Balancing Parenting, Publishing, and Dog Rescue! #TBSU

Today's post is an emotional check-in for me. Perhaps your feelings will resonate with mine.

Publishing Novels

Carole Remy is a writer, and I created this blog to sell her novels. Sometimes I feel like I really am Carole Remy, the alternate me. Other days I can write about her in the third person. Today is one of the 'other days.'

photo by Anita Peppers

Carole has repeated many steps of the writing process over the past several years. Here's her curve. (Skip the list if you want. It's here as an encouragement to hang in.)

write Beauty of the Beast

quick success with a well-known publisher

write Fantasy Impromptu 

get scared and wait a year to show anyone

more success with the same publisher

write Twelve Nights

do other stuff

write Who Is Candid?

live life

write Ophelie

write the sequel to Ophelie (as yet unpublished)

several years of other stuff

three novels published with indie publisher

ten year gap [meanwhile, Mary Carol Moran, the other me, is writing and studying poetry] 

many poems and two collections nicely published

along comes Kindle! wait several years...

Kaboom! five previously published novels now available on Kindle

What It Means...??

Though seven of my books (novels and poetry collections), have found generous and helpful publishers, mostly I've lived my life doing other things than writing. I'm a binge writer. Maybe some of you can relate. When the mood hits, I write a novel flat out, sometimes in as little as two weeks. Editing takes forever, but I'm one of those lucky writers who actually loves every step of the editing process. Maybe I should thank all those years of revising poems, word by word.

The past has given me enough confidence and life-cushion that, while I love and get excited by book sales, they don't define me. Separating your ego from your artistic creation is almost impossible; I'm nowhere near there! A benefit of having a pseudonym, perhaps, is that Carole Remy's success is a little bit separate from the joy of day to day life.

I figured out early on that writing wasn't likely to bring in a lot of money. [From a Law of Attraction perspective, I have a limiting belief that writing won't bring me the big bucks. Naughty me, but I can live with it. There are worse beliefs.] Over the years, I've made way more money teaching and coaching other writers than I've made from my own books. The fact that Amazon sends a sweet little check every month is a pure fun bonus.

The Power of Distraction

Maybe I'm not really a dedicated writer, or maybe I'm living a balanced life.

Me with my two amazing and lovely daughters!

Raising my children never slipped from being my top priority. As a single mom, that meant finding a job that I loved AND that paid enough to keep us going = teaching. Writing took a back seat. A nice big comfy armchair back seat, but still not in the front row.

For the last six months, I've put the Kindle novels not only in the front row, but in the driver's seat. I've lived, eaten, breathed Amazon, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, book blog tours, and every other method of building a social platform. It's fun and I love it. But a part of me still understands the value of diversity. My Mom always used to say, "Make sure you always have more than one string to your bow."

With a friend, Marissa Lepe Preciado, and lots of supporters, I'm moving more and more into the consuming realm of dog rescue. Just as dog rescue keeps me from focusing exclusively on book promotion, so the books keep me from submerging tooooo deeply into rescue. Either can easily become all-consuming to the point of burnout. As kids and writing did in years past, now dogs and writing will help me keep life in balance.

I love blogging!

The greatest lesson for me from the last six months is the realization that I truly love blogging! Thank you to every single reader for sharing my life, hopes, depressions, elations, and occasional aha moments. The immediacy of blogging offers satisfactions that even novel-writing lacks. Each genre has its seductions: the world-building of novels, the joy of expressing a precise emotion in poetry, and the back-and-forth instant readership/response of blogging.

by duane j

Yesterday I began a new blog, Friends of RCA Colima, to chronicle the building and ongoing operation of our dog shelter, Refugio Cachorros y Abuelitos (Safe Haven for Puppies and Good Old Dogs). I'll provide links here on this blog, as well as occasional direct updates.

My goal is still to publish at least ten articles a month here on Carole Remy. The focus will shift a little more toward writing, editing, publishing, and building a platform. If you are interested in animal rescue, I invite you to follow my blog Friends of RCA Colima. I'll try for ten posts a month there as well. Another four posts a month, focused mainly on emotional issues, appear every Saturday on Skelations. Lastly, if you prefer or want to brush up your Spanish, the Facebook page for all our animal activities is Amigos de Perros y Gatos Colima.

Thank you!!

Once again, thank you so much for including me in your world. Giant group hugs for everyone! Let me know your thoughts and feelings in the comments! What is your writing arc? Are you more a binge writer, or a steady writer? How do you balance different worlds? I look forward to a lively discussion.

