Writer's moments
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Authors on the Road Day 4
Liz takes over the blog today to share Day 4 of our writing retreat… After our obligatory hair appointment today, sporting curls on Nan and my usual flat-iron look on me, we went to lunch at Vinny Vanucchi’s in downtown Galena. We had excellent service and excellent food and opted not to have one of the most decadent looking desserts I’ve ever forced myself to turn down. Only minutes later, we were in a candy shop and never mind what we were doing there. What happens in Galena stays in Galena. Then we went on the history part of the day, enjoying a long and enlightening tour of the beautiful…
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Authors on the Road Day 3
Well, kids, I’m tired, I’m brain dead after a day of writing and I’ve had too much wine (I blame Liz for that, although I poured it myself, but she could’ve stopped me.) That’s me in my “writing sweater”–a very tattered sweater that once belonged to my sister Kate, who left us way too soon. I wear to write because it’s magic–words come when I have it on. I think they come in through the holes… I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. It was a day of all writing all the time. We didn’t even leave the condo building. It was a miserable weather…
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Authors on The Road Day 2
Day 2 from beautiful Galena, Illinois. Liz here… We slept pretty well last night, considering we weren’t in our own beds. We do have those fireplaces in our rooms, which have a lovely mesmerizing affect. At least until the timer goes off and the fire goes out. We were up pretty early this morning, ramping up our word counts and talking about what we would do this afternoon and what we needed to do with our works-in-progress. Oh, and we ate some stuff. And drank some stuff. And talked some more. This is the exciting, dramatic stuff writing retreats are made of. We had a good late lunch at Durty…
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Authors On the Road Day 1
We arrived! We drove…and drove…and drove, but we got here safely and are loving our place! I knew that sister PJ vacationed with aplomb, but who knew Lizzie and I would enjoy such luxury? First though, the trip. I asked Gigi (my GPS) to avoid toll roads and interstates, and boy, did she! Part of our trip was on long country roads, past cornfields and farms and pastures with cows and horses. Delightful scenery! Interestingly, the route she took us on had so few towns, large or small, that we were starting to wonder whether Illinois actually had any small towns. We finally found a place for food and enjoyed…
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Sunday Snippet: The What Day Is It Again? Edition
Remember when Tuesday meant you had a good start on the week, it was a pool day, and you knew Husband would be at work and the kid would be at school? When the weekend was well and truly over and you were into your week? All was right in your world. I have a confession—Husband’s been retired over ten years and I rarely know what day it is. Seriously, I don’t. Most of the time I couldn’t tell you whether it was Sunday or Thursday. It’s even worse at the lake because every day at the lake feels like Saturday. Weird phenomenon, but it’s true. The only way I…
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Author Spotlight: Meet Debut Thriller Author John David
We have a winner! Sandy Pride, you are John’s giveaway winner! John will be in touch. Thanks to everyone who stopped by–we love talking to our readers. I love a good thriller, so it’s particularly special to me today to welcome debut thriller writer and fellow Tule Publishing author, John David to the Spotlight today. We had a fascinating chat, and he’s got a giveaway for you! John David is a long-time public relations and crisis communications consultant, author of a non-fiction business book, and a corporate ghostwriter. His debut novel, The Bystander (The Lemaster Files Book 1), was longlisted for the BPA First Novel Award. When not working or…
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Author Spotlight: Liz Flaherty Is Here with Holiday Romance!
Liz Flaherty wanted to shake off the dust of central Indiana farm country and move to the city, get rich, wear designer clothes, and write books. Well, she writes books. She lives five miles from where she grew up, only now she relishes the sights and sounds and scents of the fields around her, doesn’t care much about clothes, and thinks being rich would probably have been overrated anyway. She’s spent the past several years enjoying not working a day job, making terrible crafts, and writing stories in which the people aren’t young, brilliant, or even beautiful. She’s decided (and has to re-decide nearly every day) that the definition of…
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Sunday Snippet: The Reflections on Aging Edition
I turned 72 on Friday. 72. It is a number I never expected to see because when my mom died suddenly of a massive heart attack at the tender age of 60, I became convinced that I would follow in her footsteps. After all, I’m a lot like my mom in other ways. When I passed 60 … and continued on for another almost ten years, I was always kind of surprised that the next birthday happened. Surprised and oh, so very grateful. In December of 2022 when I was diagnosed with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) at the age of 69, I was pretty sure that I…
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Sunday Snippet: The Imprinting Edition (A Peek into the Writerly Mind)
So many authors I know often talk about how much they love to write and how it seems as though every situation–good or bad–gets filtered through their inner writer. That’s so true. I’m wondering right now if it is a bad thing that even when I am in the midst of chaos and crisis, sickness and grief the writer is still creating–inventing scenes, conversations, and scenarios. I’ve thought it about it a lot as we’ve been in such crisis in our country, and I’ve been trying to decide if it’s something to feel guilty about or not. I think it’s not. It’s never a bad thing when our gift kicks…
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Sunday Snippet: The More Questions for the Universe Edition
Summer is almost over, and I’m damned if I know what happened to it. One minute it was April and we were opening up the lake cottage, and the next, it’s September and the leaves on our little sweet gum tree are changing. My personal life has been an upheaval of joys and sorrows lately, but I’ve been working practically nonstop all summer long. Editing gigs are always a good thing, except they interfere ferociously with my writing time. If I work for eight or ten hours, I’m loathe to sit down at the computer again after supper to write some more. But this week, I’ve been working on the…