First off thanks much to the Jaunty Quill ladies for inviting me to join their group.  I’ve been a fan of the blog since it began. 

My first blog is going to be short and sweet. 

I love flowers and always try to plant some to enjoy during the summer, but I had such a crazy schedule this year with writing deadlines and a day job that I just settled for throwing a few packets of seeds in planters. 

It was my worst effort yet to liven up my patio garden and I didn’t expect much reward for the little effort I put into it.  But the garden flourished.  (I actually took pictures to add to the blog but the system won’t let me.  ) 

So visualize pots of baby zinnias, marigolds a good four feet high, a garden arch thick with purple morning glories, and a nine cent packet of cucumber seeds that have covered a fence, tangled with a rose bush, and are trying to reach the roof.  I kid you not it is wild. 

What about you?  What’s your favorite summer flower?  Do you garden a little, a lot, or not at all? 

It’s the 140th year of the Nebraska State Fair…and it started yesterday!

When I was in high school, I loved to go to the fair….mostly to hang out on the midway. I liked the sights and the sounds and the smells. The food was always great (if you didn’t consider the nutritional value or calorie count) For me corn dogs, lemon whip ice cream and funnel cakes will always make me think of the fair.

When our daughter was in grade school, she was in rabbit 4H. We had mini-lops and a New Zealand. Below is a picture of a mini-lop. A New Zealand looks like the Easter Bunny–white with ears that stand up.

What do I remember of that experience? How hot it was and how the pavilion wasn’t air conditioned. They had huge fans, but it was still hot. And I’ll let you in on a little secret…rabbits hate the heat!

Do have memories of going to a State Fair? Do you even know what a State Fair is?

I’d love to hear your stories…and be sure and include your favorite food to eat at the Fair.

 
Hello everyone! Thank you so much to the ladies of Jaunty Quills for having me as a guest today! I’m celebrating the release of my 20th book, NEVER MARRY A STRANGER, a Victorian novel about a man who returns from the dead, only to discover a woman pretending to be his widow. Of course he has to figure out what’s going on—without too much scandal—so he pretends he has amnesia from his war wounds and can’t remember being married. But he’s more than willing to have her remind him!

Since I’m celebrating a new book, I thought I’d talk to you today about my writing rituals, the things I do every day. Some seem silly and obvious, but others help me get into the flow of the story, and put myself back into the scene so I can keep writing. First, my alarm wakes me up…

No, no, I’m not going to go THAT in depth. But I do manage to check my email just before I go downstairs. I write on a laptop not connected to the internet. I have to go all the way upstairs to another computer to read email, research online, etc. I would be too distracted if I could access that stuff easily. So after a check at the computer, and pouring myself a huge mug of ice water, which I refill several times a day, I head down to my office in the basement, hopefully by 8:30 or so. The first thing I do is log in. I write down the time I start and stop, and what I’ve accomplished for the day. It gives me a good feeling to page through and see that I’ve actually accomplished something on the book that’s giving me fits!

The way I get myself back into the story is to summarize the previous chapter. I tend to write about 15 pages a day, so I usually finish a chapter in there somewhere. I keep a chapter summary to one page in length, and write one small paragraph for each scene in that chapter, keeping track of important things that happened in that scene. At the bottom of the page, I even summarize the whole chapter into a couple lines. By the time I finish this, I’m right back in the story again. I use my chapter summaries when I get a revision letter from my editor. It helps me see an overview of the book, and track where I need to make changes. But sometimes, I just can’t remember where I put a certain plot point in the book, and rather than reread everything, I go to my summaries to find it with ease.

And then it’s time to write. As I said, I shoot for the daily page goal that will allow me to work five days a week, leaving me a few weeks to revise at the end before the manuscript is due. I leave my office about 1:00 to exercise my dogs, then eat my lunch while watching my soap (One Life to Live). I read emails again, and then I’m usually back at my desk by 3:30. If the day is going well, those 15 pages can be done by five, but sometimes it’s 7 or 8 before I’m done. And since life happens, if I can’t meet my goal for the day, I make it up on the weekend. And on days when I’m revising or plotting or reading copyedits or updating my website, I try to work 8 hours or so.

So that’s my writing process. Do you have your days mapped out like I do, or are you the kind of person who takes life as it comes? We’re all different, and that’s what makes the world interesting.

A recently released movie which shall remain nameless (don’t want to spoil any plots!) gave an alternate ending to a historical event. Basically, it’s how the screenwriter wished things had ended, and the audience seemed to agree. Justice would’ve been more served that way, perhaps.

I thought the idea of an alternate ending was pretty great. After all, I am the girl who spent her entire adolescence rewriting the end of Gone with the Wind in my head…Rhett Butler was the closest thing I had to a boyfriend for years. I wanted Scarlett and Rhett happy, dang it all, and that foolish Margaret Mitchell hadn’t done the job. Of course, now that I’m a grownup, I understand just what an incredible ending that is, but back then, I was a callow youth. 