Check out these related posts by gifted writers who share their perspectives on writing and life.

• Encouraging Words from Aubrianna Hunter 
• Encouraging Words from Nathalie Thompson
• Encouraging Words from Kevin Hanrahan
• Encouraging Words from Seumas Gallacher
• Encouraging Words from Ronnie L. Smith of Writer's Relief
• Encouraging Words from William Ogden Haynes

• Rescue K911 (Alabama, USA)
• For the Love of Louie *Michigan Lost Pet Lookers* (Michigan, USA)
• Save a Mexican Mutt (English language dog rescue page based in San Miguel de Allende, MX)
• Puppy Rescue Mission (rescues soldiers' companion dogs, mainly from Afghanistan)

Live in Joy, Today! #TBSU

This past week, I've lived in a different world, immersed in the animal rescue sub genre of spay/neuter. The campaign lasted five days. We spay/neutered about 150 cats and dogs; the camaraderie was joyful; the connection to the four-legged beasts was intense; and the physical exhaustion is still with me.

Why does such an experience come into a person's life? The Law of Attraction states that we attract experiences into our lives through our vibration. Feel joy, get more joy. Feel frustration, get more frustration. I'll go a step further and posit that what happened for me this time is that some interior subconscious nerve center sent out a message that I was ready to learn something more about myself, to peel back another layer of the never finished onion.

Six Months of Bliss

Moving to Mexico in January 2011, where I can't work because of my visa, forced/allowed me to relax from wanting to achieve anything.

I lived happily in the moment, with enough money to live what felt like really well. My pension didn't quite make it through the month in the US (and didn't leave any room to buy health insurance). Suddenly I had plenty to rent a nice house, eat out whenever I wanted, learn salsa dancing and wood sculpture, and hire a wonderful woman to clean. Free top quality health care was an incredible bonus and anxiety reducer!

The Seeds of Wanting More

Then about two years ago, I spent an interval in the lap of big time luxury. Anything I wanted was bought for me. I was taken on a lovely trip, all expenses paid. Returning to Mexico, the seeds of discontent awoke. My beautiful life was exactly the same, but it didn't feel like plenty any more. I began to want the money to start an extensive animal shelter. I began to want, period. An old internal barrier to happiness reawoke.

With the benefit of two years hindsight, I see now that I had already begun to be attracted to seductive friends, ambitious wonderful people who wanted and were attracting fame and fortune. Exactly the people to eventually bring me to my present day awareness.

Putting my Novels on Amazon Kindle

In January 2013, I made the decision to put my backlist novels on Amazon. It was something I'd been thinking about for years, and suddenly the time seemed right. Two of the novels had been quite successful in print, and I saw Kindle as a way to bring in passive income to run an animal shelter.

I threw myself into action, setting up a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and this blog. Formatting the novels for Kindle, and contracting beautiful covers. Dipping my toe in the deep waters of Goodreads (which I still haven't figured out). I loved it. I still love it!

Working is seductive. Anyone who has tried retirement knows this. The temptation to find your identity in what you do, in external monitors of success, is overwhelming.

But...

The harder I pushed, the more elusive external success became. With zero expectations, my first novel shot to #1 on its initial KDP free days. Woohoo! Few sales, but my name was getting out there. Then the KDP free day promotion for the second novel, with high expectations, was a flop. Six months of ten hour days, seven days a week produced only a small check from Amazon every month.

Slowly social networking became a bit of a chore, still fun, but whew! A lot of work. The impulse to push, push, push, began to feel a little off. Then with a huge aha, I realized that I don't need to fund an animal shelter myself. Colima is doing GREAT on the animal rights front, with eleven protection associations and new legislation criminalizing animal abuse. From exactly where I am right now, I can help all I want. Without the financial impulse, the promotion began to feel even more like work.

Ambition is Not Present-Centered

When we focus on future success, we project wanting. From the Law of Attraction, we know that wanting can only bring more wanting. The deeper truth is that even when we get exactly what we prescribe, the Amazon ranking, the agent, the publisher, we will only want more. The movie deal, better promotion of our masterpiece, the billion dollar success of J. K. Rowling. Several well-known authors are good friends. Only one of them, Anne George, was truly happy with her publisher, and Anne was already about the happiest person I knew, surprised and pleased by every publishing success, small or huge.

So why did I attract someone who indulged my unacknowledged desire for wealth? Why have I surrounded myself with dear ambitious friends? Why have I put my novels on Kindle and worked my butt off for six months?

