So I must be a REAL author because I have an author page on Amazon.com. The link to it is http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00T8E5LN0.
Come on over and leave me some love, FOLLOW me and check back in a week or so for the “buy link” for my March 4 release of Skater’s Waltz from the Wild Rose Press.
Now, I just have to figure out how to list myself on Goodreads!
It was a balmy -8 degrees when I started writing this morning. Hasn’t gotten much higher five hours later. I’ve been in the house since monday evening when the snowmageddon started and today I had to finally venture out into the real world. Groceries were calling, the bank account needed something added to it so bill collectors wouldn’t come calling, and the car was screaming for petrol. It’s been nice being a hermit for the past few days, writing to my heart’s content and watching the world get by in the snow on my television. I finished and submitted book 3 in my MacQuire Women series to my editor for a perusal; I blogged a bunch; I set up visits to other author websites to promote my new release on March 4. All in all, it’s been a productive few days for writing.
But…
I haven’t only been writing. For the first time in a long while I could devote hour after hour to my laptop obsession and I found I wanted to do other things in addition to just writing. Things like work on the decoupage trunk project I’ve got going…or clean my house of the tumbleweeds that have invaded under the furniture…or bake. I’ve been baking up a winter storm’s worth of stuff.
In the past, my paying job work schedule has interfered with my time ability to write. For the past three days, since the forced snow-isolation, I’ve not had to worry about finishing up a scene by a certain time because I had to get to work, or go to sleep so I could wake up and get to work. This tells you how long it’s been since I’ve had a real vacation! My official retirement date is April 30th of this year. After that, I will have all day everyday in which to write – my dream come true.
Only now I think I will have other pursuits lined up as well.
Filed under Characters
21 inches of snow already here in the woods and the storm isn’t even half over. Isn’t it funny how a snow day strikes the same happy chord in my adult heart as it did in my child one?
I’ve been up for hours due to the howling wind shaking against my weather treated windows, just watching it fall and writing. I’ve gotten 50 pages of edits under my belt, answered 18 emails, tweeted with 10 peeps, answered a few Facebook questions and am now blogging. Oh, and I made a batch of blueberry muffins for the hubman’s breakfast – who also has a snow day. His first in over 30 years of working! Can you think of a more fun thing for me to do than be snowbound with my laptop?? I can’t…well, I could if provoked, but I’d rather not!!
I got my official release date for my first book SKATER’S WALTZ. It’s March 4, 2015 so now I am embarking on the media junket. I have several blog tours already in the works but I need to get the press release to the local newspaper and then plot the rest of my media blitz. This is wicked time consuming,- but I will admit – fun! I know now, though, why multi-published authors with expense accounts opt to have publicists. I can see myself -someday- paying someone to do all this leg work. But for now, it’s lil’ole’ me doing it, so I am off to find more blogs to tour and presses to release to.
Stay warm, dry, safe and cozy where ever you are during this bit of winter wonder. Oh, and buy my book on March 4th!! I’ll put up the buy links when they are available. Shameless plug, wasn’t that?!
Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, MacQuire Women, Romance, Romance Books, Skater's Waltz
For anyone who was raised Catholic, as I was, when you hear someone has received The Call, you immediately know they have been “spiritually called” to join Holy Orders. Either enter a convent or go to seminary.
Now, even though my mother neonatally named me to enter a nunnery ( Margaret-Mary Bernadette, folks ) my Call did not come with an invitation to serve the Lord. No, my call was much different, but no less life changing.
At the 2014 RWA conference in San Antonio, Tx, I had made arrangements to briefly introduce myself to an editor at the Wild Rose Press who was currently evaluating a romance novel submission of mine. I had emailed her and found out she was going to be volunteering at the event and I wanted to meet with her face-to-face in order to thank her for being so gracious to me via all the email “chats” we’d had. When I introduced myself to her, I discovered one of the loveliest women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. She was not only as gracious as her emails had been, but sweet and kind as well. I thanked her, as I’d planned to do, for being so nice and patient, and she quite literally changed my life in that instant.
She told me that she had “good news for me.”
My heart stopped.
Literally.
I could feel my blood pooling in my feet, swelling them, because it wasn’t being shunted to any vital organs.
She told me that by the time I got home I should have a contract for publication waiting for me in my email. The Wild Rose Press wanted to publish my book.
Now, my brain stopped functioning from lack of blood. And shock.
I don’t know how long I stood there just staring at her. The poor woman probably thought I was having a stroke or some kind of medical emergency. All around us was the noise of the conference: people walking by, laughing and talking, heading to their next course; hotel workers moving about, delivering water jugs to the classrooms they were setting up; people checking into the conference.
After what seemed like a lifetime – but was probably just a few seconds – I found my tongue. I said, in a shaky voice, “there have been two times in my life I have been speechless. The first was when my boyfriend “told me” we were getting married, not asked. And the second is right now.”
I hugged her. I couldn’t help it. I was so overcome, I didn’t even realize I pulled her into my arms until she was there. And, as before, she was gracious and kind.
She had to get back to her volunteering and I had to get to my next course, so we parted, each saying we would be in touch.
I went to class. I can honestly tell you I have no idea what it was and have no memory of even being in it. After that I went up to my hotel room.
As I played the brief meeting out in my mind, I began to wonder if I had hallucinated it. I really did. I didn’t tell any of my RWA chapter mates who were at the conference as well, keeping my secret hidden – just in case I had imagined the entire two-minute event.
