Spending time with my lover

His name is HP.

And no, it's not short for Harry Potter. Although I love Harry Potter too.

HP is short for Hewlett-Packard. In other words, my computer. And whenever my husband asks me, "are you going to spend time with your lover tonight?" I know I've spent more time then I should cooped up in my office AKA the walk-in closet, making love to HP, and it's time to shut down and take on reality for a change.

The thing is, my whole life is wrapped up in HP. My work is here. Writing is my career, and I do it in front of HP, my fingers caressing the keyboard (to paraphrase my husband).

Everything else I do is also here. Twitter. Facebook. Email. Research. Netflix (yes, that's research too). I read. I pay bills. I balance the bank statement. I blog.

And I can certainly understand why hubby thinks that I like the computer better than I like him. It always gives me what I want, it never argues, and it doesn't feel betrayed when I get up to do something else.

In all seriousness, I have a time management problem. I spend too much time in front of the computer. And it's a problem many of us share. We're sedentary creatures, we writers. Everything we could possibly want is in the box in front of us. With the advent of the internet, we don't even have to leave the desk to do research anymore. With Google Maps, who needs to visit a place to get the feel for it? I've written six books in a series of mysteries set on the coast of Maine, bestselling books... and I've never been to New England.

I'm pretty sure I'll die here, sitting in this chair staring at the screen. They'll have to pry my cold, dead hands from the keyboard. And bury me sitting, since I'll be frozen in this position. Working on my next blog.

# # #

Bente Gallagher AKA Jennie Bentley & Jenna Bennett writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Cutthroat Business mysteries for her own gratification. She lives in Nashville with a husband and two boys, a hyperactive dog, a killer parakeet, two African dwarf frogs, two common goldfish, and the love of her life, HP. You can learn more about her doings and undoing on her website.

A Little Thisa and a Little Thata

I didn’t start out planning to be a critic, and I didn’t start out planning to be a writer. They both just kind of evolved. Many years ago I submitted a story to my local newspaper, “The Houston Home Journal.” I hadn’t been asked to write a story; I just did it – and sent it in. I was amazed when it ran in the next week’s paper. I was even more amazed when the Editor called and asked if I would like to start writing for the newspaper.

Now I already had a full time job so I wasn’t looking for full time employment. So I declined. Then he countered with asking me to write a weekly personal column. When I asked on what subject he wished for me to opine, he said whatever I would like to write about was okay with him. This began “That’s Entertainment,” a weekly column about the movies and other forms of entertainment.

The reading audience seemed to like the column and soon the Editor asked me to do a column on books. He knew I liked to read and it seemed to be a natural fit. So “Novel Ideas” was born. It too proved to be popular and soon both columns were running in several newspapers in Georgia. I also began doing personality profiles for various magazines. I also began to get quoted in the front sections of paperback versions of the hardback novels I had reviewed. Honestly, I think publishers thought I was with “The Houston Home Journal” of Houston, Texas; except there is no “Houston Home Journal” of Houston, Texas.

For many years I had also been keeping a journal, and the stories in my journal formed the basis for my first book JOURNEY OF A GENTLE SOUTHERN MAN. It was published by a small press in Dallas, Texas. I was one of the truly lucky ones. Eventually I entered into a contract with Mercer University Press and I am working on my seventh book for them.

Thus the dichotomy began. I was a critic by day and an author by night. I didn’t feel like a critic until a few years ago when I was contacted by “The Huffington Post” and asked to review movies, books, etc for them. That is when I became a critic, even though I was still just giving my opinion as I always had. I didn’t feel like my opinion was any better than anyone else’s; it was just mine. Still I did begin to learn that if you had a platform like “The Huffington Post” you could wield some influence. I have people who e-mail me and tell me they read everything I like, but I also get e-mails from people who say they read everything I don’t like. Hey, whatever floats their boat.

