 The other night I was watching an episode of The Good Doctor where a girl was going to miss her prom because she had cancer. Once the doctors were out of earshot, one of them quipped, "Prom sucks," and it made me laugh really hard. He was right. Prom wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Not for me anyway. That's me with the very short black hair in the black dress with all my girlfriends at my senior prom in 1987. That was one of the very rare moments I actually spent with my friends that evening. My boyfriend at the time was in a different clique than my Drama group, so I spent most of the evening with a bunch of people I didn't know or like very well. (Shockingly, he and I broke up a couple weeks later.) And yet, I do know how important going to prom feels. I've helped both stepdaughters and my own daughter get gussied up and pictures taken for various proms. So much excitement and anticipation. They were all gorgeous, every time. And, let's face it, the dress, shoes, hair, and makeup really is the point, isn't it? Oh, in case you're wondering, the doctors didn't remain jerks on the The Good Doctor. They arranged for the girl to have her own private prom at the hospital with her boyfriend the night before her surgery. It was very sweet. My heart aches for all the high school kids who can't go to prom right now. Whether it was going to be the hopeful dream come true or the disappointing, "I can't believe I spent so much money on this," it's an experience that doesn't come around again. I wish I could help like those doctors on the TV show and give everyone a special moment. Alas, I cannot. All I can do is share a prom night scene from my YA romance novel All the Love You Write for you to enjoy. This scene is pretty far into the book, so I can't share too much of it without giving away spoilers. I can tell you that Bethany and Mark are high school seniors who have been struggling with a new relationship all semester. There are two ghosts in this story meddling with the relationship. Eileen is the ghost that constantly tries to make Bethany feel that she's not good enough for Mark. It works, which is why Bethany is spending prom night at home with her best friend Kat, having an anti-prom sleepover. Kat has just fallen asleep after a long heart-to-heart chat...   I watched Kat sleep for a bit. She looked so peaceful, and I wondered what she might be dreaming about. I knew I’d never guess correctly because despite knowing her nearly my whole life, I realized I didn’t know her as well as I thought. How could I not have seen it? How could I not have guessed? Why hadn’t she trusted me enough to tell me until now? Here I’d been thinking she was a horrible friend to me over the past few months, but maybe I was being just as horrible to her. Hopefully we’d broken through a barrier and we could be more face value than we’d ever been before. What an amazing friendship we could have now if we tried a little harder. Her phone on the table buzzed. A text message. It wasn’t my business, but we did know all the same people so I picked it up. If it was her mom or something, I’d wake her. All I saw when I turned the phone over in my hand was the image of Mark and Sadie dancing again. I closed out of the picture and opened her text messages. Nope. Nothing new. The phone vibrated in my hand. The picture popped up again. This wasn’t funny. Why would Lissy send this picture over and over again? That wasn’t like her. Besides, by now she was probably at a prom after party—hopefully staying out of trouble. I shivered with new worries. I closed the picture. The phone buzzed and the picture reappeared. I closed it. The phone buzzed and the picture reappeared. Oh no. This wasn’t Lissy’s doing at all. “Eileen,” I whispered sharply through gritted teeth. This had to be her handiwork. Although I couldn’t imagine how the ghost knew how to manipulate a cell phone. I closed the picture. It reappeared. “Okay, rub it in. He went to the dance with someone else. I get it. Thank you.” I closed the picture. It reappeared. I breathed slowly through my nose. “I know you’re trying to tell me something. What is it?” There wasn’t any kind of response, so all I could do was study the picture again. I went past noticing how handsome he was in his uniform and how Sadie had this Cinderella Ball makeover thing happen to her. I enlarged his face to study his smile to see if it was genuine. Seemed to be. It was hard to tell. Did he like being with Sadie? Did he like her more than being with me? Was that what Eileen was getting at? “Sadie’s an okay girl, I guess,” I admitted. Then I wondered something about Eileen. I looked up at the ceiling. I don’t know why I thought her ghost would be hovering above me like that. For all I knew she was sitting next to me on the sofa or standing on the coffee table. “Did you and Joe ever go to prom? I know you probably couldn’t go your senior year because of the war, but did you go your junior year or anything?” The photo on the phone began to disintegrate. My heart started beating so fast as I worried Kat’s phone had some horrible virus. The screen went blank. “Oh no. Oh no,” I moaned.  After a moment, the screen brightened again, and the image had been replaced with a new one. I’d never seen this picture before, but I had no doubts about what it was. Eileen wore a creamy white sundress with strings that tied around her neck. The cotton was thin, and although it hung all the way to the grass they stood in, I could see her legs through it. She held a bouquet of daisies in her hand and wore a crown of them in her golden hair. Beside her, Joe wore a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tucked into a pair of pale blue, bell-bottom slacks. He wore a thin tie, and he had a daisy pinned to his shirt pocket. His brown hair was overgrown. Perhaps he’d been letting it grow as long as possible before he had to report for duty. Otherwise, his face was the spitting image of Mark. Both of them were barefooted. This had to be a wedding picture of Joe and Eileen. In my ear I heard a soft voice say, “We did better than dance.” The phone went dead in my hand.  I hope you enjoyed that excerpt. If you're intrigued enough to find out what happens between Mark, Bethany and the ghosts, please get yourself a copy of All the Love You Write. It's free for Kindle Unlimited users. Another novel I know of that has an "anti-prom" scene is The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner. I highly recommend it, but have some tissues handy. Do you know of any other YA books with grat prom or anti-prom scenes? I'd love to know about them. Please leave a comment below. 
