Waiting on the Interior Proof

 I get a lot of emails every day, certainly every week, asking me what the process is for writing and publishing. I've been privileged to have written more than 100 books, but people like to tell me that my personal journals don't really count. Are you kidding me? I go through a 300-page handwritten diary every six weeks. They do count. I may not have them published, but they do count. The process of writing is simple, you grab a book and a pen and you start unloading everything inside your head. You don't stop just because the clock says it's late. You get the thoughts OUT of your head. Then, because no one really rewrites their diary or journal, you move forward to the next day. I have always dated my entries, and I even say what time I'm writing, where I am, and what the weather is. Who knows, someone may someday want to use my writings to prove something. Did you know that most of what we know about Blackbeard the Pirate comes from his own journals? Truth.

    Well, the process of writing is that you write. You get it out of your head either on paper or on the screen. You just write. Prewriting is easiest because you can either just write without a direction, and say absolutely anything, or you can start off with an idea and build on it. I tend to have an idea if I'm writing a book. I don't jump in willy-nilly. I think I may end up writing a book about writing a book. I could do that.

    The prewriting can last as long or as short as you want it to be. You can write and add to it, take away from it, split it up into sections, make an outline, build on the skeleton of what you think you want to say, and then add the flesh. You dig into it piece by piece, and you get a GIST of the story in place. That can be Phase 1 if you don't count the prewriting as Phase 1. When you've got it written, and I prefer to do it longhand first, you can add it to your Word documents either as an idea and/or as a sort of loose story with a sort of loose timeframe or plot. You put one foot in front of the other until the story is told from front to back.

    Phase 2 can be the meat of the story, the details, the truths, the lies, and the part that proves or disproves whatever it is that you set out to say. You use the skeleton to find the words you want to flesh out the bare bones of the story. You start with Chapter 1 and you build it until you're finished telling that part of the story. Chapter 2 is the next part of the story. This goes on until you've reached the end, but you can take the chapters and move them around later on to fit the way you want them to fit. By breaking them up one chapter at a time, you can easily move them about. They don't always have to be in chronological order as long as your readers don't have issues with going from one part of the story to the next. I've seen books that have three separate main points, and they are told in A, B, C style. Chapter 1 is A, and Chapter 2 is B, and so forth. Then you do it again.

    Phase 3 is the part where you find all the fluff and stuff. You find points, bits, and details, and you put these into the story by telling little stories inside the other stories. You may do it in paragraph form, or you can take an entire chapter to dive deeply into a sublevel character who may interact with the main characters, or maybe they give background. With my latest book, I created several side characters and gave them really interesting features, facts, folly, and fun, just to be able to stretch the book another 30-40 pages really, to give the reader a break from the same old story they were reading, and keep their mind thinking about the overall tale, not just the details about the two or three main characters. I fill my books with historical facts, fun facts, lies, and discoveries, I don't want it to be boring or mundane.

    Phase 4 is the part where you sit back and clean it up. You go through it for comma issues, misspellings, word choices, and overuse of words. Let me tell you, you may be inside Phase 4 for a good while!! You clean it, pick at it, tweak it, and then you mull over it a few times to be sure you got it all. You never get it all. You have someone else read it a few times so they can find your mistakes. You correct your mistakes.  Then you send it off and you know you screwed up and you can't wait until it comes back to you so you can fix what you know you missed. 

    Phase 5 is the last phase. You've sent the book off. The publisher has formatted it, and has sent it back to you. You've gone through it with a fine toothcomb. You make the final changes. You list all the errors, or they may let you go into the original manuscript yourself to correct them, and send it back. Once it's done, and you are really sure it's done, you send it back again....and YOU WAIT. You wait on the cover art, and you kick yourself for all the times you made people read the galleys before they were complete, and before you had gone through them 188 times to be sure you hadn't used the same words a gagillion times; like I did. You panic because you think you misspelled Chapter. You panic because you can't remember if you put quotation marks on the inside or the outside of the punctuation mark. You panic because you just wrote a book and everyone is going to know you wrote it...and you ask yourself if that's really what you wanted to say. Then you decide to write a sequel to be sure you got all of the stories told.

