A change of plans …

Nope, no Part Three of my Misfits today. Say goodbye to Maxine for a while and hunker down for wonderful news worth celebrating.

 

Graphic credit

Today, I would like to celebrate two women I consider talented and inspiring, women who encourage and cheer others, women who worked harder and longer to accomplish what most of us aspire to achieve. I am honored to count them among my writing friends and to highlight their good news here today.

Like so many of you, I met Laura Drake on line. She has generously offered her friendship, critique of my lame synopsis and waning plots, and she has encouraged me to keep on during those times when I wanted to quit. I borrow her short bio from Writers in the Storm, a group  blog she helped to form and where she contributes monthly.

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women’s Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central. The Sweet Spot (May 2013), Nothing Sweeter (Jan 2014) and Sweet on You (August 2014). The Sweet Spot has recently been named a Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® Finalist in both the Contemporary and Best First Book categories.

Her ‘biker-chick’ novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin’s Superromance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town. The Reasons to Stay will release August, 2014.

This year Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She’s a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

 

I could not break the link to show you, but this url will bring you to the video of Laura accepting her RITA at the RWA Nationals this weekend. And tingles all around, she was hugged by NORA. list=UUexKC_mroN5YluFQ2pDJjHw

The purpose of the RITA award is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas.

The award itself is a golden statuette named after RWA’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for excellence in published romance fiction.

 

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Christi Corbett was the first person to subscribe to my blog and she has been a loyal reader for over four years now. We met on-line in a Writer’s Digest group, we exchange comments, emails, and phone calls. I can’t ever list three items with an “and” and forget the comma because she has drilled the Oxford Comma into my brain.

I have taken her bio from her blog.

From a young age, writing was an integral part of Christi Corbett’s life. It was a skill she further developed during her career as a television writer. Now, Christi continues to broaden her writing horizons with her novel, Along the Way Home, a Historical Western novel about the Oregon Trail.

After graduating from Western Washington University with a degree in Communications, Christi took a job with a CBS affiliate in the Creative Services Department. Over the years her lifelong love of writing was put to good use; in addition to writing over three hundred television commercials, she earned the position as head writer for a weekly television show. Furthermore, she was responsible for writing over one hundred press releases detailing the station’s various special events, community programs, and news department awards.

Currently, Christi lives in a small town in Oregon with her husband, and twin children. The location of the home holds a special place in Christi’s writing life; the view from her back door is a hill travelers looked upon years ago as they explored the Oregon Territory and beyond.

Christi is a member of Women Writing the West and The Ridge Writers, a local writing critique group.

 

 

This is Christi this past weekend at a book signing. She was unable to attend the RONE awards in person, but the thrill was certainly the high point of her family’s week. The RONE … Spotlighting the very best and rewarding excellence in the 2014 Indie and Small Publishing Industry.

Congratulations to both of these amazing women.

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How many times?  I mean, count to yourself and tell me … how many times have you heard … all good things come to those who wait??

I would amend that to say … all good things come to those who work hard, believe in themselves, and never give up. I mean don’t just sit there and “wait” for the knock on the door. Prince Charming never knocks and opportunity is inside your soul … listen for it … know it when it comes … and grab onto the gold ring and never let go.

 

This will be my last blog post until September 3rd. Read, write, play and enjoy the balance of your summer.

Do you have good news to share?.

Yours or a friend. Tell me.

fOIS In The City

 

The day after …

Some might become depressed that the excitement and craze, the waiting and the planning has finally come to an end.

That is, unless you are among those who wait for the best shopping day of the year … December 26th !

There I was early this morning, trekking out to Walmart in South Florida, since I no longer go to Macy’s on 34th Street or the Hallmark in the Paramus Mall, calculating how many boxes of this or rolls of that I would need next year.

Shameless hussy that I am, I also went to the on-line site for Current, the best decorating and wrapping place on the planet to order my food boxes and candy bags for next year.

Hey, don’t laugh. Fifty-percent is fifty-percent.

It has been an interesting time, these days of nostalgia and remembrances of the ghosts of Christmas past.

Unofficially, Christmas came to an end this morning.

Officially, it comes to an end on January 6th or what I know as “Little Christmas.”

What awaits me on that day is the long process of undecorating and after adding the new finds from today, re-storing, closing up boxes and stashing said boxes in said closets.

Having only a virtual “closet” for cyber space decorations and being a compulsively obsessed over-organizer, I have created a Word document with all but two of the Christmas blogs from this year.

No, you can’t see them again. You don’t expect poor Ralphie to run back and forth through the snow all year, do you?

I hope all those who visited enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

To my family, friends and whoever falls between the two, thanks for joining me during this month. For anyone who hasn’t been following me, you missed out on a lot of fun.

Where do you store your Christmas decorations, old cards,

new memories?

fOIS In The City