Spring Fever

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1362627420_PepeLePew.jpg

Ah, spring fever. Time to fall in love, and walk hand in hand in the sunshine singing sweet songs. At least, that's how it should be in my mind.

http://www.medguidance.com/images/10420185/part1.jpg

Unfortunately, my spring fever has looked more like hay fever this year. Tree pollen is high in North Carolina, so this girl was low. I spent all of last week wheezing and coughing, exhausted by little things like climbing the stairs of my own home.

But, yesterday, I finally started to feel better. I guess my Claritin ramped up enough, or my body just started to deal with it.

Even through the haze of cold medicine and kleenex, I can't help but feel the poetry inherent in the season, though. Spring is undeniably a time of rebirth and growth, of beauty and wonder. It's something about the light returning and the excitement that elicits in the soul, something that whispers, "Almost."

Here, Emily Dickinson said it better:

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

Game of Love cover reveal

Today we’re revealing the cover for Game of Love, a new sports romance from Ara Grigorian! Check out all the fun details about this sexy romance and enter his fantastic giveaway!!   Title: Game of Love Author: Ara Grigorian Genre: Contemporary Sports Romance Release Day: May 4^TH About Game of Love: Game of Love is set in the high-stakes world of professional tennis where fortune and fame can be decided by a single point. Gemma Lennon has spent nearly all of her 21 years focused on one thing: Winning a Grand Slam. After a disastrous and very public scandal and subsequent loss at the Australian Open, Gemma is now laser-focused on winning the French Open. Nothing and no one will derail her shot at winning - until a heated chance encounter with brilliant and sexy Andre Reyes threatens to throw her off her game. Breaking her own rules, Gemma begins a whirlwind romance with Andre who shows her that love and a life off the court might be the real prize. With him, she learns to trust and love… at precisely the worst time in her career. The pressure from her home country, fans, and even the Prime Minister to be the first British woman to win in nearly four decades weighs heavily. As Wimbledon begins, fabricated and sensationalized news about them spreads, fueling the paparazzi, and hurting her performance. Now, she must reconsider everything, because in the high-stakes game of love, anyone can be the enemy within… even lovers and even friends. In the Game of Love, winner takes all. Preorder today!!!   Exclusive Excerpt: “We are made strong by the difficulties we face, not by those we evade.” ~Author Unknown Gemma’s security flanked her, their grip tight on her arms. Bedric, her coach, rushed ahead, slamming open the hotel’s glass doors to the roar of the French paparazzi―a cacophony of questions, comments, and insults. Gemma moderated her breathing, prepared for another three-second spurt of chaos. Three... “―What happened in your hotel room?” They knew. Dozens of cameras from all directions chirped and flashed. She kept her eyes trained on her goal: the awaiting car. Two... “―Mademoiselle! Gemma! One smile.” The paparazzi bore in from her right. Only a few more steps. A knee rammed into her thigh. That one would leave a mark. A bruise that the papers would dissect and analyze gratuitously. One... “―Why were you hiding for four months? Were you going to quit tennis?” Don’t react. Say nothing. Bedric forced the car door open, giving Gemma the opening she needed to squeeze in. He followed. Zero. The door slammed behind them, and the sounds of commotion lowered to a gentle hush. Black tinted windows offered a veil of privacy. Bodies, camera lenses, and faces smashed against the glass. Only inches separated her from the paparazzi. There had been a time when she used to move to the center of the car, creating as much separation as possible. But now she knew better. Distance was a mere illusion of safety. The locks engaged, and the car accelerated away. She didn’t like surprises―particularly on game day―but in this case, her security lead’s demand to move her to another hotel had been spot- on. It was one thing for the paparazzi to gather outside. It was quite another when one found his way into her hotel suite... while she slept. The French paparazzi were setting a new standard. “This is not good,” Bedric said in stoic English. She eyed her superstitious coach, who was always concerned with deviations from routine. But the concern etched on his face wasn’t about superstition. He didn’t want a repeat performance of the Australian Open months earlier. “You have not rested,” he continued, “and you have yet to get breakfast.” “We’ll be fine. We are fine,” she said, nearly believing it herself. “As for breakfast, we’ll grab something at the new hotel.” The car swerved as the driver made a temporary effort to lose their tail. Memories of another car chase months earlier inched its way into her throat. “There will be people. You don’t need more distractions.” “More distractions?” She had woken to the sound of an intruder in her suite, and now she was rushing from one hotel to another on the morning of her quarterfinal match. How much worse could it get? “We’ll be discreet. Run in, eat, and we’ll be off.” The car’s tires screeched as the driver took another quick turn. It was happening again. Another chase just before a critical match. Only this time, the driver wasn’t drunk. From her bag, Gemma removed a tennis ball and twirled it in her hand. One point at a time. She focused on the soft texture. Familiar. Calming. Poking out from inside her bag, the newspaper article from the day before mocked her. Inch-tall letters above her picture: The Great Hype―Five Years and Still Waiting. She squeezed the tennis ball over and over again until her fingers went numb. She dropped the ball back inside the bag, then closed her eyes, hoping to salvage some sleep. She crossed her arms and tried to control her shivering. No, she wasn’t cold. She just wanted five minutes alone with the bastard who had violated her space. Gemma almost wished the coward hadn’t bolted when she charged him, tennis racquet in hand.     About Ara Grigorian: Armenian by heritage, born in Iran, lived in Barcelona, and escaped New York until he found his home in Los Angeles, Ara’s first eleven years were both busy and confusing. The fruit salad of languages would slow down his genetically encoded need to tell stories. Until then, an alter ego would be required… He received an engineering degree from California State University Northridge and earned his MBA from the University of Southern California. Today, he is a technology executive in the entertainment industry. True to the Hollywood life, Ara wrote for a children’s television pilot that could have made him rich (but didn’t) and nearly sold a video game to a major publisher (who closed shop days later). But something was amiss until his wife read him the riot act. “Will you stop talking about wanting to be a writer and just do it?” So with her support (and mandate), and their two boys serving as his muse, he wrote stories. Fascinated by the human species, Ara writes about choices, relationships, and second chances. Always a sucker for a hopeful ending, he writes contemporary romance stories. He is an alumnus of both the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and Southern California Writers’ Conference (where he also serves as a workshop leader). Ara is an active member of the Romance Writers of America and its Los Angeles chapter. Ara is represented by Stacey Donaghy. Website | Facebook | Twitter | Blog | Goodreads   Enter Ara’s Giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Daughter Will be Driving

