Ten Extraordinary New Ways for Writers to Procrastinate

1. Take all the 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper you were going to recycle (for instance, old copies of manuscripts) and cut them into 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 rectangles. Put one stack by your computer, one stack in the kitchen by the phone, and one stack in reserve on a shelf somewhere. Use these pieces of paper to write notes to yourself, grocery lists, or ideas for your next novel.

2. Find all of the photos you've saved in various places on your computer, CDs, or flash drives, and save them to one place. Sort and file them by categories so you can find them when you need a photo for a blog post.

3. Make homemade ice cream in an old-fashioned ice cream freezer, the kind that uses crushed ice and rock salt, the kind you have to crank by hand and takes a really long time. To make this project take even longer, use fresh fruit in your mix. Chopped and mashed strawberries work very well.

4. Take all of your clothes out of the closet, dresser drawers, and winter/summer storage boxes. Everything you have not worn in more two years must go in the donation bag. Everything. No exceptions. Take the bag(s) to a donation center before you change your mind.

5. Go to the library and do some research. If you don't have anything to look up, pick one of these subjects and run with it: zombies in Denver, zombies in Pittsburgh, or zombies in Washington, D.C.

6. Go to Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents Blog and read all the posts under his "7 Things I've Learned So Far" category. Read my post first.

7. Google "villas in France" or "villas in Italy" and check out your options. Don't look at the prices, just look at the pictures.

8. Catch up on your shredding. Feed the papers into the shredder one at a time so you can look at each one and make sure you haven't tossed something important into the "To Be Shredded" box.

9. Check out Smashwords and read their "How to Publish" page. Then go to the Smashwords blog and read at least the last ten posts. Really. It's important to know this stuff.

10. Back up all your blog posts from day one by copying and pasting to a Word document and saving them to your hard drive or a flash drive. Copy each post as you go and put it in a notebook(s) in date published order. If you want, you can print a second copy so you can file by categories. Then catalog your posts on a spreadsheet. If you don't have a blog, use 10a instead (the a is for alternate).

10a. Start a blog. Sign up for Dani Greer's FREE one-month online blog book tour class which starts July 5th. No need for any other procrastination efforts for a whole month. You won't have time. Do it. You know you want to.

Travelling Writers; Writing Travellers: Why to Keep a Journal

A few years ago, on one of our March trips from Colorado to Las Vegas for the WAC, later the MWC, basketball tournament, my husband and I took a side trip off I-70 in Utah at Thompson Springs. I had read there were petroglyphs in nearby Sego Canyon. It was true, and we spent an hour or so exploring the area and studying the art on the rock.

In 2008, on a drive to visit family in Illinois, another side excursion took us through the Kickapoo Indian Reservation in northern Kansas. Since one of my characters in my almost-ready-to-submit historical novel set in Illinois is an old Kickapoo man, I wanted to see where some of People finally settled after they were forced west of the Mississippi.

Our mini-sense of adventure on driving trips sometimes backfires. My guy likes to travel without making reservations for the night, which gives us more flexibility on how long we travel and where we stop. I like knowing where I'm going to sleep and that a bed will be waiting for me when I get there.

We were foiled twice, both times in the south of France, by following my guy's flexible plan. The first time, we drove half the night and traveled many kilometers off the beaten path to finally find a room...the last room in a hotel...the room with a broken toilet. I didn't care.

The second time it happened, we again found a hotel well off the autoroute, up on a hill, surrounded by woods, early in the morning. The one available room had been reserved but the travelers had not shown up. The kind proprietor let us have the beds. I had a crazy moment when I wanted to hug him and cry.

These are the little moments and small incidents that can lead us to story ideas, whether we write articles, host a travel blog, are putting together a memoir, or writing fiction. If we travel, keeping a journal is a great idea. I have a folder of all the letters I sent to my mother during the two years my husband and I lived in the South of France. I have a journal I kept during my solo trek to Norway at the age of 56, and I filled a lot of pages with some pretty crazy stuff during one of the driving trips we took in Europe.

Here are some of the ways travelers make good use of their travel stories:

Alexis Grant is The Traveling Writer. I first "met" her through the online blog book tour class moderated by Dani Greer. Since our first contact, Alexis has found an agent and they are working on her memoir of her solo backtrack travels across Africa.

