FRIDAY FAVORITES

Friday Favorites include my favorite images on reading or writing!

(taken from Facebook)

 Enjoy!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Image courtesy of [nongpimmy] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY WITH WINNER

Congratulations to last week's WORDLESS WEDNESDAY winner: Natalie!

I liked her answer entitled: 

Image courtesy of [nirots] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

LOVE IS MESSY

To view, go here.

Wordless Wednesday is actually filled with words--the words, thoughts, and feelings that pictures or images evoke within each of us without uttering a single word!

Image courtesy of [lamnee] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What WORD/WORDS does this picture evoke within you?

Or, in other words, "TITLE THIS IMAGE."

I'll start: "Stop in the name of LOVE!"

My favorite answer wins a $5.00 dollar Amazon gift card.

Don't forget to leave your email!

Contest is closed by Thursday at midnight and the winner will be contacted. Winner will be announced the following Wordless Wednesday.

Open only to those who can legally enter. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be emailed. If email is incorrect, a new winner will be chosen. Giveaway is sponsored by Taylor Dean Books. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

MONDAY MUSINGS

This past week I was able to go with my hubby on a business trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

At the gorgeous ABQ Uptown outdoor mall.

I grew up in San Jose, California and I never thought I'd have the chance to actually go to Albuquerque. It brings back a childhood memory of listening to a Partridge Family song over and over and over and over . . .

                             

I have so many memories of my sister and I singing along with this song as children. We always yelled the word ALBUQUERQUE at the top of our lungs. And I have no recollection of my mother ever telling us to keep it down. She's a saint!

Great childhood memory.

I still love this song to this day!!

I love going with my hubby on business trips. It gives me a chance to have a bit of a writer's retreat. While he tends to his business, I sit in the hotel room ALL DAY and work on my writing, uninterrupted. There are no distractions and I get so much done. As a matter of fact, my newest book, GIRL OF MINE, is nearly complete. Time to do some serious editing. I will announce a release date when the book is ready.

My daughter completed the first draft of the cover and I LOVE it!

She also sent me the first mock up of the back cover, which cracked me up . . .

Yes, it says GIRL ON MINE, instead of GIRL OF MINE.

And I need to come up with a REALLY AWESOME TAGLINE.

And I've already slightly changed the blurb. But I love the silly "quotes" she put in there!

The back cover is definitely a work in progress! But I love sharing this kind of stuff with my readers. It shows the progression from the early concepts and designs to the final product.

That being said . . . GIRL OF MINE, coming soon!

When we arrived home from our trip, we found that our two computer monitors refused to turn back on. Hence, we made a hasty trip to Best Buy and now I have one HUGE monitor that allows me to have several items open and in view at one time. I love it! It makes my writing life so much easier.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

FRIDAY FAVORITES

Friday Favorites include my favorite images on reading or writing!

(taken from Facebook)

 Enjoy!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY WITH WINNER

Congratulations to last week's WORDLESS WEDNESDAY winner: Rita!

I liked her answer entitled: 

Image courtesy of [Danilo Rizzuti] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

OUR HEARTS ARE LINKED

To view, go here.

Wordless Wednesday is actually filled with words--the words, thoughts, and feelings that pictures or images evoke within each of us without uttering a single word!

Image courtesy of [nirots] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What WORD/WORDS does this picture evoke within you?

Or, in other words, "TITLE THIS IMAGE."

I'll start: "Stroke of Love"

My favorite answer wins a $5.00 dollar Amazon gift card.

Don't forget to leave your email!

Contest is closed by Thursday at midnight and the winner will be contacted. Winner will be announced the following Wordless Wednesday.

Open only to those who can legally enter. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be emailed. If email is incorrect, a new winner will be chosen. Giveaway is sponsored by Taylor Dean Books. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

MONDAY MUSINGS

Yesterday morning we woke up to the first SNOW of the season!

Backyard

Front yard

I've been getting a head start on all of my Christmas shopping and now it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. This Christmas season, more than anything, I'm looking forward to spending time with my children.

Not only do I have an empty nest, but all of my children live far away and I miss them so much.

At any rate, I did what I love to do on snow days. I stayed home and baked cookies!

They're Pumpkin Chocolate Chip and perfect for this time of year!!

Here's the recipe. Maybe it will be one you add to your Thanksgiving traditions! They are yummy!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

Cream together sugar and butter, then mix in pumpkin, egg, and vanilla.

IN a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients.

Add 1 cup chocolate chips and mix well.

Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

That's it! So easy and sooooo good.

I always double the recipe, cuz we always give a few plates of cookies away.

Enjoy! 

Have a great Monday, everyone!

FRIDAY FAVORITES

Friday Favorites include my favorite images on reading or writing!

(taken from Facebook)

 Enjoy!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY WITH WINNER

Congratulations to last week's WORDLESS WEDNESDAY winner: Linda!

I liked her answer entitled: 

Image courtesy of [digitalart] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

ON THE WINGS OF LOVE 

To view, go here.

Wordless Wednesday is actually filled with words--the words, thoughts, and feelings that pictures or images evoke within each of us without uttering a single word!

Image courtesy of [Danilo Rizzuti] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What WORD/WORDS does this picture evoke within you?

Or, in other words, "TITLE THIS IMAGE."

I'll start: "Love Connection"

My favorite answer wins a $5.00 dollar Amazon gift card.

Don't forget to leave your email!

Contest is closed by Thursday at midnight and the winner will be contacted. Winner will be announced the following Wordless Wednesday.

Open only to those who can legally enter. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be emailed. If email is incorrect, a new winner will be chosen. Giveaway is sponsored by Taylor Dean Books. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

MONDAY MUSINGS

Lately I feel as though I've hit a brick wall.

