Stepping From 2012 Into 2013

12/29 By Leave a Comment

I’m looking forward to 2013 and I hope you are, too.  I’m eager to take those steps into a fresh year, starting out with a clean slate.  While I usually have a list ready by the first of the year—call it resolutions, goals, or a To-Do list—this year I’m doing something different. My goal is to have a leaner list of things to be done.  I’m resolving to be less stressed, less over-committed, and more living in the moment. 

artsy stairsteps

I must admit I don’t know how long this lifestyle will last.  I’ve always been an overachiever.  But the time has come for me to decompress.  How about you?  Are you feeling like you’ll never be caught up or are you feeling frustrated by too much to do?  Allow yourself some time to unwind.  Free your mind of clutter.  Focus on the important things in your life.  That’s what I’m resolving to do. 

I found this great article, Live In The Moment, which gives useful tips for living in the moment and the benefits of living in the moment.  Believe it or not, I think these practices will help us be more productive.  Wishing you and yours a meaningful New Year.  Start the year out right, step from 2012 into 2013 with less stress.

Filed Under: inspiration, Life Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Shopping For Writers (Or Anyone Else)

11/27 By Leave a Comment

Wondering what to ask Santa for this year?  Or uncertain what to buy for your dearest writer friends?  I started compiling a visual shopping list on Pinterest to help friends who asked what they should buy for other writers and to assist those who were stumped when their spouses asked what they wanted for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or their birthday.  101 Gift Ideas for Writers and Book Lovers is my compilation of awesome literary gift ideas for anyone who wants suggestions to give to their loved ones, or find something unique for a writer or anyone who loves books, or to buy something special for yourself.  Are you the kind of writer who rewards herself for making a deadline, or for completing a first draft, or for kicking butt during NaNoWriMo?  If so, look to this list for that amazing reward.

I included practical items for those writers who are like me and are buried under mounds of paper.  We long to free ourselves of paper clutter.  I know others must also want to be more productive so I added a few gifts to aid a writer’s productivity such as Dragon dictation software.  What writer doesn’t want to be more creative?  I recommend fun items to stir the creative juices like a Shakespeare love pillow, a banned books bracelet, and typewriter tote bags.  Then there are health and well being suggestions such as a gift certificate for a soothing massage.  Count me in!   Any woman, whether a writer or not, wants to look and feel good, so I included a couple of  jewelry and beauty ideas, too.  But, most of the items work for men as well.

Writing Prompts and Story Cubes

Now, I do mention gift cards like iTunes, but it’s not a cop out.  Some friends love to buy apps or ebooks.  And if you include a printout of a specific app like the Note Taker HD as a suggestion, then that makes the purchase more personal.

I’ll continue adding to the list on http://pinterest.com/byvictoriaj/gift-ideas/ as I do my shopping and providing the links so you can easily locate each item.   If you have any suggestions for a great gift, let me know and I’ll add them to my growing ‘Shopping for Writers’ list.  What are you asking Santa for?  Let me know in the comments.  I hope this post and board will make Santa’s job easier this year.  Happy shopping!

Filed Under: Life, writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Writing Prompts and Story Cubes

11/20 By 4 Comments

I found a fun and useful writing tool in the form of Story Cubes.  These dice-sized cubes come in a nifty storage box to be taken out when you want a burst of creativity.  Take out four—or five, or as many as you want—cubes and toss them on your table.  Taking only the images that appear on the top of each cube write your poem or story.  The cool thing is an image can mean different things at different times depending on what genre you were planning to write, your mood, and in relation to the other cube’s images. 

Writing Prompts and Story Cubes

There are thousands of possibilities (their box and website says 10,000,000 possibilities).  I’m all for creative play and anything that will shake-up my imagination.  This story generation tool might work for you, too.  I like using them for flash fiction and I imagine poets would have fun with them as well.  Think of them as writing prompts on dice.  There are a couple of versions and there’s even an iPhone app!  I just added them to my growing list of the perfect gifts for writers.  Do you have a secret writing tool?   I’m eager to hear about it.