Cara Lopez Lee blogs at Girls Trek Too! The Life of an Adventurous Woman. Cara will be a guest here in September. Her memoir about life in Alaska, They Only Eat Their Husbands, will be available from Ghost Road Press later this year.

Speaking of blog book tours, it looks like Dani is going to conduct her 100% totally free Blog Book Tour class again, starting July 5th. I took the course last year and loved it. Not only did I make a lot of new blogger friends, but I received very valuable information on blogging and blog design.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1. When you travel, do you journal or take notes or catalog your photos with the thought of using them in your blog posts, articles, or fiction?

2. Do you visit any great travel blogs you'd like to recommend, or have you recently read an awesome travel memoir?

Better Late Than Never, Right?

Why Today's Post is Late

I usually write my posts ahead of time and pre-schedule for publication, but yesterday afternoon I discovered I'd overdone the standing or the sitting or the walking (barefoot) or something and had an uncomfortably swollen foot and ankle.

It was obviously time for RICE: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Works for me 90% of the time and usually saves me a trip to the doctor (who invariably recommends RICE).

So there I was, stretched out on the couch with my foot propped up on pillows, watching television and not writing a blog post.

This morning I had priority errands and a quick trip to the dentist.

I'm just full of excuses, aren't I?

Now I'm at the computer cleaning out my e-mail and getting this quick post up, and I'm noticing my foot is aching again. Yep, ankle's a little puffy. Time to get the ice pack. But first...


The Fabulous Sugar Doll Blogger Award

This adorable award was passed on to me on June 17th by Sugar (appropriate, yes?) at her blog, Sugar's Randomocities. This award is for bloggers that cheer us up. Thanks bunches to Sugar for including me on her list. She is fun and entertaining, so you might want to pay her a visit soon.

Some bloggers are really good at cheering us up and on, giving encouragement, sharing ideas, educating us, and sometimes just plain being silly. Those with valuable information to share are worth a whole bunch, and a blog post that makes me laugh is a super bonus.

I pass the award on to these four blogs I visit on a regular basis for cheerful information and occasionally a laugh-out-loud moment. Nice folks:

Elspeth Antonelli at It's A Mystery
Cheryl Miller Thurston at Scattershot
Talli Roland
Elizabeth Spann Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder (Yes, I know you've received this award before, Elizabeth, but that's because you really deserve it -- we're heaping sugar on you, babe).

I hope you all have a great weekend!

My Writing Life by Sarah Wisseman, Guest Blogger

I am pleased to host Sarah Wisseman today, since she's a perfect example of building on what you know to create good fiction, then exploring alternative ways to publish and promote your work. As our opportunities and options expand, we need to stay informed about changes in technology, upheavals in the publishing world, and the birth of new small and/or regional presses. And don't forget Kindle, Nook, and the ebook process at smashwords.com.


My Writing Life by Sarah Wisseman

I became a mystery writer almost by accident. As an archaeologist at the University of Illinois, I was busy writing up the non-fiction account of our Egyptian mummy investigation and remembering the creepy old attic museum where I used to work. Then it dawned on me that this environment was the perfect setting for murder: a crowded labyrinth of suits of armor and plaster casts of Roman emperors and Greek gods with an ancient alarm system, broken windows with pigeons flying in and out, and an elevator so antiquated that some of our visitors thought it was an exhibit.

My protagonist, Lisa Donahue is a lot like me (an archaeologist and museum curator), but I made her a single mom who’d recently been widowed. I moved the museum to Boston to protect the innocent (actually to avoid having people I know in Central Illinois think I was writing about them). I began with X-raying a mummy that holds clues to two murders…thus Bound for Eternity was born.

When my manuscript was complete, I had it critiqued and sent it off to the 2004 Malice Domestic contest for Best First Traditional Mystery. I became a finalist, but did not win the prize: a coveted publishing contract with St. Martin’s Press. After querying numerous agents and a couple of small presses, I decided to self-publish “Bound” with iUniverse so that I could market the novel while my non-fiction book, The Virtual Mummy, was still in print. I figured that as a beginning novelist, having both books on display would help sales. It did. “Bound” is now available as a Kindle download, and I recently uploaded it to Smashwords so it is available in other e-formats.

In The Dead Sea Codex, Lisa travels to Israel, where she and another archaeologist seek an ancient manuscript before Christian fanatics destroy it. This second novel was accepted by Hard Shell Word Factory after I pitched it at a conference and published in 2005 as an ebook and one month later as a trade paperback.

