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The Make An Effort Diet

June 24, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as ,

I only used the word “diet” to lure you in.

MAE is not a diet.

Diets are depressing.  The very word makes me feel sad, deprived of things desireable, filled with a rebellious fervor to go out and eat something—anything. Everything.

MAE is an attitude adjustment, challenging and changing one’s perspective both outwardly and inwardly.

Diets demonize and bless things we eat.  They work within a familiar—and for many a comfortable—framework of sin and redemption.  The promised land is reached (or at least visited)  through privation, guilt and self-flaggelation.  And these actions offer us a sense of moral superiority.  We look at not eating/eating as demonstrating moral fibre (or moral turpitude).

The dieting activity involves self-recrimination as well as self-congratualation, and frequently involves purchasing material—books, magazines, programs, special meals, “diet” foods, etc.  Because—cue in Steve Martin’s paradigm altering realization in The Jerk—“It’s a profit deal!“

No purchase is necessary for Make An Effort.  The only requirement is to…you guessed it! To make an effort.

And that effort is real.  You have to actually PAY ATTENTION.  You have to think about:

  1. Whether you are actually hungry
  2. What does the food you are eating taste like?
  3. When you are no longer hungry

You have to make an effort to eat with intention and enjoyment and only what you really need to fill yourself, so eat slowly and allow your stomach to catch up with your mouth.

So for example, you do not need to eat the entire bag of potato chips.  The first one or two are delicious, the rest are a repetitive and compulsive waste.  Don’t even go there.

The MAE could be seen as portion control–you will be making an effort to eat less, to enjoy what you are eating more, to avoid very fattening foods.

But you should never deprive yourself.  If you want a cookie, or ice-cream or whatever, you need to challenge yourself:  Are you being frivolous? Is it anxious eating? Boredom?  Already full and just want more? If yes, then make an effort and avoid.

But if it is special, if you are really feeling a bit hollow, or just have a craving, of course help yourself.  Just enough, but not more.  No penalties, no recrimination, just really savor it, think about it and enjoy it to the fullest.

Go ahead.  Make an effort….

Isabel Swift

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emaginings: Our New #Nook and Other Musings

June 16, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday my husband bought himself a 9″ Nook tablet, sort of a non-Father’s Day gift, since we don’t have kids. He’d been thinking of getting one for some time, but this week Barnes & Noble made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: a $120 discount. His new table cost $149.00, a fabulous deal. Sale ends today.

Yet the acquisition was not without some frustration. He had been told it came with the new operating system and access to the Google play store, but when we plugged it in, the first thing it said was that a “critical software upgrade” was needed. Then it didn’t like our wi-fi connection. For some reason we had to rename our wi-fi router, before the Nook could check in with the Mothership. (Nothing works without approval from the Cloud these days.) I used my B&N account, and he discovered that the Library is the Home Page which meant he had to look at all my romance novel covers! But it turns out you can have more than one user on the Nook, so the romance novels are consigned to my side of the device.  

He seems pretty happy with it now, so all’s well that ends well.

Turning to other matters…

Some friends pointed me to a useful blog post called LOGLINES AND TAGLINES ARE DIFFERENT And You Need Both For Your Novel by by R. Ann Siracusa. It’s well worth your time to read if you struggle with elevator pitches, and timely with RWA National coming up next month.

There has been a lot of talk of privacy in the last week, so you might also want to read Rose Anderson’s post on [NETWORKING FOR INTROVERTS] How Much Should You Share Online? 

This is something I wonder about sometimes. I tend to not share a lot, not so much because I’m terribly introverted, but because my real life is so dull, I find my fictional characters much more interesting.

If you are concerned about privacy, here are a couple of options to reduce your visibility to online search engines.

Startpage bills itself as “the world’s most private search engine”. Though it uses Google’s search engines, Startpage first removes your identifying information including your IP address. Their website says “Startpage, and its sister search engine Ixquick, are the only third-party certified search engines in the world that do not record your IP address or track your searches.” Ixquick is used in Europe and was awarded the first European Privacy Seal.

The SRWare Iron browser, developed in Germany, is based on Google’s open source Chrome browser, but with more privacy protections. I’ve tried it and it seems to work fairly well.

