New!

So much NEW to tell you about!!!

Did you see my NEW website? I'm still working out the kinks but it sure looks awesome, no?

Aaaand NEW editions of Game Plan and Aptitude!!! Aptitude is now available :D Did you see the NEW deets to the cover? I love love love it. And when you open it up and re-read Aptitude, you'll find my favourite NEW touch, the notes Aubin and Hessa write are shown in their own handwriting! I'm absolutely tickled purple about that.

Game Plan will be re-released soooooon! I have my expert designer making the inside look awesome and then the cover will be done.

And that's not all that's NEW... Februrary brings out a NEW release! Take These Broken Wings will fly on February 28th! Of course there'll be a GoodReads Giveaway! Seems like a good way to weather the end of winter.

N

What Next

The term "What Next" is repeated several times in my WIP as the main character tries to figure out how to move forward from an unexpected tragedy.

What Next?

My head is spinning trying to figure that out.

What Next? What Next. What the f*ck next.

When things get muddled, I write to straighten out my thoughts... but today this page is daunting.

Most of all, I feel sad.

This man stands for hate and fear and Us against Them. He is a bully. He is ignorant. He is reckless.

And by being voted in, he has been told that all of the hate and anger and fear and blame that he has spewed over the past two years - towards women, muslims, LGBTQ, Hispanics, immigrants, ... - is okay. Okay. Acceptable. Fair. Right?

And to think there are that many people out there who support that message? Sad.

N

The Coast, Best of Halifax, 2016!!!

N

Self Control Lacking

Writing takes a certain fortitude and self control... there's no boss, no manager, no dictator standing here making sure I'm on task and getting stuff done. Just Wilbur, Luna and Hazel and they don't care how much I write. In fact, it would be just fine with Wilbur if I wrote nothing and rubbed his belly all day.

But then I'd be a belly-rubber not a writer.

And while there's no fortune flowing my way as a writer, the only one who wants my services as a belly-rubber is unemployed and lazy.

So this:

A frightening looking app that is counting down until my death.... ooor until I'm allowed to log onto Facebook again.

The battle starts today, between this Boney boss and me.


N

Second Edition

Happy Birthday to Aptitude!!!

And to celebrate a first birthday, every girl needs a new outfit, right?

Can you spot the difference?

How 'bout a closer look?

Emma Dolan is such an artist - I made a suggestion to update the cover for this second edition and she made it perfect! 

I'm tying up loose ends and the Second Editions of Aptitude and Game Plan will be out soon, available online and from me. I'm so excited to see them in 'real life' again :)

N

Back in town!

It's been a while since I updated here... summer seems to be so unproductive.

I'm working on some new things:

1. new book (yay!)
2. new editions
3. new website
4. new appreciation for Starbucks London Fog

And fighting with some old:

1. old diet Coke habit
2. old desk clutter
3. old inferiority complex

So bear with me. Bare with me? (I honestly hate that word for anything but a fuzzy hibernating mammal.)

This gig continues to be a roller coaster. There are wow-that's-cool moments that give me little pushes like hearing from a university friend that she saw my book in an airport bookstore, or that a friend of a friend saw it in a bricks-and-mortar in the US. There are ha-just-when-you-thought-about-getting-cocky moments that knock me down like fifty thousand rejections. (I love the word hyperbole, especially the way it's spelt). Even the polite and encouraging rejections sting.

SO I find this time of year is kind of a regenesis. (it is *SO* a word, spell-check). It's a time to regroup and buckle down. Evaluate and remember my goals and the whys and flush out the nagging doubt and frustrations.

And let the dog out and in. And out and in. And outandinandoutandinandout. And in.

I can only hope I'll end up with a David Tennant type season.

N

Dreary

I'm feeling a bit lost, literarily... and impressed that the spell check did not pick up 'literarily' which means it's a real word, not one I invented.

My WIP is at the editor. I've been tossing ideas for the next story around in my head, but none of them have stuck. I'd like to write an urban fantasy, I think, nothing too out there but a story that makes you think maybe it's possible... but I haven't figured out what it's about yet. 

Geez, even my blog updates are

I wonder if this worry of never again having inspiration will ever go away? How many books does it take to build confidence that there are more books to write?

