The Cowboy & the Showgirl by Heidi Hormel

It's Wednesday Guest day and I'm thrilled to have multi-published author Heidi Hormel visiting today. Learn a little bit about her book, about her, and maybe some writer's wisdom. 

 Something for Readers

As a child, my family rented a Winnebago and drove from Pennsylvania to Maine and back. This was back in the day when seat belts were just a nuisance and not a safety feature, so my sister and I were able to roam around the RV. I remember that trip fondly (not sure about my siblings) and have always been fascinated by the economy of RVs -- how so much can be fit into such a small space. Maybe that’s why I wanted to force my hero and heroine into sharing an RV (the old-style kind), not those new fangled ones with the TVs, microwaves and the walls that expand. I also attribute my recent fascination with Tiny Homes (it’s all HGTV’s fault ) to the early Winnebago travel. I’ve even thought about moving from my current locale to one of these Hobbit-sized abodes (then I remember I have cats and litter boxes). Still, I do dream of living efficiently and clutter-free in a Tiny Home. What about you? Tiny? Or Windsor Castle? Which is your dream home?

Something for Writers

I recently read the late Alice Hoffman’s The Rules of Magic. (She’s also the author of Practical Magic.) In this book that delves deep into how love shapes our lives, I found this passage that made my little writerly heart sing:

“Writing itself was a magical act in which imagination altered reality and gave form to power.”

Although this next quote isn’t strictly about writing, it still made me shiver with authorial delight:

“‘Anything whole can be broken. … And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak.’”

In the case of writers, we create what we write.

Blurb for The Cowboy & the Showgirl

Opposites attract when a bull-riding cowboy gets roped into helping a Vegas showgirl on the run from a marriage in name only.

Val Summers needs to get away from Vegas fast before her almost-bridegroom tracks her down and his missing money. She’s got everything handled until she realizes she’d stowed away in the wrong rodeo cowboy’s RV.
Cisco Santos is a bull rider trying to rebuild his career, not save a damsel in distress, but he’s certainly not going to let some goons take the money out of her hide. On the lam together, they end up stuck in a snowstorm. By the time the snowplows dig them out, they’re a lot more than traveling companions.

Paperback

Ebooks:

Amazon

Nook/Barnes&Noble

iBook

 About Heidi Hormel

A former innkeeper and radio talk show host, Heidi Hormel has always been a writer. She spent years as a small-town newspaper reporter and as a PR flunky before settling happily into penning romances with a wink and a wiggle.

While living in the Snack Food Capital of the World, Heidi has trotted around the globe from forays into Death Valley to stops at Loch Ness in Scotland.

She has published five books in the Angel Crossing, Arizona series with Harlequin Western Romance. To sign up for her newsletter or to read more about her books, visit

 www.HeidiHormel.net

or follow on:

 Facebook  and Twitter.

Thanks, Heidi. Any RV people out there? Can you imagine being trapped in a snowstorm in one? Do you know where the Snack Food Capital of the World is located? 

Series Bible and Fall Cheer

I hope you'll stop over at IWSG today. Heidi Hormel is guest posting about using Excel to create a series bible. Statistics show that readers love series. Lots of us write books in series. If you do that, there's a lot to keep track of and many ways to do it. Excel is one so check out Heidi's post.

When I taught school, I dreaded fall. Back to work and back to the hectic pace of the kids being involved in activities. The day would start shortly after 5 am everyday and many nights I was still doing the laundry past 11 pm. And if I wanted to write, I usually dug into my WIP after 9 pm. Meal times were staggered to fit the various schedules and often eaten on the run. I seldom had time to notice the beauty of the fall season. Now I do.

The leaves haven't started turning yet, but they will soon. The nights are cooling down starting this week which means excellent sleeping with the windows open. I'll miss my swimming pool when we close it later this week, but it also frees up the time I spend taking care of it. And I love hearing the geese flying over, especially at dusk and dawn.

Politics in America

The grass will grow slower with the cooler weather and free up more time for writing. My husband will be watching football all weekend, every weekend, which gives me a lot of uninterrupted time to write also. I'll also spend most Friday nights watching my son coach high school football which is a pleasure though his team is struggling this year.

New TV seasons start for a lot of shows I've missed. Once Upon a Time, Scorpion, Hawaii Five-O and a few new shows I'll probably try out. Now I just need to ignore all the political ads.

I hope you're working on your entry for the IWSG anthology contest. If you're not a part of IWSG, this is a good reason to join us and then next year you can be a part of it.

One of my recent books is now available at ARE (All Romance Ebooks). The Galactic Outlaws #2, The Outlaw's Rebel Lady has one of my favorite sharp and sassy heroine. I love banter between a couple and Jake and Poppy know how to snipe at each other.

Are you loving fall? Do you keep a series bible and what tech or method do you use? Do you have a new fall show to recommend? Can they really make a show to compare with the original McGyver?

