Three cheers for our veterans

Veteran’s Day always makes me nostalgic. My father, a WW II vet, has been gone since 1998, and I still miss him. For much of my childhood he was bigger than life. He let us kids try on his army uniform and play with the memorabilia he brought home from the Pacific Theater. He was my hero, a man who left his family behind to keep the world safe for those who would come after him. Many of these men were also romantics, and so was my dad. Days after he boarded a transport ship to take him to the Pacific, he found out the young bride he left behind was pregnant. He never saw my sister until she was two years old, but he kept her and my mom in his thoughts constantly. Out of native bamboo, he crafted a small bank and carved the letters A, N, and Y on the front. He didn’t know if the baby would be a girl or a boy, but he was ready to finish his carving with the letters for Danny or Mandy depending on the news. In November of 1943, a young soldier ran into a rice field where my dad was working. He shouted “Captain Brackett, you have a baby girl!” My father finished the bank with the name Mandy and brought the gift home to his first born. If that isn’t a truly romantic story I don’t know what is. In the next couple of days I would love to hear a heartwarming tale about your special vet. A name will be chosen at random to receive a copy of my October Harlequin Heartwarming novel, BLUE RIDGE HIDEAWAY, either print of digital. And a heartfelt thank you to all who have served.

A Ghost at the Meeting

Saturday we South Florida romance writers had a terrific meeting. Our guest speaker was Tami Hoag. It doesn’t get much better than that. She was gracious, informative, approachable. Some day I’d like to post a blog on the interesting facts I gleaned from her talk – like how she went from romantic comedy writer to romantic suspense writer to suspense writer. Her journey was interesting and encouraging. I left the meeting with two significant learning experiences. One: Tami is a seat-of-the-pants writer, meaning she doesn’t write from a detailed synopsis. I love that! I hate writing and sticking to a synopsis. Second: She lets her plot flow from her characters. Characters are number one. Another plus in the writing world as far as I’m concerned. Okay, so what does this blog have to do with a ghost? I took a picture of Tami and the room filled with eager writers, and lo and behold, when I viewed the picture after I emailed it to myself, I was surprised to see an additional “person” there who perhaps hadn’t paid. Look at the picture. Do you see an apparition? A swirling entity that you can sort of see right through. This is not the first time I’ve caught the “otherwordly” with my camera. Once in an Indian burial ground in North Carolina I caught a “spirit” on horseback. Are there logical explanations? Was someone walking by the table yesterday when I snapped this? I don’t know. Maybe. I believe in logical explanations. But I also sort of believe in the other, non-logical explanations. Especially since Tami was talking about crimes and bodies and unsolved cases. Who really knows? What do you think?

The Figures Don’t Lie – A ninc conf. update

I just returned from the Novelists Inc conference in St. Pete, Fl. It was a wonderful experience and I hope I am able to attend every conference in the years to come. I learned so much and came home energized to follow all the wonderful suggestions I heard. I plan to blog about several aspects of the conference, but first I thought I’d relate a few interesting statistics.

Almost 130,000,000 books have been published since the dawn of publishing

Almost 300,000 books are published each year. That’s a lot of eye strain if you’re determined to read them all 🙂

780 of those books reach the NY Times best-seller list.

The odds of any one author hitting the “List” is 2 in 10,000 – so my heartiest congratualtions to those who have.

One of the most interesting statistics I learned was that 28% of all books purchased are still selected through a brick and mortar bookstore. Even though I am a fan of my Kindle I still say hooray for the traditional sellers. Bookstores are still some of my favorite places to visit.

How do you choose your books? Do you go to the bookstore? Are you happier to browse digital titles? If you go to a bookstore, where is the nearest one? Is it a chain store or a section of a big value store like Wal-Mart?

All this info is very interesting to me at this point in my career. I hope you’ll share your preferences.

Happy reading and writing.

Heather Graham, Theresa Davant, Me, Mary Stella, Kathleen Pickering, Allison Chase

Cynthia

My love/hate relationship with Facebook

I must admit, until two weeks ago, I was becoming a Facebook junkie. I went on the site several times a day, kept up with friends’ news and words of wisdom, laughed at jokes and videos, and contributed my own gems of daily activities.  Harmless fun. I still feel that way about FB but now the startling reality of hackers has interrupted my free-flowing sharing of news and views. Two weeks ago a hacker chopped into my account, told friends that I, Cynthia-Cindy, was stuck in London and needed money. Though more money is always nice, the whole scenario was false. Someone reported the spamming to Facebook, and without warning, without contacting me, BAM! my account was “disabled.” Not suspended. DISABLED. Gone, whammo. Outta here. I spent two weeks suffering from a cold aggravated by Facebook withdrawal, trying to get reinstated.  I wanted to wish all my FB buddies a Merry Christmas. I wanted to see their Christmas trees, their kids in Santa hats, their dancing penquins. All to no avail. Facebook “at this time” does not offer phone support, so you can’t call them. All you can do is respond to emails, which I did, daily. But no response from them. So, ultimately I had to start all over with a new email address, password, etc. I have lost hundreds of “friends” and that’s the worst part. I want you back. If you know of anyone who might want to be my friend, please tell them to “friend” me. I have a long mountain to climb.

And you can be sure I’ll be more careful with my privacy settings.

Just wondering, has this happened to anyone else you know of?

Anyway, HAPPY HOLIDAYS and HAPPY NEW YEAR! At least I’m in time for that one!

Cindy

Thanksgivings to remember

Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  Makes me reflect on past holidays, especially three from years ago.  My husband and I had a lovable miniature Schnauzer named Shaney. She was a wonderful dog. We loved her dearly. But she was prone to overeating (made worse by overindulgent parents). One Thanksgiving when Shaney was perhaps five, my husband fed her scraps from the table (I know!  don’t do that!)  Three hours later, my family is crashed in front of the tv and the dog becomes horribly sick.  Trip to emergency vet, a strong lecture, and we bring Shaney home. The next year, I reminded my husband not to feed the dog from the table. He didn’t, remembering the enormous bill from the vet. But someone else did.  Three hours later, back to the emergency vet. And, as if you couldn’t guess, the next year, our young son made the same mistake and we were off to the vet’s again. Yes, we sound like terrible puppy parents, but Shaney lived to the ripe old age of 16 despite our poor management of her diet once a year. And, somewhat amusing, the vet at the emergency clinic, the third year, remembered us from the year before. “Hey, I know you guys!” Certainly not a reputation to aspire to! So, moral to the story – turkey and Schnauzers don’t mix.  Or maybe it’s stuffing, or cranberries, or gravy. Anyway, NO TABLE SCRAPS no matter how convincingly the little darling begs.

I would love to hear your stories, amusing or otherwise. I’m sure we could all write a book – maybe we should!

Cynthia