N

No Showers, no Flowers or Ducks.

That's a very vague title... and comes from a very convoluted region of my brain. I skipped April! There were no posts in April, I'm sorry. I've been in a weird combo of nose-down in edits and completely absent from writing - one or the other and nothing in between. 

My latest WIP has been sent off to the editor. The working title is Penny Layne. I likes it so much it may end up being the final title. This story had a weird gestation - I spent months thinking it was terrible - wait, no not terrible, but not up to snuff compared to #GoodDay and Aptitude. It doesn't hit on important issues or huge creative ideas like #GoodDay and Aptitude did... it didn't feel worthy.

But then a wise person said, "It doesn't always have to be heavy"

And then a few beta readers gave really great feedback.

And I started to like my ugly little duckling. Now it's on it's way to the editor to figure out if it's really a swan. Stay tuned.

N

What to write

I've written stories (short and long), poems (really bad ones), professional reports, essays, research studies, lab results, excuse letters for the kids' schools, complaints, opinion letters...

... Today I have the honour of writing an obituary. If it takes up 300 pages to write a pregnancy story, a few months in dystopia, a day in the life of high school, how do you sum up a whole person and 104 years in 200 words? (The first answer is, you don't. I cheated and tripled the target.) But still. It's one thing to make up characters and dance them through drama. It's something else entirely to do justice to a real life with all the real love, loss, happiness. There aren't enough words.

N

First Draft

There's this period between completing a first draft and figuring out how the fizzle to fix it. It's like shopping at Ikea - you go through their displays, get all excited about the piece of furniture you want, order it and bring it home in the box - First Draft complete!

Then you open the box and the ergonomic standing desk is in 47 pieces. It's totally not what it needs to be, though you can still picture the desk with the lamp and the cup of pens and the blotter and the coffee mug in your head. Figuring out which pieces to bang together first is daunting. Often there is crying at this stage.

(Seriously, go google 'ikea instructions' and click on 'images'. It's worth it.)

So that's where I'm at. I finished the first draft, went back and added the parts I knew needed to be added and ordered my box o' pieces (the printed hard copy to mark up with a pen). But I have yet to OPEN the box b/c I can already hear the rattling of random screws and pressed wood and I'm scared. Very scared.

N

Outside the Box

The bonus of being a writer is you can sit alone at your desk or Starbucks table or library corner and talk to imaginary people. I'm sure it's a stereotype but I fit it: Authors are all introverts who shudder at the idea of public exposure and — eek! — real people. Mingling terrifies me. Strangers are scary - not in the boogyman way we're taught as kids but in the 'what if they hate me' way of middle school. (Maybe I'm mentally stuck there, and that's why I like to write YA?)

But books don't promote themselves... books are shared.  I'm not talking about sales - I will (and have) spend more money than I make to get my books 'out there'. I'm talking about reaching more readers, getting into hands and thoughts of people who will enjoy the story and think about it after the last page. That kind of promotion. They are shared from reader to reader in a way that, in a writer's greatest hopes, extends out picking up momentum as it goes. The best advocate to push that snowball is the author. (Wait, no, the best one is Oprah, but that's just a pipe dream). So... the very stereotypical nature of the author is actually counter intuitive to the very way the process needs to be done.

Since I'm not with a big time publisher who has a budget and team for marketing, the marketing team is me and the budget is el zippo. So I need to Talk To People.

This one just makes me laugh :D

Bookends

February first was my last post and here we are at the end of February... Not good blog consistency!

I'm sitting at my desk on a rare Wednesday. It's not a snow day, I just had a slow morning at my day job and decided to stay home a little later and get some writing done instead.

Book launch is in four days!!! I've got the books, I've got my list if preorders, I'm compiling the door prize in my head, I've got the cake ordered and the library space booked - all I need is the peeps. Time slips by so fast, it's hard to believe the launch is almost here when it seemed so far away at one point.

I've fallen into rambling... Off to do some real writing.

N

Mindset

Saturday night I play hockey.

And by "play hockey" I mean I put on thirty seven pounds of bubble wrap and skates and spend an hour trying to stay vertical. Luckily I'm not totally out of my league out there - it's a shinny game with other 'hockey moms' who want to try to play too. There are several lessons to be learned from the game. The first is I have no business yelling from the stands to tell my 11 and 10 year old hockey stars how to play the game. Geez it's harder than it looks and they're amazing at it.