New Things

I hope you'll stop over to the IWSG site today. Guest poster Heidi Hormel, multi-published author, is sharing a fill-in-the-blank press release. Every writer should have one ready or at least know what goes in one. Heidi makes it really easy. See her post today.

During last years A to Z Blogging Challenge, one of the blogs I came upon and fell in love with is Alex Hurst, Fantasy Author Living in Kyoto. She shared an amusing post about purple prose words. Read them and see how many you've used and how many you've never heard of.

During my post for IWSG last week, I mentioned the concerns about Kindle Unlimited and thedifficulty of small presses and indie authors competing against the Amazon monster. My publisher threw around some ideas and I know a number of your publishers are trying the same thing. My publisher has released my two recent series in boxed sets.  The Recon Marine series and The Warriors of Gaviron Series. The third Warriors book is part of the boxed set and for now, only on Amazon. The series set has a great ranking even in the paid department so I hope this newest strategy works out for me, my publisher and my readers.

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Sometime before the year is out, I'll let you know how that is working out. I'd love it if some of you could share your experiences in the comments like so many of you did on my post last week.

Last Friday, I taped a short interview and reading with Demi Stevens, organizer of the upcoming York Book Expo that I'm part of. Demi is CEO of Year of the Book Press. She's great at making her guests relax for the recording. I'll share that sometime in the future and you can hear what I have to say about writing and being an author. I hope to rope Demi into a guest post here or on IWSG at some point.

Don't forget if you're awake tomorrow night after midnight, it's that time of year to see the Perseid meteor shower.

Do you need a press kit? Check out Heidi's post. What do you think about buying or selling books in boxed sets? Going out after dark to see the meteor shower?

5 Blunders: A List by Heidi Hormel

It is my pleasure today to turn my blog over to Heidi Hormel. She is just as entertaining in person and in her writing as she is in this blog post. Enjoy!

List. My Kingdom for a List.

I’m a guilty list lover so for that reason, I thought I’d share my list (in no particular order) of the Five Blunders I regularly spy with my editorial eye (I know this now opens me up for everyone checking my books for these).

The Classics: Its for it’s and their for there or even they’re. But what about rode and road or to/too/two. English is riddled with homophones (words that sound the same but do not mean the same thing). The contractions are easy to figure out. It’s or its easy? Can you say it is? If so, then it’s it’s.

Available now

Quote Marks Run Amok: Just as air quotes are over used and have become their own joke, placing quotes around a word does not emphasize it. That’s what italics, bold, and all caps are for. Quote marks around a word, unless it is a direct quote, is to show a word is being used in a NEW and DIFFERENT way.

Semicolons: Nope. When used to connect two thoughts, it’s just better to break the sentence into two rather than use the semicolon. By the way, semicolons prove nothing except you’ve had a grammar class somewhere along the way. They do not class up a story.

Buzz Wordery: Get thee to a nunnery. (I’m on a Shakespeare roll today.) No paradigm shifting or thinking outside the box or even freemiums. The only way to go is to use language that was NOT created by marketers, public relations folk, or corporate communicators. These linguistic tidbits may even be worse than clichés—and you know to not use those, right?!

Commas: Writers either hate commas and only use them when placed there by an editor OR put commas everywhere, like the bling of the English language. There are hard and fast rules about comma usage, but their use can also be very nuanced and less black and white (cliché alert). Figure out your style and comma accordingly (and, yes, I purposely verbed a noun—and just did it again). I won’t get into the Oxford comma which has been known to cause armed conflicts among Wordies.

Coming in August

Bonus Item—For proofreading help, checkout Word’s text to speech function. It has made my proofreading 50 times* better (*Not scientifically proven).

Finally, remember spellcheck and all of those other nifty tools are not editors. An editor is the person who makes a story its best because she (or he) understands the unwritten rules of language, the expectations of readers, and the voice of the writer. Ain’t no machine can do that.

A former innkeeper and radio talk show host, Heidi Hormel has always been a writer. She spent years as a small-town newspaper reporter and as a PR flunky before settling happily into penning romances with a wink and a wiggle. Her first two (published) novels are from Harlequin American Romance: THE SURGEON AND THE COWGIRL (Book #1, out June 1) and THE CONVENIENT COWBOY (Book #2, out Aug. 4). Visit her online: HeidiHormel.net; Facebook, Heidi Hormel, Author; Twitter, @HeidiHormel; and follow her on Goodreads, Heidi Hormel.

Heidi hit some of my favorites. I had an editor once who wanted to change my sentence structure and use semicolons all over the place. Does it drive you crazy to see the homophones mixed up so often? Do you let buzz words sneak into your writing? Love or hate commas?

Don't forget, this Wednesday is the monthly posting for IWSG. Are you ready to share something this month?