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Really? September already? Ack!

Time to announce the winner of the drawing for two books from my backlist. I had a lot of entries this time, which was fun. My husband, John, just drew a winner out of a big wooden bowl he made himself!

And the winner is …

Judy Ramer!

Congratulations, Judy. I’ll get the books you requested in the mail later this week.

Details for the next drawing will be on the Enter to Win! page later today. I hope you will all enter again.

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Don’t forget: PROGNOSIS: ROMANCE is in stores now!

Check the Books Available Now page for more information.

Recently I’ve noticed a very cute TV ad sponsored by an insurance company featuring a father handing his daughter the keys to a car. He sees a little girl of maybe five or six behind the wheel as he gives her instructions to be careful, stay off the freeways, to keep her phone in her purse while she’s driving. As she drives away, we the viewers see a teenage girl in the drivers’ seat, but I suspect that father still sees the little one.

I remember quite clearly the first time each of our three kids drove off alone in a car. It’s a terrifying feeling standing in the driveway watching that car disappear down the road, imagining all the things that could go wrong (a storyteller’s imagination can be as much of a curse as a blessing, at times!). Yet as much as I would have loved to keep them small and dependent and close by, there came a time when each of them had to leave the nest, in increasingly larger steps.

I thought of that ad early yesterday morning when our daughter and her husband packed up their car to head back to New England after a two week visit here in Arkansas. They spent a week with his family, a little more than an hour north of here, and a week with our family. We had a lovely time visiting with them, having dinner with my husband’s mother and then my father, playing games and shopping and talking. But once again, there came a time when they had to leave. Our daughter had to be back at work in her medical residency Monday and our son-in-law is starting a new semester of graduate school. I stood in the driveway and watched their car disappear, seeing a little girl and a young boy in the front seats, imagining all the hazards that awaited them on that two-day drive …

Now our house is quiet again with our oldest daughter working in the Pacific Northwest, the second one in New England and our son attending his final year of college prior to beginning his own medical training. The doors to their bedrooms are closed and their closets hold only a few left-behind belongings. I’m so very proud of them for pursuing their own lives and careers — after all, it was our goal throughout their childhoods to get them to this point, independent and self-sufficient. And yet even now, I can look around our house and see them sprawled on the floor with their toys or curled in my lap watching TV or gathered around our table for a meal or a game. Just as the man in the commercial very clearly envisions his gap-toothed little girl when he looks at his impatient teenager, I see our kids when I picture the young adults we’ve ushered out into the world.

For all the parents who just sent a child off to college for this new semester — or the first day of kindergarten or high school or a new job or the military — here’s to you for finding the strength to let go. We can share our pride in them, even as we share the bittersweet bonding of parents whose job is almost complete.

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Only two more days before I draw the winner of the September 1 contest for any two books from my backlist (subject to availability – I have most, but not all, of the titles available). Quite a few entries have already come in, but there’s still time to enter! Click the Enter to Win! tab above for details.

Don’t forget my new book PROGNOSIS: ROMANCE is available in stores this week! Click the Books Available Now tab above for more information.

Every once in a while (okay, fairly often), I am unable to resist launching into what my children affectionately (I like to believe) refer to as a “mama rant.” Sometimes those rants creep into my blog — like the health lectures you’ve read here, or my bemoaning the misuse of “I” and “me.” So, fair warning … this is another “mama rant.”

I’ve mentioned that I can be somewhat fashion challenged, so shopping for clothing for myself is not my favorite thing to do. But Saturday afternoon, I decided to venture out in search of a long-sleeve purple blouse in which to have a photo taken (more on that in a later post). I drove straight to my favorite exclusive designer boutique (J. C. Penney) and found two or three purple blouses to try on. When I walked into the fitting room area, my “mama outrage” kicked in big time!

Every fitting room was filled with clothing that had been tried on and discarded. On the floor. The customers had pulled off the garments, often inside out, and tossed them haphazardly to their feet, leaving them lying there in a tangled mess when they left. Argh.

