Cover reveal for A Million Doughnuts

Recently, the independent publisher, Great Minds Think Aloud Publishing, offered me a contract for my children's book, A Million Doughnuts. And the cover for this book was created today. Hooray! I am so happy with the cover and thank you to Kitty Bullard for her amazing work in cover design.

Now, I noticed something interesting about this particular cover. Not just that the title appears "doughnut-y." *g* But if you look at the boy's face, you'll notice that one side of his face is a darker color. Sure, you can think "shading" or something some other to explain it away. But for me, that really stood out, because half of my face is a darker color, given that it has burn scars on it! So I thought that was a really special coincidence. I do all the things that I do because I don't want to be one of those burn survivors who "hides away" from the world. Nope! None of that! I'm not ashamed to show my face with the burn scars on it. So, that particular facial difference right there really affected me on a personal level. Just as we need to accept more people who are not "beautiful" and who don' have the same kind of face as everybody else, we need more pictures of people with something similar to a burn survivor, because burn survivors should be SEEN!

Anyway, enough of all that. I am very excited about this book. I got the idea for it from a "doughnut song" that my daughter wrote 2 years ago. We were eating doughnuts for breakfast at a bakery one morning and she just started singing that song. She couldn't get it out of her head! I told her to write the words down and after I read it, I thought it was so cute that I HAD to use it in a story!

I did that very thing several months later. That song stayed in the desk drawer all those months until I finally had the perfect story for it to go into.

So, thank you, Jennifer, for writing this doughnut song and granting me permission to include it in the story.

I will post information about this book and the buy link when the book comes out.

My new ebook, On the Wings of Pink Angels

Gypsy Shadow Publishing recently released my new ebook, On the Wings of Pink Angels: Triumph, Struggle and Courage Against Breast Cancer. I am very excited about this ebook because it’s about a topic that is very important to me (breast cancer) and it’s also for charity. All royalties I receive from sales of this ebook will be donated to Courageous Kids.

Thank you to Help A Reporter Out, the ladies at Gypsy Shadow Publishing (Denise Bartlett and Charlotte Holley) and to everyone who took the time to share their stories and answer my interview questions for the material in this ebook.

This ebook is a semi-anthology. Some people who have survived breast cancer or know someone who had breast cancer took the time to write their stories and share them for this ebook. I have also interviewed people affected by breast cancer in some way. Additionally, I wrote “organization spotlights” on charities and organizations who assist anyone diagnosed with breast cancer. There are a couple of breast cancer book reviews, as well as information about businesses that “go pink” every October. Finally, there is also a short story with a character in it who is diagnosed with breast cancer.

This ebook started out as a blog series I ran in 2009 on my blog, Palms to Pines, for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I am so pleased to see the series turned into an ebook. Not everything from that blog series ended up here (and you can read one such item I kept out here) but the final result is something I’m very happy with. As to the title, while I was working on the manuscript, I noticed that a recurrent image which kept appearing in the stories and projects were angels. This stuck with me and I knew I had to use an angel, or angels, in the title somehow. But they could not just be any angel – they had to be pink angels. Pink, in honor of the pink ribbon symbolizing breast cancer. I also took note of how so many people offered support and encouragement to those suffering from breast cancer, as though they “carried them” along on their journey. Thus, I came up with the title “On the Wings of Pink Angels.”

I hope anyone who reads this book will enjoy it. There is so much in here that inspired me and touched my heart. It’s amazing how something as dreadful as breast cancer can cause so many people to come together and so something good in the face of something bad. I could reread all of these stories and walk away from it feeling just a bit more hopeful for the future of our world, and for the hope that one day we will finally have a cure.

Blurb: 

 "You have cancer." These are words people dread hearing. But when worse comes to worst, push comes to shove, something wonderful happens. More people come together for support and encouragement. More people participate in "Race for the Cure" events, and more people discover an inner strength within themselves that they never knew they had before. On the Wings of Pink Angels offers a gentle hand through this difficult time, sharing stories that inspire hope, strength, gratitude and courage during a time when someone must fight for his or her life against breast cancer. 

Check it out here.

Planning ahead for 2013

In light of recent changes I made to self-imposed deadlines on manuscripts, I have had to change my queue of what manuscripts I will work on when, and when they will be submitted. As it turns out, rearranging the queue for 2012 meant that I was able to rearrange the one I have for 2013.

And, looking it over, it's not so bad.

For the year of 2012 so far, I have submitted 11 manuscripts. (I have one more to submit next month.) Of those submissions, I received two rejections, one revision request and five acceptances. The other three are still pending. I will be resubmitting the rejected pieces until I find homes for them, but they were not moved into my queue for 2013.

For 2013, I will HOPEFULLY have another good amount of submissions. I really hope that of these, the haunted cities manuscript will be one of them. I REALLY want to finish this one. Of the others, one is nearly complete (just haven't had time to work on it), one is ongoing and my deadline is more to "finish' it and not submit since my co-author will submit it, and the others are WIPs I've had going on for some time.

But if I can't submit all 12, the BIG THING I want to do is finish them and revise those which need revisions. I just want to get them into final draft.

And so, more than anything, these deadlines are mostly to FINISH the books and get them into the best shape I possibly can. If I feel it is ready to send out, then I'll send it out. But if not, then I'll work on it some more until I get there.

But basically I have a better idea of what books I'll be focusing on in 2013. The goal is to get many of them DONE and sent off (such as the haunted cities book, the health book and the deaf parenting book) but mostly to get them done. I just want them to be final drafts. I have been working on many of them when time permits and feel I can do this with those particular books. So I hope that will happen in 2013. If I'm lucky, I'll see some of them get published, too.