With the revamp of the forums it might be a little difficult to find them so here are the links to the pitches and the due dates ( times a tick’n)

May 3 – Harlequin Historical Undone:

http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/189-Editor-Pitch-Challenge-Harlequin-Historical-Undone

June 15 – All of the Love Inspired Lines:  This one has a little twist called “speed dating.” ALL of the authors who sign up By June 15th will have a chance to pitch to an editor on June 26:

http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/189-Editor-Pitch-Challenge-Harlequin-Historical-Undone

May 17 – Harlequin Heartwarming.

http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/269-Editor-Pitch-Challenge-Harlequin-Heartwarming

June 1- 7 – Harlequin Medical

http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/226-Harlequin%C2%AE-medical-romance%E2%84%A2-is-looking-for-new-authors-%E2%80%93-stat!

None of these are for the lines I’m targeting but I’m eagerly waiting for one I can submit to.

How about you? Have you submitted to any of them or are you planning to?

However, once in awhile Amazon offers a free book for Kindle that I want but can’t get in any other format ( grrr.)

I downloaded the Kindle app to my desktop so I could take advantage of a couple of free writing books. Then I started thinking – if I could download to my PC maybe I could download the Kindle App to my Vox.

Yes!

While on your Kobo Vox, follow this link:

http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/essential-kobo-vox-apps-and-tools/comment-page-1

Click on Kindle, download and install.

I’m now reading those Kindle books on my Vox. Magic.

A see a few more apps on there I’d like to try. Will let you know how they work.

ADDED: I also installed the Flash Player from the above site.  Tried it out by watching Oprah’s Life Class. Works great.

I don’t know who invented this holiday but it’s the best one. There’s no reason for it. Nothing to celebrate. No church service or memorial service to go to. No big turkey dinner to prepare. Just leftovers and sloth.

So I’ve spent a little bit of this morning, before I settle in to write the next scene in my short contemporary, checking out writing links from last week:

Agent Rachelle Gardner writes about Making a Living as a Writer, Park One, Part Two, Part Three .

Media Bistro has an interview with Amanda Hocking where she talks about her online marketing.

The Superromance blog has a post by Assistant Piya Campana about the Do’s and Don’ts of Submitting to that line.

Fast Track Submission for Harlequin Romance is ongoing on the eharlequin board.

Do you have a good writing link? of blog? to share?

The blog has been a lonely place the last month and a half. What have I been doing?

I’ve been busy doing taxes (so much fun and I STILL haven’t done my own) AND working on my next Harlequin Desire (actual fun) while waiting for a response on the partial I sent in Nov last year.  I put the submission out of my mind for four months because that’s how long the last response took. Now, I’m getting anxious and my heart is speeding up each day before I check the mail.

I’m also working on a trilogy for Super Romance set in a fictional town, Silver Bay, on the coast of Maine. I think I need a road trip to research the area – and check out the outlet shopping. Super Romances are 35,000 more words than a short contemporary and although I’ve written a single title Romantic Suspense, and each of my three planned books has a mystery element, a Super is a romance first and foremost.  So the Romance has to be the story spine.

I dragged my sorry butt back to WW before it expanded any further. Trying to get the winter weight off. Why does it go on so fast and come off so  s . l . o . o  .  o . o . .o . w . l . y? One of my critique partner’s is joining me so we’re keeping each other honest. We found a funny and motivating meeting so we’re both inspired to wiggle back into our shorts from last year.  We did it before together so we’re counting on similar success this time around. One of these days I’m going to get it through my head that I have to be vigilant all the time or the weight creeps back.

My OTHER critique partner finalled in the GH. She’s getting her website up and running so I’ll post a link when she gets it up. Her books are FUNNY! So happy and excited for her.

I also have an online critique partner Jen Lewis, who writes for Desire. But here’s a picture of  my LIVE critique partners Nikki and Annette.  If it weren’t for them I think I would have given up a long time ago.

What’s the weather like where you’re at? Spring or Winter?

And do you have your taxes done? Or are you a procrastinator like me?

Hope you all get to spend the day with someone you love.

Or, the  next best thing, cuddle up with a book you love.

A little inspiration for the Hero of my story.

I wrote the blog title and now I can’t get the song out of my head. However,  instead of  all I want to do is have some fun,  my mantra is all I want to do is write (which is why the bathroom needs to be cleaned this morning.)

I love when that happens. Don’t know how it happens. Or why.

Ever since New Year’s I’ve been writing every day, moving forward, liking my stories and my characters. I had to change my hero’s name because it was too similar to one in another book of mine. Once I did that, his personality/family/background changed and the whole story opened up. It’s a short contemporary so I hope to be at the half way point  by the end of this week.

What can I say? I LOVE it.

I’ve had an older ereader for awhile and was just never that into it. I found it dark and clumsy to use.  Although I did read  books on it to keep from burying myself under the TBR pile which just seems to get bigger and bigger, I prefered paperbacks.  I also received a very nice egift card as a thank-you for doing some web work and I have been having fun downloading books. Too much fun since I’ve read more books in the past week than I have for months. That means I’ve been staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading (periodically checking Facebook and Twitter since it’s WIFI and Browser enabled) I haven’t set up  my email account on it and I’ve decided I won’t. Too much business on there. I’m going to keep this for “play.”

Having said that though, I must say, the technology was not always easy to set up. I can’t imagine giving one of these to my Mom or Dad or anyone else not really comfortable with technology and expecting them to download and operate it easily. Unless, of course they want to just download from the KOBO store. And even then I had to reload the KOBO app a couple of times to get all of the settings to work properly.

