MGR: December–year in review

It was a busy year.

Grandbaby in February. New kitchen floor, gas range, washer and dryer in May. We bought a canoe, used it, and went on wilderness camping trip. And as usual there was golf league and art class.

Read about the rest, including a good year of writing, at Cowgirl in New England

MGR Tour: 2015 Conclusions

It's that time of year. We're looking at how we did in achieving what we said we were going to achieve back in January. Check out how I did here.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: Conclusions

Goals? Arrggh, I haven't looked at my goals since May, I think. Let's see what I've accomplished and what I haven't.

So much has happened to me this year I really need to think about what is new and what isn't. I'm including May's status first, then my current status.

Status:

1. Goal: Upgrade my blog site to a real website

MAY: The blog is half transformed. If you look for www.conniesrandomthoughts.com, you'll find it but I'm having trouble getting into it from the Wordpress side. I also want to dress it up better. Many of the cool things I had on my blog did not transfer over to the web site. I have to figure all of that out. Stay tuned.

DECEMBER: The blog is now a website. I seemed to have lost all of the wordpress followers, maybe not but I am signing up new followers so that's a good thing. Goal achieved.

Read more here.

For me, 2015 was a year mostly successes! Three goals were not achieved but progress was made on them so I don't feel too bad. How about you? Did you have a few goals for 2015? How did you do? What would you do differently? I'd love to hear your comments.

Mystery at the Fair released July 15th! I'm pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today! You can also see all of my books on www.ConniesRandomThoughts.com, Books tab. If you've read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It's a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote the books on their sites. Thanks in advance.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, traveling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

The End Is Nigh…The Year End Assessment That Is: 2015 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

This time of year is both something I dread and cherish.

The cherish is easy. I get to see my extended family including my son who has grown up and moved to another state, and of course, there will be pies ;).

The dread is also pretty easy.

I start the year with grand plans, strategies that attempt to survive first contact with the enemy, in this case Father Time. At the end of the year, I have to evaluate the success of those strategies, identify where and when strategy devolved into tactics and further into a desperate scramble. Sure, some might have survived the year, but any that didn’t require reassessment before I set out my 2016 plan.

Some things that went wonderfully…and others were mixed.

Publishing

I released a new book in all three of my series:

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

The best-laid plans

Or why I didn't get done the things I thought I would this year, but am still pleased with the results. Check out the full post on my blog.

MGR Tour: Favorites of 2015

I listed a few of my favorites from all venues for 2015. Come see what I liked and share what you liked throughout the year.

Merry Go Round Blog Spot for November: What's New in 2015?

Nettle Pod 2015 by Randy Cockrell

Oh my! New stuff!

So much has happened to me this year I really need to think about what is new and what isn't.

One thing that is new is my love of a new to me author, Nevada Barr. I started writing cozy fiction last year and published my first work this year. See the subtle nudge at the end of this post. Anyway, my brother-in-law lent me his collection of Nevada Barr stories set around her protagonist Anna Pigeon. I love this series. First of all Anna Pigeon is my kind of gal. She loves the outdoors, fancy dress is not for her and to be honest, she likes her cat better than most people. What is not to love? I've read mystery stories for years, starting with Miss Marple stories by Agatha Christie. Anyway, I thought it was time to read some newer stuff. There is SO much out there and to be honest, I love it all. Anyway. If you're looking for some new mystery fiction, check out Nevada Barr.

Other new stuff? I don't know. I rarely listen to music anywhere. If I do, it's in the car and I live in a remote area. The local stations play oldies. When in the car, we have satellite radio and listen to, wait for it, oldies. Actually channel 32, soft rock. Of every station available on the satellite radio, what we ended up listening to was channel 32. Sigh. Sometimes you just have to go with your favs.

Food. I'm a food adventurer. I love trying all sorts of food. Unfortunately, I haven't been anywhere that's offered me a new taste sensation.

On a positive note I do try new blogs all the time. I have my favs and many of them are industry favorites. However, I do read some that are unique and interesting to me.

