Skip to main content
Dear Readers/Friends,

It's been awhile since I've written on the blog but all of that is changing! In fact, it's been awhile since I actually finished a book and put one out...that's about to change, too. Life sometimes gets in the way and can even derail us of our purpose and unfortunately I am guilty of allowing this to happen with myself.

And, when I really take a moment and reflect on what I just wrote above...the word that hits me is "allowing." I allowed myself to be derailed by difficult circumstance that took me down a bit of a rabbit hole. It happens to a lot of us in life (derailment from our purpose or passion), but it doesn't need to define us and the good news is that we can crawl out of the hole at any time. What defines me in part is "WRITER." I lost sight of that and I blamed my health, publishing, algorithms, Amazon, losing my dad, my divorce and on and on. Guess what? It was all BS! It's on me! As a writer being one of my main purposes in life, I look back now and regardless of everything outside of my control I had one thing that I was and could be in control of, and that was my writing. I realize now that even if I'd only written a paragraph a day during the time down the hole, I still would've been authentic and true to a large part of my purpose in life. But, I didn't do that and I got sidetracked and bogged down...until I called bull**** on myself and said...you better write! It doesn't matter if I'm my books are on the bestseller lists right now, or if sales aren't great. It doesn't matter if someone writes a negative review about something I wrote. It doesn't matter if I don't receive back a response from an e-mail I've written to someone in the business. None of that matters. What matters is that I write!

So, I ask you...has anyone out there ever lost sight of their purpose? What did you do? Or are you there now? If your purpose is to be a chef, even if you aren't there yet--are you cooking? If your purpose is to be an artist--are you painting? If your purpose is to be the best possible parent you can be--are you learning and teaching and coming up with ways to manage your family to be the optimum parent possible? It doesn't matter what your purpose is, what matters is that no matter what the outside circumstances happening around you that cause pressure or overwhelm in your life, are you still in some way living up to what you were meant to do/be? It can be done in baby steps. One of my favorite quotes by Wayne Dyer is, "I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can control what goes on inside."

You can expect new blogs, even vlogs, essays, articles and of course books out of me this year! Back to living my purpose! I hope you're living yours.

Cheers,

Michele

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Guest Blogger Jessica Park and Chapter One of "Cook the Books."

I am very happy today to have my good friend Jessica Park share the first chapter of her next book, "Cook the Books," due out in March. If you haven't read a Gourmet Girl Mystery, you need to. They're everything a good mystery should be and more--They're funny, romantic, mysterious(duh) and just plain fun. Do yourself a favor and read the entire series. You won't be sorry! Without further ado... Chapter 1 I have a love-hate relationship with Craigslist. On the one hand, I adore poking through the online classifieds for items I don’t even want—Swedish bobbin winders, chicken coops, vintage Christmas ornaments—and for enviable extravagances that I can’t afford—like the services of someone to come to my house to change the cat litter. On the other hand, I hate getting sucked into the vortex of randomly searching for weird items and unaffordable services instead of looking for what I actually need. For example, at the moment, I absolutely had to find a part-time j

DADDY'S HOME

This is the book that really started it all in some ways for me. I'd been writing and publishing for eight years under my name. I'd written the Nikki Sands and Michaela Bancroft mystery series before DADDY'S HOME came out and I'd built a decent cozy mystery genre readership. I'd actually written Daddy's Home before MURDER UNCORKED came out because my initial intent as a writer was to be a thriller author. However, after sending Daddy's Home out on A LOT of unsolicited submissions I hadn't found representation and the idea for Murder Uncorked came to me...and viola...an agent loved it and sold three books in that series (two of them hadn't been written yet) in two weeks after signing me. Nine books in the two different series later both series were dropped and I found myself asking...what next? It was about that time that Amazon started the KDP program for Indies and I had five manuscripts that hadn't been published and none of them were what re

Powerless and Pissy

(The kid and I wrote this blog yesterday, but I'm happy to say we now have power!) Oh. God. Killlll meeeeeee! It’s Friday night and we haven’t had power since just before midnight on Thursday. I’m a baby about this. People have gone without the comforts of electricity for much longer than this, but I am near the edge of insanity. I have zero coping skills. Thursday 12: 10 a.m.: Wind is atrocious. Howling, annoying, relentless. The last woman is about to skate her individual Olympic performance and the power cuts out. Not that I even really follow women’s ice-skating, but I was following it at the moment. The noise outside is enough to wake the dead and I’m hearing something suspicious going on with the deck. I could maybe tolerate noise and fear of exploding transformers, but I cannot sleep without my beloved white noise machine. Will pray that husband falls into some sort of rhythmic and soothing snoring pattern. 12:35 a.m.: Husband is indeed snoring, but sound is laced with a