Busy, Busy, Busy

Don't cry for me, Argentina!
But awful timing has me waist-deep in papers to grade this week.
I teach four classes at one college and two classes at another, and all six classes turned in papers this week. So my days are spent teaching and grading, along with pigeon-holing workouts in between.
Think fondly of me and any blog posts I might have been writing if I weren't busy grading.
But wish me a quick green grading pen and perfect student papers.

Here's a photo of a friend of mine who's on the Appalachian Trail and took a copy of my book with her.

My novel, The Summer of France, is on sale on Kindle for 99 cents Friday through Sunday. If you haven't read it, I hope you'll give it a try and spread the word to your friends who love reading.

Dreams..

It's a funny thing about dreams, how they grab hold of your heart and squeeze.
And who knows why one dream ignites in a person, and a different dream ignites in another person.
This morning, after a walk in the early morning quiet, I turned on the Tour de France. It's only day two and they're in the Netherlands, but as they biked through the narrow medieval streets of Utrecht, the camera focused on the buildings, with their curious step down roof lines, I felt that longing once again to be there, in Europe, in France.
I want it so much that it hurts.
Synapses fire in my brain, nudging me to figure it out so that I can live in France.
I thought of dreams earlier this week too when my running friend Noreen sent a text message that she and her husband had reached Las Vegas and were driving to the Sierra Madres mountain range.
She sent this picture

And said, "Our first glimpse of the Sierras! I am home"
That made my heart soar -- to feel that sense of accomplishment, that dream fulfillment with Noreen.
I take a bit of credit for helping Noreen focus on her dream, because I'm the one who convinced her to join me on a hike on the Appalachian Trail nine years ago as I researched my novel Trail Mix. She accompanied me again on a second hike, and she hasn't looked back. She hikes in the wilderness every chance she gets. This time, a two-week hike in California. She's in heaven.
That's the thing about a dream, a longing. It penetrates your soul and prods you to make it happen.
I'm glad we don't all share the same dream so those trails and the countryside of France don't get too crowded.
What's your dream? What are you doing to make it happen?

Saturday Snapshot -- Book Trailer

Join West Metro Mommy for this weekly meme of photos people have taken and share on their blogs
I wanted to share many of my snapshots that were used in a book trailer for my novel Trail Mix. Most of the pictures were taken by me and my friends on our hikes of the Appalachian Trail, or my friend Noreen and her husband took them while they were hiking the Appalachian Trail.
My daughter put together the pictures and the music to create a book trailer for Trail Mix, which is a women's fiction, adventure story about women's friendships, marriage and raising kids.
Hope you'll take a look at the trailer and give it a thumbs-up on youtube if you get a chance.

My novel has been selling well, and I could always use more reviews if the book sounds interesting to you. Here's the link to my novel on Amazon.

Book Launch Reflections

I don't know how my book launch slipped past without a blog post, so I am revisiting the fun and frivolity we had there.
It was in early December when my friend and marketing manager Najah convinced me that I should have a book launch for Trail Mix. I'd never had a book launch for my other novels, so this was new to me.

Luckily, the owner of a local coffee shop, The Grandview Grind, offered her place free of charge and we set the night.
I brought in wine, cheese and crackers, chips and some local specialty pizzas to assuage the hungry crowd.
The whole time leading up to the book launch, I was verrry nervous. I hate for something to be all about me.
Most people, including my husband, would not guess that I would feel shy or embarrassed to be the center of attention, but I do. I didn't want to feel like I was extorting people to attend an event and buy a book. I only wanted it to be a celebration of the novels I've written.

At the prodding of both Najah and my friend Leah, I had a table with copies of Trail Mix, along with a few copies of my other novels, The Summer of France and I See London I See France.
When people began to arrive, both those I knew and those I didn't, I felt humbled and amazed.

And yes, people did buy my books and I spent the night signing copies. I should definitely have come up with some sort of catch phrase. My most common one was "Enjoy the adventure!" which is something that I mean about both life and my novel.

I did get to enjoy spending time with friends from so many different sections of my life, and my friends were delighted to meet the other friends they'd heard so much about. My homeschool friends met my running friends who met my coffee shop friends who met the local relatives too. And Grace had a whole other section of friends who came, mostly because she's so persuasive.

After a lovely introduction from Leah, I read from the Prologue of my novel. I'll have to work on that too. Maybe I should pause longer at places where people are supposed to laugh.

In the end, I got to drink a glass of wine and spend time with friends, and I had only one book to carry home with me.
Next time, I'll know better what to expect, and I plan to have a blow-out book launch.

At Least Something About Me is Hot

So, my book releases have never gone the way I have planned.
When The Summer of France came out in October 2012, I was in the middle of a broken nose and recovering from surgery.

