With the New Year looming, I thought this was a good time to look back at my previous twelve months. If this isn’t something you’ve done, I’d like to suggest a little something:
 
Don’t bother. If you’ve experienced a year like mine, it will only depress you.
 
A year ago, the Good Witch reluctantly told me her resolutions. She wanted to lose 15 pounds, hit the gym regularly, and try to save a little money. In order to cut down on the monthly expenses, she was going to eliminate cable television from her life-- or so she said. I didn’t believe it. I don’t think she did, either.
 
Did she manage to snap the cable? “They can have my remote when they pry it from my cold, dead hand,” she told me recently, then we watched an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
 
She saved some cash, though, by cutting her gym membership. Watching our pennies, we were supposed to alternate workouts at each of our homes, but those plans went a little sour when she scrunched her left shoulder. Less than a week later, I pulled a various collection of muscles, then snow started falling, and we decided maybe it wasn’t meant to be. We decided we’d start over in a few months.
 
In April, probably, when we rejoin the gym.
 
What about my personal resolutions for the year, you ask? If you must know – and, since you can check on this blog, I can’t feasibly make up stuff now – I declared  (to you, and not to GW) that I wanted to see  Live Love Rewind  available as a paperback, I had my fingers crossed that Glynn and I would finish one of the sequels to One Bride for Seven Brothers, and I hoped to complete another novel.
 
As Meat Loaf has famously sung, two out of three ain’t bad.
 
LLR is available in a print version, should you care to pick one up. One Bride: The Sixth Brother is out, huzzah, and Fifth Brother is so close to finished, I’m counting it as a January release. But the last of my goals didn’t get completed, and I know exactly why. I ran out of time. There were life issues, there were medical issues, but that’s hardly an excuse.  While recuperating from his own near-death experience with a van, Stephen King still found the time to write Dreamcatcher. And that baby is over 600 pages long.
 
Because I’m not the wordsmith from Maine, The Blackhearted Mail-Order Bride remains an unfinished twinkle in my eye. The manuscript is halfway home and halfway is nice, but not quite enough to satisfy 2015’s goals. When I grumbled about this recently, Glynn made a comment that maybe, just maybe, we ought to set the sequels aside. We could complete Blackhearted next.
 
Of course, the very next day, Glynn asked me if I wanted to go hunting for Nazi gold, so his focus isn’t always what it ought to be. I reminded him that the Polish army is already involved in that particular chase (here, if you hadn’t heard) and they probably wouldn’t welcome the assistance of two clueless Americans.
 
My honey tells me you never know if you don’t try. Trust me, in this instance, I know.
 
Just as I know that I won’t be making any resolutions for 2016. However, if I WERE to select some goals for the next twelve months, they would include watching Luke Cage on Netflix (sue me. I truly enjoyed Jessica Jones and Daredevil), rejoining the gym with GW, and completing a few more Brothers in the One Bride series. All of which seems very doable to me.
 
Of course, last year’s list appeared very doable, too. Fingers crossed. Again.
 

Oh, I know this isn’t a surprise for you. Even if you don’t celebrate the holiday, you’re aware of it. There’s almost no way NOT to be aware of it. By the time this posts, I expect to be enjoying the company of some of my friends and a few of my family. I have good friends. I have good family. I’m blessed.
 
Before I get all sentimental on you, and just so today’s blog isn’t one paragraph and gone, let me share a few holiday-related items -- if you celebrate the day and if you’re in the Christmas mood.
 
Stylist in the UK  has offered their list of the 50 best Christmas books. No one anywhere is surprised that “A Christmas Carol” makes the final cut. Meanwhile, Esquire provides “The Worst Books to Buy for Christmas”, which is a little more intriguing. Glynn better watch out for next year.
 
TimeOut in London tells us that “not all Christmas songs are totally naff”. I don’t know what “naff” means but they’re sharing their 50 best Christmas songs. Even more fun, they also offer the twelve worst Christmas songs ever inflicted on mankind.
   
Rotten Tomatoes will give you their list of the best Christmas movies, while Paste offers their idea of the worst Christmas movies (and Glynn should be SO happy I've already selected his gift for this year). Guess which list I found to be more entertaining?
 
See you next week. And merry Christmas!

When I started doodling with this post, I was going to call it, What’s the matter with me?, because this was the week I expected to announce the publication of our newest novella, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother. It turns out the story isn’t quite finished and, somehow, I’m surprised.
 
What’s the matter with me?
 
It bothers me that this is an unexpected turn of events because…well, I thought I was slicker than this. I’ve been a professional writer for years. A newbie might hit a few bumps in the road but the two of us?  A pro writer should be able to lock her publication dates in stone. After all, Glynn and I had discussed the story, we’d outlined it extensively, and we’d even padded our projected time of delivery to allow for the unexpected. When the unexpected did happen, we still weren’t worried.
 
