New Story!

My newly published story, "Hansel and Gretel : The Teenage Years" is available today at Bewildering Stories!  What if Hansel and Gretel weren't the innocent children the Brothers Grimm imagined?  Check out this fractured fairy tale as well as many other amazing stories at www.bewilderingstories.com!

New Novel Alert! Cindy James -- Their Highland Trust

Check out my cousin, Cindy James's, debut novel, "Their Highland Trust."  If you like time travel and steamy romance, this novel is for you! The story follows a strong-willed American research scientist, Eleanor Grant, and a hunky Scottish police officer, Conall Cameron, through the highlands and back in time on a journey they, and you, won't soon forget.

Beautifully written, witty and very hot, this book is an addictive read!  The novel is available in ebook and paperback at the following locations:

Amazon
Paperback -https://www.amazon.com/Their-Highland-Trust-Cindy-James

ebook -- https://www.amazon.com/Their-Highland-Trust-ebook

Barnes and Noble
ebook --http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/their-highland-trust-cindy-james


Also, be sure to check out Cindy James's author page (BiokmstWrites) to get information on this and future installments of the Cameron Laird Series!

Starting from Scratch

Anyone who writes knows that the most common piece of writing advice echoes the sentiment of a popular shoe company.  To paraphrase -- You have to sit down and do it.  It doesn't matter what else is going on in your life, if you want to be a writer, you have to devote a whole lot of time, and a little (or lot) of blood, sweat and tears.  It's what you might call Writing 101.

Well, I've been failing Writing 101.

About a year and a half ago, I relocated from central Ohio (Go Bucks!) to sunny, northern California. It was a huge move!  As I packed boxes and then unpacked boxes, I had visions of new sights and sounds stimulating my creative juices.  I thought views of the Pacific, rugged mountains, dry heat and new cultures would cause my imagination to kick into overdrive.  Once the house was unpacked, the children enrolled in school, a new job procured and new routines developed, I did thoroughly enjoy exploring the new place I was learning to call home.  I found myself constantly amazed by the beauty before me -- the clouds hanging on the mountain tops, the rugged cliffs which jutted right into the sea, the sunsets over the bays.  I met and continue to meet wonderful people and absolutely love my job as a Paraeducator in a special needs classroom. I've been happy.  I've been intrigued.  But most of all, I've been tired!

It's only after a year and a half that I'm starting to feel like writing again.  Until very recently, the thought of sitting with my computer on my lap after a full day of living and working seemed like a pipe dream.  I've missed writing. I miss my characters.  I miss the stories.  But stepping so far out of my comfort zone and having to completely learn a new place has just sapped my creative energy.  I think about writing all the time.  I come up with new angles and ideas for the stories I was writing before I took a break.  And it isn't as if I've written nothing.  On the rare occasion I've attempted to write, however, I generally end up asleep with my laptop perched precariously on the edge of my lap.

So here I am, finally, ready to give it a go again.  The biggest problem I've noticed as I revisit my old work is that it truly is like starting over.  I feel like I'm at step one as I agonize over word choice and question whether the story I'm trying to tell even has any merit.  Rejections sting a little more as I wonder if I would have done something different with the story a few years ago when writing was apart of my routine.  

I'm enrolling on Writing 101 again.  This time, I hope with a whole lot of work and a little more of that blood, sweat and tears, I'll get my groove back!

A New Year

After a long hiatus, I am back at it -- finally! 

2015 was filled with lots of exciting events -- a move across the country, a new job and little travel. Something 2015 was not filled with?  Writing.  My new digs, new surroundings and new day to day routines left me feeling excited and sometimes overwhelmed.  There were so many new things to see and do that my brain was exhausted and utterly devoid of creativity.  So many nights I sat on my couch, laptop perched on my legs with a completely empty Word document on the screen, taunting me.  I wanted to write and felt untold amounts of guilt for not tending to my stories.  My characters invaded my thoughts, begging me to tell their tales.  I'd hand write a scene here and there, or try my hand at a prompt, but, when it came down to it, the creativity well was dry.  I thoroughly missed it, but had nothing interesting to say.

Enter NaNoWriMo.

Every November I get the NaNoWriMo bug.  I don't know what it is about staying up into the wee hours of the morning, plugging away at a seemingly insurmountable word count that is so appealing to me, but I love it.  I did not hit my 50K words, but I did clear the halfway point and I was thrilled with that.  To go from not writing at all to making a serious dent in a story I've been kicking around for a few years made me feel great and helped me to start chipping away at the writer's block.  A few months later I'm back to writing and submitting short stories while still plugging away at my NaNo novel.  The creativity well isn't pumping at full speed yet, but it is definitely more than a trickle.