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In this crazy time where most of us are sequestered to our homes and going a little stir crazy, I thought I'd share a short story I wrote about a mom who gets a fresh outlook and invents a way for her family to have a really good day together. It's a feel-good piece that I wrote when I was still living in California, and I cleaned it up today for you.   Everywhere I looked I could see them. On the walls, in the shelves, above the mantel, even attached to refrigerator magnets. Pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Dean Morgan on their exotic vacations. According to their photographic exhibit, these two had been all over the world, to every fascinating destination one could imagine. The cocktail party at the Morgan’s house quickly grew tiring. I didn’t think I could handle hearing another tale of finding off-the-beaten-track sights or staying at lovely bed and breakfasts with gorgeous views and splendid hospitality. Watching my husband, Craig, nod his head over and over again, then hearing him repeat, “We’ll have to check that out when we go,” made my stomach tighten. A world of bills, responsibilities, children, and tight schedules swirled around me, making me desperate for some fresh air. “Let’s go outside and see the garden,” I said to Craig, tugging on his arm. “I’m sure it’s precious.” I felt certain that some of my bitterness escaped with that sentence, but neither Mr. or Mrs. Morgan seemed to notice. “Oh, do have a look,” Mrs. Morgan said. “All of the Birds of Paradise were imported from Fiji.” I smiled as politely as I could and tugged my husband away, pausing only to refill my wineglass on the way out. “I can’t take this anymore,” I said as we stepped into the tropical garden of imported flowers probably kept up by imported gardeners. “They make me feel like the most boring person on earth. Do you realize that I’ve never been out of the country? Not even to Tijuana or Vancouver. I haven’t even been to Hawaii!” Craig put his arm around me and gave me one of his comforting squeezes that hurt sometimes when he does it too hard. This was one of those times. “We could go somewhere if you want.” “Really?” I asked. “Where? When will we have the time or money?” “Um…” he hummed. He always did that when he had no answer. “We could always win a trip from the grocery store sweepstakes.” I felt my eyes roll up into my head. “Can we leave before I hear any more stories about hidden paradises?” Craig agreed, and ten minutes later we walked out the front door with this haunting farewell to follow us: “Let’s do it again,” Mrs. Morgan suggested. “Yes,” Craig agreed, adding, “but at our house next time.” ***** We argued all the way home. We argued into the night. The “How could you say thats” and “What do you means” went round and round for hours. Finally, exasperated from it all, I muttered, “I just can’t bear for them to see that we have no life.” “But we do have a life, honey,” he assured me. “Look at our pictures. We have tons of them.” He pointed at framed pictures around our bedroom. “There’s us with the kids at that massive family reunion picnic at the lake. There’s the one of Kelly’s pony ride at the fair. Remember this one, when Kenny graduated from kindergarten?” He pulled the picture off the dresser and put it in my hands. It was one of my favorites, little Kenny standing there in his oversized gown, wearing a cap made out of cardboard and black construction paper. We called him, “our little scholar.” “It’s not that,” I told Craig. “I didn’t even notice our lives were lacking anything until standing in the Morgan’s house with this constant reminder that there is a world out there—a world we haven’t seen even the slightest piece of.” At that, Craig threw up his hands. “Well, I don’t know what to do about that.” We turned out the lights and went to sleep without saying another word to each other. ***** In the morning, after feeding the kids and sending them outside to play, I cozied up with the Sunday Times on the couch. Purposely, I hid the Travel section from myself and instead pulled out the Calendar. I thought I might find a carnival or kids’ show that we could go to that day to ease my mind and give us all something to do. Glancing through the events pages, I came across an advertisement for Huntington Gardens. According to the ad, this was a huge garden in Pasadena designed painstakingly by the best groundskeepers in the nation. Plants were brought in from all over the world and raised in environments that resembled their foreign habitats. Kind of like a zoo for flora. Supposedly, if I went there, I would see a Japanese tea garden, a Chinese bamboo forest, a New Zealand jungle, and a Moroccan desert. This gave me an idea. Within an hour the family was packed into the car along with a couple duffel bags full of hats, sunglasses, some changes of clothes, and a camera. Craig thought I was crazy at first, but he soon got into the spirit of it. After all, my plan was anything but boring. We spent the whole afternoon exploring the garden. Each time we found the perfect location, we’d call on some stranger to snap pictures of us standing there. I put Kelly in charge of wardrobe, Kenny took care of making sure no people stood in the background, Craig was in charge of finding the best angles, and I just had a great time. At the end of the day, exhausted but giggly, we headed over to the convenience store and uploaded our digital pictures into the kiosk and clicked the box to have them developed in one hour. We ate at the burger place across the street and waited for our pictures to develop. As the sixtieth minute passed, we raced over to tear open our results. The pictures couldn’t have been more perfect. ***** A few weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Dean Morgan came to our house, along with some other work friends, for a get-together. Our new “worldly” pictures hung on the walls, rested on bookshelves and the mantel above the fireplace, and a couple sillier ones were held in place by refrigerator magnets. Mrs. Morgan ogled a pose of Kelly and I standing in front of a Zen rock garden. “Isn’t Japan wonderful in the summer?” “Quite,” I agreed, sipping my wine to keep from giggling. “And Australia,” Mr. Morgan said, studying another picture. “You really had to take one of the hidden trails to get this shot, didn’t you?” “The kids loved it,” Craig replied, winking at me. Originally, I had only planned to put those pictures up for the cocktail party, just for the purpose of impressing the Morgans. After the party, though, I decided to leave them up. As I look at them now, I realize that although we may have fooled our jet-set friends, the photos would never fool me. I’d never look at them and think, “Wow, look where we’ve been.” Instead, I’d always look at those photos and remember how much fun we had together as a family, right here in our own home town, traveling around the world in a day.  I hope you enjoyed that short story. I have other ones in my blog if you feel like scrolling down a bit. You might also enjoy my short story "Ticket to Her Heart" published in the anthology Second Chance for Love. Please take a moment to pop around on my website and read excerpts and reviews of my published work. You might find something to help you pass the time.
All my best wishes for you, Donna  Happy New Year, everyone. Today I write my annual reflection post and list my favorite reads of the year. I hope you all had a good 2019 and are looking forward to this coming year. I kept my calendar pretty clear the first half the year. It was my daughter’s senior year of high school, and she was very active with band and theater. I wanted to keep myself available for as much of it as possible.  I used the time to revise and polish the two books that I published last year. In the spring, I released The Silent Beauty, the third of my original fairy tale novella series Chasing the Romantics. It’s darker than the other two, and I think it’s my favorite. I still have two more fairy tales that I’d like to add to the series, but we’ll see what my time is like this coming year. In the summer, Fire and Ice YA Books, released my novel All the Love You Write. It is my longest novel to date, a sweet romance with some paranormal activity. Beginning in May, I got back involved with theater. I directed the classic play Our Town, which was a fun experience. As an additional challenge, one of my actresses broke her leg during the run, so I had to understudy her for the final weekend and get some stage time alongside my daughter who was playing Emily. During the summer, I had the opportunity to have a large role in an original musical about mental illness called Greener Pastures. It was a very dramatic part where I got to pull out all my acting chops and sing a big ol’ song at the end. It was at a theater where I haven’t worked before, and it was great meeting some new people.  In December, my husband and I played Ralphie’s parents in A Christmas Story the Musical. This was an absolute blast, and I missed it the second it was over.  I had several fun opportunities to speak about my writing this year. One of the coolest ones was recording a podcast about my children's novel No One Needed to Know for Tennessee Library for Accessible Books and Media. It's a 30 minute presentation and basically covers what I say in my school appearances. Pop over to my about me page to find the link to the recording and learn more about my school visits. One of my school visits this year was canceled for a snow day, but they did buy copies of Lost on the Water - A Ghost Story for all the kids in their book club. That was sweet of them. I thought another of my school visits would be cancelled for snow in November, but even though school opened late, they still had me come. I had the best time at Gladeville Middle School talking about No One Needed to Know and my other YA novels. Truly one of my favorite days of the year.  What does 2020 have in store? As a writer, I’m not sure. I am about 35,000 words into a new novel that is my first full-length venture away from children's/teen literature. In the briefest of summaries, it’s about an aging dancer trying to figure out her purpose and worth. I hope to finish it by this spring. I have a couple other ideas bopping around, too, for future books. The only thing that is ‘sure’ is that my very first picture book, Matching Costumes, will be published later this year. I’m soooooo excited about it and can’t wait to see how it turns out. (Sorry, I don't have any images to share yet.) With regard to theater, I am starting off the year directing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It has been cast, and we have an amazing team involved. Rehearsals start tomorrow night, and I’m eager to get going. There are some shows I’ve got my fingers crossed about later in the year, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Now…. for my book round-up. I read 41½ books in 2019. There was one book that I read 75% of before finally giving up on it. Click to see all the books of my Goodreads challenge. Normally, I read a lot of YA and MG books. This year I read a lot more women’s fiction. I feel it’s important to read in the genre you’re writing, so I picked some books that were similar in style and theme to the new book I’m working on. To that end, I found myself less patient with high fantasy books than I have been in the past. I definitely have preferred contemporary or realistic fiction this year. It might be an age thing, too. I’m not sure. As usual, over half the books I’ve ‘read’ this year were audiobooks, and they tend to be by the bigger, well-known authors. The ones I tend to read in print or on my kindle are usually by authors I’ve ‘met’ in some way, either from an author’s group online or a local author. So here we go:  Favorite Book of the Year Refugee by Alan Gratz. This middle grade novel follows the stories of three different children refugees from three different eras. It is brilliantly paced with characters that I couldn’t help but love. I worried and rooted for each of them as they went through their heartwrenching adventures. Of all the books I read this year, this one rocked me the most emotionally. I highly recommend it for kids and grown-ups to increase your knowledge of world history and empathy.  Favorite Book from a Big Publisher The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley, published by Balantine Books. This novel is about two cousins who move into a dorm at college where there is a terrible fire. The story goes back and forth between the mother and daughter’s POV, and it also goes back and forth from present to back story. This book kicked me right in the guts emotionally and had lots of little surprises throughout. It was a rare book that made me gasp out loud at one point and cry at another. I suppose the timing of me being a mom about to send her child off to college didn’t help, but I thought this book was brilliant. It’s considered adult, but I think it’s a good crossover for adult and YA/NA readers.  Favorite Book from a Small Publisher Owl Eyes by Molly Lazer, published by Fire and Ice YA Books. This is a unique spin on the Cinderella story. I do sometimes get bored with Cinderella retellings, but I liked how this one took off and became its own unique, romantic story. I do hope there will be a sequel. This is a good, clean YA novel for 12 and older.  Favorite Self-Published Book This one came in right at the last moment, as the last book I read in 2019. A Time For Everything by Mysti Parker is billed as a romance novel. While it is romantic, I would definitely classify it more as historical fiction. It is set post Civil War, and it has some amazing themes to it that are much deeper than “I wonder if it’ll work out for the two of them.” I highly recommend it!
 Favorite Series Well, I only read one whole series this year, and it was good but not what I would consider a favorite. I read a couple final books of series this year, though, so I’ll count Finale by Stephanie Garber as the amazing, magical ending to the gorgeous Caraval trilogy. I would love to hear from you. Do you have any plans for the new year? Did you read any books in 2019 that you recommend? Feel free to comment.
And hey, take some time to scroll through my website and see if you want to add one of my books to your 2020 TBR list.  As with most writers, I hold a day job that pays the bills. I’m a teacher at an inclusive early childcare education center. I’ve been at this position for 14 ½ years, and I’ve been working as a teacher for thirty years now. This past week, all the teachers on staff got to attend the national NAEYC conference held here in Nashville. There were over 9,000 people in attendance and something like 500 sessions offered over the four-day event. I think there was a planned ‘theme’ for the event, but the unintended theme that I go out of it was about perception. Nearly every lecture I attended had something to do with how people perceive the actions or words of other people. Generally, our instincts are to judge harshly, to assume less of a person. “That co-worker didn’t help me because they’re lazy or doesn’t like me.” “That parent brought their sick kid to school because they love their job more than their kid.” “That student is acting up because they just want attention.” “That person thinks what I do for a living is beneath them.” It goes on and on until we have strong feelings that build a wall of frustration and anger. What we need to do instead is assume ‘positive intent’. Everyone has a story that they are going through, right? In nearly every case, I could argue that people aren’t intentionally being mean. When people are angry or hurtful, they are usually struggling with something themselves. Someone has to rise above. Someone needs to see the bigger picture. Take a breath. Calm the urge to fight or flee. Then see if you can figure out how to address and hopefully solve the problem. What surprised me was the intense focus on this concept throughout this massive conference. Clearly, how to choose how to fully comprehend a behavior before reacting to it is something people are hungry to understand. This information isn’t new to me. I’ve been trying hard to live by this method of thinking for the past few years. Sometimes I don’t succeed and my patience is challenged. It’s easy to fall into the habits of complaining about or judging others. I do feel, however, that my life has improved since I started working consciously on seeing the better side of difficult interactions. I’ve also made an effort to embed the concept in my books.  It’s particularly evident in my children’s novel No One Needed to Know. That book is centered around bullying and helping kids understand empathy toward students with autism and special needs. Heidi, the main character, realizes that the reason the kids in her class are being so mean is because they don’t understand what it means to be a person with special needs. They have fear of what is “weird” or “strange” to them, so they are cruel instead of kind. She works on finding a way to help them learn and change their way of thinking.  In my novel Lost on the Water – a Ghost Story, there are many secrets that get revealed. One of them is about Dannie’s grandmother. She lives on a lake but seems to be deathly afraid of the water. She won’t let Dannie play near the lake and acts strange whenever it is mentioned. We later learn about the tragedy she went through that created her fear, and through Dannie’s eyes see that her Grandmother has a very valid reason for being so strict and overly worried.  In All the Love You Write, there’s a scene where Bethany’s mother insists that they spend Valentine’s Day night with each other instead of letting her go out on a date with her boyfriend. Bethany is devastated by this, and the whole evening is ruined with her tears. Once they get home, Bethany learns why her mother was insistent on spending that time together. She’s not just being difficult, like Bethany thought. Her mom has some complicated feelings of her own left over from her divorce. When Bethany learns this, it changes her heart toward her mother. Another example is from my novel Whisper of the Woods. Juniper’s uncle comes across as the villain for wanting to chop down the 1,000-year-old Red Cedar tree, but we learn that he has genuine fear of the tree based on a tragedy that happened there when he was young. If we think of our favorite novels and movies, if they are well-written at all, there is always a backstory for every main character. Villains are often victims of trauma. Heroes have risen above adversity. Parents have baggage. Writers do this so that we can have empathy for the characters and care about what happens to them. (My step-daughter has a real affinity for a tragic backstory of a handsome villain.) It also helps us forgive a character (like a wayward parent) when they come around and prove themselves at the end of the story. I’m a sucker for these storylines. Yes, I spent four days at a conference about the care and welfare of small children, and I walked away with ways to apply what I learned not only to my day job, but to my writing and personal life. Some messages are like that – universal. I challenge you now to think about how you can apply the concept of ‘positive intent’ or ‘benefit of the doubt’ to your life. Think of how it can change the nature of your relationships with your family, friends, co-workers, etc. If you’re a writer, think how it can enhance your stories. This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for learning new things and to all of you who come to visit my blog. I’d love to hear an example of how ‘positive intent’ has worked for you in your experience. Please leave a comment if you like, and have a great holiday season. And hey! If you're looking for some great reads for your long weekend, click here and take a look at some of mine.   My newest novel, All the Love You Write, has recently been released. This isn’t my first book, by any means, but it is the book I’ve struggled the most to write. It’s the manuscript where I stared at my computer screen for long minutes that wielded no results and finally had me switching to other projects or simply turning off the computer to go watch TV instead. It was my first real fight with writer’s block.
