Expiration dates on books or food.

Do you clean your refrigerator often or after you find food that has been around so long you don’t remember when you served it? I admit I don’t purge food more than a week old, as some folks say they do. I do sometimes check for food that doesn’t look familiar anymore.  That I do toss. Sometimes I find colorful growth inside containers. With no kids in my house I have no need for science projects and I don’t enjoy identifying kinds of mold, so those go.

I know folks who toss food on the sell-by date. What a waste.

About those manuscripts you wrote years ago. You know, the ones you had rejected time after time by editors and agents.  Got any you didn’t have the nerve to submit because your critique partners didn’t love them or contest judges scored them closer to freezing temperature than summer heat? Maybe there were some between-the-lines comments that translated to “Don’t quit your day job.”

Do manuscripts have expiration or sell-by dates?  I don’t think so. Brush the dust bunnies off one of your old manuscripts and read it again. If reading them reminds you why you loved the characters or the story, clean it up and replace the rotary phones in the story with cool gadgets.

You take those manuscript folks said were ugly and that you dressed funny and spiff ‘em up. Get new glasses or better hairstyles for those characters you love and toss ‘em back into the pool.  This time they might swim, even if you have to slip a toe into the dark side of the publishing pool, Indie publishing.  For that matter you could just jump in and swim.

I have self-published 2 novellas and 2 novels since May of 2011. I still have manuscripts I don’t believe will sell to publishers.  No, I haven’t sold a lot of copies, or even given away thousands of copies of the free novella, but some folks have bought copies and said good things. As long as they languished on my computer, no one could read them.

Haunting Refrain is a paranormal romance with ghost facilitators and reincarnation.  At one point I was told there were too many elements.  For today’s paranormal market the book doesn’t have enough elements, No vampires, superpowers or demons. Bummer! But wait! There might be readers who still like this type of story.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65206

http://bit.ly/u7LIhK     Barnes & Noble

http://amzn.to/mZqdaV

Excerpt:

Sarah believes she lived before as Sarita and William was Walter, Sarita’s husband. She  has been sleeping, dreaming she was Sarita and she was with Walter, .

Sarah stared into stormy gray eyes. Her hunger mirrored in them. “Walter?” she gasped. “Oh, God.”

“What did you say?”

Sarah blinked, the eyes were still close enough to count the long lashes, but the face was William’s. Oh, of course it was William’s. Who else but William would be in her room, leaning over her bed, looking so concerned. Huh?

“William,” Her voice was rusty. “what are you doing in my room? Watching me sleep, were you?”

“Your parents have gone out and we had plans to do the same, remember?”

“You had to meet a client or patient, didn’t you?”

William stared at her. “That was last night.”

“Oh. What time is it, anyway?” Sarah looked at the clock. “Oops. I overslept.”

“Kind of.” William still looked concerned.

“I can be ready in twenty minutes, if you’ll get lost.”

William still leaned over her.

“Anybody home?” She brushed the stray lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead.  His eyes darkened.

“You called me Walter,” he said. “Why?”

“I was dreaming and there was this strange guy who…” she trailed off. Suddenly her body burned with the memory of … What?

William’s body was so close. His lips were so inviting.

Sarah reached her hands to capture William’s face. She pulled him closer and ran her tongue across his sensual bottom lip. She licked his upper lip, then gently nipped the center of his lower lip. She removed his glasses and pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

Sarah needed this man’s mouth on hers.

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First blog for 2012! There are prizes to be had.

First excerpt: ( warning, old-fashioned writing)

“Granny, I saw the demon cat last night.” Sabrina Louise Boyd fumed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Nothin’ you can do, child,” Granny Pearl shook her head. The red bandanna she favored had allowed wisps of stiff, gray hair to peek around its edges. “It ain’t up to you, honey lamb. When that cat shows hisself somebody dies. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s been forever. Nobody gonna to change it.”

I am a Georgia native, and we Southerners love a great story. My daughter, who attended Georgia College at Milledgeville, spent half of her junior year in Washington, DC. Her college job as the 4-H lady in the local schools got her an assignment with the National 4-H counsel.  As her mama and daddy, my ex and I were given a private tour of the places she usually showed tour groups.

Details escape me, but she showed us an area between the houses of congress. There were imprints in the floor rumored to have been made by a huge black cat, a harbinger of death who had announced the deaths of the Presidents who were assassinated while in office.   Don’t quote me on the details, please.  As a writer I change details to suit my purpose and our tour was almost 20 years ago. (grin)

About Forever Love. I moved that cat to Georgia and assigned him to a family. For centuries that “demon cat” has appeared just before a member of the family died.  Does he announce their coming deaths or cause them?  I will tell you that the cat is Devon, an American Indian who has been damned to exist in a void between Heaven and Hell. He can be seen as the cat, but has no corporal form. Want to know what his purpose is and why he’s damned? Hmmm.

Excerpt 2.

As tired as Sabrina was from reading all weekend, she pasted a smile on her face as she entered the small community hospital. All day Sabrina pushed herself.

When her lunch break came she had little appetite. She’d chosen a table away from the crowds, to think and relax. Joe had not allowed her solitude.

“Mornin’, nurse ‘Briny,” Joe whispered. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Joe Walker,” Sabrina narrowed her eyes at the hunky doctor. “Mind your own business. And don’t call me that. You gonna to eat all that?” His tray was loaded.

“You look like Hell,” Doctor Joe blurted. “See me in my office as soon as you help me eat this food.”

Sabrina read concern in his long-lashed, obsidian eyes, but she couldn’t let him think he could treat her like a kid.

“Thanks a lot, Doctor Joseph. You do make a girl feel good.”

He placed a hamburger on her tray. “Mustard, pickles, tomato, and lettuce, just the way you like it. Eat up” He added french fries to the burger she had yet to touch. How had he missed noticing how drawn she looked? Everyone at the hospital had worked like demons to make up for the flu epidemic straining staff and facilities of the hospital. But he really should’ve noticed his friend looked so exhausted.

“Well, eat up, my girl, or I’ll tell everyone about out nickname for you, nurse Br…”

“Don’t say it,” Sabrina interrupted. “I’m not hungry. Go pester someone else.”

“But I’d rather pester you. You’ve lost weight and your skin looks pasty. Except for the bruised looking circles under your eyes.” Joe took a bite of his own burger and chewed as he stared at his Sabrina. Even exhausted she was beautiful, tempting and likely to get sick if she didn’t mind his warning. For months he’d dreamed about this woman he saw every day but could not touch as more than a friend.

“Lady, if you don’t clean your plate and see me in my office before you go back on the floor, I’ll hunt you down and drag you to my lair.” His Indian ancestors would’ve just bartered a few horses and blankets with male relative and taken her to his bed. Not a bad idea, but first he’d have to explain that her cousin was leaving him before she died.

Sabrina took a grudging bite of the hamburger. She looked like she was ready to complain. Her frown turned to a grudging smile as she swallowed. “You should be a chef. You made a hospital burger almost edible.”

“Thanks, I’ll remember that if I change careers.” In his dreams he’d wanted her. In the past he’d thought of her as a buddy. Maybe, just maybe, he’d loved her forever and hadn’t realized it.

“That was wonderful, thanks, I needed that – wait, no more, Joe, I can’t eat that cake.”

She tried to put the plate back on his tray but he chuckled, shoving it back in her direction. “I got that chocolate for you. I’m allergic, remember?” He wondered if he’d have a reaction if he kissed her, tasting the chocolate from her lips. Might be worth it. If they’d been just about anyplace else he’d have found out, now.

He stood to leave. “In my office, nurse,” he said loudly enough for other diners to hear. “ten minutes, please.”

He strode out with that natural swagger she’d always found so sexy. It would look strange if she didn’t comply with a doctor’s request.

Forever Love is a paranormal novella with Southern flavor. It combines legends and lasting love with steamy sex.

Nurse Sabrina Boyd’s life was just fine before Dr. Joe Walker, her cousin’s widower, returned home to South Georgia. Avoiding the handsome doctor who wants a romantic relationship with her isn’t her biggest problem. She has seen the Demon Cat, a harbinger of death for the Boyd family for centuries. Now she’s obsessed with finding and saving the person the cat wants, and she’s immersed in old journals about ill-fated lovers.
Joe wants to teach her about steamy sex, and the cat … what does the cat really want?