It is an awkward position to be in. I have many, many good friends who are writers. Jeffery Deaver and I communicate by e-mail most of the time but when I go to see my son in Raleigh and Jeffery is at home we try to grab a cup of coffee. Still when I reviewed CARTE BLANCHE, his new James Bond novel I did not give it a rave review. And this has happened with other friends’ stories as well.

Basically I guess I am a book critic who is also an author. Reviewing is my main job and writing books is my second career. I do a little thisa and a little thata. It makes for a strange career but it is one I could never have dreamed up in my wildest dreams.

Not everyone likes my books. I understand that. I don’t like everyone else’s books. Some I do and some I don’t. I hope you understand that.

Jackie K Cooper is working on MEMORY’S MIST, the seventh book in the JOURNEY series.

15 Minutes

Julie Cannon was scheduled to post a blog today, but couldn’t do it because just now she’s on deadline to turn in her new book to her publisher, so I said I could fill in. I figured it’d take me about fifteen minutes.

15 minutes a day.

Isn’t that what everything seems to take?

On the exercise commercials the pretty blond spokeswoman says you can have flat abs, tight butt, strong arms, etc if you workout just fifteen minutes a day.

You can retire wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice if you devote just fifteen minutes a day to managing your investments.

Your house will be immaculate. Fifteen minutes a day, every day, cleaning and straightening.

Spend fifteen minutes a day talking to your spouse. Meditating. Reading the Bible. Practicing the banjo. Cooking low-fat, low-sodium, low-carb meals that yet are tasty and delicious. Crocheting. Memorizing Shakespeare. Teaching the dog tricks. Oil painting. Doing yoga.

Every goal you could ever wish to achieve, it seems, can be within your grasp if you spend just fifteen minutes a day, every day, doing it.

Of course, if we spent fifteen minutes a day doing all the things the experts tell us can be done in fifteen minutes, we’d need a 72-hour day. 72 hours and fifteen minutes – don’t forget to take time out to plan your day.

Time is limited, and of what there is of it, we have to devote some of to certain activities. A good nights’ sleep, for example, takes at least ten to twelve hours. You cannot possibly take a respectable shower in under forty-five minutes. Nor can a civilized human be expected to go twenty-four hours without watching three hours of “My Name is Earl” reruns. Time must  be spent mixing martinis.  More time, drinking martinis.  It all adds up.  So given the fact that the supply of fifteen-minute increments of time are not infinite, what will you do with the one fifteen-minute slice you may reasonably be able to set aside for something?

In my case it’s writing.

This is no more desirable, and in some respects it’s a lot less so, than many activities I could think of. I wake up each morning and spend fifteen minutes writing. Sometimes a little more, but rarely much more.

And that’s what I do. My room is not spotless. I do not have buns of steel. I cannot play the banjo, and my dog will not play dead. My garden needs weeding. But I’ve written and published two novels and I’m working on a third.

It really is amazing what you can accomplish in fifteen minutes a day.

The New York Post calls Man Martin’s second novel, Paradise Dogs, “required reading.” Man Martin publicly retracts any harsh thing he ever said about Yankees and about New Yorkers in particular. He is writing his third novel, fifteen minutes at a time. He blogs at http://manmartin.blogspot.com/

Where Did the Time Go

By: Mary Alice Monroe


“Where did the time go” is a phrase I utter so frequently I feel as if I own it.  I wish I could tell you that the reason for the feeling of time flying is because I am so engrossed in writing my next novel on a daily basis.  Some days I am, thankfully.  But there are also many days in which the hours are consumed by laundry, kids, emails, Facebook—and sea turtles.

My goal is 10-20 pages on a good day. I like to start early in the morning, when my mind is fresh and the creativity at its best.  I love those special moments when I wake with words in my head and dialogue so fresh on my lips I mutter them aloud.  Typically though, my day begins with a good cup of coffee and a read of my local newspaper. Then it’s pet duty-- feeding and cleaning up after my three dogs and two cats. 

