The Coolest Thing About Getting Your Rights Back...

Okay, maybe that sounds more  intriguing than it actually is.  But recently, I had the opportunity to get the rights to my four books back from my publisher.  I wanted to sell the e-versions myself on Kindle and Nook myself.  I studied the formats and talked to my friends who have already done it.  I was just about to publish, when my friend Jana said, "What are you going to do about your covers?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.  I'd liked my publisher's covers...well, except for one book.  I really hated that cover.
"You don't own the rights to the cover image - the publisher does."  Then she told me I would have to design my own.

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that the thought intimidated me more than the time I met Bill Clinton (and then couldn't shut up as I held his hand in a vice grip).  I felt a little ridiculous because what author wouldn't want to have total control of their covers?  My concerns were in my complete lack of photoshop skills.  That and I had no idea where to begin.

My friend Gemma told me about a photo service where I could pick, edit (and pay for) images to use.  After hyperventilating for a while, I sucked it up and thought I'd just try one to start.  Finding the photos was easy. For reasons that are beyond me, there are millions of stock photos of people holding guns.  Maybe I shouldn't question that and just consider myself lucky.

I just used color banners across the top and bottom - similar to the way my publisher did it and found a similar font.  After that, it was just a matter of pasting on the reviews.  And I did it all in...(graphic designers should look away for a moment) Microsoft Publisher.  But hey, it worked!

I even found a photo very similar to my original cover on one of my books.  Now, I just had to upload them to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  No problem!

Except that they didn't take the format I created them in.  I called up my photographer friend, Todd, and he helped me - while simultaneously making me feel like an idiot. 

BTW, did you know photogs don't use film anymore?  Weird.

So I finally got the right covers uploaded to the right books.  And now that I look at them, I smugly think (forgetting how nervous I was to do it in the first place) I did a good job.  (If you don't agree, please don't tell me...I crumple easily.)

The second coolest thing about getting your rights back?  Seeing your sales as they happen online.  But that's a story for another time.

Keep writing and don't be afraid to try new stuff...because it's all new stuff. 

Leslie Langtry

Becoming A Writer

          Wherever I go, I meet people who want to become writers.  At a party, in the dentist’s waiting room, on a cross-country flight, if the conversation turns to what it is that I do and I say, “I’m a writer,” someone will invariably tell me that he or she would love to become a writer.  People tell me they could write a magnum opus about what goes on in their office, or a horror novel based on their first marriage, or a satire inspired by all the hilarious things their three-year-old daughter does.

          I am always polite and encouraging with these people, but the truth is, they will not become writers.  A writer is not something you become.  It is something you are, something you do.  People who are writers don’t talk about the books they could write.  What they do is write those books.

          As a child, I never dreamed of becoming a writer.  I had a long list of what I wanted to become when I grew up: a ballerina, an astronaut, a farmer, an actress, a Supreme Court justice, a third-grade teacher, a United Nations translator, a rock star and a veterinarian.  If someone had asked me whether I wanted to become a writer, I wouldn’t have known what to say.  I was already writing. 

          I wrote stories.  I wrote poetry.  I wrote plays.  I wrote scripts for my favorite TV shows.  I wrote articles for my school’s newspaper.  I wrote histrionic rants in my diary.  I never imagined myself becoming a writer, because I already was a writer.  Writing was something I did, often without even thinking about it or planning around it.  I ate, I slept, I got crushes on boys, I brushed my teeth.  I breathed.  I wrote.

          It wasn’t until I was in college that I considered the possibility of making a career out of my writing.  Abandoning the actress dream after taking a couple of acting courses my freshman year and realizing I lacked the talent needed to succeed in that career, I signed up for a playwriting class, mostly because I used to see the professor who taught playwriting when I walked through the theater building and he looked cool. 

