Friday and the Gift of Reading!

I'm headed out the door soon for a quick trip out of state (tons of driving, unfortunately, but I get to see one of my very cute sons for his birthday tomorrow. Yep, he's a 9/11 baby) so saying goodbye until Tuesday. Taking my laptop with me becaues I am STILL working on this maddening second draft due Monday to my editor at Scholastic. I have this irrational/rational (?)  fear that I'm making the manuscript worse . . .



Here's a quick round-up of book signing events the next couple of weeks:

Wednesday, September 15th: Speaking and signing at the Albuquerque Retired Officer's Women's Club Luncheon at the Cooperage Restaurant. Very excited to meet them all! One of my brand new friends, Glenda, arranged this. She's not a writer, but a retired Stanford professor and SO supportive of my new book, The Healing Spell. (Click the link for some new wonderful reviews on Goodreads - I am SO thrilled!)

Friday, September 17th at 5:30 I'll be at Alamosa Books in Albuquerque for a Bayou Gumbo Book Party! Come eat gumbo, Cajun cakes and eclairs and take a ride in a pirogue! Book talk and signing, too.


Saturday, September 25th 3-5 p.m. I'll be back at Alamosa Books for a very special TWELVE AUTHOR kick-off to The Gift of Reading, a fund-raiser for high-risk kids with parents in the prison programs. Book donations will be collected at the store until December 5th and distributed to these kids for Christmas. Please click the links, this is a really super book fund-raising drive to help the cause of literacy.



Saturday, October 2, from 6-8 p.m. I'll be signing and partying at Deseret Bookstore in Albuquerque, NM. Girls Night Out evening!



Peeps - you really need to come to Albuquerque - so much to see and do! Balloon Fiesta is the first two weekends in October, too, and we're having gorgeous weather!

Teaser Tuesday!

I haven't posted a teaser in "forever". This is the opening of the new manuscript I turned in a month ago to my editor.
Current title: Circle of Secrets

Most folks call Miz Mirage Allemond a swamp witch.

I’m supposed to call her Mamma.

So when Mirage cracks open the front door and I see her wild black hair writhing in the wind like serpents, my pulse goes so fast I can’t breathe right.

Mirage’s black eyes bore into mine like she can read my deepest thoughts. Like she has a crystal ball and uses it regularly.

             As she shuts the front door, we stare at each other for a moment, but I drop my eyes before she can suck my soul out.

As Promised

Repeated words in WIP's . . . only a week late. Hey, it's summer, right?

When I finished the revision into first person from third and I was going back to look at some of the scenes that ended up getting a LOT of reworking - and then ya get nervous thinking you've left in little typos and *loose* words - so of course I had to read it a third time JUST TO MAKE SURE - which I'm still not, but after awhile you just gotta mail it and move on to the next project . . .so ANYWAY, I started thinking about some words that began popping out at me over and over again. So I made a list and did the find/replace thing and discovered there were some words which stuck out like obnoxious gremlins.

Here they are:

1. Miserable - I kept worrying that I'd used this word verbosely, but it turned out I'd only used it 4 times in 80,000 words. I left them alone. Maybe I've just read this manuscript a dozen times too many so 4 turned into 48 in my mind.

2. Quickly - 41 times, revised down to 11

3. Suddenly - 22 times, revised down to 5

4. Instantly - 16 times, revised down to 5

5. Immediately - 11 times, revised down to 6

6. Stared - 28 times, revised down to 10 (My gosh, everybody plus the camels were staring at everything and everybody all the time! Enough already.)

7. Slowly - 18 times, revised down to 3. (My slowly's were actually slowing down the story)

8. Belly - 25 times. I got this down to 12 and patted myself on the belly - I mean back - because it IS a novel about belly dance, after all. But I also have 8 gut's and 12 stomach's and 7 abdomen's.

It was AMAZING how taking out the word usually ended up not just replacing it, but revising the entire sentence and paragraph into something tighter and smoother and more vivid. It was an interesting exercise, but surprising how long it took. But then NOTHING about revision is ever fast.

Formula: E.R.T. (estimated revision time) x 5 = A.T. (actual time)

Has anyone else ever done this, and what are your pet/favorite repeated words?