Another year has closed and the start of a new one is officially off the ground.

I, for one, am glad to see the old year go. The last six months were rife with breaking things--cars, oven, house heater, windshields. And also new things--fix cars and heater, new windshields, oven, new cookware. I treated myself on Cyber Monday with a set of Calphalon cookware and I can honestly say it's the best cookware I've ever had.

Aside from all that, the last year was a hard one for me, creatively. I let all the awful things happening in the industry stifle my writing (Cocky Gate, book stuffing). I think I just got caught up in the drama, which is something I try never to do but I had a hard time looking away from that Cocky Gate thing. I stopped writing for a good six months when I got depressed over sales and everything happening in the industry and had a very "why bother?" attitude.

Towards the end of the summer, though, I got off Twitter and started thinking, seriously, about my future writing.

For 2019, I’ve decided I want to focus on the writing and publishing my backlist as well as some new material. After 60+ rejections, it makes you re-evaluate your writing life and make decisions about the career. Even though I have a day job, I do consider this a second career, so it was time to move forward instead of standing still. I’m throwing myself into indie publishing and looking forward to getting those stories told and in the hands of readers. My focus is all on the writing and the books and not so much on the marketing, though I do understand that plays a role as well.

I don’t want to get hung up on the money aspect of it like I have in the past. It’s a soul-crushing feeling sometimes to look at sales and see nothing for weeks or sometimes months. And I know that’s mostly my fault. I haven’t been producing like I should or want to. I haven’t been talking to my 3000+ newsletter subscribers. I hope to change that for 2019.

I haven’t given up on the dream that someday my books will be on the bookshelves or they’ll be turned into movies. I have very specific ideas about who should play my lead characters. Heck, I’d even settle for an HBO series. *grin*

There are other non-writing things I want to accomplish, too. Declutting is always high on my list. Getting the kid graduated and into college is another. Overall, though, I’m proclaiming 2019 Year of the Books.

How about you? What are you plans for the new year?

Do I have your attention? :)

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I mean like really participating. Not just signing up and then ignoring my book for the next 30 days.

(For those who may not know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month during November where you write 50,000 in 30 days AND survive the Thanksgiving holiday!)

Anyway…I decided to get off my duff and start working on book two in my Dragon Protectors series. I really hadn’t intended to start writing that book yet but when I put the first one up for preorder and it started getting a good response, I figured I better get on it. I even went so far as to go ahead and upload a preorder over at Draft2Digital and gave myself six months to complete it and get it ready for sale.

Would it surprise you to know, I don't write all day, every day. I'm a 9:30 to 4:30 writer. I have tons of stuff to do around my house and have to squeeze it in-today is fix the washer day; tomorrow is a new plumber coming to fix the dripping pipes under my master sink; somewhere in there is the a/c man to figure out why there is weird programming on my Nest thermostat.


So I thought I'd share what I completed last year:

I don’t often recommend products. When I do, it has to be something I truly, whole-heartedly believe in. I’m not a sales person (as evidenced by my own sucky book sales LOL) by any stretch. I’ve tried to sell jewelry and Avon but I’m…just…not cut out for that.

But there is one thing that has transformed me. Not just my writing life, but my life in general. I love to journal but sometimes those blank pages can be daunting. I love setting goals but I can never figure out how to achieve those goals. One of my big goals is to write full time, but I never really sat down to figure out what steps I had to do to make that happen. I mean, I know I need to write books. But how does that break down into achievable steps to get there?

One day I was skimming through my Facebook feed, as you do, and I kept seeing this sponsored ad over and over again. It hadn’t really stopped to look at it until one day, finally, I paused and really looked at the ad. It was for a journal, but a journal designed to help you reach you goals.



Huh. I was intrigued. I followed the link to the Facebook page here.

And then I ended up on their website.

Hello, readers!

After a long hiatus, I’m finally back as a Princess. It’s nice to be back amongst the crown-wearing gals!

I took a long sabbatical from writing. I did a lot of soul-searching to figure out what I was doing and who I was as a writer. I now know what the root of my problem was—I was really depressed about the state of my books that are currently held hostage by a publisher. Getting a check for less than $10—or a check not at all—was a huge blow to my writer ego. Because I poured my heart and soul into those books and I felt like they were slighted. I also felt like they were being served a great injustice by not making any money when I was SURE they were better books than that. I’ve requested the rights back to almost all of them—and have received rights back to one of them. Now it’s just a waiting game to see what’s going to happen.

And it hurts. A lot.

So putting all that aside was difficult at best for me. It’s never an easy thing to see your books sit and not earn money. Any books—not just the ones with a publisher but the indie ones too. I had to come to terms with that because I can’t be everywhere I want to be—I’m not MasterCard, after all. I’m a mom with a husband and a full time job. I had to stop and decide where my time was best spent and that was writing, not spinning my wheels marketing. I’m sure there is some value in that—blogging, ads, tweeting, etc.—but it stressed me out to the point I mentally shut down.

So I let it go.

Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She's been writing for public consumption for the last four years.  She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head.