My alter ego, Lyndi Lamont, is participating in the first MFRW Colors of the Rainbow Blog Hop! There are 22 authors of LGBT romance in the hop, and along with the individual giveaways, you can download a free excerpt book. Leave a comment on my blog to enter to win a free download of my historical erotic romance Deception.

That’s about it for this month. Hope you are all having a good Father’s Day, or non-Father’s Day, as the case may be.

Linda Mac

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GROUP HUG

June 15, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

Attending book club meetings used to be one of my favorite things to do, but with the advent of e-books discussions are now often conducted online by members of groups that are, at times, far-flung.  Recently, though, a group in Wisconsin contacted me and asked me to participate in their meeting. They asked:
1)   Do you have something you could send to us? Bookmarks?
2)   Do you have discussion guidelines for Hostile Witness?

I did not have discussion guidelines for any of my books*. I also did not have bookmarks since most of my readers were choosing digital files. But the request was so cool that immediately wrote discussion questions and sent them along with a Hostile Witness Book Club Box: three jars of sand from Hermosa Beach (the location of all the witness books), candles to put in the sand, and tiny plastic mermaids that are always attached to drinks at the legendary Mermaid Restaurant where Josie Bates met with Linda Rayburn.
Not only did the Wisconsin group inspire me to think about my books in a new light, they got me to thinking about why I liked book clubs so much. Here are the top reasons why I’m sending out big hugs to book clubs:

1)                 Members not only think about what they want to read but what they have read.
2)                 Members are curious.  They want to know why a book was written, what inspired the and book, and who wrote it.
3)                 Members are articulate. They explain in detail why they did or did not like a book and even reference specific words and passages.
4)                 Members are considerate. They listen to visiting authors and one another. Sometimes they even raise their hands before they talk.
5)                 Members don’t judge a book by its cover. They may not like a cover, but they don’t judge until they read what’s inside.
6)                 Members are reliable. They read the month’s book and show up on time. Okay, sometimes they don’t read the whole book, but they always show up on time.
7)                 Members abide by rules. They made the rules themselves so that means they can happily live with them.
8)                 Members always feed me. Enough said on that point.
9)                 Members do not discriminate so they are diverse. If you love books you can join the club. That is cool.
10)             Members give great big hugs to authors when they give our work a chance. That’s really what an author needs.
So next time your group meets, don’t forget – Group Hug. You are way cool.
Find Book Group Guidelines for the Witness series here! 
Digital copies of Hostile Witness are always free. 

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Between the Red-Hot Covers by Jina Bacarr

June 11, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

We’ve seen it all over the years in book covers.

Cute cartoon covers, clinch covers, and the recent addition of “elegant bling” covers. Masks, cufflinks, a man’s tie–you know what I mean.

Now I’m excited about a new trend: Temp covers!

For the first time since I’ve published, Harlequin has put up “temp” covers for the Cosmo Red-Hot Reads.

Each of the books that I’ve found on Amazon by Lauren Dane, Tawny Weber, and Helen Kay Dimon all show the same wildly sexy, raspberry-red covers with the Cosmo logo.

Here’s the RED-HOT Temp Cover for my Cosmo Red Hot-Read: NAKED SUSHI!!

Temp Cover for "Naked Sushi"

Temp Cover for “Naked Sushi”

Amateur spy PEPPER O’MALLEY gets more than she bargained for when she discovers her sleazy boss is hiding corporate secrets. 

She gets fired.

Was it her fault she got caught in the copy room with her pants down with a hunky thief? 
The only way Pepper can get her job back is to become a naked sushi model and spy on her ex-boss.

She’s thrown into a world of corporate espionage she never imagined…

What do you think of the idea of Temp Covers? It’s definitely branding the books in a unique and exciting way. I can only imagine the sexy cover Harlequin has up their sleeve for Naked Sushi…

Naked Sushi is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

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An Up Close and Personal Interview of Kitty Bucholtz

June 9, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , ,

Kitty Bucholtz  is the author of the romantic comedy Little Miss Lovesick and the light urban fantasy Unexpected Superhero. Though she grew up in Northern Michigan, the setting for many of her stories, she followed her husband to Australia twice. While he made a penguin named Mumble dance, she earned her MA in Creative Writing in Sydney. When she’s not unpacking or repacking, she’s working on her next book or chatting with readers on Facebook.