 Toward the end of 2017, however, I had a sudden flash of inspiration. What if, instead of making the existing story longer, I simply added on to it? What if I wrote the history of the ghost and the tragic romance he’d had back in 1970 during the Vietnam War era? What if I then wrote what happens next in the relationship of Mark and Bethany through Bethany’s eyes? Three related stories, told in three parts. I got really excited about this concept, and I wrote Part 2 of the book in just a few short weeks. The love story of the ghost as the teenager he had once been, told through a collection of old love letters, flew out of me. I was so excited. I thought I’d have the rest of the book finished within a month or so. Then I was on to Part 3, and this was where my struggles began. Bethany is having a hard time with this new relationship. It’s the final semester of high school, and she’s not sure how much she wants to invest herself. They don't have much in common or a lot of time to spend together. Mark will be joining the army right after graduation, and she’ll be going to college. Is it worth it? Sometimes I worried that the reader wouldn’t like Bethany not readily accepting Mark after all he’d done to win her over. I’d stop writing when I felt like she was being too hard on him or making a choice that would hurt his feelings. Was this going to be okay? I didn’t want the reader to hate her. Then there was the haunting to consider. This got me stuck a few times, too. I had Mark haunted by a helpful ghost in Part 1. There was barely any paranormal activity in Part 2. I needed to keep the ghostly aspect of the story going in Part 3 to stay true to the genre of book I was writing. I decided Bethany would be haunted by a different ghost. This ghost wouldn’t be helpful at all. In fact, she’d be pretty angry and spiteful about how Bethany was treating Mark. This ghost is very protective of the boy. (I’d like to tell you why, but spoilers, you know.) As I wrote, I’d get stuck because there didn’t seem like enough interaction with the ghost to match Part 1. I revised my outline multiple times to come up with how and why this ghost was bothering Bethany. Like I had with Bethany’s choices, I also worried too much what readers would think about this ghost being so aggressive.  But the biggest problem I was having with my writer’s block was the length. My original novella Passing Notes was shy of 60 pages. I did revise it and added on to the ending, but it didn’t get much longer than that. Part 2 wound up being about 100 pages. My original plan was that each part of the novel would be about the same length – the book winding up at between 60,000-75,000 words, similar in length to my other YA novels. This is not what happened. Part 3 wound up at about 180 pages, the entire second half of the novel. See, Part One, takes place over a week. Part Two is mostly one day of reading letters. Part Three takes place over half a year. That’s a lot of time to fit into a short space. The words took me way past 60 pages and then past 100 pages, and I knew I wasn’t even close to being done. My writing came to a halt. I was afraid to keep going. I mentioned it on my Facebook author page, posting that I’d hit writer’s block because I was worried I was over-writing. A friend teased me, responding that he wished he had that problem. And I know it sounds strange to say that my ability to write froze because I thought I was writing too much, but that’s what happened. I stopped right in the middle of a chapter and let a couple weeks pass. Then a couple months. I worked on other projects. I directed a play. I wasn’t sure if I would come back to it. Last fall, I read the whole book again from the beginning and decided I was okay with where it was going. I revised the outline for the billionth time and picked up where I’d left off. It was still pretty stop and start, but I eventually got through the whole thing. Then I had to go all the way back to Part 1, my original story. Details had to be changed: character descriptions, names of people, jobs, and a bunch of other details. Also, as to be expected, I had more revision to do once my editor from Fire & Ice YA Books gave me her notes. Now the book is out in the world, ready for readers to enjoy and leave their opinions. Some will like it, and others will not. That’s out of my hands now. The thing is, I was paralyzed with worry about what people would think of this book as I was writing it. Over-thinking made me second guess, doubt, and even quit for a while. This is part of being a writer. It takes courage to overcome all those negative inner monologues and keep going. We have to make choices, and then we have to stand behind them. In the end, I pushed through to write the story the way I wanted it. I hope readers will enjoy what I’ve created.  If you’d like to learn more about All the Love You Write, visit the page on my website. You’ll find an excerpt, some review quotes, and links to all the online booksellers. I’d love to hear from you. If you’re a writer, have you ever struggled with writer’s block? What caused it? How did you get past it? If you’re a reader, do you ever wonder about what was going through an author’s mind when they wrote a book or scene you loved or hated? Please leave a comment below.  I woke up this morning and found out that it is #NationalCameraDay. Who knew? Well, I've been meaning to do a new blog post for a while now, and I remembered that I had once written a short story about a magical polaroid camera that reveals more than it should at a high school reunion. I hope you enjoy it. Candid Moments A short story by D. G. Driver “You think that’ll work?” Bill asked, tipping a beer to his lips. I noticed Blaire, his wife, gesture that this would be his last beer. Next to Bill on the picnic tabletop, Christy looked dubiously at the Polaroid camera in my hands. “I didn’t these existed anymore.” I shrugged. “I found it in a box while searching for my yearbooks at my mom’s house last night. It might not work.” “They’ll probably come out black,” Eddie chimed in. He and his newest wife, Hallie, cuddled on a blanket separate from the rest of us. “We’ll see,” I said, quickly snapping a picture of Eddie and Hallie. If I was going to get a ruined picture it might as well be of them. Once the picture slid out of the camera, I joined the rest of my old buddies at the picnic table. Jennifer, the buddy I once considered best, grabbed the picture from me and shook it. “You’re supposed to do this.” I laughed. She always had her peculiar habits. It was kind of nice to see that after twenty-three years that part of her hadn’t changed. “It sure is great to have everyone together, isn’t it?” I said. No one jumped up and shouted, “Yes! And we should stay together like this, bonded in friendship for the rest of our lives and never let life tear us apart again!!!” like I hoped. Instead everyone did a sort of sighing, nodding head thing as though to say, “Yeah, it’s sweet, but can we wrap this up soon?” The reunion wasn’t my idea. Some teenage girl planned it. Our high school drama teacher was retiring, so the current students hosted this big event, reuniting everyone who ever once graced the stage in an embarrassing moment of Thespianism. As the event strolled through the afternoon, we alumni slowly split off into chunks by graduating years. My group consisted of the ’96 graduates and their current spouses. I hadn’t seen most of them since graduation except on Facebook and hardly recognized them as the people I used to love more than life. “It came out!” Jennifer shouted, holding up the photograph. I studied the picture closely. Strange. I swore I had taken a picture of Eddie and his wife, but Hallie wasn’t in the shot. And another thing. I thought Eddie had been sitting, but in this picture, he was standing with his hand over his heart in that romantic Gene Kelly gesture that used to drive me, and every other girl in the school, wild. Couldn’t be, I thought. I’m just over-do for new contacts. I picked up the camera and aimed the lens at Christy. Christy groaned, “Don’t. I look soooo bad.” Right. Like leggy Christy, who taught yoga and won swing dance competitions had anything to worry about. She was the only one of us still performing. She and I were the only single adults at the table, yet I’m certain her singleness was by choice and not default like mine. I joined the others in groaning right back at her. I took a few steps back in order to get a good group shot. I was still centering the picture, when Bill asked Jennifer about her kids. “I hear your boy’s an ace at T-Ball.” Jennifer blushed with a parental modesty nobody ever buys. “His dad thinks he’ll be on the Dodgers one of these days.” She elbowed her husband in the ribs. Ronnie nodded, mouth full of hamburger. “How about you, Bill?” Jennifer asked. “Any kids yet?” “Nah,” he said. “Blaire and I decided not to have kids.” He rubbed his wife’s neck as he spoke. I snapped a picture of Eddie and Jennifer, thinking how funny it was to hear them talking about their spouses and family life. It was like they had forgotten that they once couldn’t keep their hands off each other. I wondered if Ronnie or Blaire knew about that as I handed the picture to Jennifer to “air out”. “Don’t you think Mr. Grant looks old?” Christy said. She pointed at him where he sat, two tables away. I swung the camera around to get a distant shot of our old teacher. “He’s looked better,” I admitted. “Not much,” Eddie chimed in. “Remember? He was so fat that when he sat slouched in the theater seats his stomach used to touch his chin.” We all laughed at the memory of that image as I snapped the picture. “Oh my God!” Jennifer screamed. She dropped the picture she had been “drying” as though it had bitten her. I picked it up and dusted it off. To my amazement, the picture was not of Jennifer and Bill. At least not as they were today, forty-year-olds with bellies and hips. The picture revealed a much younger version of them in an intense embrace. “Oh my God is right,” I said. “What? What is it?” Everyone wanted to know. “Don’t you dare show them,” Jennifer warned. But it was too late. Christy had already snatched it out of my hands and was sharing it with Bill. “This is so weird,” she said, as though we hadn’t all figured that out. Luckily for Jennifer, Ronnie was still only interested in his meal. Bill’s wife, however, got a good enough glimpse to warrant him a harsh look and a quick exit from the scene. “Blaire!” he called after her.  