Now however, it’s summer and the peak of the very busy sea turtle nesting season.  Turtles rule my schedule.  When I get the call at 6:30 in the morning that tracks are found, I fly out the door to the beach to join my teammates to search for eggs, move them if needed, and set up the protection signs.  At night I’m usually at the beach by 9 pm to monitor the nests and guide the hatchlings to the sea.

As distracting as these duties are from writing, the adventures I experience with my Island Turtle Team are the perfect muse for my current book. I’m working on the prequel to THE BEACH HOUSE, so searching for turtle tracks, probing for eggs and supervising nest boils fit perfectly into my fictional world.  The conversations shared, getting my hands in the sand, playing a small role in the risky game of life for these sea turtles help fuel the storytelling process.  Even though I find myself away from my computer more than I’d like to be on some days, it doesn’t mean that I am not working.  It is these moments that create the words that I store to get to next paragraph, the next chapter, the next scene. 

Still, the pages need to get written.  Deadlines loom.  There is no substitute for putting my hands to the keyboard and producing pages of story.  Knowing when to turn off the research and turn on the creativity is critical to the process.  I know this.  I do.  I tell myself this every day, multiple times a day.

Ah, but on those balmy nights when the moon is high and creates that ribbon of moonlight along the ocean, when the breeze is just strong enough to keep the gnats and mosquitoes at bay, when I’m sitting with my friends, my legs stretched out over the sand and we’re just talking about everything and nothing….  

Where did the time go?

Mary Alice Monroe is an award-winning, bestselling author of thirteen novels, plus one on the way.  Look for TIDES OF MEMORY to be released in the spring 2012.  For more information, visit www.maryalicemonroe.com.   

A Great Schedule: Niles Reddick

If you ask anyone who knows me well, he or she will know with certainty what my schedule is like. I'm a creature of habit, after all, a little bit OCD, as relatives and co-workers might add.  The point is, however, that I am quite happy in my dysfunctionality.  My writing schedule, except right now, begins about 4:00 am any day of the week, any time of year. I'm an early riser, always have been, and when Santa was coming Christmas mornings through my childhood, my parents and even my siblings hated me because I would wake them all up between 2-3:00 in the morning to let them know he'd arrived and what we all got. Even after I was older, I still couldn't hide my excitement and woke up early.  Most mornings, too, I wake up in a good mood.

I drink half and half coffee now and still have energy enough for two.  It used to drive my college room mates crazy that I would wake up so early and read or clean while having coffee, and even now, I type away on the computer while a few feet away, my wife continues to sleep and has become conditioned to the noises I make, clicking the keys and the creaking my desk chair, a hand-me-down from the poet laureate of Tennessee, Maggie Vaughan, an eccentric soul and former country music song writer for greats such as Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, and Ernest Tubb. Maggie is the only writer I've ever been with anywhere, but then in a Rotary Club in Tennessee, who charmed the Mayor out of his Barbour blazer (very expensive) through humor and at the same time brought the house to tears reading a poem about her mama.

I tend to get a lot done. Recently, I've taken on some interesting little projects: writing reviews for new books by Janice Daugharty, John Michael Cummings, and Clyde Edgerton, all great writers; writing short stories and submitting a few of them to journals and magazines; writing a formal literary criticism paper; writing a proposal for Criminal Minds, a television drama; writing a film script proposal for an agency.  All these are mostly done in the early morning hours before the sun comes up. Of course, I get to work and put in a full day. At night, around 9pm, if I can't find something interesting on Discovery, National Geographic, or the History channel, I'll watch some reruns of Sanford and Son, Everybody Loves Raymond, or All in the Family. I love the older television shows, but I must admit that I'm much more interested in Big Foot and UFOs, but rest assured, as soon as I can, I fall asleep.