Filed Under: Creativity, writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to Write Scary Stories

10/27 By 2 Comments

What makes a story scary? Is it the characters, the setting, or the situation? The simple answer is yes to all three. The complicated answer is it depends. It depends on how the author handles each of these elements and it depends on your reader. What does your reader fear? What gives your reader the willies? What would cause your reader to freak out? It’s not too difficult to imagine what your reader fears if you draw upon your own fears. Universal fears are things that scare almost everyone—that’s the survival instinct at work. So what scares you? What makes the hair on your neck stand up? What makes you sleep with the lights on? Ask yourself these questions as you create your story elements. If your antagonist does not bother you, then you need to try a little harder. If the situation isn’t filled with tension, then you’re making your work more difficult. If your location doesn’t fill your reader with dread, well, sometimes that’s okay. Let’s look at each of the story essentials more closely.

The three components should be intertwined so that they feed off of each other. Good scary stories tie the character to the setting and the situation. In Stephen King’s The Shining, Jack, the main character, is a writer who takes his family to a secluded hotel so he can finish his novel. As caretakers, they will be the only people at the hotel during the brutal, snowy winter. It’s believable that this character would take his family to the Colorado wilderness setting for free rent, solitude, and time to write.

The situation for this character, in this setting, is that either the solitude or evil in the hotel causes Jack to lose his mind. Now, writers are known to be a little crazy anyway, so his wife cuts him some slack. But Jack slowly becomes a violent, possessed man. Would that story work if Jack took his family to a crowded hotel on a bright sandy beach? The story would likely lose its intensity and increasing dread. What if instead of a writer, Jack was a used car salesman? Then why would he spend hours alone at the typewriter? Why would he want months of forced solitude if not to push himself into finishing his novel? The three facets of story are linked together, creating cohesive conflict.

How to Write Scary Stories

Creepy Characters

If you read the horror genre, you know that the antagonist doesn’t have to be a person. It could be an animal, a car, or a disembodied hand. It could be a ghost or the devil. But sometimes creepy characters are the sweet boy next door. In fact, that could be even scarier than all the above because how would you know? You wouldn’t—until it was too late. And that builds dread in the reader. Flesh out your antagonist with a backstory, motivation, and conflict no matter what form he’s in. Put him in this location at this time for a plausible reason. Strive for a natural fit for this character to unleash his wickedness, anger, or whatever, to the situation of the story.

Sinister Locations

Think of places that are scary on their own: a graveyard, a morgue, an abandoned house, an asylum. The setting alone creates tension. Then find a logical reason to get your character there. Better yet, strand them there. Being stranded adds to the sense of helplessness and doom. So does being confined. Think of the movie Alien. The characters were trapped on a spaceship with a human-eating monster. In one intensely claustrophobic scene, a character has to go through the air vent to set a trap. Confinement within confinement! On the other hand, some writers are great at frightening us with settings that are supposed to be safe. Malls, suburban neighborhoods, prep schools, nurseries should be safe, right? We are all the more caught off guard when evil lurks there.

Frightening Situations

What’s the situation or premise of your book? Does it lend itself to scary scenes? In Tess Gerritsen’s novel The Surgeon, a twisted character performs surgeries on women while they are awake. That’s chilling. In Dean Koontz’s novel Your Heart Belongs to Me, the lead character is being stalked by a woman who’s the spitting image of the donor of the heart now beating in his chest. In Richard Matheson’s Hell House, three people spend the night in an evil house that has been sealed since 1949 to learn the facts of life after death. Does your story’s premise touch on a universal fear? Is your character’s situation dire by the middle of the story? Does the situation worsen?

Keep the tension building all the way through to the end. Fans of horror know that the story needn’t have a happy ending. Even if the protagonist escapes to safety, the menace can live on. This is especially true if you want to write a sequel. These three elements are barely the bones of a good scare story. It’s up to you to add the flesh and guts, and, of course, blood. Don’t disappoint your readers with wimpy premises or characters, or play on fears that aren’t scary. Give your readers goose bumps. Make them worry. Force them to sleep with the light on.

Filed Under: writing, Writing Craft Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Reach Writing Goals in 15 Minutes or Less

10/27 By 1 Comment

Did you set New Year’s resolutions this year? Are they the same as your unmet resolutions for last year? If so, please don’t get uncomfortable. I’m not pointing fingers. In fact, I too, have unresolved goals carried over from last year and the year before. While I write goals for each area of my life, the one we’ll delve into here concerns writing goals. And to be more specific, writing productivity.

