Happy Monday Everybody, Last week on Facebook I revealed one of the songs from Hailey Banks' play list . Hailey's story is the one that's releasing in early summer/late spring this year. To get to know Hailey, read the Immortal Dreams Trilogy-- Divine Love , Astral Love , and Immortal Love , she's Laney's best friend. Play lists can reveal some of the moods of either the author, the scene, and/or the characters involved. To see the play lists from my Immortal Dreams Trilogy, click here . Music has a way of inspiring a lot of writers. When I wrote my stand-alone Fantasy Romance, All's Fair In Love & Lion , I listened to a lot of Chris de Burgh 's music. There was something so beautiful and stirring in his ballads. Interestingly enough, I didn't listen to very much of his music for the Trilogy (except for one song for Immortal Love ) but that's because Immortal Dreams  novels are a different story. All's Fair In Love & Lion is s...

Happy Thursday All, What makes you love a novel? Is it the writing? The characters? The atmosphere? The genre? Or all of the above? As a reader, it depends on a lot of things. Sometimes the writing is excellent and I'm in raptures. Other times the characters are amazing, even if the writing isn't the very best I've ever seen. And sometimes, I just get drawn into a story and I can't really say why. In terms of my writing, it depends on what type of inspiration strikes. With my standalone Fantasy Romance, All's Fair In Love & Lion , I was into brooding male leads, and fairy-tales. I took the two and came up with a lion shape shifter and an orphaned English teacher (Sasha loses her parents when she was 15, although in the novel she's much older than that). I wrote it with adult audiences in mind, even though the heat level is more Sweet Romance than hot. Writing first person present tense wasn't a plan of mine, either. I tried writing it third pers...

Happy Thursday All, Smokey Mountains in Gaitlinburg, TN, 2013 In writing, editing, critiquing, and being a judge (yes, I've done a little judging for a contest) there's a few things about writing that are true all the way across the board--no matter what genre, no matter if you're a newbie, or best seller, or somewhere in between. Or if you're a "pantser" or a "plotter". And that's organizing your story. Every writer is different and every writer does this differently. I call myself a "half-in-half" writer because I do a little plotting and I do a little pantsering. But the main things every writer needs whether they do it before they write the first draft, or in the editing process are for every important/main character(s) in one's novel: Me, at the NWHRWA Lone Star Conference, 2014 Goal, motivation, conflict. Yes,  GMC that leads to the actual plot. Whether you're writing the hero, heroine, villain, whatever...

Happy Thursday Everybody, Me with my author copy of ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE & LION It's wonderful to be able to hold the physical book in hands! Before I get to today's topic, I just wanted to let anyone who didn't already know, All's Fair In Love & Lion is available in paperback! You can either order it through Amazon or you can order it through Barnes & Noble . Some of you have told me you've already put in orders. Thank you so much! I truly appreciate it.  So today is a very special day because... May 8th is me and Husband's 10th wedding anniversary. In some ways, it feels like the years have flown by. Other times, I know there were moments where it seemed like time crawled.  I still remember the day pretty well. I got up (I don't remember what time), showered, dressed, got my hair done.  After returning from the hairdresser, ate a quick cheese sandwich, boarded the limo and headed over to the Church. Once I got i...

Happy Friday All, I've been thinking about what kind of post to write, and well several ideas have been floating in my mind. I couldn't nail down one, so I waited until I could. And I still haven't, but I thought I'd give it a go to see what happens. (Bear with me LOL). I'm awaiting 1st round edits for Immortal Dreams Book 1: Divine Love . I'm still waiting on the paperback version of All's Fair In Love & Lion (I'm sorry that's been taking so long). I'm waiting on the cover art for Immortal Dreams Book 1: Divine Love .  The form has been turned in to the artist, so I guess just waiting on them. I am so looking forward to this cover you have NO idea. I love this Trilogy. I do, I really do. There's just something about Erich and Laney that has me going bonkers. My beta reader is awaiting Book 3. She's loved the first 2 and is ready for the third one.  If you're a member of Goodreads , all 3 Immortal Dreams Trilogy ...

Happy Friday All, Wow! It’s been such a fun week with learning more about different Classic novels, and other authors’ work. If you haven’t checked out yesterday’s post with TinaBausinger , please do. I think it’s fascinating. To close out Classics Week, you get yours truly (me) for today. There are many authors I could have chosen to talk about today, however, CS Lewis is an author I've particularly enjoyed. So I’m going to go ahead and focus on him and his Chronicles Of Narnia . You could say in some sense, Aslan from the series influenced All’s Fair In Love & Lion a bit—given Monroe , like Aslan, (when Monroe was in his lion form) could speak My Monroe Christmas ornament, given to me by one of my sisters and be understood, was majestic. In the stories, Aslan sacrifices himself, and sacrifice comes into play in my story, as well. However, the thing about Narnia that appealed to me was how each adventure was full of imagination, wonder, a...

Happy Wednesday All, Lately I've been talking a lot about my New Adult Paranormal Romance Trilogy that is going to start releasing this June. I've gotten several questions about this and the NA genre and about the new story, so I'm going to answer some of those questions: What is New Adult (NA)? Based on what I've seen and heard, the genre is exactly as the name suggests:  The characters are new adults. They are typically in the age range of 18 to 25, facing new adult situations. Why did you write an NA novel? Well, that's kind of a funny story. My critique partner was the first person to suggest it to me. Originally she suggested YA, but I found my writing ended up being a New Adult. I also challenged myself to write third person, past tense (the way most novels are written) as opposed to first person, present tense (which is how I wrote All's Fair In Love & Lion ). One thing led to another and the Immortal Dreams Trilogy came into being. ...

Happy Wednesday All, I hope everyone is doing well this March and enjoyed/enjoying their Spring Break. We've had some sun and some rain, some cold and some warm weather. Basically, I think our weather has some kind of indecision problem. Either that, or it got into someone's liquor cabinet and is completely drunk. I'll let you decide which scenario best fits. There's a couple of blog-related things coming up that should be fun, I've got 2 official blog book reviews in the works. One I'm planning to post next week, and one I'm going to post as soon as I can (I'm currently reading the novel). On the writing front, I got the critiques back on one of my WIPs and I'll be working on that. I'm awaiting first round edits for book 1 in my Immortal Dreams Trilogy. I'm also waiting on cover art (I've already turned in the forms for all 3 books--each book will be released separately, though). By the way, Immortal Dreams Book 1: Divin...