Despite my early writing schedule, many days pass by when I don't write at all, sadly (other than personal correspondence at work, via my home email, or on facebook, which I've really come to love lately). Sometimes, the ideas just aren't there, and I'd rather not write just to write than write something not worth writing. I've done a lot of that through the years, no doubt about it.
Currently, I am blogging from a cafe in Panama City Beach, Florida, where I've come for a brief vacation, and the heat, the lack of connectivity, the crowds and noise are all getting on my nerves. The sea is beautiful and makes my getting up early worth it even more, looking out at the emerald water and feeling the salty sea breeze. It's inspirational--that and watching my kids enjoy their grandparents, their great Aunt Naomi, their Uncle Coleman and his new bride Misty. It's also rather comforting that what is colloquially referred to as the "redneck riviera" seems to be an accepting place. No one pointed and laughed as I made my way to the pool today and plopped in a vinyl chair, revealing more than an inch of Special K pinch and my lily white skin, so white now that veins are visible. Of course, most of the people looked worse than me.  I haven't been here in over twenty five years and can't seem to locate where I stayed with my high school buddies when we spent a weekend drinking T.J. Swan wine, playing dinosaur putt-putt, getting sun-burned so bad blisters formed and acting silly like teenagers do, but even then, I was on schedule and thought about life and writing. 

Niles Reddick is author of a collection of Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, which was a finalist for an Eppie award, and a novel Lead Me Home, which was a finalist for a ForeWord Award and was a finalist for first novel in the Georgia Author of the Year Awards.
He is author of numerous short stories in journals and anthologies. He lives in Tifton, Georgia, where he works for Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. His website is www.nilesreddick.com

PUBLISHING TODAY: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by Maryann McFadden

It’s no secret the publishing world is in chaos. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) sales figures for the first half of 2011 “adult paperback is the most popular trade category. However, paperback sales dipped nearly 18 percent and hardcover sales fell 23 percent compared to the same period previous year. At the same time, eBooks sales have continued to grow at a rapid pace.”

I know this isn’t exactly new news, but is anyone else alarmed?

And then there are the closing independent bookstores, falling like dominoes every week. Even Borders, hanging on by a thread for months, made the big announcement yesterday that they are finally done and… nearly 11,000 people who have been hopefully trying to sell our books will be out of work soon. 

As for the writers…a few months ago the back page of the New York Times featured an essay by a respected mid-list author who says he’s CHOOSING TO SELF-PUBLISH! That’s right, forgoing his traditional publisher and striking out on his own.  And that he’s far from alone. Why? Because he can make more money on the ever growing e-book market. More so than if his traditional publisher put his book out there.

That one had me more shocked than alarmed.  Because for me the traditional publisher has always meant one thing—validation. That my work was good enough to pass muster and be selected for that inner sanctum

In 2006, I self-published my first novel, THE RICHEST SEASON out of desperation! It had been rejected off and on for 5 years! I’d shelved it 3 times. My goal wasn’t to make money, but to simply get it out there and read—what any writer wants for their work. My secret dream was to get it taken. And it was, by Hyperion Books. I got the validation I was seeking, and the cachet of having a big publisher.

Now, in 2011, it seems the publishing model is being turned on its head and fellow writers—the ones I personally know, whose work I respect, who also have dreamed of being “the real deal” are now telling me that they, too, are CHOOSING to self-publish, only now it’s called Indie Publishing, according to one of my favorite booksellers. They are going to keep total control—of the cover, the rights, the money.

What’s a writer to do in these tumultuous time?

I for one choose to watch and see what happens, and continue to write. Despite the seismic shifts, and the occasional tsunamis as one editor after another hits the chopping block, I have to keep reminding myself why I am a writer. Is it for money? Fame? Glory? 

Hardly. It’s because there’s this need in me to create, to play with words, to feel the thrill of something falling into place like a perfect jigsaw puzzle. 

Ever since I was 11 years old, I have wanted to be a writer. And I am. I write. So whatever happens, whatever shifts affect me and my stories, my characters, my words, in the near or far future, I know something for sure: I will always write. Because I love it.

Maryann McFadden is a Jersey Girl who is still longing to live in the South. Her novels, THE RICHEST SEASON and SO HAPPY TOGETHER are both Indie Next Picks. Her new novel, THE BOOK LOVER is coming soon.

