Writings, Wanderings

December 2017. I sat at a booth in an Eat 'n' Park and caught up with a friend on our life over the last year. At the time I was still smarting from my two failed attempts to break the four-hour mark in a marathon. Although my friend encouraged me to look at the positive--I did run TWO marathons within five weeks after all--I couldn't shake the funk of having put in months of training and not being successful in my goal. February 2018. My sister informs me that the Marine Corps Marathon--one of the few races at that distance on my wish-list--is changing their registration. Every other year it had been lottery-style, but this year there would be a fifteen-minute window when anyone who registered (and paid the fee) would be an automatic entry. The only catch? That window was in the morning when I was supposed to be interacting with a classroom of Spanish students. Registration day arrived--and with it a school cancellation. I was amazed at this moment working out, but this wa...

I am excited to share the cover of my upcoming release Decision in Paris !  Isn't it beautiful? The cover artist and I spent several hours over two meetings brainstorming and discussing ideas. She also read the story to get a better idea of a direction to design. She was awesome.

It's a little hard to believe but in three weeks Decision in Paris , the first book in Suitcases and Love Trilogy (which is starting to turn into a universe of its own), will release. The book has been to an editor and some beta readers, and with the exception of one passage of five-six pages I am very happy with it. Final tweaks to that section is on my weekend to-do list. I met with my cover designer this week and we are on track for a beautiful cover for this book as well as the other two books in the trilogy. To stay in the loop, make sure you are signed up for my newsletter .

Where am I with my writing this month? 1. The first novella of my Suitcases & Love trilogy is back from its editor. I have to go through and make decisions about which changes to keep, modify, or ignore. I am meeting with the cover designer next week. I am also receiving feedback from my beta readers so that will play into the editing process of the final draft over the next few weeks. I am still aiming for a late February release of the Kindle version (Feb 28 actually!). 2. The second novella has made it to its second draft. Next step will be to get it to the editing eyes of someone besides myself. 3. I have written a short story of almost 14K words that serves as a prequel companion story to the trilogy. I am not sure yet of the path I will follow for its release but it will be available sometime this year as well. 4. I am working on two other short stories of 2K-5K words. I really don't know the publishing plan for these two, but I am enjoying the writing. One of the...

Over a decade ago I discovered NaNoWriMo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is a challenge to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month, enough for a novel. The first year I tried it with a personal goal of just hitting 20K. With my success at that number, the following year I went for the full 50K and have "won" eleven times now. My 2013 NaNo project eventually became Through Hammers and Verse: Revealing Love . This year I took a different approach to NaNoWriMo. Instead of writing a brand new idea, I used the time to make significant progress on my romance trilogy of novellas tentatively titled Suitcases & Love . I had finished the first draft with one round of revision of book one before September but with school kicking into gear, the second book about Aubrye and Greg had languished. NaNo proved to be the jumpstart I needed. Although the first few days I fell behind the optimal word count (1667 words per day), I caught up after the first weeken...