How much time does it take to slip a garment back on the hanger? Perhaps to refasten the top button so it doesn’t slide off again? To place that now-hangered garment onto the rack provided by the store for that purpose as one leaves the dressing room? Not only is this more courteous for the store employees who have to deal with an often-cranky public many hours a day to make their livings, but it’s so much more thoughtful for the other customers who will use the dressing room afterward. Or perhaps try on those same garments later. Honestly, who throws nice, new clothing in a pile on the floor, walking over them on the way out?

I made a point to be extra nice to the pleasant young woman who came into the dressing room to straighten up as I was leaving (and yes, I hung the blouses I didn’t want on the rack, hangered and buttoned).  Retail is not an easy job, and I always appreciate the sales clerks who manage to be friendly and helpful, anyway.

Okay, deep breath. Rant over. One request — smile at a helpful sales clerk today.

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Don’t forget to sign up for my September 1 give-away for two autographed books! Click the Enter to Win! tab above for details.

My husband, son and I have just returned from a week-long visit with our daughter in Washington state, so you’ll be seeing lots of pictures from the Pacific Northwest in upcoming posts. We explored Seattle, Whidbey Island, Bainbridge Island and Mt. Rainier. The weather was cool and perfect (especially compared to the 106 degrees days back here in Arkansas) and the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. We rode the ferry, crammed into my daughter’s little car for excursions, walked city streets and hiked beach and forest trails (I didn’t exactly keep up with my fit, athletic offspring, but I got to the destinations eventually). I had a fabulous time — and now I’m so far behind I’m wondering if I’ll ever catch up!

Vacations are interesting in that regard. We look forward to them all year. We save and scrimp, work like crazy to clear some time off, spend hours packing and sitting in airport terminals and/or cars, and then when it’s all over, we have the unpacking, laundry and catch-up work to do — not to mention the bills to pay. Our vacation wasn’t extravagant, since most of our favorite things to do there were free — the hiking and beach-combing and sightseeing — but it was still a disruption to our usual routines. So was it worth it?

Oh, yes. The family time alone was the most valuable part of the trip for me. As our children have grown up and gotten more involved with their own lives and careers, those times together have become more rare — and all the more precious to me. The only thing that would have made that week more perfect would have been if our other daughter and her husband could have joined us there. I’ll get to see them when they come home from New England for their own vacation next week, and I’m counting the days until we’re together, but I’ll be aware that we’ll still be missing one around the game table, even though I just spent a week with her.

Creatively, it’s good for me to get out of the house and into a new location. Ideas crop up in new and (to me) exotic locations while I people-watch and subtly (I hope) eavesdrop and mingle with friendly strangers. When I declined to make the particularly-strenuous hike with the rest of my family to a point as high on Mt. Rainier as they could climb without spikes and picks and other gear, I spent a delightful couple of hours visiting with a couple of other women who’d made the same decision. One accompanied me on a somewhat-less-demanding climb to the waterfall pictured above, and the other sat and chatted with me for an hour in the beautiful visitor center. Both of my new friends gave me ideas for upcoming scenes and cheerfully answered questions about their interesting jobs. I’ve mentioned before that it’s easy for me to become a hermit in my house and at my computer, so it’s good for me to have an excuse to get out and away from the keyboard, even if I do fall behind in doing so.

So, I’ll be working madly during the next few weeks to catch up, but whenever I start feeling stressed, I’ll have my memories and my dozens of photos to make me smile again. If I fall a little behind in my postings here, you’ll understand why.

Don’t forget that my next book, PROGNOSIS: ROMANCE, a September release from Silhouette Special Edition, will be on the shelves at the end of this month. Click on the Books Available Now tab for details.

And don’t forget to enter the contest for the next drawing on September 1. The prize will be two books of your choice from my backlist (subject to availability). All the details for how to enter are available on the Enter to Win! tab above.

Until next time, I hope you find your own moments of relaxation and pleasure, whether on vacation or in your own backyard.