We can only feel JOY right now 

I did all these things because in some corner of my heart, I hadn't completely accepted that living right now is the only joy. A piece of me still believed in the IF-ONLY scenario. If only I had LOTS of money, I'd be happy. If only my novels would sell a boatload of copies, I could help animals. Last week was the final piece of that jigsaw puzzle, when I was neck deep in helping the four-legs, without needing anything other than my presence.

Another impulse toward living in this moment, right now, is my elderly dog. Gemma is twelve, and my desire to travel, to plan fun trips to see relatives and/or exotic places, has been put on hold. Gemma no longer does well when I leave, so I'm not leaving. Simple. Equally disastrous for me is the future scenario of her death. I refuse to spend our last months unhappily anticipating the future without her. Not. Happening. Every hug, every walk, every snore in the middle of the night is pure joy!

What does it all mean?

Last Saturday (July 6, 2013) my guest post on living in the present was published by Skelations. Another take on the same topic will be published there on July 27. I've taken a week off promoting and proven to myself yet again that the sky did not fall. Relaxing now with the physical aches of a sore hip and the remnants of overall exhaustion, a couple of layers of the emotional onion have peeled back.

One realization for me is that I want my novels to be available. I want them out there in the public marketplace. Selling or not selling is nowhere near as relevant as availability. So thank you, Amazon Kindle. Huge thank you! The people who like my novels REALLY like my novels. That's what matters. One reader who writes me because they 'get it' is a lifelong connection that I would miss out on if the novels weren't for sale worldwide.

Another realization is that I can do exactly as much or as little as feels enjoyable in the moment. If I don't post for a few days, so be it. Without pressure, the fun comes back. I really do love tweeting! Thank you to my generous, funny, and loving Twitter friends! Even Facebook is mostly awesome, and I love keeping in touch with people's lives through their photos and updates.

Yet another reminder recently is that I LOVE the intellectual side of writing, reading, and discussing novels. James McAllister and I have started a correspondence about his amazing and complex novel iNation, and I'm loving it! Molly Ann Wishlade and I share ideas and encouragement on our novels all the time. I love reading the thoughtful posts of  Thomas Rydder (My Road to Better Writing), Cassandra Page (Writing), Kristen Lamb (everything!), James McAllister (iNation), and many, many more wonderful writer bloggers!

Anyone who would like to talk novels, contact me! Huge advance hugs!

I don't want anything!

The final layer for me is to say happily and openly, I don't want anything!! Woohoo! Repeat after me, I don't want anything! I don't want ANYTHING! Life right this instant, this very second, is complete and amazing and plenty.

link to the recipe on The Furious Pear Pie blog

“I got the blues thinking about the future, 

so I left off and made some marmalade. 

It’s amazing how it cheers one up 
to shred oranges and scrub the floor.” 

D. H. Lawrence

Please join me for a lively discussion of all things writing and publishing, or whatever else you'd like to talk about! I look forward to your comments.

Check out these related posts on writing and publishing:

• Publish or Perish vs the Law of Attraction
• Wait! Change! It's the Law of Attraction!

• Synopsis Day at the Novel Writers Workshop #TBSU

• Creating Guidelines for Writers' Critique Groups #TBSU
• Developing Your Voice: Novel Writers Workshop #TBSU

Please click on the embedded links to several amazing blogs, today's contribution to The Blog Scratchers Union!

Five Great Reasons to Guest Blog! #TBSU

If you're a blogger, you probably pour a lot of time and attention into your blog. Just writing and formatting your own posts may seem daunting at times. Why on earth would you also want to write posts for other blogs?

Plenty of reasons come to mind!

Reason #1: Variety!

Your blog has an identity. For example, pretty much everything on this blog relates to publishing, supporting writer friends, and dog rescue. When I want to write about something else, I guest blog.

For example, the emotional/spiritual aspects of the Law of Attraction don't feel quite like a fit here. If you want to read about my spiritual journey, you can find eighteen of my guest posts on Deliberate Receiving, cataloged on the tab above. When my friend Nathalie Thompson started her new LOA blog Vibe Shifting, she invited me to guest there also. So far I've written two posts for her, Healing Lessons and LOA, and Money, Taoism, and the Law of Attraction.

Reason #2: Exposure!

About a month ago, I started contributing a weekly column to an awesome website, Skelations! The webmaster, Nathan H-C, is young, hard-working, inventive, creative, ambitious, and did I mention hard-working?! Nathan put out a call for How-To articles, and I thought, why not?

