A blog tour

I'm particpating in a little blog tour about what my book is about. Here are the questions I answered for my next release, due out at the end of this month. 

1. What is the working title of your book or story? A Reckoning for Alisha
2. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? A mother seeks justice for her daughter's death.
3. Where did the idea for the book come from? Not sure. It just popped into my head.
4. What genre does your book fall under? Suspense.
5. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? The Heroine would be Angelina Jolie 
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Self-published. I'm a Indie.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? An embarrassing 9 months. 
8. What other books would you compare this story to, within your genre? Can't think of any right now. I guess its original.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I was just compelled to write the book. My inspiration usually just comes out of nowhere.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? My heroine is a Interpol agent who is from Northern California's lost coast area. She is also from a band of very reclusive Gypsies, who don't encourage their young women to leave home and pursue careers. This puts my heroine at odds with her clan and her family for the choices she's made in her life.

Check out www.jilljameswrites.com as I pass these questions on to her.

Cleansing Green Tea

This cleansing green tea I make often for me and hubs. It's a ice tea and helps with the digestive system. Especially if you have acid reflux. It's not a cure, but it does help to settle the stomach and get it in working order. I try to drink one pitcher a week. It's very refreshing.

8 cups boiling water
8 green tea, tea bags
1 bunch of fresh mint
2tbs. Fresh ginger
2 cups ice
2 fresh lemons


Boil water to make tea. Pour over the tea bags making 8 cups. Let seep for 5 minutes. In a ice tea container, place 1/4 of the bunch of fresh mint. Break the mint into piece. Peel the ginger. With peeler peel pieces of ginger measure about 2tbs. Add two cups of ice. Discard the tea bags and pour the tea over the mixture of mint, ginger and ice, add the juice of the lemons. Let it set for 1hr. to cool. It's not a sweet tea and I don't recommend adding sugar, honey or sweetener to this drink. It could counter the healthy properties.

The Diet, Stress and Little Insanity for flavor

Stress is probably one of the biggest diet killers along with that bottle of honey Jack in the cupboard. If anything can throw you off track from bothering to weigh food, watching every fucking calorie that goes done the gullet, and gives the biggest excuse to miss the Zumba class because of emotional exhaustion, it’s STRESS. Yes, stress will take a perfectly good diet and exercise day, and just trash it right into the gutter. It does for me, because I’m a stress eater.

When I’m under stress, nothing that even resembles food, wither I like it or not, will go in my mouth. I’m like a teething two year old. It all goes to one place, in the pie hole, including a piece of pie. And I don’t eat sweets.

Right before I went on vacation with my friends to beautiful Mendocino, I was slammed with over the top family drama. My dad is 90 something years old, (there is a whole story behind why we don’t have an exact age) and seems to think his new job in his golden years is to make his kids crazy. He should get a raise because he does a damn good job of it. It just might be pay back for our teen years. I’m beginning to really believe it.

The problem is more dad’s live in girlfriend, than him. On his own he’s pretty good. His girlfriend, who has been with him for only two years, is a mean nasty thing. Twice we’ve called Adult Protective Services on her. The first time she called her son to come and get her, because of this bodacious insult. The son refused, doesn’t want mom under his roof making him miserable. What my dad saw in her, I don’t know. She’s vicious enough to end up as the villain in a book. Yep, never piss off an author, ya might end up in an Indie book, which stays up on Amazon for fucking ever and ever, one more ever to grind in the point. Actually the whole shebang goes in the will, along with the image of being a really repulsively ugly bad guy, with the very well worded imagery.

What this whole situation has done, is completely throw me off my diet. While in Mendocino, I actually did pretty well, because my friends all eat healthy. It was the wine that was the killer, but it was so beautiful, having a glass of wine on the front porch with ocean view, can ya blame me. We hiked every morning and spent hours exploring the area, so I burned off every calorie that passed my lips. I even managed to lose a couple of pounds while I was there. In between stress and walking, I'm sure that did it. I would never prescribe this as a diet. Stress will kill ya, or your 90 something year old dad.

I had to make a run to dad’s when I got home and confront the girlfriend and her bad behavior and lies. It was ugly and once more, my diet went further south, due to the stress, and because I was eating out. I didn’t want to eat there, I was afraid she’d poison me. APS was there, again, and things were straightened out, again. We're getting to know the social worker well, maybe we'll invite her to Thanksgiving. Oh the girlfriend would love that, maybe so much she'll leave for the day. We just have to get one of the girlfriend's six kids to take her. Damn, maybe I can pay them to take their mother. Buy She Cried Wolf, so I can bribe this woman's kids into taking her away. Please. It's only $1.99. This whole situation has slowed my writing progress way down, to a near stop.