Speed Round:

Favorite movie:  Dead Poet’s Societ 
Favorite book:  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See 
Last book read:  Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda by Tara Lee Reed 
Favorite color: Blue Stilettos or flip-flops:  flip-flops 
Coffee or tea:  Coffee 
E-book or paperback:  E-book 

After I had been secretly writing for a few months, I sat down to have dinner with Handsome who had been mega traveling. We chatted about the usual—kids, cats, house, his trip, my upcoming class reunion. Then he asked, “What have you been up to?” meaning besides Jazzercise, needlepoint, and reading.

I drew a deep breath and let this rip quickly, “I’ve been writing.”

I'm sorry.  Today's my day to blog and I totally spaced on the date.  So, since I didn't have anything ready, I've pulled an older blog post that I did for another blog and I'm going to post it here today.  It still applies to the way I think, so I hope you'll get something out of  it.

Steam! Romancing the railroads…

Something about railroads calls to my romantic nature. Maybe it’s the passion and excitement of a long-ago era when America expanded its boundaries as fast as men could lay track. I wanted to give readers a glimpse into that exciting time period, and that’s how the idea came about for the series Steam! Romance and Rails.

Both books in this series are set against an actual construction race between two railroads with long names that were dubbed “The Katy” and “The Border Tier.” Passion’s Prize focuses on The Katy’s story. Her Bodyguard follows the troubled Border Tier and a woman embroiled in a bitter war between the railroad and rioting settlers. 

#writing #social media

I love this sign! And what does it have to do with my blog today? Um, nothing much, but it cracks me up and is so true. Rather reminds me of a product I used to use, a shower cleaner where a bottle of cleaner went in a battery-powered holder. Push a button and voila, spray comes out and cleans your shower. Since this meant less work for me, I bought one as soon as it came out. Pretty soon I started noticing a warning on the bottle: This is not a body wash. Nah, REALLY? Can you picture that? Someone jumping in the shower, pushing the button and thinking the chemical cleaner would clean their body? Cracks me up. And what about the Do Not Use In Shower tags on hairdryers? Didn't we learn that electricity + water = very bad in Kindergarten?? Stupidity knows no limits.

Anyway, on to my take on social media. Does it help? Of course it does. Can you find readers in social media land? Sure you can. But this blog is for those of us who get shivers when we think of getting out there and marketing and promoting. Now, I know I'm not the only author out there that has to suck it up and promote even though I'd rather be reading or writing or even hand scrubbing the shower. Lots of other things to do besides try to come up with ideas for social media. And there are plenty of blogs, etc. about what to share/write about in online digital land.

I'm sure you've read interviews with authors that when asked how long they've been writing they reply since childhood. That's the case with me. One of my first stories was similar to Nancy Drew, a mystery where the sleuth found a key trapped in tree roots from a century before that unlocked some chest holding some treasure. I'm not sure what ever happened to that story, perhaps Mom has it hidden in her closet. <g>  But I did find another story I wrote in sixth grade and thought it might be fun to post parts of it here. Hopefully my writing has improved since then. <g>

This is the story of my childhood dog that I wrote for an English writing assignment. And as you can see in the pix above, I typed it on our ancient typewriter (that's me on the couch and my bro smiling for the camera while Mom pets Tasha). My teacher liked it so much she let the principal read it. His comment was: "Sprightly is a word that I think I have never used ('til now). I can think of no other which so fittingly describes this." The teacher said she loved the humor. After reading it now, I cringe at all the exclamation points. Yikes. Anyway, here goes the condensed version with all the exclamation points left in (get ready to cringe):

Hi! My name is Natasha Golden Amber, but they call me Tasha for short. I heard that you wanted my life story. Did you? I'm glad to hear that! I'll tell you all about me!

Photo courtesy Zimbio.Com

A few days ago, my son (who is 11) and I were running a few errands. One of the stops was the post office in which I was mailing a box of swag and a free book as well as an envelope with some swag. He held up the envelope and asked if that was bookmarks. I said yes and that they were for a reader.

Then the conversation went like this:

"Mom, how popular are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"In your book stuff. How popular are you?"

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. "I’m pretty much a nobody, son."

He didn’t seem to believe me. "But on a scale of 1 to 100, how popular are you?"

I laughed again. I guess to him I am SUPER popular because I have books and talk about writing pretty much 24/7. I’m sure my husband and son are sick of me. It’s all consuming. Just ask them. Poor guys.

When I didn’t respond, he said, "Like...are you a 60 or an 80?"

Bless his little heart. He thinks I’m that popular. I muttered, "More like a 20."

And then we had a long discussion about genre fiction. One of his questions was, "Why don’t you write science fiction or fantasy, Mom?"

I think that’s a sign, don’t you?

Everybody's been unwinding from a busy and hectic holiday season, and I'm no different. I just got the rest of my Christmas decorations put away today and it's the middle of January! I am already falling behind. Trying to come up with a blog post for today . . . well my brain completely shut off. Couldn't think of a single thing I thought would interest people coming to the PP blog.

Then it hit me. Literally. My spiral bound calendar fell off the corner of my desk and landed on my foot, a clear indication something had to be done with the stacks and stacks of stuff sitting on my desk.

Let me explain. I work a full time job in addition to writing. But I'm one of the "lucky" ones who can work from home. I'm basically on the computer all day long. I work at the computer. I write at the same computer. It is pretty much my constant companion. So I thought I'd share with you my writing space.