I let them deal with their soap opera moment. I needed to know how the other picture I took came out. The image struggling to brighten looked to me to be Mr. Grant slouching in a beach chair in the park. Only, we were all in the picture too, sitting in the grass with our backpacks and scripts. This time, I dropped the picture. Eddie joined us at the table at last, curious to see what was going on. Bill couldn’t find it in him to leave this phenomenon to chase after his wife, so he leaned in too. “Take another one,” Christy said. “Take one of me.” As she flung her hair back over her shoulder, I clicked the button. We waited wordlessly for the picture to develop. Nothing unusual. It came out as a picture of Christy flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Well, that’s not fair,” she whined. Of course not. I knew she just wanted to see if it would show us a picture of her once glorious star-of-the-senior-musical self. Jennifer, studying the pictures, said, “Here’s what I think. When you took these two pictures we were talking about memories.” “But we weren’t talking about these memories,” Bill said. “Take another one of all of us,” Christy ordered. “While she does that, we all have to talk about something. Okay? Let’s talk about a play we all did or something.” Every face went blank for a moment as they calculated which play to talk about. Between us, we had performed in over twenty of them. I aimed the camera and waited for someone to start. “Remember the auditions for Guys and Dolls?” Jennifer asked, pushing it for a believable delivery. “We all had to do that dance to Luck Be a Lady and it was so hard.” Christy jumped up. “I choreographed that number.” Bill cringed. “I remember looking like an idiot.” “But you got the part,” Christy reminded him. “Well, yeah,” he admitted. “But Nathan Detroit doesn’t really dance, you know.” I let them go on a bit longer about the auditions and the show before I took the picture. I wanted to capture them when they truly had forgotten to keep posing for the camera. A deep debate about the pros and cons of seniority casting occupied them. By the time I approached them with the developed picture they seemed surprised that I had it already. I dropped the picture on the table and the conversation came to a halt. No one spoke. How could they? Who would have imagined that the picture would not be about the show? Who would have dreamed that the picture would not include any of us? Who would have thought that the picture would reveal Susie Talbert, the girl who should have played Sarah Brown that year. We all just stared, silently moved by the fact we had forgotten all about this girl who had once been our friend. The silence caught Ronnie’s attention. “What’s going on?” he said. “Is it another picture of my wife smooching some kid?” “Uh, no,” I said quietly. I didn’t know what to say. Apparently, no one else did, either. Ronnie picked up the picture. “She’s pretty. Who is she?” We all looked at each other, hoping someone else would answer. Eddie finally spoke up. “That’s Susie. She was killed in a car accident about a week before the school musical.” He paused, and I could sense the need in him to explain things. I felt it welling up inside myself too. I had denied what happened for so long. After a deep breath, Eddie continued. “It had been prom. We had planned to all go together instead of separately with our dates. Only, Susie’s boyfriend was the school president, and he hung out with a different crowd than us, so she decided to go with him and hang with his friends that night.” I interrupted to say, “She figured she’d be spending the whole next week and weekend with us because of the play.” “Anyway,” Eddie said, “some of us were kind of pissed off that she chose this guy and his jerk friends over us. She was like a real turncoat, you know. Four weeks from the end of school, and she’s hanging with the people who always trashed us.” Eddie was getting worked up about it, so I took over. “We ignored her at the dance. Didn’t give her an ounce of attention. We actually booed and hissed when she won prom queen. I don’t know why we were like that. I can’t remember why…” That’s when I had to stop. Ronnie raised a hand and said, “I don’t need to hear any more. I think I got it.” “No, you don’t,” Jennifer said to him. “I need you to know this about me. About my friends and me.” Ronnie let her talk. “Susie was so depressed that night ‘cause we were so mean to her. I mean, we were her best friends. So, she went to some party after the prom with her boyfriend and got wasted. She’d never done that before.” Jennifer bit her lip in an attempt to control the shaking of her voice. “They were driving home from the party, drunk, and they crashed into a stoplight. Her boyfriend broke both his legs. Susie was killed.” Christy, who had jumped all over the leading role in the musical as soon as the news came out about Susie’s death, started bawling. Of course, none of the rest of us were exactly dry-eyed. Nobody had anything left to say. We sat there in a funk for about five minutes or so. Eddie’s wife came over to comfort him in her snuggly way. Only Ronnie moved as though unaffected. He got up to dump his paper plate and napkin in the trash. When he came back to the table he took the camera from me. “Do you mind?” he asked after the camera was already in his hands. “I guess not.” A hint of a smile crossed his otherwise blank face. “Thanks.” He took about three steps backwards and lifted the camera to his eye. “Hey, everyone,” he said. “Oh, not now, honey,” Jennifer said. “No one wants a picture of this.” The words didn’t daunt him one bit. “Think about this Susie girl,” he said. “Think about what you should have done. What you would have done if you could do it again.” Before any of us could protest, he snapped a picture. We waited anxiously while Ronnie fanned the shot just like his wife had before. Finally he walked over to us and held the picture up for us to see. There we all were, sitting at a picnic table in our modern-day clothes with our modern-day wrinkles and weight. Only one thing was different. Susie was there with us. She had her arms wrapped around Jennifer and my shoulders and was squeezing hard. A great grin stretched across her young face. As we enjoyed the sight of our angelic friend, I could feel my friendship with Jennifer return and my awe for Christy’s talent swell up inside me. The way I used to always appreciate Eddie’s frankness and Bill’s sweet demeanor came right back to me. Everything fit right back in place—twenty-three years of distance suddenly erased. Ronnie flipped the camera over in his hands to inspect it. “This is a great thing,” he said to me, bringing me out of my reverie. “Mind if I borrow it for my reunion?” “It’s yours,” I whispered. I knew I didn’t need it anymore.  Click on image to go to Amazon. I hope you liked that. If you did, you'll probably enjoy my other ghost stories Lost on the Water and Passing Notes. And hey, my newest novel All the Love You Write (a contemporary teen romance challenged by a couple meddling ghosts) comes out in about a month. I'll be having a cover reveal really soon! 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 Bullies, mean girls, brats, uncompromising or corrupt adults... Over the course of my writing career thus far, I’ve written a number of dislikable characters. In some ways they are more fun to write than the nice ones. I don’t consider myself a mean-hearted person (I teach babies for a living), so it’s a bit of a thrill to dip into the head of someone who has nothing nice to say or does appalling things. At the same time, writing these kinds of characters is also a challenge for me because I’m kind of a mild-mannered person. I have to work to make the nastiness of these characters believable.  My middle grade novel, No One Needed to Know, is full of bullies who unfairly pick on Heidi and her autistic brother. The point of the book is Heidi overcoming the bullies and hatred so that she can help people learn to be kind toward her brother and others with autism and special needs. So, the bullies had to be awful and do name-calling with a word that makes me cringe. This novel is based loosely on my real-life relationship with my older autistic brother, and we were both bullied when we were young. My daughters were also bullied in school. I had to dredge up what that was like to write these scenes. I can’t say that was particularly fun, but it was important.  The Juniper Sawfeather Trilogy, my YA fantasy series, features several characters that are fairly hateful. The worst of them is Regina, the president of the high school student council who has no use for Juniper until Juniper can provide her access to real-life mermaids. There is also Nick, the high school boy determined to make of fool of Juniper in the school yearbook, and Mrs. Slater, the vice principal who clearly hates teenagers and Juniper most of all. Within her family, Juniper’s mother isn’t the most likeable woman, and her uncle Nathan is a tough pill to swallow. All of this ugliness is necessary for the series in order for Juniper to feel isolated and to force her into action. Most of the characters in the small-town setting of my YA adventure novel Lost on the Water – A Ghost Story are welcoming, but not all. Chris is a pretty big jerk to the youngest boy in the group, Alex, and newcomer Dannie. He even insists that Alex just ‘wimped out’ on the kayaking-camping trip and paddled home, refusing to believe Dannie that the boy is lost and needs help. When he finds out that Dannie isn’t really a boy, well, there are some less-than-kind words about that, too. I get attached to my protagonists. I don’t want them to suffer or feel hurt. I guess I think of them as my children, and my instinct is to protect them. When I write a scene where another character is bullying my heroine or treating her badly, it feels icky inside. It’s weird knowing that these awful words and actions are coming out of me, and yet they do. I wrote a scene in my upcoming YA romance All the Love You Write (July, 2019) where Bethany’s friends are being very critical of her relationship with Mark and are tearing her down. I remember tweeting after I wrote the scene about how much I hated those two girls and what they were making me do to my sweet leading lady. Still, it’s necessary, right? We can’t just have happy stories where nothing bad happens. Antagonists exist to make trouble for our protagonists. It’s absolutely necessary for creating an interesting plot or character development. That said, antagonists don’t have to be villains. They don’t have to be the obvious ‘bad guy’. They can simply be the people planting doubt or creating the obstacles.  