Well, I thought I'd share my Golden Heart®  call story from last week. As you all know, The Romance Writers of America calls all of its unpublished manuscript finalists in its annual Golden Heart® contest every year on a designated day.      I was picking up my 16-year old son’s friend to take them both to volleyball practice when the [...]

I was just going to post some pictures from my trip to the lovely city of Savannah this past weekend but today I got a call from RWA that BOTH of the manuscripts I entered finaled in the Golden Heart contest. My friend and chaptermate Amy E Jones ( http://aejonesauthor.com/), also from Northeast Ohio RWA (NEORWA) also finaled in the paranormal [...]

Do you struggle with trying to make your writing perfect? Gosh, I do, and it is the bane of my existence.It's what makes me a good writer and what makes me a terrible writer.The older I get, the more I realize that what makes you good also makes you crazy and bad. The same exact thing! [...]

I just found out my early Victorian romance The Spy Who Loved Me is a finalist in the Historical category of the Chicago North Fire and Ice Contest.  Yippee!!Fortitude.  Resilience.  Rebirth.                  Oh, and this picture is from my garden.  There is something alive under there after all!!

Harlequin Desire author Jules Bennett gave an awesome workshop about deep point of view (POV) for those of us who attended the Cleveland Rocks Romance Conference this past weekend.  Jules gave me permission to post her helpful pointers about writing deep POV and ramping up the emotional stakes in your own work:Before you begin writing, imagine yourself [...]

I have been discovering new authors (well, actually, famous authors who are new to me)--ones who are going to be a part of the Jane Austen anthology coming out this fall by Ballantine books.  I had the great pleasure of reading Very Valentine, Adriana Trigiani's 2009 book about a woman's quest for self discovery in [...]