The Company We Keep

Field of marigolds in India

Enjoyed giving a presentation to the Suguaro Romance Writers in Tucson yesterday. True to my standards, I made a dramatic entrance.

Enjoyed meeting with the board Friday night, and over a spectacular mexican dinner, I began to pass out. One minute I twas speaking, and the next, I was looking down at someone kneeling and asking me if I was okay. I don't even remember them separating the tables, customers from that side of the restaurant looking on. Light-headed and unable to finish my food, and a little sick to my stomach, I was confused and unable to move.

Well, next I heard they'd called paramedics. "I'm fine!" I said, to which they all laughed. I was helped outside and was treated by six (count them) handsome paramedics. We're all romance writers. We write about firemen and paramedics all the time. I'm telling you, if I'd felt better, I might have laughed it off better, but the ladies were having fun. Every single one of our paramedic crew knew we wrote romance. I heard about it all the way to the hospital.

This could be Sonoma County, but it's India. 

I waved good night to my group of board members who were having me speak, from the back of the ambulance, and was transported to the Emergency Room.

Okay, so I did admit to passing out a few bookmarks, and one of the nurses who attended me was a big military romance reader and had heard of me. I got an Uber driver for $5.67 who took me from the hospital back to my hotel at 2 AM, after I'd been checked out, hydrated with an IV and discharged. We talked romance in his RAM truck. I think his girlfriend will be getting one of my books.

And at 9 AM, I was feeling great. After my grand dramatic entrance, I was on.

A grand railway adventure to the caves in Goa?

I talked about my journey, and literally had some laughs about stories I'd heard about other writers and their perserverance, which was a theme in my talk, about not giving up, not ringing the bell. We talked about exposure, getting follows, getting a dedicated fanbase of readers. Taking what we got and just expanding on that, large or small, grand or simple. The pros and cons of different types of marketing and Newsletters, assistants, review teams and reader groups. It was all out there.

Of course I talked about my thoughts about watching my son get his Trident. What he had to go through, and showed what things did or didn't make their way into my books and why.

Life is color, and meant to celebrate.

It was inspiring for me to get up and talk for a couple of hours, to laugh, and to demonstrate the sisterhood (and brotherhood) of writers we are. Great group, and was one of my better days. Hospital scare and all.

I come back refreshed, recalibrated. Sometimes I think I get so wound up with my own goals and focus, I forget that being an inspiration is part of what I love about being a writer. If I didn't feel I gave anything back, it honestly wouldn't be worth it.

Indian monuments of love. My kind of trail. I'm going.

On the plane home, I found something new for my bucket list. I have a story brewing about India, about a time travel romance spanning a hundred and fifty years crossing three continents. Now I have a new mission. This picture is pasted on my wall by my computer screen to remember.

Visiting the great monuments of love? What's not right for a romance writer? I have to get there, somehow.

https://www.facebook.com/incredibleindia/photos/a.305148219500600.97654.144113158937441/1633320600016682/?type=3&theater

RELEASE WEEK! A New Bachelor is Released: Jake

On Tuesday, we release Book 3 in the Band of Bachelors series (part of the overall SEAL Brotherhood series). I've had a great time writing this hero.

I have a printable book list on this website, if you go back to the Home page. That will give you the reading order, and the series, as well as other books, box sets, and novellas.

So here's how I got the Band of Bachelors. I was going to do a SEAL for Cat Johnson's Kindle World. Cat is a good friend of mine, and a great writer. I got Lucas' story done in novella format, and then had to change plans. So this book became a full length novel, Book 1 in the Band of Bachelors.

All my books are part of the overall SEAL Brotherhood series. My publicist at the time told me that I shouldn't have long series. So I decided to break up the titles to focus on the unique group of SEALs in each group. In real life, there are different types of SEALs. Ones that stay in for twenty years, married and divorced SEALs, SEALs who get out after six years, ones who are single, ones who are happily married, ones who have to roll out due to injuries, and everything in between.

So my Bachelor SEALs then are those who have been married before, and either get married multiple times with kids all over the place (like my Jake), or go through messy divorces. The one thing they have in common is that they rely too heavily on their own form of Bachelor advice. They live like a bunch of bachelors, and haven't yet figured out what all the fuss is about housekeeping and decorating a home. In fact, they are enjoying the fact that they don't have to do that anymore.

But one by one, they fall. I love the concept.

In contrast, my Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3 are men who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, from often foster care or tragic family lives. Men who found their true calling by becoming a SEAL. Of course, one by one, they each find their Happily Ever After, and rise to become the warrior they were destined to be.

True Blue SEALs is going to be a series of injured warriors, starting with Book 1, Zak. This story was based in part on the story of Adam Brown, who lost an eye and then have to re-qualify to go back on the SEAL Teams. Very inspiring true story. I used the idea of what impact a freak injury can have on the life of a warrior. Zak of course opens the door to the winery life in Sonoma County. I wanted to be able to include that in the future for some of the guys who get out and go on with their lives.