So now I’m fighting to regain my diet footing. I rode my bike like the wind yesterday. Today, nothing, I had a migraine. Tomorrow, I plan on taking a nice long ride. My diet is slowly going back to normal. I’m eating a lot of veggies, juicing and adding more fruit, trying to get more sleep, that’s a challenge, since my dad makes me fucking crazy, (he won’t kick the girlfriend out because he feels sorry for her). I don’t, I’ll do it.

This is turning into the further adventures of Lee and her diet. Stay tuned for more disruptions. The one thing, that is helping with my stress and physical exhaustion, is Kale juice. I drink it everyday. I swear by it. Kale juice helps with detoxing the liver. The liver stores energy. The better functioning it is, the more energy there will be for the body to burn.  This nasty little veggie is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body, especially for women. Try different recipes to get use to it. I swear this dark green veggie is keeping me sane right now.

If you have a juicer it's very easy, 2 bunches of cleaned kale, with two apples. When I drink it, because it is nasty, almost as nasty as the girlfriend, but not quit, I squeeze one lemon in it. It helps to cut the bitterness.

The pictures I took while in Mendocino. It's such a spectacular area. My muse did manage to wake out of a deep slumber a couple of times.  
 

The writers guide to detoxing, cleanses and fasts

The diet is going pretty well. You’ve climbed over the stall, and have continued to lose weight at a reasonable rate, which is about 1-2lbs a week. RWA National is three weeks away, and things are looking pretty good. Exercise is a challenge with life, but it’s manageable. Now you’re considering a cleanse, detox or fast.

A detox and cleanse is a good old fashion fast with a modern twist to it. Every major religion in the world has fast and feasts days. It’s part of not only cleansing the body, but the soul. It’s a good time to reflect on life and faith. In modern times, fasting is still widely used for both the cleansing for those old reasons, but it’s also used to jump start a diet or help it over a hump.

My best advice is not to cleanse before you’ve settled into your diet routine. Cleanses are not for the faint of heart. There is some preparation that is needed both physically and mentally to succeed and go the distance. Think about this, detoxes, cleanses and fasting is not easy nor is it fun and they are not meant to be part of a diet routine. It's an occasional fix. 

Here are some suggestions:

• Research the kind of cleanse that fits your taste. Know what you’re putting into your body for two or three days. If it sounds insane, most likely it’s not good for you and the results will be limited.
• Be prepared to be hungry, at least a little.
• Don’t exercise. There is a reason monks meditated during fasts. They didn’t have the energy to do much else.
• Plan it out. Pick a weekend where you don’t have to be anywhere and you don't have to explain to Grandma why you can’t eat anything she’s prepared for the family gathering. It should be a quiet weekend at home.
• Avoid stress. You’ll fail if you’re stressed out while trying to cleanse. If something stressful comes up, cancel your planed cleanse and do it another time.
• Don’t do it if you’re working. Work can be stressful, and you don’t want to be cranky with co-workers.

Right now juice detoxes are popular. They are great for cleansing the body, but they are difficult. You need a juicer with lots of fresh produce and juicing recipes. A friend of mine, did a three day juice detox and lost six pounds. But-the first two days she felt like crap. It was her body detoxing. By the third day she could manage a lot better. She did this prior to her sister's wedding, so she'd look fabulous as the maid of honor. She came off the detox at least three days prior to the wedding, and instantly gained back 3lbs. But she had achieved a goal to lose a couple of extra stubborn pounds.

I just completed an detox using Dr. Oz’s recommended cleanse. I lost 2 ½ lbs in two days. I’ve kept off 1 ½ lbs. I gained back 1lb. That is typical. You will lose weight, and feel much lighter. But will gain back part of it.

When you’ve completed your cleanse, give yourself one full day of eating in your normal diet before returning to exercising. With ingested calories your body will respond much more favorably to a your exercise routine. 

Remember, detoxes aren't easy. If you decide to try one, whatever you're eating it should be clean, organic foods, absolutely nothing processed. Otherwise, why bother.  

