Hi all! My blog today is going to be short and sweet. I’m at an all day workshop today and will be out of touch for the day. So, I’m giving you a tad of food for thought.If you’re an author, do you hate to research for your novels, or do you love it? If you’re a reader, do you know how much research goes into writing an accurately depicted historical novel without the story feeling like it’s a documentary?

I’ll admit it. Researching history for my novels has never bothered me. When I researched my Scottish time travel, I loved learning about Scotland around 1318…the clothing people were probably wearing, people’s diets, the castles, the languages, and the war. Same with researching London in 1888.  San Francisco in 1906 fascinated me. Roman Britain drew me in and wouldn’t let me go when I wrote my recent novel set in 167AD Britain. Now I’m researching 1840’s and 1850’s Philadelphia and surrounding area, the politics, the upheaval, the immigration of Irish to the area. Beyond that I’m also researching a novel set in 1700’s France. I’m enjoying learning something new every day as I search the Internet and tap into research books.

Few things are as good for a novel as learning a tidbit of history that gives you an idea for a plot turn. I feel excited and intrigued by history and everything that has gone before. As I explore history, I notice that nothing is new, everything repeats itself. These themes allow an author to create in infinite new ways. With a romance author like myself, I enjoy showing how love can endure many adventures throughout history. I’m continually drawn to big events and writing about how those events changed and altered people. How do a man and woman survive catastrophic occurrences and what do they learn from them? 

I know I’m excited about creating these worlds for you, the reader.

Now the drum roll!!! The winner of last week’s blog is…Tina Brunelle. Congratulations Tina! Email me at danovelist@cox.net and you’ll receive a free download of my quickie from Ellora’s Cave called JUNGLE FEVER.  

Okay, now that I have your attention…

Ever feel like sharing your dumbest moment? No? I was inspired to write this because I was watching dumb criminals on television. J I’ll admit to an addiction to watching Most Shocking where we’re treated to videos of criminals running from the police or other jackass actions. Since I got TiVo early last year there are programs I wouldn’t have watched before that I record and indulge whenever it suits me. How did I ever live without my TiVo? AHEM. Anyway, criminals doing really, really comical and stupid things made me think back to the times when I did something I’d classify as nuts or stupid. I also thought about this because I’m curious what types of antics a hero or heroine could get away with in a novel and not seem “unheroic.” Is that a word? Probably not.

What has to top my list as one of the most ridiculous things I’ve done is trying to ascend an escalator with a rolling bag. Now I’ve seen a lot of people do this in airports with no problem. Easy. Well, I’m not coordinated enough to do that, apparently, without almost creating a comical (though not funny at the time) situation. This rolling bag was the kind you put brochures in or other business related items you want to take to a trade show. I managed to heft it onto the escalator, but then it hooked on one of the teeth on the step and as the escalator went up, the bag thumped down to the next step. Here I am hanging on for dear life and my arm felt like it was going to pop outta the socket. I was sooooo pissed at myself as I was wrestling like a mad woman trying not to lose my grip on the bag and have it fly down the steps like a missle. Lucky for me, there’s a kindly gentleman two steps down who probably figured I was going to brain him with said missle. He grabbed the sucker and lifted it so it was on the step with me. By the time I wrestled the bag off the escalator, my arm was sore as hell, I was blushing as red as a tomato (well, my face felt on fire, let’s put it that way), and I was so embarrassed I wanted to hide somewhere and never come out.

Ever made a mistake like that? Even a tiny one that turned into a big deal? Come on! Fess up.

Tell me your experience, and I’ll pick a winner in my next blog to receive a free download of my Ellora’s Cave quickie, JUNGLE FEVER. Happy confessional.

Hi everyone! Today I want to welcome guest blogger, multi published author Roz Denny Fox. I’m very proud to know Roz. She’s one of the kindest, most supportive authors I’ve had the pleasure to meet, and I’m thrilled she agreed to blog today. Roz is a prolific category romance author, and I can say she truly knows a lot about what it takes to grab a reader’s attention and keep it. So sit back with your java and enjoy Roz’s blog. Take it way, Roz!

* *

I noticed from the books listed that the writers on this blog have no problems getting motivated to write. But a lot of new writers ask how to motivate themselves and the characters they’d like to write about. So that’s my topic for today. While no single aspect of structuring a novel stands alone, characters, plot goals, motivation, conflict, and action all fit together like puzzle pieces to make a story work, motivation is the why of each scene.