Okay, yes, we were a tinge worried about those particular life events but not about completing the story on time. We were pros, we were prepped, Fifth Brother was gonna get out on time. This wasn’t like Sixth Brother. This time, we had it all figured out.
 
There was only one tiny issue that was outside of our combined experience. Fifth Brother would be the first time that we’d ever written a sequel to a sequel. But the sequel-to-sequel thing wouldn’t have bothered any of our favorite writers (most of whom have written multiple follow-ups to their novels) and, if they could do it, we could manage the job, too. Right?
 
So you may be wondering why Fifth is now peeking at a January launch date. It somehow keeps getting longer. That was never part of the plan; this time, we were supposed to be trimming words, not adding them. I mean, I know Sixth Brother ran long, longer than the original One Bride, and I was surprised by that, too. So why am I somehow stunned that the third in the series is the longest tale yet?
 
I truly am, though. *sigh*
 
So that’s the bad news. The good news is, both of us really like the story we’ve written. It is inches away from a completed first draft and we’ll see that before Christmas. A second and third draft will go quickly, then we’ll ship the pages off to Beta Reader #1 and Beta Reader #2. Their suggestions will lead to still another version of the story and then – we’re done.
 
We’ll publish the story, tell the Good and Wise People on our mailing list, celebrate and take a week off. Before that week is over, giddy with excitement, I’ll want to discuss the next novella with Glynn. After all, it will be our first ever sequel to a sequel to a sequel, and I’ll want to get going. We’ll outline the story extensively, and I’ll optimistically decide it will take three months (tops) before it’s finished.
 
In other words, you can expect another What’s the matter with me? post sometime in early April, where I’ll be astounded that Fourth Brother is even longer than Fifth, and isn’t yet complete. I’ll probably be shocked that it won’t be done until May, and I tell you this in all sincerity. I am, sadly, not teasing at all.
 
What IS the matter with me?

This weekend, I went to my local bookstore, trying to find the perfect printed present for my sweetie. Why something with pages and a binding? Well, as much as I love electronic stories, a digital novel just doesn’t quite cut the mustard, does it? (If you’re curious where the phrase, “cut the mustard” comes from, the Urban Dictionary tells all.) Since Barnes & Noble packed up and left our town, and the downtown Mom and Pop book place leans heavily on metaphysical how-to volumes – and Glynn is not so much a fan of the metaphysical realm – I found myself in Hastings Books, Music and Videos.
 
Our small town Hastings isn’t the best bookstore in the world and the service is a little indifferent, but it has a couple of things going for it. (1) It has books and lots of them; and (2) it sells used books, too, and lots of them. I can’t always find something new that will delight Glynn, but some of the older tomes are unexpected treats. And I discovered a (3), to my surprise. Hastings has a separate book rack for local authors. They offer books from writers in my local community, whether self-published or not.
 
It was like a Christmas miracle.
 
Even though I’ve haunted the store’s aisles over many years, I’d never seen this selection of books before. This could be because the rack was positioned a little oddly, outside of the path of normal foot traffic and facing toward general nothingness. Or maybe the rack was new, an experimental thing, but I didn’t really care. I loved that there was an entire rack of books by my neighbors, offering their works for purchase. There were at least twenty titles available, some of them by recognized publishers. For the most part, however, I was looking at self-published titles.
 
I have no snobbery when it comes to small press or self-pubbed books. How could I? Glynn and I have signed with big publishers (one), small publishers (many), and we love publishing our own stuff (and see that as our future). As readers, we'll give everyone a shot, no matter who published their work, but we have certain standards. When we pick up a new title, we expect the cover to be attractive, the layout to be professional, and the story to engage us. If a writer has managed to do those things, she's halfway home to selling us her novel.
 
In Hastings, most of the books I was looking at failed the first test. It started with the covers...oh, those covers. Many of them weren’t anything close to professional. I picked up one novel because of it's intriguing title – for this blog, let's call it MURDER AT MOHENO-DARO, and we'll call the author "Frieda Grawbler", but neither is anything close to those – but its cover was terrible. The inside inscription was long and rambling, the story's typeface was weirdly stretched and bothered my eyes, and the sticker price on the back was a couple of dollars higher than what Elmore Leonard’s publishers were currently asking. (Glynn likes Elmore Leonard’s stuff, which is why I’d been pricing his paperbacks.) It was a little depressing.
  
I was still holding the book, one of three copies, and feeling sad for Frieda Grawbler (again, not the real author’s name). Even if her mystery was fantastic, I knew I’d never read it because of those other elements. Most reviewers would refuse to look at it for this same reason, and this shelf on Hastings might be as close as Frieda would ever come to finding an audience. But with a better cover, a more pleasing typeface, maybe a little editing….
 