Here is one of my favorite detox juice recipe: 

1 to 2 red beets, depending on size. 
2 lg carrots
2 stalks of celery

Clean the veggies thoroughly. Chop the beets into quarters, cutting off the crown end. Run the beets through the juicer, then the celery (whole) and the carrots. The juice will be a very intense reddish purple color. If you make a large amount and plan on storing it, only make enough for a couple of days. It is best if it's fresh as possible. This will clean out your system...

The Writer's Guide to a Stalled Diet

One of the biggest problems most dieters face is the stalled diet. The reason behind this is your body has suddenly become use to your diet and exercise program. It’s settled in, you’ve lost weight, and now it seems like your just maintaining your new weight.

The first part of your diet is the greatest weight loss. Part of it is water, and then the body adjust to no more fatty rich foods, and the weight comes off. Then suddenly stops. You stay the same weight for weeks.

The best thing to do, if you’re not doing this already is eat six small meals a day. Look at your caloric intake, what you’re allowing yourself in calories, and divide into six. Say if you’re eating 1200 calories a day, you have six 200 calorie meals a day, with lots of water in-between. Yes, you’ll be running to restroom often. But you need to flush the system of toxins released by your sudden healthy eating.

If you’re already doing the six meals, try this. Reduce any other fatty items you can in your diet and reduce carbs. That little piece of chocolate might have to go for the time being. Then increase your caloric intake with a healthier item, or replace less carbs with lean protein. Yes, increase, do not decrease calories. Then add, if humanly possible another 15mins of aerobic exercise, such as a longer faster walk or run. The body will kick start again and the weight will start to come off once more.

It’s important to stimulate your metabolism with healthy food. By not eating enough of the right food, the body will hang on to the fat. It’s often called the ‘starvation mode'. For a dieting body to go into starvation mode, it takes a long time of not eating enough, or not eating enough of the right food. The body has a mini rebellion and refuses to let go of fat.

To get the body going, add more healthy foods to your diet, increasing the caloric intake and reduce carbs or anything with added sugars. The body will automatically respond, by working to burn those calories, which in turn burns fat. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way with fatty foods. If you increase your caloric intake of foods that are high in sugars and fat, like a fast food hamburger, all you do is feel sluggish and bloated while the body tries to fight through the garbage to digest it. Once you get done, you feel like crap, and hate yourself for eating it. The moral of the story don’t try to stimulate the metabolism with unhealthy food. The key is feeling sluggish after eating too much of something unhealthy. The body is trying to tell you something, like its fighting to digest it.

How to solve the problem:

• Increase caloric intake with healthy food.
• Reduce carbohydrates and increase lean protein.  
• Increase meals to six a day.  
• Eliminate any remaining fatty food from your diet.  
• Reduce dairy products.
• Increase aerobic exercise.

Another reason for stalled weight loss, is gaining muscle weight. If you are working out in a gym in combination of aerobics, machines and weights, most likely you're gaining muscle. This is a good thing, because muscle is smaller, but heavier then fat. If this is the case, start to measure yourself, and that's were you'll see the changes, not on the scale. Still look at your diet carefully, to continue to decrease size you might need to reduce carbs and add more protein in the form of lean meats and protein shakes. Read the labels on protein shakes carefully, they can be high in calories and sugar for energy.

Next week the detox or cleanse. Do they work? 

The Writer's Guide to adding Exercise to your diet regiment

In the past few months I’ve fallen completely off my exercise routine. I was editing She Cried Wolf, making it my whole focus. When the book was released, then it was blogging, guest blogging, promoting and just dealing with life. I got lazy.  

It is unusual for me to ignore regular exercise, such as riding my bike, running or hiking. I did do some, but not seriously or on a regular routine. When I was recently in Trinidad in Northern California I was surprised how well I kept up my nieces, nephews and grandkids on hikes. But- I know if I don’t get back into it soon, that won’t be the case.

I’ve been on my Caveman or Paleo diet for over a week. I’ve lost another 4lbs on top of the 5lbs I dropped preparing for the diet. I believe the first 5lbs was simply water weight. Something to consider, the first weight you lose will be the easiest and most likely water weight as the body naturally detoxes as you ingest healthier foods. The body will react positively to the lack of the usual fatty and toxic foods.

Now that you’ve started to eat healthier and have hopefully lost a couple pounds, it’s time to step things up with exercise. Since I haven’t run seriously since May, I’m currently walking to build up to running. In one hour of brisk walking you can burn over 300 calories. Running or jogging of course burns more in the same amount of time, up to 600 calories, depending on the length of time and speed. This is why long distant runners are skin and bones.

