With a Little Help From My (Character) Friends: Guest blog post by Charlene A. Wilson

My guest today is author Charlene A. Wilson. I first “met” Charlene when she featured me as a Highlighted Author on one of her sites. Since then, I’ve been keeping tabs on her work and, I must say, I have been impressed with this woman’s gusto for the writing life! She writes with a passion and a fearlessness I have not seen in many other authors. Charlene’s post reminded me of how characters can so often make it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to sit down and write, because they all vie for the chance to strut their stuff and make their voices heard! But Charlene knows these guys (and girls) she writes about so well, and manages to get the job done despite their interruptions.




A writer of paranormal romance, Charlene loves what magic can add to relationships. She currently lives in a small rural town in Arkansas and enjoys close family ties with her two beautiful daughters.

Charlene’s interest in writing began in her early teens and she took any creative writing courses available. As she married and started a family, she had to set aside her writing and focus on the more pressing matters of job and family.

Many of the attitudes and personalities woven into her characters were taken from those she worked with while serving as a Deputy at a large detention center. From kindness to bigotry, the variety of personal outlook was amazing. As time now affords her, she is able to pursue her love of writing and incorporates those experiences into some of her work.

Her first novel, Cornerstone Deep, was published in November 2010 by Class Act Books. Her second, Cornerstone Deep Echoes, was released February 2012, also by Class Act Books. The stories keep coming and she keeps typing. On to the next!



Welcome, Charlene!

Thank you for having me here today, Dawn. It’s a real treat. My characters started gearing up to make an appearance today until I told them I’d be handling this one. I had to promise to share a couple clips from our new release, Cornerstone Deep Echoes, before they calmed down and let me type this up. Lol.

Back when I began writing as a teen, I never would have dreamed my stories would ever make it to publication. Well, I might have dreamed about it. But, never believed or expected to see it happen. From the time I was little, my imagination carried me to wherever I wanted to go, gave me everything I wanted to have, and became any kind of friend I wanted.

I was born in Florida, and with a father that loved to wonder the states, I’ve lived all over this country. We finally settled in a small community in Arkansas where nature sings all around me, from the birds in the countless trees to the cows in the fields across the way. (Yeah, they call it lowing. I call it singing). I’m a mother of two beautiful daughters, a fuzzy dog named KooJo, and a gray cat, Chester. I still imagine friends in far-away places. Now, though, I write them down and share them with others.

I was labelled a writer when I was 16. I would write short stories about dreams I had and shared them with my friends. For a time there I even wrote short plays that my youth group acted out for family and friends. I guess I’ll never know what everyone really thought about the productions, but we had so much fun and I’m sure our parents were just happy to have something to keep their kids occupied and out of trouble. Lol.

Several of my stories come from dreams: Scenes, settings, plots… And many of the attitudes and personalities woven into the characters are taken from those I worked with while serving as a Deputy at a large detention center. You can find it all in those places. Kindness, bigotry, spirituality, opportunism; the variety of personal outlooks is amazing.

Lord Dressen’s character from Cornerstone Deep Echoes was very easy for me to write. He’s the villain of the story.

Forcing his gaze to view the broad city of Shilo, he anchored his chosen destiny. Terra runs through my blood. Nobility courses through my veins. I am Lord Kyle Dressen. And I’m one step away from having Anna…Mianna at my side. Tension eased as he focused on his domain. No one held a higher position, more respect, or more power.

He peered back at the bluff and greed curled his lips. But what of beyond? Realms. Rich with possibility.

His baritone voice rasped as he spoke. “Soon.” He nodded in agreement with his thoughts. “Craft and deed will take me to you.”

Though, he does have his reasons for doing the things he does. Then, don’t we all. Life is just complicated. I don’t believe anyone is all good or completely bad.

Cole, the hero of the story, is pretty tarnished himself. He’s led by his heart, and with that trait, he makes some decisions that really should have been made with a level head. But he’s such a romantic soul. And when Mianna speaks in her unique poetic way, he’s just gone.

In this excerpt, Cole is troubled by something that came to light. I can’t share what it was or it would give away too much. But it effected how he viewed the love he and Mianna shared so long ago. Nothing could dim his love for her, but the information weighed heavy on him.