Kitty was interview by long time OCC/RWA member Marianne H. Donley.


Marianne: First question, do you find yourself returning to certain themes in your stories? What? Why?

Kitty: It’s funny you should ask because I discovered one theme a couple years ago, but I discovered a secondary theme while writing my book, Unexpected Superhero. After several years of writing, I finally realized that I write about women who are finding out that they have more “power” than they think they have. Mostly, it comes down to personal strength, inner resolve, and the character to think through how to change a situation they’re not happy with, though in Unexpected Superhero, she literally discovers a power she didn’t know she had. That theme comes directly from me and my life experience. I’ve never wanted to just accept a bad situation; I’m always trying to make things better.

But writing this new book, I realized that several of my stories have a “protecting children in danger” element. It’s a little weird to me because I don’t have children. Where did this theme come from? I could guess, but I don’t really know. The fun part about not knowing is that I get to find out more about it as I write!


Marianne: What’s the best writing advice you ever received? What’s the worst?

Kitty: The best advice I’ve gotten is “trust yourself.” It takes a lot of writing for that advice to be useful, but there’s a point at which trusting yourself is the best thing you can do.

The worst advice I’ve gotten is “real writers write every day.” That doesn’t work for me. I work best in bursts. That may mean writing 5-8 hours a day for weeks to finish a book, then 10-14 hours a day doing what I call the book build, creating the files that will become the ebook and print book. Then I may read all day every day for a week, and half a day every day for another couple weeks, researching and ingesting material that will eventually find its way into another book. The only way I overcame the worst advice for me was by taking the best advice for me – I trusted that I had figured out how I worked best.

Marianne: Do you ever run out of ideas? If so, how do you get past that?

Kitty: I’m laughing! Run out of ideas? No! I get tangled up in my ideas and get stuck when I don’t realize I’ve got two or more ideas working against each other. That’s been happening a bit with my next release, Love at the Fluff and Fold. But that’s been untangling more as I finish the current book and spend more time on the new book.

An example to show you why the question made me laugh – when I was hired at E! Entertainment, the cable TV network, I had to sign a standard contract. In it was a clause that any creative ideas I came up with, at work or away from work, while employed there would be the property of E! Entertainment. I made a polite but assertive fuss about it and wouldn’t sign the contract. The network attorney finally said that I should provide a list of all the titles of projects I’d already thought of and those would be exempt. My agent suggested I write down everything I’d ever thought of, ever. I took her advice and the addendum was two pages long, single-spaced. I think there were fifty or more ideas listed!

Marianne: What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Kitty: I get really excited about people discussing ideas with passion. Once at a party, I got all fired up talking to a friend’s uncle about economics because he was passionate and I knew a bit about the subject and was really interested in what he had to say. I love talking about God and how everything works together, from personal situations to the fact that we are on the only planet in the known universe that provides the exact mix of elements for us to live freely. I cry over commercials and TV shows, even though I know it’s pretend, because I’m thinking, “Somewhere, there’s a real person this is happening to, and I feel for them.” There’s just something about passion and energy coming together in the form of ideas that makes me crazy excited!

Marianne: What are you dying to try next?

Kitty: Ooo, good one! Well, it’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time, but it’s going to require a ton of research and I’m inherently lazy, so… LOL! During a class in my master’s degree program, we had to write one scene in each of eight different categories from romance to detective to thriller, etc. One assignment was to write a scene with “magic” in it. That led to my master’s degree final project – a spiritual warfare, angels vs. demons story set in modern New York City with a teenage girl as the main player for both sides. Kind of a Joan of Arcadia meets Supernatural story laced with the kinds of humor that are in both of those TV shows.

This is kind of a “book of my heart” story, inasmuch as I have some really strong spiritual beliefs that I want to use without disrespecting them. I need to research what we think we know about angels and demons, what we think we know about what is happening outside of our five senses, and I need to research New York, its tunnel systems, the political climate, the financial district, and more. Yikes! So I’m slightly terrified! But I’m hoping to have at least a strong first draft done in the next 12-15 months.

Marianne: Okay, last question. What would you like to hear God say when you arrive?

Kitty: I’m really glad I made you, Kitty. You really crack me up!

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