    That is the writing process folks.  I'm in Phase 5. I'm waiting for the interior proof to be done again. Whew....and then when it is done, I can say it's a book, it's done, it's going to be great - - and I can't wait to start the sequel. 

Photo Credit: Praxis.com

ONE MORE TIME....I MEAN IT.

 It's Saturday, so I have a bit more time to blog. I'm about to go back into the throws of reading "Of Kilted Pleasure" one more time. I can honestly say that I've read this book more than 10 times now, and it is the one book I've read more than any other book. I'm going back over it for a really good reason. You'll love this too. 

    Xlibris was kind enough to send me the book in production form and to allow me to make corrections one more time before they finished the book.  Well, when they sent the book to me, I immediately dove into it, but I wasn't looking for misspelled words or misplaced commas (which I found), I was looking for word choices. I decided to use the FIND option and see just how many times I had used the same word(s) and I decided I would either change 1/2 of them to something more colorful, or I would find a way to restate what I had stated.  OMG...by that I mean WHAT THE HELL was I thinking?  I used the word "question" more than 150 times. I had used the word "seemed" as many times as I had the word "question". I had used the word "good" too many times. I think I said "little dog" eight or nine times, but come on, you're going to know the dog is small if I just say it twice! 

    Bottom line, I went through the book AGAIN and rewrote the rewrite. I went through it AGAIN, and changed the word "changed".  I went through it so many times and so many ways, that now I need to go back again to be sure I didn't miss putting an "an" in where an "a" had been before, and so forth. This makes me think that now I need to see how many times I used the words "so forth".  I did take out about 50 "now" and 50 more "he" or "she" to make the flow seem better. Geez, writing can be a pain in the ass. Speaking of body parts, there really aren't many choices to use when you want to replace the word "cock" in a book that takes place in the 18th century. Nope, you can say "dick" because the origin of the word does date back to the start of the 18th century in England! There you go! I was able to use that. I wasn't about to say "penis" or "phallus" in my novel, and "willy" just seemed too funny. Not as funny as "pecker" or "wood".  I did use "knob" once.  But yeah, you get the picture. It's hard to find a good word for "cock".  I almost said it's hard to find a good cock, or is it good to find a hard cock? I'm not really sure. Either way, I made my point.

    I'm going back to reading now. She smiles. I really like this book. The cover art should be out soon. I did have to write to the artist(s) to say that Craig Allan Mackenzie does have hair on his bare chest. 

Something like this, only longer hair and yeah, a kilt.

Photo Credit: Pinterest Adrian Paul

NAIR - UNDERARM and BIKIKI

 I am so weird sometimes. I found underarm and bikini hair remover in a tube like you'd find in a deodorant. It's from Nair, and it's still cream, but it is packaged in a deodorant-style package and you roll it up from the bottom, it squirts out from the top, and you apply it. You wait 5-10 minutes and you take a shower.  I think I paid $6.99 for it on Amazon. I'm currently in the waiting stage, and like a dummy, I sat down to write the blog though I have a towel under me, I'm no doubt wasting the product, so I'm going to get up now.

    So yeah, now I'm standing, and let me tell you, my desk isn't one of those that lift, so I'm bending over to type. Not the most fun, but when I stood up from the chair I had in fact left a great deal of the product on the towel. I am not going to be a product waster..nope. I do, however, think I want to order one of those cool desks.  I had one when I worked for the trading company, and it was really great. I could do squats while I worked.

    HERE WE GO! I applied the Nair at 12:13 p.m. and I waited until 12:22, which was nine minutes, and it took about a minute to get to the bathroom, turn the water on, get the shower set up, and get into it. So, let's say the cream was in place for 10 minutes.  I used soap to scrub the areas and though I really couldn't see any hair falling off my armpits, which would have been fun, I did see it fall off on the lower area.  While washing the area with a wash cloth and body wash, there was definitely a release of hair from "down there".   It works. The product works. I did go ahead and finish up with a light razoring just to be sure, and it was really smooth already. 

    I will recommend using Nair's cream remover for sure. This one and I don't know if they all do, has coconut oil in it to assist as a moisturizer as well.  I use coconut and/or shea oil anyway after I shave, but it was nice that it is already in the tube. There you go, your first-hand experience review of a product I'm not sponsored by, but would recommend.  There are certain scents that people may not like. The remover component does still have a scent to it. There is a tinge or tingle of that "burning" feeling, but nothing like it would be if you put the harder stuff down there. I didn't feel anything at all under my arms.

