This Thanksgiving season, I’m thankful for the opportunity to write books and share them with readers. (And they hopefully enjoy them, too!) Recently, I’ve been thinking about the (dumb) luck that got me to point. Maybe if I remind myself of these mistakes, I can go even further.
 
#1) Submitted too early. Didn’t know the book wasn’t ready.
 
#2) Submitted too late. Didn’t know when to stop editing and missed an opportunity regarding a timely topic.
 
#3) Queried in bunches of 30. Yes, 30. And yes, that’s embarrassing and thankfully was a long, long time ago with a book that shall never see the light of day. Spoiler alert/no surprise: I did not succeed with this book.

Interested in free Paranormal Romance reads? Or maybe 50 bucks? Either way, feel free to check out this awesome group promo that includes...yours truly.  :)

And as always -- happy reading!

​Recently, I had a great time at  Emerald City Writers’ Conference  and did a talk on Fastdrafting 101. A few questions came up after this talk that I wanted to address here. I may have answered some of the questions, but honestly, the first 20-30 minutes of that talk was like an out-of-body experience, due to nerves. Also, if I cussed during that time, I'm super sorry... (sometimes I say bad things when I'm super nervous)
 
As we approach NaNoWriMo, the fastdrafting materials might be helpful for those WriMo-ers out there gearing up for November!
 
Here are my prior fastdrafting blog posts, if you would like a refresher/cautionary tale…
 
Part 1: I've got an idea!
 
Part 2: Bad decision making, for sure, but what could possibly go wrong?
 
Part 3: Uh oh...

Some of you know the drill: Whenever I do a reader event or book signing, I have a rule. Any reader who signs up for my newsletter during the event gets entered in a drawing for free books.

As promised, I took the new newsletter subscribers and used a random number generator. (Not hubby this time, either!)

The winner of a digital copy of the entire Hell to Pay paranormal romance series is:

Tanya P

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Winners of a digital copy of my first book, Immortal Flame are:

Vella M
Lee H
Colleen M

I'll be sending out emails to the winners.

Big thanks to all the readers who came by to check out my books and to chat. It was a super fun evening!

Thank you again and happy reading!

I had the best time in Cedar Falls, Iowa last weekend at the Romance Rendezvous event. If you've ever hung out with me at a reader event or book signing, you know the deal: Anyone who signs up for my newsletter is entered in a drawing to win BOOKS!

Using a random number generator (on the computer -- not hubby this time), the winner of the entire Hell to Pay series is : Nicole M.

Winners of my first book, Immortal Flame are:
Elva R.
Marialee D.

I'll email you all this week and get these digital copies right out to you!

Thanks again to all the awesome readers who came to Romance Rendezvous. I look forward to seeing you all again at future events! 

Just had a book signing this last weekend, and anyone who's hung out with me at any book events knows the deal: If readers sign up for my newsletter during the event, they get entered to win free reads from yours truly!

Big thanks to Jackie for a great conference and book signing. It was great meeting lots of new readers and reconnecting with some author buddies I hadn't seen in a long time.

As promised, our winner from ​Rust City Book Con's book signing is: Lisa A!!!  

Lisa, I'll be emailing you with the information. Feel free to pick out any book I've written, and it's yours in digital format of your choice. Thank you and all of the readers for supporting authors at events like this!

Over a week’s vacation from Day Job recently, I had one of my hardest running weeks, probably ever, as I’m training for a trail marathon. In case you didn’t know, trail marathons are just like regular road marathons except muddier, buggier, longer, and nastier than their refined road-based counterparts (which are also no cake walk). During that same week off, I had one of my toughest writing/editing weeks in a very long time. Given that one of the training runs was over four hours long, I had time to think. A lot of time. Too much time.
 
Seems that marathon training and writing aren’t that much different, after all.
 