Nathan H-C, owner of Skelations.

The demographic for Nathan's website is quite different from my blog, but his readers are equally likely to want to read my novels. Win, Win, WIN!

Click to visit Skelations. 

Nathan recently redesigned his site, and I'm now a featured contributor. Thanks, Nathan! Please go by and visit. There's a permanent button on the left sidebar here. Skelations also has reviews of books and movies, interviews with interesting people, LGBTQ campaigns, and click-to-read fun facts. If you have a book trailer, send it to Nathan for great publicity in his new trailer database. You can contact him through his Twitter account @skelations.

Reason #3: Fresh Ideas!

Doing book blog tours with Bewitching Book Tours, I was challenged each month to come up with fresh interviews, unique guest posts, and entertaining tidbits from my novels. Doing the blog tours fulfilled all of the reasons for guest blogging, but most memorable for me are the wonderful ideas that blog hosts sometimes suggested. It hadn't occurred to me to write about The Wicked Fifties on Louisa Bacio's blog,  to come up with a list of 10 tips for sexy road trips on Shelley Munro's blog, or to realize that the heroes of my novels are all Taoists on 4 the Luv of SaNiTy. Thank you to all the host bloggers for inspiration!

Reason #4: New Friends!

I can't even count on two hands the number of new friends I've made guest blogging. Here's a list and a shout-out to some who have become an important part of my daily life. Huge thanks and many hugs to you all!

Roxanne Rhoads

Seumas Gallacher

Nathalie Thompson

Molly Ann Wishlade

Melody Fletcher

Sapphyria

Nathan H-C

Pembroke Sinclair

Erzabet Bishop

Shelley Munro

Lori Gosselin

Please visit and join their blogs!

Reason #5: Fun!

Reason 5 sums up all the other reasons in one word: FUN! For me, meeting new people, finding new writing challenges, and making new blogger friends are all adventures that keep the writing game fun. Yes, we work on writing and editing our novels, we tweet and Facebook and Google+ all day. But there's something special about writing a guest post, knowing someone invites your words into their space, and chooses to share their readers with you. It's a wonderful feeling, and I'm honored by each invitation!

Reciprocity!

Let me close by inviting you to write a guest post for my blog! The feature, "Encouraging Words from _________," is designed for guest bloggers to offer their wisdom and inspiration. The guests so far have been beyond awesome, and their posts are some of the most popular on the blog. So if you'd like to expand your audience and to write about something that perhaps doesn't quite fit on your own blog, please send me your ideas!

And of course, if you'd like me to guest post on your blog, I'm always open to suggestions!

Thanks for joining me here today! I hope you've met some new friends, and perhaps been inspired to write a few guest blogs. What do you find are the advantages of guest blogging? Have you discovered any downsides? How many guest posts do you write, as compared to posts for your own site? Do you participate in book blog tours? Please join us for a lively conversation in the comments.

Check out these related guest posts! 

• Encouraging Words from Aubrianna Hunter 
• Encouraging Words from Nathalie Thompson
• Encouraging Words from Kevin Hanrahan
• Encouraging Words from Seumas Gallacher
• Encouraging Words from Ronnie L. Smith of Writer's Relief
• Encouraging Words from William Ogden Haynes

The list of blogs above are presented in the grand tradition of #TBSU, The Blog Scratcher's Union!

Live a Creative Life, One Sudsy Glass at a Time! #TBSU

Do you use your creative capacity 

as part of your everyday life? 

Could you can recognize and get greater satisfaction 

from the things you are already doing? 

Can you turn every act into a time 

to think, act, and simply be creative?

We can make more opportunities to grow creatively, and to define creativity in a way that makes it accessible to us all the time!

What are you already doing that fulfills your need to be creative? 

It could be – I hope it’s true – that you are already living more creatively than you think.

As a first step, let’s look at the difference between an ordinary, everyday experience, and a creative experience, what we might also call an aesthetic experience. An example of an ordinary experience might be somebody poking a stick into a fire. The person might say, “Well, I wanted to get the fire to burn a little better.” 

What if the person focuses on the fascination of watching the interaction between the flickering flames and the coals that crumble at a touch? What if she notices the sensation of heat on skin, the smell of wood smoke, the crackle of a sizzling twig?! Voila! She is having a creative experience!

Attitude is Everything!

The actual experience is not the important thing. Our attitude toward the experience is what defines it as ordinary or extra-ordinary. Buddhism does a great job with this concept. One of the main ideas of Buddhism is the principle of mindfulness. Basically, the message is: Pay Attention! 

