Welcome Lin and Kat Holmes

Mother and Daughter Reunion

Of Sorts

First I want to thank our beloved Queen of all things Humorous, Ginger Simpson for inviting us to come and share a bit of chatter on her guest blog. As always, we jump at the chance to come and set a spell with Ginger.

My Name in Lin and I write as L.J. Holmes and am an author with Muse It Up Publishing, Inc, one of the absolute finest publishers in the world today.

Lea, our glorious publisher has been nipping at my shyness trying to instill upon me the need to truly share who I am…so Lea, these next words are yours…I am an award winning, multi-published author. (Last count, nine in this past year alone with another coming next month in December.)

Like Ginger, I have been around the bend a time or two, giving my inner voice, I sometimes affectionately call Nudge…sometimes I have other names for her, but I’ll be nice, a lot to say. My current release is about a harrowing journey into having someone dare you to move way outside your comfort zone…WAYYY outside entitled Champagne Afternoon.

I could sit here with y’all and Ginger and wax poetically about how brilliant I am, but I try to always tell the truth…so instead let me introduce my better half…and NO…I’m not talking about a husband.

My better half is my charming, gorgeous to the marrow, equally prolific Best Selling, 2011 Pearl Award nominee, multi-published offspring, Kat Holmes. As of today, Kat has four releases in 2011, with so many coming in both 2012 and 2013 I can barely wrap my head around how many. Her current release Dangerous Voice is an amazing tale of a cougar and the hunky younger cop living next door who attaches himself to her like Krazy glue when a murderer stalks her sexy self.

But Kat and I are not here, this time, to speak about our separate writings…we’re here because so many have asked us to collaborate on a book and when people nudge our nudges, our nudges step up to prove their stripes yet again. (No not prison stripes, though sometimes our nudges make us feel like they’ve handcuffed us to our MS Word programs.)

Our first collaboration recently contracted Her Last Day, is releasing in April 2013…and trust me, we will be sharing many updates over the months ahead about this story, so dear to our hearts…and that is what we are here to talk about.

We’re here to talk about what it is like being a mother and daughter collaborating on our first joint project. (Did you notice that “first” reference? Yeah, Her Last Day is our debut together.)

People have asked us what it’s like to hone a story into something rational and worthy of both our names. Do we kill each other? Are clumps of pulled hair flying about in the wake of our writing endeavors?

We know a lot of people would be pulling each other’s hair out by the root clumps if they had to mingle their personalities into one single story, but for us it was fun, difficult, teeth gnashing, and in the end, more than worthwhile.

To begin with, it really helps that we live under the same roof. No matter how mad or frustrated we might get, we couldn’t storm off in a snit, giving each other cold shoulders. To live in harmony when not wrangling over our manuscript, communication on all levels had to be respected. (All right, total truth…it is what we promised…we like each other…and I can make Kat laugh even when she wants to be “in my face, boiling mad at me.” It ticks her off no end, but once I make her crack that first smile, the heat level begins to fade and it is back to being Mom and Kat giving life to Daria, our absolutely most favorite character ever.

Maybe that’s why it was so much fun. We both love Daria, the heroine of Her Last Day.

Sitting at our computers in the very same room, we take the draft one or the other of us first fashioned…in this case, Kat wrote the first draft…and go over it line by line…out loud. Does this word work? Would this word be more powerful? This scene has nothing to do with our heroine, should it stay in as peripheral detail, or be deleted altogether and a different scene inserted?

Should we make Titus a bigger pig, or just let him quickly fade out of the action and move on to the rest of the people in Daria’s life? How much detail do we need to share about Daria’s life before Her Last Day?

Word by word, line by line, scene by scene, we scrutinize the flow, ebb, and impact of what we’ve written, and in the end, when we finished sending it off for submission, our fingers crossed, we felt closer still than we’d been when Daria’s story first was born.

Kat and I are prolific authors, but to date, this story is the one that we hold deeply in our hearts, and present with pride and appreciation. 2013 is a long way away, but now that we have written one contracted collaboration, Kat and I have written a second and look forward to our next joint project.

Once more we both want to thank Ginger Simpson for her generosity in allowing us to come and visit a spell.

For more information on us you can find Lin on her authors pages at www.museituppublishing.com and www.museithotpublishing.com

She is also available through her Muse dedicated personal blog http://linsownblog.blogspot.com and via e-mail at Spatzdkat1212@yahoo.com

Kat can be found on her Muse It Hot author’s page at www.museithotpublishing.com her own website at http://www.authorkatholmes.webs.com her blog at http://katluvr130.blogspot.com and e-mailed at MyKitty130@yahoo.com

Thank you all, especially you Ginger.

Welcome Rebecca Minto

I want to thank the beautiful Ginger Simpson for having me as her guest today.  I appreciate the opportunity.

I am Rebecca Minto and my A Kiss To Remember is coming out January 7, 2012.  This will be my first published work since college, although far from the first story I’ve ever written.  I have written for pleasure as far back as I can remember, from poetry and short stories to full-length novels.  I have always considered it my therapy.

I stepped away from my comfort zone in writing this book.  I have always preferred writing in the Middle Ages, and this story is set in the Regency period, a time I have always avoided simply because of all the straitlaced rules of that time and because I have never been a big fan of Cinderella ballrooms with all the idleness of high society during that era.  My characters demanded it, however, and I am ever a slave to what my characters require.