The lesson I learned on Saturday was a harder one to swallow. When I was in high school I played competitive sports; basketball and baseball mostly. It fit my competitive spirit, b/c everything is more fun if there's a winner and a loser. When we went to China to adopt our daughter my bestie and I declared a Utensil Challenge. I won. You do not want to attend a baby or wedding shower with me.

So what happens when I find myself on the ice?

I have to talk to myself down. Literally. I have to change the script in my head. The voice that is telling me 'go faster', 'get that' and then 'why can't you...' The same voice berated me for taking a break 'so often'. The voice isn't very nice.

I had to rethink everything. What was the point of being there? To have fun, to do some exercise. Neither of those goals required me to be the best on the ice and who cares if I sat twice before some other skater sat at all? What did it matter if someone else had better wind? Perhaps their feet didn't feel like they were walking on swords instead of gliding on ice.

There's nothing wrong with being competitive... my competitive drive has pushed me to accomplish many goals and won many jars of gummy bears. But I'm starting to figure out the whole concept of "time and place" and trying to be more gentle and forgiving with myself when I'm not quite up to snuff.

Now if I could let that wisdom trickle into other parts of my existence...

N

Writing Interrupted

Mondays and Fridays are my 'Writing Day's. When I decided to make a go of this writing thing for real, I shifted my day job schedule and loaded hours on T/W/Th to leave M/F for writing. BUT, if there are kid appts, they are made on M/F as well b/c I don't lose money when I take time off writing...

Today there's double duty - a doctor's appt then a dentist appt for different kids. The chances of me finding a solid hour to peck away at the computer are frighteningly slim. And then there's the bag of Dairy Milk and Ritz mix that I've been saving for a writing day so I don't have to share them with anyone. Sad all around.

N

Egads!

I did it.

I ordered books.

A lot of books.

I had to fill the pre-orders from the Indiegogo campaign.

I ordered some for the Chapters in New Minas who has agreed to carry it, and a few extra for other Chapters.

I ordered some to have available at the book launch, and a couple for the library since they're hosting.

I ordered a few as gifts, and a few in the name of 'hope' that I'll need a few more than expected.

Can't wait til the big box comes.

N

Blog Tour! A visit with Portia Adams!

Angela Misri, creator of the fabulous Portia Adams, has the first stop on the #GoodReads book tour!

You can read her kind words about It Should Have Been a #GoodDay here.

Check out other parts of her blog to learn about Portia's mysteries and her fascinating connection to the Sleuth Sherlock himself.

N

Proof

Lookie here:

What this young sir is holding is a PROOF of my upcoming release It Should Have Been a #GoodDay! It came for my review in the mail yesterday - and holding a hardcopy paperback of a real live book that came all the way from my brain is just as exciting the third time as the first and second.

But I don't get the word "Proof". I guess it's short for "proof-reading" or something. Right? Maybe? Professor Google says proof can be defined as "a trial print of something" which fits.

But I associate this kind of Proof with the first-listed definition:

This is Proof.

Proof that this book is real. This publication is happening. Proof that I have a book. That I wrote a book. That I write.

See what I did there?

N

Back to Reality

Ah, vacations.

Everyone's back to real life today and, in true Sampson fashion, my alarm didn't work this morning. And by 'didn't work' I mean I probably turned it off to shut it up. I don't remember. Wake up to Kids at School was thirty two minutes... not bad! That included a shower for me, though I suspect none of my kids brushed their hair.

There are a bazillion things I should do this morning. The house looks like it threw up on itself. Especially the kitchen. If left any longer the dishes may sprout arms and wash themselves. The couch is taunting me with cushions that are uneven and sliding out of place. The dog is reminding me that he is a terrier and needs exercise in order to not be an asshole. Someone spilt Cheerios on the floor in the kitchen and those fuckers stick to socks so it's like getting a rock under your foot that crunches and crumbles with every step. Laundry. Laundry is like a good setting for a horror movie - you see the situation unravelling and know it's no good before the stupid characters do....

but I'm determined to write this morning.

If the dog lets me.

N