Today is My Eldest Daughter’s Birthday!

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When I tell you how old she is today you’re going to realize she’s older than all of you youngsters who post regularly or guest post–and possibly even read this post.

My first baby girl is 58 today! I can’t believe it. It was only a short time ago that I was that age. Or at least it seems so. Poor child, except for doing a lot of babysitting when I was a kid, I really had no idea how to take care of a baby. When Dana was born I lived 3000 miles away from home in my husband’s home town in Maryland and barely knew my in-laws–and there were lots of them. Instead of asking for advice, I raised my newborn using a Good Housekeeping Baby Book. (I still have it.) At the time, hubby was stationed in Virginia and only got home on some weekends.

She lived through it all and actually thrived. By the time her sisters and brothers arrived she knew far more about mothering than I did at 19 when she came into my life. As the oldest child she also was the one who did all the things she was supposed to, excelled in school, and we had a great time together.

When she was a junior in high school she fell in love with Mike. He rode a motorcycle, skipped school and not at all what I’d hoped for for my Dana. The August after her high school graduation she married Mike. The wedding was nothing like Chelsea Clinton’s. Dana made her own wedding dress and a couple of the bridesmaid’s dresses and the flower girl’s dress. We picked daisies out of our neighbor’s yards to fill the baskets the girls carried. The wedding was performed by a Navy chaplain in the chapel on the Seabee base where my husband was stationed.

The reception was in our family room and backyard and I made all the food. A neighbor made the beautiful wedding cake. (This was the first of many wedding receptions that I prepared all the food for.)

Dana and Mike have been through a lot. Mike had a motorcycle accident during a race the day after their wedding. He was almost killed in a bizarre truck accident on the job and spent nearly 6 weeks in the hospital with Dana staying by his side nearly the whole time. I took care of their two kids.

They now have five grandkids, both are retired and love to travel all over in their motor home. We’ve gone with them a couple of times.

A lot has happened since that darling baby was born 58 years ago–but it doesn’t seem all that long.

And the point of this story? Enjoy each day to the fullest, because it goes by far too fast.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com/

Whither Thou Goest

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I’m married to a Kamikaze Tourist. Let me be very clear. He’s a wonderful man. There is none better. In fact, we just celebrated a milestone anniversary, in honor of which we took a 10-day vacation. But traveling with my husband is exhausting and I always need a vacation from my vacation. How could two such compatible people have such differing views of what constitutes a respite from work?

The man, who while home never misses the opportunity to nap on the weekends, is, when traveling, suddenly transformed into the energizer bunny. There isn’t a ruin, a cathedral, a graveyard, that doesn’t require close inspection. Now I have been known to “brake for garage sales,” but I could pass by a pile of rubble and never even feel bad that I had missed, according to my better half, an enormous event in the earth’s history.

Now that’s not to say that I wasn’t dazzled, overwhelmed, struck silent (quite a trick) by the grandeur of the Grand Canyon. Surely, it deserves inclusion on the Seven Wonders of the World List. But in 100+ degree weather, my husband had us criss-crossing the South Rim at a pace that rivaled a Marine platoon, climbing up 84 narrow steps of a watchtower (and then down again, although I suggested that he leave me at the top and save himself), and virtually hang-gliding off precipices that Evil Knievel would have declared unsafe.

If insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result – call me crazier than a loon. I keep traveling with this guy – and then wondering why I come back so tired that hibernation is my only option. There is no lolling by any poolside, holding some fruity alcoholic drink decorated with a tiny paper umbrella. There are places to go and historic markers to read.

On the other hand, my guy is willing to keep a nice balance between the history stuff he wants to see, and the schlock and kitsch that I find interesting. For example, we started the trip in Las Vegas, despite the fact that he has zero interest in gambling. The reason we landed there, literally and figuratively, was because of my fear of flying. Don’t try and figure out why Vegas eliminates that phobia – it doesn’t, but in the context of this vacation, it made sense. Anyway, the point is that I wanted to see the Liberace museum, which according to AAA, is a “gem.” And despite the fact that my man neither liked Liberace, listened to him as a child, nor is that crazy about crystals, feathers, and rhinestones, he’s a good guy and drove me to the strip mall where the museum is housed. It actually was a fascinating historic review of the 1950s, the costumes were indeed way over the top, but best of all, my hubby led the cheers when I won the drawing at the end of the tour. I was presented with a CD of Liberace playing the piano and even better, my very own Liberace bear, complete with mirrored mini-capelet. We spent hours in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, examining every rock and trail marker for miles…but we also spent hours at the Farmers and Crafts Market in Las Cruces where I could find a dozen different types of chili peppers, as well as gorgeous silverwork and pottery.

