A New Book and a Great Resource for Writers fiction and non-fiction

I just bought a new book, well okay I bought it on June 5, but I've been going through it and I wish I had an affiliate link for this book because I'm going to recommend it every where to every one.  It's called Sell Your Book Like Wildfire The Writer's Guide to Marketing and Publicity, by Rob Eagar...what makes this one different is that he doesn't leave the fiction writer behind - He makes it useful for all of us-- 277 pages of awesome things...like - did you know what to do with Author Connect on Amazon - do you know how it can really help you sell your books for free?

Do you know how to effectively use twitter, facebook, linkedin and the rest?  I took copious notes--and I'm still trying to digest it all. It doesn't make you feel over whelmed but it does give you a head full of what's out there and how to use it.

And each chapter he has an online resource or two on his website you can download for free. I mean this guy gives so much!  I think I paid $16.99 for this book from Writers Digest but it was worth every penny. I am usually pretty skeptical because most times its all for non-fiction -- not this one. One chapter he interviews publishers, agents and others that know what we deal with when we seek publication. It's down to earth. It's a " here's how we see what you submit," kind of stuff straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. This guy just knows what we need.

His website is http://www.bookwildfire.comgo check him out.

I'll post stuff in a couple days that I've learned from here. And another resource that I just got called "Your Daily Success Plan,7-Steps To Starting Every Single Day With The Right Mindset, A Clear Direction, And Unstoppable Energy!" by Dennis Becker...talk about stoked - I'm ready. LOL

Finding Ideas to Write About

Sometimes it seems finding ideas to write about is hard, but if we open our minds up there are things to write about everywhere.
"Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything." Says William Shakespeare.
Many an enchanted forest has been fodder for a book or several. Imagine what a tree with a big nurl in the side of it looks like. My Willow tree outside my office window is such a tree. In different light, the time of day, the weather conditions that nurl looks like a million different things that could wind up as printed words on the page somewhere.

Running brooks in many ways sounds like a story teller. Listen, sit quietly at the side of a brook and listen. What message does it sing. What words does it bubble forth?

Sermons in stones - Peter the rock, comes to mind but their are others . Sticks and Stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me. Pet rocks. The Rolling Stones, musical group.

Good in everything?  Nothing happens without a reason. We need to test the skills we've been given to find the good. Imagine those people who were late for various reasons that probably stressed them out and started their day in a miserable mood when they were late to work in September 9 of 2001, they surely see the good, their blessings in that day. We may have to linger over the seeming obstacle before we see the good...but if by chance...imagine.

Did Shakespeare know something we didn't? or that we don't regularly think about?
What do you think? Comment here please.

The Glass Mountain

“My mood is the glass mountain of fairy tale lore! I slither down every time I try to clamber up.” Julia Cameron

As writer’s we expect those days when the words just won’t fall to page in the manner we hoped. When we’d rather pull the rabbit hole we’ve fallen into down with us and never view the light of day or the page again. When the wind blowing the new fallen snow across shoveled pathway creates drifts and magical pyramids in its wake, we want to be swallowed up in the white-out. But we clamber up out of that black hole, we clamber back up that slick glass mountain, we push and fight to get out from under the drift and we do write again even better than before.

Elisabeth Kubler Ross says, “…live each day…as if it was the only one we had.” And to do that we need to climb up, dig out, and scale the mountains in our path or roadway. If we don’t write it no one else can. Our uniqueness is unique only to us.

Two writers writing side by side with the same three-word prompt will never have the same story even if they write elbow to elbow. I read somewhere that our attitude creates our altitude, so if we are to scale great mountains of glass we will need to adjust our attitudinal course.

One way to plow through the snow drifts of our fear, our refusal to write, our writer’s blocks is to just write. Ribe Tucus! Butt in chair and write. We eventually can write through that drift as if the pen were a snow plow or shovel. We can climb over that glass mountain as if we had diamond studs in the tip of our pen and our cleated shoes. It takes courage to write in the face of great obstacles, but once begun, the writing will solve its own road blocks, its own mountain or snow drift.

