One Week Until My Next Book Birthday & Signed Copies Available! 🎉

Just one week to go until this beauty drops. Woot! I had to break out the red lipstick today to celebrate.

Order today at Amazon: clickety-click!

Signed copies also available at WritePathProductions, my Etsy shop. Ta-da!

More details about the book:

Ever wanted to write a nonfiction reference book? Curious about how to organize and develop your topic into an inviting, easy-to-use manuscript? Look no further!

Packed with tips, this book will walk you through insights into planning, writing, editing, pre-publication, and marketing your reference book, from pre-writing to post-publication.

To sweeten the day even more, my box of copies arrived from my awesome publisher, Vine Leaves Press, and I got to hold my first printed copies of my May-releasing book, From Promising to Published: A Multi-Genre, Insider’s Guide to the Publication Process. Pre-order now open for this charming new addition to my book family.

A double delight, so I had to share. 😊📚 #authorlife

One Month to Go! 🎊

Just one more month until my next book birthday @vine_leaves_press! Woot! 🎂🎯 Pre-order your copy of Writing It Real: Crafting a Reference Book that Sells at Amazon.

Upcoming Writing Class: Food Writing! 🍓

Who doesn’t love food?! 🥕🥔🥑

But what, exactly, is food writing?

It includes a diverse multitude of writing projects and styles to savor, including (but not limited to):

*fiction

*memoir

*review

*personal essay

*free-verse

*flash

*blog

*graphic novel

*recipe and/or cookbook

*haiku

No previous cooking or restaurant experience necessary for the class. If you relish words and the flavors of fabulous food (and haven’t we all?😋), this class welcomes you.

Join the nourishing fun in my next online writing class: Food Writing for Fun and Profit.

Starts: Friday, April 8, 2022. Sign-ups open now!

From Promising to Published: Cover Reveal! 🎉📔

Cover reveal time! @jessicabelldesign knocks it out of the park again!

Why, yes, there is both a dragon and a swan-diving swimmer in my forthcoming writing craft book.🎉📔

Arriving in May. More details about the book at: Vine Leaves . More details and other covers by my amazing designer at: Jessica Bell Design.

Featured Today on I've Got Questions 🥳

Great news! To celebrate my book birthday today, I’m featured on Clifford Garstang’s wonderful site, I’ve Got Questions.

It was a joy to talk about Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit as well as teaching, food, and other elements of the writing life.

Check out Cliff’s many excellent books as well as other interviews with talented authors.

It's Book Birthday Time! 🎉📚

I couldn’t resist staying up to ring in the book birthday of my next book: Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Woot! 🎉

Available at Amazon as well as signed copies at my Etsy shop, WritePathProductions.

Many thanks for celebrating with me and for all of your wondrous support!

Updates on the Writing It Real Series 🎉

🎉Just one more month until my book birthday @vine_leaves_press for Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Can't wait! Preorder today at Amazon.

It's even more awesome in person! 📕🎉@vine_leaves_press That holding the first printed copies feeling: priceless. Props to my amazing cover designer @jessicabelldesign . Couldn't resist sharing this moment with all of you. Writing It Real: Crafting a Reference Book that Sells has a book birthday in April, and it's available for preorder now at Amazon.

Pre-Order Time! 📚

Super excited to announce that the pre-order for my next book is all set!

Whether you’ve never taught an online class before or if you’ve been an educator for years, if you’ve ever thought about launching your own online course or brushing up on your teaching skills to bring extra pizzazz to your classroom this book is for you.

I’ve packed it with tips, advice, exercises, humor, and lots of can-do motivation to inspire the class-creation and class-launching experiences from choosing a theme through syllabus creation through marketing and more! Also, it’ll make the perfect gift for the favorite educator friend in your life this holiday season.

To pre-order and learn more: Amazon Paperback and Amazon E-book .

Vine Leaves Press .

NaNoWriMo Day 8: Reflections So Far 📝

Just popping by for a quick update about my first week of National Novel Writing Month. Here’s the scoop and the skinny on my progress. On this sunny November day, I feel like a bulleted list, so I think I shall. [Razzle-dazzle formatting, 🧚‍♀️done! ] Proceed:

• I’m working on draft 2 of a novel about two sculptors that I finished a first draft of in September and purposely didn’t look at again since. I like to let first drafts marinate a few weeks while I work on other projects, so that when it’s time to edit I see what’s really there and not what I think is there. #writerproblems #tookabreaknomistake

• Instead of writing new content this time, I edit a little each day. No certain word count each day. Unlike a traditional NaNoWriMo and yet in the spirit of NaNoWriMo’s creative marathon, I’m going rogue and savoring the process as it evolves each day. #keepingitcopacetic

• I’m not writing at a particular time of morning, afternoon, or night. Each day has been different, but each day I’ve been both pleased with some dialogue and character insights as well as (on some other pages) frustrated by clunky first-draft stuff I’d forgotten about in my draft. #plotholesIgotem #charactersmademelaughandcrythough

• One day last week, I edited three chapters around 11 pm-1 am. That was my longest writing day. Later that week, I had a four-sentence editing day one afternoon for about twenty minutes, aka: my shortest day. Most days, I averaged 2 or 3 pages in 45 minutes or so of the early evening. It’s ALL good and motivates me through the second draft, bit by bit.

• Yesterday, I edited around 8 pages in a chapter where my protagonist finally has her own studio. #virginiawoolfvibes #aroomofherown For the first time in a week, I found myself adding two or three pages to a scene, rather than focusing on trimming. Both are needed and will happen in drafts 3, 4, etc., but it was refreshing to tie a bow on the first week by being so back into the characters’ POVs that new ideas were percolating again. #writergoals 🌻

Supporting my fellow intrepid and awesome NaNoWriMo 2021 authors! How’s it going? What projects are you working on? I want the tea. Merci beaucoup, and write on! ☕📝

Photo Courtesy of Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash.com .

"Ekphrastic Magic" Exhibition at Revela'T Analog Photography Festival 📄🖊📸

Super excited to have poetry in the awesome collaborative "Ekphrastic Magic" photo-poetry project curated by the fabulous @amyjasek @filmshooterscollective in the international Revela'T Analog Photography Festival, currently running in Barcelona! Check out the festival website for excerpts of the excellent work in the "Ekphrastic Magic" exhibit as well as a listing of other fine photographers/photographic exhibits now on view in Spain and on their Instagram @revelatfestival .

More details about the exhibit: “The Film Shooters Collective is proud to present ‘Ekphrastic Magic’: an interdisciplinary project bringing together thirty FSC members and thirty writers. In it / Ekphrastic Magic, the private world of the photographer becomes the solitary walk of a poet, and together they create a new, unique universe, welcoming in the viewer to bring their own experiences to their personal interpretation of the work. The photographs range from 35mm and 120 film to instant film and even tintype; the images and words are as diverse as the artists who made them.”

To celebrate, I thought I'd post this film photo I took this summer on #kodak #kodakfilm with my #35mmfilm Canon camera. Can't resist glasses, violets, and reflections.