Changing Your World One Story at a Time®
And cj's tip for readers…these are great books for your to-be-read stack.
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Rooting for you… This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard. — Neil Gaiman
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Nearing the home
stretch and worried you aren’t going to succeed? Here are some words from Kurt
Vonnegut:
“When
I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one
of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of
“getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports?
What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do
theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And
he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of
them.”
And
he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my
mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think
being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these
wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things
and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
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John Floyd is a prolific author (he’s written 32 stories in 2020), and his short mysteries are favorites of mine. In a recent Sleuth Sayers column, he recounts how he reworks old, unsubmitted stories he’s had stashed away for years and then submits them…some moved on to become award winners. Maybe there are points you would find worthwhile…I sure did: https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2020/11/the-same-old-story.html?fbclid=IwAR05pLxJJr9NcZGJ1E4LtmsAc7WUbYRHLjUfSrMxkikY1mBmwGyGoTSFP_0
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HOMETOWN HEROES eBook is on sale now. This anthology brings you five Christmas romances that celebrate everyday heroes.
From paranormal to contemporary to historical, there's something in this anthology to fill everyone with the spirit of the season.
On Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ncvCS5
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99 CENTS !! PREORDER PRICE for Bienvenue Press’s upcoming charity anthology HOMEROOM HEROES. Look for it on Amazon Saturday, December 5. The final cover reveal coming soon.
In “The Substitute,” my short story in the anthology, an FBI agent’s undercover assignment as a substitute teacher gets complicated when he falls in love with a first-grade grade teacher. Here are the opening lines:
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That’s it for today’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.
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