          As it turned out, he was cool.  He was a phenomenal teacher.  And one day, without my knowledge, he entered a one-act play I’d written for class into a playwriting contest, and it won.  I was stunned; I hadn’t even known of the contest’s existence, let alone considered entering it.  I was even more stunned when I learned that my first-place prize included a monetary award.

          I’d always written.  But now I realized that I could get paid for doing what I was already doing anyway.

          That was when I set aside all those other possible careers.  As it happened, I was really struggling in my Russian class, so the UN translator gig didn’t seem likely.  To become a Supreme Court justice, I’d have to attend law school, which I wasn’t absolutely opposed to, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea, either.  And forget about becoming a veterinarian.  All those bio and chem prerequisites?  No way! 

          My playwriting-contest win had proved that someone was willing to pay me to write.  This was like someone paying me to sleep or eat or brush my teeth or breathe.  How sweet was that?

          I wound up working as a playwright for the next ten years.  Sometimes someone paid me for my writing.  Sometimes no one did.  I took other jobs to make ends meet while I wrote.  Along with my plays, I also kept writing short stories, novels, poetry and essays.  When I wasn’t writing one thing, I was writing another thing.  I wasn’t becoming a writer.  I was a writer, doing what writers do.  When I got tired of writing plays, I turned my full focus to novel writing, which I’ve been doing for the past twenty-plus years.  But plays or novels, fiction or poetry, I’ve just kept writing.

          I know a lot of writers.  Some, like me, are published.  Some aren’t.  Some work at other jobs to make ends meet.  Some make enough money from their writing not to need outside jobs.  Some write only on weekends.  Some write at night.  Some write nine-to-five, then turn off their computers and punch out for the day.

          I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the writers I know say that they want to be writers.  In fact, some wish they weren’t writers.  Writing is hard.  It’s physically and emotionally demanding.  It can break your heart, and often does.  The pay is erratic and it doesn’t include health insurance.  Why would anyone choose this life?  Surely becoming a Supreme Court justice can’t be as hard as writing.

          We don’t choose to write.  If anything, writing chooses us.  Writers think in words.  Without prompting, our brains spin plots.  Characters invade our thoughts and beg us to tell their stories.  We scribble notes on napkins, on the margins of the magazines we’re reading, along the edges of our shopping lists.  We walk past a house, peer into a window and suddenly our minds fill with stories about the people we imagine living inside.

          This is what we do.  This is what we are.  We don’t “become” writers.  We just write.

And Blessedly Tired, Too

Funny how, at fifteen and twenty and twenty-five, when I wrote constantly, kept a daily journal, had novels and short stories and poems in files, I considered myself, in a self-important youthful, but sincere way, a writer. Now, at something older than thirty, with one novel published and one on the way, having been paid, for the first time in my life to write, I find myself literally NEVER describing myself as a writer.

This may have something to do with the fact that my writing life is pressed into the edges of a very full-time job of mothering three children under five (4.5, 2.9 and three months to be exact). More significantly, my mothering is more important to me--not merely more demanding. I have found, to my surprise and dismay and delight, that, in ways I couldn't have imagined when I was young, being a novelist is currently inconsequential. Ha! Funny what life will show you if you let it.

Since I wrote my debut novel during my first son's naps, and revised it after my daughter's birth (and now have revised my second novel during the thrills of a third post partum experience), it is not suprising my sense of relativity (and I might just be too tired to be what I think a writer ought to be--intelligent, dedicated and able to write in something more than a fifteen minute block of time!). But as I think about the women who write this blog, who have beautifully posted about their writing lives and habits, I know one thing is true for me with my non-existent writing schedule (yes, I write, but no, there is no schedule now of any kind). My children, and my awarenes of their preeminence in my life, has freed me to be a writer, because, for the first time, I can write without it mattering so darn much.

Being just one of many writers, not on the best seller's list, not getting rich, not writing the great American novel, not becoming famous, not doing as well as I had hoped, I can bear all this. In fact, provided my children are healthy and happy, I feel I can bear anything.

