Deadlines and Books, the Life of an Author
March 12, 2025 by Denise M. Colby in category The Writing Journey by Denise Colby tagged as books, deadlines, Denise M. Colby, readingWith the deadline approaching for my third book in my Best-laid Plans series, I’m deep in my writing cave and not thinking about much else except exploring the California countryside with a peddler in 1867. And when I’m not thinking about that, I’m reviewing the edits on book two. Or working through my next read. Whatever it is, it’s all about books.
So I thought I would share some highlights from each of these areas.
What I’m Revealing – A Slight Change of Plans Releases May 27th
I will be revealing my book cover for A Slight Change of Plans in my newsletter that goes out on March 15. This is the second book in the Best-laid plans series. If you want to be the first to see it, sign up for my newsletter right now.
Deadlines on multiple books this month, which included edits on this beauty. I can’t believe that in a few months I get to say I’ve published books (plural)! I can’t wait for people to meet Ren and Jenny when it releases on May 27, 2025.
Here’s the back cover blurb.
A Slight Change of Plans – Book 2 in the Best-laid Plans series by Denise M. Colby
She believes she doesn’t matter.
Jenny Millard’s hopes for security and stability as a schoolmarm out west are dashed when her schoolhouse closes and no positions are available nearby. With only enough money for a one-way train fare, Jenny heads to her friend’s home uncertain of her next step.
His scars have made him an unlovable outcast
Newcomer Ren Lyman prefers to keep to himself, hiding in the back of the blacksmith shop to avoid the stares at the scars left by a childhood accident. When he comes across a lost stranger, he’s surprised when she doesn’t recoil at his appearance, and even more so at his eagerness to assist her.
As Jenny settles into the welcoming, but small, town of Washton, she can’t help but come across Ren, especially since his daily constitutional takes him along the same path. It doesn’t take long for them to form a connection that breaks down the walls erected by years of hurt. But when strange occurrences unsettle the townspeople, it seems their chance at happiness might be at risk.
Will Jenny and Ren discover that they’re enough—for God, and each other?
What I’m Reading – Readers Comfy Porch Book Club
I’m participating with eleven other authors in the Comfy Porch Book Club. I posted about this in my January post. This month we are reading EV Sparrow’s Muldoon’s Misfortunes. Anyone can join us at any time. There’s daily conversation in a facebook group page, and a monthly zoom call to discuss the book.
Back cover copy: A cursed widower forsakes his faith to ensure his hope.
On a verdant island beset by poverty and death, Mick Muldoon dares to escape his misfortunes. Is working a farm and raising a family such an impossible thing to ask? Wasn’t God supposed to answer prayers—not turn a deaf ear?
After surviving the treacherous voyage to America, Mick discovers the rumors of ample opportunity aren’t exactly true. His defective body hampers employment and keeps him dependent upon his peculiar sister. However, an unexpected invitation to move to the heartland guarantees his dreams.
Mick’s own dreadful choices hamper his hopes when he accepts work as a widow’s farmhand. Unbeknownst to him, there’s deception afoot. Mick’s inattention to love causes catastrophe as single fatherhood cruelly shatters his family. Will God miraculously hear his prayers this time?
In Book 1 of Those Resilient Muldoons series, this misguided, wayward widower encounters God’s unexpected presence.
What I’m Giving Away
I’ve joined a group of authors in a newsletter round robin and each month I will feature a different author in my newsletter and my subscribers can download their book for free. I thought I would start out with the first one here. All That Glistens by Marie Wells Coutu
When the bright lights of Broadway dim, the warm glow of home beckons to Delia. Delia left her tiny Kentucky hometown to make her mark on a Broadway stage in the 1930s. But when her success proves fleeting, will she be welcomed home or will her older sister’s jealousy tarnish the homecoming?
This short story was originally published in Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest 2023.
Get your FREE copy of All That Glistens
Hope you have a wonderful week
Blessings,
Denise
0 0 Read moreA Little Taste of Space
August 15, 2024 by Renae Wrich in category Writing tagged as Childrens Lit, Mac and Cheese, Outer Space, reading, Summer, TOGHello friends! How has summer zoomed by so quickly? Thankfully, my family and I have been able to sneak away from life and the softball field where we spent 90% of our summer (I wish I was exaggerating) for a little lake time.
Me sitting lakeside in Northern Minnesota with a local brew, good company, and Sarah J. Maas’ Crown of Midnight. –>
Weeks at the lake always give me the best perspective. I mean, how could it not?! It provides an opportunity to unplug from my day-to-day and focus on me, my family, and my favorite hobbies. While I didn’t get as much writing done this on this vacation as I have in the past (probably had something to do with the fabulous Sarah J. Maas), I have zero regrets about that. 🙂
One writing project that is moving along very well is my next children’s book! I’m excited to share is that the illustrations are completed!
My wonderful illustrator, Winda Mulyasari, finished the illustrations for my second children’s book over the summer and they turned out better than I ever could have imagined. The fact that she is able to take my bulleted illustrator briefing and carefully craft the images to match the crazy world inside my head completely blows me away. She’s so talented and I feel very fortunate to have her as a partner in this.
Mac and Cheese in Outer Space will be available this fall and I’m SO thrilled with how it turned out. I can’t wait to share it with the world. I have a few more boxes to check off before we are ready for liftoff, but it’s coming soon!!
Why Do You Read Blogs? by Debra H. Goldstein
August 13, 2024 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as Blog posts, Debra H. Goldstein, Give-a-way, mysteries, reading
There are many reasons I write blogs, such as this one. Some include interacting with readers, hoping to attract new readers, sharing my thoughts in a forum that reaches more people than journaling would, and because I enjoy it.