    Have fun people! Hope you have smooth sailing -- and/or shaving. 

Photo Credit: Nair.com

Of Kilted Pleasure is a REAL Book Now.

 Well there you go, my book, my first novel, titled "Of Kilted Pleasure" is a real live book now. It has been registered with the Library of Congress, and it has its own ISBN number. Woot! I can do the dance, but I have to reserve my entire enthusiasm for when it is released to the public for purchase. Right now, it is still in the production stages. I have been going through the PDF to make corrections.  

    About 100 years ago, when I wrote my first book through Xlibris, I had to wait for them to send me a hardcopy galley to go through and that was really tough. Not only did they send it in 11-point font, but it was also squeezed together to save paper I guess. I was NOT a happy camper when the finished product came out the same way. I was LIVID because I had made it perfectly clear that I wanted 12-point font, and I wanted more space between the lines. This was my first experience with book publishing. The ONLY thing they could or would do for me is to scrap that project and make a 2nd Edition, and in doing so they really only fixed those issues, not the 100+ corrections I had sent in to be changed on the first edition. Talk about FURIOUS! That book is a mess.

    This is my sixth or seventh book, I'm not sure. It's my first novel. I do know that. I have more experience and I've been working with other publishers as well, so I know a thing or two now, about standing up for myself and telling the publisher exactly what I want. I'm paying for it, right? That's right. So yes, they will listen. Xlibris has been pretty good this time around. I had a few minor issues with the cover designing team not wanting to do an illustration, but after speaking with my project manager, and then paying a little bit more, not the full price by any means, they were able to get that going. The project manager was able to give me the best discounts because he had failed to explain there would be an additional cost for illustration vs. photography-type covers.  I want illustrations, realistic, not photos. This is a Highland Romance book, not another genre.

    Well, I sent off the manuscript last Thursday I think, and it has already been returned to me in book format! Wow, that's really good. I was quite impressed with that. I do have to go through the PDF and make corrections. I am FLAT amazed at how many mistakes I made. Not even gonna lie about it, I suck! I wrote the book in a month, and got it on the screen, but didn't take the time to make sure I had spelled everything correctly, I was more concerned with getting the Scots words spelled correctly. I didn't go flow-blown on using the Scots language because I didn't want the reader to be completely confused. I wanted them to taste the difference, but not be overwhelmed by the flavor.

    So, now I have to go through the PDF, and I am. I will submit the mistakes and the changes I want. They'll redo it on their end and send it back once more for the last and final look-see.  I hope we can get all of the corrections done this time. I hate having that fear that I missed something, but I know it's going to happen. I have people writing to me now to tell me about the first book's mistakes. LOL  Well, that's about it, I'll go back to work now. I just wanted you to know the book is in production and about to be released in May 2023.  The cover will come out soon and I'll post it when it does.

Photo Credit: Me.

The Gourmet in Me.

Cooking and baking have always been something that I've enjoyed doing. I can't give Mom credit for that one; sorry woman, Daddy gets the title of Cook in our family. My mom did bake, and she was decent at it, but her daughter, my sister Linda, is the ESSENCE of awesome! She really does "take the cake"...OMG, I went there. Did you see that? Yeah, OK, that was dumb, but she really is great at what she does. I think Lin should write a book and she should show you just how wonderful she is. Mom and Linda both were cake makers in the 80s and although they have slowed down their work in that area, it still remains that they are both really gifted and talented people when it comes to making and decorating cakes. I am not that kind of a baker. Nothing I make will be baked for a wedding, anniversary, or birthday. I just bake it, and then I eat it.

    What I decided to do is to write my own recipe book since everyone seems to think that recipe books are the way to express yourself.  I mean, I get that, but mine won't be just a book with recipes in it, it will have to be a storytelling type of book as well. I'm thinking something along the lines of a blog book with 100 recipes and stories in it. I'll likely tell a story, share a recipe, and add a photo of what it turned out to look like rather than what it SHOULD have looked like. No one, including myself, is going to call me a gourmet chef. Nope. I cook. I will add that I cook well, but I am not a true gourmet. I use great ingredients.

