Kicking the M&M’s to the Curb

It was way back last September when I sat down with a one-egg, portobello omelet and proclaimed I was going on a diet.

Yeah right.

I was motivated, but it didn’t last long. I blame NaNo and M&M’s. Things didn’t get any better over the winter, and even though I never weighed myself, I knew I gained more weight.

When I posted my expectation to lose weight last September, I wrote this as a reason for my motivation: “I know I’m going to need headshots next spring when my books are flying off the eReader shelf and into eReaders, so I better start now so I can put out the best possible picture. How’s that for motivation?”

Who knew part of that statement would end up being true? I was just being silly when I wrote it, but over 51,000 copies of Sunshine Hunter have been downloaded to date.

However, I had an epiphany recently. I realized I didn’t feel good. My health was starting to suffer, and I was pretty sure I could attribute it to weight. The feeling was overwhelming, and I knew if didn’t do something now, there might be no turning back. Ahh, the things that come to you in the middle of a sleepless night.

So … I had to come up with something that would work for me. I didn’t want to follow a specific diet as I have in the past – even if it worked. I wanted to eat in a way that wouldn’t make me feel as if I wasn’t depriving myself.

The smoothies at this site are only three ingredients each and sooo good!

I’m delighted to say, I’ve come up with something that makes me happy, and it’s working for me. Here’s the simple version: I have a fresh fruit smoothie for breakfast, the dreaded egg omelet for lunch, and then a protein and vegetable for dinner. That’s it. I don’t eat after 7:00 at night. I drink a ton of water all day long, and I’m not hungry. Because of the protein dinner, I have no cravings in the evening. I don’t add salt to anything, I avoid sugar (other than natural in fruit), and I’ve had no caffeine other than what’s in cocoa powder for a particular smoothie every now and then.

I’m eating healthier than I have in ages, and none of it is processed food. I weighed myself Tuesday morning. In eight days, I lost 15 pounds. I’m happy with that. I’m on a mission. I’ll feel better, and I’ll have an author headshot soon.

By the way, when I came up with the idea of writing a new series about a couple of weight-challenged sisters, it was because it would be easy to write – I know how they feel!

Wish me luck. I can do this, even though the M&M guys are sad to see me go.

Oblivious in Ohio

It’s early evening, and I’ve been sitting at my desk pondering what to do. Watch television? Write? Go over to the den and torture Rich? Go to the grocery store for eggs and pumpkin?

As I sat here twiddling my thumbs, trying to make a decision, a strange little icon popped up in my notifications box. Cool. I probably reached some new milestone with likes or follows. I clicked the box and found a congratulations notice. Ha! Today is my one-year blogging anniversary.

I was oblivious.

So much for a special post.

 

 

What was your post about on your one-year anniversary?  See you in a bit. I’m going to the grocery store.

In Search of Quelques Fleurs

My niece is pregnant with her first child. Rich recently chauffeured me and several family members to Columbus to attend her baby shower. Before dashing out of the house, I took a moment to dab a bit of perfume at the hollow of my neck. The lovely scent brought a smile to my face.

After I started working from home, I stopped wearing perfume on a daily basis. When Rich and I go out, I almost always forget to put it on. But I love perfume! I used to wear it to suit my mood or to suit the season. I like lighter scents for spring and summer, a bit heavier for fall and winter.

Many years ago, before the internet age, I was relaxing and reading a Glamour magazine. Inside was a Neiman-Marcus advertisement for a French perfume, Quelques Fleurs. In those days, the samples were all scratch and sniff – and so I did. I absolutely loved the perfume. LOVED IT. I tore the page out of the magazine and smelled it often until the odor dissipated .

Rich and I were dating at the time, and I showed the advertisement to him. I told him I would love to have a bottle. He took the page, cut out a small section with the name of the perfume, and he slipped it into his wallet.

We checked all of the major stores at the mall, and we called a few stores in other nearby cities, but no one had ever heard of the perfume. If I recall, there were only a few Neiman-Marcus stores (still hyphenated in those days) outside of Texas, and none of them were in Ohio.

Over the years, I occasionally thought about the perfume and asked for it in stores, but the French perfume I sought was not to be found.

Ten years later, a package arrived in the mail for me. I was surprised to open it and find an entire box of samples of Quelques Fleurs perfume. The internet was open for business by now, and Rich had found a listing for the perfume at eBay. There were no bottles available for purchase; there were only a few listings for samples. I was beyond delighted with the glass tubes of perfume attached to their pretty cards.

The scent was as wonderful as I remembered, and to this day, no matter how many perfumes I try and like, this is the one that does something to my heart. It takes me away to a beautiful place. Maybe it’s the multitude of notes that remind me of my childhood – the rose garden where we caught bees in our hands, my mother’s lilacs, the lily-of-the-valley growing wild in the nearby fields, and even the scent my grandmother’s powder. Yet it’s not a childish scent. It’s mature and classic.

I asked Rich how he managed to remember the name of the perfume to buy. He pulled an old worn-out slip of paper from his wallet. He had kept it all those years and continued to search for Quelques Fleurs on his own.

~sigh~

I adore my husband.

Quelques Fleurs Perfume – One of the most renowned and admired fragrances of all time.  Quelques Fleurs L’Original forever changed floral fragrances when it became the first true multi-floral bouquet 90 years ago. A classic that has endured the test of time, the fragrance is wrapped in a theme of sculptured petals in a frosted and clear French glass.

The true Quelques Fleurs formula has never been published. An ancient formula still kept in the family archives, this fragrance will never be duplicated. The blend of soft, sensual florals uses over 250 different raw materials and more than 15,000 flowers to create just one ounce of Quelques Fleurs eau de parfum. To this day it is still produced in Grasse, France, where Jean Francois Houbigant first created his perfumes in 1775.

http://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Houbigant/Quelques-Fleurs-l-Original-5356.html

Do you have a favorite perfume? A favorite cologne? Do you have a favorite scent story?

Recalculating … Republish! (Part Two)

Self-publishing definitely has its advantages. One of them is being able to click three hyperlinked words: Upload new version.

Some of you may remember from previous blog posts that this would have me banging my head on my desk and swearing under my breath. Before I tell you why I’m thinking about doing this again, let’s go back to the beginning for a moment.

I admit to writing my first book because the story made me laugh, and I thought it was downright funny that I was writing a book. My entire family laughed about it, too. I wasn’t a writer, and there wasn’t any attempt on my part to write a bestselling novel. I simply wanted to produce something entertaining, put it up at Smashwords, and maybe make a couple of dollars. I didn’t worry too much about the book being perfectly edited; after all, realistically, who was going to read it other than my family?

I set the first book aside and wrote the second one. Same scenario; entertaining, not perfect. I wrote the third book – and I finally published all three in May of 2012.

While I was writing my fourth book, I found Robin Coyle’s Strong Words vs Weak Words. On July 18, two months after publishing the first three books, I started comparing her information against my first book. I wrote these words in my blog post of July 22: “I was sick to my stomach. My book was crap! The use of unnecessary words blew me away.”

I worked as fast as I could to make changes, and although there was some minor swearing through the process, I was relieved when I uploaded the new versions. Since that time, I’ve been mostly satisfied with the last three books, but I’ve always had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the first two were edited too quickly when I was in a panic to make changes.

This past weekend, I finished an editing pass on book two, Big Apple Hunter. I was surprised at how many changes I made. Adding or deleting commas and removing unnecessary words comprised the bulk of the changes. Some sentences were reworked so they would read more smoothly.

I also made changes based on reviews. One of them was to the descriptions of clothing. Some people have been put off by the detailed clothing descriptions. I really did find clothing in online stores and dressed my characters in them; it was fun. But I realize now (I didn’t know it when I was first writing) that this has been done to death, and many people are tired of it or simply don’t care to read it. I kept the basic clothing descriptions but pared the many details down.

I’ll upload the changes with the new cover soon, but I’m also going to make another editing pass on Sunshine Hunter. I don’t know why I didn’t think to re-edit both books sooner, but I know I’ll feel better about them when I’m finished, and I’ll be more comfortable to market them more aggressively.

This has been a bit of a bump in the road, but I’m glad I have the opportunity to make changes based on reviews and my own instincts.  So … onward and upward! I hope to have the two books with their changes uploaded by mid-June. From there on out, I’m writing and marketing. Maple Leaf Hunter needs to be finished, and then I have a date with a couple of sisters. I have my fingers crossed for the new series, and I hope I never again have to click “upload new version.” The head banging and the swearing have to stop!

Avoiding the Circus -and- A Breakthrough

Do you have a mundane daily routine? Does every day seem like the previous one? Do things never change?

That’s certainly not my life, but I sometimes pine for that level of “normal” – if only for a week or two. How in the world do you ever write with consistency when you have no routine?

When there were four dogs, a son, and a husband in the house with me, it was a three-ring circus every day. With three of the dogs and the son now gone (I kept one beagle and the husband), we are still having at least two-ring circuses.

This was my week to get back to writing full-time. It’s Wednesday already, and Maple Leaf Hunter doesn’t have a single word added to the story. Speaking of Maple Leaf Hunter, do you remember the crazy cover art I sent to my niece for Windy City Hunter? I asked her to work a miracle for me, and she did! Here is a picture of what I sent to her for the next round of miracle working. Pink will have to be added, but there is going to be a Bigfoot on the cover! Don’t try to talk me out of it; I’ve already made up my mind. She won’t be working on it for a while yet, but it will be fun to see what she comes up with.