“Freedom means choosing our burdens,” Hephzibah Menukin told us. If our burden is to write and we choose to accept it by picking up the gauntlet in the form of pen or keyboard, then we must WRITE ON!

Billie A Williams
Award-winning, multi-published author
Accidental Sleuths who solve crimes with wit, wisdom and chutzpah
Writing instruction books written in byte sized, portable prose.
Spice Up Your Writing, Write to Entice
ISBN 978-0-6151-7533-1
To see more go to
http://www.lulu.com/content/1349866
http://www.billiewilliams.com/

It Seems Like Only Yesterday

The Red Mittens of a Mother’s Love
Laura Deringer-Pemper-Miller
1924 – 1996

A small pair of red, hand-knit child’s mittens hung on a hook at my front door. They are the legacy she left behind. This was part of the warmth on a cold winter’s day, from the heart as big as all outdoors that always gave no matter how little she had. She taught us what “love one another,” really meant.
When someone gave her a winter coat too large for any of us four girls to wear, though it would have fit her perfectly, she carefully took it apart.. Each seam carefully dismantled to preserve the integrity of the fabric. She made two smaller winter coats, one for me and one for another child who needed it more than we did.
She wouldn’t accept charity, or welfare, that was for poor people. She never let us feel that we were poor. We may have had less then some, but we had more than others. We may have had to share beds, and clothes, and toys, but we were rich beyond measure in those growing up years.
A warm homemade quilt, a warm meal shared; there was always room at our table and a place to sleep for those in need, or for a friend we dragged home with us.
Sometimes we carried water from a neighbor’s pitcher pump, because we didn’t have running water when others did. Sometimes we carried firewood that dad had cut and split for kitchen cooking, heating water and heating the home, when others had gas, oil, or electric heat and cooking fuel sources.
In spite of that we never felt deprived and we learned to share with those less fortunate then we were. We learned to work for what we wanted, and save and dream.
She never wrote the great American Novel, though she encouraged me to write it. She never became a famous movie star, but she instilled the dream in me that I could—I could be anything I chose to be as long as I helped others climb up with me. “Do not ever step on another to make yourself larger,” she would say.
“Waste not, want not,” was a favorite phrase she spoke often. She could unravel a too large or too small sweater and remake a suitable sized one or several pairs of warm mittens and a warm scarf or two.
She was famous for her delicious Stone Soup. Whatever morsels stewed with her loving and giving nature, it turned feast in her determined hands.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she seemed to have a saying for every occasion, every reason, and every season. She taught us perseverance, by example, as a way to deal with rejection and disappointment.
When our questions were too large for her, like when daddy died too young from a heart attack. Our why’s echoed her own questions, but she stilled our sorrow with prayer, and trust. “God knows best,” she would say her faith never faltering, showing, never preaching or demanding blind obedience, we learned to trust and believe.
I finished those wool mittens she had begun for my Fireman brother, who had frozen his fingers fighting to save someone else’s home and life. I hung the little red child’s mittens by my front door to remind me to give and share and love.
Ten years later my niece had her first child. She had been especially close to my mother, and her heart still ached for the camaraderie she always found with grandma. She was filled with the sorrow that grandma would never hold her baby Zakk. I gave Julie those little red mittens, the last pair of children’s mittens mother ever made, so that grandma could hold Zakk’s hands through his winters and know the warmth of her touch, and her caring, giving heart.

Dictionary The Devil is in the Details

Billie A Williams ©2007
Dictionary – does that word throw you into a tail spin or are you ready to sit down for a good read? This morning when I went to look up a word that just happened toward the back of the dictionary (tribute) I wanted to know the meaning for a project I was doing. Anyway, I opened my concise Oxford English Dictionary (this is a one volume tome that you can read without the magnifying glass that comes with my two volumes, slip cased tome.) This one has plenty in it, just not everything. In the back of this delicious piece of writer’s arsenal were some things I never bothered to look at thus far, called Appendixes —what could they possibly have that would not be in the dictionary right?