This may make me a worse writer; I'm not sure. I can confidently say it makes me a better mother. Do I hope to apply myself more as a novelist in 2011? Not at all. I am always writing a story in my head, one way or another, and my heart has to follow its fulfillment. Writing is a joy. Getting paid for it, a privelege. But this family is an etching carved deep into my heart by the Universe itself, and I want to do it better. Loving that, I am free to be as successful as life will have me be as a writer, and that girl of long-ago who imagined some Oprah Winfrey type of fame, is happy to have grown up (it's much better than I'd imagined).

Though I have this secret, rather child-like wish, that Oprah will read my book and contact me and...What? I will be doing the dishes and nursing and arranging a preschool event all at the same time and since I can't stand technology and don't have call waiting she will get three hours of a busy signal and finally give up and her email will land in my junk mail since she isn't a "known" sender and I will never even know that I could have been The Next Big Thing if I weren't so woefully busy (and blessedly tired, too). Hey, now that I think of it, maybe this has already happened....

A last minute P.S. Has anything unexpected humbled your writing? Your childhood dreams?

Samantha Wilde is the author of THIS LITTLE MOMMY STAYED HOME. You can visit her at samanthawilde.com.

Read This Book: Jane Porter's SHE'S GONE COUNTRY by Megan Crane

I'm just back from a couple of days celebrating the release of Jane Porter's new book, SHE'S GONE COUNTRY.  Jane doesn't do anything halfway.  That's why we all had cocktails on a little terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Laguna Beach, while Jane charmed readers and friends.  It looked like this:

Can you think of anything better than talking books (and Shonda Rhimes television shows, and the over-consumption of delicious nachos) in a place like this?  I certainly can't.  We then made our way to lovely Laguna Beach Books, where Jane read from her new book and had her usual lively question and answer period with the crowd.  

Going to see Jane speak and read is always a delight, because she's so funny and so honest.  But it can also be a life-changing experience.  Jane believes that all women deserve to be happy--to find happiness in their lives and live with hope.  Yes, you.  And me.  And your best friend who's going through such a tough time and doesn't know what to do.  We deserve to write the story of our own lives, and that story deserves a happy ending.  That's a simple message, but also a powerfully moving one.  

So... what about the book, you're asking?  Well.  It's fantastic.  Every Jane Porter book is better than the one before.  Every one of them sucks you in and keeps you completely immersed in the world she creates until the very last page.  I had the pleasure of reading SHE'S GONE COUNTRY long ago, when she'd just finished writing it.  I couldn't stop reading.  I sat at my desk and gulped it all down on my computer screen, absolutely riveted to the screen, frozen in place until I reached the end.  I think you'll find you can't put this book down, and when you do, you'll feel a bit like this:

But don't take my word for it.  Here's a little summary:

Shey Darcy, a 39-year-old former top model for Vogue and Sports Illustrated led a charmed life in New York City with a handsome photographer husband until the day he announced he'd fallen in love with someone else. Left to pick up the pieces of her once happy world, Shey decides to move back home to Texas with her three teenage sons. Life on the family ranch, however, brings with it a whole new host of dramas starting with differences of opinion with her staunch Southern Baptist mother, her rugged but overprotective brothers, and daily battles with her three sons who are also struggling to find themselves. Add to the mix Shey's ex-crush, Dane Kelly, a national bullriding champ and she's got her hands full. It doesn't take long before Shey realizes that in order to reinvent herself, she must let go of an uncertain future and a broken past, to find happiness—and maybe love—in the present.

I loved this book.  LOVED IT.  You can rush right out and buy it here.  I think you should.  

And if you can catch Jane on tour somewhere, (details here) you should probably do that, too.  You'll never regret it, I promise.

~Megan

18 Novelists Share Their Writing Routines

Morning, noon, midnight? All day, a couple hours, a few minutes? In a boat, with a goat, on a moat? Girlfriends reveal their writing routines.




