It has been a long time since I've written a blog post.  Well over a year.  Whoops!  But for both of you reading this I want to say that I am not gone. I have not given up on writing.  It’s just been a bit of a struggle getting things finished and finished right.  But I will get another book published this year if I have to go crazy and white haired doing it.  

Whew, I know everyone was worried about that!

Moving on.  

So, 2014 is gone.  Even though it's 16 days into the new year, I'm still writing '14 on everything and probably will be until around June.  Such is life.  

Last year was strange.  I don't really remember much of it.  It flew by in this big blur of not much happening.  I blame Netflix.  And Pinterest.  And my new found anxiety about life. 

This year is going to be different, though. (Says every one ever during January)  But really, I'm putting all my fear aside and getting shhhhii--- stuff done.  (I'm trying to swear less, can you tell?)  Because that's what I remember most about 2014.  Being afraid. Being afraid to write, to submit (again.) Being afraid of rejection. That and I've spent a year writing synopses. Which I will happily burn if they ever get picked up to be published and I don't need them anymore.  I even hate the word synopsis right now. Look at it, all smug and superior.  Synopsis.  Douche-bag word.  Guess I wasn't kidding about going crazy *checks for white hair*

I'm also trying to utilize fun motivational tools to keep me writing.  I've downloaded an ap for my phone with a word count tracker, and a timer that guilts me if I try to stop writing.  It's worked both days I've used it so far.  And a writer friend mentioned what's called the calendar method on twitter the other day. I'm not sure who originally thought of this but I want to give them a great big bear hug.  It basically involves putting a sticker on the date every time you reach your word count goal giving you something to work toward.  It's so simple.  I remember getting stickers as rewards when I was a kid (I've got the piano sheet music to prove it) but I never thought to do it as an adult and you know what? I want to earn those freaking stickers!  Of course, upon hearing of this method I drove straight to the store and went sticker CRAZY!  I even got some for my sister because they looked like something she would love.  And you know what?  She went sticker crazy, too!  We are, apparently, a bunch of kindergartners in my family. 
          

So here's my plan.  The stars are for every 1,000 words I write.  The birds/owls are for every 10,000 words. The candies are for blog posts/ every 500 words (say I wrote 1,500 words that day, I'd want a sticker for those extra 500 words but I didn't quite earn a star.) And the cupcakes are the special ones for the halfway point and when I finish.  I reeeeeeeaaaaaalllly wanna use one of those cupcake ones.

I may need stickers for when I exercise, too, because I'm paying for a gym membership that I hardly ever use. (Didn't see that coming when I signed up.)  Hmmm... probably not the candy stickers, though.

If I'm going to be completely honest with you, I'm writing this blog so I can put a candy shaped sticker on my calendar.  My super geeky, super awesome Firefly calendar. Oh yeah, I'm a cool kid.

What else?  Well, there's the usual resolutions: save money, lose weight, wear leather pants... wait, that was Ross on Friends (love that episode.)  

Hopefully 2015 will be a great year.  Fingers crossed.

Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday.  What's not to love? Halloween movies that range from scary to down right adorable, pumpkin carving (has anyone seen the Foodnetwork's Halloween wars? That's some serious pumpkin carving!) candy is always welcome, and I love dressing up in costumes.

So when I got the opportunity to write a Halloween novella I was really excited for it and it was so much fun to write.  Also, since I only had about 2 weeks to write it I didn't get a chance to get sick of it.  Let's face it, after working on a story for several months, reading it over and over, it starts to lack the shine of that new idea sitting over in the back of your notebook.  

The anthology is called I Put A Spell On You.  As soon as I heard that title I could not get Bette Midler's voice out of my head.  That scene from Hocus Pocus would not stop playing in my mind. Sooooo.... I just had to finish the lyrics and I named my novella And Now You're Mine.  Which is fun because if totally fit with my story.  It was a win win.  Now all of you can have it stuck in your head, as well... You're welcome.

And for those of you that live under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about I found the video on youtube so that you, too, can have it stuck in your head.  
Again, you're welcome.

So this novella will be available on October 15th.  That's right, peeps.  Tomorrow! 

Here is the back cover description of mine:

And Now You're Mine
With their show on the verge of cancellation, amateur ghost hunters Casey Taylor and her sister, Abby, are scrambling to boost ratings. Though Raiders of the Haunted House has yet to see an actual ghost, Casey doesn't mind the lack of close encounters. The only thing that scares her more than things that go bump in the night is her massive crush on the show's sexy producer, Luke Mason. When her sister not only books the most haunted place on earth, but decides to put Luke in front of the camera with Casey, she finds out that she wasn't the only one hiding their true feelings. But when a malevolent spirit marks her for death, Casey and Luke find themselves fighting more than their attraction for each other. They need to survive the night...or else it wont just be the show that gets cancelled.

Here is the link to Amazon:

And the link to our Goodreads page

So get into the Halloween spirit, open up a bag of bite sized snickers, and curl up with a fun read. (That was a subtle way of me saying to buy my book... does it detract from the subtlety when I come right out and say it?)

