Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all of you have a joyous day with loved ones and lots of sunshine and flowers.

Love and peace,
Devon

Sloan Seymour's Debut

I know it's been a few days since I've blogged, but I have a good excuse. I've been writing!

I wanted to get on here and tell you about a new author, who's also a friend and chapter mate, and introduce her debut novel, That Montana Summer. The book, which is a contemporary romance set on a ranch in Montana, releases in e-format today over at The Wild Rose Press. The print version will be out in the fall.

Sloan Seymour is a natural storyteller with a gift, and I was so tickled when she received her very first review today from The Romance Studio. Here's a link to the full review.

The reviewer, evidently, saw the same thing I saw in Sloan's story the first time I read her writing. Pure talent. She's got a huge career ahead of her. Her characterizations are some of the best I've read anywhere and she lends such authenticity to her settings, you think you're there. I highly recommend That Montana Summer and can't wait until Sloan finishes her current work in progress.

Devon

Inspiration?

For the past two or three weeks I've been completely uninspired to work on my writing. I thought it was spring fever making me lose focus. At least, that's where I lay the blame. Each time I sat at the computer, rather than open up a document, I checked email or browsed the very long list of sites on my favorites list--writer and reader blogs, reader forums, publisher sites, MySpace, and even the weather.

Then, when I got up this morning, something unusual happened. The cable was out. No tv and no internet. After putting in a call to the cable company, who informed me there was an area-wide outage, I settled in with a little housework. When I figured I'd done enough of that, I finally ended up at the computer. And you know what. I ended up writing 2,288 words today, which is a very good writing day for me. I didn't have the distraction of pulling up email, or checking to see the latest on my favorite reader blog. All I could do was sit here and write, and I actually lost myself in it for quite a while. The result was fingers flying on the keyboard to try and keep up with the narrative and dialogue scrolling through my head. It was terrific!

So now I have to admit that my husband has been correct all these years. He's always told me, if I turned the energy I spend writing emails and cruising around the internet toward my writing, I could turn out several books a year. I always denied the truth of that because, frankly, I didn't want to admit the amount of time I waste each day purely on entertainment. But now that it's looking me straight in the eye, I'm going to have to face the fact and reassess how I spend my time each day. I have no wish to give up email or some of the things I do online, but many of the things I'm currently doing in the name of trying to keep abreast of what's going on within the romance community are a complete waste of valuable time.

I see so many authors in cyberspace that make me wonder how they ever get anything written. They're here, there, and everywhere. Some of these authors have built big careers from their writing and are very prolific, but I'll be darned if I can figure out how they do it all.

Peace,

Devon

Light Bulbs -- Warning!

You may think this post is about those rare moments of inspiration we sometimes get. I wish it were, but it's not. This post is about exactly what the title says -- light bulbs. The following is copied from the Daily Mail which, oddly enough, is a British news agency. I Googled for facts before I went spouting off and this article--dated April 27, 2008--was the first one I ran across.

~~~~~~~~~~

Energy-saving light bulbs are so dangerous that everyone must leave the room for at least 15 minutes if one falls to the floor and breaks, a Government department warned yesterday.

The startling alert came as health experts also warned that toxic mercury inside the bulbs can aggravate a range of problems including migraines and dizziness.

And a leading dermatologist said tens of thousands of people with skin complaints will find it hard to tolerate being near the bulbs as they cause conditions such as eczema to flare up.

The Department for Environment warned shards of glass from broken bulbs should not be vacuumed up but instead swept away by someone wearing rubber gloves to protect them from the bulb's mercury content.

In addition, it said care should be taken not to inhale any dust and the broken pieces should be put in a sealed plastic bag for disposal at a council dump – not a normal household bin.

None of this advice, however, is printed on the packaging the new-style bulbs are sold in. There are also worries over how the bulbs will be disposed of.

~~~~~~~~~~

I posted this because I want everyone to know about it. Hubby and I actually saw a news story warning of the hazards because of the mercury content on the Nightly News with Brian Williams about a week ago. I had planned to tell my mother and a few people because no one I know is aware of any of this and they all use the bulbs to some extent in their homes, then it promptly slipped my mind. Just goes to show how scatterbrained I am these days.

What really got me about this, besides the obvious dangers, is the fact that we live out in the boonies where there are no hazardous waste disposal places. So what are we supposed to do with these bulbs when we've ready to throw them away? You can bet your boots these babies are going right into the garbage dumps with the rest of the trash around here--and how many do you think stay unbroken from the crush in the back of a garbage truck.

Just one more thing to boggle the mind and unleash more poison on us. As if we don't already have enough in all the food products we consume.

Devon

Joys of Writing

Well, the Texas Rose story is in a temporary holding pattern while I figure out how to fix a major plot snafu. Ah, the joys of goal, motivation, and conflict. And just so you know, motivation (the part that's grown from a character's past and solid enough to carry throughout the story) is the one that habitually gives me fits. Not to mention the sympathetic factor. But I didn't come here tonight to talk about craft. I figured I should blog since my last post was 10 days ago. Yikes.