Nashville SEALs was inspired in great part by my narrator, J.D. Hart, sort of as a romanticized version (although J.D. needs no enhancement) of his early life as a country-western star in Nashville. In getting to know him over the twenty plus audio books we have done together, his story came out, and I asked for and received permission to tell an exaggerated tale of it, tailored to my SEALs. He could have been a bad boy, but I don't see J.D.'s young single life as being bad at all. But that's just me. My hero is the same. He gives more than he takes, but he decides there's more to life than backstage hookups and short term relationships, and rises to the call.

And now I have the Trident Legacy, my first paranormal SEAL. Tay Demmett makes your acquaintance on 3/28/17 when Kathryn LeVeque and I release the duet Trident Legacy. I hope you will go buy that book as soon as you finish Jake.

What's next? It will be another SEAL story, in one of these series. It might be Bad Boy #4, Bachelor #4, Tay's full length story, another SEAL Brotherhood story in the original series, a continuation of Lizzie and Jameson's story, or a continuation of Fredo's Dream with Fredo and Mia.

In any event, I hope you use this as a reference to what has come before, and where I'm going. After all, it's been a fun journey and I couldn't do it without you, the readers, and my wonderful sister authors, who have taught me so much.

Thank you for a great year so far. I've only just begun!!

Protect The Work

I used to wonder when I was a little girl what my future would be. I think most of us with any kind of imagination would. That little record player and I when I was 3 or so, living upstairs in the big old house in Oakland, California, were best friends. The wonderful Disney stories like Cinderella and Snow White helped me escape. Truth was, that big old house with the double dark attics and the two vacant rooms haunted me. And I was afraid. Falling in love with the music, the dancing and the Happily Ever After was my escape from fear.

Part of being a successful writer is learning things about myself that keep me going: my favorite friends to visit on social media, or when to stay off social media, that I love to get all down and dirty with a story until it consumes me (I don't ever do anything in little bites), that writing intense, like living intense is way more exciting than being safe and secure. Sort of like being on a big ship and daring yourself to imagine falling overboard and considering just for a minute what it would feel like to be plunged into the cold ocean.

Our fears are sometimes what drive us, compel us to do things. It works with performance as I've heard actors say if they aren't just a little nervous before they go on stage, they don't give a good performance. Athletes train for extraordinary results. Competing is training in itself. The thing that drives us is the fear of failure in many realms.

Our brain filters what is "good" for us and what is "bad" for us, and for each one of us it's different. I've learned that there are only a few people I really need to know about during every day, and I'm not missing out if I don't turn on every follow or worry about what someone's friends of friends are saying or liking, or whether or not I'm "trending."  Those are fears that are unhealthy.

And tuning out all that "chatter" comes with its own set of fears: missing out on something. I've made decisions to hire people based on not wanting to "miss out." I've worried when I didn't need to. Birds make nests this time of year. Flowers bloom. Gardens grow. Living things respond to the sun and are enhanced.

So here's the right mix for me, and maybe it will help you. At some point, you put aside the fear, and you just have faith. That's little letter "f", but it works for the big one too. The fear is like the double yellow line, or the white lines on the side of the road that help you steer. So anything that doesn't drive faith to me, is unnecessary. Not that it's bad or evil or anything, it's just unnecessary.

Worry is unnecessary, but effort, laced very gently with the fear of failure or success, just a tiny bit, is a good thing. Fierce writing is good. Setting goals and deadlines are the roadmaps. Achieving everything on a To Do list is good. Having a plan is good. Abandoning a plan is good if it causes too much fear. Re-evaluating goals and dreams, adjusting our course is good. Feeling like the tail is wagging the dog, running to catch up, to be good enough is unnecessary.

I think understanding that word, unnecessary, means I have a healthy set of filters in place that protect me. Protects my spirit, my humanity, my graciousness and my gratitude. Protecting the work.

Loving is protecting the heart. Loving with the fear of it not being returned enhances the experience, in my opinion. Always striving, improving, adjusting and broadening my experiences make me a better writer, lover, mother, wife, friend and all round human being.

So while my future wasn't anything like what I'd planned, it does more resemble what I listened to as a youngster of three. That love will win not just some times, but every time. That being connected is more important than frequency or following of trending. And in that wonderful process called trial and error, course correction and that drive to never give up, blooms that beautiful flower of creativity that decorates the gardens of my heart.

While it wasn't what I thought it would be, life has been even better than I could possibly dream it could be.

Writing is Work

Writing is work.
There are days when you just write because you don't know what else to do. Or because not writing feels like giving up. Or that you don't fit in anywhere else. Or that you've forgotten how to be or do anything else.
You have to have a thick skin.
Some days you disappoint yourself.
Other days others disappoint you.
Nothing is for sure or stable.
The world is burning.
And I'm still writing.
The fairy princesses have flown away.
Duty, honor and true love are still possible.
But darn! There are so many potholes.
It's day 5 of BUD/S.
I hear the bell ring, but someone else pulled the strap.
I'm still here.
And so are you. Are you listening now? When do the clowns come out and play?