Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life – John Updike
Apple blossoms in the rain – how beautiful is that?
Iris in full bloom.
On the blue theme: Mountain Bluet.
Rhododendron kissed with rain drops.
I caught this rainbow slipping down a slide area on the mountain across the lake.
I suppose the picture says it all 
The proof copy of No Compass to Right arrived and, on first blush, it seems everything I hoped for. Of course, with proof copies, the devil is in the details. I discovered that uncomfortable truth the hard way with a previous release. I’ll be pouring over this one for a couple of days before placing my bulk order.
If you read e-books, you can pre-order a copy of No Compass to Right for release on June 1st. The big day is coming, folks!
And if all of that is not enough cause for celebration, I received another wonderful surprise in the mail yesterday. Delayed Mother’s Day gift – Bear Paw oven mitts. Many thanks to Kristen, Matt, Emma and Britney. Can you imagine a greater gift for out here at the lake? Now I can lift hot pans with my bear hands while watching bears stroll by – LOL. Wow – two goofy, happy pictures of me in one post. What is this world coming to?
I want to take a moment today to shout-out a writer’s blog that I never miss – Writers Helping Writers: Home of the Bookshelf Muse.
The creators of this blog are also responsible for putting together the incredible writing resource book – The Emotional Thesaurus. But they didn’t stop there! They have added The Rural Setting Thesaurus and The Urban Setting Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus and the Negative Trait Thesaurus. They are currently at work on a character trait thesaurus that I’m certain will be every bit as good!
There are so many great things to say about this resource blog. Practically every post is interesting and informative and the site is well set-up for finding archived material.
I’ve been going to this site for at least a couple of years and only this week caught on to the fact that I can feature their neat little logo on my sidebar and shout them out to other writers.
Here’s a bit about the bloggers on the site:
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Angela Ackerman is an international speaker and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also enjoys dreaming up new tools and resources for One Stop For Writers, a library built to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Becca and Angela really walk the talk when it comes to sharing. They are very generous with the material they put on their blog and often their responses to comments are as informative as their posts.
Writers – follow this blog! It will be time well spent on the internet.
The May long weekend has come and gone with it’s regular lake time antics. Anyone fancy a motorized barge complete with barbecue and dog. Looks like fun.
Alas, the weather was somewhat less lovely near the end of the weekend.
We spent the time gardening and enjoying our first real days of warmth. Me consulting the gardening maps and Bruce digging. Sounds like a nice division of labour, doesn’t it?
As we near the beginning of summer, I am so pleased to announce that the official work on the 4th book in the Crater Lake Series is done. The ebook for No Compass to Right is on pre-order through Amazon for release on June1st. A few days ago, I ordered the proof copy of the softcover. It is due to arrive in the first week of June. Fingers crossed, it will look as it should and I will be able to place a bulk order and start shuffling off copies of this new book to my list of waiting readers.
It feels strange to wake up and not have a long list of tasks related to No Compass to Right running through my mind. This book and I have been close buddies for four long months – creating, rewriting, editing, formatting and proof reading. It’s been quite a journey.
I plan now to take some time off. I’ll travel to visit kids and grandkids; I’ll putter in our garden; I’ll read novels written by other writers; I’ll enjoy posting on this blog and reading other blogs; and I’ll think about things unrelated to Crater Lake. In short, I’ll live my life and gather up new impressions and ideas for when the whole writing business starts up again.
Here’s hoping your May long weekend was as relaxing as mine.
Picture me sitting, sipping a coffee and reading a good book while the hummingbirds zip through the breezeway and the gentle breeze makes the chimes sway and sing.
Okay – let’s be honest, folks …if you’ve ever written anything that you let loose in the public realm, you’ve found out first hand that not everyone loves what you have struggled to produce. It proves that old maxim – you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you sure can’t please all the people, all the time.
Check out any of your favourite authors on Amazon – I mean the big-name favourites. They will have more than a few stinker reviews. Bad reviews are like taxes and death – inevitable.
So, how do you handle the one and two star reviews that really sting? I know of what I speak. Consider these recent reader opinions of Disappearing in Plain Sight:
Quit reading. Drag-you-drama, vile adults, helpless and hopeless teenagers. Too depressing. No desire to finish this story or follow the series.
Or what about this:
This reads like a first draft by a complete amateur … I tried. I couldn’t … if you told me this book was a high school student’s creative writing homework, I’d believe it.
Ouch! I thought of titling this post – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – after that one!