My writing routine involves shuffling to my computer half asleep, and glaring bleary-eyed at the pages stacked up there on the desk that indicate I am, supposedly, writing a book. I then drink copious amounts of tea while reading everything on the internet. And I do mean everything.

When I feel sufficiently guilty--and bored, having read the whole internet--I launch into my word quota for the day. The closer I am to my deadline, however, the more I write, the less I use a word quota (preferring to operate on sheer panic), and the later I tend to sit there into the night. Assuming I bang off a robust number of pages at a decent hour (this never happens, especially if I have distractions during the day, like unavoidable phone calls or lunches or meetings), I have dinner and watch television (I love a good procedural), interact with spouse, then get in bed and read other people's (much better) books before going to sleep. And then I wake up and do it again!

Megan Crane


Before I write a word, I have a five-mile run, devour lox and bagel (canceling out the run) and peruse no less than ten internet sites. Then, armed with Extra gum and Cheerwine, I tentatively approach the keyboard. Once I get rolling (sometimes as late as 11 a.m.) and I keep at it until happy hour (5 p.m.) with very few breaks. I also write every day, including weekends and holidays.

Karin Gillespie



I try to treat my writing like a full time job. Once I've gotten the children off to school I give myself 30 minutes for the internet. I even bought myself an egg timer that beeps loudly to try and keep me honest. I have no self-control when it comes to the internet. Hours can go by without me even realizing how long and what I've been surfing. Once the timer beeps I reset it for 15 minutes. I then sit down and meditate.

After that I set the timer for 1.5 hours. This is relatively new as I used to set it for 4 hours and stop it whenever I had to take a break but I read an article about how we are at peek concentration levels for about 90 minutes and then we need a break so I've been trying it and I have to say I like the 90 minute block. I work for 90 minutes and then I take a break. By break I mean I stand up and do something other than sitting at the computer. I fold a load of laundry. Unload the dishwasher. Open some mail. Anything away from the computer and that will take 15 to 20 minutes. Then I go back and do another 1.5 hours. I do this cycle as many times as possible. The first two generally go interrupted... After that I have yoga. Then the kids and homework (the kids not mine) and all the other parts of life. On a good day I can get 6 hours of writing in...on an average day it's 4.5. In the evenings, once the children are in bed, I try to reread what I've written that day so my mind can noodle while I sleep and I am ready for the next day.

Maggie Marr


My writing routine is mainly over my lunch hour, at night and on weekends. As a result, I seem to have become very antisocial. ;)

Leslie Langtry


When the kids were small, I got in the habit of rising at 5 am every day so I could have some alone time to write before the family woke up. Now they're all teenagers, but I stuck with the routine as I find that I'm most creative and focused in the early hours of the morning.

Ellen Meister


My routine is flexible by necessity. I'd so love to be one of those authors who escapes to a seaside cottage to craft a rough draft, taking short breaks only to walk on the beach and nap. But since I've got three young boys, my laptop comes everywhere with me. Today one of my sons is taking a test required for him to transfer to a new school. It's a 90-minute test, so my laptop and I will be working together in the lobby of the building!


Sarah Pekkanen

Rule number one: Along with routine, a muse is an integral part of the writing process. Rule number two: Never count on a muse to comply with routine. If he’s my muse, chances are he’s around back, having a smoke, and tapping into a fifth of gin. Assuming he shows, an optimal routine includes my sunroom on a rainy day, six uninterrupted hours, and the wherewithal to push forward instead of succumbing to editing what’s already there. That said, I’m not opposed to writing in airports, on the front porch, or in the homes of people I’m visiting and whose company has grown tiresome (:


Laura Spinella


I write all the time, it stretches and snatches, including evenings and weekends. I've learned that the earlier I do it, the better. Deadlines always make me more productive. And I just found this great program called Freedom that locks you off the Internet for a pre-set period of time (up to eight hours). Sadly, it turns out I'm not capable of mustering the willpower to do it all my myself. (http://macfreedom.com/  - and there is a version for both Macintoshs and PCs).