~ * ~

Adoration flowed from behind him, touching his senses. Slender hands smoothed his shirt to his waist and a soft form leaned to his back. His heart melted and he closed his eyes. Mianna. Unrest fled. Doubt disappeared. Once again, Mianna’s soul spoke to his as none other had or would. He lifted an arm to turn and hold her in his embrace.
Her brow wrinkled with worry. “You’ve been distant.”
Her soul’s call washed through him and he brushed her long hair with a gentle stroke. “I’m sorry, my love.”
She caressed his forehead with her fingertips, erasing the tension there.

“Hush thy worries. Still thy mind.
For within my arms,
love’s sweet bliss will heal thy soul.
Cares of life be gone.”

Cole rested his cheek on her soft locks, allowing her poetic tongue to sooth him.

“Whispers, wings of love’s caress,
light upon thy heart.
Gazes, speak of my soul’s want.
Body, sing their praise.”

She gently placed a hand to his cheek, guiding him to look into her eyes.

“I long. I pray thee touch me.
Carry forth my will.
Leave behind the world, my love.
Be this moment mine.”

Cole’s heart wrapped around her plea and the reality of her return filled his being. She was his. Now and forever. “This moment, my life, my existence is yours.” He cradled her face with his hands. “Every breath you take is a song to my soul.”
Her words fell to his lips in a hush. “Make love to me, Cole. I need to feel you still love me.”
The breath of Zephyr flowed freely and licorice and cream rode his whisper. “How could you ever doubt.”



He loves Mianna with his whole being. Would do anything to keep her safe…and his. But Lord Dressen is determined to win her over one way or the other…to the point of obsession.

Really, these characters made it clear how they wanted their stories told. Comments, quirks, personalities, they all came to light as the scenes unfolded. Cole’s brothers, James and Vincent, are no different. *leans in to whisper* Quite honestly, I think their magical abilities have gone to their heads.

Vincent: *swings the door wide* Now, I’m more down to Earth than a lot of people from Earth, Charlene. There’s not one scene in either Cornerstone Deep or Cornerstone Deep Echoes that I treat anyone different because I’m able to…

Cole: *steps past him* Blow things up? *smirks and shuffles into the room* And if we hadn’t kept you up all night with details about the Arched Spectrum of Realms you’d have never figured it all out.

James: *leans his head past the door jam* I don’t believe Charlene meant her comment to be cruel, you two. *looks at Charlene, a little doubt on his face and enters* And what about announcing the release of the second book in the Chronicles of Shilo Manor series. We’re on tour.


I knew you guys would be listening in. *hooks her arm around James’s thick arm* Of course, I didn’t mean anything by my comment. I wanted to let everyone know you were special. *glances at blog readers and winks* I hope you fall in love with them as much as I have.

And yes, we’re on tour for the release of Cornerstone Deep Echoes and Dawn was wonderful to host us as one of our stops. We’re holding weekly and grand prize drawings for all those who comment and leave an email address where I can get in touch with them if they win. You can get all the details, including what you could win and how you can gain more entries, at ShiloManor.com.


And I would love you to join me around the web!

Author site: http://CharleneAWilson.com
Blog: http://CharleneAWilsonblog.blogspot.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charlene-A-Wilson-Romance-Author/162568770441255

Twitter: http://twitter.com/AuthorCAWilson

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/charlene-a-wilson/15/989/1b8

Cornerstone Deep Echoes is available is paperback and e-formats. Here’s where you can get them:
Buy Links:
Class Act Books: (kindle) http://bit.ly/xcEBuy
Class Act Books: (paperback) http://bit.ly/yhaY6j
Amazon: (Kindle) http://amzn.to/CDEchoesk
Amazon: (Paperback) http://amzn.to/CDEpb




Mianna’s return heals Cole’s soul and he promises to follow her for the rest of his existence. But the past isn’t what he believes. The fight for her has only begun.

Lord Dressen’s obsession grows as unexpected knowledge is revealed. His search for Mianna has spanned six life times and he won’t give up now. The courts stand behind him. Power pulses through his veins. Determination peeks and not even Cole Shilo can stop him. He will win his prize.

Struggling to stay ahead, Cole’s anger explodes. Nothing is sacred when it comes to keeping his love—not even covenants made with gods. But, through all his efforts, lofty or damned, the truth remains. Will echoes of another life cause him to fail?