The third and fourth novels, The Fall of Augustus and The House of the Sphinx, were published almost simultaneously by two separate presses in 2009. How did this happen? I discovered agents weren’t interested in picking up a series halfway through so I continued to approach small presses on my own.

“Fall” (Wings ePress) returns Lisa to her museum when her boss gets killed by a falling statue, and “Sphinx” (Hilliard and Harris) takes her to Egypt, where she stumbles upon a plot to infect Western tourists with smallpox. Wings Press publishes both ebook and trade paperback formats. Hilliard and Harris uses Amazon’s Digital Platform so that “Sphinx” appeared immediately on the Amazon website.

I plan to approach agents again when my next manuscript is ready. My fifth novel begins a new series starring a physician and amateur archaeologist fighting Prohibition in central Illinois. This will be a whole new episode in my zigzag path to publication.

Thanks, Sarah, for being here. It's great to learn we have choices when we tackle this business of getting published. There's a lot more information about Sarah and her books on her website. She has a blog as well, and there you'll find information on writing and archaeology (including interviews with other authors such as Molly MacRae, Barbara D'Amato, and Libby Fischer Hellmann).

Time for a Few Bits and Pieces

Update on The Prairie Grass Murders

The Harlequin Worldwide Mystery mass market paperback edition of The Prairie Grass Murders is no longer available at the eHarlequin online store. The book was sold out. Wow! I've been remaindered, but never sold out. It's like...like...a super bonus. Maybe I'll get a royalty check. Oh, my goodness, we're talking super excitement now.

I know some of you just smacked your forehead with your hand and said, "Shucks. I shoulda bought one when I had the chance." Never fear. You can get the paperback new or used through amazon.com's associate sellers, or you can buy a hardcover direct from me at a discounted rate, or you can buy the audiobook, or...you can wait just a little longer and get the title as an ebook. As soon as I figure out how I want to do it and arrange for a new cover design, I'll make The Prairie Grass Murders available for Kindle, Nook, and any other e-reader as well as computer download.

Note to self: Stop procrastinating. Do it!


The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club

I'm sure lots of you have read at least one novel by Maeve Binchy. Those who are also writers will be interested in her recent release from Anchor Books, The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club. Its intention is to "motivate and encourage aspiring writers, as well as to entertain Maeve Binchy fans the world over."

From Maeve's website:

"Inspired by a course run by the National College of Ireland, The Writers' Club comprises twenty letters from Maeve, offering advice, tips and her own take on life as a writer, in addition to contributions from top writers, publishers and editors."

By the way, did you know Maeve Binchy became a best-selling author at age 43? There are 17 novels and one other nonfiction book listed in the front of The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club.

There are books on that list I haven't read yet.

Yay!


Thursday Guest Blogger: Sarah Wisseman

Be sure to drop by tomorrow and read about archaeologist and museum curator (and mystery writer) Sarah Wisseman's path to publication.


The Northern Colorado Writers Question of the Month

Yesterday morning was our monthly morning coffee. Each month a different mix of writers turns up at the NCW studio and we talk writing stuff. We socialize for a bit, get our coffee, then sit around the tables and do an introduction. This usually consists of our names, what we're working on now, a "get-to-know-each-other-better" question to answer, and any topics we want to discuss.

The question of the month was, "If you could stay any one age forever, what age would you choose and why?" I said, "I would pick 35, but I did some pretty stupid things back then. So I decided on 55, an age where I was brave, and a lot smarter than I was at 35."

Since our group is made up of writers of all ages, it was interesting to see that very few of the older writers would choose to go back to their teens or early 20s. Many chose the age they are now, or just a few years younger. I kept wondering if the younger writers noticed that and realized perhaps their best years are ahead of them, not behind them.

Now I'm wondering about you. If you could stay any one age forever, what age would you choose and why?

Getting Down to the Writing Business

Saturday morning I did something I haven't done in a long time. I poured a cup of coffee and went into the living room for a thinking session. There's a special chair in there for meditating or puzzling through a problem. It's a little glider with a green early-American style cushion on seat and back. Rocking, or in this case gliding, seems to help my thinking process, moving it along in a way. The motion is calming, and don't we all think better when we're calm?

What I needed to think about was:

Reading, critiquing, blogging, and tweeting,
Lallygagging, sleeping, writing, and eating,
There's not enough time to do them all,
Who in the flying hell do I call?