Well—an hour later I’m still enjoying these delights Collective Nouns — where you will find such things as a group of apes is called a shrewdness, a group of bears a sloth or sleuth— wouldn’t that be a quirky red herring for your mystery? A group of boys = a blush. Ha, not in this century. A group of cats a clowder or glaring or a group of wild cats would be a dowt or destruction — they don’t know my Lady Slipper she is a destruction force of one. Or did you know that a group of nuns is a Superfluity. Love that one. Wonder if Janet Elaine Smith thought to use that in her book Old Habits Die Hard, one of her Patrick and Grace Mystery Novels?

The Collection of Collective Nouns, while entertaining, is very useful for trivia contests, writing your novel or poem and more. These particular ones above are noted in the Concise OED are from the 15th century Proper Terms Book of St. Albans by Dame Juliana Barnes.

The list goes on but here is just a glance at what those appendix hold:
1. Countries of the world with capitals, square area, population, currency unit
2. Prime ministers of Great Britain, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and Presidents of the USA.
3. Kings & Queens of England and the United Kingdom
4. Weights, Measures, and notations with conversions to metric, Fahrenheit and Celsius temperatures, metric prefixes with meanings and power notations.
5. Chemical Elements
6. The Greek Alphabet
7. The Solar System
8. Collective Nouns
9. Types of Language; formal, informal, archaic
10. English in Electronic communication – Abbreviations used for text messages cell phone or computer.
11. Guide to Good English

All of this was fascinating, but then words are my stock in trade. I love them. That’s why Richard Lederer is such a treasure to me.

Then I decided to take a look at the introduction. I always read the introduction, preface, prologue in the front of books now. I never used to. I thought they were a waste of time. They certainly are not. The introduction to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary is a plethora of great information from how to use the dictionary (everyone knows that, right? You may want to think again) the way it is set up, the uses, and method of the whole book— to trade offs between Canadian English and American English; gas for petrol, braces for suspenders etc. There are 22 pieces of information that are contained in each word and definition if you understand what is presented there. My new rule – Never skip an Introduction the author or authors put it there for a reason.

And Speaking of writing - guess who is a guest blogger right here next week - Friday the 13th of April ? - my good friend and fellow author Joyce A. Anthony. She will stop by to talk about her new critcally aclaimed book that is taking the world by storm -- STORM. You won't want to miss her visit. Be sure to come by April 13, 2007.

Another Great Writing Tip 0r Trick to Grab the Writing Muse

Lists -- you make them every day - to do lists, grocery lists, birthday/event lists, writers can use them to their advantage. They can use them to spark their muse -- much like brainstorming or mind mapping - try this:
Make a list about something ordinary -- sorting laundry, garage sale, party games, grocery list--anything. Off the top of your head no pondering allowed = )
(I'll wait, go ahead and make your list..tum, da , dum, da dee, tum tum)
Okay you done? Good now take that list and take ten minutes or so (set your timer) Now read your list. Do you sense a rhythm to what you wrote down after a few lines?

Laundry:
Dark Blue - yeah you too
whites - pretty pinks work
undies - and a sundries
well okay that's stretching it but you see where I'm going-- What was your list about - was it about love and all the things you associate with it? Could you turn that into a poem? How about the argument you had, the anger you felt at the stupid driver who cut you off -- any topic is prime for a list and you never know what writing it could spark.

The Garage Sale list could include - a list of available items, the buyers you encountered, the seller, what the day was like - rainy, sunny, hot, cold, blustery--what of those items you haggled over--what history might they have had?

The imagination is a powerful tool, combine it with lists and you are on your way to opening new doors with your writing. Try it! You just might like it. Please let me know how you did - you can post a comment here or you can leave a comment at my web site I look forward to hearing your thoughts and your results.

More later. And don't forget to watch for our guest blogger - Joyce Anthony when she tells us about her writing career and her new release STORM that is taking the world by storm.