I love book covers.  Breaking the rules and judging a book by it's cover is definitely something that I do (sorry if that makes me a bad person lol.) But, honestly, if I see a really cute cover it makes me long to read what's inside.  Today I get to introduce you guys to my good friend Codi Gary's newest cover from Books with Benefits Press. 

It's super cute... Wait for it


Wait for iiiiiiiiiiittttttt.... (If there are any Psych fans out there then, by all means, feel free to read that like Shawn Spencer)

Drum roll...

aaaaaannnnnddddd....

HERE IT IS!!!!

Cute, yes?

And, so I'm not being a tease, here is the back cover description:

Make Me Crazy will be book one in the lovely and talented Codi Gary's Loco, Texas series and will be available on December 3rd.  If you want an early look into the world of this series there will also be a Halloween Novella in the anthology titled I Put A Spell On You (which I really hope you'll all be interested in since I have a novella in there as well... wait, this isn't about me right now. Whoops) That will be available on October 15th. That's right... less than a week to wait :)

What was that? You want to see that cover, too? Alright.

(Look! There's my name, too!!)
I'll be posting more about this one soon. Until then here are some links to Codi's... well, everything.
Website: www.codigarysbooks.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CodiGarysBooks
Twitter:https://twitter.com/CodiGary
Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6583366.Codi_Gary

And a quick bio: 

Thanks for reading and I'll keep everyone updated on Codi's series and I'll post another blog about our upcoming novella.

Whenever I tell someone I'm a writer, for some reason, I usually get this response: "You're just like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City!" It's funny, too, because several people have had that reaction all on different occasions.  

My reaction? "Yeah, I'm exactly like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City... except without the rich, handsome men, I don't live in the city, and instead of Manolo Blahniks I wear Keds.  Other than that, yes.  We're exactly the same."

And then I watch the show and listen to her reading from her columns and wish that I could do that to my blog.  It wouldn't be nearly as interesting, though.  
Hers are all: 

Mine would be more like:

Then I was googling Manolo Blahnik for this post (which, by the way, I find it entirely creepy that facebook is now giving me ads for it, but I digress...) Where was I? Oh yeah, Manolo Blahnik.  I about had a freaking shoe-gasm. Holy crap-balls I wanted those shoes so freaking bad!

This one in particular. It makes me drool a little.

Was it good for you too?

I need to be rich just so I can wear those shoes. I would sell a kidney to own those shoes. Want my eggs? Take 'em, just leave the shoes! Half my liver? Ok, what do I need it for anyway?!?! Gimme, gimme, gimme, I need, I need!!

And as I thought about selling a kidney to own a pair of Manolo Blahniks, I wondered... Am I more like Carrie than I thought?

In a writer's brain there is nothing better than sitting down to write and having everything flow.  Knocking out page after page, watching your word count climb, feeling the end getting closer and closer.  Before you realize it, hours have passed and you don't want to sleep because you know you can crank out another scene.

But what about those times when you don't feel like it?  You're tired, drained, and ready to throw yourself from the highest tower because nothing is getting done.  (Hey, when you're tired and drained it's easy to be over dramatic!)  For me, it seems, these kinds of days far out number the other ones.  But it's not like I can sit around and wait for the Creativity Fairy to appear in a puff of smoke, slap me across the face with her fist of magic productivity, fairy dust flying everywhere, and bestow some mystical motivation on my sorry butt.

So, if there's no Creativity Fairy then what's a writer to do?  Here are some of my tried and true methods for keeping going even when you don't want to.

Set an alarm
Give yourself a finite time frame where you do nothing but work.  Turn off the T.V. Back away from Twitter and only allow yourself to write.  Then when the timer goes off, take a break.  Set your alarm for that, too.  Go get an iced mocha or watch 30 minutes of your favorite show then jump back into it.  Another hour on the clock and go.  
Do this as many times as you need to.  Even if you only manage to get an hour of writing time in it's more than you did before.  And when you allow yourself a set amount then you're not wasting your entire day staring at the screen and jumping back and forth from your project to facebook and not actually getting anything done. (Been there!) 
Also, there's something about racing the clock that makes me want to write faster.    

Get a writing buddy
I love when I get a message from one of my writer friends on twitter asking to do a 1k1hr challenge.  Grab a friend, tell them that at a certain time you are going to do nothing but write for one hour.  At the end of the hour your goal is to have written 1,000 words.  
Add some competition.  It's like when I exercise, if I'm by myself it's easy to say "screw it, I'm only walking for 10 minutes then I'm calling it a day" but when I'm with a friend it's like "if she can do it I can do it!" and I end up pushing myself and getting more done.  Friendly competition is healthy and motivating.  I highly recommend it :)

Know that you can always fix it in edits
So what if you're brain is shot?  So what if you can't think of the right word?  Write 'blah blah' in it's place, highlight it and come back later. (Yeah, I've actually written 'blah blah' into my manuscript.)  If you adopt the motto that it can be fixed it later it allows you to take some of the pressure off.  Without the stress of being perfect it's a lot easier to get more done.  Take the stress out of it and just get the story down.  Fine tune it later.