Before I leap into the analogy, I need to make myself crystal clear on both topics. Full disclosure. I am in no way a great athlete. This chunky bod is getting dragged 26.2 miles (hopefully) because, well, the challenge is there. I’ve wanted to do a trail marathon for >15 years. Now is my chance, and you bet your left bunion, I’m downing the biggest bag of Cheetos + a Blizzard after I finish/collapse/die as I cross the finish line in dead last place. Also, I will not be setting any land-speed records. In many respects, that’s like my writing career. I’m not a bestselling anything. The writing happens because I need to/want to/enjoy it and I want to always improve. You can bet that writing consumes a huge amount of time and it’s exhausting. Also, Cheetos.

​You guys, I’m super stoked to be giving two talks at ECWC this October. If you haven’t heard of it, this is a fabulous writer’s conference. I’ve been lucky to attend for the past 4 years now.
 
The very first talk I attended as a writer – ever – was Cherry Adair’s master class, given at ECWC. The title of her talk escapes me, but her course involved spending several hours learning about character development. It was frankly, life changing relative to my writing process. (If you ever have a chance to hear Cherry speak, don’t ask questions. Just go.) The other (writing)life changing piece was her advice to use medicine as part of my author platform. You see, I’d gone into that first conference thinking that no way would I share with anyone that I’m a physician because #1) writing credibility reduced and #2) privacy. So basically, yes, I was clueless.
 
Cherry took all of ten seconds consideration before saying something to the effect of “Honey, that’s your platform. Use it.”
 
As it turns out, blending medicine and writing? Not so difficult, since there is zero way I can completely separate Dr. Jill from writer Jillian. And once I figured out the privacy piece, I feel a lot better about the blend. But what I did this year with the workshops at ECWC takes that blending to a scary new level. This where I put it all out there, together, and see how it goes…

 Recently, I was cleaning out my email in-box and ran across contest entries, emails, and queries that I sent, way back when the world was good and pure, and the possibilities for becoming an author were endless. One thing became super clear: I didn’t have a single clue what I was doing.
 
Now? Still learning, but I do have a better grasp on what I am supposed to be doing and what seems to work in my little nook of the universe.
 
#1) Time management = everything. Especially for those of us working full-time jobs. A day or a week off is GOLD. Give me a few post-it sheets for my to-do list and I will set the world on fire. (Not literally. That would be super bad.)
 
#2) Let editors know your time frames. Because of my weird work schedule, I am on call for 7-10 days at a time. During that time, my writing brain pretty much shuts down and I live in on-call doctor mode. It’s not in anyone’s best interest for me to have deadlines or interviews or projects due during that period. I do my best to let folks know this information in advance, or will try to pre-emptively complete projects early when I know these blocks are coming. I’ve been caught out a few times where I didn’t give enough lead-time on my time limitations. Like many professional areas, I need to work more on time transparency.
 
#3) Marketing still kind of stinks. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no one thing to do that will make a book visible. And social media will eat up all of my time, if I’m not careful. Over time, I’ve cultivated some marketing sites that seem to work for me. For right now. Things change constantly.

It’s been 12 years since I wrote that first (awful) manuscript. Wow. Looking back, it’s clear I had no clue about publishing, and very little clue about writing. That’s not to say I didn’t >think< I knew a lot! Ugh.
 
Here’s a mishmash of what I’ve learned. Maybe it will help other writers or writers-to-be. Hopefully it will keep others from making the same mistakes that I’ve made.

Image via despair.com

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#1) Overnight success isn’t overnight. Marketing/social media makes it appear like it’s overnight. Rarely is this true. I don’t know if I can claim the robust definition of “success” yet, but I wrote my first book in 2005. My first published book (which was NOT my first book written, BTW), was printed in 2015. That was a goal achieved, even if a small one.
 
#2) If you’re going to be clueless, at least be pleasant. I didn’t know beans about publishing and etiquette, and thus I kind of Mr. Magoo’d into asking for something. And got it. (Stars and planets had to have aligned that day. No other explanation.) That conversation could have gone either way, and frankly, I got lucky.