Welcome, Lin Holmes

Hello Ginger,

Thank you for having me here to play in your yard. You didn’t give me any clues about what you wanted me to talk about today, so I’m just going to wing it.

I’m new…really new to this world of publishing. I did try ten years ago to get my foot through the door, and did, sort of. I had myself an editor and agent that loved my mediocre poetry, since I wrote it, I am allowed to say it was mediocre and when you are held to the grindstone and commanded to crank out 50 plus poems a day, mediocrity is almost a guarantee.

My muse hates the limitations of pentameter and soon began to shrivel in upon herself and hide. She had written stories, some short and some not-so short, during that time frame that S&J my editor and agent respectively, called crap when I finally threatened to stop pouring out the mediocrity if they didn’t at least take a peek at it.

Their critique nailed the last nail upon my Muse’s Pandora Box and she slipped into hibernation for ten long years.

Now I was perfectly content to let her stay there because she is, when she’s out and about, an insistent little task master who likes to have her say about all kinds of things.

It’s a good thing, actually, that she remained; somewhat mute…she did sneak out from time to time on my personal blog to do things like issue weekly McQuack awards to honor the parade of doctors I was dealing with during these ten years. Yeah I know, I should have bought a titanium padlock for her Pandora’s Box, but I was busy recovering from a car accident I had 11 days after 9/11. It was because I was busy with surgeries and physical therapy, modern day torture disguised as “good for you”, that she managed to slip past me and make those postings by the way. I’m including a link to one of her harangues here if you want to see what she’s like when she’s been deprived of being able to daily annoy me.

As I said, I was quite content with only the intermittent emergence of my Muse all those years. I was also happy not having those two allegedly smarter than me men telling me my writing smelled worse than the stuff that permeates the air when you drive by a dairy farm during the dog days of August.

Then my cute as a button thirty-four year old daughter submitted one of her stories got contracted and began nagging “old mom” to try again. I SOOOO did not want to travel down that route again. Inside I protested, outside I protested. All around the land I protested…then the annoyingly little minx did it…she said the one thing she knew would leave me no choice…she called me a COWARD!

I got out my hammer, wrenched up all the nails, flipped open the latch…not that any of those things had kept my MUSE in there all that securely, but there are rituals, and flipped the lid into its upright position. May I say a semi dormant for ten years Muse slams back into your heart muscle with the force of an out of control rocket launcher.

Before I could count to three I was sitting here at my erstwhile keyboard pounding out my first brand new story…I guess you would classify it a Cougar story…50 year old woman and 35 year old man…but before I could finish it, the publisher my daughter was with, closed that theme for new authors.

A SIGN FROM UP ABOVE that I was NOT to start back into the whirlwind world of publishing.

OH NO MOM…my insistent brat of a child pooh poohed. Get to work on another story…and she stood over me as I wrote…or I should say as my Muse poured out its second new story…and before I was finished it, my wicked child asked me if there was going to be a sequel, a trilogy to this story…which I hadn’t thought of that, but now my muse was hopping around with glee.

To make a long story short, that second story became my first Muse It Up Contract Santa is a Lady with a release date of December 1, 2010. The first…cougar story In From the Cold was also contracted by Muse it HOT with a June 1, 2011 release, and the first sequel to the Santa is a Lady; The Christmas War has a December 1, 2011 release date.

But the strangest…at least to me, and my muse…our editor at Muse, Lea Schizas, told me to open up the dusty files on what I had written ten years ago, and get them ready for submission. AS of today I have FIVE from ten years ago due for release in 2011 for release. They are:

Forever With You…a romance with a surprise ending February 1, 2011
The Pendulum Swings…a time travel romance March 1, 2011
Twilight Comes…a dark story loosely based on a true story May 1, 2011
This Time Forever…a reincarnation tale August 1, 2011
Beyond Yesterday…Another dark story loosely based on a true story September 1, 2011.

How amazing is that? I guess that means I owe my daughter an apology for nudging me out of my comfort zone back into the fray. And thank you Lea, Litsa and Muse. I’ve found an amazing home at Muse and am planting my roots deep.


I can be found at my two blogs:

http://linsownblog.blogspot.com

http://linsownoyster.blogspot.com



The McQuack awards- the first one includes Katie Couric:


http://linsownblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/and-winner-of-2nd-weekly-mcquack-award.html


http://linsownoyster.blogspot.com/2010/07/very-first-mcquack-award-goes-to.html


I had to move the second which is actually the first McQuack to my oyster blog because I couldn’t get the url to work in bringing it up. No doubt because I am a bit dyslexic…but if you want to see the original posting just go to my linsown blog and go into older postings and you’ll find it there too.