A few more days before Christmas and I’ll be running around tomorrow doing last minute stuff like mailing holiday cards and a book that someone won in a Goodreads giveaway!
Thank goodness for blogs where we can wish everyone Happy Holidays and the message goes worldwide – or to whomever still visits this blog!
In the meantime, being a romance writer, I wrote a holiday short story for you all. It’s basically a book that you can add to your ebook library, or you can read it on Wattpad. It’s also free to download from most major retailers and you can find the links here.
Edited to add: I just realized I misspelt “foregoing” when it shouldn’t have an “e” but that’s life, eh?
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Morrighansmuse is the poetic alter-ego of Liz Durano, who writes women’s fiction and romance.
Every time I walk past this little red wagon, I can’t help but look through the selection of books to see if there’s something I’d like to read. Then I remind myself to drop off a book or two in exchange for the ones I picked out.
Yesterday while my walking buddy found The 36-Hour Day, a guide for caregivers to those with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other related conditions, I picked Lincoln, the screenplay version in a book and I can’t wait to read it!
No, I did not fall off the face of the earth
though I did disappear for awhile
if only to dot every i and cross every t
for there’s a book I was getting ready to let fly
It took some time to get things right
And I still don’t do things in their right order
but if you’d like to find out what’s kept me busy of late,
here’s my book – with its brand new cover!
Kidding aside, I just officially gave my book a whole new look via a brand new cover, and I couldn’t be happier. There have been so many lessons learned in this journey called self-publishing – and I’m still learning – on how to release a book properly. In fact, writing is the easiest part – and I mean it – E-A-S-I-E-S-T.
I’m not saying I’m a genius wordsmith but when it comes to making sure that your story is seen and read (i.e. purchased), there’s so much to do, and even then, with so many people telling you of many more things to do, the work of promoting your work is never done. It also takes away from more writing.
But the end result is still there – a book with my name on it – a sweet chick-lit with romance and a bit of mystery to keep you occupied for a few hours.
You can preview the first few chapters and purchase Loving Ashe here, and if you’re a book blogger and are interested in reviewing Loving Ashe, please drop me a line.
Yesterday I drove past Book Again, a small used bookstore in Redondo Beach that I haven’t been to in a while (constantly rushing with the little one, you see), and finally made it a point to go to before seeing my clients. Now I know why it was meant to be, for who else was waiting for me in the row of shelves outside the store with the sign 15 books for $3 but Baydr Al Fay, uber hot protagonist of Harold Robbins’ The Pirate, someone I’ve been on the hunt for since forever.
This was one book I didn’t want an ebook copy of (like I do for A Stone For Danny Fisher which I discovered doesn’t bring about the same feelings I’d felt then holding the paperback in my hand) and I’m so happy I’ve got my own copy finally. The smell and feel of an old book is downright amazing, and reading the words again feels even better than I expected. At first I thought I’d be disappointed like I read some people are when rereading a book they used to love, but not this one.
I’ve been reunited with Baydr Al Fay and Jordana and Leila – and it still feels damn good.
I need to toot my horn a bit so please do indulge me. I just published my NaNoWriMo novel, Loving Ashe, a few weeks ago and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve neglected to make even an announcement on my main blog!
[begin self-promotion]
So here I am doing just that and hope that you will mosey on over to Loving Ashe’s landing page to read a few sample chapters and even purchase a copy.
The paperback is still in the works but the ebook is available right now.
For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s stands for National Novel Writing Month which falls every November. It benefits literacy programs throughout the country and it’s a challenge (to write 50K words in 30 days) I’ve undertaken three years in a row now. I failed that first year but it planted the seed, which was all I needed.
Loving Ashe started as a short story challenge on this blog two years ago and I expanded it into a novel, which I serialized live on Wattpad on November 2014. Sour Patch Kids (that sour and sweet candy) included it in their list of featured stories this February during their #sourthensweet contest which definitely didn’t hurt boosting its reading numbers, which now is at 1.5 million reads.
So if you like to read an unconventional romance novel with a little twist, do give Loving Ashe a read!
And from today till July 7, 2015, you can purchase Loving Ashe at 50% off on Smashwords (epub version only) using code: WG32X
[end of self-promotion]
Whew! Hope that wasn’t too painful for you to read, and thanks for reading this far 🙂
In April 1946, Theodore Lustig was discharged after serving three years in the army in World War II. Heading home on a train to New Jersey, he had grand plans for his new life. First, he bought a white shirt: a symbol of his return to a normal routine. The next step? Finding the girl of his dreams: his high school crush.
In his very short piece — “What If?” — he writes:
We got on the same bus — hers — and sat together reminiscing about the past and talking about the future. I told her of my plans and showed her the shirt I had bought — my first step toward making my dream come true. I didn’t tell her that she was supposed to be step two.
“What If?” is just one story among the 180 true stories in I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales From NPR’s National Story Project, a compilation of the best submissions to Paul Auster for this story project on All Things Considered. Each tale is a small window into one stranger’s life: a glimpse into the American mind and heart. The stories are grouped into broad themes: animals, objects, families, slapstick, strangers, war, love, death, dreams, and meditations.
I’ve been a fan of NPR’s National Story Project since it began, and each story they aired always made me cry. You heard their voices, felt their emotions – and now you can read their stories! This is definitely one that I’m getting for myself!
“Izzy, I’ve learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you’ve got to give up hope of ever changing your past.”
-M.L. Stedman
Gutted, I really am
all because of the story you wrote
so good, so sad, so real
how cruel you are,
to make me feel –
torn between characters
good people every one
you’ve gutted me, wrung me dry
now I’m all undone
*Don’t get me wrong. It’s an amazing book. A bit frustrating at times because you fall in love with the characters and they’re just to human and fallible, and…and now that Tom and Izzy and Lucy have managed to dig a hole so deep inside my heart, part of me wishes I never read it…because darn it, it hurts.
One of my favorite books growing up was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.
I don’t even remember how I got it, but I do know that it wasn’t something that I would have picked out on my own because we didn’t learn about such books at school. It was among the books that my mother stored on shelves above my childhood bed that included a cover-less copy of Harold Robbins’ The Adventurers and the classics such as Black Beauty and Robinson Crusoe.
I still remember how the book felt in my hands. It was small and it was a quick read, but I had to read it a few times because it did not read like all the other classics I had read before. It was almost cryptic at times.
How was I to know, a mere ten year old, what the book was really about? When the fox says to the little prince, “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye,” I understood it because it has since shaped the way I see the world. But I could not understand then what the fox meant when he said, “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed” – that it meant more than just the taming of a small animal, of which I probably with my limited experiences, associated that sentence then.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve read The Little Prince and I’m due for a reread. I stumbled across the dedication of the book today, and it brought tears to my eyes. It brought me back to that room with the custom-made bed and the shelves above it, all filled with books about adventures and worlds so different from my own. And one of them, my favorite one, about a little prince stranded in the desert, so far from home.
Image from Letters of Note
Leon Werth, a French writer and art critic, was a close friend and confidante to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He would not learn of the book nor the dedication till five months after Saint-Exupéry’s death in November 1944.
Morrighan's Muse 