Well, my first page was not one of the 4 finalists on the Ruby Sisters blog last week but if you haven't already, go and read the wonderfully creative ones that did final.  This little contest underscored the importance of the first line and the first page of your manuscript.  From now till October 13th, the Rubies [...]

Are you polishing up your manuscript for the RWA's Golden Heart contest?  Pop on over to The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood today to check out the finalists in their First Line contest.  The Rubies (who are the 2009 Golden Heart winners) took 100 first-line entries and voted to choose 11 favorites.  Those 11 will submit the first [...]

[Today I thought I'd share with you an article I wrote for the July issue of my local chapter newsletter.]  [Wasn't Nationals fun?!]Susan Elizabeth Phillips, bestselling author of contemporary romance, gave a talk to a packed room at RWA Nationals on “Writing the Bestseller:  Six Magic Words.”  She was highly entertaining and hilarious and packed a [...]

I am lucky to be in a course on SavvyAuthors run by Lori Wilde.  It is a Fast Track Novel Writing Class that goes for six months.  It's wonderful, and Lori is a great teacher.  That being said, the agony is that every day, five days a week, each of us has to turn in 1500 [...]

Had a big family event this weekend at my house that required a lot of preparation, so yesterday I gave myself permission to vege out, enjoy the 80+ degee weather (yes, even in Cleveland, it appears spring has arrived (and I say that with a great deal of caution)!), and dig into Brava, Valentine, Adriana Trigiani's continuation of [...]

I've recently been called upon to read a friend's partial manuscript--all written in the first person.I recently wrote a short story in the first person, which I had never seriously done before. And I realized there are pitfalls.The hardest one for me was the "telling" pitfall.  How on earth do you avoid telling if you [...]