It took me hours to figure out how to download free books from the Library.

So, for those wanting to save some time.  Here’s the scoop:

You have to DOWNLOAD OVERDRIVE on your VOX to read free library books and books you purchased from other retailers ( like harlequin)

I don’t know why it was so hard to find that info but it was.

And to save you the agony of beating your head against a wall. Here are the instructions from the KOBO site:

To install the OverDrive app: On the Kobo Vox

1. Make sure you’re connected to a Wi Fi network
2. Tap the Home icon
3. Tap All Apps
4. Tap Browser
5. Navigate to http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc/
6. Find the section that states “If your device doesn’t support Android Market, you can download OverDrive Media Console for Android from OverDrive” and tap the link<< (this is the important link – once you find this, everything else works)
7. Agree to the terms
8. The download will start
9. After the download is complete open the notifications bar by dragging down from the top
   • Or tap the Menu icon and tap Notifications
10. Tap on the Overdrive download (ODMediaConsoleSetup.apk) in order to install
11. Tap Install
12. Tap Open once the installation is complete
13. Tap Close in the About OverDrive Media Console window
14. OverDrive is installed in the All Apps section

Your Welcome.

What you do with your time is what you do with your life.

I don’t know who said this but it’s my New Year’s Mantra.

I’m pretty clear on what I want. What my goals are.  I’m just not spending the time and focus to make it happen.

My goals for 2012?

• Write every day
• Exercise every day

Completely doable. Right?

Wishing you all the brightest and best in the upcoming year.

I’m sure anyone who knows me well won’t be surprised. I’m not.

Oh, I managed to drag my token candles out of the basement and put them in the windows last weekend.  And I made the dreaded trip to Wal-Mart (also known as purgatory in my house) yesterday to start my Christmas shopping, then on to Costco.  I had to come home and lie down after spending so much money in one day.  But, hey, that’s the down side of leaving all the shopping to the last couple of weeks – you just have to buy it all at once.

I tell myself each year that I’m not going to buy into all the crass capitalism of the season but I try not to think about Christmas until I absolutely have to and by then, there’s no time to plan alternate gift giving and activities. So I’m stuck with doing the same thing I do each year – rush out and spend money on stuff people don’t need.

My daughters are  young ladies now and we no longer have so many of their outside activities to keep me on the go during the holidays.  I definitely think it’s time to for us to rethink our Holiday priorities and my girls are on board with this.

What do you do to bring the joy back to Christmas?

In an effort to gain control of the piles of papers and notes, I opened up OneNote, a program included in Microsoft Office.

I plan to use it for keeping track of my notes/pictures/research etc but I will be using WORD for writing the actual MS. Which, quite honestly is a relief because I think I’ve reached my saturation point with learning new software programs at the moment. And I fear I’m dangerously close to using all this new tech stuff to procrastinate getting started on my book.

OneNote is a good tool but like all OFFICE products it does a great deal – which is a good thing and a bad thing. Keeping things simple is a challenge.

Here are some tips from what I learned over the past week.

Open the OneNote program and take a look around. Don’t be afraid of it. I decided to play around with the program, this wasn’t the “real” thing and I would Delete everything after I checked it all out.

Michelle Helliwell wrote a blog about her initial intro to ONENOTE,  so take a look at that as an introduction: www.michellehelliwell.com/blog

If you think of ONENOTE as a binder, with tabs, and pages within those tabs, this will help you conceptualize how you want to set up your notebooks and pages. Remember, though YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE IT LATER.  Don’t get so caught up (like me) in making the whole thing perfect and workable in the initial stages. Already, I’m moving things around and rethinking the structure. That’s okay, it’s easy to fix.  And from my days working in offices: don’t have so many notebooks, sections and pages that you spend more time deciding where something should go – or where you filed last weeks notes. I’ve worked places where  you needed a diagram and flowchart just to find a piece of paper.  Seriously.

My advice: Keep it simple!

The basic building block of the OneNote notebook:

NOTEBOOK

• Section Group (not required, you can just go with “sections” but you can also group things like characters and then set up a section for each character within that group)

• —– Section

• ——– Pages

• ———–Subpages

If I remember correctly, the program opens with a “Personal” Notebook set up. You can just rename this or set up a new Notebook.

In the toolbar: Click on “FILE”

Choose “New”

Save to a location on your computer

And choose “Create Notebook” on the lower right hand side.

Return to Home.

Right click on the Notebook and you can add sections, pages, etc to your notebook:

Here’s how I organized my notebook

NOTEBOOK: Secrets in Silver Bay

Sections:

• Three-act Structure
• Synopsis
• StoryBoard
• Research
• Settings

Section Group: Characters

• Section: Hero
• Section: Heroine

And you can move these all around by dragging and dropping – and you can change the names, add pages, move the pages, etc.

In addition to the links on Michelle Helliwell’s blog, here’s the link to Microsoft’s Onenote support page.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/onenote-help/

I’ve used the program to diagram a brainmap for each of my characters, to jot down notes while on other sites and to save pictures of my characters. After I’ve had a chance to become more familiar with all the features, I’ll do a future post.

Anyone using OneNote for writing? If you do, what do you find most useful?

Or if you don’t use it, do you think it’s something you might try? Or are you perfectly content with pen and paper – or Word?

Or are you one of those totally intuitive writers who opens up the blank page and just starts typing (or writing on paper) until you reach the end?