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57300  99 cents until January 15.

http://bit.ly/k5QLtA   Barnes & Noble

http://amzn.to/mWRCHO

For the research folks

http://www.unsolved-mysteries.com/unexplained_events/phantom_black_cat.html

MMARVELLAB@aol.com

MaryMarvella.com

www.PinkFuzzySlipperWriters.blogspot.com

FOR A CHANGE TO  WIN A FREE COPY OF  FOREVER LOVE. MAKE A COMMENT. I WILL DRAW FOR THE WEDNESDAY EVENING.

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The Gift is a woman’s fiction book.

On Edna Mae’s 40th birthday she buried her controlling father and lost her virginity in a one night stand with a stranger she never expected to see again. Her life is about to change in more ways than she could have imagined.

Like Cinderella, she had no real life. The world opens for her now that she has no sick parents demanding all of her attention. Finding new friends and a world she thought had passed her by is wonderful, but there’s more!

THE GIFT is story about an old fashioned woman in a modern world, written in an old fashioned way.

Love Lust, and Southern Comfort

What a perfect place to see ghosts!

This appeared in the June 2006 Galley, the newsletter of Georgia Romance Writers.

What Keeps Me Writing?

What keeps me writing? The same thing that keeps me going, and going, and going no matter what.

The universe has so many stars and planets, we can’t count them all. New heavenly bodies appear as old ones disappear. Stories and characters fill my imagination and demand their time on paper. They want their stories told and I am sometimes their slave and sometimes their mistress. After all, if I don’t write their stories, no one will hear them.

And they won’t give me any in peace.

When life throws me a curveball or knocks me on my ample butt, writing is my salvation. Through the loss of my parents and the death of my dream of a life partner with whom I would grow old, I wrote (the death of the dream, not the ex-partner). The writing wasn’t always great but it was there.

I love words. I love what they can do for me when I use them to tell a story, or allow a character to come to life, or deal with feelings through those of my characters.

If you’re ready to hang it up or wondering why you’re still writing when you’ve collected more rejections than you have hairs on your head and contest judges hate your writing, consider this.

Why did you start writing? If it was because you thought you’d make a living as a writer, what I have to say might not help.

Learning about writing and writing to sell can steal your joy. Incorperate what you learn to make your writing better, but don’t let it make writing a chore. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hope to sell your work. After all if you sell your stories, people can read them. Selling validates your writing, as does winning contests. It also validates the time you spend writing and attending conferences or putting money on equipment and supplies.

Sometimes you need to write for the fun of it. You can go on to the second draft and add the elements you didn’t get in the first draft. With each draft you can play with the words and edit your work to make people laugh, or cry, or do both. If I feel with a character, I will keep reading.

Keep in mind what you want your reader to feel so you can manipulate the way you use words and sentences, the way you present a scene or a character. Use your life experiences and the books you’ve read to make me feel something. Not every reader will respond the same way, that includes editors and agents and contest judges. So? You don’t like every book you read or every character in them. Someone did or you wouldn’t be reading the book.

When an editor or agent sends your book or proposal back and tells you your baby is ugly and you dress her funny, (or other words to that effect.), whine and fume. After you give in to your disappointment that another person doesn’t love your book and everything about it, look at the comments, if there are any.

Maybe the kid’s beauty would shine through if you clean her face and comb her hair. Maybe the mismatched socks aren’t helping her win the beauty pageant. Maybe the judge can’t see you baby’s beautiful eyes because of the glasses. Or maybe her glasses and mismatched clothes are part of her personality and charm. Maybe you sent her to the wrong pageant, or contest, or agent, or editor. Maybe she just isn’t ready to go out into the world yet. Hug her and tell her you love her, then see what you can do to help her make someone fall in love with her.

Remember, we don’t always understand why people fall in love with each other or why some readers don’t like the books we love or our favorite foods. Someone will love your story and your characters.

I have eight completed novels  and 3 novellas and have been rejected by the best. I’m working on book nine. I can’t stop telling my stories and neither should you.

FYI, I took a new path and Indie published a novel and a novella.