Productivity is the amount of ‘product’ we produce each year. In our case, the product is the number of pages we write. It’s apparent that the more pages you write, the more productive you are. And so when we set goals to write a book in one year, write 10 short stories, or create a chapbook of poems; we are making a resolution to a big picture goal that taunts and eludes many of us all year long. Rather than feeling like we’re reaching our goal when we write one page or a line in a poem, we end up feeling like we’ll never get anywhere close to accomplishing that big goal. That kind of unproductive thinking leads to troubles like writers block and, well… unproductivity.

I’m proposing that you break down that big picture goal into doable steps.

Instead of resolving to write that big thriller novel, how about resolving to write two pages a day, five days a week. That kind of productivity would add up to 520 pages of draft material. But let’s be honest, we all know writers need days off for vacations, family matters, holidays, sick time, and so on. Here’s the thing, even allowing for all these life interruptions, you can still write a draft of a 400 page novel (and edit it too) in one year at the measly page count of two pages a day. Do the math. (two pages a day, five days a week, for 40 weeks equals 400 pages and allows for twelve weeks worth of interruptions throughout the year, and if you occasionally write three pages, you can make up for it). You don’t even have to sit at your desk for several hours to get those two pages.

Reach Writing Goals in 15 Minutes or Less

If page count scares you off, try time increments.

Try really small time increments like 15 minutes. Surely even on your busiest days you can allot 15 minutes to writing. Those 15 minutes really can help you finish a sizable project. Before you scoff, let me say that many of my newsletter articles were written in 15-minute increments. I obviously may need three or four such sessions to complete the draft but I get it written. In 15 minutes I can also write an outline for one of my Blog Talk Radio show episodes, generate bullet points for a chapter of a non-fiction book, create scene notes for a fiction story, or plot a dialogue scene between two characters. If I waited until I had an hour to sit and write I would never produce any work to submit.

I’m like you. I have a dozen commitments. I don’t have time to write either. But I can get thoughts down, a few sentences, flesh out an idea, etc. At the end of a day or two I have a draft I can work with. Another cool thing is that sometimes when I intend to write for just ten minutes to scribble down an idea I’ll look up and discover that 30 or 40 minutes have passed and I didn’t notice because the writing was flowing effortlessly.

And I’m not the only writer who confesses to squeezing in my writing to whatever minutes I have available.

Romantic suspense author, Stephanie Bond, consistently writes several novels a year and teaches writers about page production. She says she’ll write on her Alpha Smart keyboard throughout the day whenever she has a few minutes. At the end of the year she’ll have an extra book done that she wouldn’t have produced if she didn’t write during those small blocks of 10 to 15 minutes.

Award-winning romance author April Kilhstrom, the first author I heard talk about the ‘Book In A Week’ method of writing, insists she writes whenever she gets a moment and that those ten minute and fifteen minute bursts throughout the day (in addition to the few hours she spends daily at the computer) result in a completed draft of a book in about a week. She uses every available free moment to continue writing and at the end of the day she types those notes into her computer. Once she has that draft, she’ll take a few weeks to edit it before submitting the manuscript to her editor.

Bill Belew, the former editor of WritersTalk, says he writes a blog post in about 15 minutes. He does this everyday, for several blogs. And look at his annual accomplishments, not only in posts written but his increasing readership. In one year he produced something like 5,000 posts and had 20 million views of his blog posts!

Of these three writers above, how many of them would you guess reached their writing goals last year? If you said all three, that’s my guess too. Of the writing goals I accomplished last year, I achieved them by being willing to write in small chunks of time rather than waiting until I had the afternoon to write. Of course I relished those afternoons too, but I’ve found that writing steadily—even 15 minutes at a time—leads to increased productivity. And a productive writer produces pages written. That’s the product we’re trying to sell right? No pages, no product. At some point we do need time for deeper thought but that’s no reason to let minutes go by that could have added to your productivity. See if this practice helps you reach your writing goals. I believe every minute you spend towards pursuing your dreams is a minute well spent.

Filed Under: writing, Writing Craft Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Eight Ways to Break into the Romance Market

10/26 By Leave a Comment

Have you always thought that romance writing isn’t your thing? Well, think again. Romance novels have evolved so much over the years that several subgenres have emerged. Today’s readers can easily find the romance novel subgenre that suits their tastes—and writers can, too.

