Besides Being A Writer

Besides being a writer, which could be called into dispute since I have not published in a very long time, I am a caregiver. My husband of 40 years has been laid low by stroke and congestive heart failure. He is a quadriplegic. I could put him in a nursing home and “get on with my life”, but he would get care that would be substandard to which I can give him. After all, I am a “nurse” who is on call 24 hours a day and at his bedside every day. I don’t have 30 or more patients to care for besides him. I care only for him. I have been doing this 7 years.

There is a down side to this, however.

I look at other blogs and see written accounts about incidents at work, incidents about the strangeness or wonderfulness of life in and among the world.

I am home. I have one chore – besides the usual required to maintain a home – take care of hubby. It is not the thing of blogs. Not many people want to hear about bed-baths, caring for a gangrenous wound, or turning and propping him up with pillows to prevent bed sores every couple of hours. No, most people do not want to hear that. People look to blogs to be entertained, to gain information about whatever, not to be brought down or grossed out (unless it is a gross blog but then it is grossness that over the top and not what is a day to day drudgery in grossness).

So, why do I bring this up? Well, I have tried again and again to write a blog. I have tried to be entertaining. But the problem I have is that the day to day drudgery of caregiving always rears its ugly head and my blog falls to the wayside.

This time I am going to try to blog every day. Be forewarned. This blog is going to include all my warts, wrinkles, and drudgery because I have three things in my life. Caring for hubby, writing adventurous romances, and the rest of the world which occasionally peeks in.

If you check by off and on, you might read something that interests you and at other times you might scratch your head and say Huh? Why did she write that? The reason? It’s the only thing I could think of that day, it was the only thing that happened that day. But it was my day so I blogged about it.

Hope to see you around now and then. Leave a comment so I will know you dropped by.

Charlene

Achieving My Dreams in 2008

Every step I take brings me closer to the realization of my dreams”
With 2007 behind us and 2008 on the horizon, it’s time to reflect on how we want the rest of our journey here on earth to go. Do we settle for letting life happen or do we take steps toward achieving our dreams? Do we think about it or do we DO it? Judi Moreo has written a book Achievement Journal. In it you are supposed to track your progress toward your dreams. Track you achievements.

This month, January of the new year 2008, as part of Judi’s Virtual Book Tour, I am supposed to let you know what I am doing to being me closer to the realization of my dreams.

My lifelong dream of being a published writer was fulfilled last year 2007 in August with the release of Prophecy of Vithan with Cerridwen Press. For 2008 I have a new dream. Not to simply be a published author, but be a prolific author.
Have you heard of the National Novel Writing Month each November? Nanowrimo.com is a yearly competition with yourself to see if you can write 50,000 words in 30 days November 1 thru November 30. Last year I won, this year I didn’t. However I did start a new novel.
So to bring the dream of being a prolific writer closer to fruition I plan on running my very own personal nanowrimo each month of 2008. My goal is to write 2000 words each day. It is a daunting goal and I may not make it. But if I aim for the 2000 words I may hit 1000, or 500. It won’t matter. I will have set up a habit of writing every day in 2008 and I will be finishing novels left and right.
Another dream of mine is probably the same as 99% of the women out there. That is to lose excess weight and get this body of mine in better physical shape.
Have you ever wondered where the fat that you lose goes? I mean, if you lose something, don’t you normally want to find it again? Well, I have lost and found my weight waaaay too often. So I have come up with a solution.
I do not plan on losing weight this coming year. I plan on giving it away. To whom, you might ask. To the Hollywood stars. They are much too thin and are finally beginning to realize it. So in an attempt to bring health to those hardworking actors and actresses that have too long deprived themselves of nutrition and are now underweight, I will generously give my excess weight. I do not need thanks nor do I need to have it returned. The excess weight is a gift and not something I am lending. In fact I do not want it back.
With that in mind, the steps I am taking to get my body in healthy shape and to donate my excess weight are: 1) begin a workout program. Start slow and work up to a more active workout. I am an dyed in the wool couch potato. So I will start with being active for 10 minutes at a time and work my way up until I can do aerobics with out stopping for 30 minutes then keep up the 30 minutes a day for the rest of the year. And 2) I will change my eating habits. I know what good stuff I am supposed to eat. I just don’t do it. This year, I will make a serious effort to consciously change the way I eat. That means be aware of what I am putting in my mouth and then be just as aware of what I should put in my mouth and make the two match.
Perhaps something else I should make a dream and take steps to accomplish is to be a consistent blogger. You wonderful people come by and read my blog, so I should at least make sure you have something to read.
While I am preparing to be a consistent blogger, you can work on achieving your dreams during the year 2008. You can start that process by getting Judi’s book Achievement Journal at Amazon.com. Have a wonderful and dream filled 2008.

WELCOME SANDY LENDER

1) Do you have a belief in certain spiritual things? (For instance, souls, nirvana, God, invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, or heaven.)
Love the flying spaghetti monster. Ohmigosh. When I found that, I sent the link to everyone I could think of…
But I definitely believe in God. I know that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and I am eternally grateful for that (otherwise, I'd be in a heap o' trouble).
2) Which of the following motivates you more to accomplish something? The prospect of fame or self-fulfillment.

