Product Review – SmartEdit

APRIL 2013 UPDATE: A new version has been released. I hope to test it by month’s end when I finish my current work in progress. Please note the following review is for a past version, not the most recent. Some of you may remember my Tools of My Trade blog series. I did it in July of 2011 and again in July of 2012. One of the featured tools I wrote up, which I use for every manuscript to clean it up before I submit to my editor, is SMARTEDIT. Imagine my surprise when the developer of SmartEdit contacted me asking if I’d like to try out the new version they just released. Being a technology geek, I of course agreed. I downloaded the new version and used it to go through the 82,000 word romance novel due to my editor at Kensington on January 1st. By the time I was done, the program had identified, and I had cut hundreds of unnecessary words out of the manuscript, making it stronger and cleaner. Here are my initial thoughts while they are fresh in my head. To save time and effort, I have pulled some of the feedback I emailed to […]

More Gifts for Writers…

Yesterday over at Confessions of a Romance Writer I gave a little insight into what I consider perfect gifts for the writers and shut-ins in your life. I posted that and then had to actually go out somewhere, which made me realize something. There were a few more things I needed to add to that original list. So here it is, part 2 of Gifts for the Writer, these for when we must leave our writing den and venture into the cold cruel world. Touch Gloves– I LOVE these things. I have no idea how or why they work–they feel and look just like plain old wool gloves–but the magic fingertips make it possible for me to swipe my iPad, and use the mouse on my laptop while wearing the gloves. This makes it much more comfortable to work while I’m waiting in the car with the engine and the heater off, which happens more than you can imagine. My gloves also happen to match my new writing sweater. Bonus! Power Converter– While we’re on the subject of working in the car…I live in fear of a dead battery on the iPad and the Mac and my cell. I haven’t […]

Setting the Record Straight

I’m taking a moment away from writing, in spite of a looming deadline, to go over a few things because first, I am a dirty rotten procrastinator who puts off work, but mostly because some reader misperceptions have come to light and I really would like to address them. It seems the point of some scenes were misinterpreted. Here are the two specific instances I’m referring to… In Valentine Cowboys there is a scene in a calving shed.  The two young ranch hands have to help a young cow deliver her first calf because this is a high risk birth. The cowboys take care of their work while the heroine watches, and in the end, they have sex with the heroine right there in the calving shed. There are many reasons I wrote this scene. They are… 1) To show how these two young ranch hands had to, for the first time in their lives, handle a difficult birth on their own because their boss had been pulled away. The two young cowboys are hard workers, but they can be jokers at times, and to have them be completely responsible for the life or death of not only the cow […]