According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) website, approximately 8,090 romance titles were published in 2007, accounting for $1.375 billion in sales. In fact, one of every five persons who read books in 2007 read a romance novel! Among the 43 RWA recognized romance publishers, Harlequin Enterprises is by far the largest, bringing out 120 titles a month in 29 languages for 107 international markets on six continents.

If you’re wondering how to get in on the romance action, consider focusing on one of these popular eight subgenres:

• Inspirational—novels where faith and religion are integral to the story.

• Paranormal—novels may include werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and more.

• Mystery & Suspense—women-in-jeopardy stories.

• Young Adult—books feature teen protagonists, written for readers from 12 to 19 and incorporate all the elements of adult fiction—character, plot, setting, theme, and style.

• Erotica—sexually explicit stories where the character growth occurs through the sexual scenes.

• Historical—historically accurate stories where the setting plays a part of the book.

• Contemporary—novels can be funny, emotionally intense, and spicy but not explicit; or sweet traditional romances. They can be as short as 40,000 words, or as long as 80,000 words, depending on the publisher and the line.

• Mainstream Women’s Fiction—big novels where the romantic relationship is a significant part of the story.

Know that within the first seven genres listed above there are category romance novels, those that are part of a series, which are published monthly by Harlequin, Silhouette, Steeple Hill, and Mills & Boon. And there are single titles, those novels that are released as standalones and have a shelf life of longer than one month.

With all these books and series and markets, how does a writer break in?

Eight Ways to Break into the Romance Market 

Author Carol Grace Culver wrote short stories for the confessions magazines and Woman’s World before she broke into the romance market in 1989 by selling a book about a single dad and a nanny to Silhouette Romance. Since then, more than thirty-three of her romance novels have been published.

“I am currently under contract with Harlequin-Mills & Boon; my July 2009 book is called His Sicilian Bride, under my pen name Carol Grace. I wrote a series of young adult books for Berkley in trade paperback last year (the first is called Manderley Prep) under my name Carol Culver. As Carol Grace, I also wrote a couple of single-title romances for Pocket Books that took place in Greece and Italy.”

Historical Romance author Anne Mallory broke in in a different way. “I entered the RWA Golden Heart contest and became a finalist. My editor read the entry in the finals and contacted me about buying the book!” Mallory writes Regency romances for Avon/HarperCollins, and has published seven books since her debut in 2004. Her release, For the Earl’s Pleasure, set in 1822, was due out in July 2009.

Jasmine Haynes, also known as Jennifer Skully, followed yet another path: “I joined Romance Writers of America, attended many craft seminars, and utilized their networking opportunities.” As Jasmine Haynes, she writes erotic romance for Berkley. Jennifer Skully’s publications are light, humorous, romantic suspense novels published by Harlequin HQN; as JB Skully, she writes the Max Starr sensual mystery series available from Liquidsilverbooks.com. She’s been published for six years and has twenty-one books under her belt. Her book, Fair Game, was a June 2009 Berkley Heat release.

Does the romance genre have too many options? How does a writer choose the subgenre?

Culver has a quick answer: “I pick the genres that are actively acquiring books.” But then she explains, “Single titles are longer, more characters, more complex plots, more freedom from rules. Young Adult can be edgy, funny, paranormal, light, lots of freedom there, too. Category romance follows certain rules that are important to follow. In a way, it makes writing them easier.”

For Mallory, “Regency historical romance is what I love to read! There is a definite fantasy aspect to historicals. The world is familiar, but just different enough to give the reader more of an escape.”

And Haynes says, “My voice is pretty humorous, but I also love having a mystery to solve. So both light mysteries by Jennifer Skully and the grittier Max Starr series came out of discovering my voice. I didn’t pick the genres as much as they picked me. I did specifically decide to write erotic romance, though, because I saw that it was a growing market. However, I found that also fit my voice, too. I’ve always written very sensual books, and erotic romance was an outlet for that without having to figure out who I was going to kill (lol). I have found the more erotica I write, though, the more humor slips in.”

It sounds like these writers have found their niche in romance.

“I like writing romance, inserting it into whatever genre I’m working on,” Culver says. “I’m writing a mystery now and sure enough, the sleuth has a boyfriend. It just makes life more interesting to have some romance in it.”

Mallory adds, “It’s been wonderful! I started writing full time and love the work and flexibility.”