If you lack motivation to write—identify why you want to create. What are you curious about? What intrigues you? What touches you emotionally? It is the same with characters. Why do they…do? Why they act as they will throughout a book–is motivation.

Without motivation characters are stick figures moving from point A to B to C. To give them life, add trauma and drama showing what drives them to act. These traumatic, dramatic reasons must be believable, compelling and they must exist on more than one level of a character’s persona. Real people are layered. No one is single-dimensional. Few are single-minded. Real people change as they receive new input. As they achieve one goal, they automatically set another. Some do cling to revered beliefs and biases. It will be the same for story characters. In romance, the main goal remains static throughout the book–the hero and heroine desires a committed relationship. Consequences that occur along the path cause characters to reassess and alter their course. Both characters learn, grow, and change. You may show them motivated to change in a big way or a minor one. Even the slightest nuance in motivational change keeps readers interested and reading on.

A character’s motivation isn’t just derived from a situation you’ve created. It evolves from the character’s past, present and future. Consider for instance that a former nun and a gambler may work for the same company, and the boss decides to send them on a mission together. The former nun might ask God for direction before she sets out, while a gambler may roll dice to see if it will be a lucky trip. Their boss sees the former nun praying, the gambler at his desk playing with dice, and the boss considers it wasting time and fires them both. The abrupt job loss sends both characters in new directions.

Readers have a very basic need to understand what drives each character. So explain: Why does God direct the former nun’s decision? And why would the gambler rely on something unreliable like dice? It has everything to do with background. With how they grew up. With who influenced their past. Why did a chicken cross the road? Motivation may be simple–to get to the other side. It may be complex–this chicken is being chased by a fox, and by a farmer with a hatchet. Will crossing the road offer safety, or sure death? Thus the chicken’s motivation to cross is challenged, altered.

Backstories are built carefully to show readers why characters react in a consistent manner. Why they laugh, cry, need to win, expect to lose. Why they fight or rebel. What makes a character impulsive, cocky, irreverent, flawed, reserved, insecure, eccentric? Why they may be dreamers, mysterious, virtuous, or courageous.
It’s rare for men and women to be motivated in the same fashion. Men tend to react out of anger, retribution, a feeling of injustice, or scientific knowledge. Women make changes in their lives for reasons of love, devotion, and altruism.

Yet for the purpose of pleasing romance readers, a hero must always be a dragon slayer. Be a man with a good heart. Change in his journey will be brought about by love of a good woman. (Think for a moment about Raiders of the Lost Ark)

H & H have strong reasons to never see one another again. At mid-point they’ve been forced to work together. Then hero decides it’s safer for them, though, if he strikes out on his own. Heroine feels abandoned. The desire to make him pay changes her motivation from just wanting safety. Three forths of the way into story, each starts to see that working together is the only way to triumph over greater evil. In the end, the realization that hero loves heroine and doesn’t want to live without her provides a final catalyst. A last motivational change.

Readers never seem to tire of stories where a hero and heroine start out with opposing goals.

So, with these tidbits, I hope anyone who wants to write a romance, but has lacked motivation, will see something in this blog to propel them off on a writing journey.

**

Thanks Roz. Jump right in there, everyone, and say howdy to Roz.

Denise A. Agnew

In the day and age of reality television, we are all saturated in celebrity. What we know about, what we hear through the news and other programming can lead us to think we understand the nature of reality. We think American Idol showcases all the talent out there. We think we should look like the latest television or big screen star. We want to be on a list of the best, the brightest, the most awarded. There are even words that jump out at us from the television that somehow make way into our psyche until we think if we aren’t on “trend” with what we eat, watch, read, wear, and do, that we are somehow doomed. We forget there are singers, actors, artists, writers you have never seen on a best of the best of the best (to quote Will Smith in The Men In Black) list who would blow you away if you saw them act, heard them sing or read their books.