    My culinary experiences began as a kid when my dad cooked and I helped. I can't remember my siblings helping Dad. I don't know why I can't remember that. I'm pretty sure they had to. Andie (my big big sister) always brought the green bean casserole to the family dinners, so I know she can cook that. Linda (my little big sister, she's under Andie and before Mike. I'm the baby.) was in charge of all the good stuff. She put herself in charge, and we didn't argue. She was really good at it, so yeah, we let that happen.  She brought the sweets and jello stuff. Mike brought the ice...and that tells you a bit about his kitchen skills.  I brought the sweet potatoes and occasionally I'd step over the boundaries and bring a cake or something. 

    When I really got serious about learning to cook well I was really super old. I had already earned my Masters at Oklahoma City University, and I was teaching at the Platt School of Culinary Arts in their General Education department.  I won't say it was the best job out there, but it had its perks that is for sure. All of my students were culinary chefs in the making.  They made us lunch EVERY day, and often they made something in the afternoon that I could pick up and take home with me for dinner or dessert. One student, in particular, decided to teach me the tricks of the trade and he took me in as his personal student since I was giving him extra credit to make up for his lack of writing skills.  It worked out.  He learned not to plagiarize and I learned how to cook really well! Thank you, Patrick.

    The one thing I remember about the school was Master Chef saying to the students, and I was present when he did, that there should always be a party in your mouth when you make something worth eating. You mix salsa and you think it's great, but did you add apples and cayenne to that salsa? Did you add bacon to your taco? He would throw out things that made you think. He had written at least two successful recipe books and he had more than 30 years of culinary experience in Dallas, so I think the man had a bit of experience for the students as well as myself, to glean from -- so we did.  He was a true Artisan with the creations he made. It was mostly about the presentation; the quality of the food, he said, could be secondary. I didn't really like that concept.

    I told myself that I didn't need to present the food in a way that made my dinners memorable, I wanted the guests to say it was good, they liked it, they wished they could do that, you know  -- that's the concept I was hoping for. When it comes to food and anything else, it's OK to disagree with someone. It doesn't change the way we love it. Presentation is definitely a good thing; but not the most important; to me, the person I'm serving is the most important. Does that person like the food? That's what I'm interested in, so that's what I try to achieve. I use my kids as guinea pigs all the time. They usually don't seem to mind. If they do, they've never said so. I like my kids.

    I'll end up going to Pinterest and finding breakfast ideas, lunch ideas, dinner ideas, snacks, appetizers, and dessert ideas. I'll end up taking photos of them and giving credit to the photographer if I can, and then I'll end up making the dish(es) and taking photos of what my food actually looks like. I may need to set up a cool corner in the dining or kitchen to show off the dish(es) before I devour them. I also want my book to be a book that suits a single person or maybe only two people. I'm not into making a lot of food anymore. Those days are very long gone for me. I'm just out there making a good meal for me and my daughter. If I ever do move out, which I hope is sooner than later, she can come over to eat. I can see her that way. 

    There you go. There will be ANOTHER Blog book and it will be the Gourmet Book. So, it will be "Jude's Almost Daily Blog: The Gourmet in Me"  No one can steal that idea because that would be the gourmet in them, not me. I'm the only me there is. Ha! Some are really happy about that fact.  I know I am. So, what's for dinner tonight? Well, I think I'll make Grilled Cheese Brie sandwiches with bacon, spinach, and a tangy avocado balsamic drizzle on top!  Sounds good. Here's a photo of what the Pinterest suggestion is. I'll add spinach and avocado to mine.

Photo Credit: Pinterest. (Yammie's Noshery)

The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Or is it)

 Being an avid reader, when I was less than ten I remember reading every Sherlock Holmes mystery that I could get my hands on, and that was literally every one of them since I was often hanging out at the library. Yes, I was that kid.  You'd catch me walking from 2212 N. Mueller to the corner of 35th and Mueller so I could be at the Bethany Metropolitan Library, and you know, I loved it. It was MY hiding hole. I would find a good spot to sit in, usually up against the wall and on the floor between aisles of reference books since no one ever went there. I would bring my pillow and to my surprise, one of the staff members said I could keep one up there so I didn't have to drag it back and forth with me. What a thought! I did that.