Image courtesy of [Salvatore Vuono] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My reviews are good, yet in recent weeks my books have not been selling well.

This makes me unhappy.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The funny thing is . . . when I get down, guess what I want to do?

Image courtesy of [iosphere] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You guessed it. I want to sit at my computer and lose myself in writing.

It's what makes me happy and it knocks all the blues away.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So when all of my efforts seem to be in vain, I remind myself why I write.

I love it and I will continue to write for the rest of my life.

When someone else wants to read what I've written too, it's simply a huge bonus.

Image courtesy of [Sicha Pongjivanich] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sometimes you just have to put life in perspective.

(AND concentrate more on marketing and advertising ideas!)

And so, I'm moving forward.

I'll keep on writing.

I'll keep on working.

I won't give up.

Did you know . . .

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

Colonel Sanders had the construction of a new road put him out of business in 1967. He went to over 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found a buyer interested in his 11 herbs and spices. Seven years later, at the age of 75, Colonel Sanders sold his fried chicken company for a finger-lickin' $15 million!

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching." In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, "I was considered by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams." He was expelled and refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School. The University of Bern turned down his Ph.D. dissertation as being irrelevant and fanciful.

The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20th-Century Fox finally produced it. It went on to be one of the largest grossing movies in film history.

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15 out of 22 in chemistry.

When NFL running back Herschel Walker was in junior high school, he wanted to play football, but the coach told him he was too small. He advised young Herschel to go out for track instead. Never one to give up, he ignored the coach's advice and began an intensive training program to build himself up. Only a few years later, Herschel Walker won the Heisman trophy.

When General Douglas MacArthur applied for admission to West Point, he was turned down, not once but twice. But he tried a third time, was accepted and marched into the history books.

After Fred Astaire's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, "Can't act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!" Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

The father of the sculptor Rodin [The Thinker Statue] said, "I have an idiot for a son." Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.

Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.

Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was turned down by more than twenty-five publishers.

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbusting movie and highly successful television series.

When the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book was completed, it was turned down by thirty-three publishers in New York and another ninety at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California, before Health Communications, Inc., finally agreed to publish it. The major New York publishers said, "It is too nicey-nice" and "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Since that time more than 8 million copies of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book have been sold. The series, which has grown to thirty-two titles, in thirty-one languages, has sold more than 53 million copies.

In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, "You ain't goin' nowhere… son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." Elvis Presley went on to become the most popular singer in America.

Dr. Seuss' first children's book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. The twenty-eighth publisher, Vanguard press, sold six million copies of the book.

Never give up believing in yourself!!!

The above inspirational stories were compiled from two excellent books by Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen,
Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul and A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

THAT BEING SAID . . .

COMING SOON . . . THE NEWEST BOOK BY TAYLOR DEAN

(New cover is still in the works, but this is the first mock up! I haven't purchased the image yet, hence the watermark, so please don't share.)

Have a great Monday, everyone!

FRIDAY FAVORITES

Friday Favorites include my favorite images on reading or writing!

(taken from Facebook)

 Enjoy!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY WITH WINNER

Congratulations to last week's WORDLESS WEDNESDAY winner: Natalie!

I liked her answer entitled: 

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

YOUR LOVE MAKES ME INVINCIBLE

To view, go here.

Wordless Wednesday is actually filled with words--the words, thoughts, and feelings that pictures or images evoke within each of us without uttering a single word!

Image courtesy of [digitalart] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What WORD/WORDS does this picture evoke within you?

Or, in other words, "TITLE THIS IMAGE."

I'll start: "Wandering Heart."

My favorite answer wins a $5.00 dollar Amazon gift card.

Don't forget to leave your email!

Contest is closed by Thursday at midnight and the winner will be contacted. Winner will be announced the following Wordless Wednesday.

Open only to those who can legally enter. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be emailed. If email is incorrect, a new winner will be chosen. Giveaway is sponsored by Taylor Dean Books. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

MONDAY MUSINGS

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween!

I received this review for I HAVE PEOPLE the other day. 

Beautiful!

By klynnbennon November 1, 2014

Format: Kindle Edition

Another winner for Taylor Dean, whose books I have only recently discovered. This one featured Holly and Gabriel and their beautiful love story. I love the way Taylor has so much interaction and dialogue between her hero and heroine. She doesn't waste my time with long drawn out descriptions of places or lengthy passages of people's redundant thoughts. Taylor's books are clean, yet not prudish as so many clean books are. So far every book I have read by this author was free through my Prime membership but I have gone on to buy each one to keep in my library to read again. Please do not pass up this book or any others by Taylor Dean. You won't be sorry. Happy reading and God bless!

I LOVE this review, but what stood out to me was the following comment:

Taylor's books are clean, yet not prudish as so many clean books are.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The one thing that has surprised me the most of anything since I've been published is the different definitions of CLEAN ROMANCE.

Where one person does find a book CLEAN, another does not.

It quickly made me realize that it was all up to me.

I need to write what I feel good about and not worry about pleasing the masses. Everyone will have a different opinion.

And that's just the way it is.

When I worried and fretted over it, my hubby said to me,

"Do you think you write clean romance?"

I thought for a moment. "Yes," I answered. "I do."

My hubby said, "Well, then that's all that matters."

Wise words.

Moving on, my newest book is still in the works and coming along nicely. It is getting close to completion. I wandered around iStock the other day and found the cover I'd like to use. This is just an initial mock up and you can still see the iStock watermark because I haven't purchased the image as of yet, but I think it's what I'm going to use. I'm still in the "idea stage" though.

What do you think? Do you like it? I'd love to hear from you!

Have a great Monday!