I jumped a little when I realized a Hastings employee had come up behind me. Tipping his head toward the novel, he asked, "Are you Frieda?"
 
Oddly enough, I didn't know what to say. I had absolutely no response. My first thought was, He’s going to ask me for an autograph.
 
Because, clearly, this tired-looking young man had mistaken me for the real Frieda Grawbler, talented creator of MURDER AT MOHENO-DARO. He’d hovered around the “Local Authors” rack day after day, this secret admirer, hoping to bump into Frieda and tell her –
 
“Please quit moving your books into the other areas of the store,” he told me. “When you put them with the New Releases, or over with the Patterson novels, I have to bring them back here. Please.”
 
Then he was gone.
 
I felt embarrassed. Because, even if I wasn't Frieda, I was still guilty of similar acts. In the past, you see, I’ve visited bookstores and moved my own books from the center bottom shelf to an end display. I’d even done something like that at our local library, bumping our YA novels from the “A - G” area to the more visible “Popular” shelves. On more than one occasion, I’d even shifted friends’ novels to a higher shelf or more prominent location. At those times, all I'd considered was discoverability. I’ve never once thought about the poor employee who is tasked to move the books back.
 
So, this cold December day, my apologies to everyone who has had to do extra work because of me. I'll try not to do it again. But there is a little cosmic justice in all of this. From now on, whenever I go to the bookstore, the tired-looking Hastings’ guy is going to be watching me. And the next time Frieda shifts her books spine-to-spine with the new John Grisham? I bet I’m going to get an earful.

Last week, I wrapped by mentioning writers who couldn't be bothered to sacrifice their holidays for the sake of their art. Before I get to that, let me tip my hat toward one of literature's most successful workhorses. According to The Creative Penn, Nora Roberts creates a new novel every 45 days. An entire novel. She achieves this remarkable feat this by putting her tush in a chair and writing eight hours a day, every day.

If you’re curious, dear reader, my average day is usually occupied with other labors. If we’re lucky, Glynn and I get maybe sixty minutes a day to work on our writing. Sometimes it's hard to find even that one spare hour. Consequently, it takes us about nine months to write and publish a novel.
 
In a piece by The Daily Beast, James Patterson revealed that he writes every day of every week of every year, and averages about 10 novels a year. Yes, he has co-writers for several of them, but still. If you’re hoping to become one of his co-writers, and I expect we'll all get a turn sooner or later, he pops out 900 pages of novel outlines alone on an annual basis.
 
If you’ve been wondering, Glynn and I usually outline our stuff, too. We have never followed the outline to the letter, sometimes the story goes awry or our characters decide to carry the tale in a new direction, but we prefer to begin a project with a solid storyline. To plot and write our last seven-page outline took us about two weeks. JP would be ashamed.
 
Barbara Cartland, per Writer on Fire, was one of the world's most prolific authors but she didn’t bother typing out new words on a regular basis. Instead, she lounged on her sofa, dictating fresh fiction to her faithful secretaries. (It wasn't such an easy job, being one of her secretaries. If Barbara was dictating, you were forbidden to cough or sneeze.) BC's technique was a success, producing as many as 7,000 words a day and a full-length manuscript every two weeks. She eventually published 723 novels, with even more to come. Although she’s no longer with us, Cartland has another 160 unpublished manuscripts in the archives.   

Glynn and I can’t hope to compete with those kinds of numbers. Although Glynn might argue otherwise, because he has no real sense of time or the passing of years, there’s no chance we’ll ever complete hundreds of novels. Or, for that matter, even 100 novels. Someday, with our fingers crossed and great good luck, we hope to have published ten full-length romance novels. Eleven, maybe, if Alan Dean Foster ever steps up to meet our vampire romance novel challenge.
 
I admire Roberts, Patterson and Cartland, both for their success and for their work ethic. They've earned their kudos. They’re in it to win it, as some of my writer friends say, and they won't let anything deter them from doing their jobs. Anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays are just another working day for them.
 
Even in death, Babs Cartland is kicking our butts. It doesn’t matter what the calendar says, if the sun has risen, these authors are (or were) on task. And hurray for them. Way to go, guys.
 
Glynn and I aren't nearly as driven. I insist we take time off for birthdays and anniversaries, and he happily complies. We especially enjoy holidays together – like Thanksgiving, a week ago. We took Poison on our trip with us, walked her at every rest stop, and listened to Radio Classics along the way. (I sacrificed my Broadway tunes and he gave up his sports reports.) While we happened to discuss our upcoming novella a couple of times, we did so without pressure. I think Glynn may have sneezed once or twice.
 
Babs Cartland would probably have docked his pay. Me, I let it slide.