Happy Thanksgiving! I’m thankful for each and every one of you who stops by to visit this blog. I wish you a wonderful day filled with so many blessings and the gift of friendship and love!
Today we’ll all be trekking to the in-laws for Thanksgiving lunch. Then it’s back to writing that holiday novella that was due last year, but only as long as I don’t get distracted by the next shiny thing… oh, look! A new story idea! A new pen name! A new way to kill time instead of write!
I wish I planned things better but it’s better late than never, right? So one day after the release of my latest book OTHER SIDE OF LOVE, I’m celebrating with a giveaway!
To enter, just click on the image above or this link. And good luck!
I had a really good reason for being late, actually. I spent yesterday morning walking with a dear friend, feeding ducks, and catching up on things. Jackie used to be my walking buddy until I simply dropped off the face of the earth this year… basically burnout and other stuff.
But I’m back on the schedule and tomorrow I get to attend my first Tai-chi class! It’s the balance I desperately need after the imbalance of the last year and I may even have found my sweet spot as far as writing goes. Instead of sitting at my desk for hours at a time only to end up spending most of that time surfing the Internet, I get up at around six in the morning and write for about an hour. No checking email or opening the browser. Just me and my Ulysses app putting down the words.
Then at seven or so, I get up from my desk and start making breakfast for the LilDude. After I drop him off at school, I then go for my walk and then run errands. Then when I return home from the walk or errands, I sit down and write for another hour. Maybe I’ll spend that hour doing marketing/promotion stuff. Maybe some personal stuff like renewing my passport or whatever, but I’ve been more mindful about my time since I felt like myself again in the last two weeks. I’ve even reached out to people to let them know I’m back.
It’s the balance I need and so far, it’s going good. I’m going to be printing out the schedule soon and laminating it, just like I laminate my kid’s schedule! Who knew I need those things more than he does?!
Three years ago this month, I released my fourth book. It was a story that had been percolating inside my head about an older woman who falls in love with a much younger man. Originally planned as a novella, one that would have tons of funny and steamy scenes, it would end up taking a different road all its own the moment I sat down to write the first chapter.
I didn’t even know the heroine’s name that night in May. I just knew that she was on some kind of vacation in the Southwest, a place I’d been to in the past and had fallen in love with. There was just one catch.
This was one vacation she planned never to return from.
And so the original steamy lighthearted novella turned into something different but one that I realized was a story I wanted so badly to write. I had to write it like my life depended on it.
Around this time, I had already written three books, all of them commercial failures. I had been so close to quitting writing altogether and heaven knows what my friends and family thought of me and my sad attempt at being a writer. But something inside me decided to give it one more try. One more book.
One more story.
And so, I quit my massage teaching job that summer. I still had my main private practice even if it had already been cut back from five days a week to two days a week because of my son’s schedule which only made childcare costs more expensive because now I was paying per day instead of a monthly rate.
At this point, I’d lost whatever confidence I once had about being a decent writer. I really had no idea if I was good enough or not. I had no idea if the story would resonate with anyone outside of Wattpad (where I was posting each chapter). But I had to try. Quitting my teaching job which I had relied on for that extra boost of income was also that message to myself that said, no more net. Now show them what you got even if you have to bare your soul to do it.
For days and weeks after the book was done, I was so scared of letting it go. If I could have delayed the release, I would have simply because the book, to me, was too raw and too honest in parts. I had also changed my pen name and so people were basically seeing a brand new author at this point. Just another wannabe writer trying her hand in the author world.
But life has a way of reminding you that you’re on the right path. The singer-songwriter whose two songs inspired the book granted me his permission to include lyrics to one of the songs when I saw him perform in Los Angeles two weeks before the release, prompting me to go back and do those additions just in time.
There was no turning back now.
And so if my math is correct, October marks the third book birthday for Dax and Harlow’s story, Everything She Ever Wanted. It marked the official debut for my main pen name and it would remind me that you can’t sit back and wait for things to happen. You have to take that first step and put yourself out there.