I didn't do the best job promoting that first novel, but it has plugged along and still sells the best of all my novels. 

My next novel, I See London I See France, came out right before Christmas in 2013. All of the hectic activity of the season caught me unawares again. 

I thought I'd get it right with this third novel. I had finished and edited my novel. Then I sent it out to the copy editor to find any missing commas or transposed letters. The editor told me when she would be finished and I set the book on pre-order for the following Friday. 

But then she wasn't finished on the promised date. And then suddenly I was unable to cancel the preorder. I did manage to update the file with the correctly formatted one. 

I sent the book off to another editor and finally got all the minute corrections in. And I'm thrilled that even without promoting it, Trail Mix has sold well.

In the tradition of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, comes a novel of two suburban women who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail, escaping their lives as moms and wives in search of nature, adventure, and the ultimate diet plan.
How does a woman know what she wants after spending 20 years thinking about her husband and children? Sometimes it takes a distraction from everyday life, time to examine the forest before the trees become clear. With no previous camping experience, Andi and Jess begin the 2100-mile odyssey from Georgia to Maine. The friends figure life on the trail can't possibly be worse than dealing with disgruntled husbands, sullen teens home from college, and a general malaise that has crept up in their daily lives. At the very least, the women are bound to return home thin.

Look, it even made the list of "hot new releases" on Amazon in the Adventure Travel category. 

The kindle edition is available on Amazon. The paperback is coming to Amazon, but currently on Lulu, and the Nook version is available now on Barnes and Noble, so everybody can get a taste of life on the Appalachian Trail.

Saturday Snapshot -- Book Cover

I'm sharing a snapshot that friend took, which almost became a book cover for my new novel Trail Mix.
The book is about two friends who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail as the ultimate diet plan as their lives are in flux -- kids going off to college, jobs and relationships changing. They aren't sure who they are anymore.

I love the hazy blue mountains in this picture and the way my friend Noreen looks so awed by the mountains. She's also very authentic with her bed pad and her walking pole.

But in the end, I went for a more polished picture for the cover.

What do you think? It's available now for pre-order on Amazon for Kindle. Hopefully the paperback will be up there soon too. 

Here's the blurb:

How does a woman know what she wants after spending 20 years thinking about her husband and children? Sometimes it takes an escape from everyday life, time to examine the forest before the trees become clear. With no previous camping experience, Andi and Jess begin the 2100-mile odyssey from Georgia to Maine. The friends figure life on the trail can't possibly be worse than dealing with disgruntled husbands, sullen teens home from college, and a general malaise that has crept up in their daily lives. At the very least, the women are bound to return home thin.

Looking forward to seeing all your Saturday Snapshots too.

Funny Writing

I'm revising (maybe reviving) my novel Trail Mix. I figured when the movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon comes out, that might help sales of my own novel of trials hiking on a trail. Rather than the Pacific Crest Trail, which the woman in Wild hikes, my characters are hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Here's my blurb -- Some people will do anything to lose weight. With no previous camping experience, two suburban women come up with the perfect way to shed excess pounds – hike the Appalachian Trail. It's a 2100-mile odyssey, from Georgia to Maine, a grueling experience, even for seasoned hikers. But friends Andi and Jess figure life on the trail can't possibly be worse than dealing with disgruntled husbands, sullen teens and a general malaise that has crept up in their daily lives. Side-effects of the diet may include spending far too much time with a hiking buddy, leading to some startling revelations about each other.

 The whole idea of selling a book based on hiking the Appalachian Trail as a diet plan

sounds funny, don't you think?

Somewhere along the way, my book has gotten too serious. As I'm revising, I read funny things that happened, but I don't feel like I wrote them funny. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to write funny.

I think I'm fairly funny in life -- at least witty. I'd say some of my blog posts are even humorous, yet I'm unsure how to invoke some more humor into my book. Maybe it's a matter of timing. 

I'm going to go back and try to punch up some of the funny parts.

The release date for the movie Wild is in December. I hope my novel is available much sooner than that. 

Writing Revisions

This morning, I am going through one of my novels changing it from present tense to past tense. I'm not sure why I wrote it in present tense. It just came out that way. But it was something that agents commented on. Things like, "Some readers aren't comfortable with 3rd person present tense." I always just moved on. Too bad, I thought.
Then recently it hit me. I could change it to past tense. And that's what I'm doing.
I'm only on page 51, so this may be a long, tedious process. This is the book about the two women who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail as the ultimate diet plan and as an escape from their almost-adult children who come home for the summer. The women use their time on the trail to figure out what their lives will look like without the day-to-day job of raising children.
As I'm making my way through though, I found this sentence which I liked and thought I'd share with you.

The trail snaked across the mountains, a mere comma in the middle of a sentence of unending trees.

Hope you find a gem in  your work today.