For help, I mean. Is there such a thing as procrastination-busters? A group dedicated to breaking the television/movie habit? How about a twelve-step method for beating the "meet me for coffee at Starbucks" or "let's do lunch" addiction?

The same two manuscripts I was talking about three months ago, one that needed "one more good read" and the other that was ready for revisions, haven't been touched.

I've fiddled with my blog, playing with the new Blogger templates. I took two trips. I've spent hours in the garage cutting up old cardboard boxes to conform to our town's new recycling opportunities. I ordered a new storm door and had it replaced. I rewrote my To Do List, which is down to 21 items, although it doesn't have anything on it about daily writing time. I accepted a book to review for The Blood-Red Pencil blog, and I added a new weekly guest blogger series to my own blog.

I'm still working one afternoon a week (for three hours) at the Northern Colorado Writers studio, I taught another self-editing class for NCW, and I attend the group's monthly morning coffee and writing discussion. I'm on the editorial committee for the Senior Center's Mountain Scribe Anthology. And then there's all that really frivolous stuff I do like grocery-shopping, strolling through Farmers' Markets, laundry, and occasional bouts of housecleaning.

What is it about sitting down to write or revise that's so difficult? I see the question pondered over and over by writers, but I still don't know the answer.

What I finally decided as I sipped my coffee and rocked (okay, glided) is that it's okay not to write if I want to do something else instead. The only thing I have to do is stop, think about what I'm doing, make a conscious choice, and then proceed. No stress. No guilt. Just know what I'm doing and why.

I'll write when I choose to write.

So I took a deep breath and let it out. I felt better. Even felt a little bit like cleaning off my desk so I can work with a hard copy of my novel as I read and make revision notes.

But first, I had to meet a writer friend for coffee at Starbucks, buy fresh local strawberries and spinach at the Farmer's Market, set the sun tea jug outside, write a blog post and pre-schedule my guest blogger's post for Thursday, wash those strawberries that had perfumed the whole kitchen, make shortcake and whipped topping, wash the spinach, check my e-mail one more time, and read for an hour before starting dinner.

And so it goes.

Visit The Blood-Red Pencil Today

My review of A Bad Day for Pretty by Sophie Littlefield is posted today at The Blood-Red Pencil. If you didn't read Sophie's first Stella Hardesty mystery, A Bad Day for Sorry, you're missing a fun read about a badass fifty-something woman whose extracurricular activities include an attitude adjustment service aimed at the jerks who beat on their wives or girlfriends.

Come on over to The Blood-Red Pencil. We'll be giving away two copies of A Bad Day for Pretty.


Other Links of Interest

Last week's guest blogger, Alan Orloff, was featured on the Guide to Literary Agents blog yesterday with 7 Things I've Learned So Far. This whole series is of interest to writers, especially those just getting started.

--------------------

The Writing Bug Top 10 List: You Know You're a Writer When... And in the same blog post Northern Colorado Writers director Kerrie Flanagan has issued this call out:

"HUMOR BLOG CARNIVAL CALL OUT

I am looking for humor blog posts about writing (doesn't have to be in a 10 ten list format, it just has to be funny.). The carnival will run on Wednesday June 30. Send me your links by June 25th."

For more information, go to the bottom of The Writing Bug's Top 10 List post.

My Writing Life by Guest Blogger Barbara Graham

Barbara Graham lives somewhere in that northwestern quarter of Wyoming so I don't get to see her too often. That's why I'm jumping at the chance to have dinner with her on Sunday after attending her book signing at Barnes & Noble Centerra, Loveland, Colorado. The event is scheduled for 2 to 4 PM. The first novel in Barbara's mystery quilt series set in the Smoky Mountains was Murder by Serpents, published in 2007 by Five Star. Her new release, Murder by Artifact, is available in both hardcover and large print editions.

My Writing Life by Barbara Graham

When I was about eight years old, I had huge front teeth. In all the photographs taken at the time, I resembled a beaver--one wearing braids and glasses. Very attractive indeed. Years of braces and normal growth seemed to shrink the teeth but, in truth, they merely remained the same size while the rest of me grew. My progression from “I’d like to be a writer” to “yes, I’m currently revising book three of the series and working on the first draft of book four” was gradual as well.

