Saturday morning, blogging instead of writing

I received two emails this week that totally blew me away and renewed my hope. The first was from a fellow writer Goldie Browning who was letting me know she'd just finished reading Echoes and loved it. She then devoured Whispers and let me know that she loved that as well. Turns out, she's recently completed her novel that has parallel stories and it sounds like it's a terrific one. Hopefully we'll all see it on the bookshelves someday in the not too distant future. Good luck, Goldie, and thank you for writing to me.

Then, this morning, I received an email from Su at Earthly Charms telling me she'd just finished Whispers and loved it. Sue designed the very cool door hangers I had made for Whispers that say "Shhh, I'm reading" on them. She also did the interview for the Motivated Writer. I've heard from quite a few readers who said they'd read the interview.

Anyway, these letters really gave me a boost I needed. I am so excited about the book I'm working on. I've developed so new ideas that I believe will layer the story with a dark, paranormal flavor that has all my senses sparking. I do have to come up with another title though. Currently it's called Vanished, but since I thunk'd it up, several other books have come out with the exact same title. This has happened to me with both Echoes and Whispers. In fact, when Echoes first came out, I went to the bookstore with my daughter and we were looking for it on the shelf without luck. So I asked the bookseller and he directed me to the more famous writers' novel which came out the month before much to my dismay. And then he told me, "I should read that one because it was probably just as good."

Heavy sigh.

My friend Kallie Owens is going to be sending me some pages to critique soon and then she's going to mail them off to a big agent who is dying to get them. She's got a dynamite story and I'm looking forward to the reading.

Okay, enough avoiding the "real" writing.