March 2013

We are having our first signs of Spring here in the mountains of far Northern California. A welcome and early respite from heavy snows and strong, cold winds...Yes, there will be more Winter but we are basking in the sun's warmth for now.  I am focused again on writing a sequel and promoting TRUE.  I have run across some very informative and useful sites to share with you kindred writers.  Jonathon Gunson's www.bestsellerlabs.com has several inexpensive programs to empower and help Indie authors.  I took his Twitter for Author's course which was excellent and easy.  Twitter has made amazing strides and offers many opportunities for marketing and contacting agents, publishers, and promoters.  A strong writing and reading community is here at our fingertips.  Jonathon also gives out tons of free insightful tips and info, and as a bestselling author he is generous, authentic, and available for questions and support.  Hope Clark is another resource, her www.fundsforwriters.com is amazing.  When you subscribe you will receive an email every week with contests, jobs, marketing tips, and much more.  This is free and her total www.totalfundsforwriters.com is even better and is only $15 per year.

I am off to Texas soon where I will be signing books and speaking at Hasting's Book Store in Midland and at the Unitarian Universalists Church.  These events are fun, informative, and lucrative, not to mention that I get to meet other writers.  Last year in Ukiah, CA at Mendocino Books I was introduced to a gentleman in his eighties who gave me a hand written poem:

So Much of My Woe

So much of my woe

goes down to the sea

with the river.

I can never lean against

the back-drop of orchard and vineyard

framing the valley,

surveying the contours carved

in the flood plain by the current,

that my heart's most ardent

hopes and aspirations

didn't seem like pebbles

purified by the flow,

polished to a high lustre

by the stream-surge

on its tumultuous journey.

Roll, Navarro, Roll!

Doug Strong's Chapbook will come out in late Spring.

We writers are everywhere and I wonder sometimes if the best storytellers never even put their work out there...Support your local library and Indie bookstores and take advantage of resource on the internet. There are a lot of people out there trying to make money off of us independents but there are some quality souls who remain reasonable and really care.  Let me know of any support you have found and remember...

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day,

and on the good writing days nothing else matters."

                               Neil Gaiman

~ Melinda