But… What if my main character is the awful person? I have a certain admiration for people who write thrillers or horror novels where the book dips into the mindset of the villain. I’m currently reading Remember Me by D. E. White where there are chapters told in first person from the serial killer’s POV. It’s creepy. It’s effective. Still, this isn’t quite the same as writing a hateful main character of a story that is not horrific and hoping the reader will stick with her to see where this is going. I think of characters like Dr. Gregory House from the TV show House. That show was a big hit despite him having the absolute worst temperament. That’s because deep down he was an amazing doctor who would do right by his patients. He had a good side. The audience knew it and trusted it.  What if the main character doesn’t appear to have a good side? With each passing page, she gets more and more vile. What would keep a person reading? I think of someone like Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind, for example. She’s selfish, vain, and manipulative, among other things. Yet we root for her. We read that massive novel or sit through that 4-hour movie (again) hoping she’s going to become a better person and wind up successful and happy.  Well, I decided to write from the perspective of a character like that. I’ve done it twice now, both times as fairy tales. The first story I wrote was easier because the original plot and main character weren't my original ideas. I took an old Grimm Brothers fairy tale called “King Thrushbeard” and retold it as “King or Beggar”, now published in the anthology Tales of Ever After. In this story, a princess haughtily dismisses every man that asks for her hand in marriage. She’s impossibly rude about it. Finally, her father declares that the next man to arrive at the castle will be her husband. The next man turns out to be a beggar. Oh, what a horrid punishment for this vile girl. I named her Brianna, and she is a rotten thing.  Next, I decided to get braver and try an original story. This fairy tale would be the 3rd in my ongoing series of original fairy tale novelettes. Colleeda, the leading lady of The Silent Beauty, is disgustingly vain and selfish. She doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings—unless it’s adoration for her beauty and lovely singing ability. Life is a flirtatious game until a witch who clearly does not adore Colleeda curses her to never speak or sing again. In both of these stories, the ladies are punished for their awful ways. Deservedly so. The question is: do readers think the punishment is enough or will they read on to find out if the girls ever change and earn the right to a happy ending? Happily, one of the first reviews of The Silent Beauty (which released this past week) read: “The Silent Beauty is an unusual fairy tale, as the beautiful maiden is not one you will like, or even like reading about. Her faults heavily outweigh her looks and her stunning voice. Yet, you’ll likely keep reading. As the tale progresses, you’ll dislike her more and more, as for a change from most fairy tales, she is the evil one. Does she get her comeuppance? You’ll have to read and find out. Like Driver’s first two original fairy tales, the story is well written, detailed, and full of twists and turns.” Another first reviewer wrote: “The main character Colleeda is perfectly drawn as an enticing but altogether pompous character, who is perhaps a woman we would all love to hate, but when circumstances catch up with her ill deeds, we come to wonder if, both, she will be saved and if she deserves it?” It's definitely a thrill when some of the first readers express that they 'get' what you're trying to do. What are your thoughts about the rotten personas infiltrating your books? If you’re an author, do you like writing them? If you’re a reader, do you like reading them? I’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to leave a comment below.  To learn more about this series, click on this image.  Happy Valentine's Day! Whether or not you have someone special in your life, I hope you'll enjoy the day with some sweets and something sweet to read. My next YA novel, All the Love You Write is scheduled to be released by Fire and Ice YA Books in late summer this year. It's still got to go through editing and proofreading rounds, and it hasn't got a cover yet. Still, I thought it would be fun to share a little sneak peek at it today. This is a scene that takes place on Valentine's Day between my main characters Mark and Bethany. First, a little set-up (as this is pretty far into the book). Mark and Bethany, both seniors in high school start dating after Winter Break. They have a rocky start, but thanks to a meddling ghost who help Mark write a beautiful love letter, they are finally on track. The big problem now is that Bethany knows that once high school is over, she will head off to college, and Mark is leaving to join the military. She is having a hard time investing herself in a relationship that is doomed to end. And it really doesn't help that a different ghost is meddling with her, too. Only, this ghost is not like the ghost who helped Mark. This ghost wants Bethany to leave Mark before she breaks his heart. To top it off, Bethany's divorced mother is making her spend Valentine's evening with her at a play instead of letting her go on a date with Mark. Enjoy...   Joe and Eileen didn’t get to spend Valentine’s Day together because he was in Vietnam. I supposed they had spent Valentine’s Day together the year before while they were still in school, but never again. Next year on Valentine’s Day, Mark would be deployed. He might be in the Middle East somewhere. We would definitely not be able to spend Valentine’s Day together. And if he died there, we’d never spend it together. Never. I ran down the hall and stood at the top of the stairs. “Mom! I won’t go to the play with you tomorrow night. I have to spend Valentine’s Day with Mark.” Mom twisted around on the couch and looked up at me. “You’re going with me, and that’s final. Mark will survive.” But that’s the whole point. What if he didn’t? What if he didn’t survive for another Valentine’s Day? “Mom. Please. This is important to me.” “I tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you money to pay for the dinner when you two do go out together to celebrate. My gift to you two. Okay? Fair deal?” “Mom!” “End of discussion.” I suppose the play was good. I have no idea. I don’t remember watching it. Mark and I did have lunch at school together that day, but it was it was hardly private. We decided to picnic in the gym hallway as a sad farewell to our secret love letter nook. He brought some sparkling apple cider and plastic champagne glasses. I made us both some ham sandwiches and cookies. He took off the worn out watch he owned and put on the watch I gave him. His excitement about it seemed genuine. In turn, he clasped the locket he gave me around my neck. It was oval shaped, about an inch tall. The gold had lost its shine, but the etched flowers were still visible. He said it was his Aunt Nettie’s and that she wanted me to have it. I was grateful that it hadn’t been Eileen’s. I was afraid it might burn me or choke me during the night. “I didn’t put pictures in it yet,” he told me. “I’d mess them up. I figured you’d do a better job at cutting them the right size and stuff.” I took a selfie of us holding our champagne glasses. It came out really cute, and I told him that was the picture I’d use in the locket until we got a better one at his J.R.O.T.C. ball or prom. He gave me a sweet kiss while people around us oohed and clapped. It was something but not enough. A true Valentine’s celebration shouldn’t be cut short by a school bell sending you to fifth period. I hated being at the play knowing he was roller skating burgers and fries out to people’s cars in the cold February weather. My stomach churned with the guilt of it, and I went to the bathroom twice thinking I was about to throw up. Mom asked if I thought I had the flu. When Riff and Bernardo died, I cried. When Tony died, I sobbed some more. I didn’t care that they died, but the tears had been waiting for the opportunity and took it with abandon. I blubbered halfway home. Mom stopped going on about the show after a while when she finally clued it that my tears had nothing to do with West Side Story. When we pulled into our garage, Mom put her hand on my arm before I got out of the car. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I upset your plans with Mark, but…” She squeezed my arm too tightly. “I just didn’t want to spend Valentine’s Day alone again. It’s hard, you know?” My mom’s eyes were soft, her eyeliner smeared with some tears she’d been quietly crying on her own. Tears that weren’t for Riff, Bernardo, or Tony either. I reached across the seats with my free arm and hugged her. “It’s okay,” I whispered. Now my guilt was two-fold. I’d let Mark down, but I’d also spoiled my mother’s night. She wanted a night out with me to not think about this romantic holiday that she no longer shared with a husband. I was a jerk. I was a terrible person. Although, in my defense, if she’d said something about her real feelings earlier, I could have done better. I think. “Mom, you know you can talk to me about things, right? About Dad, if you want to.” She let go of me and turned off the car. “It’s not about your dad. It’s about this dumb holiday. When you don’t have anyone, it makes the loneliness so much more vivid.” “I guess it does,” I agreed. We went in the house, and when I was sure she was all right and getting ready for bed, I went to my room. I talked to Mark on the phone, but it was a short call. I lay there in the dark, unable to sleep as Valentine’s Day shifted to February 15th. “It’s just a dumb holiday,” I said, repeating my mom’s words. “Just a holiday to make people spend money on gifts and cards. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything.”  I hope you enjoyed that little glimpse of my newest novel. All the Love You Write is a sweet teen romance with some paranormal activity. It's tentatively schedule to release in July. This novel is an expanded version of my novella Passing Notes. If you want to see how Mark and Bethany's relationship begins, you can pick up that novella today. (This book is only 99 cents)  I also have a Valentine's Day scene in my novel Echo of the Cliffs, book 3 of the Juniper Sawfeather Trilogy. If you'd like to read that cute, romantic excerpt between Juniper and her boyfriend Carter, click on over this old blog post.