~ * ~

"Every breath you take is a song to my soul."

The Versatile Blogger Award

Lillie Ammann at A Writer's Words, An Editor's Eye has nominated me for The Versatile Blogger Award. Thank you, Lillie! You can learn more about the VBA here.

Being nominated for the VBA means two things for me. The first is that I share seven random things about me. The second is that I nominate fifteen excellent blogs that I read regularly or have recently discovered.

So, here it is. Seven random things about me:

1. I have 4 sisters and 2 brothers.

2. I am currently reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand -- a book that has been sitting in my room for MONTHS that I finally picked up to read!

3. Coffee is not an addiction, just a necessary part of my diet -- especially if there is lots and lots of it!

4. I have 2 children, a boy and a girl.

5. Because it seems like the dog I end up owning ends up being a Chihuahua and because Chihuahuas used to flock to me in the past, my sisters jokingly called me the Chihuahua Queen.

6. Even though I read both print and ebooks, I love reading print books the best and will NEVER give up on them!

7. This year, I am posting on the writing blog whenever I have the time, when participating in blog tours or when the mood strikes, as opposed to just once a week like last year. So expect to see more posts on this blog this year!


The 15 bloggers I nominate are:

Karen Putz at A Deaf Mom Shares Her World.

Jenn Greenleaf at Jenn Greenleaf: Wearer of Many Hats.

Martha Jette at Aging With Creativity.

Jana at Jana's Journeys.

LK Hunsaker at Thoughts and Sketches.

Dellani Oakes at Writer's Sanctuary.

Catherine Cavendish at her blog.

Sheila Deeth at Sheila Deeth Blog.

Jeanna Guzman at Romance in Flight.

Aubrie Dionne at Flutey Words.

Ann Gimpel at her blog.

Sutton Fox at Fox Tales.

Lee-Ann Graff Vinson at Writing Commando.
Mridu Khullar Relph at her blog.

Beth Bartlett at The Writing World of Beth Bartlett.

Meet Author David Bradley

David Bradley's web site: http://www.dedwardbradley.com/

Interview of David Edward Bradley with Debra Shiveley Welch

Hi, Edward. I’m happy to be able to visit with you today. I have some questions for you which my followers will be interested in. Edward, how long have you been writing?

Edward: First of all, I should point out that my real name is David Edward Bradley, but I write under the pen name of D. Edward Bradley.

To answer the question, I actually wrote a novel circa 1950 when I was about 20 and still living with my parents in the UK. It was about a giant asteroid….. I sent it to a publisher and it was read (and rejected, of course) by a well known author whose name I have since forgotten. It was pretty awful.

I have been writing seriously since retiring from a faculty position at Canada’s most easterly university, Memorial University of Newfoundland—about 15 years. Since my last novel, She Came from Away, was published in 2007 I have been attending to other aspects of the writers’ craft and learning about e-publishing.

DSW: How do your ideas for stories typically come to you?

Edward: My first novel Leeward is entirely imaginative; the Caribbean island, where much of the action takes place, doesn’t exist. It was vacations in Jamaica and St. Kitts— each with its own dramatic topography, colourful history, and tropical headiness—that rekindled a creative spark that had lain dormant while I had been concentrating on my career as biology researcher. Places I had known as a boy in England, while on military service in Germany and on a scientific expedition to Iceland, were soon woven into the plotlines of my first four novels. You could say that, to some extent, places I had experienced prescribed plot direction. Harry’s War is the only novel where actual events in my life inspired the story. My latest novel, She Came from Away, borrows from our life in a small Newfoundland town, both for settings and for local colour.

DSW: Do you know the entire story when you embark on a new manuscript, or do you begin with a grain of an idea and allow the story to tell itself as you write?

Edward: It depends on the book. For Leeward I had a rough idea of plot when I started, but the plot transfigured itself through twists and turns as I wrote. For all the other books I knew where the story was going before I wrote the plot outlines, and the writing flowed.

DSW: When you decide to write a book, how do you set about the task?

Edward: I have a system:

First I start with a single-sentence descriptor of the book: who, what, where, and when. For Harry’s War it might read “Thirteen-year-old Harry Lockwood’s life at an English boarding school for boys near London during World War II.”