My blogs range from a personal topic that crosses my mind to blatant self-promotion. I want people to become familiar with my five books in Kensington’s Sarah Blair series. If you don’t already know, unlike most cozies, Sarah is a woman who finds being in the kitchen more frightening than murder. I also hope University of Michigan or academic fans will check out IPPY winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on U of M’s campus, or that traditional mystery lovers will pickup a copy of Should Have Played Poker. If I’m not pushing my series and standalones, I often use blogs to promote the newest anthology or periodical I have a short story in. Sometimes, I utilize a blog to introduce readers to other writers or books that they might not otherwise be familiar with. Finally, I try to direct people to sign up for my newsletter or my personal “It’s Not Always a Mystery” blog from my website: https://www.DebraHGoldstein.com.
I also subscribe to several blogs and read them religiously for their humor, insight, or because I like the people who write them. At this point, I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t sign up for another blog, but I feel an obligation to follow friends or people who interest me. Of course, if they tend to be too long-winded, I merely glance at the heading and hit delete (do you ever do that?).
To me, the soft spot for a blog is 300-500 words. Just enough for a reader to take the ideas that it is conveying in immediately. Usually, I try to make one major point that the reader will leave with. Although a lot of bloggers do giveaways or share personal tidbits, that’s not why I follow them (okay, maybe for the personal tidbits. Let’s be honest, I also read People magazine and TV Guide from cover to cover).
Why do you read blogs? Why do you follow this specific blog? Leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of my first Sarah Blair mystery, One Taste Too Many (mass market or e-book – U.S. only). I’ll look forward to reading your answers.
Judge Debra H. Goldstein (www.DebraHGoldstein.com) is the author of Kensington’s Sarah Blair mystery series and two standalone novels. Her novels and short stories have received Silver Falchion, IPPY, BWR, and AWC awards and been named as Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Claymore finalists. Debra’s short pieces have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Weekly. A national board member of Sisters in Crime, Debra previously served on the national boards of SinC and MWA and was president of the Guppy and SEMWA chapters.
Books by Debra H. Goldstein
Books from Bethlehem Writers Group
MY FAVORITE SENTENCES
May 25, 2023 by Kidd Wadsworth in category Infused with Meaning by Kidd Wadsworth tagged as favorite sentences, kidd wadsworth, Motivation, reading, writing
MY FAVORITE SENTENCES
by Kidd Wadsworth
These are my goto gems, the sentences that keep me writing, that whisper, “you can do better.”
From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling:
Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.
Until I read that sentence, I never considered using the length of a character’s neck to reveal their social-climbing snobbery.
From Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis:
Here we go again. I felt like I was walking in my sleep as I followed Jerry back to the room where all the boys’ beds were jim-jammed together. This was the third foster home I was going to, and I’m used to packing up and leaving, but it still surprises me that there are always a few seconds, right after they tell you you’ve got to go, when my nose gets all runny and my throat gets all choky and my eyes get all sting-y. But the tears coming out doesn’t happen to me anymore, I don’t know when it first happened, but it seems like my eyes don’t cry no more.
Whenever I want to write with the voice of a child, I read Bud, Not Buddy. The last phrase, my eyes don’t cry no more, is pivotal. This little boy has been injured and wearied by a world full of uncaring adults who see him as nothing more than something to be packed up and shipped off. He could have been a frozen ham steak.
From Holes by Louis Sachar:
If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy.
I almost stopped reading Holes when I read that sentence. It crushed me.
I think this next sentence by Jane Austen will forever take the prize as the best first sentence of any novel ever written. Not only is it funny, but it also completely captures the essence of Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
From The Road by Cormac McCarthy:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
What continues to fascinate me about these sentences are how they weave together two images: the first of a dying world and the second of a father desperately trying to save his son. Notice that you feel the love of the father for the boy after you read the first sentence, but it only as you read the next two sentences that the father’s desperation slams into you.
This next one I have added, although I don’t know who wrote it, simply because I love it.
I am, perhaps, stalling.
Finally, here is one of my own from a short story set in the Caribbean.
About her came the sounds nocturnal, some cooing, some clicking, the sea softly crashing, and pressing in the sticky night, so different from her air conditioned life.
Please comment with your favorite sentence. I’d love to read them.
Kidd Watsworth’s Books
A LOVE STORY
February 15, 2022 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster, Writing tagged as inspiration, Plotting, reading, writerslife, writing inspiration
We are fresh off Valentines Day, so I thought I’d share a little love story.
In November ,2021 we traveled to Albania – a country we fell in love with ten years ago and where our youngest son now lives – and to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. Our son arranged the party and the details were kept secret. On the day of the party we were picked up by a driver who didn’t speak English, could barely understand my few words of Albanian, and seemed confused as to his destination. Finally, the car turned up a dark and winding road and delivered us to our party destination—an ancient castle.
People we didn’t know greeted us like old friends; those who didn’t speak English blessed us in their language. We danced for five hours to Turkish and Albanian music with a little Roy Orbison and The Doors thrown in for good measure.
That night was joyous, exciting, and exactly the kind of adventure my husband and I love. But it wasn’t until I was back home and writing again, that I understood what made the trip so magical. It was like a good book long in the making. My husband and I had 45 years of a backstory, so our sons had a lot of information to draw on. They intimately understood our individual characters and loved us quirks and all. They also had an appreciation for drama, and pitch perfect pacing. Together they crafted the perfect narrative with a very happy ending.
I’m going to remember that night forever. I will also remember the lessons I learned because of it. If I love my characters, so will my readers; if I’m excited by the adventure, the reader will be too. I’m not sure if my books are as perfect as our anniversary adventure, but the fun is in trying to make them so.
Stay tuned for the sequel, watch out for the next book. Meanwhile, happy belated Valentines Day. Here’s to the next chapters of all of our love (and life)stories.
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