While a few authors sell their first book, it is rare, and most of us sell later work. The number of my personal trial and error books, unpublished and deservedly so, is about eight. Eight books filled with wretched prose, inadequate characterizations and flimsy plots require many words and years to complete. In the sports world they’d be called “training wheels”.

The first book I wrote in the “Quilted Mystery” series came close to being publishable but not quite ready. Rejection was the norm. Stubborn and hard headed, self-publishing was never an option. So, I kept studying and working on my craft. One day, I returned from a fun weekend at a quilt retreat to find an email from the most recent publishing house I’d contacted. Resigned to read yet another rejection, I opened it and saw the words, “Congratulations, we would like to buy Murder by Serpents.”

After checking to see if the odd noises coming from me indicated a heart attack, my husband confirmed the document was neither a joke nor a rejection. Soon the contract arrived. Later the advance. I took the check to our local tee shirt printer and had a shirt made with a copy of the check printed upside down just below the collar so if I glanced down I could read it. Inspiration. Confirmation. If I could do it once, I could do it again.

As a former dance student and later a teacher, I believe the mindset of practice, try, fail, ask advice, practice, improve, fall down, get up, listen to the advice, practice, succeed is one vital for everyone in the arts and life in general. It works if you want to do turns in toe shoes or grow vegetables. Don’t quit learning. Don’t quit trying. Few babies learn to walk without crawling and I’d guess none without falling. No one is born being able to write, or cook, or play checkers without some instruction and lots of practice. The words written today will seem less perfect with tomorrow’s even better work. Never give up. Rewrite.

For a little more information on Barbara, check out the Q&A on her website. There you'll find entertaining tidbits such as:

"How did you get hooked on mysteries?

My life in literary crime began with the Hardy Boys. I would purloin (a word learned from reading Poe) my older brother's latest Hardy Boy adventure and read it by flashlight under the covers. Many of my friends were readers of Nancy Drew but I found her less exciting. I did have a terrible childhood crush on Frank Hardy. I'm not sure I realized I was reading fiction. Never the sharpest tack in the box, I still remember the devastation I felt when learning my other hero, Roy Rogers, was an actor, and I was not watching a documentary."

Thanks a bunch for contributing to my guest blogger series, Barbara.

The Photos That Tell the Rest of the Story

This little photo essay is an experiment. My record with photo placement on Blogger is spotty at best. Sometimes the layout is exactly as I planned. Other times my first attempt looks like I stirred the content with an old-fashioned egg beater. I've put together this post to pre-schedule for early Wednesday morning, so if you get here before I do and see a scrambled mess, check back later. I will attempt to fix it and re-post later in the day.

In Monday's post I mentioned some of the things I did on my vacation in Las Vegas. Here are a few photos that clearly, or in some cases not so clearly, tell more of the story.

There's a large tank full of jelly fish in the middle of a room at the Shark Reef aquarium at Mandalay Bay, and I tried a dozen different ways to capture the feel using background light from the far side of the container. This is the best I could do. The creatures were constantly moving and pulsing, so a bit of blurriness was inevitable.

The dolphins at Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage are not used for tricks or shows, but these guys seemed interested in putting on their own form of entertainment for the crowd. The beached dolphin got there on his own, and seemed able to jump out of the water and back in at will. The curious fellow in the water seemed interested in these crazy antics, but he didn't try any unusual moves of his own.


In the evening after dinner, we headed outside to wait for the volcano eruption in the lagoon in front of The Mirage. The first picture looks across the water with the edge of the volcano on the left side of the photo.



All is calm . . .

until the eruption begins. Here are different phases, ending with the fire on the lagoon itself. As the display increased in intensity and the flames became visible between the rocks, we felt the heat.



My face flushed. Perspiration beaded on my forehead and on the back of my neck.



Well, okay, the air temperature was close to a hundred degrees without the volcano, but the flames made the evening air even hotter. Earlier in the day we were using glasses of ice to cool off . . .

and hot fudge sundaes.


Oops, let's get back to the volcano.

The flames leaped higher . . .





and exploded through the rocks.


All these little gas jets poked up out of the water and flared so it looked as though the volcano was throwing burning debris into the lagoon.

Okay, enough with the volcano. I'm sure it was nothing compared to the real thing in Iceland.

We ended the evening by attending that Cirque du Soleil Love event featuring the Beatles and their music. Well, not the real Beatles, of course. But there were some poignant special effects that made the show extra-special.