    When I was less than a teen I was in the spot where I found such peace, and I had in my hands the hardcover bound book titled "The Hound of the Baskervilles". I remember the story. It was ONE hound. It wasn't the HOUNDS of Bakerville, as some people would call it. My freaking teacher called it that and YES, I corrected her. I know, I'm not really supposed to do that, but I did. I was in the 5th grade when that happened and my mom was called to the office to speak to me. Can you imagine if that were to happen today? A kid corrects a teacher, and then their parent is asked to come up to discuss it? No. That is what is WRONG with our society today. I was in the wrong for trying to openly and publicly correct my teacher. I get that now. I don't know that I got it then. I was right. I knew I was right. My mom even told me I was right, but it wasn't the best practice. It was in fact, WRONG to correct the teacher the way I did it.

    What I remember about the entire event is that our school media center didn't have that particular book as it was considered too scary or something for elementary kids. We had other books, but not those written by Sherlock Holmes. That was the year I found out (I was corrected) that the books about Sherlock Holmes were actually written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!! WHAT? I knew him. I knew he was a writer too. I just hadn't put two-and-two together until the 5th grade. It was likely because when I went to the library to get the books they were all in the same area (Thank you, Dewey Decimal System), and all the books I was looking at said "Sherlock Holmes" on them; so naturally, my ten-year-old brain assumed he was the author. Also, I was flat upset about the fact that Holmes didn't narrate the books, his friend Dr. John Watson did. I couldn't figure that one out either.

    So, here we are so many hundreds of years later, and I am still correcting people when they bring up the book in conversation; or they make a reference to it. They almost always say "The Hounds of Bakerville" as if Baskerville is a place and there were multiple hounds. Nope. It was ONE big dog, and the Baskervilles were a family who lived in a fictional manor on a fictional moor. It's kind of funny really. I mean, I am wrong, absolutely wrong, about so many things. I'm not as wrong as I could be because I get really really upset with myself when I am wrong, so I tend to fight to my own death about decisions I need to make so I'm not wrong. I kick my own ass, no one else needs to stand in line to do that.  

    My good friend got it right! I called her and I said "OK, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a book about a family who lived on a moor, and one by one the head of the household was either killed by or chased by a big black dog. Do you know the name of the book?"  She answered yes, "but I didn't know his name was Arthur. I thought it was Conan Doyle." I did laugh.  She did however get the title of the book correct, so we're still best friends.  If I turned that around and I had to answer for her who sang this or that song, or what the title of it was, I would be lost in the abyss because I'm not going to get that unless it's a Bee Gee song. 

    I sat myself down this past week and read the book on my Kindle. I recalled so very little of the book from when I was ten. I really hadn't remembered most of it whatsoever, so that makes me think I now need to go back and read every last thing that Doyle ever wrote. Yes, I do. Did you know, and maybe you don't care, but did you know that before he was an author Arthur Conan Doyle was a medical student and he is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh Medical School? WHAT? Yes, he really was a doctor, and Dr. John Watson is not. Dr. John Watson is a fictional character. I can't tell you how hard I took that information when I realized that neither he nor Sherlock Holmes were real people. Just devastated me. I think I was about 12. I had to question my entire existence at that point.

    If Sherlock Holmes wasn't a real person, I asked myself, were the other people in the other books real? That was when I had a long and drawn-out conversation with Sheila Parker; the teacher who lived behind our house. She had kids that we played with, and since she was a teacher, and I had seen her in the Reference section of the library, I figured she might know something about it. She did. She set me straight on fiction vs. non-fiction, and she even told me about TWEEN books and that was fascinating. I didn't do too much reading in that section, but for some weird reason, I loved the Betsy and Tacy books. Geez, now I have to go back and read those again. I have NO clue what they did, but I remember I loved it.

Photo Credit: Audiobookstore.com

I Bought Drumsticks.

