My Newspaper Article

Here's the newspaper article about my book. Double click on the newspaper to enlarge it to readable size (I think. It may or may not enlarge from here.)

I'M IN THE NEWS!

Today I made the local newspaper. My photo and an article about my upcoming book appeared in the Neighbor Newspapers. I'm a teensy celeb around here! LOL

Yesterday, the husband of one of my BFFs had his obituary in the paper.

I was thinking about the dichotomy there, with the "birth" of my book and the death of this really great man. Both were unexpected events, in a way. Well, we were both working toward those conclusions, in a way. I'd wanted to sell sooner, and I'm sure Bob wanted to live longer!

Life is crazy, isn't it? Crazy and amazing and wonderful and scary and a wild ride at times.

The thing about Bob was, he always seemed upbeat. I didn't want to look at him in the casket, because I wanted to remember him with that teasing light in his eyes. It's too bad more people can't be like that. Now, maybe Bob had his darker moments. But if I didn't know it, I'm sure a lot of other people didn't, either. There's something special about a person who brightens peoples' days just with a "Hello, Melissa" and a friendly, open expression.

A book is coming out. It'll be around a while. Well, probably a lot longer than many, since I'm getting *tons* of author copies. Bob will be around a long time, too. He touched too many lives not to be remembered fondly.

Hug your family members. They're far more important than the business of writing. I do it because I hope to touch people with my words. But real relationships that involve laughter, compassion, friendship--now, *that's* da bomb.

Synopses, sucknopses, stinknopses!

UGHUGHUGH!!
I do not enjoy writing synopses. They sound so "canned." So sterile.
So why am I tearing my hair out over one at the moment? Well, because I went to the Romance Writers of America conference and met with the Harlequin editor I'm courting. She asked me to send her all that I have right now of my work-in-progress. I came home all excited about that invitation and began making the revisions to Ch1-Ch4 that my great critique group had suggested. That went fast. Certain that my synopsis was in awesome shape, I opened it and began to read. Gross. Bad. Writing.

I don't think I've mentioned what I'm writing, since I said I was writing The Perfect Wife. Well, that didn't get past Ch1 before I decided to write something else. The manuscript I'm writing now is called His New Family. The hero lost his son last year to a sudden illness, and his way of grieving is to pull up the tent posts, move and start fresh. The heroine is a spoiled rich girl with a mission: to show everyone she's worth more than the family name. But her *current* mission is to help an accident-impaired friend keep his bar afloat. She just doesn't realize the hero actually owns that bar and it's part of his "healing mission" to close it.

You'd think it'd be easy to just list the hero's and heroine's goals, motivations and conflicts, filling in emotional growth and finding great plot points to ratchet up the whole deal. But sadly, it's not. It's just as frustrating as the first time I tried to write a synopsis. It has taken me all week and I'm still not there. It's holding up my progress, and stopping my partial from being sent to the editor.

Tomorrow. I'll finish it tomorrow, or else. I really want to get back into the story. I'll let you know how it goes. I guess the key to a great synopsis is to know when it's great. I hope I have that epiphany tomorrow. Do you hear that, writing gods?