April 26

Happy birthday to my son who turned 22 yesterday~ I love you and hope that this is your best year yet!! XO

I was happy to attend the Chicago North-RWA Spring Fling conference this Saturday. So many wonderful people there. What a great time. My talk on perseverance and perspective really hit a note in these hard times. I gave away chocolates, chocolate hand lotion and a small red badge of courage to the writer who had written the most. I showed off my horrible stack of rejection letters-from the rubber stamped query letters to the "Dear Sir or Madame" notes. Then I showed off the inch high stack of rejections since I've been published. Wow, it was rough putting that bit together. But my point being that if you are writing full manuscripts and sending them out, then you are living the same life a published author lives. (Minus the book on the shelf, but that will come with time.) I've heard this a lot and believe it to be true: the difference between a published author and an unpublished author is perseverance-which is a nice word for stubborn and/or muleheadedness. (Is that a word? if not it should be.) :) Cheers~