April Henry


I like to wake up even before the crack of dawn, when it's still dark at 5 a.m. and write for two hours before my 8 year old bounds out of bed with all his energy and the get-ready-for-school rush. For writing, especially first draft and first revision, I love those two perfect, quiet, uninterrupted-by-anything hours. Just pure mind, fresh from sleep, where so much of my plot issues seem to work themselves out, without distraction. Once I get my son off to school and I'm back at 8:30, I spend a good chunk working on my freelance projects (I write 10-15 back covers a month and do freelance line-edits for the publishing house I used to work for) and then when I'm done with my assignments for the day, somehow my brain is fresh again to go back to my WIP, to write or to revise. I revise as I go--I've never written a first draft through without revising, editing, polishing each chapter as I go, though I wish I could!

Melissa Senate



My writing routine is very simple: get up and write a thousand words
before moving on to anything else. Ahem. Actually doing it is a little
more tricky! My writing brain is much sharper in the morning, so I try hard to
write before responding to emails, going to exercise class, or doing a
million other things that all seem more appealing! And some days the
words are harder to get out. It might take me until noon to get four
or five hundred. So I move on to lunch (always a highlight), walking
the dog, checking the mailbox, reading the paper, and then go back to
the grind.And I always keep Annie LaMott's excellent advice in mind: A dreadful first draft can be improved later!

Roberta Isleib



My writing schedule seems to vary with each book, but one constant is that I set a word goal for each day. This works better than writing for a set period of time. Usually, my word goal is 1500 words per day. I generally don't write on weekends (my brain needs resting and I find I come up with all sorts of ideas when I'm not even thinking about it).

Judy Larson



Whether I'm working on a first draft or a revision, I'm thinking about it 24/7. I'm not a good sleeper so I'm often up in the middle of the night, either writing or jotting down notes. I don't have a specific schedule so I basically just work on and off all day and often on the weekends. I do like to get other writing-related stuff out of the way early: emails, blog posts, Facebook, etc. Then I dig into the book. Okay, yes, I'm antsy, so I'm up and down a lot, doing laundry, running errands, and tackling other household tasks. I don't have a set amount of pages I do daily either, although I love it when I get at least four fresh pages done. With revisions, if I can do a chapter a day, that's fantastic! And, somehow, despite what seems like perpetual distractions and disorganization, everything gets finished and turned in on time (or close to it!).

--Susan McBride


I don't really have much of a routine. I generally just write as much as I can, whenever I can.

Brenda Janowitz



Here is my writing routine before sale of debut novel:
• carpool line drop-off,
• brisk two-mile walk to prime the writing pump,
• light a fragrant “writing candle”,
• write straight through lunch into mid-afternoon,
• extinguish same fragrant “writing candle”,
• carpool line pick-up.

Here is my writing routine after sale of debut novel:
• carpool line drop-off, checking email during slow turns,
• walk two miles while searching memory for name of new novel’s protagonist,
• light fragrant “writing candle”,
• perform blogging responsibilities and check email while avoiding: face book, blog stats, Amazon pre-                  pub sales ranking, and Goodreads shelf count
• pull up work-in-progress and locate name of new novel’s protagonist,
• check email, respond to requests from editor, publicist, sons, miss lunch, complete task for    
                 editor, publicist, sons,
• CARPOOL!!! Drive to school frantically while calling home for someone to extinguish “writing candle”.

Cindy Jones




I have been a writer for over twenty years and when I think back to my original routines, I actually long for those simpler days. I had three children underfoot and though there was plenty of whining, crying and he-hit-me's to interrupt the creative flow, my kids were still a lot less disruptive than the Internet turned out to be.

For me, Email, Google, Facebook, Syype AIM and online shopping are like a drug, especially on days when my bad girl muse, Ms. Procrastination, shows up and doesn't want to work. Then it's diversion time and boy is it hard to get back into the swing.