One is https://talainsphotographyblog.wordpress.com/ I love the simplicity of this blog. He posts pictures. Birds, butterflies, flowers. Restful and peaceful. This is a wonderful blog.

Another blog, one that may be considered an industry fav is http://kriswrites.com/business-rusch-publishing-articles/. Kristine Rusch publishes a lot of stuff, free fiction, this business blog, all sorts of other things. What I love is how wide ranging her blogs are. Business, art, personal, there is a blog for everything. Especially the business blog posts. If you are serious about becoming the writer you've always wanted to be, this is just one of the blogs you need to follow.

Another is http://goanwiki.com/. I love this blog. The food from a specific part of India and with a family story with each recipe. How awesome is that? For me the major draw is that many of the recipes are naturally gluten-free and those that aren't can be made so quite easily. This is a wonderful blog for me.

For me, 2015 was a year of discovery and adventure. I hope it was for you, too. Let me know in the comments what was a discovery for you. A new recipe? A new favorite vacation spot? A new band? Shout it out. I'd love to hear about it and try it out for myself.

Mystery at the Fair released July 15th! I'm pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today! You can also see all of my books on www.ConniesRandomThoughts.com, Books tab. If you've read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It's a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote the books on their sites. Thanks in advance. 

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, traveling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

A Few of My Favorite Things from 2015

When I read this topic, what immediately came to mind was the song from Sound of Music, hence my title.

Choosing favorites is one of the worst jobs in the world because you’re not really choosing favorites if you’re doing it right. Everything I enjoyed this year is a favorite or I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, and as in the song, there are so many favorites small or large that no single post could cover them.

A lot of my favorite things are nature-oriented such as delighting in the strength of the trees in my neighborhood (it was newish when we moved in 10 years ago, so the trees took a bit to grow), especially now with them displaying their fall colors. I love the way there is snow on the mountains in all four directions as much as it hints at a hard winter because we need the water and there’s something magical about the crisp snow air.

Those above are the easy ones. With things like books, movies, etc., it depends on my mood. Here are some of the ones that come to mind today, though a different group might float to the top tomorrow:

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

MGR Tour: Influence

Join me this month while I discuss writers who have influenced me.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: How my Favorite Authors Have Influenced Me

Last month, we talked about my favorite genre being Science Fiction. I read a lot before then but other than Gone With the Wind, which I first read at twelve, I don't remember any of the stories. I was a regular at the classroom library and the school library, but there was no lasting impression.

What did impress me was that box of books I mentioned last month. Notable in there were books of short stories by Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov. I fell in love with Heinlein's, Podkayne of Mars, and Asimov's robot stories. In high school, I dove into the much larger science fiction section. There I found Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula LeGuin. As a young adult, I found C.J. Cherryh and Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon.

Read more of this post here. 

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, traveling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

Authors Who Have Influenced My Writing

This month’s Merry-Go-Round topic is a hard one for me, though perhaps not for the reasons you suspect. The topic is “If you could be another writer, who would you want to be? Or what have you learned from them?” While I do not want to become another writer, I have certainly learned from many. This answer will have some crossover in my favorite reads because that’s whom I learn from as well, but the focus will be different.

My earliest influence as a writer has to be Andrew Lang, who compiled a series of fairytale books. From those, I learned the patterns, tropes, that underlie many genres, and I learned my first rebellions. My early stories were all fairytales, but while some followed the tropes, others broke them by empowering the female characters, undermining the concept of clear good and evil, and making other changes to reflect my complex reality. I think of one in particular where the beast terrifying the land is the ensorcelled twin brother of a simple peasant…and my “princess” is another peasant who goes to the king to demand assistance, and ends up accepting both brothers into her life.

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

MGR Tour: Reading and Writing -- Do They Line Up?

Come on over and see what I read and whether or not it lines up with what I write.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: What Genres do I like to Read and Write?

My very favorite genre is Science Fiction. When I was a young teen my friend received a whole box of SciFi books from someone who gave them away for a paper drive. I spent the whole summer with my nose in those books. I found the worlds fantastic and the ability of Science Fiction to explore an alternate way of life has not lost its charm for me yet.