When starting an exercise routine, take a good look at it, and examine how realistic it is for your conditioning. If you haven’t exercised in years, take it very slow. I suggest starting with walking a couple of times a day, slowly adding light weights and an exercise ball. You want to build up to a 1hr exercise program 5 to 6 days a week, for weight loss.And you've got to SWEAT in order to burn fat.

I’m not big on joining a gym right away. Gyms can be intimidating, noisy, and discouraging. You walk in and the first thing you see is a cute little girl behind the counter who is in perfect shape. Depending on the gym, there is the body builders, big, noisy and hog machines and equipment. All the classes offered are fun, but again, it is awkward, when you’re stumbling around the Zumba class feeling foolish.  

There are smaller gyms geared towards just women. Those can be much less intimidating, but can be just as expensive.

It is easy enough to start a program at home, with CD’s, walking and an inexpensive workout ball. If you have a treadmill, clean off the clothes hung there, and walk it. Once you have gotten into a regular routine, and are losing weight at a steady healthy rate, and feel better about your body, a gym might be the way to go. Make sure it’s something you’re really going to use. They usually require a contract for a year or two.

One thing I don’t advice, is push too hard in the beginning. I’m a regular fan of the Biggest Loser and am in awe of the contestants and how hard they workout. But-they are under constant doctor monitoring, with trainers, with a regular specialized diet. They lose large amounts of weight in a week, like up to 10lbs. In the real world that is unrealistic, those individuals workout up to three or four hours a day. In the real world, we have to work, deal with family, plus write, without the benefit of a luxury ranch where we’re locked away from life, and live and breathe diet and exercise.

Either find a calorie counting book, or use an app for a smart phone. The apps can be free and update regularly for products and restaurants. If you are counting calories, depending on your weight, taking in between 1000-1200 of healthy calories is considered the way to lose about 1-2lbs a week. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s considered the healthiest reasonable weight loss. The faster you lose weight, the faster it will come back on if you fall off the wagon. Think Oprah, when she went on a liquid diet, within months she was bigger than when she started the diet.   

If you are counting calories, and considering calories burned in exercise, my advice is not to consider the burned calories. What can happen is, “Oh, I burned 300 cals on that walk, so I can eat 300 extra cals.”

What happens, you’ll start to just maintain your weight, rather than lose it. Just consider the intact, not the burn.

Take your exercise easy, build up, let your body adjust before hitting it harder and you'll lose weight. Exercise should be part of a healthy lifestyle. All the way around it's good for you in moderation until you can handle more difficulty. 

Next week, what to do when weight loss slows to a stop.

The Wrtier's Guide for Preparing for a Diet.

Preparing for the diet is a necessary evil to see success.

RWA national is around the corner, and here I am preparing my body for a diet. Yes, preparing. After doing a lot of research on why diets fail, besides cheating on the diet itself, I found it is more about the body’s reaction to the sudden lack of junk and fatty foods. It is one of the biggest reasons diets fail. We’re actually putting our bodies and mental attitude under a lot of stress by sudden denial of everything bad for us, which we often love. It’s a love/hate relationship.

What to do?

Take a look at when it would be a good time to start a diet, and start to mentally and physically preparing in the weeks prior. Most diets started on January 1^st fail by the 15^th. Look at the date, it’s January 1^st, a good time for new beginnings, but possibly the single worst time to start a full blown diet. The weeks prior to New Year’s Day, we party hard, drink too much, over eat foods we normally don’t eat, we're way off normal schedules, are placed in stressful family situations and travel. Then we celebrate the end of the year and think the next day we’re going on a diet. It’s a recipe for failure before it starts.

First sit down a take an honest look at your diet. Not the holiday one, but the one you eat everyday. That is the diet that has caused you to slowly gain weight. Write down everything you’ve eaten normally and add up the calories. It is a sobering experience to see the blaring abuses in the form of way too much caloric intake.

This is when you pick an actual start date for the diet. Don’t make it the next day. Pick a reasonable date one month out. First, pick out the highest calorie item. For me it was wine. I loved to have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Alcohol is the biggest diet killer. I started to slowly bring down my intake of wine to two glasses a week. Then what followed was the slow elimination of processed foods. I’m lactose intolerant, so I only gave up hard cheeses, during those weeks. No dairy, was the easy one for me. While I was getting rid of bad things, wheat or gluten's, were slowly being eliminated. As I did this over a month, with the reduction of one thing at a time to get where I felt I was ready to hit a diet full on, I had lost five pounds.