 I have an acoustic guitar that I named Wally. I bought him on Facebook Marketplace about two years ago. A drummer in a country rock band owned the guitar and he never played it. He bought it so he could learn how to play, but he never got around to it.  Wally sat in the man's garage for over two years and outside of needing new strings, the instrument was pristine. The sale price for the exact Yamaha model number was over $500 when I first bought Wally for $100; so I feel like I got a really good deal. I don't know if the drummer paid that much, he had a friend at Guitar Center who used his personal discount. I know the entire story.  

    When I brought Wally home I had intentions of learning to play him as well. I bought a book, I bought a CD on training yourself, but my fingers are not being very cooperative with my brain. My brain is not the issue here, the fleshy tenant of my skull is directing my fingers to do this or that, but they just sort of sit there; without being nimble and without being the least bit motivated. I can only do what I can do. So, what I'm doing now is intellectually training myself through reading, videos, etc, and if my hands ever do get around to wanting to partner up with my mind, I'll have a really good time playing Wally.  Until then, I just strum along, sing little songs to my dog Ginger, and pretend I'm some sort of master.  Don't laugh, we all do that.

    Did you read the title of the Blog? I bought a pair of drumsticks. There was NO reason whatsoever for the purchase. The ONLY reason they ended up in my hands was that I took them from a toddler who was about to try and put them in his mouth again. His mother wasn't paying attention and the boy could have thrust them down his throat if he fell. Yep, that's me, Granny, on the spot! I was on top of that boy in less than a flash and grabbing those sticks from his open mouth. He stared at me, but I stared right back at him. I wonder if he actually has ever experienced a Southern Grandma before. He could be traumatized, I don't know.

    Anyway, I walked around with them because they were covered in his drool and I didn't want to put them back on the shelf where someone could pick them up unsuspectingly; I'm so nice sometimes. Then, because I was walking around with them, trying to find the hand sanitizer, I thought I would just go ahead and buy them, clean them when I got home, and use them to torment the animals. Good plan. They are the best tormenters out there really. I have no idea what I'm doing when I beat and pound on things, I'm just channeling my memories of Alex Van Halen, and trying to make some sense of the world.

    I did however because I'm cool like that, email the guy who sold me Wally. I told him the story and he said he would have grabbed the sticks and beat the mother with them. He and me both really. I can't blame or fault the woman though, you can't watch the baby 24/7/365. It's impossible. That's why God made angels, and that's why angels use Grammas.  Reuben was about 17-18 months old when I had to let go of his hand to open a door, and he took off into the street behind us. I about died myself that day. I had put the thing I was holding in my left hand over the safety of my child. It happens. We are all fallible.  God is great all the time.

Photo Credit: Musicworks.co.nz

Forced to Look at Handsome Men Today.

 One of the perks of being an author of Highland Romance novels is that I get to design and approve the illustrations that appear on the cover of my book.  If you go into Barnes & Noble, Half-Price Books, or other wonderful places where they sell books, you'll find an entire section for ROMANCE in the larger Fiction section. In the Romance section, you'll find an enormous amount of books written with Highlander men either nearly naked or trying to get to that stage of undress; they are usually wearing a kilt, or some sort of Scottish traditional garb so you know they're Highlanders. I think there needs to be, if there isn't already, an entire genre dedicated just to Highland Romance. That's my thought.

    Because I want my new book "Of Kilted Pleasure" to be up there with all the other fine Highland Romance novels in terms of good-looking Highlander men who are barely dressed, I have commissioned the illustrators at the publishing house to use their digital artists (bots) to create for me the perfect Craig Allan Mackenzie as he is seen throughout the book, holding Aria Campbell from behind, and he's just about to do things that don't require a kilt. The good news I suppose for any Highlanders is that the kilt can be on or off of the man and not really get in his way when he does what he needs (or is expected) to do.

    After a bit of an argument today, my publisher has asked me to go through Getty Images www.gettyimages.com and look through the hundreds or thousands of photos necessary to create the right cover images for my book, and I had no problem agreeing to do so.  You go to the site, you put in what you're looking for, (sort of like Pinterest) and you just pick and choose. In my case, I was allowed to send three images for Craig Mackenzie, three images for Aria Campbell, and three images for the area where they are standing, which are called "the Ruins".  Basically, the Ruins are 500-year-old walls that are the only things standing from a huge manor house from yesteryear. This is where Aria and Ewan go separately and together to dream, pretend, and meet.