Haynes’s experience is equally positive. “Romance writing has been good to me, but I’m still building my career. I do have freedom to write the stories I want and I do this full time, so I don’t have to work another job. I have worldwide distribution, but that could be improved. No movie deals, though!

While we do hear about those overnight sensations, building a writing career takes a long time for most of us.”

If you’re interested in pursuing this versatile genre, Culver offers this advice: “I’d say an aspiring romance writer has to read and read and read some more. Then get into a class or a critique group for support. It can be such a lonely life, writing, so you need other writers who understand and will help getting over the bad times as well as to share and celebrate the good times.”

Mallory agrees, “Write, write, write, and read, read, read! And join RWA. Look into your local RWA chapter for specific help and camaraderie and the national organization for consolidated publishing information.” Haynes concurs, “Join Romance Writers of America and become active with your local chapter. There is a huge support system in addition to so many workshops, online classes, and conferences where you can learn your craft and make the contacts you will need to get published. RWA helped me learn how to write and once I’d done that, they gave me the resources to sell my work.”

For more information on each of these authors, visit their fabulous web sites at carolgracebooks.com, annemallory.com, and skullybuzz.com.

Filed Under: writing, Writing Craft Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Is Your Idea a Novel or a Short Story?

10/26 By Leave a Comment

You’ve come up with a brilliant idea. How do you decide whether the idea is suitable for a novel or a short story? While sometimes you just instinctively know, other times you may be stumped. Let me offer a few points to consider that may save you days, weeks, or months of writing only to discover that you’re heading in an unpromising direction.

There are two other reasons to identify your project’s structure early. First, if you’ve experienced writer’s block with a story that initially had high promise, it’s possible that your case of writer’s block stems from not choosing the best format. Second, it’s also possible that comments from editors’ rejection letters such as “not enough conflict” or “pacing too slow” may be signs that you’re telling too little story for a long form, and comments such as “too many characters to keep track of” or “plot too confusing” may indicate that you’re telling too much story for a short form.

There are a few essential elements that both short stories and novels have in common: a compelling premise, a compelling character with a compelling goal, and compelling conflict. Both forms have a beginning, middle, and end. Did I mention compelling?

What is a short story?

In short stories everything is condensed. There’s no time for subplots, and there’s a limited number of characters. Short stories capture a significant moment in time—often a snippet of time in the character’s life.

What is a novel?

Obviously novels are longer. What fills these extra pages? More characters, more complex plots, and a longer time span. The added length allows for a deeper exploration of main characters, however shorter lengths are no excuse for cardboard characters.

Is Your Idea a Novel or a Short Story? by Victoria M. Johnson

How to decide

Start with your end in mind.

What does your character have to confront or overcome to achieve his goal? If that path can be shown to the reader in a compelling way without too many characters, without a subplot, and without a lot of layers of revelation, perhaps you have a short story. If your character has to undergo much trial and tribulation to achieve his growth and change; if his actions affect many others and the reader needs to see those other characters and the impact on them; if subplots add more significance to the goal, theme, or resolution, then perhaps you have a novel.

Theme

What do you want to say with your piece?

Whatever message you hope your reader gets, ask yourself if you can convey that message with the form you’ve selected. Of course, you never want to hit readers over the head with the moral of your story; rather, you want all the elements of the story to lead the reader to that “hidden” message.

Michael Crichton’s novel Next tells a riveting tale that leads readers to his theme of the real-world catastrophic mess concerning gene patents. The novel is as fascinating and fast-paced as any of his books, and I was convinced by the end of it that gene patent procedures in this country needed a drastic overhaul. I don’t believe he could have conveyed this theme so convincingly in a short story.

On the other hand, Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” uses a relationship between two gay men in a time and place where homosexuality is unacceptable to draw the reader in. Proulx skillfully provides insight into a theme of intolerance with strong characters and gripping conflict all in about 15,000 words.

Conflict

Does your idea have enough conflict to sustain a novel?

If it doesn’t, you have a short story. Going back to comments from editors about the lack of conflict, don’t try to add conflict with arguments and petty bickering. Editors can spot weak conflict a mile away. Successful novelists prolong conflict throughout their books by altering, twisting, and elevating it. Static conflict causes all sorts of problems (which is an article by itself). No matter what length your project becomes, when the conflict’s resolved, the story is over. Tie up all the loose ends and finish it.

