RONE Awards

Vocal Crush won a 2016 RONE award for  Best Contemporary Sweet Romance!!!

I'm super grateful to have my efforts recognized by In D'Tale Magazine and a hefty piece of glass to set on my desk. :)

My trip to Burbank to the In D'Scribe Con was a new experience and education in the various genres of romance authors write. I had the opportunity to attend some excellent classes and meet some wonderful writers. Romance genres don't create boundaries, people do. I roomed with some amazing women, Lindzee Armstrong and Jaclyn Weist. Both are excellent authors. Go get their books!

Lindzee Armstrong
Jaclyn Weist

I wore a fantastic costume to the first ball. I added the wig and mask for pennies. Thank goodness all the stores are stocked with Halloween fare!

And my little black dress to the second. Where I got snagged by Debra Holland to pose with the male models. That is a story all it's own.

These people are serious about their parties. I dressed up every night. The last night was the black tie/red carpet affair: The RONE Gala.








I took a pic with the sweetest writer: Rachel Jones. She is truly a Georgia Peach!

And that's when I became an award winning author. I hope that doesn't give me writer's block!

I had the opportunity to share this moment with my sister whom I hadn't seen in 9 years as we live on opposite coasts. Love this woman! She inspires me. I loved having 4 days to spend in San Diego with her and her family after the conference. I hope it won't be 9 years before I see them again.




It's time to gear up for National Novel Writing Month aka NaNo in the writing community. Not sure I'm going to succeed this year with so many days unavailable to write for really good reasons: family. Plus, I'm having trouble deciding what to write about! More contemporary? A series? Regency? A modern twisted fairytale? So many options! Time to pick one and get outlining.

Please submit my latest book, On the Corner of Heartache and Love, for a Whitney Award: 
Whitney Nomination 

Thanks for all the support!

Dia-what?

by H. Linn Murphy

I have been very lax lately. This is only two months and two weeks late. Life has taken a much busier turn. End of excuses...;o)

So I went to a class on dialogue when at ANWACon16. I'm always up for better dialogue. However, there's at least one point I hope to contest:

The lecturer said, "You need to dump all accents and slang of the period and use only the way a person says something to indicate that person's difference."

What? I asked myself while pondering all the work I'd just done on my brand new débutante work.

She somehow missed my look of abject horror amidst the sea of faces and blithely continued her journey, which otherwise offered some outstanding ideas.

"We're supposed to get, from sentence length, that Juan is from Ecuador and not Minnesota?" I asked myself under my breath.

"I think that's absurd," I told my seat partner (SP), later. "When I read a book with a handsome Scotsman in it, I hope to find a few dinna's and oots. I think portraying a Regency belle with completely modern language is silly. It makes no sense to me to have my valley girl speak the same way as my starship ensign. A character needs to have their distinct way of speaking, or it isn't believable."

SP agreed. "Of course you don't use the same words for a child as you would an adult, among other things." 

I might have plowed into the runway in a massive conflagration if not for her acknowledgement, and that of several editors and other great books I've read.

"There are, however, exceptions," I said. "Or maybe I'm taking exception and this isn't part of it. Don't use language that takes the reader out of the book. Read your work out loud to someone who doesn't think the sun shines from each of your orifices. If they get confused or lose interest, think of a better way to convey what you want to say."

SP's smile warmed my heart. "I like that. I too was worried about this problem."

"Your words have to work," I said. And it's true.

It's Going To Be Okay

Valerie J. Steimle

I just sat there watching.  Watching the garbage men throw all of our trash into this humongous collector’s truck with a big claw.  The contents were the sum of the past 24 years living in Alabama. It was piled pretty high. My husband and I raised nine children there until he passed away at fifty leaving me to raise the last five on my own for the past ten years. I became contemplative as I watched all of this mess go into the big bin and my youngest, now 17 asked, “What are you thinking?”  He knew by the look on my face that my brain was off in deep thought.

