IWSG: February 2019

The year is already zipping along. The first Wednesday of the month mean IWSG, the monthly bloghop and brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. Please share your questions, failures, victories, and inspirations with the group. Find the entire list here.

The optional question for hop participants this month: Besides writing, what other creative outlets do you have?

Not as many as I used to. LOL. Time being a factor. I love cross-stitch and have done some pretty nice projects with it, if I do say so myself. I also love to crochet and I love to bake and try new recipes. I don't do much of the latter anymore. With my kids all grown up, baking is a very bad idea for my husband and me. It's only us to eat those goodies. I have no one to crochet a blanket for either though my granddaughter is getting one as soon as she's old enough to pick her colors.

Hope you all didn't suffer too much in the recent deep freeze. It was really miserable. I'm dreading the electric bill which will probably be posted today or tomorrow. Could be a record for us. It's warmer than average now, but who knows what is on the horizon.

"A fair day in winter is the mother of a storm." English proverb

I've been reading a lot of statistics about publishing and how writers are faring in this ever more competitive field. Lots of numbers show that authors are making a lot less in the past year than they made a few years ago. Over-saturation of the market is one of factors most often cited. At a recent one-day workshop I attended, the presenter shared that 730 new romance novels are published every day. Wow! Romance readers are voracious, but those numbers are still unnerving. How does one get found by new readers?

Working on a new book and trying to keep my 1,000 words per day going like I have for the last four books I wrote. It took me a lot of years to figure out a process that works for me.

I'm enjoying the new FOX show, The Passage. It's a lot like the books, and the differences are working. It's getting the creep factor right. Another show I'm looking forward to in 2019 is the return to The 100, a CW show that gets better every year. Also, I heard this season of SYFY's Killjoys will be its last. This is a fun show if you haven't tried it before. In case you believe I only watch science fiction and fantasy show, I am really enjoying the new CBS show, FBI.

Saw on the news today that Pennsylvania's new budget is once again not increasing the funding to public libraries. What are they thinking. It's one of those things I'm glad to pay taxes to support. Hope your home states or countries do better than mine. On the other hand, my local county has found more monies for libraries. I can't express how important libraries are and how much I love my local one.

Stay warm, friends, and keep on reading and writing. Do you have many creative outlets? Do you love your local library? Did the polar vortex get you? Any TV keeping your warm this winter?

IWSG: Farewell to 2017

Can it really be the last IWSG post of 2017? The year flew by. Thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh for starting this awesome group. Join in if you want. You can sign up here and visit lots of other participating blogs.

The optional question this month:
As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?

I guess I would spend more time on my fantasy writing and less on the romance side of my career. I felt like I didn't get much writing done, but looking back, I did complete three new novels. One less than I wanted but still not too bad.

My local writers' group held our group Christmas party last Saturday. We also went to a retirement party for the mayor of the town closest to us on Friday evening. On Sunday, I made Mac-n-Cheese for the kiddies after we decorated the Christmas tree. Needless to say, I'm watching the calories this week. I'm not a person who usually gains weight over the holidays, but it was a tempting three days of goodies. Still, it was wonderful to have all the children together to decorate the tree plus the new granddaughter. It's a time when I really see how much my kids love each other as they argue over placement of ornaments.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.
Freya Stark

Between now and the start of the new year, I'm going to organize my projects and my promotional plans and ideas. And of course, I can't wait to break out that brand new Old Farmer's Almanac Planner. I already have things written in it. In the meantime, I need lots of coffee for rewrites and outlining for what's up next.

TV land is drying up over the holiday season as usual. The Gifted has continued to keep me interested. The Good Doctor hasn't disappointed me yet. I like a medical show where everything doesn't always work out. More realistic when the patient isn't always saved. Looks like a lot of Netflix happening at my house for the next few weeks.

Last week also was a time of giving at our county libraries. They collected foodstuffs and took donations. It was also a great time to donate to the library itself. Perhaps even to gift a book in the name of a beloved teacher.

The news is awash with all kinds of accusations about sexual misconduct by people in power. It's all sickening and not at all surprising. Will it ever stop? As parents, we need to educate our children, boys and girls, about respectful behavior. I hope I've taught my daughter to take no s**t. 

We're expecting a bit of snow this coming weekend. Traffic in all the places I have to shop is already bad. PA has terrible roads and there's also still some summer roadwork that is messing things up.

Would you change something you did in the past year in terms of your writing? Suffering from holiday TV hiatus time? What good causes do you donate to at this time of year? Did you get the LotR reference?