I didn’t want them to think I was suffering from delusions. It was bad enough I thought I was.
I got through the rest of the week and headed home. Sure enough, when I got there and checked my email there was a contract proposal waiting for me.
Third time in my life I’ve been speechless? When I opened and then read that email.
To say my life has changed since this is a totally inadequate way of conveying what has happened to me. My first romance novel SKATER’S WALTZ, book 1 in the MacQuire Women Series will be published in early 2015 and book 2, THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, later in the year. I have officially given in my resignation to my day job, effective in April 2015 so that I can no pursue the lifelong passion I have always wanted to pursue. I’ve begun learning valuable marketing tools to sell my books, and I now know the difference between an algorithm and branding. These days my head is not only full of plot lines and character profiles, but social media sites that promote authors and help with book sales.
In the Catholic faith, THE CALL is a life-changing, spiritual event. And although I didn’t immediately don a habit and enter a nunnery, my Call was no less life-changing and spiritual.
Filed under Characters, Dialogue
I sent in my first round of edits on my soon to be published romance novel two weeks ago, and once again I am playing the waiting game.
I’ll just say this plainly: I HATE WAITING.
I am not a good wait-or. I don’t like standing in lines waiting for stuff; I hate when something needs to be delivered via snail mail; I break out in hives when I’m waiting for a phone call. Pregnancy was torture for me. 9 months. 9 long, laborious, months. It might as well have been a lifetime. It certainly felt like one.
The road to publication is not a short one. I knew that going in. What I didn’t know was that I’d be so stressed with the time frame. I almost wish I was on a time crunch deadline. THAT I can relate to and work through. Deadlines are my friends – always have been. I actually do some of my best work when I’m on a deadline.
I know my editor told me she would get back to me within 30 days. 15 have already gone by so that’s half way, right? Home stretch time, correct? I should be sitting back, just working on book three in the series ( I am, truthfully), and not worrying.
Not gonna happen. I’m a worse worrier than I am wait-or.
Waiting and worrying.
This is my life…..
Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, Editors, Romance, Romance Books, Skater's Waltz, Strong Women
I have been up to my eyebrows in my first professional edits for the past few days, so I have not been able to blog much. Oh, who am I kidding: I haven’t had a moment to pee, much less blog!
I want to get these done correctly, quickly and accurately, so to the exclusion of housework, laundry and grocery shopping – the milk for breakfast didn’t taste so great – I have been diligently editing. Page after page. Paragraph after paragraph.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to change any of the plot or story line. Just tweak some tenses, kill some commas, and omit some superfluous phrasing.
Ah, the pleasures of having a novel in pre-production.
Release date will be forthcoming, so stay tuned.
Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, Editors, MacQuire Women, Romance, Romance Books, Skater's Waltz, Strong Women
I’m finally coming down off cloud 9, where I’ve been for the past week since I heard my book is going to be published by The Wild Rose Press. It’s been a loco week with family, friends and writing friends Facebooking and Tweeting me. Can you make Facebook a verb? I think I just did.
Anyway.
I’m not sitting back and enjoying this 24/7. I’ve been concentrating on pulling together several other stories I’ve written in the hopes of getting them into print as well. I’ve logged a lot of typing miles on my laptop this past week and I’ve got a lot of work to show for it.
This got me thinking: I have two real jobs now – the one I get paid for every two weeks and now this writing/publishing hat I’ve put on. Where am I going to get the time to do both jobs well, plus maintain my life? How am I going to be able to budget the time to do all of this: life’s dream and the reality of still pulling in a paycheck. Not to mention laundry, housework, cooking, seeing friends and family and being a great wife?
It’s a little mind boggling when you think about it.
I can usually multitask well – or at least it was well until I hit menopause. Now, I’m scattered at times and not easily able to get it all back on track. There are only so many workable hours in the day, and even though I don’t sleep well – or a lot – it’s still going to be a major adjustment to find the time that I will need to devote to edits, when they arrive, and then do all the marketing and publicity necessary in order to actually sell a few books.
Or a million.
I need a plan. Any ideas? I appreciate any and all responses no matter how trite or intricate they seem to be. And thanks in advance.
Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, Life challenges, love, MacQuire Women, Romance, Romance Books, Skater's Waltz
My big news of the past 24 hours is out. If you haven’t heard it yet, my novel SKATER’S WALTZ has been contracted for publication by The Wild Rose Press. To say I am over the moon is such an inadequate descriptor for what I am feeling right now.
What I am feeling is: overwhelmed, not worthy, scared, fretful, fearful, impatient, shocked,uncertain, uneasy and worried. That’s 10 kinda negative emotions.
So here are ten positive ones – and these are definitely positive emotions: amazed, elated, gleeful, giddy, relieved, reborn, speechless (really!!??), flabbergasted, dumfounded and blown away.
Note to self: never ask a writer to describe something.
That sound you just heard was me falling on the floor. When I pick myself back up I have to start putting together a marketing plan. Books don’t sell themselves. You have to have a fully realized marketing and publicity plan in place before the book is even out.
I think I’ll stay on the floor a few more minutes and just bask in my glee.
More to come on this great news when I have it to share.
Filed under Author, Contemporary Romance, Family Saga, love, MacQuire Women, Romance, Romance Books, Skater's Waltz, Strong Women
Peggy Jaeger, Author 