Case in point, during the last year I’ve discovered a whole host of singers I think have heavenly voices, and yet before I came upon their songs on a television show, I had never heard of them. Two excellent examples would be Paolo Nutini…a very young Scottish singer who has a quirky voice with his accent shining through and a spectacular ability to write songs that don’t sound much like anyone else’s. He’s fantastic. Another group I’d never heard of until last year is Evanscience. Their beautiful songs Haunted and My Immortal were showcased during the vampire series Moonlight. I had to have those songs! (The lead singer’s is delicious, full-bodied and beautiful.) Do I think she’s more talented than some singers who danced across American Idol? Well, I have to admit I’ve probably watched about all of fifteen minutes of American Idol, and I know there are some great talents that crossed that stage. I only know that Evanscience and the lead singer’s voice doesn’t sound just like everyone else. They aren’t popular cookie cutter.

Book celebrity is sometimes the same, though not always as obvious to the average individual who reads books and enjoys them. A good chunk of the books I read are fairly obscure in the larger scheme of things. Ninety percent of the books on my keeper shelf are written by mid list or small press authors that the larger public hasn’t discovered. They write books that are different, rich and lush with characterization, description, and tales that fully touch the heart. Are they on a New York Times Best Seller list? No. Why? For too many reasons to list here in a reasonable amount of time.

What this brings me to, of course, is that as the saying goes, celebrity isn’t everything. If you’re an author and writing a book, ask yourself what is most important about it? That you made ton of money and you became some sort of minor celebrity for two seconds? Or that when you wrote it the following words could describe you: invigorated, filled with pleasure or joy, that you made someone else laugh, cry, think about the world more deeply, or that you plain just had a hell of a good time creating? Ask yourself what makes you happy when you’re writing. What gives you the greatest pleasure in this process? If it doesn’t happen to be the same as most other people’s idea of success or celebrity, then it’s too bad for the world. Your idea and creativity isn’t defined by everyone’s judgment. It’s what that creation does for you where it counts. In your heart and soul. If it makes you happy to create it…that’s all you need.

I’ve always envied authors who can write in weird places. I have one friend who can write virtually anywhere with people buzzing around and noise. I once saw her clacking away on her laptop in a busy lobby at a conference. On a self-imposed deadline, she worked hard to complete a manuscript. She’s an extrovert, though, and it seems to me extroverts tend to have this ability to put up with noise far more readily than an introvert like me.

One of these days I think I’ll try writing in a coffee shop and see how that works. Sometimes sitting in the middle of chaos can work for authors. One time I took my Alphasmart with me to the shop where we get our cars fixed. Now, let me explain something about my car repair shop. They’re extraordinary. They fix foreign cars, they’re small, and they have a really nice waiting room. The atmosphere isn’t “ode to car repair shop.” I sat down on their comfy couch, ignored the television playing the Weather Channel, and lo and behold, wrote quite a few pages before the oil change finished. Amazing. I hadn’t expected that.

When I’m at home and my hubby is at home, I close my office door so my atmosphere is quiet. But my experience writing while getting the car fixed makes me wonder if I could write in a ye olde coffee shop. What about you? Have you managed to study for a test, work on a manuscript, or accomplish another task while enduring the noise around you? Curiosity makes me ask.

At this writing I’ve come to one conclusion. Remodeling a bathroom and revising a novel uses some of the same skills. How do I figure?

In October 2007 we hired a company to remodel our seven-year-old bathroom. They started work on December 15. It’s now January 4 , 2008 and said company still has one last thing to do. They have to put glass doors in our shower on January 15. Why so long for the glass? Stubborn dimensions in the shower. Ordering things like glass for a shower during the days between Christmas and New Years is so not happening.

Remodeling a bathroom. Where do I start? Well, assuming anyone could actually remodel our entire bathroom in two weeks was probably a big mistake. Why were we remodeling a seven-year-old bathroom? Because the faux marble was coming away from the wall in the shower, the cabinets had been splashed (two months after we moved in) with nail polish, and hell…while we’re at it if we’re going to replace the shower and the cabinets we might as well replace the tub, sinks, countertops, lights, mirror, etc. Yes, it’s expensive, but we decided it was worth having the bathroom we wanted. So what’s the problem? There were complications, you see. Complication number one involved the realization that the brand new countertop they’d just replaced had sink bowls (it’s a double sink) that weren’t in line with the mirrors and lights. The guys had to come back with a fixed countertop. Then the guys discovered that the right sink, because of some doomy flatcher thingy situation just wouldn’t work right. It took them from 9:30am to 3pm to fix the problem. Lordy have mercy. ☺ All the while I’m pretty much in my office revising a novel. Trying to, anyway, with banging and thumping and all that happening. Finally I hear that the shower glass won’t come in until January 15 because ordering during the holidays didn’t happen…the glass manufacturer or whatever wasn’t available…yada, yada.