Self-fulfillment is the big motivator. I don't want fame for myself: I want fame for Nigel and Chariss out of Choices Meant for Gods. I want to watch some talk show some day in the future and hear the host say, "Like Romeo and Juliet or Nigel and Chariss." Now, this will do one of two things to me: it will either make me burst into tears (very likely) or it'll send me into cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is probably best so I can die before I hear the audience say in crushing unison, "Who?"
3) Which of the following best describes you? And give us an example of how emotions or logic show up in your work.I am emotional and base my decisions and writing on feelings.
I am a thinker and I base my decisions and writing on logic and research.
Well, I'm a Gemini, so they both describe me to a "T". Seriously. In my day job, everything is based on the Vulcan way of thinking: what's logical? How can I back up this decision? But I'm very impatient (character flaw!) so I don't like to take a long time with research. I make gut-reaction decisions often, but they're gut-reaction decisions that are backed up with fast, find-this-and-figure-it-out-in-the-next-30-minutes kind of research, if that makes sense.

In my writing and personal life, decisions are made on an emotional basis, which is probably why my bank account weeps and I've been to 33+ Duran Duran concerts…

4) Tell me about a decision in your book that you made which was a bad one for your character. Did you keep the scene in the book or did you delete it?

I don't think any of the characters in Choices Meant for Gods make any bad decisions, really. They do things that are necessary and right, and I don’t fault any of them for the things they do. Now, the sequel is another story altogether…Toward the first third of Choices Made by Gods, the sequel to CMFG, Nigel Taiman makes a rash decision that will cost someone his or her life. It's very bad. I've left it in. It has to be there.

And Chariss and The Master Rothahn both make a horrible decision in the sequel as well. But, again, they have to. These are choices made by gods…

5) What strengths and weaknesses do you bring to writing?
I'm not sure if I'm going to answer this right, but I'll give it a shot here. A strength I have in writing is dialogue. I'm not going to pretend that I'm as good at it as Charlotte Bronte, but I learned from her. I've read her works and I wanted to emulate that style. A weakness I have in writing is probably using all those blasted adjectives. I over-describe stuff. Now, yeah, in epic fantasy, you have to describe things and explain just what the heck is going on—it's a world no one has seen before—but I have to edit myself A LOT before I turn stuff over to my publisher.

6) Describe a time when you had to sacrifice quality for a deadline, or vice versa. Would you try to extend a deadline to stay true to the quality of writing you aspire to?
In magazine publishing (my day job), you sacrifice for the deadline all the time, but I don't think we really sacrifice quality of writing. What usually suffers is the editing/proofreading. "Just send it," has come out of my mouth more than once when it's 11 p.m. and it's time to upload to the printer's ftp site. Extending deadlines is rarely an option in the professional world. Now, in book publishing, there are times you can morph the deadline schedule within the production schedule, but there's a drop-dead date for printing, and if you miss the window…ah…well…someone else's project goes on press in front of you because any time a press is quiet, that eerie sound of wind is the sound of the printing company's money going out the window…and they don't like that. So presses don't sit idle for long. If your project isn't ready to go on press when it's supposed to be there, they throw someone else's on and you get to wait for them to finish.

7) Tell me about a project you have been working on and how you organize your paperwork, chapters, writing goals, etc.
Right now the biggest project I've been working on is my online book tour. (I've already completed Book II of the Choices trilogy and I'm almost finished with Book III, so those are taking a back seat to promotion of Book I.) So I organized the tour down to every last anal-retentive detail.

When I'm working on a writing project, I don't typically outline chapters and I never set writing goals. The goal is to tell the story. Pow. My paperwork is sets and series of notebooks, notecards, sticky notes, and calendars with sticky notes on them so I can track where characters are and on what dates specific things happen. Now, for my vampire trilogy that I'm working on, things are more structured. I have what looks like an outline for the story-line and I have histories and descriptions written out in an orderly fashion for the characters (their character sketches), but this is a function of the muse, Caleb, who is a vampire, visiting and making those demands. He's quite meticulous and detail-oriented, which is fine. I think you have to be when your survival depends upon staying-alive-through-advanced-planning every time the sun rises—which is daily. It will drive me insane when I get started on the series in earnest.

8) Describe for me two improvements you have made in your writing in the past six months. Greater word count. More emotions. Better able to describe a character. Etc. What have you improved?
I think lesser word count would make my publisher happy…he'll be delighted when I send him Choices Made by Gods because it's only 120,000 words (currently…I'm not done editing stuff in), which is 150,000 less than CMFG started out with.

I think I've improved on punching up my action scenes. I don't know, really. They've always had the combo of short and long sentences to make flow "go," but I think I've given them more "hit." And that's important for Books II and III.

9) What aspect of your past books did you enjoy the most?
Chariss's sense of humor. I love it when she teases someone because it usually takes them a minute to realize she's just "got" them…

10) Now that we know you better, how can we buy your book Choices Meant for Gods?
My publisher's site gives a 25% discount, but you have to pay shipping. So Amazon has an option to get free shipping at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9089752-5140754?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180941096&sr=1-1.
Thank you for hosting me at your site today, Charlene! Your note to me said these questions were "off-the-wall," but I thought they were refreshingly off-the-beaten-path. This was a fun interview. I'll check in later on to see what questions or comments I can answer from your visitors.

Prophecy of Vithan

As a reader I never quite understood the significance of writing a book, getting the cover, and actually being published. As a reader I saw a book on the shelf of a store, or in an online store, admired the art work and bought the book. It was no big deal. It was a matter of fact. A book had a cover that I liked and I bought it.
Today my pardigm changed drastically. I am an author who now has a cover. I can't post it to the world yet, until everything is finalized. But the tremors in my hands as I type (I must have typed this sentence ten times. I can't seem to hit the right keys) and the pitter patt of my heart tell me that this ranks right up there with marrying my soul mate, having a first child. I am in awe of the fact that I have written a book, a publishing company wants to publish it and I have a cover.