​I stretch my fingers, letting them hover over the keyboard, taking a deep breath before I set them on the smooth keys. An old feeling I once loved. I let them lay flat for a moment, taking in every second of this moment I thought I wouldn’t have again… 

Today I'm excited to say that I'm over at the blog for Life Bridge Church, with a special Christmas post on money stresses, "All I want for Christmas is my Freakin 2 for 1" I would love it if you stopped by for a quick visit to read my post. I hope you're all having a great start to the holiday season!

Thursday Tidbits… I’m bringin’ it back. On my old blog I really enjoyed creating a variety of weekly memes. From the readers to the writers, I tried to focus on things that would be of interest to everyone kind enough to stop by for a read. But life being such as it is, the schedule kept getting busier, one by one the memes dropped off, and then disappeared altogether. But I have to say, I kind of miss it. Despite the schedule being more chaotic than it was then, I’m determined to bring back some memes. 

We teach our kids to be honest, to never lie, to always tell the truth even in times when they might get into trouble or hurt someone they love. Always tell the truth, we say. But the truth is, we're big fat liars. We lie straight to their face. Every. Single. Day.

This post was written on Friday, I hope you appreciate all I went through to get it done, lol.......

The kids are out of school for the day because of teacher training. I gave them plenty of warning ahead of time that I had work to do, so unless they were on fire, accidentally chopped off a finger, shaved the dog, or fell down the stairs, that they were to leave me alone for a little while so I could get some work done. Sounds easy enough, in theory.

I’ve been trying to write one blog post. One. For over two hours now. Something that normally takes me 20-30 minutes, if it’s a long post. There have been so many interruptions and distractions that I can’t even remember what the heck I was even trying to write. I had to hide. Literally hide. To do this.

I was talking with someone recently, and it really got me thinking about how often we let people see our true selves. How well do we really know people? How well do they really know us?

I have a friend, we’ll call this friend, Awesome. I’ve known Awesome for many years now, consider Awesome to be a very dear friend, someone I would always stand behind and they would always stand behind me. But I wondered, how well do I really “know” Awesome? And, how well does Awesome really know me? 

How often do we shed our fears and worries about looking like a broken person, and bare the true being we are to our friends? How often do we let them in, be our true self, and show the person we are. Not the person we wished we were, or the persona of what we think people want us to be, or the person we think we should be. But the real, broken, us?

I’m not sure if it has something to do with the changing of seasons, when readers are ready to pack away their flip flops and curl up with a book, but there has been a marketing buzz in the air the last month.

I subscribe to quite a few writers and publishers blogs, so many that it’s actually a nagging item on my to-do list to weed through it and clean up the list – only keeping one’s I consistently read. But among this big list of blogs, all of them are chatting it up on marketing. The hot topic as of late is finding your target market. Not giving in to an easy, blanket statement like “I write romance, so my target market is women.” Yeah, it’s probably helpful to know what gender you’re marketing to, but they’ve been digging in deeper than that. What type of woman is she? What is she like, what does she enjoy doing, what are her typical days like? What are some of her emotional triggers? Is she an emotional reader, or an intellectual one? They’ve been peeling back the layers of the easy route, and really pushing for writers to take a true look at who, specifically, they’re writing for.

I read an interesting question today on a forum (yes, despite popular belief forums are still around and active), and it got me thinking. The question was, what’s the difference between Women’s Fiction and Romance?

I know a lot of writers who cannot clearly define the difference between the two, and many times when I’m asked what I write and I say Women’s fiction – I get that blank stare, followed by “So, is that like romance?” While seeing the difference between the two genres might seem difficult, it’s really quite easy.

Woohoo Wednesday is a day to celebrate, pat yourself on the back, and share the weeks little accomplishments. So, let’s get to the woohooing.