You have to go after your dream, share your stories with those who need to read them and do it again and again and again.
I also learned that you do need to set a series bible and timeline but that’s a story for another day…
In the meantime, the ebook version of Everything She Ever Wanted is FREE for a limited time. It’s also available in paperback and audiobook.
When her husband leaves her for a younger woman, transplant surgeon Harlow James hits the open road and ends up in Taos, New Mexico hoping to find out where she went wrong.
Instead, she finds the perfect man.
Master woodworker Dax Drexel is gorgeous, funny, and represents every reason to keep going.
There’s only one problem: he’s too young.
But even if everything about Dax is perfect, can their fling stand a chance against the world that betrayed her… the same world she’s about to return to?
For Dax, a naked woman asleep in his bed when he thought his rental would have been available is the last thing he expected to find on his day off.
He could walk away… but he can’t.
For there’s something about Harlow James that he just can’t turn away from.
Sure, she’s thirteen years older than him, but she’s smart, independent, and beautiful.
Day three of no laptop/computer and so far, I’m still… sane. Well, maybe I was a bit cranky last night but it helps to have an iPad and a few wireless keyboards to make sure you still hit that word count each day.
Right now, I should be writing but it’s a steamy sex scene and being constantly surrounded by family members as I try to write on my iPad in the kitchen is not as easy as I thought it would be. And with LilDude constantly coming over to “check the time” right when I’m writing those four-letter words becomes, shall we say, awkward.
And so I’m distracting myself with Instagram. Probably a bit too much because now I’ve probably spent two hours looking at all the pictures and videos of the current muse/inspiration who I had hoped to limit to stock photos like I always do, that way, he remains something I’d create in my head.
Only he’s such a charismatic performer to boot (not just a model but an actor and singer, too) and so he’s quite active on Instagram and today, he popped up in a private message responding to a comment I made on his IG story after he emerged from one of his boxing workouts with a cut under his eye and I had responded with a “hope your eye is okay.” I actually don’t expect responses when I do that because I kinda don’t respond to all my IG story comments myself (sorry).
That was probably a week ago and I had completely forgotten all about it but when he messaged me back, I was working on that steamy scene and I just had to drop everything. And since he can only speak Russian and Spanish, I ended up with a crash course in Spanish which was good because I’ve only been half-heartedly studying it for decades since when my grandparents spoke it whenever they’d get really exasperated with us and I always wanted to know what they were saying. Unfortunately, when you don’t practice something regularly, you forget and today, my Spanish got a workout.
Poco a poco, he said and damn, is he right. When I got confused between “soy” and “estoy” as a variation of “I am,” he said I was correct the first time. He said he liked the way I used his images for my naughty pen name’s IG (unfortunately, this is not related to my Liz Durano IG). It helps that he’s also so gorgeous and sexy and… well, come to think of it, I need to get back to writing that sexy scene again. Sarah and Benny are waiting!
I am in love with this series and these characters… I loved the narration (his voice melts me like butter). Loved the twists in the storyline, the sweet romance and of course the HEA…
“Great voice brings the story to life”
This book was the second in the series and the story takes up just where we left off in the first and didn’t disappoint. plus the narrator’s voice captured my mental image of Ashe perfectly and I can’t wait for the next in line in the series.
“Riley and Ashe…”
Ashe and Riley have overcome so much. The secrets revealed in this book were so worth waiting for. I loved the characters determination. The storyline has heartbreak, perseverance, love, humor, and vengeful ex-lover. Martin John Hopkins is the perfect voice for this book told from Ashe’s point of view. I really enjoyed his sexy accent.
It’s been a few weeks since the audio narration of Loving Riley was released and the reviews are coming in. If you’ve left your review, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed the story. If you’d like a free copy to review, let me know in the comments and I’ll send you an Audible code which you can redeem.