No photos were allowed inside, so I made sure to get a shot of this huge neon ad outside The Mirage.


I eventually had to stop eating and playing and go home. We were on a driving trip because the route from Colorado through Utah to Las Vegas is so beautiful. There's something new to see every few miles. These two random shots through the window of our moving car are a sample. I didn't keep track, but I think the first one is in Utah.


This shot was taken in the mountains in Colorado. All that green is a result of the extremely wet weather Colorado experienced while we were roasting in Las Vegas. You can almost see the snow on that far peak in the background if you squint your eyes and use your imagination. It's there, I promise.

The brownish trees in the center background are probably pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle. It doesn't look so bad in this location, but some parts of Colorado are horribly blighted by these infestations.

That's all, folks. Be sure to come back tomorrow for my guest blogger, Wyoming mystery author Barbara Graham, who will tell you about her writing life and that all-exciting path to publication.

What Happens in Vegas

What happened to me in Las Vegas probably happens to almost everyone who goes there:

1. I ate too much.
2. I got blisters on my feet.
3. I became dehydrated.
4. I spent too much money.
5. I had fun.
6. I wore out and spent the last evening with my feet elevated, wishing I had an ice pack.

I'll have a couple of fun photos to show you later in the week, but first I want to tell you what a great place Las Vegas is for doing research. For instance, I discovered these educational opportunities:

1. The Tuscany Kitchen at the Bellagio has a cooking demonstration and food tasting.
2. At the Las Vegas Motor Speedway you can get driving instruction and ride-alongs on the track.
3. Learn to fire real weapons, maybe even a machine gun, at The Gun Store.
4. And at Planet Hollywood Resort, you can take Stripper 101 classes and learn the fine arts of pole dancing as well as other classy...I mean classic stripper moves with boas, chairs, etc.

I didn't do any of these things. I did, however, enjoy the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, as well as the wall aquarium and the erupting volcano and Cirque du Soleil Love (The Beatles), all at The Mirage.

There was also eating, lots of eating. Serendipity 3 at Caesar's Palace (including a frozen hot chocolate), Border Grill at Mandalay Bay, and B.B. King's Blues Club at The Mirage were all outstanding.

Now you know the rest of the story. My husband was playing in the Las Vegas Regional Bridge Tournament, so I went along to take my own little Las Vegas vacation. A friend from high school days (and I won't even go into how many years ago we became friends) drove in from California to share my adventures.

Once again I want to thank Alan Orloff for being my first guest blogger and for covering the comments since I was separated from my computer that day. And I hope you'll mark your calendar for this Thursday when Barbara Graham's guest post about her writing life will appear.

Speaking of Birds

A pair of robins built their nest in the grape arbor, amongst the twigs I thought were dead but hadn't ripped out yet. The nest is not much more than six feet off the ground, easily reachable by the black and white cat that roams the neighborhood. The nest is also less than six feet from our front door.

The mother robin is very trusting. If I open the door gently and talk to her first, she'll let me walk past. She does keep her eye on me though.

The male is less friendly. He guards the nest from a nearby tree when the female is away, but he abandons his vigil when I come near. This morning one of the birds brought a worm for the first born, then perched on the side of the nest and peered at the squirming creature as though wondering who was the real father of this ugly thing.

This picture shows the nest in the arbor clear over at the left just above the yellow cap on the finch feeder, nearly hidden by grape leaves from my "dead" vine. The robin, probably the male, is in the tree. I was standing not far from my front door when I took this picture.

Originally there were four eggs in the nest, but one ended up smashed on the sidewalk. We're not sure what happened. Could have been the wind, I suppose. Or that cat. Hubby pulled the ladder out of the garage and checked on the eggs a couple of times after that happened.

We think the first born must have hatched last Sunday morning. Bill brought out the ladder again and peeked into the nest, and then he took this picture for me. There should be two newborns in that squirming mess because there were three eggs left the last time he checked.

I just looked up the Wild Birds Unlimited info on robins and found the babies should be fully-feathered in ten days and should leave the nest in 14-16 days. I hope the wandering cat stays away, but I fear for the chicks when they start making noise.

Did you know that robins can eat up to 14 feet of earthworms in a day? Pretty darned impressive, in my humble opinion. I couldn't even eat 14 feet of chocolate earthworms in a day, and I'm lots bigger than a robin.