    Ewan will not be on the cover of this book but he will be on the cover of the sequel. Craig is the Highlander who needs to be holding the woman while heaving and panting. It's sort of the way things go in the Highlander Romance book genre expectations. Only after you become a successful Highlander Romance book author can you deviate from this expectation...I'm absolutely making that up, but it sounds good to me. Bring me more bulked-up, good-looking, muscular, half-naked Scottish men with their beards, longer hair, and somber faces. I don't mind looking. 

    Now, if I was asking them to print me off a 3-D image of one he would be about six foot, 200 pounds, rounder rather than too bulky, he would have good strong arms, thighs, and butt, and he'd have that three-day beard going on. I do like the longer hair, but as long as it's thick and easy to grab a hold of I'm good.  I'm not into the whole six-pack abs thing. I like a man with life and experience on him rather than him having nothing else to do than hang out at the gym staring at himself in the mirror. Give me a man every time.

    So, that's what I did tonight. I looked at a bunch of men. I found a few and I sent them in to be mixed together, blended if you will, to become Craig Allan Mackenzie. Now, the real Craig Allan doesn't look like that. He's my personal Naked Bearded Man, and he's older, has a lot more life than these guys, and he's nowhere near as fit either. He's been with me for a few years so he's been eating well and resting; when he can. Like the one in the book, my Craig, the real fantasy man, also only speaks Scots Gaelic so I can absolutely not understand him unless he tells me he is OK and has a kitten and a bus. I have those words down pretty well. I'm doing better on Duolingo. Love the content. 

    If you have nothing else to do when you go to the bookstore next time, take a look at the Fiction section, find the Highland Romance section, and just feast your eyes on the big bulky brutes of the moors. You'll not be sorry.

Photo Credit: Gettyimages.com

The Murder Book : (It's Taking Shape)

         You may not know this, but I'm an author. I am a writer. It's what I do. I write. The "Sex Book" as my daughter calls it, has been written, it's been gone through 10 times, and will be gone through ONE MORE TIME before I send it off to the publisher. I am in the middle of a discussion/argument over the cover right now, so there's that. I am not happy, and if you know me, you know I don't do inconvenience very well. I am probably the first person who will snap at you if I'm inconvenienced, but luckily for everyone I was born and raised in the South, so I try to smile through it and make the person realize they've pushed me too far before I actually stand there blankly staring at them without saying anything - - that's when hell breaks loose. If you know your Southern women, you know that. As long as you can make her talk, you'll survive another day. 

    After the Historical Romance book, which is what I call the Sex Book, I will write the Murder Book. The really cool title for the Murder Book is; wait for it, The Murder Book! Yes, it's so classic, I know, right?  I'm actually in the thick of it now. I have a green notebook, I'll show you, and I'm writing the notes in it that will become the written notes, which will become my paragraph guidelines. The paragraphs then get put into chapters, which are later organized into chronological order, unless I'm using flashbacks.  It could happen.  I write from the ground up, and keep it as organic as I possibly can. 

    Today, I was working out at the YMCA here in OKC, and I asked the manager Sherry, a lady about my age, African American, tall, quite pretty, and active if she wanted to be in the book. She said she did. She and I worked out her role. Now, the book takes place in Oklahoma City, Chicago, and Edinburgh, Scotland. Sherry will be a manager of a fitness center, a YMCA in 1929 in Oklahoma City...as a BLACK WOMAN, can you believe it? She will be so progressive, and so talked about, both good and bad. The man who dies was a co-worker. He was a bigot, a racist, and a narcissistic bastard, and those were his good points. Sherry was NOT upset that he was dead, but she did inform the police of all she knew. She just didn't tell them what she had heard or seen. You can't believe half of what you hear you know, and most of what you see, so when she informed the police, she did so in a very minimal way.

    For me, it's never about the murder, but about the disposal of the body. We'll have three murders, or at least 3 attempted murders. One will survive, I won't tell you which one, but it wasn't the guy in Oklahoma. He died. He was dead the minute he stepped foot onto the ranch. He was and will be enjoyed for years to come by various fish species in and around the greater metropolitan area of Oklahoma. I won't give much more away, you'll have to read the book. I have to write it first, but I'm on my way!! This is gonna be fun.