So for my new writing routine? The one that keeps me focused and in my chair? It's all about not logging on, not checking my cell, not checking my Facebook page, not interacting with anyone other than my characters, who do seem happier when they have my undivided attention. Best time of day then is early morning when nobody but me and a whole bunch of other writers are up pounding the keyboard.

As for those little kids of mine, now adults (the nerve of them)... I miss, miss, miss, those deliriously sweet days when they'd barge into my little office, tug at my arm and say, "C'mon mom. Be done already. We wanna play."

Sigh.

Saralee Rosenberg

I don't have regimented hours set aside to always do one task or another, but I work on writing or promotional things for most of every work day. When I'm approaching a deadline or when a book is just about to be released, I work well into the night also. There are a great many business-related aspects to being a novelist that I hadn't realized until after I sold my first book. Those things (like designing/buying ads, doing guest blogs, giving phone interviews, preparing presentations, logging expenses for tax records, etc.) definitely cut into the time I'm able to spend actually writing/editing the novel, but I do try to make sure I'm doing some work on my current manuscript every day.

~Marilyn Brant



If I'm working on a novel, I pretty much work straight through from 7am, when my daughter gets on the bus, until 3pm, when "General Hospital" starts. If the writing is going strong, I'll put in more hours and sometimes on weekends. I used to write 7 days a week, but now I only work 7 days a week, meaning lots of times the weekends are devoted to answering business email or doing promotion. People wonder how I can write so much and there's the answer: I treat it as a full-time job.

Lauren Baraz-Logsted



To be honest, my writing routine is all over the place. I'm not good at sitting at the computer for longer than 2 hours, so I slot 2 hour intervals for writing. For example, I might get up and write from 7-9 am, then do errands or housework till noon, and write from 1-3 pm, and so forth. I find that after 2 hours, my creative juices run dry and the mundane activities I do in between the writing time helps to rev me up again.

Maria Geraci


I write when I can, but I don't beat myself up for not writing every day. The act of writing can also exist in my head. I can work out plot and character issues in the shower, when driving to the grocery store and while waiting to fall asleep.

---Wendy Tokunaga

Girlfriend News

Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been, is now a New York Times Bestselling author.

"Sins of the Mother," a Lifetime movie adapted from Carleen Brice's Orange Mint and Honey was nominated for a NAACP Image award.

 Laura Spinella has a new blog post "Transaction Complete" with pics from her first booksigning ever: http://lauraspinella.net/blog/  and an interview here: http://www.fictionall.com/

Q and A with Guest Writer Jackie Miles, author of ALL THAT'S TRUE

What’s the backstory behind ALL THAT’S TRUE?



I was contemplating what I was going to write next and nothing came to mind. Since I tend to write from the perspective of young protagonists, I thought back to my early teenage years for inspiration. That’s when I realized nothing very significant had happened to me during those years. My parents got along; there was no divorce pending. We had no deaths in the family and no major illnesses to struggle with. We had no brothers, so nobody was going off to war. My prospects of writing from that segment of my life seemed fruitless. Then I realized, what if a teenager such as myself, had a life, like mine, that was going really well and then the entire bottom fell out of it?


Thirteen-year-old Andi St.James was born. I had her struggling with a mother who turns to alcohol after her brother is killed in a freak hazing accident and a father who starts having sex with her best friend’s sexy new step-mother.

Sourcebooks, my publisher, calls it “an authentic coming-of-age novel with a terrific takeaway.”

I grew very fond of Andi and the novel was a pleasure to write. I hope my readers love it I made every effort to write it with the mindset to keep the pages turning. Joshilyn Jackson, author of Backseat Saints, wrote, “All That’s True is a genuine Southern-style page-turner. What makes this book shine is the authentic voice of its narrator, a winning and warm-hearted girl on the verge of womanhood, learning what it means to be human.”