My Train of Thought has Jumped the Tracks

by Nicole Seitz

It's been a while since I've written. As life necessitates, I needed to finish teaching and move into a new house before I wrote again, but I'm happy to say, I'm beginning to see the light as things are winding down. We're in the new house and it's starting to feel livable. So the other day I was sitting in my home office. Just...sitting there. There are pictures propped up against the wall, cords going everywhere, and a new adorable writing desk I bought--just to get me in the mood of writing in a new house. Since my last book was turned in in February, I have edited a book, reworked it, but not yet written a new story. I have not really "created" story in about 5 months. That's a long time. It's not easy to be a writer who is not writing. It's frustrating. It feels as if you are a dangling balloon that some child let go. You are floating, floating...



Okay, I'm being dramatic, but I am a novelist. We're supposed to be. So after this move in June, with my office still a mess, I found myself sitting there behind the computer the other day, literally praying for the words. Usually this works. Usually I can pray for the words and boom, they rush out of my fingertips, but on this day, there was nothing but quiet. No clickety clack of the keyboard. Now, in my house in the summertime with two children and a husband, my name gets called about every 17.5 seconds. And this is not really an exaggeration. Sometimes I sit there and pretend not to hear. On this day, I could hear my husband calling AND hear his footsteps, which meant he was coming closer, closer. But I was having a thought. At least I think I was close to a thought. When he came to the door to tell me or ask me whatever it was he had on his mind, I looked at him intently, arms waving and said, "I'm thinking!"

I'm sorry, but seriously, how lame could that have sounded? I'm thinking? THIS is what's so important that you can't turn around and talk to your husband?



I reacted to my husband a bit like my chihuahua when
she left the yard one morning only to came back home with a
quesadilla in her mouth. No lie. She was quite protective of it,
as I'm sure you can understand.



Sadly, I never did begin writing a new novel that day. My train of thought was interrupted. In fact, I just remained frustrated that I wasn't writing. BUT I had begun thinking, and for you writer types who know about thinking, you know it's the most important part of writing. I LOVE the thinking part. I love trying to decide who did what and what happened way back when and what secrets everyone carries, and how this is all going to end up. The thinking part is part of the magic of writing and every bit as important as the clickety-clack part. So even though I snipped a little at my husband, and even though he must think I'm nuts or an egomaniac or both, I don't apologize for requesting a little time to just sit quietly and THINK. In fact, that thinking has led to more thinking, pondering, even. And along with the thinking and pondering comes praying for the words, praying for the story, and I'm pleased to say that although I'm not writing yet per se,  I am researching and pondering the story that has grabbed my soul as of late, and now I find myself thinking about it every moment I'm able to THINK. And this, folks, makes this writer very happy. Surely the written word is not too far off.



I'm writing this from my hotel room at a conference in NC called SheSpeaks. I'm here speaking because my latest novel, The Inheritance of Beauty, was a SheReads book club pick earlier this year. I'm thinking of grabbing someone's ear and suggesting a very quiet new tract for next year called SheTHINKS. Now there's an idea. Just peace and quiet. No one calling your name. Women having time to sit and think. Who knows what might come out of a conference like that?



This is an illustration of "The Thinking Tree" in Shellie
Rushing Tomlinson's wonderful yet unpubbed children's
book series about the foibles and wisdom of her inner
child. She's writing and I'm illustrating.
What a fun collaboration!



PS. Enjoy this illustration of "The Thinking Tree" I did for friend and collaborator, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson's unpubbed book. We're working on a children's book series based on the wisdom and foibles of her hilariously Southern inner child. Who couldn't use a good thinking tree?

Blessings on your writing and life!

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

Nicole Seitz is the author of five critically acclaimed novels and another on the way (BEYOND MOLASSES CREEK coming January 2012). She is married and the mother or two and lives in Charleston, SC area. She teaches art at a local school and writes whenever she has a spare moment. One of these days she will get her office in order, but in the meantime she's thinking about it, which is almost just as good. Visit her website at http://www.nicoleseitz.com/ or find her on facebook and twitter.