I'd love to hear from you. So, please feel free to leave a comment.  A few days ago, I was talking with my mother. She said my brother (yes, the one I’ve written about in my novel No One Needed to Know), recently read a book about how people should choose a ‘word of the year’ to make their own and guide their actions. My parents were excited about this concept, and Mom chose ‘positive’ while Dad chose ‘tolerant’. My brother has not chosen a word yet. I don’t think he has to. He’s awesome as he is. We should all strive to be like Joe. Anyway, my mother suggested I choose a word for the year. This isn’t exactly a new idea. I’ve read lots of motivational books and articles over the years that suggest this, or something similar to this. Visualize success. Make your thoughts about what you are, not what you want. “I am a writer” verses “I want to be a writer.” And you know what? I’ve seen it work for some people. I have a couple friends who are like poster children for positive thinking. I, however, am not one of those people. Honestly, it always backfires on me. The more I use ‘this is happening’ language in my head or start believing that something is really going to transpire, the more I lose. It’s like I jinx myself. If I can picture myself doing it, I won’t ever do it.  Me as Wendy in Peter Pan, circa 1989. Here’s one of my earliest examples. When I was 20 years old, I auditioned for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at a professional theater in California. I had just played Wendy in Peter Pan at that theater the year before. I was 5’3” and super thin. I did a great audition. Other actors at the audition were gathering around me, certain that I would be the one playing the part. I saw it in my mind—me in the brown braids and wearing that blue dress with the red sparkly shoes. Then… I lost to a 33-year-old actress who was an Equity union actress. I was devastated. No joke. When I start planning what I am going to write as my next tweet or Facebook post about my great upcoming success story, that’s usually when I get the rejection. This happened just this past week. I got a request for a full manuscript from a publisher only two days after submitting. I just KNEW this was going to be IT! Not just a book sale, but a SERIES sale. I had my announcement tweets forming in my head and my blog post about determination and dusting off old manuscripts half planned. Then I got a rejection—the very next day. It wasn’t the direction they were planning after all. I didn’t tweet about that. So, here I am, a determined optimist who is cursed to not be allowed to specifically imagine the fruits of success. My mother suggested I picked a word for the year, and my impulse was a big fat “No!” If I pick a word, then the opposite of that will happen to me. I know my tone disappointed her, and that made me feel sad and guilty. In deference to her, I decided I would give it some thought. I’ve come up with a few words that might be good motivators (without being too specific).  With some fellow SCBWI members and book blogger Kester Nucum at the Southern Festival of Books - Oct. 2018. STUDIOUS One of my goals this year is to further my knowledge about the business of writing. I’ve been to lots of writing conferences and workshops about the craft of writing and how to submit to publishers and agents. I’ve read and read and read about these skills and have applied them. What I haven’t taken enough time doing is learning about promotion tactics, SEO, effective advertising, you know, how to really sell books. I have a limited amount of time to dedicate to my writing career, and most of that time has gone to actually writing or doing some minimal publicity. There has to be a way to break through and get my books noticed by a larger audience, and I want to take more time learning the tricks of the trade that are eluding me right now. FLEXIBLE In both my acting and writing careers, I’ve always been a person who sees an opportunity and runs with it, even if it takes me away from where I thought I was headed. For that reason, I published 6 nonfiction books back in the early 2000s and did a fair bit of freelance writing even though I always wanted to be a novelist. These nonfiction books helped me make some income as a writer and become a Published and Listed author with SCBWI, which was important to me. I like challenging my writing ability, and I also like working on assignment, so I might look for more opportunities outside of writing young adult novels this year. To that end, I’m also considering leaving children’s writing (and fantasy) behind completely later this year and working on a book intended for grown-ups. My plans have a way of getting changed depending on what comes my way, so we’ll see what happens. COLLABORATE Five of those nonfiction books I mentioned above were a series of biographies about classical composers that I co-wrote with Daniel Felsenfeld, who is now an accomplished composer and a music professor at Julliard. It was a great experience. Other than that, I have always worked on books by myself, in a little messy office, with no real input from any outside voices. I had a meeting yesterday with a dear friend about the possibility of us working on a novel together. I’m super excited to see where this will go and how it will improve and change my writing for the better. PARTICIPATE Along with collaborating, I need to get more involved. I am a member of SCBWI, but I haven’t been to the local conference in the past three years because of schedule conflicts. I feel the difference it makes, not being connected to the local pack of authors. I am in a great online group of clean indie fantasy authors, and I’ve had the good fortune of having three stories of mine selected for their anthologies. I’ve done a few of their Facebook events but not enough of them. (In fairness, my fantasy novels aren’t self-published, so I can’t always do some of the group sales events because I don’t control the prices of my books). However, I could try harder. I went to a couple local book signings last year, but I want to be more supportive and go to more of these if possible. I will definitely be looking for more opportunities to include myself in events—and not just ones where we all stand at our own tables and sell books.  A sweet picture of my novelette The Royal Deal on @thelibrarymermaid Instagram page that made my day when I saw it! FORTITUDE
Fortitude means to carry on bravely through adversity. I’ve been at this writing game for 24 years now. That’s a considerable amount of time. I’ve seen my work published in magazines, websites, anthologies, nonfiction books, and novels, but I’ve yet to get an agent or reach what I call 'The Big Show'. Like most creatives, there are days I want to quit and give it all up. I had more of those days in 2018 than ever before. I hit a hard block on the novel I was writing because I just didn’t see the point in finishing it. I was disappointed at the lackluster sales of my newest novel release. One of my manuscripts that I shopped around to agents all year didn’t get a single bite, even after multiple revisions of that all-important first chapter. Sometimes I get really heartbroken by it all. But then I’ll get a new awesome review, or a small award, or someone does a cool bookstagram post with one of my book covers or sends me a message about how much they liked one of my books. I’m revived and rejuvenated. I keep plugging ahead and hoping the next project will be THE project. The one that’s going to propel my career to the next level. There you have it. That’s my list of words for the year. I hope Mom is pleased. Do you have any words that would help define what you expect for yourself in 2019? I’d love to read your comments about that, and I wish you all the best at achieving your goals.  So, here I am, like every other author, doing my annual year-end round-up of my writing-related experiences and favorite reads. I hope you've had a lovely year. Mine had some stressful moments personally, but overall was a better year for my family than 2017. I'm grateful for that. I stayed away from doing any theater the first half of the year and focused solely on writing. Due to this, I was able to be involved in a couple anthology projects and got more work published. Normally, I'm a person that works on one project at a time. This year was the opposite for me. My main writing project was interrupted multiple times for other more pressing deadlines and ideas. It started right before New Year's Eve last year when Fellowship of Fantasy (a group of indie fantasy writers on Facebook that I'm part of) announced that they were putting together an anthology of stories with the theme of magical doorways. I knew I had an old story like that. So, I stopped writing my novel and spent a few days cleaning and pruning that old story. It got accepted into Mythical Doorways which came out early in 2018. Cleaning up "The Hallway of Three Doors" reminded me that I had several of these old original fairy tales, and I decided I would clean them all up and release them as a series of novelettes. I got right to work on the first one The Royal Deal and released it at the end of January. My plan had been to get these out quickly, but the revisions took a lot longer than expected, and the next one, The Tomato Quest, didn't come out until summer. Also, one of my old stories, which was a retelling of an old Grimm Brothers fairy tale got chosen for the Fellowship of Fantasy anthology Tales of Ever After.  