Next, I expand this to a paragraph outlining the plot direction and naming the principle characters. From there I write single-sentence chapter outlines for the whole book. I flesh out the chapter outlines to several paragraphs, three at a time, before I sit down to write. As each chapter is completed, I flesh out another chapter outline. Plot changes are accommodated as they arise by updating the chapter outlines.

Generally, I write several pages longhand and then type them, revising roughly as I do so. There are revisions at the chapter level for things like awkward phrasing, word overuse, and anything missed by the word processing software. With a lot of dialogue, punctuation spell checking can be a concern. Rereading of longer sections hopefully picks up any plot inconsistencies and a read by an “outsider” can help with this. I used to print and bind several copies of my final drafts, complete with laminated colour covers, to send to friends before publication.

DSW: Why did you start writing novels after a career in Biological Research?

Edward: An underlying desire to write fiction had been with me since young adulthood and I felt an unmet need to be creative after I retired. The career work I was involved in —first as an electron microscopist and later as a microbiologist—was both visually and intellectually stimulating. Research is a field where you have an end goal and must plot how to get there. As with writing a novel, you may end up somewhere totally unexpected!

DSW: Do you write to inform or to entertain, or for some other reason?

Edward: Primarily to entertain, though with Harry’s War I wanted the reader to sense the reality of war-time Britain: rationing, German aerial attacks, family separations and stolen childhoods. My other books might be informative in the sense that descriptions of foreign settings are based on my actual recollections, sometimes augmented by research.

DSW: Do you write to yourself or do you keep a reading audience in your mind's eye?

Edward: Definitely the latter. I try to develop characters in such a way that readers can feel strongly about them. I also try to paint a vivid picture of the scene where the action is taking place so that readers might feel as though they are there with the protagonists.

DSW: What is the most satisfying aspect of writing for you?

Edward: Getting very good reviews has to top the list. Producing pre-publication bound copies for family and friends, with covers that I had designed, was also very rewarding as I developed the technique myself through much experimentation in my garage workshop.

More recently I had to read versions of several of my books which I had formatted as ebooks (Kindle in particular). I was surprised (though I say it myself!) that the writing still seemed strong and clear. I don’t think I could write as well now.

DSW: What is the most difficult aspect of it?

Edward: Putting pen to paper and composing—converting my chapter outlines to scenes and actions, especially where the outlines lacked detail.

DSW: Do you write on a fairly regular basis, or do you wait for your muse to whisper in your ear?

Edward: I try to have a writing session every day, however short—even just a paragraph or short conversation. This means a day doesn’t pass without thinking about the book. I feel that if I wait for inspiration, there is a risk the work will never be finished, as is the case with a novella I started a couple of years ago.

DSW: What do you do when you face the dreaded nemesis – Writer’s Block?

Edward: I have been lucky in that my system for writing the text seems to have almost eliminated writer’s block. There is always a detailed chapter outline to draw me onward. The fact that three of my novels form a trilogy has meant that my characters have a shared past that can be drawn upon when needed. Quirks of character or past foibles can be revisited.

DSW: Is there a better time of day for you to write?

Edward: Probably afternoon or late morning. Not after dinner.

DSW: Where do you like to practice your craft? Is there any particular room?

Edward: In summer, with good weather, my favourite place is in my shaded garden. Indoors, I enjoy the seclusion of my bedroom where a comfortable chair awaits.

DSW: Do you need quiet, or do you like noise when you are writing?

Edward: I definitely need quiet; even music upsets my concentration. Unfortunately even a suburban garden can be fraught with distraction.

DSW: Do you have to struggle for ideas for stories, or do they come to you easily?

Edward: I do now. Ideas used to come easily since I wrote most of my novels using my own experiences and observations. When I travelled more there were always intriguing places and new people that I could reconfigure into the dramatic scenarios of fiction.

DSW: What do you consider the most important quality in writing: character development, plot, etc?

Edward: Definitely character development. Some of my reviewers have said how much they like the portrayal of my Newfoundland characters in She Came from Away.

DSW: One of your reviewers described Harry’s War as “semi-autobiographic.” To what extent was he right?