We drove more than 1100 miles in 10 days, making multiple stops in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Is it any wonder that I need him to go back to work so that I can get some rest?

Tell me Stiletto Faithful: Are you taking a vacation this year? Stay-cations count too. If so, what are you doing? And is your traveling companion compatible?

Marian, the Northern Half of Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Murder Off the Books by Evelyn David
Murder Takes the Cake by Evelyn David
Murder Drops the Ball by Evelyn David — Spring 2011 !!!!

Inspiration on a Bumpy Road

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Inspiration hits at funny times. It’s never planned and for me it’s often dangerous. I find it while I’m driving.

Always one to find a shorter route to work, I Google Mapped an old country-looking road polluted with Pittsburgh’s legendary potholes, which shortened my daily commute by a total of fifteen minutes. I was driving too fast and my car was bouncing in and out of the potholes when the inspiration for my novel hit. John Mayer’s Who Says was playing on the radio and the song was just to the part where he says: Who says I can’t be free/ from all of the things that I used to be/ Rewrite my history/ Who says I can’t be free?

It hit me like a bolt of lightning, or perhaps it was an exceptionally large pothole. Either way, I was moved. As a writer, you listen to every other writer tell you to keep a pen and notepad handy, by your side at all times to capture writer-ly things like bits of conversation, flashes of genius, mind-blowing plot twists, etc. But no one ever tells you the secret behind always remembering to harness your notepad by your side. In the last two years alone, I’m willing to bet big bucks that I’ve managed to buy and collect a hundred notepads. Perhaps more. Want to know how many are in my purse right now? None. I have notepads in all sizes and colors. I bought cool colorful pens thinking that I could organize my thoughts into colors: something like red for plot, green for character, blue for dialogue. It was kind of like organizing my closet, but after doing laundry for two weeks, the closet starts to look like the mess that it was in the beginning.

A few years ago, I was gifted a super high-tech voice recorder. It was small, purse worthy and slightly feminine. Like most people, I cringe at the sound of my own voice. I never play back a voicemail message that I left and I never, ever set my own voicemail recording. The recorder was cool enough that I was willing to get over my fear. It made me feel like a detective. Or someone else that’s really important and has to keep a recorder by their side.

The last time I recorded my own voice was when I was in junior high. My best friend and I were going through this phase where we thought that we would and should have our own radio station. We interviewed each other. We gossiped. We fought about whose turn it was to use the microphone, recording our fights until the door slammed and someone remembered to turn off the cassette recorder.

I never used the recorder. I rarely remembered to carry it and when I did, inspiration never hit. It was almost bringing bad luck. It was anti-inspiration.

Back to my commute on the bumpy road, I started to think how cool it would be to rewrite your past through diary entries. So I swerved off the road in my little Honda Accord, grabbed a Sharpie and reached into my purse for paper. Anything. The back of a receipt holds inspiration just as well as any notepad or voice recorder. If anything, it’s more authentic; like that old image of a writer grabbing coffee and is so inspired that she writes all over a bunch of napkins. The moral of the story? When it comes to capturing inspiration, anything within your natural environment will do. Everything else is fluff.

Holly Christine

Holly Christine at Twitter

www.hollychristineonline.com/

_________________________
Tuesday Tells it Slant by Holly Christine

Tuesday Morning has always been a little different. She’s kept a diary since 1989 and while researching for her English Lit thesis in 2003 on Emily Dickinson’s transcendental tendencies, finds a poem that will change her life. Haunted by a past that she considers less than desirable, Tuesday recreates her history with the stroke of a pen. Page by page, year by year, she rewrites her painful memories as she has always fantasized. Tuesday finds herself in an odd place six years later, unknowingly spending each day of her life as someone that she was never meant to become. With each breath of her new life, Tuesday obliviously loses more of herself. When a special person of her past returns to her present, Tuesday is forced to choose between the life that she had once desired and her true self.

Buy the Book

Buy for Kindle

Bulletproof Ideas

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by Bethany Maines

When I started writing professionally it was with the understanding that I was, as my high school English teacher once wrote on a short story, “not very creative.” And ok, later I figured out that said teacher had gone to junior high with my mother and probably hated me (What did you do to her, Mom? What?!), but some things stick with you. So it surprised me when people kept asking me, “How did you come up with your idea?” Oh please, like it never occurred to you to invent a make-up company that saves the world one woman at a time and with extreme prejudice. But it turns out that it hadn’t occurred to most people to do that. Or to invent genetically-engineered glowing-salamander tube lighting. (I thought that one was great – not sure why it got rejected.)

But as I venture further into writing, the bedrock questions remain, “How do I find inspiration? And how do I find it NOW?” I wish I knew how to make inspiration happen on command, but I’m not sure it can. British fantasy satirist Terry Pratchett suggests that ideas sleet through the universe like a meteor shower looking for a receptive brain, and I tend to believe him. The ideas are out there. The trick is to figure out how to make the brain more receptive.

First, do not try to make an idea-catching hat. That would just be crazy. However, do not be afraid to wear funny hats. If you free yourself from the idea that you have to be appropriate all the time, then it means you’ve freed yourself up to be silly, daring, adventurous, and just a little bit crazy. And, in my experience, that’s where the good stuff is.

Second, research is your friend! Ideas lurk in the new and unexpected, so learning something new exponentially increases the chances of having an idea. Which is how I justify my addiction to going on vacation–it’s research!! Learning how to say “apricot” in French from a crêpe dealer? Research! (For the record it’s ap-reh-ko, thank you, and no, you will not be getting your crêpe until you say it correctly.) Following my idiot travel companion onto a tuk-tuk in Bangkok because some stranger on the street said the Temple of the Giant Catfish was THE place to go when clearly he and the tuk-tuk driver were in cahoots? That’s inspiration fuel at its finest! (The catfish were indeed giant, and the neighborhood as shady as expected, but there actually was a temple, and we didn’t get kidnapped and sold into slavery.)

Third, as a wise man from someplace called Ridgemont High once said, “Wherever you are is the place to be.” Yes, new and crazy are good, but sometimes your life is all the inspiration you need. Which is another way of saying, “write what you know.” But besides writing what you’re intimately familiar with, write like your life is important. I know sometimes we all feel like our lives are occasionally dull, horrible, and eye-stabbingly painful (make sure it’s someone else’s eye), but that’s because we’re the ones living through them. Someone else’s life always looks more interesting to us (which is why we read and write to begin with), but we should remember that the world is chock full of someone else’s. Look at your life from the outside and you may be inspired by what you find.

So when the idea meteors are just bouncing off my noggin, I try to use one of these techniques. I hope I’ve helped all of you out there on the intra-web to some fresh inspiration as well. And now, as another wise man said, I will go home and attempt to “Learn it. Know it. Live it.” Thank you Judge Reinhold, and thanks to the Stiletto Gang for letting me visit!

__________

Thank you for visiting, Bethany! You are too funny (and so is your book)! For more scoop on Bethany and her fabulous debut, BULLETPROOF MASCARA, visit her at BulletproofMascara.com.

Kids Rock

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I announced this on The Naked Hero last week, but must give props again (’cause when props are due, they’re due). My kids ROCK. Here’s one reason why.

One of my sons has celiac disease and is sick and tired of the food he eats (rice, beans, tofu, and myriad combinations). My daughter loves to cook. We all love Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution.

They were talking at dinner one night and all the sudden they dreamed up a challenge–cook, using Jamie Oliver’s recipes, and blog about it to encourage other kids to eat healthy, and to empower other kids with celiac disease. For 100 days… or 6 months… whichever comes first 😉


They’re well into their challenge and still fired up (it certainly helps that Jamie Oliver himself has Direct Messaged them onTwitter and is now following THEM! Yes, Chef Jamie Oliver is following my kids and their challenge and how cool is that?).

And let me tell you, Jared and Sophie are regular kids who float through life like the next kid. But they’re not floating this time. They’re motivated, loving the blog, are thrilled every time someone subscribes or follows the blog, and in their minds, are loving their 15 minutes of fame.


They’ve made some great things including Classic Tomato Spaghetti and Chocolate Pudding Bake (SO good!).



They totally think they’re going to meet Jamie Oliver… or at least they really want to! (They were actually invited to come to a Jamie Cooking Project in the UK. Small problem… we don’t live in the UK.)

We have no small dreams in this household!

This is their dream and they’re doing good for themselves, our family, and anybody who happens across their blog and is inspired by the fact that two kids are cooking healthy and gluten free. And if two kids can do it, surely you can, too.

I’m so proud of them! Please help them by spreading the word about Jared and Sophie and their Kid’s Cooking Challenge! And join the challenge!

I’m so proud of them! Please help them by spreading the word about Jared and Sophie and their Kid’s Cooking Challenge.

**You don’t have to eat gluten free! Jamie’s recipes aren’t, but we are adapting them, showing both ways.

The Things that Matter

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Every morning, I get home delivery of the New York Daily News, which calls itself “NY’s Hometown Paper.” Not as sophisticated or as intellectual as the New York Times, but not as much of a tabloid as the New York Post, it falls somewhere in between. It covers local New York City news as well as national and international news. It has an incredibly comprehensive and well-written sports section so that if you’re as big a sports fan as I am, you know you’ll get the unvarnished truth about your favorite teams written by people like New York Times bestseller Bill Madden and Mike Lupica. If you want to know a little bit about a lot of different things, the Daily News is the paper for you.

Some of my friends scoff at my devotion to the paper, but I always counter with “I’ve never seen one of my books reviewed in the New York Times, but I have in the Daily News.” Just for that, the paper will always get my business.

One of the other features of this paper is a section called “Voice of the People,” in which ordinary New Yorkers sound off on a variety of topics, not limited to important current events like the BP oil spill in the Gulf and the war in Afghanistan. Instead, most days you find people spending a great deal of ink on topics like Michele Obama wearing shorts or Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. And most days, I find myself screaming at the names of the people who have written into the opinion page to “get a life!”

Seriously, do we really care that on a long plane flight, the First Lady, like any other modern-day mother and wife, donned shorts to fly in Air Force One? I can’t imagine wearing pantyhose on a short domestic flight never mind one that crossed the Atlantic. Yet, many of the people writing in thought this act was akin to treason. “Jackie Kennedy NEVER would have worn shorts on an airplane” and “Like the Queen, she should wear gloves and a hat while traveling” were just some of the comments that appeared in the paper after this apparently horrific photo surfaced. Wearing shorts to a State dinner? Bad? Wearing shorts on an airplane? Not so bad. I understand her role in putting forth a positive and glamorous face, but seriously, one can only keep that up for so long. And since we’re having the hottest summer on record here on the East Coast since something like 1869, I say, “Mrs. Obama, rock the shorts while you still can.” Have you seen that woman’s legs? If I had them, I’d wear shorts all winter.

I don’t know if you heard, but Chelsea Clinton got married this past weekend in a little sleepy town not far from where I live. I also don’t know if you heard, but the wedding cost close to three million dollars. Yes, you read that correctly: three million dollars. Know why? Well, for one, the airspace above the town of Rhinebeck had to be closed to ordinary air traffic for security reasons. That costs a lot. And they had five hundred guests. I, for one, only had two guests for dinner last night and my grocery bill was one hundred and eighty dollars. Food ain’t cheap, people. Throw in the gown, the security detail, and the bottles of wine the Clintons sent to all of the residents of Rhinebeck who might be inconvenienced by their daughter’s special day, and I can see where the bills would start to mount. This price tag brought outrage to the opinion section of the paper and for days, I have been following the “They have the money so why not spend it” people versus the “There are people starving in Third World countries; how could they spend this kind of money?” people, both camps in high dudgeon when it comes to an opinion about a young lady none of them have ever met.

It’s astounding to me that these two topics would engender such vitriol. How about we save our outrage for the young men and women who are dying every day overseas? Or the ones who live but who are stuck in some filthy hospital where the chances of dying from an infection are greater than those from an IED? How about we worry about our neighbors who don’t have jobs, or health insurance, or even food? There is far more in this section of the paper about things that don’t matter and not enough about the things that do. Let’s save our outrage for the things that matter, those that count.

Stiletto friends, what are you sick of reading about? What is the one thing you wish people would put their efforts and energies toward?
Maggie Barbieri

How Much Of You is In Your Books?

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I’ve been asked over the years if Deputy Tempe Crabtree is me–and I always wonder why people ask. After all, Tempe is an American Indian, in her late thirties and is a deputy sheriff. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I’m not an Indian of any kind, much, much older and have never been in law enforcement.