Technically, the box set of The Juniper Sawfeather Trilogy came out in December, 2017. I started back on writing my novel and then, of course, was interrupted with rewrites to my editor's notes and proofreading of my newest YA novel release, Lost on the Water - A Ghost Story, which was published by Fire and Ice YA Books in July, 2018. Along with that, I had my novel No One Needed to Know narrated as an audiobook by Allie James and had to proof that. I also got the digital rights to that novel returned from the publisher and released the book as an ebook. Lots of stuff going on. Oh, and hey! Two books of mine won awards this year. The anthology Winter Wonder, which features two of my short stories, won 1st place in the 2018 Purple Dragonfly Children's Book Awards for Best Anthology. My novel Lost on the Water - A Ghost Story won 2nd place in the 2018 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards for Best Young Adult Fiction. So that's fun. I finally got back to work on my novel... and then I was asked to direct a play.  The second half of my year was full with theater. I directed Steel Magnolias for The Larry Keeton Theatre in Nashville, which ran in August. I wrote a blog post about that experience. Then my husband, step-daughter, and I were all cast in A Christmas Carol, the Musical. They were fun experiences, and totally worth interrupting my writing schedule. I tried to sneak in writing on my novel between rehearsals, but it was slow-going. I also experienced some serious writer's block on that novel (definitely due to the stopping and starting). It's the first time this has really happened to me, and I'll blog about that sometime soon.  I had a few fun in-person experiences as an author this year. I did some school appearances and special events in April (Autism Awareness Month) to talk about my novel No One Needed to Know. My favorite (and most successful) events of the year were the Rocket City Author Event in Huntsville, AL, the Taste of Wilson County in Lebanon, TN, and doing a signing for Lost on the Water at Button Willow Coffee House and General Store. This event was extra fun because it was in the small town where some of the novel takes place. We sold a lot of books there, and I had to return another day to replenish their supply. Another fun day was when my daughter, husband, and I went to Center Hill Lake (where the story is set) to hike around and take lots of publicity pictures for the novel. I hope to go back next summer, too.  I can't say for certain what in store for 2019 yet. I DID finally finish writing my novel. It's called All the Love You Write and is a full-length YA romance that expands upon my previously published novella Passing Notes. I sent it to Fire and Ice YA Books yesterday morning, so I'm waiting now to see if they like it, want to publish it, and when. In November, I signed a contract for my very first picture book. It's called Matching Costumes. I don't have a release date yet, but I expect it will be in 2020. My next project is to work on the next of my original fairy tales. It's titled A Voice of Desire. It's a bit darker than the other two, and I hope to release it in February. Here's a little sneak peek at what I'm planning for the cover (this may change). At the moment, I've agreed to direct a play in May. I hope to do something theatrical in the fall, too. My daughter is graduating from high school this year, so I'm trying to keep my calendar clear for all her senior year events.  As for my reading? According to Goodreads, I read 42 books this year (although it says I read one more than once.) I think there are a few books I didn't include in my challenge, too. I continue to mostly read YA and MG books, and half of the books I 'read' this year were audiobooks. Typically, I 'eyes-on' read more indie books and authors I've met (whether in person or online) and listen to the books from the big publishers. My Favorite Books of 2018 My Favorite Book of the Year was Caraval by Stephanie Garber. Which also makes my favorite series of the year being this and the sequel Legendary. Caraval had an amazing, magical setting with a complex plotline that kept me riveted the whole time. Gorgeous!  Best Book from a Big Publisher (not including Caraval) was Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. I listened to 3 of the 4 books of this series and then needed a break. I haven't gotten back to the final book yet. The second book in this series is BY FAR the best. It's so romantic and full of action. It's sexy, though, so I don't recommend it for YA readers (even though it's sold on YA shelves.) Runners up were Stalking the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco and What Happened to My Sister by Elizabeth Flock  Best Book from a Small Publisher was Before I Found You by Daisy White. This is the second book of this 1960s New Adult mystery series, and there is a third one out now waiting on my Kindle. I'm drawn to the atmosphere and setting of these books as well as the characters, and the mysteries are solid. White has become one of my favorite writers, She writes quickly, though, so I can't keep up with her. I have 3 of her books on my TBR list for 2019. My runner-ups in this category were The Gemini Connection, a cool YA scifi by Teri Polen, and Barn Shadows, a YA ghost story by Laura Wolfe.  Best Self-Published Book. I actually didn't read very many of these this year. Sorry, my indie friends. I'll do better. I bought a lot of them, if that counts. I'm actually going to vote for Tales of Ever After, published by Fellowship of Fantasy. (This is a cooperative author group, not a publisher, so it fits in this category). I know I have a story in this book, but I didn't read the other ones until the book came out. It is my favorite of the FoF anthologies so far, and I truly enjoyed every story. I recently wrote a blog post about it if you want to scroll down a little and read more of my thoughts about this little (did I mention free?) gem.  Best Local Author Book was Freefall Summer by Nashville author Tracy Barrett. I'm a big fan of Tracy Barrett's work, and I enjoyed her first YA contemporary novel. It was a fun, spirited, coming of age novel with a unique activity as the backdrop.  Best Audiobook was definitely End of Watch by Stephen King. It was read by Will Patton (who also narrates The Raven Boys). He is an amazing actor, and his gravelly voice was perfect for this terrifying mystery/horror series. I actually started watching the TV show of Mr. Mercedes and couldn't get into it because Hodges didn't sound like the Hodges I knew. I just loved these audiobooks. Creepy as hell, though. Be warned. Runner up is What Happened to My Sister by Elizabeth Flock and narrated by Cassandra Campbell. I don't know how she did it, but Campbell managed to change her voice from an 8-year-old dirt-poor girl from the hills to a suburban Southern housewife and made me believe every second of it.  Favorite Grown-Up Book. (This includes nonfiction as well as fiction.) Life is Like a Musical by Tim Federle. I bought this book as a gift for my daughter, a musical theater actress and fanatic. I'm a fan of Federle's fiction, and he's a doll on Twitter. I knew I was going to love this book of uplifting advice and autobiographical stories from his Broadway life. Yes, it's targeted toward theater nerds like me, but I think there's something in it for everyone. It has a positive, optimistic tone that is so refreshing right now. I can't recommend it enough. I would love to hear from you. What are some favorite books you've read this year? Can you recommend any? Please leave a comment. (And feel free to roam around my website to find all the excerpts from my books.)
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D. G. DriverAward-winning author of books for teen and tween readers. Learn more about her and her writing at www.dgdriver.com Archives
April 2020
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Author D. G. Driver's
Write and Rewrite Blog
“There are no bad stories, just ones that haven’t found their right words yet.”
A blog mostly about the process of revision with occasional guest posts, book reviews, and posts related to my books.
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