Writing the ending of a book is one of my absolute favorite parts of being an author. For roughly 375 pages, my imagination has been leading to this exact moment. Everything is going to be wrapped up, and yes, in a romance, you can pretty much bet that the hero and heroine are going to make it. The ending is one of the few parts I’m certain of almost from the very beginning. You can even say that the last scene…or the last two or three scenes, perhaps…are the reason I write those first 375 pages.

Sometimes The End comes quietly…in Catch of the Day, the action might be small, but the emotions are big. Both Fools Rush In and Just One of the Guys end with a wedding…though not necessarily the hero and heroine’s wedding. In fact, I’ve received a lot of e-mail about what happens at the end of Just One of the Guys…there were a few readers who hoped for something else to happen. (As the author, I can assure you that my twist is the right one!) But I view it as a compliment that these readers felt so strongly about what happened that they wanted to talk about it.

In The Next Best Thing, my upcoming book, The End is probably the best yet (in my own humble opinion, that is). I admit that I was crying quite hard when I wrote it. And I’ll also admit that I didn’t want to write it. The End is just that…our time together is over, and I have to say goodbye. Yes, Lucy and Ethan (and Maggie and Malone, Sam and Millie, Grace and Callahan, Trevor and Chas)…they get to live happily ever after, but I have to bow out. It can be tough. I miss them. I love them, after all. I made them!

Sometimes I rent a DVD where there’s a special feature which shows a different ending to the one that actually made it into the movie. I think that’s cheating, don’t you? The writer has to make a decision. Can’t have it both ways. Would Titanic, for example, have had the same punch if the viewer got to choose whether or not Jack lived? My daughter recently read Lord of the Flies and felt very badly indeed about the ending…but then again, the reader is supposed to feel bad! I felt the same way about To Kill a Mockingbird. When I was a kid and saw Star Wars for the first time, I kept waiting and waiting for Obi-Wan Kenobe to reappear. It was too sad to believe that he was gone forever.

The End is huge for us writers. It’s the culmination…and also the beginning. It’s when the two characters we love so much finally reach their potential. They have faced all their fears, overcome all those obstacles, and now…now, at last, they put everything on the line, and they push through. They make it. The rest of their lives will be better from this point on. At long last, they have become the people we always knew they could be.

What are some of your favorite endings, in either movies or books? Which endings surprised you, either in a positive or negative way? Which endings would you rewrite if you were the boss?

Just thought I’d mention that there’s a special promotion going on on eharlequin. If you spend $10 on select books, you get a free book by Stella Cameron. And my book is one of the books!

Tomorrow’s my birthday. Not a round number or anything, but I’m looking forward to spending the day spoiling myself (and hopefully being spoiled by others as well). The truth is, I’m in the mood to be spoiled.

I’ve been having a rough few days. Nothing horrible, just a lot of little things going wrong. So here’s my plan for birthday spoilage: (gosh that just doesn’t sound right)

Watching Jane Austin adaptations rented from netflix. Okay, I started early on this one and watched Presuasion yesterday. The new BBC version. Loved it!

A trip to see something wonderful at my favorite local movie theater, Alamo Draft House. It’s one of those places that serves food and alcohol. Not to mention just about the yummiest desert ever — Desert eggrolls, with ginger apple pie filling, drizzled with dark chocolate sauce and served over vanilla ice cream. I don’t know what I’m going to see yet. I’m not sure it matters. It’s ridiculously delicious. Trust me.

A nice long baking session making a birthday cake. A year ago I bought a new cake cookbook and I’ve been slowly working my way through the recipes. Okay. Very slowly. I can’t wait to try the chocolate margarita cake.

A few hours reading a good romance. Right now I’m The Perfect Rake, which I believe someone here recomended. So far it’s delightful. I can’t wait to squeeze in a few more pages.

I figure, since I’m spoiling myself, I might as well spoil you to. Tell me what you do to spoil yourself and I’ll pick one lucky winner to receive a very special prize package that includes:

• A fabulous Green Apple shopping bag (I gotta tell you, I love these bags! They’re as functional as my standard reusable shopping bag, but more durable and so much classier I can bring them into even the nicest stores. (If you don’t win today, I’ve got another to give away in the near future. Or you can get your own at: www.greenapplebag.com.)
• Some of fabulous free books by Carla Cassidy, Brenda Jackson, Blythe Gifford, Leslie Kelly, Stephanie Bond, and Vicki Lewis Thompson.
• And a copy of my newest, In the Tycoon’s Debt.

I’ve been under a strict FaceBook moratorium since I got back from vacation. I was finishing up a deadline and then I went right into edits. Last weekend, I signed onto FB for the first time in a long time, and there I found a note from my good friend Joanne, entitled, “Firsts.” It struck me that it would make for a fun blog post… so here goes… Oh! and please play along by answering the questions and posting them below.

1. What was your FIRST job?
Robinson’s Department Store. I was a ‘flyer,’ who filled in where they needed me.

2. What was your FIRST car?
A ‘70s yellow VW Bug (it had no AC and a faulty clutch that I had to keep reconnecting, but I loved it because my friends called it the “Yellow Submarine” and I finally had wheels!

3. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
Sadly, no. I haven’t seen him in ages.

4. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
My Dad loves to tell the story of when I was two and I upended my mother’s champagne glass when they were doing a tasting at G.H. Mumm Champage in France. I suppose that would account for my love of bubbly!

5. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
Mrs. Jung at Stapelton School in Joplin, Mo.

6. Where did you go on your FIRST ride in an airplane?
I can’t remember, but it was probably to France. We moved there when I was a baby. Moved to the UK and then returned to the states when I was about five or so.

7. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
Rodney Simpkins – we lived nextdoor to each other. I’m sad to say I haven’t seen him in years.

8. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
Got up, fell out of bed, I dragged a comb across my head… Oh, wait, that’s a Beatles tune. I brusehd my teeth and then turned on the computer.

9. FIRST tattoo?
From a crackerjack box

10. FIRST piercing?
Ears – I was probably in 6th grade or so…

11. FIRST foreign country you went to?
France

12. When was your FIRST detention?
I was a junior in high school and I skipped a class. A friend and I decided to go to the library rather than to American History. The next day when the office called me down to account for my whereabouts, stupidly, I said I’d forogtten something important and had to run home. I got double detention for “leaving campus.” See I always get caught and the lie just made it worse!! Can you say, ‘Karma’?

13. If you had one wish?
To have more wishes, of course!

14. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?

15. Did you marry the FIRST person who asked for your hand in marriage?
Nope.

16. What was the FIRST sport that you were involved in?
Basketball! Played it very badly when I was 14!

17. What were the FIRST lessons you ever took?
Ballet… my unrequited love. I’ve always been a ballerina at heart.

18. What is your FIRST memory?
I remember playing in the sandbox in the back yard of our house in England. Though, truthfully, I’m not sure if I actually remember it or if I’m conjuring it from old photos and stories my parents told me.

19. What is the FIRST thing you do when you get home?
Take off my jewelry! For some reason, I have to undecorate myself when I get home.

20. FIRST published book?
REINVENTING OLIVIA – 2003

Okay, now it’s your turn. Who’ll go FIRST?

It’s that time of year. You can smell freshly sharpened pencils in the air and most of you moms have a spring in your step. Perhaps you’ve even started whistling thinking of the upcoming days when your house will be a little quieter and you can fold laundry in peace.

Well, there are no children here at the DeHart house, but the school year is still about to begin. Starting tomorrow The Professor heads back to school for the new fall semester. This time at a different university, so I’m sure those first day of school jitters are nipping at him. I’m so very proud of him, for being great at what he does, for getting a new job in today’s economy and for being so passionate about his teaching.

But enough of all that mushy stuff, here’s what’s really exciting. Now y’all need to pull in close for this one because I have to whisper. I don’t want to broadcast this else I risk hurting a certain someone’s feelings. Tomorrow is the start of a new semester for him and for me it’s FREEDOM! Now don’t get me wrong, I love my husband, he’s my very best friend and my most favorite person to spend time with. And therein lies the main problem. When he’s around I want to hang out with him – watch bad SciFi movies, snuggle on the couch, or just sit around and chat. And when all that is happening I’m not working. Not only that but because I work from home I don’t have a regular schedule, my computer is almost always open and I work on and off all the time. When he’s at home my sense of time is completely off kilter – I don’t even know what day of the week it is. But when he’s at work, up in his office away from the house, I hit my rhythm. I can stretch and breath and really find my stride.

No longer will I have to ask him to turn down the TV or put my earbuds on because I can’t stand one more episode of Scrubs – seriously, that show is on ALL THE TIME! And I don’t have to worry if I stay in my PJs a little longer than necessary – he won’t be here to see – not that he cares, still when someone else is around it makes you a little more aware of your own appearance. I’ll make his lunch and off he’ll go and then I can work how I want, where I want and for how long I want without too many distractions. Then when he comes home in the evening we can snuggle on the couch and enjoy one another without me worrying too much if I got my pages done that day.

You can see from the pictures that The Professor is a serious sort. He’s an amazing man and I am thankful everyday that he’s all mine. And if for some reason you’ve wandered over here today to read this blog, I love you like crazy. Now get back to work!

So how about you, are you eager to send your family members off to school? Or are you yourself starting a new school year as a student or teacher? What’s your favorite part of the new school year?

It’s another….everyone wins weekend!!! Everyone who posted this weekend (including my fellow Quills) wins a copy of my latest Special Edition, Your Ranch or Mine!!

Just send me an email with your name and mailing address and what name you post under…and I’ll put the book in the mail to you this week!! My email addy is cindy kirk @ aol . com (without the spaces)

Great comments, everyone.

Okay, I know Fall won’t arrive until late September, but the past couple days in Nebraska have felt an awful lot like Fall. The temps have been in the seventies and low eighties and nights have been in the sixties. Today when I was walking into work from the parking lot, some crunchly leaves were being blown around my feet. A totally Fall moment. Tonight when I go for a walk with my husband and our dogs, I’ll take a jacket.

I love three of the seasons….winter not so much.

How about you? If you had to pick a favorite season what would it be and why?

I’ll draw a winner from everyone who comments and send you my July Special Edition, Your Ranch or Mine?