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When you’re on deadline and the time changes and you freak out when you lose an hour by Jina Bacarr

March 11, 2023 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as #Historical, clocks forward, editing, Paris, time change, women's fiction, World War 2, writing

when the time changes and you don’t…

If there’s one thing we writers never have enough of…

It’s time.

Words we got… thousands.

Coffee… by the potful.

Comfy bunny slippers… on automatic re-order from Amazon.

But time?

That’s as elusive as the instant bestseller.

I’m on autopilot this week until whenever to get it all together and bring my next Paris WW2 novel home for my publisher Boldwood Books. Amazing company. They take good care of their authors… fabulous marketing team… I love my editor, Isobel… and the company has won several ‘Best Publisher’ awards in the UK and is up for more awards this year.

And my fellow authors are like family to me.

But in the end, it’s up to me to write the damn book.

Sweat, tears… blood. Yes, I changed the order because I sweat the small stuff like commas and the big stuff like research which turns into major tears when I realize writing never gets easier but tougher (you demand more of yourself)… and blood because if you don’t bleed onto the page, you’re not giving it your all.

So, mes amis, tonight is the night we turn the clocks forward and lose the hour.

But guess what. I’ve decided to do something about it.

I’m going to type twice as fast for a solid hour (accuracy is another story) and write twice as many words and–

Voilà!

I’ve got my hour back… at least for tonight.

Tomorrow?

Well, that’s another day.

===============

Some great book news:

The trade paperback of my Paris WW2 novel THE LOST GIRL OF PARIS

is coming to THE WORKS stores in the UK… so check it out if you’re in the United Kingdom.

Listen to an excerpt in the video below…

E-book:

My heroine, Angeline de Cadieux, is a Roma girl in WW2 Paris… she’s strong, fights in the Resistance… makes exquisite perfumes and comes up with an amazing marketing campaign during the war to boost morale in France.

Thank you!

UK https://amzn.to/3j7eU6S

US https://amzn.to/3aD9Jae

CA https://amzn.to/3IbaVRZ

AU https://amzn.to/3xtrF1A

————–

And THE RUNAWAY GIRL is a Kindle Monthly Deal in Australia.

Thanks for listening… and now back to our regularly scheduled craziness.

Jina

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More Mac and Cheese, Please, Please, Please

February 16, 2023 by Renae Wrich in category Writing tagged as Children's stories, Childrens Lit, Mac and Cheese, teachers, writing

My eldest daughter was in kindergarten the year that I published my children’s book, Mac and Cheese, Please, Please Please. Her Kindergarten teacher and classmates instantly became my “M&C Triple P Fan Club”. I mean, it’s a rhyming book with easy to read words, repeated sentence structure and a memorable plot-twist ending… That has ‘Kindergartener’ written all over it! (Pun 100% intended)

As a lot of parents can relate, my daughter’s kindergarten year was impacted by the pandemic and her class moved to a distanced learning format to finish out the year.

Fast forward a few years and you can imagine our delight when my daughter learned that her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. K, would now be her third grade teacher! I was honestly feeling relief because after Mrs. K transferred to third grade, all I heard about was how my daughter hoped she had Mrs. K for third grade, and I was not prepared to deal with the disappointment had that not been the outcome.

When we went to open house at the beginning of the school year, my daughter quickly recognized that a lot of the kids from her kindergarten class were going to be in her third grade class too. When we pointed this out to Mrs. K she smiled and said that she had asked the principal if she could have as many kinds from her kindergarten class as possible so they could, “Finally finish the year together.”

Her words still make me cry. We are so lucky to have teachers like Mrs. K.

As it turns out, the kids in this class are still diehard Mac and Cheese, Please, Please, Please fans and they are straight-up demanding another book. So I started writing the sequel and I’m pretty excited about it. The only teaser that I’ll share is that my kids helped me pick the setting of the book, and as a result I’ve been watching A LOT of YouTube videos about space. Excited to share more updates soon!

gray and black galaxy wallpaper — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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Do You Need More Time for All Your Goals? by Kitty Bucholtz

February 9, 2023 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Online Class, Planning, time management, writing, Writing Plans

Subtitle for This Block

Title for This Block

Every year, when I write down all of my goals, the list contains enough stuff to last several years. And after I trim it down to the essentials, it’s still almost definitely more than I can accomplish in the next 12 months. But I always want to try! Haha!

Do you have a lot on your mind and in your heart to do in 2023? I’m with you, friend! But there’s a saying attributed to the famous American businessman, Peter Drucker: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

So let’s work together and both achieve more this year than we did last year! We’ll write down our goals AND how we’re going to measure them. As we keep track, we can look for ways to improve what we’re doing — and get more done.

