The Dawn of a New Year

New Years Eve. A time for reflection, goals and resolutions, change, introspection, and a chance to look toward the future. All of this has never been more true for me than this year because at the close of 2009, Linden Bay Romance will be shut down. No I don’t think someone will be waiting by the computer to disable the website at midnight tonight, but then again, I don’t know, perhaps these things can be set up in advance. What I do know is that as of 2010 I go from an author with over 2 dozen published full length novels, novellas and short stories, to one with just a handful. So what am I doing? For one, I have made my Facebook page, which had been private for a bit because of some issues, public again. I need a strong web presence to build my career and for better or worse, Facebook is part of that marketing plan. I am trying to focus on reworking my backlist to get them back out there. And to keep my sanity I began that cooking project I told you about in the last post. How is that going? Well there have been […]

The Fine Art of Procrastination and French Cooking

As a testament to the fact I will do pretty much anything besides what I am supposed to be doing, today I read Julie Powell’s “The Julie/Julia Project” blog from 2002 and cooked two recipes out of my new cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. (To see the beginning of my new obsession click HERE) Yes, I should be working on Jack (Red Hot & Blue, Book 2) to submit to my editor so I can get a date and get my now out of print backlist back out there. Instead I made Quiche Lorraine for breakfast and Cream of Mushroom Soup for Dinner, with food shopping for ingredients wedged in the middle there. How did the recipes come out? Well I cheated on the quiche because 1) I had no lard to make fresh crust and 2) I did have a frozen piecrust. Aside from some over spillage onto the cookie sheet in the oven, it was very tasty. The soup was easier than I thought though I kind of had to cheat there too. I am SURE I had half & half in my hand in the foodstore. I know I put it in […]

What was under your tree? Maybe more than you realize…

What did you get this morning when you tore open that wrapping paper? Did you get a Kindle or Sony eReader? Then stick around and I’ll tell you how to start filling it up for free. For the rest of you, what else did you get? An iPod Touch? An iPhone? A new fangled Google Android phone? A Blackberry? A Palm? A netbook? Then you got an eReader too and you don’t even know it! Yup. There are apps that will allow you to quckly, easily, wirelessly fill your device with ebooks right this very moment. Talk about instant satisfaction. You can download the Stanza app for the Touch or the iPhone and connect instantly to Project Gutenberg if free classic reads are your thing. Or connect to All Romance eBooks and check out one of the many free reads listed there through Stanza. There is also a free Stanza Desktop version that you download onto your computer which will convert your non-DRM Word and PDF files and wirelessly send them to your Touch or Phone. Got the Google phone instead? The Aldiko app works the same as Stanza. For eBooks with Digital Rights Management (DRM) it is a little […]