I also like mystery stories. Click here to read more. 

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

My Favorite Genres for Writing and Reading

This is a hard topic for me because I’ve hardly met a genre in which I haven’t found at least one book to enjoy, and odd stories have popped up from all sorts of genres I never imagined writing.

If you want my oldest favorite, that would have to be science fiction. I had a troubled time with reading in school during my early years. I could not find anything valuable in the books I was offered (Dick and Jane) and so decided the whole thing wasn’t worth my time. Then my sister stepped in with Anne McCaffrey and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

At the time, both Pern and Darkover were filed under science fiction (don’t ask me what I think of the shift), as both are anthropological science fiction. I adored the cultures and the interactions between people of different traditions. As a diplomat’s kid, it was as though they were writing for me.
Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

What I learned from other genres

Though I'm not sure what type of writer I am, I know I enjoy writing and reading romance most.

I write to share my creativity, help others and hold myself accountable. I'm not tied by one type of story telling and love blending element across genres.

And why not?

It's fun!

You may read the more, or follow me on The Literary Hub 

MGR: Lessons from Other Genres

I was at a loss for how to approach this month's topic, but I gave it the old "college try." Read what I came up with here.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: What have I learned from other story-telling genres?

I'm an eclectic writer. While I love SciFi and write in that genre often, I don't limit myself to just that form. What that means is, I need to be consciously aware of the tropes, the expectations, if you will, of every genre I write in.

A good example is my latest book, Mystery at the Fair. I've been reading mysteries and thrillers since I was a teen, right along with my SciFi and Fantasy. But I was never conscious of what it was about those stories that made them a mystery, rather than a SciFi or a Fantasy.

Of course, there's the mystery. That much is obvious. But what makes it a mystery? See more at ConniesRandomThoughts.com.

Mystery at the Fair released July 15th! I'm pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today! You can also see all of my books on www.ConniesRandomThoughts.com, Books tab. If you've read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It's a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote the books on their sites. Thanks in advance.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

Lessons Learned from Other Storytelling Genres: 2015 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

The topic for this month is lessons learned from other storytelling genres. This is a strong one for me because I didn't come to storytelling through writing. I came to it from an oral tradition that I later tried to translate into written form. I never did finish that project, but have since moved on to new ones.

I feel I've already given a strong example in a post I made all the way back in 2012 (which you can read about here) where I compared two television shows that on the surface are completely different and yet share at least two character arcs (one I discuss and the other mentioned in the comments). The two shows are Chuck and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

Robecca Austin - Midyear check in 2015

I find time passing more quickly than previous years which is laughable since they are exactly twelve months annually year after year.

I wrote new words for most of this year 2015. I’m also working of editing and finishing a few older pieces. It’s also the last stretch for the novel writing class I’m taking. Blacksmith’s Wife, a short fiction is being edited before going out to my first readers.

Read more on The Literary Hub

 

 

Mid-Year Checkin (yes I'm late)

One of the January goals I’m doing the worst on is keeping up with my blog posts :p But I haven’t been great with many of the others. Not terrible, either, for the most part. How am I doing with the rest? Check it out at https://bonniers.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/mgr-mid-year-checkin/

MGR Tour: Mid-Year Check-In

Howdy, MGRers. We're avoiding the mid-summer heat and staying cool while we check on our progress for the year so far. Here's mine -- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: July - Mid-Year Check-In - how you're doing on your January goals

Picture is Goal by oscarsnapshotter via www.DeviantArt.com

I haven't checked on my annual goals for awhile so this is a great chance for me to check out where I am!

1. Upgrade my blog site to a real website: I've been poking at this for awhile but at the end of June I went into WordPress and poked around until I figured out I needed to do a domain mapping to make everything work correctly. This $13 dollar per year fix seems to have been the final step. Yay. Up to this point I'd been double posting my posts on both the Wordpress site and the GoDaddy site. Not convenient at all. I'm so happy!