Weeks ago I visited Sandy Hook, New Jersey to lean from the Coast Guard.  I have always been a sucker for a guy in a military uniform. Now I know  how important the Coast Guard is to our history. Those folks protect our shores from the bad guys and more.  

A group of writers can be a tough audience but the guys and women in uniform held up well!

Check out the way the man below holds his weapon. He and his fellow instructors didn’t recommend trying to shoot with one hand for this or the smaller guns.  The guys showed us how to take that big boy apart and put it back together again.                                                                                          Of course we had to check out the firing range. Hey, we write                                                                                                       about murder and mayhem!

After hearing from the tough After listening to the young woman above, I believe she can play with the big boys and would love to have her on my protection team!

We lunch ate with the coast guard folks. The food was simple but good.

If you want to see more photos, you must go to www.pinkfuzzyslipperwriters.blogspot.com.

Check out the history of the Coast Guard for some BIG surprises.

I published a new book! Yep, I fussed and cussed and strained my brain with formatting puzzles, but I did it! Did you know you mustn’t use the tab key to tell your computer to indent a paragraph? You must NOT hit the space bar to move to the next line.

That meant I had to reformat 5,500 paragraph indents. My learning curve has been steep lately and I suspect it wil become steeper before I’m good at this.

Haunting Refrain
When Sarah Overby found ghosts in her attic she hesitated to tell her best friend, William McKeown. She didn’t think he’d understand. Telling him he lived a previous life as her husband would make him think she was crazy. William has adored Sarah forever, he just doesn’t realize this isn’t the first time he loved her. His feelings for his best friend are changing, but he doesn’t believe in ghosts, reincarnation or lasting romantic relationships.

Love, Lust, and Sweet Tea.

“William, you never thought any boy was good enough for me. Is there a man who’s good enough for me?”
“Of course there is, somewhere. You don’t have to settle for anyone but the best. When you meet the right man, I won’t stand in your way. I’ll dance at your wedding.”
Suddenly the thought of any man making love to his Sarah hurt. He wanted to pull her close as he had so many times before, but this time he had to fight the odd urge to kiss her pouting lips. She was so warm, so right tucked under his arm. He wanted to kiss her until she couldn’t think about any other man.
“Damn,” he muttered. He hadn’t felt like this with Sarah before. For the past few months he’d had some strange dreams about her. The Sarah in his dreams had worn virginal white, but had seduced him with her sensuality alone.
He could never have shared a sleeping bag with that different Sarah and left her untouched. It didn’t seem right. She’d always been his best buddy, like a younger sister. He’d have to resist the strange urges until they went away.
Maybe it was time for a new woman in his life. He hadn’t had good luck with relationships. Women had offered diversions, but none had found a place in his heart.

Haunting Refrain by Mary Marvella      Smashwords.com
Forever Love      Smashwords.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com
www.pinkfuzzyslipperwriters.blogspot.com

I did it! I e-published a novella through Smashwords.com. Yep, I really bit the bullet and uploaded the manuscript and waited and waited for more than 2,000 other projects to be accepted and made available for purchase.

The next evening I got word that there were formatting errors and I needed to correct them I read the list of sins I had committed. For me they folks at the site might as well have asked me to work calculus problems in Greek. I suck at highest levels of Math and barely survived college French many years ago.

After I whined long enough, Tammie, a true BFF, talked me from the ledge and took me by the hand. Actually, she grabbed my hand and yanked me down, sniveling all the way.  She showed me how to fix formatting issues, one line at a time, and paragraph indents, one paragraph at a time. It is difficult to work on formatting sins while grumbling and hiccuping from the fit I pitched earlier.

I then waited for more than 3,000 projects to be published or rejected.

The results.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57300

Nurse Sabrina Boyd’s life was just fine before Dr. Joe Walker, her cousin’s widower, returned home to South Georgia. Avoiding the handsome doctor who wants a romantic relationship with her isn’t her biggest problem. She has seen the Demon Cat, a harbinger of death for the Boyd family for centuries. Now she’s obsessed with finding and saving the person the cat wants, and she’s immersed in old journals about ill-fated lovers.

Joe wants to teach her about steamy sex, and the cat … what does the cat really want?

Love, lust, magic, and Sweet Tea.