Goodbye to you 2009, new site, new projects

by | Dec 27, 2009 | Uncategorized

When I think about 2009, the song that comes immediately to mind is Scandal’s 80s classic “Goodbye to You”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH1O6nyKnow

I’m ready for 2010. Not really ready work-wise, but there’s never enough time to do everything we want to, is there? I’d write 12 books a year if I could. Maybe in 2010 I will. My kids will both be in school. Anything’s possible.

Highlights of 2009: moved to Michigan. Got kid #1 settled in school and herded through the EIP process, which was huge. Contributed to one Mammoth anthology and got invited into another, hooray. (Will turn that story in in 2010, so it’s not crossed off my list yet) Sold my Djinn trilogy to Carina Press, a new e-venture from Harlequin that I predict will kick ass and take names in 2010. I finally got around to joining SFWA, and I’m member #1200. This is a full-circle thing for me, since the books that made me want to be a writer were SF/F. I sold and wrote the Take Me Lover series for Samhain, contemporaries without SEALs or shapeshifters. Because I wanted to, that’s why. Take Me #2 will release on Dec. 29, Undercover Lover. I sold sequels to my St. Martin’s series to Samhain, Red Queen (Neuri) and Kiss of the Demon (Shadow Guardians). I have a gazillion projects lined up that I love and want to do; 2010 looms as a year full of exciting work. Oh, and I get to end 2009 as an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award nominee. That’s incredibly cool.

I have a new website; when I outgrew WordPress, the husband moved me to Drupal and then I didn’t do much with it. There’s a lot of functionality I haven’t taken advantage of. You’ll notice the new look; he did a new design and added some nifty new features like the top of page book cover carousel. (Use your arrow keys to spin through, click on individual covers to go to the book’s page. fun!) Other stuff on the backend makes it easier for me to administer, and the spam filter’s been updated, which has some unwanted side effects, like blocking Monica Jackson from commenting. (Sorry Monica!) But it is keeping out spam, and better hyper-alert spam filtering than too lax.

One big change we’ll implement in the new year; adding a bookstore. I have boxes of backlist books that I would prefer to be in your hands, and Drupal has a killer shopping cart. So I will be making signed backlist books available soon through my own site webstore. I may also experiment with self-publishing, but that will require enough spare time to write a book that isn’t already earmarked for somebody somewhere.

How was your year? Happy to see it ending?

Deep thoughts about the gift of writing

by | Dec 26, 2009 | Uncategorized

Writing is work, but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift you get and then it’s up to you to develop it and give it back in the form of stories, poems, songs, essays, articles. But it also gives to you in often unexpected ways.

In my teens and twenties I had no clue how to figure out the world, so I didn’t try. I figured I could learn to write and I focused on that instead. And in the process I did learn a lot about life. I now have sixteen titles in print, more sold, and a fair grip on what life is about and my place in it. Many things remain a wonderful mystery, and one of the things I’ve learned from writing is that that’s okay. You don’t have to have it all figured out for it to work anyway.

I’ve spent most of the last year writing my way back into my own life. A year ago I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. I thought I’d start by finishing projects I’d started. Writing leads to clearer thinking, better understanding. New ideas. Those are the kind of gifts you can’t buy and other people can’t give them to you, either.

Writing can help you see who you are, what you’re doing here. If you’re very lucky and work very hard at developing the gift, your writing might help somebody else see who they are and what they’re doing here or get a tiny piece of understanding about life, something that helps them go on with what they’re doing.

Writing can help build confidence that spills over into other areas of life; see this article, which is also a fine piece of writing. http://www.nerdist.com/2009/04/confidence-theory/

So writing is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a gift that makes you work hard, but work and life aren’t separate things. Work is a big part of life, of who we are. We’re not happy if we’re not doing something meaningful. I’m grateful for the gifts of work and writing.