The Normal

Our local chapter had an interesting meeting this past Saturday. As I mentioned before, my group, CPRW, won an award for being the top small chapter of RWA for 2017. After the business portion of the meeting, the handful of members who attended RWA's yearly conference gave a recap of the insights into the industry they gathered at the massive gathering of writers, editors, and agents. One of the interesting thing they shared was how smoothly our chapter runs compared to so many others. Each of our members had tales from other groups of how their chapters suffered from infighting and drama. Some groups are considering disbanding because of the dysfunction of their chapter. There is not one hint of that in our group. We won the 'less than 50 members' group award. And we all support and cheer for each other. There's no jealousy or ego-driven rifts in our little family. I would never have imagined other groups weren't like ours.

Tomorrow I'm taking my granddaughter to library for the first time. We're getting her library card and in three weeks we can sign her up for her first reading group. She'll be six months old so it's time. Not that we haven't already bought her dozens of books. Mostly, she wants to eat them at this time, but I'm sure she'd get over that.

"To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter."  P.T. Barnum

My publisher put together a Best of  Susan Kelley album for me. I mean an anthology of three of the first books in my space opera romance series. I'm excited to see how this does as it's something new for both of us. I'm really excited that I have enough series to make an anthology with only my work in. Though since this contains 3 full length novels, it's more like an omnibus.

Went with my daughter yesterday to use a great coupon we had for The Gap. Way too many people. Have I mentioned how glad I am that I don't have to do back-to-school shopping. I do miss searching for some cool office supplies. But I really don't need them. I buy a planner once per year and occasionally need more pens or pencils.

I've heard about Game of Thrones being the most pirated show in history but how about the leaks and hacking they have to battle all the time? I watched Les Miserables so I understand stealing because you're starving, but what is with the thieves in this world. I don't understand the mindset that it's okay to take something that belongs to someone else.

I'm looking for a new home for my other fantasy series that I received my rights back for after the small press closed. They had published the first book out of three but only for a few months. So I've narrowed down a few publishers who will look at a book that's been published before. There aren't many of them. Suggestions are appreciated if you know of any.

Are you doing any back-to-school shopping or only bemoaning the crowds like I am? Are you a fan of anthologies? Have you ever been part of a writing group that didn't get along? How old were you the first time you visited a library?

Reading On the Cheap

I finally made the decision and bought a tablet. I couldn't help myself when Amazon offered the latest version of their seven inch HD Kindle for only $139. I have a ten dollar gift card, so it made it an easy choice. It arrived yesterday, a day earlier than predicted shipping date as often happens when dealing with the retail giant.

I haven't explored all the possibilities with my cool little tablet but it sure is fun to read on. It's easy to get to my Facebook and email accounts. I'll be able to use it to access my blog during my travels as well as Netflix and my Ultraviolet account. How fun is that?

Would I have preferred an iPad? Maybe, but I do have my iPhone for my music and a few games. There are so many options for tablets, but so far I'm happy and I didn't have to spend too much money.

In my Kindle account, I have lots of books I bought for free and others I bought for only a few dollars. There are lots of selections out there and you can bet I'll be searching for even more now that I have my lovely little Kindle.

Also on my desk is a stack of hardback books I borrowed from the library. Though I like to browse in the library, I often use the online catalog to request books by favorite authors including new releases. The wonderful library people pull those books off the shelves for me. Sometimes the books aren't in the local branch of our county wide system so another wonderful worker puts them on a truck and ships them to my local library. I can walk in the door, pull them off the special shelf and check out. So easy and quick, and cheap.

Do you download free books onto your eReader , computer or smartphone? Do you have a tablet? What kind? Is your library as terrific as mine is? Wasn't the kickoff of the IWSG website amazing?

At the Library

When The Keepers of Sulbreth was first released, like many other authors, I made sure those google alerts came to my mail box. I googled the title nearly every day, looking for reviews, searching for the independent stores who had stocked my title. It was fun, exciting and sometimes surprising. One of the things that surprised me was the number of libraries across the country where my book turned up on their list of titles, including my own county library.

In the past year, I've rediscovered my local library and enjoyed many books I wouldn't have read if I would have had to buy them. Lots of new authors were added to my list of 'read everything they write.'



Kansas City Public Library

But since I parted ways with the press that published Keepers for me and took the self pub route for the rest of the series, I won't ever see the next three books of The Futhark Chronicles in my local library.  I miss that and I've heard library sales are very big indicators of a book's success. 

I often look for my bloggy friends' books at the library also. Most of them are not there. The self pubs don't surprise me, but I think I should find some of those books published by small independent presses.

Does your library carry books by small, independent publishers? Do they carry self pubbed books? Do you make good use of your local library?