Handling rejection
Several years back, I was having some problems at work. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, my efforts weren’t deemed good enough. Needing someone to talk to, I confided in my friend, Liz. Being from The South, she didn’t just offer a sympathetic ear.  Her heritage compelled her to give homespun advice.
 
“Shake it off and step up,” she told me.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, completely confused.
 
With a sigh that bespoke long-suffering patience for us ignorant Left-Coasters, she told me the following story:
 
One day a mule fell in a dry well. He brayed and [...]

Barbara P/Needsleep259 is our winner for Stephanie’s latest in the Body Movers Series.
Barbara, please send your snail mail address to dlkaufman@bellsouth.net
Thanks to Stephanie for the fantastic post and giveaway! And, thanks to all who participated.

It’s always a pleasure to welcome a fellow Georgia Romance Writers’ member to the blog. Stephanie is a long-time contributing member extraordinaire. If you’ve never had the pleasure of sitting in on one of her workshops, you’ve really missed out! To keep up Stephanie and her wonderful books, check out her website. Now for a little background on our guest.
Stephanie Bond was seven years deep into a systems engineering career and pursuing an MBA at night when an instructor remarked that she had a flair for writing and suggested that she submit to academic journals. But Stephanie, a voracious [...]

Mission #2: Writing your synopsis
During week one, we started out by getting to know our characters. If you took this challenge serious, you should have at least two new friends (maybe more depending upon your story).
With week two, we are going to attack that dreaded synopsis. Because this is my writing nemesis, I’m adding a few links that I’ve found useful (see links at end of post). Just because the synopsis is listed as week two, doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with writing a synopsis before writing the book. If you are one of those people, feel free to re-arrange [...]

My friendly randomizer website got a workout this morning! That’s randomizer.org if you ever need him. This is what Mr. Randomizer tells me this morning:
Tamara is our winner of the Prey Trilogy!!!
Vicky B. is our winner of the No Evil Trilogy!!!
Mary Barfield is our winner of the Prison Break Trilogy!!!
Caroline Ziebarth is our winner for the first book in the new FBI Trilogy, Sudden Death!!!
Ladies, send your snail mail addresses to me @ dlkaufman@bellsouth.net
Please put blog winner in the title.
Thanks to everyone who participated. And a special thank you to Allison Brennan for her not only her generous giveaway, but [...]

Allison obtained her first library card at the age of four when she could print her full name, and thus began her love affair with books. It’s no surprise that her first job was as a clerk in a bookstore in her hometown of San Carlos.
In March of 2002, near the end of her thirteen year career in the California State Legislature, Allison seriously started writing—after hundreds of beginnings and no endings. She wrote five manuscripts before she found an agent who sold her book to Ballantine. Her debut novel, THE PREY, sneaked onto the New York Times extended list [...]

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a woman named Tamara. Though she had a huge assortment of shoes, ate double stuffed Oreos by the pound and had plenty of free time to write romances, something was amiss. Her stories were falling flat. Her worlds were boring, her prose choppy and her grammar atrocious.
So she squeezed into her favorite platform Mary-Jane’s and pocketed a zip-lock full of black and white cookies and a thermos of milk. She then hoisted her laptop into her arms and made the decision to leave the safety and comfort [...]