2. Research the pros and cons of selling my books from my own website. If it seems good, get that page set up: Umm, nope. Nothing done on that but, to be honest, just got the website going. I still have some time before the end of the year.

Click here to read the rest!

Margaret McGaffey Fisk - Mid-Year Check-In 2015

It can be easy when looking forward to see everything you have still to do and despair. It's one of the reasons I do monthly goals on Forward Motion. The goals matter less than the review at the end of the month which gives me a glimmer of just how much I've accomplished...whether directly related to those goals or not.

So, here we are halfway through the year. I know I have a lot more to do before the annual clock ticks over, but what have I accomplished?

On the writing front:

1. I wrote the How Beer Saved the World, Book 2 story in January.
2. I finished writing Uncommon Lords and Ladies, Book 3 in January (started in November).
3. I wrote The Steamship Chronicles, Book 4 from March to June.
4. I am now writing Apprentice (Seeds Among the Stars, Book 3).

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: June - Beach reads (aka, what's on your TBR pile?)

Photo: Books by Connie Cockrell

So I had this written but for some reason it wasn't posted. Well, June isn't over yet so here it is. A little late, OK, ten days late, but better late than never. 

I'll have to admit. My To Be Read (TBR) pile is full of adventure stories. I like adventure, always have. These are the easy Clive Cussler, James Patterson, stories that just take you from scene to scene, leaving you breathless at the end. Then there's the pile of cozy mysteries by Nevada Barr. I've read the first one and loved it. They're as much research into the current cozy mystery scene as they are pleasure reading.

To read more, click here.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

MGR Tour: Beach Reads!

What a fun topic. Unfortunately, I'm not spending time at the beach this summer, but that doesn't mean I'm not reading.  Come find out what over at the blog.

What’s on My TBR Pile? 2015 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

This month’s topic depends on which to-be-read pile you’re talking about. Since it doesn’t specify, I’ll look at the top four books of each in turn.

I’m a reviewer for NetGalley as some of you might remember me mentioning. This means I end up with a good stack of books I’ve asked for but haven’t finished. And more get offered all the time–interesting ones that are hard to turn down.

The top four on the NetGalley list right now are:
Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution by Peter Ackroyd
In The Air Tonight by Lori Handeland (Paranormal Romance)
Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

MGR Tour: In Memorium - Monica Jackson

Welcome, riders! This month I'm memorializing Monica Jackson. Please come read about her.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: May - In Memoriam or My Favorite Books

I was a pre-teen when I discovered science fiction. I was a reader before then and not the easy stuff either. I read Gone With the Wind when I was twelve. I wonder now what the librarian who checked out the book for me thought but she never said a word about the appropriateness of that title for a 12-year-old.

My first SciFi authors? E.E. "Doc" Smith, Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, all sadly gone now. No one told me that those books were for boys. I read through them avidly and reread them over and over. If you haven't read Doc Smith's the Lensman, it can be kind of dated but the last book in the series really shows women in a strong light and the ultimate conclusion must have been controversial at the time. Probably still is. No spoilers, read the series.

Read more here.

Note: I'm transferring from this wordpress site to an actual website address. It's www.conniesrandomthoughts.com. Check out the new web site and follow that because in the near future, this page will be going away. Don't miss out on stories and publishing updates. Go follow the new site today!

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

Margaret McGaffey Fisk - In Memoriam - Desmond O'Grady, Poet and Friend

There are people in your life that are pivotal to how you perceive the world, even if you don't know their full story, even if it was a fragment of your existence.

Desmond O'Grady was one of those people for me. I met him when I was about six years old. I had no idea how old he was beyond "adult" and didn't learn until last year when he died that he was an internationally known poet. I knew he had some measure of fame from how my family visited him in Boston when he was doing a reading, but I saw my Desmond with little understanding of the bigger picture.

So while his bios and tributes talk about what schools he taught at, the places he'd been and who he met, I'm going to talk about the adult who didn't care about age, who wasn't perfect, had some bizarre quirks, and created strong communities of fascinating people.
Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

Thoughts on Pratchett

Sometimes, reading an author's earlier work can leave a reader disappointed. Come check out my blog to see why I don't think that's true of Terry Pratchett.