Edward: I was just a little younger than the fictitious Harry when I experienced the war years in England. I too spent four years at an English boarding school, complete with prefects and bullies. My school, Malvern, was taken over for the development of radar near the outbreak of WWII and re-housed at Harrow-on-the-Hill, which, like the fictitious Markham College, is about 15 miles from central London. I experienced several of the war-related incidents in the book but embellished them so they were more exciting.

DSW: Did writing Harry’s War change how you remembered WWII?

Edward: Yes, it certainly did. For the first time I wrote down my own recollections in as much detail as possible. I did a bit of research to ensure historical time lines for events in the book were plausible if not 100% accurate, and I located a sound clip of a V1 flying bomb which made me relive the night when they were first launched to hit London.

Oddly, writing the novel made my personal experiences at boarding school feel more like a movie and less real, but how I remember WWII remains a complex compilation of experienced events, newsreel footage, and my relative’s harrowing tales. My parents were in South Africa for part of the war then were finally allowed to return to England in a convoy. The ship behind theirs was sunk in the north Atlantic.

DSW: Can we look forward to other books by you in the future?

Edward: Probably not. As a retiree of many years I’m not sure I have the discipline to take on a novel at this point.

DSW: What made you write a trilogy—the Harry’s War Trilogy?

Edward: That’s simple! A reviewer wrote: ". . . . Growing through the adversities of WWII and of Markham College, Harry develops from a 13-year-old . . . to a confident, mature young man of 17 in 1945, ready to tackle a still uncertain future. His girlfriend, Jenny, is as sure as he is they can succeed. Perhaps there's a sequel in the offing to determine whether or not they did. And if it's as good as this book it will be well worth reading." M. Wayne Cunningham, Books in Canada—The Canadian Review of Books, September 2004.

So I took his suggestion seriously and wrote Another Kind of War, then The Iceland Connection.

DSW: David, that you very much for taking the time for this very interesting and informative interview.

D. Edward Bradley’s books are available on most online book stores, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble and can be ordered through your local book store.

How my dayplanner failed to plan my day

This is my entry for today in my dayplanner:

1. SoS
2. Haunted cities
3. Ebook

And these are notes of what I ACTUALLY have to do today:

1. Write and submit REVISED SIGNews article. (The interviewee on one article pulled out so I have to start over. *cries*)

2. Start up first draft of “freebies” ebook.

3. Work on other ebook edits (correct typos, fix formatting, revise as needed, cite sources, etc.)

4. Start Phase 2 of Shadow of Samhain rewrites. (For Phase 1, I wrote new chapters and did some touch-ups in the rest of the manuscript. In Phase 2, I fix typos and grammar mistakes, seek and destroy POV shifts [head-hopping] and read for continuity.)

5. Book reviews. I usually review for 3 sites – my book review blog, The Dabbling Mum and Night Owl Reviews. But I don’t have new books from Night Owl yet (though they were requested, just haven’t arrived yet) and the book for “my blog” is actually one I’m reading for research. I DO have a book to read for The Dabbling Mum, so yay!

6. Touch base w/contact for the haunted cities book. (I just MAY be adding another city to this book.)

I decided to write all that stuff down so I wouldn’t forget it! I know, I could try to fit it all in for the dayplanner entry, but given that it seems that my day is deciding for me what’s going to get done, I don’t see much point in STOPPING what I am doing to write everything down. (I made notes as I went about my business.)

And while I should be writing that SIGNews article right now, I am waiting and waiting and, ah! WAITING! For an email first. Then I can get cracking and start ticking off the other things.

So what else do I have to do today?

Well, yesterday, I was thinking about this ebook I am planning to write. Next year, I am doing “12 ebooks in 12 months” just like my friend and fellow author Jenn Greenleaf is doing this year (though she is doing print AND ebook). Of course, I’m changing it a bit so it won’t be EXACTLY like what she is doing this year, but she is the one who inspired this experiment all the same.

One of the ebooks I am writing is a collection of some of my most memorable accounts of paranormal activity. Of course, I’ll include my experiences from when we lived in a haunted house in St. Louis (you can read more about that in TOTALLY SCARED: The Complete Book on Haunted Houses), but it seems like there has just been so much ghosty stuff going on, I could write a whole book about it! But instead, I’ll do an ebook. And I was thinking, you know, I should write down stuff while it’s still fresh in my mind. In fact, I have journal entries in my own personal PRINT journal (not a blog) of stuff that has happened, and of course I have emailed stories to my co-author, Martha Jette. But I think it’s important to write that stuff down. I was actually thinking about that yesterday when, on the day before, I happened to see a ghost just walk right across the hall....