And not just “stuff.” If you’re looking for someone to help you get off the couch and clean the house every Saturday, there are better people out there to help you with that. 😉 I’m talking about looking at the next 10-12 months and focusing on the most important things to you — finishing and publishing one or more books, helping your daughter plan her wedding, gain some muscle and lose some fat, do something from your bucket list.

I teach a class that’s helped hundreds of writers over the last two decades to get more writing done. Going the Distance: Time and Project Management for Writers. And with my new and improved version, we’ll look at my WHOLE PATH System to working on your whole life, not just writing in a vacuum.

The class will be online and self-paced, so you don’t have to show up at a certain time. But as a bonus, I’ll offer 4 live Q&A sessions during February and March. If you can’t make it live, you can send me your question and I’ll answer it so you can watch the recording.

Now is the time to get focused on what’s most important to you. And starting February 20, you can get the help you need to write more with less stress and more peace and joy this year!

I’ve created a couple short videos on my YouTube channel to help you in the meantime. The first is Easy Planning for the 3 Most Important Things in Your Life, and the second is Micro- vs. Macro-Planning. I hope you find them useful and encouraging!

And I hope to see you in class! 😀

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Still Groundhog Day?

February 6, 2023 by Linda O. Johnston in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as distractions, edits, recurrence, writing

It’s now the second month of 2023. Do things keep recurring to you, as they do with me—kind of an ongoing Groundhog Day, even though that was four days ago this year.

But as I’ve mentioned before, it’s another busy year for me. At the moment, I’m working on edits for two of the books I’ll have out later this year. Edit, after edit, after edit. Yes, a recurrence of edits, though they’re for different stories.

And then I have more books to write, and at the moment they’re all in series that have already begun. Yes, another similar, but different, recurrence in my writing.

Hey, though. I like them all, and that’s just the way things are for me now. Different, yet in some ways recurring.

That, plus my puppy Roxie just had her first birthday, and I love paying attention to her and our older dog Cari. Distractions from my writing? Definitely, as I’ve mentioned before. But happy ones. And delightfully recurring ones.

How about you? What recurs in your life and your writing?

~ Linda

Some of Linda’s Books

BEAR WITNESS

UNLUCKY CHARMS

TO CATCH A TREAT

COVERT ALLIANCE

BAD TO THE BONE

PROTECTOR WOLF

SECOND CHANCE SOLDIER

PICK AND CHEWS

TRAINED TO PROTECT

VISIONARY WOLF (Alpha Force)

FOR A GOOD PAWS

COLTON 911: CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

COLTON FIRST RESPONDER (The Coltons of Mustang Valley)

HER UNDERCOVER REFUGE

UNDERCOVERING COLTON’S FAMILY SECRETS

GUARDIAN K-9 ON CALL

BEAGLEMANIA

THE MORE THE TERRIER

HOUNDS ABOUND

SHIELDING COLTON’S WITNESS

UNDERCOVER COWBOY DEFENDER

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The Birthday Song(s)

January 30, 2023 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as Birthday Songs, music, writing

I often listen to music while I’m writing, and it’s nearly always to one of my two favorite college radio stations: WPRB in Princeton, NJ, or KVCU in Boulder, CO. No Spotify or Pandora for me.

The other day the DJ Dana K from WPRB decided to celebrate her birthday by playing during her two-hour show songs only from the year she was born. What a cool idea, I thought. I’d never looked back at songs that way. And since this post is the closest to my birthday month—I won’t be posting in February because my slot falls on the 30^th of the month—I am going to do that look-back here.

To give the range more breadth than Dana K did, I expanded my research (thank you, Google) beyond my birth year to all years that are decades for it—so, all years that end in the same digit. I discovered, though, that, like any best-of list, what’s “best” is in the eye of the beholder. Since I don’t currently listen to top-40 radio, those that floated to the top of the online lists were not often ones I would choose to play (or remember fondly).

I did see some favorites, but many other popular hits did not register high on my interest gauge.

I was delighted to find that both “Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Suede and “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone were on the list. I am a big fan of the film Guardians of the Galaxy, and those two songs are part of the much-played soundtrack. “Jolene” by Dolly Parton is on the list; I also love Jack White’s version of the song, which came out 30 years later, on the White Stripes’ Under Blackpool Lights.

“Beeswing” by Richard Thompson was not a top-40 hit on the lists, but it’s a stunning song-story on Mirror Blue by one of my favorite singer-songwriters. “Crown of Love,” from the debut album by Arcade Fire, is another on the timeline that swept me away. And I was happy to discover that “Say It Ain’t So” on Weezer‘s Blue Album fit my time parameter; the song speaks to a topic that’s personal for me.

There are many other songs I could mention. Instead, I’ll just slip on my ear buds, crank up the volume, and get back to writing my next story.