The idea came to me in one of those exhausted, sleep-deprived dreams one has when my son was in his infancy, meaning he was up ever two hours.  It was a misty dream, full of the beauty of a lovely English manor of that time period, and I watched this beautiful golden young lady go through her morning libations.  I knew it was her birthday, I could feel her joy spreading throughout me, her excitement as she prepared to go on a morning ride with her father, but when she went downstairs she began screaming.  It haunted me until the story began to form, with names to go with the faces, with the joy, terror, laughter and sorrow that life entails. 

This story was a labor of love, but at times it was extremely challenging.  My main character, Daphne, was especially difficult for me.  She was a dreamer and an artist, a girly-girl and a peacemaker.  I had difficulty understanding her because, well, she was everything I have never been.  I was a tomboy who could be found playing with frogs and climbing hay bales and tormenting my poor brothers.  Daphne was the sort of girl who longed to wear frilly dresses and paint fantasies of the perfect knight in shining armor riding up to her enchanted tower on a glowing unicorn.  It took time, but eventually we were able to come to a comfortable compromise.

This story did not focus primarily on the hero and heroine of the novel as many stories do.  My heroine, Daphne, was not the sort of person who could maintain a single-minded intensity on only one aspect of her life the way you often see in many romance novels.  Family was important to her, as were her friends and her art, so it was often a balancing act trying to focus enough in each area that was so vital to her as a woman, which led to the greatest difficulty of all in writing this story: the secondary characters.

I absolutely fell in love with the hero’s sister and the heroine’s best friend, Annalise.  She was a strong character, with an intensity that simply drew me in.  She never overshadowed Daphne, but rather I think she complimented her and grasped the imagination.  Who was Annalise?  What drove her?  What would push her to the very bring of her haughty control?  What would she do for those she loved?

Those are questions I hope to find answered soon, in my next work in progress.  I hope everyone enjoys A Kiss To Remember when it is released January 7 by Eternal Press. 

Help me kick start my new blog.

Tomorrow's Tourist

Help me welcome, Katie Hines. She and I met through a publishing association, and she'll be here tomorrow to share details about an upcoming release. I'm happy she agreed to grace my blog, and I 'pirated" this from hers:

Although I've been writing for as long as I can remember, I didn't get serious about it until I decided to write a memoir. That's when I realized I didn't know what I was doing. So I started researching and learning about writing do's and don'ts. I wrote quite a few newspaper pieces, and then completed a middle grade novel.

You can find find her at Walking on Water. Gotta love her blog title.

Welcome, Joan Maze

Running a day late, but wanted to sneak in and welcome today's guest, Joan Maze. If you're looking for mystery, then this the novelist for you. I've just met Joan, and I'm excited to read some of her work. We'll both learn a little more about her.

Today, I sneaked onto her website and found this:

I've always been involved in the arts, music, writing and painting, beginning with studying voice at Northwestern University. I interrupted this endeavor for a family, but finally finished my degree at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. The emphasis, this time, was in subjects related to writing.

My first attempt at fiction was at the age of eight when my mother taught me how to use her turn-of-the-century typewriter. It was so heavy I couldn't lift it, but that didn't stop me from spending hours learning to type and, supposedly, write. As far as the story is concerned, it contained every mistake known to the publishing world, but it sparked my interest, which grew from that point on.

Help me welcome her today.

Tomorrow's Thursday's Tourist

Author of Historic and Romantic Fiction!

That's what Danielle Thorne's website proclaims, and I'm so proud that she's joining us tomorrow to share her successes with us. I'm sure she won't mind if I 'borrowed' her trailer to help welcome her to "Dishin' It Out."

My Visitor This Thursday

This week, I swing open the gate and allow Chris Redding to hold the spotlight in my Thursday Tourist slot. I hope you'll log on tomorrow and see what she has to say.

I visited her site and 'borrowed' a little information about her:

Chris’ desire to become a published writer began at an early age. When she received her first A on a story she wrote in fifth grade, Chris knew she wanted to be an author. However, writing romance fiction books didn’t enter the picture until later in her life. She didn’t read many romance books growing up, but after college, discovered the genre fictions of mystery and romance. Her favorite authors are Suzanne Brockmann and Lisa Gardner, both of whom she has had the pleasure of meeting.


NOTE FROM GINGER: I'm sure I'm not among her favored authors because we haven't actually 'met.' *lol* We do tend to share the same publishers though, and I always consider myself in good company when she's around.

Rolling Out The Red Carpet Again

My Thursday Tourist this week, hopefully making an appearance tomorrow on cue, is Lisabet Sarai.

I had the good fortune to meet Lisabet through our mutual publisher, Eternal Press. She's quite a talented and fun person, even though I can only attest to that through virtual contact. As I've said before, Internet relationships can be as tangible as face-to-face, and I'm happy to host her on my blog anytime.

From her website, it appears she's led quite an interesting life, obtaining a master's degree, globetrotting, and spending more than twenty years with a husband she seems to adore. The pair lives with their two cats in Southeast Asian, and Lisabet still plans to do more traveling. Her writing leans more to the 'sexy' side, and I'm sure hubby doesn't mind at all. I checked her list of favorite authors...and darn, I wasn't listed. My content is probably far too bland for her. *smile*

If you don't believe her books are steamy...just check out this cover:

Please make her feel welcome.

Welcome, Kristin

Today, I'm putting out the welcome mat for my guest, Kristin Battestella. I hope you'll join me in making her feel at home. Kristin has some pretty pasty-faced friends and I guarantee you'll find them interesting.