Okay. So I've run into a huge stumbling block with the one, but in the meantime I've been working on another gunfighter story. My faves. :o) The conflict in this one is so monumental, it gives me the silly grins every time I think about it.

I managed to get some words down on the page today. But it's very hard to sit here in my cave while the weather is so glorious and the temperature topped out near 80 degrees. Nature, flowers in bloom, trees and bushes leafing, and yard work beckons. Outside, the air smells sweet with the natural perfume of lilac and dianthus, vastly preferable to my stuffy office with Zeb cat's litter box hidden in a corner behind the armchair. Ugh. There's just no place else to put it. Lately, I've been mighty tempted to ship him outside with the rest of God's critters. Only the thought of him actually being out there, having access to the road and any huge dog that might wander past stops me. The poor guy has spent his entire life in this house and I can't bear the thought of putting him out the door. He thinks he belongs here, with us, and I guess he does. And, wow, did I ever meander off topic.

Since I mentioned him, here's a picture of Zeb. He'll be 9 in June. When this picture was taken, he weighed 28 pounds. Truly. He's a whopper and wouldn't lay a claw on anything (such as furniture) if you paid him. Such a nice puddy tat.

Well, I have no idea how I started out talking about gunfighters and ended up with my cat. But there it is. It's late, so I guess I'll call it a night. Later...

Devon

Oh, The Drama...And a Lovely Surprise

Earworm for the day = Roy Orbison's "Crying"

Since the earworm topic is such fun (not to mention weird). I thought I'd add it as a regular feature. LOL!

Angel in the Rain was put into Kindle format by my publisher today on Amazon. Don't know what the result of that will be. Remains to be seen. The list price is $4.80, which is well below regular price for a download. One thing I'm sure of, any resultant royalties will make peanut money look good. Once everyone gets their cut off the top, what's left to filter down to an author? Not much. But I'm looking at it this way, at least I might get a few more readers, people who would not have bought the book otherwise. So, hopefully, it will be a good thing.

I've noticed that the numbers on Amazon have been really sluggish for the past several days. From the looks of it, book sales across the board have slowed way down. No wonder, with all the drama that's been ongoing for the past couple of weeks. First it was the BookSurge panic. Now the reviews manipulation and some really bad behavior over there on the part of certain authors.

So far, this year has been nothing BUT drama in the romance community, and all of it negative press. The actions of a very few have impacted all of us a great deal, and it's all played out on public forums. The bizarre and sometimes criminal actions of a handful of authors have given all of us a black eye in the public view. I hope things settle down soon. I keep wondering how many more nasty little cans of worms (oh Lord, worms again) the bloggers are going to tip over in romance land. Who knew there were so many bad eggs among people who write about enduring love and relationships! Blows my mind.

The Romantic Times convention is in Pittsburgh this year, and it starts tomorrow (I think). Maybe something fun will come out of that. Let's hope.

Before I go, I want to tell you about a lovely surprise I got today. My crit partner, Jan Scarbrough, who often leaves comments here, recently had a book released, titled "A Man of Her Own." She made the dedication to me! When I saw it, I could hardly believe it. What a wonderful tribute. It brought tears to my eyes, I can tell you. That's her cover at the top of the post. Most of her books are set in Kentucky horse country, and she really knows her stuff. This is the one and only story she's written that I haven't read, so I'm very much looking forward to it. :o)

Peace,

Devon

Earworms That Eat Your Brain

From Wikipedia: Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a term for a portion of a song or other musical material that becomes "stuck" in a person's "head" or repeats against one's will within one's mind. Use of the English translation was popularized by James Kellaris and Daniel Levitin. Kellaris' studies demonstrated that different people have varying susceptibilities to earworms, but that almost everybody has been afflicted with one at some time or another.

For the past 48 hours, I've had an earworm that won't quit. It goes like this:

It's lonely out tonight, and the feelin' just got right for a brand new love song.

Somebody done somebody wrong song.

Hey, won't you play...

Yeah. Remember that one? I'm thinking I'm one of the people who's susceptible because it's rare when I don't have something playing in my head. Let me put it this way. If there aren't scenes from a story, or dialogue between characters going on in my head then that space is usually occupied by an earworm. Sometimes, it's so bad, I spontaneously start belting out lyrics to go along with the broken record in my brain. If my husband's around, he can't resist doing a Simon Cowell imitation, which annoys the hell out of me. He holds up his hand and (deadpan) says, "It's still a no." Errr! This coming from a man who sometimes spontaneously breaks into his own stylized rendition of Tainted Love.

My earworms don't restrict themselves to any certain genre or time period. Oh, no. They're all over the place. So, do you ever get earworms? If so, what type of music does your brain get hung up on?

Devon