Readers' Sites

I don't hang out in reader communities much these days. I did for a while, trying to be friendly and take part in conversations but I quickly learned one important fact: readers are not like writers.

Here

MGR Tour: Online Reader Communities

This month I'm discussing online reader communities.  Come see what I have to say.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: April - On Line Communities for Readers

Uh oh, you caught me. I'll have to confess that I don't know about online reader communities. I should, as an author, have a whole list of reader communities that read my genre's books but I don't.
Read more here.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

Margaret McGaffey Fisk on Online Reading Communities

I keep hearing how no one is reading, how there are no more readers anymore. I’m a little confused by this considering I am surrounded by readers in both my physical and online life.

The question with this month’s topic is not so much what to talk about but rather how to narrow it down. Since the topic refers to communities, I’ve decided to talk about two I participate in at least to the extent of posting my book reviews and tracking my own reading, though I’ve done more on and off in both. These are GoodReads and LibraryThing.

I had a grand plan of interviewing my sister who is a much more avid user of LibraryThing, actively participating in discussions and the like, but life happened so you’ll have to survive on my own impressions. Maybe she’ll write something in the comments (hint, hint).

Based on my experience, the main features in both online communities are the ability to track what you’re reading, a forum built around talking about what you read, and the giveaway programs.
Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

Hobbies and Writing

     Somehow I just keep getting later and later. I set alarms and they don't go off. I put the information on notes on my desk and the cats sleep on them. At some point, I'll get this into my brain again.

But writing and hobbies. . . .

I am a photographer. I can't think of a better hobby for an author because it does two things that helps with writing.

 

Read More Here

MGR: Hobbies that Help?

I talk about this month's topic over at my blog.  Come see.

Margaret McGaffey Fisk on Hobbies and Crafts Aiding Writing

The topic this month is an interesting one for me because I’m a bit of a generalist as are many writers. I list among my crafts and hobbies everything from quilting to drawing to playing the guitar to doing puzzle books. Reading I don’t really consider a hobby, but then it’s life critical.

The thing about creative outlets is they draw from the same creative pool. There’s the risk of taking energy away from something I’m writing by indulging in one of my hobbies, but at the same time, they can have a renewing influence when I’m tapped or stuck.

The risk, or maybe the reality, of how much creative energy my writing demands is the reason my creative hobbies often fall by the wayside. My life is littered with guitar songs I planned to learn, quilts I’m in the middle of sewing, drawings abandoned because it takes too long to get them right, and more other projects than I can think of offhand, which doesn’t even begin to touch the things I’ve wanted to do but never started.

From the above, you might think my hobbies have an antagonistic relationship with my writing, but that really isn’t true. Beyond the renewal, playing the guitar can set my mind spinning through different answers to plot points I’m struggling with. My drawing might be restricted to marginalia at this point, but those same skills have helped me produce covers that have drawn many positive comments. Without that ability, I would have had many fewer titles released because of startup costs.

However, I want to talk about the least likely and ultimately one of the most helpful hobbies I’ve found: quilting.

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over

MGR Tour: Ideal Writing Retreat

I had fun with this month's prompt.  Go read about it here.

Zette's Retreat

Yes, I am late again. Sigh.

I've been busy with the writing stuff. I just finished the last big edit of a novel (In the Shadow of Giants) and just have to wait back on stuff from the editor. This is going to be my first release for 2015. It's been difficult work, but I love the story.

      Which brings me to the subject of this month . . . The Perfect Writing Retreat.

        I would have a problem with something like this. I really would, and not because I can't write away from home. 

Read more here

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour for February: What Would Be My Dream Writing Retreat?

A dream writing retreat? I don't know. I'm new to writing, as many of you know from reading these posts. I started writing in late 2011. I have a nice set-up in the third bedroom of our house with a main computer, a small TV as a monitor, and a glass-topped desk. But I have been known to hand-write stories in the back seat of our car when we're on a road trip, in the local coffee shop and even in a tiny notebook in the waiting area of the local tire shop when my car's tires were being changed out.