If you are contemplating a detox prior to a diet, prepare your body in the same way, with slow elimination of bad foods. You'll have much better results from the detox. You will lose weight with a weekend or three day detox, but-will gain it back as soon as reintroduce regular meals, even diet meals. Just keep that in mind. And research detoxes or cleanses carefully, there is a lot of really crazy ones out there. I like Dr. Oz's, because you still take in calories. Plan your detox on a quiet, uneventful weekend. Don't do it when you are attending parties, family gatherings or any stressful event.

As I went through this process of preparation of a detox leading into my diet, I mentally prepared myself for the actual diet. This is an important if you’re deciding to go on a strict limited diet. To try to give up everything at once puts both physical and mental stress on you, which can add up to failure. It’s a slow process to become a healthier eater, and requires patience. You've got to plan every meal, and know what you can eat when you go out. Check out menu's on-line before you go to a restaurant. It's all about being prepared. As for parties, I simply go with the flow, don't expect anything special for your diet or ask for it. It's your choice to be on the diet, the world doesn't care.
 

To help with my mental attitude, I cut out pictures of dresses I’d like to wear to National, and tape them in a place where I’d see them daily. For me it was inside my medicine cabinet. I’ve reminded myself daily, I’ve really started late on this, and so I won’t be at my goal weight, but will at least be half way.

Now take a look at diets that have worked well for you in the past, and examine why they failed. Be honest, was it you or the diet. I’m a yoyo dieter, and I can say without a doubt, I’m the reason for failure. 

The hardest diet for me is the low carb, or Caveman diet, but-it worked the best for me. I’ve found success with it in the past. It’s just I hit it too hard out of the gate, and the diet collapsed under the stress. It’s not an easy diet, every meal has to be planned, and eating out is difficult.

Now I’m on my caveman diet, and doing well, because I prepared myself both physically and mentally for it. With this particular diet, I was prepared for the headache from the lack of carbs, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time I did it, because I’ve slowly eliminated high sugar items over the past month. 

Why the caveman? I like meat and love vegetables. The combination is a good one for me. It does require a lot of planning and cooking, both of which I don't mind doing. I also have the support of other family members who are on the diet, and inspire me with their success. I find it to be a very clean diet also. I buy only grass feed meats, and organic veggies. It's an adjustment, but I'm making it work, because of all the preparation.
  
As for exercise, I’m allowing my body and lifestyle to adjust to the diet, before I start to add a normal exercise routine. It's about the stress of trying to do everything at once. Build up to it.

I'm not a nutritionist and am not indorsing any diet. If you have medical problems and are on medication, talk to your doctor before attempting any strict diet or exercise. Pick out a diet and exercise program that works for your physical conditioning and lifestyle. 

Next week, adding exercise.  

The Writer's Guide to weight loss, better health and excercise

There is something new I’m doing here. About once a week, I’ll be posting my journey through weight lose and health. Right now, I weigh 165lbs. It’s the heaviest I’ve ever been. I have Thyroid disease, (which doesn’t help) High cholesterol, mostly because of my thyroid, high blood pressure, and pretty serious stomach issues. Those last two are from over twenty years as a cop. It comes with the territory. I’m on, (as I was reminded by a doctor) very serious medications for my age. Yep, pretty much.

What brought me to this point is what I call a 'Josiah' moment. My nephew who, is a cop, was sitting on the couch with his kids, and it just hit him how tired he was of feeling the way he did, and being at his weight. So he did something and lost a lot of weight and got in shape.

I had my Josiah moment recently. I hadn’t been running, swimming, biking or hiking like I love. I’ve had my butt in the chair writing. It started with going through the edits of She Cried Wolf, and went from there. So there I was sitting on the couch, watching a mindless show, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of my computer, and was not too happy at all. The Josiah moment slammed into me like a player up to bat. I couldn’t complain. I had no one to blame, but me. I’ve done this before, where I’m really not feeling so great about myself. I’m going to National in July and would really like to wear something cute for the awards. I did this the last time I went to National two years ago, “I’m going to lose the weight.” I didn’t and wore something I hate, that was black.

I’ve made a lot of promises to myself, and announced to the world I’m going to do this and that. Nothing…Here I am at the same weight I’ve been for almost six years, doing nothing. It is my Josiah moment and I’m ready.

