My novel Dust To Stone is now available on Amazon, eBook and Print. I hope to offer it at Barnes & Noble and would love to have it in independent book stores all over, but let me tell you – getting it uploaded to Amazon was a feat in itself! 🙂 I’m very tech-challenged.

I find it easier to write over 81,000 words than to format the manuscript. You know that saying, “It takes a village”? Yeah, it took my village and some strangers to get it published. But we did it! 🙂

If you happen to download it or buy a paperback, I hope you enjoy Aiden’s journey with PTSD. His service dog Butler certainly helps day to day life, but it’s McKenna who gives him the motivation to push the boundaries he set. All this is set on the remote Aran Islands, three tiny islands off the west coast of Ireland. Such a beautiful place! I hope to go back one day and leave a few copies of my books there.

Thank you everyone that helped make this happen. I learned so much about the writing and publishing process and can’t wait to use that knowledge on my next novel, which has already been started. It’s the story of a young man from a small southern town who inadvertently falls in love with a serial killer. This one’s going to be a thrill to finish for you all!

We’ve all had to deal with rejections, whether you are an author or not. They are unwanted, ugly and sometimes leave you scratching your head wondering where it all went wrong. Caroline takes some of the guess work out of interpreting those awful emails we receive from agents and editors. It won’t take away the sting, but her advice may help you build a stronger manuscript.

If your head is spinning from the manuscript rejection feedback you’re receiving while on submission, you’re not alone. Let us help you translate it.

Source: Manuscript Rejection Feedback: 3 Critiques to Heed (and 2 to Ignore)

An amateur is not someone who is merely new. An amateur is a mindset.

Source: Maybe It’s Time to Give Up

Have you ever been so excited and so scared about something? Where you are ready for the change, living for it, working towards it, but at the same time your feet don’t want to move? Where your heart flutters in anticipation of taking the next step and thuds with dread at the mere thought of doing so?

I have never been shy about taking chances. I’m a ‘why not’ kind of girl with a ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ motto. When most high school seniors were firmly entrenched in their cliques and clubs, I was moving to a school where I knew absolutely no one. By choice. So I could experience something different.

When my husband and I married, I needed a change of scenery from the east coast so we pulled out a map of the United States, closed our eyes and let our finger find our next address. A couple of months later we packed up our two cars, complete with Mr. Fish in his tank buckled in beside me, and drove cross country to Idaho. Without jobs. Without a place to live. We ended up staying there only 3 weeks and limped across the upper mid-west to family in Minnesota, but we still tell stories about those 3 weeks. And discovered that no matter how poor we were or how bad it seemed, we were in it together.

Many years and several moves later (more calculated than the first) we are getting ready to make a new change and for the first time in my life, I have hesitation. I’ve never paused before in doubt. Looking back, I have some regrets, but when I was making decisions I never had doubt. Now I’ve got a tiny one, flickering inside me. I think it’s because I’m older, expected to ‘plan for the future’ and ‘what about your retirement’. I don’t have the luxury of youth anymore, the freedom to live my dreams with abandon. But I want to. Inside my forty-something year old body is the ‘why not’ girl screaming out ‘what’s the worst that could happen’.

And so I’m trying my best to listen to her because I know that if I don’t at least try, I will have regrets. And if you don’t take chances how will you ever know the possibilities?

New Year’s resolutions are all fine and good for some, but I usually find them too difficult to remember or by March they are no longer relevant. So instead, I do yearly mottos. Last year was DARE YOURSELF. Yes, I got it from the swimsuit issue of a Roxy catalogue and I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about improving your reading list. But, it can be applied to so much. And for me it meant completing something. 

I love new things and get easily distracted by ideas. During my home interior design phase I changed the wall color of my kitchen so often my husband said we were losing square footage from the thickness of the paint alone. I once started a home-based business and as soon as it started growing and flourishing, I no longer had the desire so I shut it down. Acrylics and canvases are packed away in storage after I swore I wanted to sell art. I have a history of jumping from one thing to the next. So when I decided I was going to write a novel, I saw the Roxy cover and it clicked. “Wendi,” I said to myself, “I dare you to finish a novel!” It worked and I even managed to learn the publishing process and submit it to editors near and far. Two are very interested and I hope to have a contract next month. Not bad for my first attempt at writing and publishing! 

So, this year my motto is LIVE OUTSIDE THE BOX. See that picture up there? That is Gee Atherton during his downhill mountain bike race run at RedBull Rampage in Utah a few years ago. He and his family have made a living out of doing what the love. They get to travel all over the world and get paid to ride bikes. Down mountains. They love what they do and they’ve turned it into a career. Not many of us are programmed to do that. Or maybe we are and we’ve just been reprogrammed to do the whole 9 – 5 thing for 50 years and then retire. 

I admire people that live a life less ordinary. My husband and I are preparing to do that: buy a boat and sail the world. We have a few years, but this year is all about getting into that mentality to live outside the box.