If you are washing a glass, savor the bubbles and the hot water. Rub your thumb against the edge and listen for the squeak. Use a nice-smelling dish soap, something you like, and sniff the lingering scent of the soap on your hands a few minutes later. Pay attention!

Don't Live an Antiseptic Life! 

Our modern lives can seem antiseptic. We can get preoccupied with details, and yet paradoxically not get much pleasure from them. We write a check to pay the gas bill, but we don’t notice the feel of the pen in our hands, or the silkiness of the ink as it flows onto the paper. 

Think of your great-grandmother’s rocking chair. To her, it was a convenient place to sit, an ordinary, everyday, taken for granted part of an ordinary life. But to us, now, that exact same rocking chair may be a work of art, a beautiful antique. We almost hesitate to sit in it, it’s so precious. Do you see the irony here? What if we could transfer that future reverence into the present moment, and still maintain the utility? That would be living creatively.

A Fun Challenge!

I want you to do something right now. I want you to wiggle around a little in your seat. Feel the steadiness of it against your back. Feel how well it supports you, how easily you can relax, feeling secure that it isn’t going to collapse under you. This is a little silly, but I want everybody to say, “Thank you, chair!” Everybody now, “Thank you, chair!” 

Maxi instinctively savors every sensation! We can too!

You know what, we just had a shared aesthetic experience, a little moment of creativity in the middle of sitting at a computer with you reading, me writing, a blog! Feel free to keep enjoying a creative adventure with your chair as we continue.

In fact, continue your day and evening enjoying EVERYTHING as a creative adventure! What's your favorite sensory experience? What are the everyday tasks that you savor? Send your ideas and inspirations via the comments! I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Check out these related posts:

• Publish or Perish vs the Law of Attraction
• Wait! Change! It's the Law of Attraction!

• Developing Your Voice: Novel Writers Workshop #TBSU
• Why Wait to Be Creative? #TBSU

Three creative blogs, presented here in the grand tradition of The Blog Scratchers' Union! #TBSU

• Vidya Sury 

• Kevin Hanrahan 

• Scarlett Flame (for adults, please!)

Tasty Humble Pie #TBSU

Do you know the Taoist story of the Chinese farmer and his son? If not, here’s a brief version.

Excellent website for a quick intro to Taoism

A farmer has a strong young son. The neighbors say, “How lucky you are.” The farmer shrugs. The son breaks his leg and can’t work. The neighbors say, “How unlucky you are.” The farmer shrugs. The army comes and takes all the young men off to war, except the farmer’s son. The neighbors say, “How lucky you are.” The farmer shrugs.  And so on, and so on...

The point of the story is that we can’t see a big enough picture to know how something will ultimately turn out. The farmer knows that, but most of us are so caught up in the moment that we can’t help but react to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news.

My Farmer Moment

I’m in the middle of a farmer moment myself right now. Twelve Nights shot up to #1 when it went for its Free Days on Amazon Kindle in early May. Amidst a frenzy of promotion, thousands of people all over the world downloaded copies. Of course, I was thrilled, happy dancing around the living room for days!

A small cloud appeared a week later when negative ratings began to appear on Goodreads. It seems some of the people who picked up the novel just because it was free ended up not liking it. The euphoria of having a #1 novel far outweighed the tiny downside. Overall though, I was quite happy to get back to a less promotional life, quietly blogging and walking my dogs.

Last week another of my novels, Who Is Candid?, was on Kindle Free Days. The downloads were in the hundreds, rather than the thousands. Same promotion. Same frenzy. Totally different outcome.

Can Humble Pie be Tasty?

Honestly, once the initial disappointment wore off (it took a few hours), I felt more in tune with the farmer than ever before in my life! It REALLY doesn’t matter! I kept on Tweeting and Facebooking the promotions, hopefully not obnoxiously, and at the same time I was laughing inside.

Already, by not feeling upset, I could see the upside of NOT having a best selling novel. My friends are amazingly supportive, some more upset than I am. When people are there for #1 and they are also there for #who-knows-how-low, you know you have strong real friendships! All sorts of new ways of supporting our friendships have occurred to me in the last few days. One is the book and blog trailer sharing on YouTube that I announced recently. 

Thank You, Readers!

I also appreciate more than ever the readers of this blog, most of whom are nameless and yet keep visiting by the hundreds every day. The same day my novel had the least downloads, I found out that the blog had been nominated for 2014 Blog of the Year. The next day I was invited to a write regular guest post column on a popular website. How cool is that?! You can read my How To post every Saturday at Skelat.com, starting with How to Let Go of Self-Consciousness.