The reason I’m bringing it here to such a public forum is because of the past. When RWA had its National convention in Reno, (those of you as long time members will say, wow that was a long time ago), a good friend of mine's husband met us there. The first thing he said, “Wow I’ve never seen so many fat women in one place, who need a makeover.” 
Yes, he went there. And yes, I’m saying it. I’m not saying it to insult anyone, but to make a point. Writers love to write. We forget about everything else including ourselves. We get lost in the voices in our heads and indulge in our characters lives as we eat the wrong foods, ignore exercise and indulge in chocolate. The part of any good writers life is chocolate. It is the sweetness of our imagination, the fuel for our fingers. And it likes us too, right down to our asses.Fortunately for me, I like dark chocolate, that is 72% or higher in cocoa. Less sugar.

I won’t make my goal by National. I’m starting too late. But I’ll lose something before I leave.  So as the weeks and hopefully the months move along, this will be a honest appraisal of what works for me and what doesn’t. I’ve got the experience as a fantastic YoYo dieter. I've tried everything...This will be the journal of triumphs, failures, what works and what doesn't. I'm hoping for the positive as I take a totally different approach this time. I'm ready to kick my own ass into gear.

I might get brave in the coming weeks and put a picture of myself up on the blog. But for now, I'll just hope I look like the silhouette in about six months. 

Next week: Wrapping ones head around the idea of diet. Believe it or not you've got to prepare your body for it..

  

Writing during summer, or the lack of....

Summer is literally just around the corner and my writing time is sucked right up into the hot Northern California sun. From late summer to late spring, I’m in writing heaven. I have time to sit at my computer for several hours a day and write. Once summer hits, it’s gone with the breezes coming of the San Francisco bay.

Don’t get me wrong I love summer. I live in an area known as the eastern most area of the San Francisco bay, which means we dodge the June gloom of the city. The weather is beautifully bright and I want to be out in it. The first thing to take me away from writing is the sunshine and gardening. I love my roses and irises and spend long hours working in the yard.

Then there is biking and hiking. I love to bike in the morning to escape the heat, and hike on weekends through our golden hills at the foot of Mt. Diablo. Another distraction.

Then there is my grandkids, who spend weeks at a time with us during the summer. I try to write when they go to bed, but usually they wear me out, making it difficult to write. I just want to relax. Since I run and bike early in the morning that sucks that time up.

Then there is camping trips with family or just me and hub’s wanting to get away in the mountains to hike and get away from all things electronic. I often bring a notebook and write long hand during those trips. It’s amazing what I get done that way. No distractions other than a squirrel or the occasional bear at night.

The answer to this is to write as many completed manuscripts as humanly possible during the rest of the year, so when summer hits, I have nothing bending. Right now I’m in the middle of completely my next release and it can’t come at a worse time, with summer and all its distraction.    

I’ve changed release dates because of this situation, because it simply isn’t going to get done. I do love my summers, but they are my greatest distraction.

Now I can Say I'm a author, a real author!

My book, She Cried Wolf was finally completed, handed over to a editor, then beta readers, then I formatted (with the help of Jill James) and up loaded to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

Then I quietly sit, chew my nails, drink wine and freak out.

Now I wait for reviews, or lack of, or bad ones, or the drive-by 1 star, and drink the whole bottle of wine and continue to freak out, while I try not to check my stats every few seconds. Even though the book has only been released for one hour. I’m checking. I’m freaking out. I’m checking some more and waiting. 

I’ve been writing a long time and this isn’t my first manuscript. But the first I felt good enough to be published but not the first completed.

I’ve been down that long rocky road of rejections, enough to wallpaper my bedroom, down the hall, and into the bathroom. When self-publishing took the turn it did recently for all us little people, I jumped on the very overloaded and crowded wagon to seek publication, because the other more traditional way, wasn’t working for me well. Let’s rephrase that, it wasn’t working at all. But I wasn’t alone.

It’s not that I love to write, or am that good of a writer, but I love to tell stories. As an author, I’ve got plenty of material to work with, and time to write it. Self-publishing worked well for both. So I bit the bullet, had a cover designed, finished my manuscript, went through the editing process and asked friends and family to be beta readers, than learned to format my manuscript to be published, and at the end of it all I can say I’m a author, a real author.

Now on to the next book…It’s a bit addictive to see one’s name up on a book cover and a dream come true.

I’m a author..Finally…

Lee Lopez, 

Author