Cut out distractions
For the love of God, get off the internet. Stop pinning, stop tweeting, don't look at the kitties doing funny things.  
Sometimes, when I absolutely can't concentrate long enough to work and I keep ending up on Pinterest, I'll leave the computer behind.  I've been known to bust out a pen and paper, old school style, and jot down a quick scene that way.  It's a pain at times to type it up afterward but, honestly, I end up adding to it and making it a fuller scene and then it's easy to keep going.  Like a kick start.  It gets you going then you can run with the momentum.  

I'm sure there are a ton of other ways and I'll probably think of more after I post this :) but these are a few of my alternatives to the Creativity Fairy.  That damn fairy is so flakey.

I got a tumblr account when I first started my ventures into social media but once I got my shiny new website, complete with blog, I wasn't sure what to do with two blogs.  But during the intense amount of procrastination I've done today I decided on my tumblr's fate.  I'm going to revamp it and start posting these thingies (that big pink thing down there.  Yeah, those.) It's going to be stuff that pops into my head (or, like this one, things I say to Codi Gary on twitter.)

Mother's day is an incredibly special day to me because my mom is one of the most important people in my life.  We're really close. Like Gilmore Girls close.  Like the end of Brave close.  This year we got to have mother's day with my two best friends and their mothers.  And it turned into an extra special day for me, too. 

A few weeks ago my best friend invited me to a mother/daughter candlelight tea.  And she was very vocal about me going.  It seemed important that I do what I gotta do and BE THERE!  She was slick about it, though.  Every time I saw her for weeks she asked if I had remembered to request the day off but I thought it was because I had forgotten last year.  (Still feel a little guilty about that.  I suck at remembering to request days off.)  So my mom and I got all dressed up and went.  I was thinking a little food, wine tasting, raffle drawing, home in time for... well, nothing specific because nothing happens on Thursday nights. But I'd be home in time for all that nothing.

But when I got there I was so excited to see what her mother had done for me.  She was one of the hostesses and in charge of three tables.  On each setting, at each of those tables, was a copy of my book, Kiss Me.  I was so touched.  She even included a copy in the raffle prize.

Look at all of 'em. Aren't they adorable!! Also, those deserts were so delicious. The little pink ones in the middle were raspberry mouse with edible chocolate cups.  So good.  I'm making myself hungry.

Then everyone started coming up asking me to sign their copies.  It was so strange (in a good way.)  I wasn't expecting it but it was an amazing feeling.  Signing copies of a book that I had written had always seemed like a someday thing.  You know, someday I'll have a book published and someday I'll have people asking me to sign it.  But thanks to my best friend's mom last Thursday turned into that someday.  And the look of pride on my own mom's face was so rewarding.  I could see her glowing with it (and it was pre-wine tasting so that makes it all the more sincere.)

So, everyone, hug your mom and hug your all of friend's moms because if they're anything like the ones in my life they are awesome people :)

Any writer will probably tell you that they don't write because they want to.  They write because they need to.  At any given moment I have stories and ideas and characters in my head all trying to escape onto a page.  And I can't remember a time when I didn't have that particular problem :)  Oftentimes, imagining them is a lot more fun than sitting down to actually write them.  Writing is hard work.  It takes time, and a lot of mental energy and it can be draining.  That's why I have to remember to keep it fun.  To take joy in it.  Sure, it's a job and sure I have to sit down and write every day otherwise I won't get anything done.  But if you're not careful it can start to feel like a chore instead of a calling.

Lately, I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to get my word counts in and get the book written (for the love of God GET SOMETHING WRITTEN!) and it's been so hard to sit and stare at that little flashing cursor on my word program mocking me.  Reminding me that I don't feel like doing this right now. (That cursor can be such a jerk sometimes.)  And I'll sit all day and maybe write 500 words (maybe) but the thing is I still am constantly thinking about my characters.  About how they'll react to situations.  How they treat each other.  How they'll act when they figure out that they're in love.  So why is it so difficult for me to get the words onto the page?  Because I started equating writing with stress.  

So today, instead of being hard on myself for not being farther along I sat back, watched some fun, romantic, and exciting movies to get myself in the groove of writing a fun, romantic, exciting book and worked on my collage.  The collage for this book was a mess before today. I think it's because that's how I had been feeling about the book and it reflected in my art.  I started from scratch on it this morning and you know what? I'm super motivated right now.  I feel like I have a better grasp on the plot, on the emotions, on the direction the book is going.  All because I'm letting myself have fun with it.  So listen to music that sounds like your book.  Take the time out to watch a fun movie that inspires you.  Write a scene just for fun and not because you have a word count goal to meet.  Keep the joy alive.

So from now on when writing starts to feel like a chore I need to remind myself to have fun with it because writing is my life and I want to enjoy it.