My Writing Life by Guest Blogger Alan Orloff

I'm pleased to introduce Alan Orloff as my first guest blogger. Alan's debut novel, Diamonds for the Dead, was released in April by Midnight Ink. Be sure to visit his blog: A Million Blogging Monkeys. (Someday I need to ask how he came by that title.)

My Writing Life by Alan Orloff

I’m not sure why or how, but about six years ago the urge to write fiction erupted from somewhere within and slapped me rudely on the face. And, I should say, the urge wasn’t telling me simply to write—it wanted me to get published, too.

An engineer by training, I decided to conduct a “proof of concept” before I started my Great American Novel, just to make sure writing “agreed” with me. First, I wrote a few short stories. I was bold enough to let my wife read them, and, much to my amazement, they didn’t stink. Then I took an adult education class at a local high school. More short stories, still didn’t stink. Next, I enrolled in a writing workshop at a wonderful facility, The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, MD). I wrote some more and I still didn’t stink.

I wasn’t very good, but I didn’t stink.

Best of all, I enjoyed writing. Really enjoyed it (and that’s saying a lot from a guy who hated English classes in high school and college). So I kept at it, writing one novel, then another. I found a critique group and submitted pages and critiqued pages and learned a ton about good writing and bad (this included recognizing similes as smelly as a skunk that’s been run over by a school bus and left by the side of the road for two weeks in ninety-five degree weather). When manuscript number three was finished—really finished—I took the next big step toward publication. Time to query.

I drafted a query letter, revised it, honed it, and polished it until I could see my desperate face reflecting back at me. Then I sent it out. I was sure my manuscript was good, and I was sure my query was solid.

One hundred rejections later, I knew that a good manuscript and a solid query letter didn’t stand a chance, not in a tough marketplace. I needed to get better.

So I wrote some more. And more. And more. Finished a fourth manuscript, revised it until it was very good. Then wrote a dynamite query letter. This time, I attracted (and signed with) an agent. Yay! Then it didn’t sell. Boo! I got the feeling the agent wanted to concentrate on non-fiction, so we parted ways amicably.

But that left me back in Query Heck.

I wrote another manuscript. And worked on it until it sang. Then…well, you know the drill. Concoct a query. Again, I was fortunate to sign with an agent. And this time…this time…SALE!

So here’s my five-pronged strategy for success on the road to publication:

Take classes. How else will you learn what to do?
Get thyself into a critique group. How else will you get feedback on your particular project?
Join a professional writing organization. I belong to MWA (Mystery Writers of America) and ITW (International Thriller Writers).
Read, read, read. Learn from those who’ve gone before you.
Write, write, write and never give up.

A special thanks to Alan for being here today. If you want to know a little more about Alan's background and how he decided to become a writer (and sample a bit more of his excellent sense of humor), check out his blog post of May 24th: When Did You Know? You'll enjoy it. I promise.

Surfing the Web Again, and Here's What I Found

I like to go exploring once in a while. Internet exploring, that is. I plug a word or phrase into the search box and wander through the list until I find something of interest. I looked for "blogs writers blog" which was actually a typo since I meant to search on "blogs writers block." Even with the odd search phrase, I found some gems.

Writer Beware Blogs!

"Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. We also provide industry news, advice for writers, and a special focus on the weird and wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world."

The Rejecter

"I don't hate you. I just hate your query letter."

"I am an assistant at a literary agency. I am the first line of defense for my boss. On average, I reject 95% of the letters immediately and put the other 5% in the "maybe" pile. Here, I'll talk about my work. Do not email me your submissions. I do that at work, not in my spare time."

Blogging Basics 101

Ginny's Fiction Writing Blog at About.com

And if you have no interest in these writing-related sites, check out these three humor blogs:

How Not to Act Old

Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat?

Attack of the Redneck Mommy

That's all.

Be sure to drop by tomorrow for my first guest blogger, Alan Orloff, author of the debut thriller, Diamonds for the Dead.

The Birdie in the Cupboard

This is a travel day for me, so I've posted these photos to give you a Monday morning chuckle.

My mom's parakeet developed a funny habit in her declining years. She overcame her fear of flying into the kitchen of my mom's apartment, and she figured out how to pry the door of the cupboard open and slip inside.

Mom would eventually realize Birdie was missing and would call out, "Birdie, where are you?"