It seemed that our whole life was in the contents of that trash. There were old puzzles with missing pieces, twenty years of homeschool work, my writing drafts on paper, old bills, old clothes unfit for humans, and other stuff that no one would be interested in keeping.  Just twenty-four years of life. Though, all is not lost to me it was quite the pile and made me realize that I am sliding into the empty nester stage.  I still have those memories in my head as I have filled 10 journals and 5 photo albums with all the good we have done together.

I am moving out of this house now which pushed and shoved me into cleaning out the attic and getting rid of the clutter from nine children and two husbands.  I remarried after Bob passed but now I find myself single again. It will take some adjusting back to just me with Henry along side.  He has a year to go until his LDS Church mission so in one year I will really be on my own. That’s a scary thought. I have never really been on my own. Oh sure, I spent four years at college but I didn’t consider that on my own. I

always had roommates and I was so involved with the lives of many people around me like family and close friends, I didn’t feel on my own.  But now I am (although I am moving closer to my oldest with her four children and that will help to have family).

I have little regrets as I think about the years I have lived so far.  There are a few but for the most part of I have tried to always make the right decisions. Not only for myself but for my children and husband. I haven’t been writing lately because I just can’t find the gumption. It left me somehow. Although every so often I find myself pounding out an article that moves me and feel passionate about.

Our life here on earth is a great learning experience but sometimes I just can’t see it that way.  When I have my senses around me then I can put everything in perspective. Just recently The Piano Guys came out with a new song and video to go along with it. Listening to this song has an amazing effect on my mood and psyche. 

I had the worst Friday recently probably in all of my life (except in losing both husbands) and listening to this video lifted my spirits in an amazing way. When we are in the midst of a trial it is difficult to see the sun through the clouds. If we just hang in there, eventually everything will be okay.

Click to watch Video: It's Going to Be Okay.. 

Living after the Manner of Happiness

by Lisa Rector

Learn about living after the manner of happiness through memes. Enjoy!

Quotes taken from this talk.

My Writing Path

My writing path is crooked. I am a self-diagnosed dyslectic. When I was a pre-teen and teenager, I told stories to my nieces and nephews. I don’t remember what they were about, but the children liked them better than when I read to them. Except for one—they insisted I tell a ghost story. I don’t like ghost stories, they still give me nightmares. I pressed forward anyway. It went along pretty well, at least they were listening. Time came for the ending. It was dumb. They said so. They never asked for another ghost story.

            My big stumbling block was spelling. That followed me through high school and junior college. When I was in high school, some teachers graded B/C. The first letter was for content and second grammar and spelling. I got an A/F from a teacher who said there was no such thing—yep, you guessed it: spelling. I started 2 novels in high school. I’ll mention the one titled 5 Girls in a Trailer.

            It was about me and 4 friends taking a road trip in a trailer I’d seen. It went pretty well, except for the spelling, until I got to the Arizona-New Mexico border. I lived in southern California, and had visited Grandma Mac in Phoenix, Arizona regularly. This was my first lesson in the need to research. I didn’t know what we would see or do further east.

            When I went to the local junior college the first time (today we call them community colleges), I took what we then called Bonehead English 4 times. I knew grammar perfectly. The 4^th time, the teacher said, “Miss McNeil, don’t raise your hand. I’ll call on you if nobody else knows the answer.”

            The problem once again was spelling. They didn’t teach spelling. At the end of the pass/fail class we had to write a 500 word essay. More than 5 spelling errors and you failed the class. I dropped out that semester for other reasons.

            I even gave up reading because I read so slowly. When Star Wars came out, I couldn’t read the opening credits because they went too fast. I have since conquered that, but don’t have space to delve into it here.

            Helping my children with spelling words and grammar check helped tremendously for the spelling part. When spell check catches things like “comming” enough times you learn.

            In the early 1990’s I felt a call from Heavenly Father to go back to college. This post is already too long, so I won’t go into that here either.

            After I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Literature and Writing, I started writing once again. The rest of the story is too long for this post.

The main point is, in my senior years, I’m striving to fulfill a dream that started when I was young. 

On the Corner of Heartache & Love Giveaway!

On the Corner of Heartache & Love is here!

What's it about?

Maren's stuck at the intersection of heartache and love, but happily ever after might be just around the corner.

After three years, Maren Summers is elated to finally have her dream wedding to her dream man, Kevin Bryant. In her sights is the promotion to Weddings she’s worked so hard for at the newspaper. Happily ever after is within her grasp…

Until Kevin jilts her at the altar, elopes with another woman, and becomes her boss. Devastated by the twisted turn of events Maren moves in with her best friend and notices the not-so-homeless guy on the corner, Zane Whitfield. As his heart-wrenching tale unfolds—his vow to wait a year on the corner for his lost love—Maren sees his compassionate human-interest story as her ticket away from Kevin, weddings, and her heartache. But as the New Year approaches, is Maren headed for heartache again if Zane's lost love returns or has time changed more than one heart?

Where can you get it?  Amazon

SALE! All my previous books are on sale for $0.99! Such a deal! Amazon

About the Author:

Lisa Swinton caught the romance bug early by way of fairy tales and hasn’t been able to cure it since. Instead, she feeds her addiction with romance novels and films. In between being a dottore’s wife and mother of two, she occasionally puts her B.A. in Musical Theater to good use via community theater and church choir. In her elusive spare time she enjoys researching her family tree and baking (especially with chocolate). She loves traveling, Jane Austen, and all things Italian. In her next life, she plans to be a professional organizer.

You can visit her at:

https://www.lisaswinton.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLisaSwinton

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HXNXDCO

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7796962.Lisa_Swinton

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The Enchanted Calamansi Tree

The summer before I started grade four in the Philippines, we moved from the haunted house (that's a story for another day) to a government housing unit near what I believed was an enchanted calamansi tree.

Calamansi is a round, quarter-size green citrus fruit that tastes like key lime. This tree was rounded at the top and not very tall. The reason I thought it was enchanted was it stood like a gatekeeper at the edge of a ravine that I had to jump to access sprawling undeveloped land.

I was still mourning our move from a spacious house and yard to a crowded condo situation, where our unit was one of four on the first floor of a four-story building. Our yard was narrow and small, about all that would grow were papaya trees that smelled fragrant when the fruit was ready to harvest. Water usually stood in puddles on the dirt, rife with mosquitoes that feasted on my bare legs when I played house on crates in the back. The next-door neighbor had no indoor plumbing and used their yard as their toilet until someone with authority told them to stop. Another neighbor wasn't all that friendly. The only consolation I had was a stray cat came over often and I could feed it a saucer of milk.

So, for the few remaining weeks of that summer, I escaped to my ravine, the enchanted calamansi tree appearing to me as though it glowed its welcome.

In the tract of land beyond, a river wound its way past huts, water buffaloes knee-deep in mud, and women washing their laundry in aluminum basins. Floating in the water, dark green kangkong plants that resembled spinach grew in profusion. Dragonflies as big as my pinky finger — we called them tutubing kalabaw, after water buffaloes — hovered, then landed on the kangkong leaves. I caught and released them all day.

Then one afternoon, I pulled up short at the ravine with a little gasp. Men in tractors were tearing up the land past my enchanted calamansi tree. Someone had hammered a “No Trespassing” sign into the dirt.

I ran home to my father and demanded an explanation. He said a developer was preparing the land so they could build more houses.

“But it’s our land!” I said, near tears.

He studied me for a moment, then gave me a sad smile. “Unfortunately, it never was."

The ravine seemed wider than ever as my bubble burst and reality set in. It meant I could no longer play in the river, catch dragonflies, nor tiptoe on rocks to cross the water. I could no longer escape to a fantastical world by way of my enchanted calamansi tree.

In a way, though, that tree stayed with me. It’s gone, true. Concrete and houses have taken its place, but something magical took root in me that summer. On quiet afternoons in my office, when I write my novels, I feel like I am leaping over the ravine, past the enchanted calamansi tree and into an imaginary world beyond.

Jewel Allen is an award-winning journalist, author and memoir ghostwriter. Visit her at www.jewelallen.com.