So my hubby and I, who were planning on painting the bathroom after all this are saying, “We can’t move back into our bedroom until about February.” We’re thinking worse case because it might take a while to get that lovely paint stench to waft out the sliding glass doors. Ode de stink of paint, if you know what I mean.

Now you’re asking what in the name of Hades this has to do with revising a novel. Well, you never know how long it might take to write a book. At least, I don’t when I start out. It may take three months, four months, or maybe five to write that first draft. Depends on the book and my writing speed. Once I finish the book, it’s that whole pesky revising thing that may take tweaking here, nudging there, painting, pondering, weighing options, etc. Once I’ve revised that book one time before I send it to my critique partners, I’m about ready to scream and so tired of looking at the manuscript I wanna run around yelling at the top of my lungs, “I’m gonna peel somebody’s head.” (One of my grade school teachers used to say this when a kid pissed her off…she was from somewhere in the South. Love that saying). Anyhooo, you know the feeling.

Have you ever had a part of your house remodeled? Did it go the way you wanted? What lessons did you learn, if any?

My sympathies. :) :evil:

Linnea, welcome to our blog! First, I’m thrilled to have Linnea here. We’ve known each other for several years…at least eight years I think. Wait…it might even be longer. Anyhow, there is one thing I’ve always counted on and that’s Linnea’s terrific sense of humor. So sit back and enjoy a perfectly fun moment with Linnea.

The Untruth, The Whole Untruth, And Nothing But…

Thanks so much for asking me to guest blog here, kids! ::Linnea looks around, waving at everyone:: It’s a thrill to share your personal cyberspace today, especially as Denise , Ann and I go back a few years. And the rest of you I’m sure I’ve tripped over…oops! I mean met in a bar at a Romantic Times Booklover’s (which Jodi mentioned here a few days ago) or RWA convention from time to time.
Which brings me to my topic. No, not my propensity to guzzle gin and tonics (two limes, please) at various reader and writer conventions around the planet. But something that occurs to me now and then as I sit at a bar in one of these conventions, watching readers and authors interact.

Do you realize we’re paid to lie?

Alright, you call it storytelling or fiction or the suspension of disbelief. But the fat reality staring at us is, as authors we’re paid to lie.

And as readers, we beg authors to do more of it.

Authors are people who started playing with dolls or toy soldiers or, like me, having conversations with rows of stuffed animals, and we never stopped. Mostpeople (and I’m deliberately using poet e.e. cummings’ phrase for that), mostpeople grow out of playing with figurines, of setting said figurines in settings concocted of old shoeboxes and such, and moving them through the paces of danger, action and adventure. And love.

Authors never do. We just translate our plastic figures to the plastic keyboard, and continue their adventures on a plastic-edged computer monitor.

And we get paid to do this.

Readers, on the other hand, willing plunk down hard-earned bucks for something they intelligently know is fully and totally a lie. False. Invented. Pure bunk, Bunky. They grasp the new paperback or gaze longingly at the new e-book file downloading to their PDA and sigh, “Lie to me, again. Bamboozle me. Make me believe the unbelievable.”

Does anybody ever think about that? I mean, I do, but then I have this gin-and-tonic- two-limes-please thing going, and it tends (it’s the high vitamin C content of the limes) to make my brain work in strange ways.

Authors and readers are gleeful members of the biggest Liar’s Club in the solar system. (I’d say galaxy but Ann Aguirre and I are still poking around out there, so I’m not sure.) And not only are we card-carrying Liar’s Club members, but we react to our lies as if they’re real.

Okay, show of hands here, authors. Who else bounces around in their office chair while writing the exciting parts, gets sweaty palms in the scary parts and goes reaching for the significant other during the steamy parts? Ah-hah. ::Linnea’s emerald gaze sweeps the room in a very clichéd fashion:: I thought so. Guilty as charged, all of you. Yes, authors while creating those lies they call “my next novel” begin to believe those lies. The characters sound and feel real. We have conversations with those characters (sometimes more than we converse with our significant others…or our cats). We find images of our characters and post same on our workspace, and when the cover art comes in and it’s not our character, we are affronted. Seriously affronted.

It’s like having someone else’s photo on your driver’s license.

I mean, really!