For everyone with a dream, there is someone hoping to con that dreamer out of some cash. Think of the fly-by-night “modeling agencies” that crop up to tell young women how pretty they are, how famous they’ll become, if they’ll only pay the agency for photos and expenses and a signing fee. The Bernie Madoffs who prey on people’s dreams of wealth or financial security. The Nigerian scam artists and other con men who convince people to give them their banking information for an elaborate get-rich-quick scheme that only makes the cons rich. The snake oil salesmen who sell fake miracle cures to desperately ill people. Those who promise their product will keep you young, make you healthy, enlarge body parts or make you thin.You bet they’ll take your money — but the dreams are more likely to be shattered than fulfilled.

So many people dream of being published authors. I understand that one completely — it was all I wanted to do from a very young age. I worked very hard to make that dream come true. Studied, read, researched, risked and survived rejections. I’ve talked before about some of the steps I took to be published, finding an agent, learning the business. I am so proud, and so eternally grateful, that I have been a Harlequin/Silhouette author for more than twenty years and more than 90 books. By buying my first book in 1986, Harlequin fulfilled my lifelong dream, and my association with them has been a joy. I’ve worked with so many wonderful, ethical professionals there who genuinely love romance stories and who work with me to make every book the best it can be — from title to cover art to editing to back cover copy to marketing. I have been truly blessed.

Yet there are many talented authors who somehow never find the right person to read their work, writers who dream of being published but grow frustrated with the challenges in reaching that goal. And are there people who are willing to cash in on those dreams? Oh, yes. Shady “agents” who charge exorbitant reading fees and expenses and never sell a book (tip — an agent makes a percentage of the author’s earnings. No sales, no money to the agent. That’s their incentive to hustle!) So-called “book doctors” who will read and edit your book for a high price, but no guarantees that you’ll ever actually be published to recoup any of that outlay, of course. And “publishers” who are really nothing more than printers. They will print anyone’s book, whether good or bad, for the right amount of money. They’re called vanity presses. They aren’t publishers.

I can’t tell you  all the stories I’ve heard of people who have given large sums of money they didn’t have to spare to “publish” their books this way. They end up with a closet full of their own bound books, which they then have to try to sell to friends, family and strangers. They don’t have the marketing resources of the legitimate publishers who pay an advance to their authors, then follow up with royalties once the advance is earned out. (Again, the legitimate publisher doesn’t make money until the books sell. The author Does Not Pay up front).

You’ve probably heard stories of authors who paid to print their own books, then caught the attention of mainstream publishers and made it big. You’ve probably also heard about people winning multi-million dollar lotteries. The odds are about the same. The vast majority of players end up with a pocketful of useless lottery tickets — or a closet full of expensive, bound books they can’t sell.

Authors do not pay to print their books. Nor should they pay for cover art or other expenses that are the reason the publishers get the largest percentage of the sales earnings. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s hard to make a living writing these days. The industry is changing so quickly, the economy is in such turmoil, and society’s habits are changing. There are very few superstars of writing. But there is still a demand for fiction and there are still readers willing to pay to be entertained and transported into the pages of a good book. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Writing is hard work, and we expect to get paid for our work. Why should someone else make money off the author’s book when the author ends up losing money for their hours of effort? That doesn’t even make sense!

Romance Writers of America, Novelists, Inc., Mystery Writers of America and Science Fiction Writers of America have all issued statements warning authors of the many vanity presses cropping up lately. I highly recommend that you visit ninc.com and read their  brilliant statement and excellent arguments against these expensive and rarely-beneficial endeavors.

Because I know exactly how it feels to wants to be published very badly, to live with that dream for so very long, I feel especially compelled to warn others who share that aspiration about the many pitfalls awaiting them on their journey. Be careful.  Keep telling your stories and honing your craft and submitting to legitimate publishers (do your homework, find out who those legitimate businesses are). Join writers’ networking groups so you’ll be wise to the traps. And do extensive research, on-line and through author recommendations, about any publisher or agent before you sign any contracts.

Don’t let others cash in on your dreams.