My eldest daughter turned fifteen on me a few months ago. That means we're in the downhill slide into getting a license. It's no longer this "when she grows up" thing. In fact, she goes to the driver's ed part of things here in just a couple of weeks.

http://www.gettingorganizedtoday.com/dreamstime_LittleGirlDriving.jpg

That's not her in the picture, but that's very much how it looks in my head when I imagine it. In reality, she's 5'9", that kind of fifteen-year-old who looks seventeen--so grown up and gorgeous that it's amazing to think that such a creature sprung from my loins. But, she is and always will be my little girl, too.

Like every parent who ever arrived at this moment (I suspect), I am both excited and terrified by the prospect of my girl behind the wheel. It's another one of those big moments, like when she learned to walk, or lost a baby tooth, or took off her training wheels, or performed her first solo, or got her braces off, or fell in love. In every one of these moments, I've reacted the same way. Part of me has wanted to cry and cling to the younger version of her and rail against the heavens for letting her grow up too fast. Part of me is proud of her, and anxious to see what this next phase of life brings us.

I know I'm lucky in that my daughter is an intelligent and capable young woman, with common sense and a good sense of self-preservation. I teach middle school, so I know a lot of teenagers. Some of them are complete flibberty-gibbets and I worry about them riding bicycles, let alone operating vehicles with engines. My girl is not one of those. She'll handle it well.

The question is, will I?

IWSG: The Anxiety of Finishing Things

On the desktop of my computer is this picture of Neil Gaiman:

It's there because, well, Neil Gaiman. And because of that second bit. Finish Things. He's right about that, I know, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do.

Finishing things, really truly finishing them--not just abandoning them and hoping no one notices that you didn't really hone it into something beautiful as you should have--is difficult. It takes time and hard work. Deep brain and soul work.

