Adventures N Writing

I am not going to lie. The past two weeks have been a real bummer. Nothing about them have been easy! And, I have these horrible grey hairs sprouting all over my head. I even bought a box of color to cover them, but just have not found the time or energy to do so. The joke around my house is that I should be wearing a scrubs. If you read the blog about my little kid, and middle kid, then you know about the accident. The update is: My daughter is doing very well, albeit a bit grumpy. She gets a new cast today, and has already determined that she wants a green one. My son is still working through some of the angst that he has felt over the accident, but each day as it moves farther away from us, he does seem better. My dad is doing well, and all of his Parkinson's meds are being re-evaulated, yet again. What readers don't know is that my oldest son is also in a wheelchair currently. Before the accident, my oldest had a major surgery a month ago to correct a bone deformity...

I am very pleased to have my dear friend Gayle Carline blog today. Gayle is one of the funniest people I know and an extremely talented writer. Plus we both love horses, which automatically makes us friends. She gives me way too much credit here but it did make me feel good. :) She is a lovely and amazing lady who I enjoy spending time with and reading her material. Check out Gayle's books and enjoy today's blog! Riding and Writing When Michele asked me if I'd like to guest on her blog, my tail started wagging. I became friends with her at a writer's conference, when I was in one of her workshops and she mentioned horses. I have horses, too, and we both love to talk about horses, so it was karma for us to become friends. Of course, our riding disciplines are completely different. She likes to jump, over… stuff. I compete in something called trail, an arena event that's basically a horsey obstacle course - with NO jumping. In my defense, I took my first riding...

You know how when you do something that in the moment seems like it is probably an okay thing to do, but then you later think, "Huh. That was stupid." Yeah well, that would be me right about now. I decided yesterday to go on Kindleboards (for those of you who don't know what Kindleboards is, it is a place where Kindle readers and writers can go and check out what others are reading, writing, etc). There is a section in there called Writer's Cafe where writers can post stuff. Well, silly me decided to post how green-eyed I am with envy over J.A. Konrath's e-book sales (I won't even mention Amanda Hocking). A good friend of mine read it and didn't see a problem with what I wrote, but you know how when something nags you for several hours, then you should trust your gut. I didn't write anything negative, just truthful.  The replies were nice. No one was a jerk and people had some really great suggestions, but I felt icky and dumb for writing it in the f...

I posted this same blog on the http://www.equestrianink.blogspot.com/ that I also write on. However, I felt it would pertain to those of you who write and are interested in self-publishing. This weekend I am teaching at The Southern California Writer's Conference. I have done this for the past several years and it's always fun and educational. As traditional publishing is looking at change with the massive growth of e-books and various self-publishing options, this year should be an especially interesting one. When my first book was published back in 2005 (Murder Uncorked), I was bright eyed and in many ways naive. I was so excited to have finally signed a publishing deal. It was for the first 3 books in the Nikki Sands' Mysteries. I had a lot to learn. Nine months later I signed another contract for my Michaela Bancroft series (aka--The Horse Lovers' Mysteries). Both series did well, but my Nikki Sands' Books took off and that was where the publishers' fo...