Readers develop serious attachments to fictitious characters. This is no new phenomenon. When Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in a story published in 1893, his readers went ballistic. He has to resurrect the detective and continue his adventures. Sherlock Holmes could not be permitted to die!

Which has actually become a bit of fact because Holmes has outlived his creator and still appears in books, films and television today.

Readers will not let the lies the love die. Or marry the wrong other fictional character or have or not have a fictional child… or even continue their fictional lives out of the public eye. Readers want those lies alive and kicking, book after book.

(I get a fair amount of fan mail asking, “What happened to Mack and Gillie after the final chapter?” or “Do Sass and Branden ever get married?”, and I have to honestly reply that I don’t know. I’m on deadline for another lie…oops, I mean another book.)

I find all of this rather grand. I really do. To me, it shows something in the human spirit called compassion. Okay, we create lies. Okay, we crave more lies. But our ability to step out of our personal selves and become immersed in the lives of those lies is, to me, nothing short of amazing.

It’s suddenly not “all about me” but about someone else, someone unaware of how deeply I care and yet I do, anyway. I care if Mack lives or dies. I care if Theo loves Jorie. I care if Sirantha Jax survives the ambush (believe me, I was on the edge of my seat on that one), and I cared so deeply about two characters—Grace and Nate—trying to fall in love during the 1906 earthquake that I wrote the e-book author a heartfelt fan letter. Back in, oh, 2000 or so was it, Denise?

Yes, we’re purveyors of untruths. But I find it noteworthy how those untruths elicit very real, true, genuine feelings. And through these untruths—both in the writing and the reading of them—we very often learn some deeper truths about ourselves.

Happy Writing, Happy Reading,
Namaste (I salute the divine in you),

~Linnea

(and now for a word from our sponsor…)

The Down Home Zombie Blues, an RT 4-1/2 star TOP PICK! from RITA award winning author Linnea Sinclair: http://www.linneasinclair.com/DHZBCOVER.htm

Life, Theo Petrakos decided, was not cooperating with him at all. It ruined his vacation, trashed his car, dumped unwanted houseguests into his accustomed solitude, threatened his planet, and made him start to care—far too much—about a woman he had no business caring about.

All in about twenty-four hours.

He couldn’t wait to see what the next twenty-four hours would bring.

***

“From its tongue-in-cheek title to its melding of romance and zombie-killing action, there’s little in Sinclair’s newest sci-fi romance that doesn’t surprise, grip or entertain… Sinclair’s strong characterizations and methodical plotting… make the book an unexpected treat. ” –Publishers Weekly

Linnea, thanks for reminding me about that great letter you sent me about my novel, LOVE FROM THE ASHES. That was a big thrill for me to receive all those kind comments about Nate and Grace and the fact you can remember their names after all these years is a thrill, too Wowza! And thank you for being our guest blogger today. I appreciate it so much.

Denise A. Agnew

Howdy from Sedona, Arizona. I’m on a week’s sabbatical as this blog appears. As a result, I may not get to the Internet to say howdy to you all today. I’ll be thinkin’ of you while I enjoy the red rocks of Sedona. Yeah, right. (Evil grin.) I promise, though, to take some photos of Sedona and post them when I get back. You’ll note I’ve put one at the top of my blog today that is from my trip to Sedona last year. I’ll admit it, my hubby and I love it in Sedona. 

My question today, though, is all about authors and promotion. I’d like your opinion, as much to appease my curiosity as anything. Authors are crazy creatures. We’re fruitlessly looking, pretty much all the time, for ways to catch a reader’s attention. I say fruitlessly because in some ways whether we catch a reader’s attention or not can sometimes be out of our control. The best thing we can do is attempt to write the best book possible, and then word of mouth can often do more to sell a book than anything else. So tell me…what types of promotion grab your attention? 

Easy to navigate website?

Promo items such as pens, business cards, key chains, cover flats?

Email newsletters?

Printed newsletters?

Blogs on an author’s website?

A blog on a site like The Bradford Bunch?

Book trailers?

Reviews on a review site?

Reviews posted on an author’s site?

Other things I haven’t thought about? If so, please list them.

And here’s a last question…how does an author’s public persona (in person or on line) effect whether you buy their books or not? If so, how?

Until next time, I hope everyone is having a great New Year. Talk to you when I return. Have a good one!