And with that thought in mind, I was thinking I should start early on the “freebies” ebook I am planning to include in the “12 ebooks” experiment next month. In this ebook, I talk about how I have managed to score FREE stuff every month of the year. This has turned into a mission to find out how people can get free stuff (and I mean free stuff that is NEW and not something that includes fees, etc.) If I waited until December to write this ebook, which is when that “mission” will end, I don’t think I’ll be able to remember everything so clearly. So, I have decided to start up the first draft of this ebook and write it up along with the current ebook I am writing for next year’s release.

(And if anybody knows how to get free stuff or has ideas on how to do that, please share in the comments! Note: I have already signed up with Swagbucks.com to earn points for something free, so please do not suggest Swagbucks.com.)

So it seems I have a busy day going for me today. Interesting just how far it strayed from what I actually had planned for the day!

With that said, time to get back to work!

The first book I ever wrote

Some people may think that the first book I ever wrote was the first book I ever got published. But the truth is that November’s Child is not my first book. It’s actually the second.

Yes, I started writing November’s Child in my teens. But I actually wrote another book before that one. This, too, was a novel, but it was actually a spy story. As a kid, I was totally entranced by the whole “spy scene.” I wanted to know about spies, the kinds of spy tools out there in the world and I even took an interest in cryptography just so I could use secret codes. (I even tested these codes on coded messages I wrote to my siblings, just to see how hard or easy it was for them to break the code.) So it would happen that I wrote a spy story as my very first book, my first novel.

This novel was called Hide … and Seek. And even though I finished this book, I did not get it published. I passed it around to get feedback on it and I spent hours, days, fixing it up to where I felt it was publishable. I even queried publishers about it (even though I was not yet an adult). The novel received many rejections so I ended up trunking it. Alas, I also ended up losing it; it, along with the typewriter I used to type it up with, ended up getting lost in one of my many moves.

Still, I have fond memories of this book, even of the time I spent hunched over a typewriter and typing it up. (I write at the computer these days, but I still miss using a good old-fashioned typewriter.) It was fun to research the story and create my characters. It was interesting to find out what people had to say about the story and I felt a sense of pride when one of my friends liked it so much that he showed it to his English teacher at the school we went to.

I also wrote other books. I wrote a Star Wars spinoff novel called The Force is Back (oy, that title makes me cringe but, hey, I was 14 and thought it was a cool title!) as well as a collaborative story I tried to write with a friend but we ended up abandoning it after he and I kept arguing over things so much. (A side note here: I tried to get The Powers That Be at Lucasfilms to pick up The Force is Back but they ended up rejecting me. Family members can regale you with stories of how I kept bugging them about it and ultimately told off George Lucas’ secretary. I ended up giving the manuscript to my teacher.)

Like the characters Jonathan and Jovin in my novel, November’s Child, the story November’s Child will live on, only under a different title. It is the one book from my early years as a writer that will be an actual book for everyone to read, albeit as a completely different story than the original. The other books, however, will never see print. But they were a good springboard for me to launch into a career as a writer. The hours I spent at the typewriter instilled in me the importance of sitting at the desk to write every day. The trials and nightmares of rewriting and revising my work has helped me become better at coping with the rigors of rewriting and revising. (Of course, I still panic every now and again, but I get over it. I panicked when my publisher asked for a rewrite of Shadow of Samhain, but after the running around, screaming, crying, stomping, moaning, hair-pulling and constantly asking HOW IN GOD’S NAME WILL I DO THIS???!!!!, I sat down and got to work on it.) The actual writing of these books helped me to strengthen my imagination and broaden my creativity. Working with words helped me to use words better and put together sentences, paragraphs and scenes better. And the fact that I COMPLETED a book, even a novel, made me see that this book-writing thing is DOABLE. I did it before and I could do it again.

And you know what? So can you. So grab that story idea and start writing! Get yourself on your path towards being an author. We all have to start somewhere, but the important thing is that you start.