Back to the topic of writing …

There are little things to distract. A knock at the door, the dog, incoming phone calls or text, laundry, cleaning, etc.  I know these are normal distractions, but then add in running a few errands for our son because he’s working ten hours a day, visiting with him on his lunch break, taking my mother for her errands and doing her laundry, dashing out for a lottery ticket(s), running down the street for Chinese because I’m still not on a good cooking schedule, making arrangements to pick up my truck after a brake job, fighting with the evil downstairs toilet when the washing machine is running, catching the mouse that took up residence in the closet where my shipping supplies were, and on and on and on. Where is the time to write?

Yesterday was “the day.” I was determined to get down to it, and nothing was going to get in my way of writing.

Then my sister called. She needed a ride down to the hospital for a CT scan. No problem. The trip to the hospital turned into two trips to the hospital, an Arby’s lunch run for a Reuben sandwich for me, one trip to her surgeon’s office, and then a third trip back to the hospital where she was admitted for emergency surgery. I arrived home fairly late in the evening. She had her surgery today, and she came through it just fine. She’ll soon be as good as new. Yay for great surgeons!

But something happened while I was waiting for her at the doctor’s office. I thought he would see her right away, so I opted to wait in the truck and listen to the radio. Earlier in the day, in an effort to keep her distracted, I told her I was going to write my next series of books about a couple of weight-challenged sisters who solve crimes in their community. No more skinny, hard-working, fashionista blonde-who-travels in the new series. We laughed, but the idea intrigued me, and I thought about it again while I waited for her.

I had a little notebook in my purse. I started jotting down ideas for characters. Names, ages, married or not, kids, jobs, community, etc., and a first line that will never stand: I swear that body was hard as a rock when my butt bounced off of it.

I started scribbling as fast as I could. I managed just under 1300 words before my sister came out of the doctor’s office. When I got home late last night, I hurried to type it before I would forget and could no longer read what I had scribbled.  The last line on this page is: “Sorry, Sergeant. She’s got a knife in her.”

This was huge for me! I’ve been afraid to complete the Susan Hunter series for fear there wouldn’t be anything else. I kept thinking Susan was a fluke, a flash in the pan, a one-hit wonder. Ha! No longer! Make way for a couple of fun sisters.

I’m not going to finish this first chapter just yet. I’m going to get back to Maple Leaf Hunter and enjoy writing the story. I’m going to keep an open mind that Susan just might show up again in the future – somewhere deep in a new series where she meets a couple of sisters via a Slimmers Weight Loss center.

Oh my gosh! Writing is crazy fun, and I continue to be amazed at how ideas pop up, rush in, and come together. Now, if I could just get my daily routine under control to make it all happen.

Edited to add: Chinese was for dinner again tonight. I opened my fortune cookie a few minutes ago, and this one popped out!! 

When Blogging Takes a Back Seat

Just kidding!

It was a big job to pack and ship over 1,000 books, but they were finally shipped last week. I am officially out of the used book business.

I know I’ve missed a ton of great posts, and I know I can’t catch up with all of them, but I have started to read blogs again and will try to go forward with some regularity of stopping by to see what you all are up to. Here are some of the things I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks:

~ We finally have new neighbors. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Stairway to Nowhere to see what they do with it, but there is nothing to report yet. The family has a well-behaved dog who looks like Carl, so I’m assuming (based on the dog) that they will be good neighbors.

~ I’ve rediscovered glass in our house. I’ve enjoyed reading Dianne Gray’s adventures as her family has moved a rugby club onto their property and is now restoring it into a beautiful home. It has been lovingly dubbed The RUC, and it has some wonderful features including some vintage windows. Rich finally convinced me that the window in the upstairs bathroom is an oldie but goodie, and there is not a plastic laminate over it; it’s 100% glass:

And this window hides behind a shade in a spare room that is only accessible through the bathroom, so I rarely remember the window is even there:

It’s double-paned glass with glass slats running up and down between the panes.

~ I read Carrie Rubin’s book, The Seneca Scourge. I enjoyed it very much. I stayed up until after 3:30 a.m. to finish it one night. I haven’t read a medical thriller in ages, and I had a hard time putting it down. Carrie, you made me cry in chapter six, and I had to grab a tissue while reading a few subsequent chapters, too. The funny thing was that no matter how many times the main character’s blonde hair was mentioned, I could only picture Sydney as Carrie! And Sydney/Carrie, you rock!

~ I read Matthew Iden’s book, A Reason to Live. I read it in two days, and thoroughly enjoyed this one, too. This style of book (murder, crime, suspense) is probably my number one genre to read, and Matthew didn’t disappoint. His main character of Marty Singer is likeable and easy to root for. A couple of events at the end of the book took me by surprise. I’m definitely reading the next two books in this series.

