Welcome to My Roller Coaster

In my last post, I was celebrating. My editor had emailed me with the news that The Midwife’s Confession was a go. My celebration was premature, I’m afraid. A couple of posts before that one, I wrote about some of the reasons a synopsis might not be accepted, remember that? One of the reasons was…

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Creating a Story, Cont'd: Time to Celebrate!

  Yesterday I opened an email from my editor and learned her response to the synopsis: I have two words for you–Love. It.   Those of you who’ve followed my synopsis-writing journey know how overjoyed I am to get this news! The book is tentatively titled The Midwife’s Confession (thus the picture on the left. Adorable, no?)…

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Hey!

When did people start using the word “hey” instead of “hi”? I remember when I first heard this word used in casual greeting. I was researching my fourth novel, Keeper of the Light, in the early ’90s and contacted the woman who was heading up the renovation of the keeper’s house at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in…

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The Synline? Outopsis?

Whatever you want to call it, it’s finished! In the last post, my usual optimism was showing when I said I’d finish the synopsis on Saturday and rest on Sunday, but here it is Monday and I just zipped it off to my agent a couple of hours ago. It’s long. When people ask me how…

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Creating A Story, Cont'd: Are We There Yet?

Those of you’ve who’ve been following the synopsis saga are surely asking yourselves what’s taking so long. It’s a slow process, for sure, but I’m closing in on the finish line. I’ll wrap it up this weekend, without a doubt. The past couple of days, I’ve been making a list (in prose form) of certain scenes…

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From a Not-So-Simple Guy in Denmark

Every once in a while, I’m particularly touched by an email I receive and want to share it with my readers (with the emailer’s permission, of course). Today, I received the following email, touching because it comes from Denmark and it always warms my heart to hear from readers around the world, but even more…

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Creating a Story, Cont'd: Suspense

  After taking a break for the election and to talk about my cute new UK cover, I’m following up on my recent posts about creating a story. You may recall that I hadn’t quite finished the synopsis for my next book while in the Outer Banks. Once I got home, I whipped through to…

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Judging a Book by its Cover

I received an email from my publisher in the United Kingdom, where they’re getting ready to publish The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes under the title The Lost Daughter. In her email, the editor said she was attaching a picture of the new cover, and I thought, Oh no! Why are they changing CeeCee’s cover…

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Vote! Especially you Eighteen-Year-Olds

I’ve nearly finished my synopsis, but I need to take a minute to urge everyone to get to the polls Tuesday, especially you 18-21 year olds, because my generation fought hard to get you the vote and I’d really love it if you’d exercise that right. We hear often about women getting the right to vote in…

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