I read all my reviews … of course, I do. I share the one and two star ones with close friends and family who almost always give me a pep talk that ends with – ignore that review, the person is obviously a troll. I know that assessment is not true but a bruised ego will take comfort where it is to be found.
What I never do is interact with the reader who has given a less than salutary review. A good maxim here is: never explain, never apologize. I proceed from the belief that every review is some reader’s legitimate opinion and thus deserves to be respected. There’s a lot of books available through Amazon and a reader chose mine. This someone read, reacted and recorded his or her thoughts. That’s what the review system is for.
Listen up, now, because this part is important – not all bad reviews are written by people with axes to grind. Don’t take it personally. The best thing to do is accept legitimate criticism seriously and leave the rest.
I do my job when I create a story, do the work of rewriting, editing and formatting to the best of my ability so I can offer my novel to the public. Readers do their job by reading and sometimes sharing their opinions. The system works best when writers and readers stick to their jobs.
Let me know what you think.
During the creative process of writing the fourth novel in the Crater Lake series – No Compass to Right – I found that reflections to share on this blog tripped from my fingertips to the keys of my laptop on a regular basis. Line-by-line editing was definitely a different kind of beast. Though easily one of the most important parts of the process required to bring a finished manuscript to fruition, I’d be lying if I didn’t come clean about the amount of work involved. Editing does not leave room to think about anything else.
Deconstruction versus construction – no wonder editing is difficult. There is an excitement that buoys the work of creating pages and pages from nothing but the thoughts in my head. Sitting down to take that creation apart line-by-line does not carry the same euphoric glow.
At the same time, editing is satisfying in the way that polishing a piece of silver to glowing perfection is satisfying or standing back to admire a well-hung clothesline flapping in the breeze is satisfying. Examining the words and ideas that make up my novel, sentence-by-sentence, with the aim of scraping away all that is superfluous so that the prose snaps with meaning, that is a exhilarating experience.
During the editing stage, another phenomenon comes into play. After a few weeks of intense editing, looking so closely at my own work begins to make me squirm with unease. It’s that kind of phenomenon that occurs when you examine a single word over and over and before you know it, you can’t be sure it’s spelled right. If I wasn’t working so closely with my editor who is very affirming – throwing in a compliment now and then – I might dump the whole novel!
From editing, I went straight into formatting. I’ll talk more about that in my next post. For now, I’m going to leave you with more wind chimes and the reminder that you can now pre-order a copy of the 4th book in the Crater Lake Series – No Compass to Right.
This guy or gal stopped by this morning to say hello 
I was having a coffee and thinking about how to promote the last free day for Disappearing in Plain Sight – 1st book in the Crater Lake Series.
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.ca
Bear watching and book promoting – great morning activities. Oh, did I say the 4th book – No Compass to Right – in the series is available for pre-order with a release date of June 1st?
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.ca
But let’s focus on what really matters and get back to that bear And coffee
Disappearing in Plain Sight hit number 1 in the Amazon Free Store in the category of Literary Sagas today 
Free book offers continues until midnight Wednesday, May 10th. Don’t miss out on a chance to read the first book in the Crater Lake Series for free.
All my chimes were ringing in celebration today.
Pick up your free copy of Disappearing in Plain Sight on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk. Or search for it on the Amazon site of your choice. It is free everywhere Amazon operates.
And while you’re out and about book buying, please check out the pre-release page for the 4th book in the Crater Lake Series – No Compass to Right. Available June 1st.
Here’s your chance to grab the first book in the Crater Lake Series free of charge.
A Novel to Deepen One’s Humanity – Amazon reviewer
I rarely read contemporary novels (Marge Piercy and Barbara Kingsolver being notable exceptions), but once I read the first chapter of this one “just to check it out,” I was hooked. The psychologically-true and compassionate descriptions of each unique, complex character, blended with the real-life-like plot twists, kept me eagerly reading on. I resonated with the wisdom of the life lessons and insights each character developed, and their processes of growth and discovery catalyzed new insights in me. I appreciated the multisensory richness of the scenery, creating a vivid setting in which these extraordinary “ordinary” people move, stumble and grow in deeply realistic and moving ways. The plotting is intricate and well-woven, easy to follow if one pays attention — which is easy because the characters are so engaging and interesting. I grew to care about them, so I’m glad there’s a sequel. Best of all, I was reminded that everyone has a story, and if one knows these stories, one can never judge another human being, even while deploring some of the things they do. Reading this book, taking in the courage, vulnerability, and honest communication amongst the characters as the story progressed, I felt my own humanity was deepened.
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.ca
Fourth book – No Compass to Right – is available now as a pre-order for release on June 1, 2017.
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