I’m overjoyed!!

Who are some of your literary influences?

It started with John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath, a book that triggered a lifelong passion for reading at a young age. I tend to devour anything written by southern writers, which is strange as I’m originally from the north. I love Connie May Fowler, Eudora Welty and Earnest Gaines. But I also enjoy books by Elizabeth Berg. Her novel True to Form provided much inspiration for All That’s True.


What books are on your nightstand right now?

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf. Author Karin Gillespie recommended it to me and said the writing reminded her of my work, so I’m anxious to read! Tess Gerritsen wrote, “Beautifully written, compassionately told, and relentlessly suspenseful.” It’s the story of the disappearance of two young girls. I also have Connie May Fowler’s latest resting on my night stand, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly. It came out in April of 2010 and sadly I’m just getting to it. I have plans to re-read Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina for the umpteenth time. It always inspires me to write about great young protagonists, which is the age group I seem to do well in. Also in my stack it the non-fiction piece Save the Cat! by the late, great Blake Snyder. It’s called “The Last Book On Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need”, but works well for fiction, too. The title intrigues me and is in reference to the fact that all protagonists need to do something to endear themselves to the reader very quickly in the narrative, like save the cat! Works for me!

How do you feel about ebooks?

It’s certainly the wave of the future and I’m intrigued with the idea you can load one of 775,000 books in your reader in under thirty seconds. I have yet to buy the device, not that I’m against it per se, I just love the feel of a book in my hands and find it no problem to carry one with me in my satchel wherever I go. Maybe down the road. . .

What are you working on now?

I’m glad you asked. I just finished SUMMER RIDGE, which follows twelve-year-old Mary Alice Munford who struggles with the knowledge that her mother plans to marry her father, a man who abandoned them before she was born. Here’s the opening:

When I was very little my mother told me stories about why my father wasn’t with us. First she said he was away in the war going on in Asia, Vietnam. Then she said he was healing from the wounds in his head that made him forget us. Later she said he was on assignment for the secret service.”

“Hogwash,” Granny Ruth said. “She’s filled your head with garbage.”

Ours is not a happy household. There’s me, my mother, Granny Ruth and Aunt Josie, whose husband, my Uncle Earnest, fell under a combine when I was five so I never got to know him good. The day he died, I climbed on Aunt Josie’s lap and wouldn’t leave even when it was time to go to bed. Mama tried to pick me up.



“You been sitting there all day, sweet thing.”



“Leave me lone, Mama,” I said. “I’m helping Aunt Josie cry.”

The book is reminiscent of "Paper Moon", initially known as Adie Prey, which was an outstanding movie as well. Like Adie’s father, Mary Alice reluctantly follows her father around the rural south as he swindles people out of their money. Eventually he gets his comeuppance with Mary Alice learning some valuable lessons in the process.

Jackie Lee Miles, a resident of Georgia for thirty-five years, hails from Wisconsin via South Dakota. She considers herself “a northern girl with a southern heart” Her other novels include Roseflower Creek, Cold Rock River, and Divorcing Dwayne. Visit her at http://jlmiles.brinkster.net/index.html

Good News! Tomorrow our regular Saturday round-up feature resumes. We'll be talking about our writing routines.  

A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES...(you know the rest)

My writing journey, these days, looks a lot like what's happening right this minute: it's almost nine p.m and I'm writing, crafting something (in this case, a blog post) that's due in the morning, after spending all day working on something (always, a novel) that's due in a few months or sometimes less. During breaks in my day, I'm checking in with Facebook, I'm learning to tweet, I'm trading emails with my agent, my editor, my publicity team, my marketing team, my husband, and our dog. Wait, no, we don't have a dog.

My writing journey used to look a lot like this:
.
.
. (nothing)
.
. (nothing)
.
. (nothing, nothing, la la la la la)
.
.

Because until I was in my thirties, I didn't see myself as a writer; I was a voracious reader who'd once imagined becoming a popular novelist, but never did much of anything to make that happen. Took one writing class in high school. Bought one How to Write Romance Novels! guidebook. Filled a spiral-bound notebook with a story about a young woman in a failing marriage while I was a young woman in a failing marriage.

At 30, newly single and with two young children, I put myself into college. At first I thought I'd major in psychology but, after a semester, saw that sociology was the better fit. While I'm fascinated by human behavior, I didn't want to spend my days with troubled people; I knew I had too much empathy, too much imagination. I knew that I'd never leave their problems at the office.

Sociology: the study of social systems, groups, dynamics, institutions. Race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, justice. My concentration was cultural anthropology, and I studied physical anthro, too. I loved it, and as I approached my final semester with a 4.0 GPA in place and my new membership in Phi Beta Kappa (not to mention a new husband and two stepsons), I had my eye on a fellowship for my PhD. This is when Fate intervened: my last semester included an English class taught by a Real Published Author who, upon reading the short story I wrote for my term paper, told me I had it. You know, IT, that thing (whatever it is) that enables some people to imagine a thing and write it down in a sort of interesting, possibly compelling way.

I wanted to believe him. So, with my husband's encouragement, I took a year off to write Mostly Readable: a novel. Tried to find an agent. Collected rejections. Revise, rinse, repeat.

That Real Published Author of my undergrad program said, maybe take a writing workshop. I said, maybe I'll go to grad school for an MA in English and a creative writing concentration! Maybe I'll get a teaching assistantship so that I can get paid (a very little, tiny amount of money) to learn cool things AND to write a novel! Fate said, "Sure, and by the way, the school may be getting an MFA program; you could transfer into that." So I did.

The other thing I did: write, write, write, write, read, read, read, write, write. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Then my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. I dropped classes. My father-in-law passed away. Shortly after, my mom came to stay with me; radiation daily, chemo weekly, drugs, doctors; not much writing, reading only medical stuff, not much sleep. Three months into her stay here, she died, and everything really, really sucked for a while.

To be a novelist, to have a writing career, you have to be motivated by something more powerful than all the forces working against your success. Writing, even when you love it, is hard. Getting an agent is hard. Selling a novel is hard. Rejection is hard, bad reviews suck, deadline pressure is intense. What motivates me, foremost? Mortality.

Life is uncertain and, even when long, almost always too short.(This is my forearm; the kanji is a Japanese proverb that translates as, Each moment, only once.)

So, I finished my MFA program with a completed, defended novel in hand. I found a fantastic agent--but we didn't sell the novel. I wrote another novel (Souvenir) and my agent sold it, at auction, and ultimately to ten different publishers here and abroad. To quote a line from near the end of my second published novel, Reunion: "It was a good start."

I emphasize, however, that it was only a start. Review copies of Exposure, my third novel, are arriving in mailboxes this week. Will it be well-received, well-reviewed? My film agent continues to field interest; will someone make an offer? The topic is timely: teen love and sexting. The story, inspired by my own son's arrest, is very close to my heart. Will readers love it? Will it sell well? Will I make my next deadline? Will I figure out hashtags, re-tweets, Facebook Pages? Will that dog stop emailing me?

I don't know. You never know whether the future will bring catastrophe or grace. But if you have an ambition or dream, of any kind, don't let that stop you from trying to achieve it.

***********

Therese Fowler is the author of Souvenir, Reunion, and, coming May 3rd, Exposure. She has worked in the U.S. Civil Service, managed a clothing store, lived in the Philippines, had children, sold real estate, earned a B.A. in sociology, sold used cars, returned to school for her MFA in creative writing, and taught college undergrads about literature and fiction-writing -- roughly in that order. With books published in nine languages and sold world-wide, Therese writes full-time from her home in Wake Forest, NC, which she shares with her husband, four amiable cats, and four nearly grown-up sons.