Once you decide where you want to take your idea, dive in. Whether your project ends up as a short story or as a novel, make it compelling. Say what you want to say with confidence, and have fun. Enjoy the burst of creativity a new idea brings.

Filed Under: writing, Writing Craft Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Shots on Goal

10/26 By Leave a Comment

In honor of hockey season, I thought I’d write about how a popular hockey term relates to writing. In hockey, the phrase shots on goal refers to how many times the players take a shot with the puck to score. I’m of the opinion that, in writing, shots on goal refers to how many times a writer submits her work for publication. That’s kind of obvious. But let’s look a little deeper.

In hockey, in the players’ quest to score, there’s a lot of skating, passing, and fighting. With writing, writers spend their time thinking, plotting, and writing and sometimes fighting in their quest for publication. Where the hockey players have thousands of fans screaming at them if they don’t take shots, writers often have only themselves or critique partners to answer to. But what other difference is there? Well, there is the net itself. That small square with a big guy (goalie) holding a big stick ready to whack the puck, or the opposing player, if either comes near his territory. That net is the goal. That is what every player is aiming for. It doesn’t matter where on the ice the puck goes, the players are continually trying to get it back to the net, to where they can score.

For writers it’s a little more complicated. Our goal is publication, right? But what is preventing us from our goal? Do we have a big guy with a stick standing in front of the mailbox or the send button on our computers? Do we have other mean guys with sticks trying to wipe us out? No. Not usually.

writers tips and hockey

Hockey players know the more times they take good, deliberate shots at the goal, the more chance they have of scoring. Hmmm . . .  Not bad shots. Not wayward shots. Not weak shots. But practiced, strategic shots at their goal. Ever watch a game where your team is not shooting the puck? They could be making great passes, playing awesome defense, creating explosive breakaway opportunities, and then not shoot the puck! What happens? The other team, perhaps not playing as gracefully, will steal it, whisk it down the ice, and take a shot on goal. They do this over and over and finally they score! My favorite team, the Detroit Red Wings, often won games where there were 50 shots on goal and they scored only three points.

Guess what? The other team had 40 shots on goal and scored two points. See how that works?

We’re back to that question of why writers aren’t taking their shots on goal. Are you submitting your work? If you don’t submit your work, you can’t be published. If publication is your goal, you have to take a shot at it. Over and over. And not just  blind shots, but strategic shots—to editors and publishing houses that are a fit for your work. I have a rule to always have something out there under consideration with an editor. Sometimes these editors take forever to reply and I end up with several projects waiting for a response. I find that the more I submit, the more rejections I get (just like hockey players getting denied by the goalie). But at least I’m in the game. At least there’s hope for publication.

A few months ago I realized that I had six projects under consideration. I was excited because I had never done that before. I had six shots on goal. As it turned out, I got one rejection, two are still pending, and three were accepted! So not only did I get more rejections by submitting multiple pieces, but I got more acceptances, too.  Sticking to my rule has made a difference. Every year during hockey season I’m reminded of that rule, and I’m re-inspired to keep taking those shots on goal. I encourage you to give it a try.

Filed Under: writing, Writing Craft Tagged With: , , , , ,

My Novel Available in Kindle and Paperback!

10/16 By 2 Comments

I pleased to announce that my romance novel, The Doctor’s Dilemma, has been released in paperback and in eBook format on October 16, 2012!  Previously only available in hardcover, this is quite an exciting step.  I am hopeful that these additional formats will allow the book to reach more readers.  Montlake Romance, an imprint of Amazon, is publishing the paperback.  While I’m a bit nostalgic that family-owned Avalon Books (the original publisher) decided to sell the company to Amazon, I am pleased that the shift means The Doctor’s Dilemma has gained new life.

The Doctors Dilemma, romance by Victoria M. Johnson

You might remember that The Doctor’s Dilemma was a finalist in the 2012 Booksellers’ Best Award.  It finaled in two categories, Best Traditional Romance and Best First Book!  The Doctor’s Dilemma, set in rural Mexico, tells the story of a doctor and nurse who work at La Clínica Pediátrica, and the villagers whose lives they touch.  The lead characters have their own personal issues to resolve but they are forever changed by their time in this small village.  I hope you’ll check it out.

Filed Under: Book, Romance Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »