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Day 7: Gratitude and Work

I often forget to be grateful for having work I love–the writing is work and I consider being a novelist my career, but I am also an editor pretty much full time, too. I love being an editor, polishing other writers’ books is incredibly rewarding. When I used to be strictly a nonfiction editor, my fellow general reference book editors and I joked that our job was to make the authors of the books sound as smart as they probably were. Sometimes it was a challenge, but wow, did I ever learn a lot of interesting stuff from working on those books.

Editing fiction is a whole different ballgame, but one that is often just as challenging and certainly just as rewarding. I love my fiction authors! The stories are fun and sexy sometimes and always enjoyable. I see my job as sort of a teaching moment in a way as I fix common errors and some not so common. I don’t know if authors remember when I’ve put in a note like “never hyphenate an ly modifier,” but it makes me feel better to offer an explanation for my edits when I can.

So today I focus my gratitude list on work:
Steady work from my major client, who books are just plain fun
My regular big publishing clients who have authors who ask for me–what an honor!
My 65-year-old eyes that are still able to read clearly
My 65-year-old brain that is still sharp and processing
A wonderful support system in family and friends

And here’s a treat! A new book from Maggie Mae Gallagher!

The Fixer Upper: Abby Callier is more in love with Shakespearean heroes than any real man, and she’s beginning to wonder if there is life for her outside the pages of a book. It doesn’t help that her esteemed parents tend to view her as they would one of their science experiments gone wrong. On the eve of finishing her dissertation, she escapes her staid existence to live in the house she inherited from her Great Aunt Evie in the small town of Echo Springs, Colorado. Because, let’s face it, when a woman starts comparing her life to horror films, it might be time for a break.
Sheriff Nate Barnes believes in law and order and carefully building the life you want. In his spare time, he has been remodeling his house in the hope that one day it will be filled with the family he makes. But Nate doesn’t like drama or complications and tends to avoid them at all costs. And yet, when Miss Abigail Callier, his newest neighbor, beans him with a nine iron, he can’t help but wonder if she might just be the complication he’s been searching for all along. It doesn’t hurt that he discovers a journal hidden away by the previous tenant and decides to use Old Man Turner’s advice to romance Abby into his life.
Abby never expected her next-door neighbor, the newly dubbed Sheriff Stud Muffin, to be just the distraction her world needed. The problem is she doesn’t know whether she should make Echo Springs her home, or if this town is just a stopover point in her life’s trajectory. And she doesn’t want to tell Nate that she might not be sticking around—even though she should because it’s the right thing to do, the honest thing—because then all the scintillatingly hot kisses with the Sheriff will come to an abrupt halt. Did she mention that he’s a really great kisser?

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