It's not fun in the same way as starting things. After a while, you might not like what you're working on and wish you could just be done already. Even a potential masterpiece can lose its sheen for its creator when you've been staring down the barrel of it too long. But if you give up too soon, it's a near-miss. It's not what it should have been.

It's also sometimes difficult to know when you have, indeed, finished something. There is a time when your tinkering around and rearranging things is just you fussing about because you don't quite have the guts yet to send it out there into the world to be judged. You're lingering and procrastinating when the work is really already done.

I'm afraid that's where I am right now. I've got a book I first wrote as NaNoWriMo 2013…so that means I've already been working on it over a year. Moreso than other books I've written, I'm worried about getting this one right. So, I keep seeking one more beta reader, one more round of edits, one more…something. Anything that means I don't have to send her out there yet.

I'm fighting that impulse in myself by making a schedule. She's *done* as of the end of March. It will be done. It is known.

https://girlsgonegeek.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/it-is-known.jpg

It's time to finish this, so I can move on to the other projects waiting in the wings.

How about you? How do you know when you have really finished something?
______________________________________________

This posting is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. To check out other posts by writers in a variety of places in their careers, check out the participant list. This group is one of the most open and supportive groups of people I have ever been associated with. You should check them out!

Judging My Own Book by Its Cover

A cover is a really important part of a book. What the cover looks like can have more to do with whether a reader decides to pick up your book than the words on the inside or the blurb on the back.

That's a terrifying prospect as a writer, because, most usually (of course there are exceptions), we don't make our own covers. In fact, depending on your path to publishing, you, as author, might not get any say at all about what the cover looks like.

A bad cover can make the uphill climb of finding an audience that much harder. It's like birthing a beautiful and intelligent child, only to have someone else reject it as worthless because your child is wearing dirty or ugly clothing. I've seen several indie writers put out a book with a less-than-professional cover (usually a financial decision), then re-release it with a better one and see large changes in the kind of attention their book attracted.

If you've been reading here at all, then you already know that my debut novel is coming out with +Curiosity Quills Press  on April 23, 2015. (I am perhaps, maybe, just a smidge excited about that). Curiosity Quills is a small, independent press. My contract with them gave me input on the cover, but no right of refusal and no requirement that they actually use my input.  So, I was on tenterhooks, waiting to see what my cover would look like.

You wanna see it? It's available out there, but I've never officially revealed it. So here it is!

I love it! And, boy was that a relief!  

The cover is by +Polina Sapershteyn , a graphic designer in NYC that Curiosity Quills contracted for the work. (Here's her website if you want to check her out)

There are several things I love about this cover. 

First, the bright yellow is really eye catching. When I've seen it displayed onscreen on an Amazon search page, for example, I feel certain that anyone seeing it would at least glance that way because of the bright yellow. The image also instantly suggests humor and superhero, two important hints about the book on the inside of this cover. 

Second, +Polina Sapershteyn captured a lot of revealing details about threads of the book in this one image. The torso is thick in the waist, in a way that is not typical of superhero comics, but is completely normal for my menopausal characters. The costume is non-professional looking--the cape held on with a tied ribbon and the tunic consisting of a teeshirt looking material that wrinkles across the breasts. That fits so well with Helen's thread in the story (she's the one who does eventually make herself a costume)! The image used on the center of the chest suggests gender and LGBTQ+ issues. That fits so well with Linda/Leonel's thread.

I was utterly amazed by how well Polina was able to represent my work, especially when you consider that she and I have never met and only made contact online after she'd already done my cover!  There's not much there from the ideas I submitted, except thematically. But, you know, she's a graphic artist. I'm not. Her ideas were better than mine. There's something to be said for trusting the judgment of professionals.

So, what do you all think? Do you, as readers, judge a book by its cover? Have you seen other covers that you felt really captured a book or really didn't? Do you like mine? :-)

#1000Speak: 1000 Voices for Compassion

I've been feeling that compassion is sorely lacking in the world around me of late, so I was thrilled to learn of this hashtag movement for #1000Speak. Check it out on all your socials--you'll find some great writing about the idea of compassion.