I like to imagine myself as the Chinese farmer, stepping back and scratching my chin. Truth is, it’s all good. The good parts are good, and the bad parts are also good. With a shrug of Taoist chin scratching, Life is Awesome!

And humble pie is really quite tasty!

Hardly humble! Thank you Molly Ann Wishlade for the photo
of your cranberry and orange meringue pie!

Have you had an experience that could have felt awful, and instead felt okay, even comfortable? How do you ride the wave of outward success and outward less-than-success? Please share your secrets for serenity, your questions, your doubts and affirmations, in the comments. I look forward to a lively discussion!

Check Out These Related Posts

• Humility and Publishing #TBSU

• Thriving on the Roller Coaster of Life! #TBSU (cowritten with Seumas Gallacher)

• Pawn to Queen Six, and Gratitude Unlimited #TBSU

Five fantastic blogs about LIFE, presented in the grand tradition of The Blog Scratchers' Union! #TBSU 

• Tao Te Ching Daily

• Life, For Instance

• Deliberate Receiving

• Vidya Sury
• Against All Grain

Humility and Publishing #TBSU

My friend Amy Putkonen wrote a post this morning on humility from a Taoist perspective. Here's the image from her post. I'll enjoy it while you take a minute to read her wise words...

The last two sentences got me thinking. "Give [humility] a spot at the table and ask it how its day has been. Let it teach you something." 

That wisdom applies to so many aspects of life. If we can take a step back and detach a bit from our emotions, life suddenly becomes much simpler. Not easier, necessarily, but simpler. 

I began to wonder how the concept of humility applies in the publishing world.

Humility implies comparison. 

The word humble carries within it the notion of high and low. In fact, one of Webster's definitions of humble is "ranking low in a hierarchy or scale." The publishing world is certainly full of comparison. Just look at the ever mysterious Amazon rankings.

So does striving for humility mean we should hope for poor rankings? Does it mean we should be content with sitting in the middle somewhere, unnoticed. I think not. To me, humility in publishing means letting the book talk. A brief digression, then I'll tied it together...

The word humble comes from the Latin humus, meaning "of the earth." It goes back in English all the way to around the year 1200. Of the earth to me has a connotation of trusting the elements, the basics. When we live of the earth, we don't worry about numbers, we don't compare. We live gratefully with the abundance we have.

Trust the book.

In place of the phrase of the earth, substitute of the book. To me, humility in publishing means trusting the book. Just as we can nurture the earth, we can certainly nurture the book: Amazon it and Tweet it and Facebook it and Google+ it and Goodreads it. But we can also realize that the words themselves, apart from us entirely, have their own life.

The book itself owns the Amazon ranking, not the writer. When we detach our ego from the darling product of our creation, we take a giant step toward peace and contentment, as writers and as human beings. We become neither humble nor arrogant, but simply happy parents of strong, independent offspring.

Could humility become obsolete?

I wonder if we can reach a place where humility becomes irrelevant. I ask myself, is my Soul humble? The question has no meaning. My Soul just is. Humility is a human construct, something we've accumulated over the millenia along with blame and guilt and anger.

In every one of our modern definitions and connotations, humility implies comparison. Once we recognize that we are everything, that we lack nothing, that the Universe is us and we are the Universe, we are neither humble nor arrogant. We just are. What an excellent goal!!

What do you think of when you hear the word humble? Is humility even a goal? How does humility play into your experience of the publishing world? Please join me in the comments. I look forward to a lively discussion!

[As a fun aside, my personal exercise in humility this morning includes having no control over the spacing of paragraphs! Must learn HTML...]

Check out these related posts:

• Can I Use the Law of Attraction to Boost Book Sales?
• Banish the Anxiety — Focus on the Fun!
• Publish or Perish vs the Law of Attraction
• Pawn to Queen Six, and Gratitude Unlimited! #TBSU

Some great blogs, presented here in the grand tradition of The Blog Scratchers' Union! #TBSU

• The Creative Penn 
• Caffeine's not a crime 
• Seumas Gallacher 
• Vibe Shifting

Pawn to Queen Six, and Gratitude Unlimited! #TBSU

Yes, I know that Pawn to Queen Four is the standard opening (thank you Google). Pawn to Queen Six, on the other hand, could be the brilliant set up to checkmate, or it could be the random move of a beginner (me!). And that's the point.

a good basic intro to chess

Tonight I find myself on the last night of my First Kindle Free Days adventure. Pawn to Queen Six. When you're in the middle of an adventure, you can lose sight of the simple fact that you are on one carousel, riding one pony of many, in a great big fairground of life! For a few days, I got so caught up in the game of tag-you're-it, that I forgot about the big picture.