~ I’ve been cleaning and throwing things out. The room I work/write in has an echo now. I kind of like that. Most of the shipping boxes are gone from the house, but I still have to deal with packing peanuts and a few other packing materials.

~ My hardcover books are finally on my bookshelves. The plastic shelving on the right holds the overflow. I’ve started reading A Decadent Way to Die by G. A. McKevett. She’s not a WordPress author, but I couldn’t resist the cheesecake on the cover of this one, and I want to hold a hardcover in my hands for a change. This book is in the Savannah Reid series of books. I’m only two chapters in, but so far so good.

~ I watched a marathon of Bar Rescue on Spike TV. It’s a bit like a train wreck, but I couldn’t look away.

~ I found a blog I must tell you about. Mr P’s Adventures. Mr P is a potato head! He has some type of adventure every day. The first time I saw one of his blog posts – happily orchestrated by Ohiophotogrl – I laughed out loud. I took the time to go back through the archives and look at every post from the beginning of the year. I was wonderfully entertained. The posts are usually short, and you can click an archived month and simply scroll down to see all the pictures and posts. You don’t have to click through to the actual post unless you want to leave a like or comment (which you will want to do as something will likely tickle your funny bone). The blog is family friendly, and your kids will enjoy seeing what each day holds for Mr P as well as to read his final daily comment: “Wonder what we are going to do tomorrow?” Please check it out!

~ I caught up with all of my business paperwork.

~ I’m nearly finished with an editing pass on Big Apple Hunter. I wanted to do this before republishing with the new cover, and I’m happy that some small errors will now be fixed. But most of all, I’m finally ready to buckle down to continue writing Maple Leaf Hunter. My family is giving me pointers on Bigfoot creatures. Yes, that’s right. My two brothers believe in Bigfoot, and I’m putting one (or more) in my new book. Ghosts, a gorilla head, zombies, and now a Bigfoot. I’m still out of control!

Do you believe in Bigfoot? What do you do when your blogging takes a back seat?

Putting My Best Face Forward

Have you ever heard of Ford Models? No, not the cars. The modeling agency. There was a Ford Modeling Agency about a mile from our home, and I signed up for classes when I was nineteen. I had no illusions of being a model in New York City; I was simply tired of being gawky.

For me, it was like acting. I loved learning about hair, fashion, and how to walk a runway, but most of all, I loved learning how to apply makeup.

I was reminded of this fun time in my life yesterday as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror applying full makeup. I wanted more coverage than that of the mineral powders everyone is pushing right now, so I went full-spackle with a foundation, followed by a light dusting of loose powder. Blush, three shades of brown shadow, false lash mascara, eyebrow pencil, lip liner, and an all day lipstick. I removed the hot rollers that were curling my hair, and I picked out a pretty maroon shirt with a nice detail and gold buttons.

Twenty minutes later I was having my picture taken as I renewed my driver’s license.

That’s right. I put on all that make-up for my driver’s license photo. For four years, I’ve had the driver’s license from hell. The lighting is terrible in the BMV, and my last picture had yellow hair. Not blonde, but bright yellow! Last week I chose to do my hair in a light auburn shade simply because of the upcoming picture. There was no way they could turn auburn into yellow. Four years ago, I had chopped off most of my hair, and I don’t know if I tumbled out of bed just before I had the picture taken, but my hair looked like something styled by Moe of the Three Stooges. Every time I had to hand that license to someone (I still write a lot of checks), I wanted to die, or at least melt into the floor.

Yesterday, I was determined to get a good picture worthy of the next four years.

It was windy as I walked into the BMV. I was aware of my hair blowing around. Before I could even take a number and sit down, I was called to the counter. What are the odds of that happening? There wasn’t a spare second to run a brush through my hair before the woman wanted to take my picture. I told myself it would be ok; my windblown hair would give the picture a sexy look.

I looked down into the camera, because it wasn’t at eye level. I expected a “1-2-3” or at least a “ready?” from the woman, but the next thing I knew, she was telling me to have a seat. Five minutes later, I was walking out with my new license.

The picture is on the dark side. My makeup doesn’t show up whatsoever, and my hair is blonde, not auburn. It doesn’t look windblown and sexy; it looks like someone flattened it. There is no expression on my face, no smile, and as the picture was taken at an angle from under my chin, I look like a criminal.

The only good thing about the license – IT’S PINK!

I cry false advertising!!  Her picture is well lit. You can see the highlighting under her eyebrows, and her lipstick even shows. She has a smile, and the picture was taken straight on. I’m hating on our BMV today.

I’m finally going to make the move to a debit card so I never have to hand my license over to anyone ever again. Well, other than the policeman who is surely going to stop me one of these days as I blow up and down the Interstate to and from my mother’s house. He’ll think I look like a criminal and run a background check on me.

Do you try to look your best for your driver’s license? Are you happy with your picture? Do you look like a criminal?