    This is the first novel in the Nick Posh series. Nick was born in Scotland, his family moved to the U.S. when he was a boy, as his dad was U.S. Army. He has dual citizenship. He broke the OKC case and was loaned out to Chicago Police to help with one of their cases. This case leads to one in Edinburgh, and that's where it gets really good - - love me some Greyfriar Kirkyard shenanigans. It will happen. We'll go up on top of Arthur's Seat, through the wynds of High Street, across the tailored lawns and gardens of Holyrood Palace, and even make an appearance at Hogmanay up under the Castle Rock!  So many things to do, and so many places to visit, and we can't do it without finding out a few interesting facts about my favorite city of all time; Edinburgh.

    So sit back, rest, and relax, you'll be invited to curl up with my good book, and find your way through the herringbone cobbled streets of one of Europe's most incredible cities; Auld Reekie. I'll explain later.

Photo Credit: Me

Still Finding Mistakes

 The thing about life is you're going to always find mistakes no matter how perfect the thing looks or feels. You just can't get it right every time.  No worries. I'm OK with mistakes as long as I know I've done what I can do. I downloaded Grammarly to help me with the issues I was having in my book, but when I used it, believe it or not, where it certainly did a bang-up job on some of the issues, it caused others. I had to go back and reread and rewrite the changes I had allowed Grammarly to make. My writing wasn't necessarily MY writing anymore. It was more polished, more sophisticated, less edgy, and of course, less raw. 

What I found myself doing in writing my book, was that I would write as I speak, and then I'd try to dress it up with language used in the 18th Century. I did that on purpose since the book takes place from 1731-1746 basically. I mention other dates, but the book actually takes place over that period of time. I used Wilson's Border Tales series to find like language and style, and I think it worked out pretty well, thank you very much.  I did find that I had to change a few words so I'm not repeatedly saying the same words too close together. CHALLENGE!!

Reading your own work is hard work, let me tell you. I tend to gloss over my own mistakes the first several times. I have to put the book down, or in my case, not open it on the desktop, and then I have to give it a few days before trying to read it for issues. I have probably gone over it more than 10 times. I've read and reread my own book at least 10 times. It's not something I can say I have ever done with someone else's book. I thought I had it all done, and ready to send to the publisher, but then I found another mistake...in Chapter One.  Only six pages in and I'm screwing up. I can handle it. I'll go back over the thing ONE MORE TIME and look for tiny details that need to be changed.  Geez!

I had to laugh.  I was so happy about having finished it, and having it ready to send to the publisher, that I sent it out again (again) to the 10 people who have been reading it for me. They tell me about mistakes and they make suggestions about the Scots language or tell me when I should have been more specific (or less) about a certain Scottish city, site, phrase, idiom, etc.  I love it. I was so excited about getting the last revision to them that I accidentally sent the dang thing to a man I have been purposely NOT speaking to; at his request.  Yes, I can be an annoyance at times. I was asked not to contact him, and there I go, sending him a sex-filled crazy historical romance novel that takes place in his own country! OOPS!  Well, maybe he'll enjoy himself after he begins to read the first few pages. (Maybe not, he may think I'm a total whack at that point.)

Anyway, the point of the blog is you can't make things perfect and if you did someone wouldn't like it. Someone would disagree with you. Someone would say it's this way or that way. I do know I need to go through the book to change the wrong words; I get that, and I'll work hard on it for sure, but I won't be going through it to change much about the landscaping, or the type of things one may expect an 18th Century whore to say to her husband; sorry....it stays the way it is. I like it.

This brings me to another point. I like the book.  I have literally read this book 10 times and I like it. I did move a few chapters around to make it more chronological, and that was a good decision, but I like this book. I like the characters. I like the colors, I like the way they make decisions. I like the way it ends. I like the dog...she's my dog, of course, I'm going to like the dog.  I really hope others like the book too. I don't measure my success by how many books I sell, but by whether or not I think the book is worth reading. It is.  I tell people I would rather be a successful author with books I love than books that I don't like that made money for me. I'm not lying. I prefer quality over what could get someone's attention. That being said...I think Chapter One is bound to get a few people's attention. Just....just... sayin'. 

Photo Credit: Incomediary.com