But–and it’s a big one–there is a lot of how Tempe thinks and figures out things that’s very much like I am. And since I’ve written so many books about her, I probably know more about her than I know about any of my friends or my relatives. I know exactly how Tempe thinks–something I don’t even know about my husband of nearly 59 years.

When it comes to what Tempe encounters in her books, I have to admit that a lot of what happens are taken from incidents that I’ve experienced or come across in my life. That’s one of the advantages of having lived a long, long time.

In Dispel the Mist, the latest in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree series, a residential care home is licensed in an upscale community and the some of the neighbors are not happy. We owned and ran our own licensed care home and though we got along fine with our neighbors, we had friends in the business who weren’t as fortunate.

One of my friends told me about the murder of one of her cousins and it became the seed for the murder in Dispel the Mist.

And of course, the Hairy Man, is the Big Foot counterpart to the Indians on the reservation near me that closely resembles the Bear Creek Reservation in my books. No, I didn’t see the Hairy Man, but I talked to people who knew about him and knew people who’d seen the Hairy Man. The closest I got was to view the pictographs of the Hairy Man and his family in a hidden rock shelter on the reservation.

In my other books, I draw from people I know and events that I’ve heard about or may even have experienced–but when I write about them, they are fictionalized.

What about you? How much truth is in your fiction?

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Meet Rachel Brenner

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Thanks to Evelyn David, for not only letting me guest blog today, but for creating me in the first place. My name is Rachel Brenner. I do hair, makeup, and a few more substantial restorations for the clients of O’Herlihy Funeral Home. I believe it’s never too late to look your best.

I’m single. Wow, that sounds strange after 18 years of marriage. My ex has moved on to younger pastures – actually he moved on long before the marriage ended. I just pretended not to notice until my pride finally said no more.

My son Sam is a freshman in college. I see him every couple of months – more often if he’s between girlfriends or needs money. I love it when Sam comes home. He and his friends bring my old house to life. I don’t even mind the piles of dirty laundry and empty glasses and tomato-stained pizza cartons scattered around.

In between visits from Sam, I spend my time worrying about how to pay for his education, the maintenance on the old house my great aunt left me here in Washington D.C., and cat food. I have one four-footed dependent, Snickers. She’s happiest when it’s just her and me in the house.

Last fall, I’d just been settling into a new job and my single, empty nest, life when someone broke into my house, stole half of a ham, and had me hiding in a closet until I located my backbone and a hockey stick.

The purloined pork was only the beginning chapter in a “bigger than my life” tale of murder, mystery, Irish wolfhounds, and one very interesting private detective, Mac Sullivan. Tell me the truth; don’t you think a detective should own his own car? I mean, who does stakeouts in a hearse with a giant dog riding shotgun?

Mac may just be the man I’ve always wanted. Or he might be the one my grandmother always warned me about. Either way, I’m ready for a change.

You can stop in and find out more by picking up a copy of Murder Off the Books!

Murder Off the Books is available in trade paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon. Also the trade paperback is on the shelves at The Digital Bookshop. Other e-book formats can be found at the Apple iPad store and The Digital Bookshop.

If you already know how my story started, you can catch up on my latest adventures in the sequel, Murder Takes the Cake. ebook versions are available now at Amazon, Apple iPad store, and The Digital Bookshop. A second edition trade paperback will be available this fall. (Note: I have issues with turkeys not pigs in that book.)

All my best,

Oh, wait, don’t go yet. I meant to leave you with a tip – Ladies, if you are going to carry a cell phone, keep it close and charged, especially at night. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to resort to just throwing the darn things in self-defense. Would have been so much easier to just punch in 911 on the keypad. For instance, if I’d had a working cell phone I wouldn’t have had to steal that garden gnome … uh wait.

Can I take that back? I meant to say that I don’t know anything about my neighbor’s missing garden gnome. Nothing. I know noth…ing.

Rachel

Dance (and write?) Like Nobody’s Watching

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Rachel Brady

Maybe it’s just me, but publishing a book feels a little bit like getting a serious groove on when you think you’re alone but people are watching. Dang. If I knew you were standing there during my unabashed booty-shake*, I’d have worked on my moves a little more.

When I wrote my first novel, I had no idea my friends and co-workers would read it one day. That is probably a good thing, because just like we should dance like nobody’s watching, I also think we should write like nobody’s reading . . .