But where would I love to be when writing? Click here to read more.


The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

I always thought it would be easier to get away for a writing retreat after the kids left home and we retired. No obligations, no kids to take priority, no...

Read the rest at https://bonniers.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/mgr-february-dream-writing-retreat

Dream Writing Retreat: 2015 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

When I was in college, I had this image of my life afterwards as a permanent writing retreat. I would live in a cabin in the woods, only come out for supplies, and write all the time.

Well, life happened.

I met my husband before I graduated, we had two kids shortly after, and writing became a hobby I slipped into the cracks between working full time, caring for the boys, and enjoying myself.

What I realize now, though, is just how quickly I would have grown stagnant, become a hermit with nothing new to say, had I made that dream happen.

I have written on a Palm Pilot with an IR keyboard while at noisy kids places like Chuck E. Cheese, Great America, and my favorite though now defunct, The Discovery Zone. I have written while sitting in my car outside of my son’s first college (a high school/college hybrid) on my phone. I have written while standing in line at the DMV, using the notes function on my Kindle... Read more on Tales to Tide You Over.

Better late than never?

Better late than never? Here's my Merry-Go-Round blog post for January :)

I've been struggling all month to write this post, not because the post itself is so difficult but because the goals I wanted to write about refused to stay put. I knew I was going to need to be flexible what with the first grandbaby arriving in February and the usual family obligations and impromptu weekends in the mountains, but the lists I came up with were more than flexible. It didn't seem to matter what order I put things in, or whether I changed one project for another. They were all equally arbitrary and equally impossible to believe in. (Read more at Cowgirl in New England)

Where -- no, how -- I work best

If you could work anywhere you wanted, do you know where it would be? For me, it's not so much a place as a way of working. Come by my blog and see what I mean.

MGR Tour: New Beginnings!

Welcome to 2015 MGRers! The years go marching by, and this year will be no different. It will be gone before we know it, but while it's still fresh, I'm going to share what I plan to accomplish this year. It's ambitious, but I think it's doable.

Go here to finish reading.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: January - New Beginnings

Hello and welcome back to the Merry-Go-Round Blog tour. I hope you're as excited about the New Year as I am.

I have a number of new projects planned for 2015.

First, I'm finalizing my story, Lost Rainbows. I received the prompt for this last January and a few of my fellow Forward Motion authors took the prompt too. Every story is different though a few of us went with the obvious, a story about leprechauns. While I generally wanted the story to be short, it turned into a novelette, 16,000 + words! I'm in the final stages of editing then I'll self publish by the end of this month. Oh, I'd better hurry. It's halfway through January already! 

Read more here. 

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara

What to do in 2015?

I suspect this is a sign of how 2015 is going to go in general, because I am late with the first post to this round of the tour. Dare I even make plans for a year where I am already falling behind?

Might as well live dangerously.

(Read more here!)

New Beginnings: 2015 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

The topic for January is somewhat ironically New Beginnings. I promise I did not know that when I decided to join the tour. This is something I've thought about since it started some two years ago, and this seems the right year to jump in with both feet.

My life has been full of new beginnings recently in pretty much every aspect.

On the professional side, starting in October of 2013, I decided to take the leap of faith and put out my novels for the public's reading pleasure. You won't see my name on the television any time soon, but I've entertained and inspired some readers, which is a heck of a lot more than my stories were doing as they took up space on my hard drive.

Like any new beginning, this endeavor provoked both joy and terror. I've fumbled about a little, made some mistakes, and gloried in the ability to correct those errors rather than living with them.

Read more on Tales to Tide You Over.

Beginning of 2015, and what am I doing?

I don't have resolutions so much as I have projects I want to work on this year. I don't discuss the projects themselves as much as I do how I'm breaking up my time to tackle them. Stop by my blog if you want to see how I use my whiteboard in planning.