My 7 Links

Thank you to Lillie Ammann at A Writer's Words, an Editor's Eye for nominating me to participate in the My 7 Links challenge. The purpose of the challenge is to create a bank of posts from the past that deserve to be seen again.


My Most Beautiful Post

Fathers in Fiction
I spent some time researching this one before I posted it but that time was worth it. I felt this was a nice tribute to fictional fathers. It was hard for me to find an article about a fictional dad that could only be found in BOOKS, not TV shows, so I wanted to put something like this out there for Father's Day.


My Most Popular Post

Please vote for your favorite pic!

This one got quite a lot of votes. Thanks to everyone who participated!


My Most Controversial Post

It’s a Free Country – Except in Publishing

I did not get any comments here, but offline I came across people commenting on this issue A LOT. It was interesting to read what others thought about this.


My Most Helpful Post

How I survived the HARO deluge

Once again, another blog post that got responses that were not on the blog. This method helped me out a lot. Recently, Peter Shankman wanted HARO subscribers to send in their tips on how to use HARO but unfortunately I chickened out. I just didn't feel that sending him this link would make much of a difference because it was probably a repeat of what everybody else said.


A Post Whose Success Surprised Me

You, you, you, and, yes, even YOU!

This one got 15 comments -- the most I have on any other blog post!!


A Post That Didn’t Get the Attention I Feel It Deserved

Top 10 signs you're in the zone during novel revisions

This was something I just wrote in fun. Kinda forgot to mention how I stopped at a stoplight that was green, not red. LOL I wrote this just for laughs and I think a lot of fiction writers could relate to this.


The Post I’m Most Proud Of

Thank you, Girl Scout Troop #2056!

I will be forever grateful to these special young ladies who did something wonderful with my poem. They will always have a place in my heart. This is one experience of my writing career I will always cherish. (I have one of those bookmarks on my wall, by the way.)



The second part of the challenge is to nominate up to five other bloggers to share their 7 links. Of course, these lovely ladies are not obligated to do the meme on their blogs, as well. I'm just nominating them because they are the ones who come to mind.

Jenn Greenleaf: Wearer of Many Hats
Colby Marshall at Spittin' (out words) Like a Llama

Tara McClendon at Eye Feathers

Beth Bartlett at The Writing World of Beth Bartlett

Angela Benedetti at Angie's Desk

Six submissions in six months

The previous blog post on my plans to submit the haunted cities book got me thinking: How will these plan affect certain other plans I have for the year concerning OTHER manuscripts that I plan to submit? Yes, I do actually plan to submit more than one manuscript this year.

In fact, I have six.

These are six manuscripts that I have either completed and left to sit on my hard drive or they are revisions of previous submissions. Before the year started, I went over which manuscripts I have ready or nearly-ready to go. Or which ones I REALLY want to be done with!

The list ended up containing these manuscripts:

Book 2 in The GHOST Group series
The revised draft of Shadow of Samhain
Wandering Soul (poetry book)
A Ghost on Every Corner (haunted cities)
The first Revisions book
The revised draft of The Ghost of Sarah Travers

Putting this list together helped me to time when I would submit these manuscripts. I grabbed my dayplanner and figured out the dates that would be ideal to submit each one. And it looks pretty good to me; I’ll be sending out 6 different manuscripts to 3 different publishers until June. Last month, I submitted Book 2 in The GHOST Group series (it very likely won’t see publication until next year, as it’s going to need some serious work to get it written in the same style the revised draft of Book 1 will be written in). This month, I’m sending out the poetry book. And next month? Out goes the first book in the Revisions series.

Putting together this list has taken a weight off my shoulders. I’ve been stressing over getting revisions and edits done over a bunch of manuscripts at once, but now with this list, I can space them out and not worry about getting them ready to go RIGHT NOW.

Also, not all of these books will see print this year, but the important thing is that they are Done. Submitted. And just might see print NEXT year. (Some may see print this year, and my charity ebook is indeed slated for publication this year.)This has made me think about what I can expect to see happen NEXT year, and of course I’m all excited about the prospect of these books eventually getting published in the year ahead. (Yay!)

So, there we have it. Six manuscript submissions for the first six months of 2012. Got the first one sent off; pretty soon I’ll be sending out the next one.