. . . but only during the early drafts.

Later in the process, we have agents and editors to prevent us from embarrassing ourselves and help us shine.

Thing is, I don’t like my agent or editor to see my early drafts. I don’t like to publicly mess up. But in the life cycle of a book, this is required. So I have a few close writing friends who look over pages before I do the literary equivalent of busting a move on the dance floor with toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

Their job is to tell me which parts are humming and which parts I should cut and delete off my hard drive so they can never be traced back to me.

Rules of engagement go something like this.

1. Must be frank.
Recently, I got a note in one scene that just said: Huh??
Enough said. Thank you, it’s fixed now.

2. Must tell me when I use the wrong word.
You were right. A voice “crackles” on a speaker, it doesn’t “cackle.” Thank you for preventing me from being exposed as the imposter I am.

3. Must call Bullsh!t on me when I handwave around an ill-conceived plot point.
Perhaps I’m inherently lazy or just hopeful nobody will notice, but my friends always do. A good reader will tell you it doesn’t make sense and spare you from hearing it from an editor, who I promise will always notice.

4. Must wield a pen like a machete.
There’s a prevailing notion that getting copy back with a lot of red ink (or tracked changes) is a negative thing, but I love it. When this happens, a reader isn’t trying to re-write your stuff so much as suggest an alternate way to present it. I usually like the new way better and almost always use it, sometimes shamelessly ripping off a line and passing it off as my own. Before you judge me, my friend David says there’s no such thing as plagiarism between friends*. He calls it an homage, which sounds so, so much better.

My editor likes to see the first 100 pages of a new story before I get too far along with the book. It’ll be a while before that happens, because right now my fave writing buds, Bill Tate and David Hansard, are off employing rules 1-4, helping me make sure I don’t go out on the dance floor looking like Elaine.

Writing is solitary sometimes. Other times, it’s a tremendous team effort. This post is a virtual hug to Bill and Dave, who are reading for me now, and to Laura Weber and Nikki Bonanni, who read for me earlier and helped me get this story off the ground.

Thanks to you all, maybe next year I’ll be rockin’.


*Clips are more fun in foreign languages, don’t you think?
**When employing the homage approach, it’s good to have reader friends who won’t sue you. Good luck.

Call Me Crazy

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Call me crazy.


I’ve joined a new blogging community.


Go ahead, I’m serious. Loca. Nuts. Headed for the loony bin. They all fit. I’m a blogging fool.



But the thing is, I must love it or I wouldn’t do it! And blogging has made me so many fantastic friends. One, for example, ahem, Tonya Kappes, has become one of my all time best friends. Simpatico is the word that comes to mind. Another, Lee Lopez, is that friend who will always be there, she’s grounded, and she’ll tell me like it is. I trust her to be honest all the time.



Then there’s Wendy Lyn Watson, fellow cozy mystery writer and crit partner and great friend–she gave our family our newest addition, a little kitty whose name is either Pablo or Nacho. We’re still undecided. Together, Wendy and I work with Heather Webber. Now Heather and I met online through a variety of blogging ventures and now the three of us (Wendy, Heather, and me) blog together on Killer Characters.



When you meet a blogging friend in person, it’s so cool! I met Heather in Cincinnati recently when I presented a workshop (The Naked Hero Strips Down Hero – Archetypes!) at Lori Foster’s Readers and Writers Event with Tonya.


We already *knew* each other, so it was easy to fall into a friendship face to face.


Not all friendships are easy. Some are work. Some are toxic. Some are just not meant to be. But no matter what, you learn (or at least I do) from the friendships and relationships in your life. And blogging (or online) friendships are no different. I’ve learned to surround myself with people I enjoy being around, people who are easy to talk to, easy to get along with, who give as much as they receive (because I’m a giver, and reciprocity is always appreciated!), and who are fun. Life is too short not to have fun!


Blogging is a great way to make friends-just look at the ladies in heels right here at The Stiletto Gang! I adore every one of them and am so glad to be part of their group.


And so my blogging community has broadened. Here’s a rundown of me…on the web!


The Naked Hero

Books on the House

Books on the House for Kids and Teens

Stiletto Gang

A Kid’s Cooking Challenge (more on that another time, but check it out! It’s with my kids!)


and now…


Killer Characters


I hope you’ll visit me, and now, tell me where you hang your hat on the web so I can visit you!


~ Misa / Melissa