Birdie peeped an answer from inside the cupboard.

"You better come out of there," Mom said.

And Birdie would nudge the cupboard door open enough to peer out.

Eventually she learned to push the door hard enough that it would stay partway open. From her perch inside the cupboard, Birdie supervised all activity in the kitchen until she grew bored and returned to her toys by her cage in the living room.

Yes, the cupboard required frequent cleanings. My brother got that job. Ha.

Birdie had a few other tricks, but nothing quite as much fun as the birdie in the cupboard game. She was the tamest bird I've ever met.

When I came to visit, she was nosy, but mostly wanted to inspect my shoes. She liked my shoelaces and the Nike Swoosh. She would have liked to land on my head, but I wasn't too interested in that idea.

It's pretty strange that we became so attached to this parakeet. Over time, however, I decided her little birdie brain held a lot more information than I would have thought possible.

Birdie is gone now. I'm glad my brother managed to get these photos. How else would anyone believe such a silly story?

What Are You Reading?

It's time to talk about books again.

I'm reading When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes by Jay Feldman.

These earthquakes occurred at the end of 1811 and the beginning of 1812, centered on the fault that lies in the southeast part of Missouri. Three of the quakes would have measured near 8.0 on the Richter scale, if such a thing had existed at the time. Felt as far north as Canada, all the way to the east coast, and south to New Orleans, the New Madrid series destroyed towns and even made the mighty Mississippi run backwards for a short time.

I became interested in the subject when I was researching true events for background in my historical novel manuscript, Wishing Caswell Dead. This is how we get sidetracked by research. I've been reading history of the Illinois area in the early 1800s ever since.

Maybe it's odd to think about first sentences in non-fiction history books, but I thought Feldman had a good one:

"Accompanied by an entourage of Shawnee, Kickapoo, and Winnebago warriors, the Shawnee chief strode decisively through the Creek village of Tuckhabatchee."

The book I recently finished was In the Woods by Tana French. This debut novel is mystery/suspense set in Ireland with a cop protagonist. A cop with a secret.

The winner of the 2007 Edgar Award for best first novel is so well written that it made me jealous. I can't wait to read French's new book, The Likeness, which was released in 2009. Instead of continuing the series with the same cop protagonist used in In the Woods, French apparently takes the cop's former partner as her new lead character. I think that's a nice variation on series.

The first sentence of In the Woods is in a prologue:

"Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film sent in small-town 1950s."

The two-page prologue sets the scene--the Irish countryside, the small village, the summer season, and a foreshadowing of the terrible things that happened that summer. French ignored all the advice that says no prologues, no long narrative openings that focus on setting, and don't open with backstory. I'm glad she did it her way, because it works beautifully.

What are you reading these days? Do you have something great to recommend?

As Promised, I'm Opening My Blog to Guests

I told several blogging friends that I was considering opening my blog up to guests after June 1st. I took the first step in May by reducing my own posting schedule to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The Thursday slot is the one I want to fill first, and I've decided to keep that day open for published (or about-to-be-published) writers who will tell us about their writing journey. I'll call the posts My Writing Life by "Author's Name."

I'm looking for essays of 500 words or less about the author's path to publication, with no profanity or graphic descriptions of sex or gore. I will be happy to include an author photo and cover art of the author's latest book. I'd like these posts to inspire and encourage beginning writers. Humor is encouraged. I will reserve the right to reject a post if it requires too much editing, doesn't fit in with my goals, or if I'm having a bad day and am feeling real mean (which, I assure you, doesn't happen very often).

If you're interested in a My Writing Life slot, e-mail me at:

plynnes at patriciastoltey.com

(using the normal e-mail address format, of course -- you know the drill).

I also want to mention that I recently received the Sisterhood Award from Yvonne at Welcome to My World of Poetry. I want to thank Yvonne for including me in the sisterhood. I am honored.

I reserve the right to pass this award to other blogging sisters at some future date.

Now here's something interesting I noticed with this latest award. See the tiny url listed at the top of the award: dianarambles.com? I was curious, so I just had to jump over to see who diana is. I think you'll want to do the same. Diana Hansen is a blogger, but she's also a crafty creative designer who does custom blog designs. If anyone is looking for a change and doesn't know where to start, you might want to explore Diana's site and see what you think. She also does custom Twitter backgrounds, an option I should look into.

See what happens when you go exploring? Wasn't that fun?