A fresh New Year coming up gave me an idea. Most of the time I feel young. Younger at forty-five than I did at twenty-five. Then I make the mistake of thinking about, “back in the day.” When did people start saying that anyway? While I was thinking about my past, I came up with fourteen things I remember from the seventies and early eighties that would seem incomprehensible to a lot of young ones today.

I remember when there were no cell phones and no cordless phones.

I remember when we had a rotary dial phone.

I remember when kids rode skateboards and bikes without helmets, elbow pads or knee pads and no one thought anything of it.

I remember when there were no airbags in cars.

I remember when it was okay to toilet paper the trees, put Crisco on locker handles, and dump newspaper in the halls for Senior Day in high school and no one called the cops.

I remember when kids could neck in the hallway in high school and no one called the cops.

I remember when boys’ pinched girls’ fannies in junior high and they didn’t get hauled in for sexual harassment.

I remember when girls wore hip hugger bell bottom pants (what they called them in them there days by golly), long straight hair parted in the middle, smocks, and platform shoes…the first time they were popular.

I remember what boys’ hairstyles looked like in the 70’s…it’s coming back now.

I remember when I bought an album or a single and played them on a stereo turntable.

I remember when there were no seatbelts on the bus.

I remember walking three miles to school in the snow uphill both ways (and if you believe that one I have some swamp land…)

I remember when word processors were made by Wang (and I don’t mean Vera Wang.)

I remember my first date…and wish I couldn’t remember it. LOL!

Okie dookie, there you are. How many of you have a few “remembrances” from back in the day…whenever that day might be?

Hi everyone. I’m off on a trip for the next week, so I won’t be able to respond to my blog today, but I still had a topic for you and will respond when I return after December 28.

When people ask where I get my ideas for books, I have to say from everywhere. Truly. Take this day in between writing projects as it might look from my point of view.

Wake up at four thirty am after the antihistamine based cold pills make muscles restless. Brew coffee early. Stare at the television mindlessly. Hubby awakens and goes through his morning routine and is off to work. Stare into the mirror in disgust at freshly washed and styled hair. Hair looks like bad imitation of hair on trendy soap opera actress. It sticks out where it shouldn’t. Glops where it shouldn’t. Looks, in estimation, like hell. Fiddle with hair until apparent attempt to fix is hopeless. Give up and resign to looking less than coiffed.

Later in the morning, fueled with caffeine, run to the post office before the holiday rush people arrive. Person at the front of the line, though, has mailing issues. Lots of them. Me, normally a patient person, grits teeth and envisions white light around my body to ward off the negative energy. Lady behind me has a big box. Bumps into me. I inch forward. She inches forward and bumps me with her box. I inch forward again. She inches forward and bumps me with the box. I feel like I’m living back on Oahu where personal space wasn’t as readily observed sometimes. Grit my teeth again and envision white light. Speed through mailing in record time.

Return home. Decide to print out some research material for next colossal historical tome. Open printer top and prepare to replace low ink cartridges. Being cautious, take off the twisty thingy on cartridge that promptly squirts blue ink across my hand and part of my desk an all over top of printer. Curse. Decide to pitch cartridge because inserting it in printer would cause equal mess. Grimace. Grit teeth again. Loosen jaw to prevent unwanted tension and cracking in joint. Wash hands. Repeatedly. Six times with little promise of removing all ink anytime soon. Because on a month break from writing, allowing creativity to recover after writing 110,000 words, figure printing out research materials for next novel is something to accomplish another day. Can read about 1767 France tomorrow. Sit on couch and prepare to read. Decide brain death is a certain possibility as eyelids start to droop. Consider nap. Realize nap would mean less sleep later tonight. Stare mindlessly at TV.

Sound familiar? No? Well, I did get a couple of ideas for something I could use in the next historical novel just from experiencing this ordinary day. I’d tell ya what they were, but then I’d hafta kill ya.

Granted, the day I’ve described isn’t traumatic, but it makes me wonder if other authors and readers sometimes give in to a day that just doesn’t want to be managed. What’s your most recent, weirdest day? Did you manage to keep the lid on or did you blow your stack and think later that you shouldn’t have? Personally I’ve noticed that the less I give into irritations and allow them to pile on and turn into a “big deal” the less stress I have. Here’s to making lemonade out of lemons.

Everyone have a super, wonderful, delightful holiday, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Denise A. Agnew