That's not an apology. Tag is a LOT of fun! Being immersed in the moment is intense, fulfilling, and... fantastic! If this were an erotica blog, I'd say orgasmic! (*cheeky grin*) BTW, you can still download Twelve Nights for free through midnight Pacific time today! Tag! You're it!

Click here to download!

Now that this one lovely game is winding down, the mosaic of the big picture is coming back into view. The next game is about to begin, when Beauty of the Beast unleashes on Tuesday, May 7. In the breathing space, here are a few observations.

Friendships Are Cemented When You Work Together

Global Internet friends—movie making friends, hugging friends, recipe sharing friends, family photo sharing friends, Law of Attraction friends—all came together to promote the heck out of the Twelve Nights free promo days. You know who you are, and for those who don't know, you can read a whole post about them here.

We're a disparate group who met through each being my friend. Now it feels like I have a true band of brothers (and sisters). Seumas Gallacher's Vengeance Wears Black goes on free days at midnight tonight? We're on it! When Molly Wishlade's Desire in Deadwood debuts in August, we'll be there!

My gratitude is unlimited!

I Love Giving Away My Books

Kindle Free Days are a strategy to sell more books. My brain knows that. My heart is so joyful to give my books away, I could burst! If I put all my novels free on Amazon all the time, I'd be in heaven! [All right, Ms Brain. I won't do it!]

I worried that I would obsess about the numbers (curse of the mathematician). Did you know that you can track downloads click by click? My worst nightmare guilty pleasure! Instead, because the books are free, watching the downloads is fun. I won't check for hours, and then happy dance around the room, again!

From a Law of Attraction perspective, generosity is about the best gift you can give yourself. When you are generous, you feel abundant, and feeling abundant brings more and more abundance into your life. So thank you to the thousands of readers who downloaded Twelve Nights! 

My gratitude knows no bounds!

Things Change in an Eye Blink

With the first of May, all the posts on the blog from April vanished off the front page, into the depths of the archives! I loved April! It's seems silly, but I miss seeing the gecko post on the sidebar. How could One Global Tweet, One Earth disappear from page one? Of course, they're still here, and often posts pick up more readers later than immediately. Google search engine, I love you!

Some changes I welcome. Whew! I can go back to tweeting normal non-promotional stuff and not feel like I'm abandoning my Twelve Nights baby in the middle of her first free spree.

Over three days, Twelve Nights climbed from unranked to #1. It's on its natural way back down now, dropping more slowly than I had anticipated, actually. Still #6 at last count. If you are ever doing a KDP free fling, my observation is that the greatest number of downloads came on day 2. Just for reference.

A small surprise for me is that I'm just as happy as the ranking falls as I was on the way up. Not as giddy, mind you, but internally I'm feeling very content! Yet another lesson in welcoming change. Ahhh...

My gratitude is endless!

Please join me in the comments! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What are you grateful for? What fills you with a sense of abundance? Tell me about change, small or large, and how it affects you. Do you welcome change? Does it scare you, or make you sad? But first of all, how the heck are you doing today??

Check out these related posts:

• KDP Free Days Wedding Night Jitters! He Said, She Said, He Said! #TBSU
• Amazon Best Seller! Has a Nice Ring! #TBSU
• Wait! Change! It's the Law of Attraction!

Three fun book blogs, presented here in the grand tradition of The Blog Scratchers' Union! #TBSU 

• Sapphyria's Steamy Book Reviews
• Erzabet's Enchantments
• Adventure into Romance with Shelley Munro

Amazon Best Seller! Has a Nice Ring! #TBSU

Update!

Wow! What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in!  ♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪

No wait, it's not love, it's Amazon rankings!!

Thanks to YOU, my wonderful friends and readers, Twelve Nights climbed to the #3 ranking on Amazon Kindle Erotica today.

And in Germany? #1!! Danke sehr sehr sehr viel!

Two days ago, Twelve Nights was a relative unknown in the Amazon Erotica World, lowly enough that it wasn't even ranked. I actually thought of the free days promo as a lead in to the launch of Beauty of the Beast. Today? Well, the words stunned, gob smacked, elated, thrilled, and GRATEFUL all have new meaning.

Gratitude and Appreciation!

The greatest of these freshly defined words is Grateful! I'd like to publicly thank some mentors and friends, without whom... wait a minute... this isn't an Oscar speech. Okay, huge thank yous (buy their books, read their blogs, everyone!) to

• Suzanne Johnson aka Susannah Sandlin, who held my hand when I dipped my toe into the Amazon stream

• Molly Ann Wishlade, one of my first Twitter friends who makes every day brighter and is a tremendous RTer!

• Melody Fletcher, Law of Attraction genius and very funny lady

• Nathalie Thompson, who suggested we mentor each other back before any of this started for either of us and has been a steady friend ever since

• Seumas Gallacher, whose support and enthusiasm make all things possible. #TBSU!

Greatest thanks of all goes to the people that I've met and become friends with through the energy waves of the Internet, and especially to the amazing readers of this blog. 

Beauty of the Beast

The fun isn't over, folks! Twelve Nights is still FREE on Amazon through Thursday. And in just seven days, Mary Jane Andrews of Beauty of the Beast makes her bow as the newest Carole Remy heroine. Like Aggie, Angela, and Lucy, Mary Jane is smoking hot, smart, and independent, more than a match for the man of her dreams. Especially when it turns out that she's been the woman of his sexy dreams for quite awhile!

Mark your calendar! Mary Jane is about to unleash the Beauty of the Beast!

If you have a blog and would like to participate in the Release Day Blitz, let me know and I'll send you a press kit with everything you need. The Blitz has been organized by Roxanne Rhoads, owner of Bewitching Book Tours and another great supporter of my novels! Everyone, feel free to download, copy, and distribute this badge (created by the ever amazing Marissa) in any way you wish!

As always, I look forward to your thoughts and comments! Once things settle a little, I'll think about how all this relates to the Law of Attraction. What do you think? Best manifestation ever, right! Happy dance!

Check out these related posts:

• New Sexy Fun Erotic Romance Book Covers
• Can I Use the Law of Attraction to Boost Book Sales?

Twelve Nights Optioned as Independent Romantic Comedy Feature Film! #TBSU

Wow! What a day! This morning we finalized the deal, and Twelve Nights is now officially optioned as a feature length romantic comedy film!

Producer T. N. Mohan is best known for his film Hanged on a Twisted Cross, "a gripping documentary, narrated by Ed Asner, that captures the life, times, and thought of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer." Eight feature films directed and/or produced by Mohan are displayed on his Amazon page.

Mohan has been teaching for the last three years, and has chosen Twelve Nights as the vehicle to jump start his return to active film making.

Here are Mohan's words on why he selected Twelve Nights.


I've had my eye on Twelve Nights since it was originally published. When I found it again on Amazon, I was thrilled. Perfect project, perfect timing for me. I see the movie as Shakespeare meets Bollywood meets Valentine's Day.  The novel is mainly in dialogue, which makes it easier to translate to the screen. The story is lively and the characters are well-developed. As Carole Remy says, Twelve Nights is a sexy fun romance. For our film, we're taking out the graphic part, but the movie is going to be a solid hour and a half of sexy fun.

An International Movie!

The production of Twelve Nights (BTW the title may change) will be truly an international effort. The screenwriter and director will probably be Canadian. Then again, Jimmy's home location may move to Scotland! I could see him as Scottish, couldn't you? Who knows? The movie could be set in Toronto or Montreal, or even London, Frankfurt, New York, or Madrid! As you can see from his previous movies, Mohan has produced and directed all over North America and Europe. What an adventure!

Yesterday was a day of amazing, emotional, super-charged positive energy. The Law of Attraction says that you attract more of what you already have, and boy, has that proven true today! I am filled to the brim with gratitude, and you can imagine how eager I am for tomorrow!

Join us for a conversation in the comments. Who do you see as Jimmy and Richard? How do you imagine them? Who should play Aggie and Angela? One actress or two? What about Danny, and Monica? So many actors! So many choices! Names, people, names! 

If you have questions, suggestions, or comments for T. N. Mohan, he'll be stopping by to chat too. Take advantage of this opportunity to ask a movie producer all the behind the scenes questions you've been curious about for years!

It's a party! Join the happy dance!

Check out these related posts:

• New Sexy Fun Erotic Romance Book Covers
• Can I Use the Law of Attraction to Boost Book Sales?

Two great blogs, presented here in the grand tradition of The Blog Scratchers' Union! #TBSU 

• Susannah Sandlin (movie about vampires, anyone?)
• Roxanne Rhoads (how about sexy witches?)