Compassion is probably the one lessons I truly want to hammer home for my children (including the ones I only claim when they are at school with me).  The idea is simple enough: consider the other person.  Think about what that person might be feeling. Consider that there is history you are unaware of that might make a small thing more painful than it seems on the surface.

Around the middle school I teach in are several versions of the idea, hanging on posters outside various teachers' classrooms. In middle school, we have to fight the blurt factor. Kids this age have a thought and say it without considering the consequences or the effect on others. They often don't have ill intent at heart; they simply didn't THINK:

https://alanonmama.files.wordpress.com/a/05/imagesthink-before-you-speak.jpeg

Now the kids at my middle school are just that: kids. So when they blurt something hurtful out, we, the adults, step in and try to mitigate the pain caused, rebuild the bridges burnt, and encourage kids to learn from the teachable moment. 

But what happens among the adults out there? The ones who value their own zinger of a joke over the heart of a human being, or who have simply never outgrown their adolescent narcissism? For me, I've started to call them on it. Bullying among adults is just as large a problem as it is among children. Larger, maybe, because the kids are more likely to learn and outgrow it. But bullies will keep bullying as long as they get away with it. So, when you see it, speak up! It's not as small as it sounds. 

https://judgybitch.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/first-they-came.jpg

Blog Tour: Treasure Darkly

I'm happy to introduce you today to Jordan Elizabeth, a fellow CQ author. Her new novel, Treasure Darkly is coming out soon. I'll be a guest author at her release party on Facebook!  Hope to see you there!
______________________________________________________

(The stunning cover art is thanks to Amalia Chitulescu)

Seventeen-year-old Clark Treasure assumes the drink he stole off the captain is absinthe…until the chemicals in the liquid give him the ability to awaken the dead. A great invention for creating perfect soldiers, yes, but Clark wants to live as a miner, not a slave to the army—or the deceased. On the run, Clark turns to his estranged tycoon father for help. The Treasures welcome Clark with open arms, so he jumps at the chance to help them protect their ranch against Senator Horan, a man who hates anyone more powerful than he.

And he is not alone. His new found sister, Amethyst, thinks that's rather dashing, until Horan kidnaps her, and all she gets is a bullet through her heart. When Clark brings her back to life, she realizes he's more than just street-smart - and he's not really a Treasure. Amethyst’s boring summer at home has turned into an adventure on the run, chock full of intrigue, danger, love, and a mysterious boy named Clark.

TREASURE DARKLY, book 1 of the Treasure Chronicles

The young adult novel is a dark mix of steampunk, the paranormal and romance in a “Wild West” setting. 

Below is an excerpt from TREASURE DARKLY.  You can read more on the Curiosity Quills Press website.

“Looks like he did drink it up.” The general client spoke from the right. “Must’ve interacted with all that bloody hertum. Look at ‘im, he’s bleeding already.”

“What’s it gonna do to him?” the guard from the morning asked.

“Lots of stuff.” The general laughed. “When he touches the dead, he’ll be able to bring them back, and exchange that life for another. Perfect soldier, huh? We only have one vial ready and I was going to give it to a lucky fellow. Guess it will be this boy.”

“Whatcha gonna do with him?” The guard snickered.

“Have to be a test subject,” the general said. “Sure thought it was that Judy who stole my bottle. Pity I killed her. She sure knew how to make my pecker sing.”

Judy.

Clark’s mother.

Clark bolted off the ground and ran. He could hide in the hole under the shed behind the brothel. Mable never found him under there. He might be cursed with raising the dead—he’d already done that to the poor mine worker—but it didn’t mean he’d let them take him for tests.

###

You can read more about Amethyst Treasure in GEARS OF BRASS, a steampunk anthology from Curiosity Quills Press available now from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Jordan Elizabeth, formally Jordan Elizabeth Mierek, is the author of ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW, available from Curiosity Quills Press.  Check out Jordan’s website, JordanElizabethMierek.com, for contests and book signing locales.  Jordan is represented by Belcastro Agency and she is president of the Utica Writers Club.

No blog tour is complete without a giveaway.   Enter below for a chance to win a paperback copy of GEARS OF BRASS.   

a Rafflecopter giveaway