Yep, I’m counting. Forty days until the publication of my first book. Cool. Not much going on professionally right now, though my life is very, very busy. I did get a chance to go hear the very talented Nicholas Sparks speak on Saturday. Special thanks to him for taking a couple of hours to speak to writers and fans. He’s an excellent public speaker and a born storyteller, so I had a lot of fun listening to him. Unfortunately, this lunch was sort of a sad time for me as it marked the end of the New Bern Literary Symposium. I very seldom get a chance to connect with other writers and this symposium made me realize how much I miss that. I plan to seek out new opportunities as often as possible in the future.

Since I’m officially starting my countdown to publication, I thought I’d give you guys another taste of it. My publisher Lyrical Press has posted one short excerpt on the site. You can read it here: Secrets of the Lotus. However, that seems far too short for you to get a real idea of who these characters are. So to wind up this week’s update, here’s another short excerpt for anyone interested:

Dan shrugged. “I like kids. They complicate life, though, when they’re yours. Maybe when I find the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, I’ll feel differently.” He looked at her. “How about you?”

Josie hunted for the right words to answer his question and shivered, putting up her coat collar.

“Are you cold?”

She wrapped her scarf around her throat. “A little.”

“C’mere.” He held his arms out.

She hesitated then let him pull her close. He turned her so her back was against him and wrapped his arms around her, completely enfolding her in his embrace. For a moment, they stood that way in a silence he finally broke. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Josie sighed. She felt her body molding itself to him, remembering this embrace from the night before. She wished she could enjoy the warmth and comfort of being close to him without having to concentrate on what she was saying. “We didn’t even discuss marriage. I learned pretty early on he didn’t want to talk about it. The very idea of getting tied down messed up his artistic aura or something.”

“Dumbass.” His voice was a mock growl.

She laughed and turned her head up to look at him. “Doesn’t remind me of anybody at all.”

“I’m different. I never get a chance to meet nice girls. There aren’t that many that travel in my circles.”

“You told me when we first met nobody was out of your league.” Josie arched her eyebrows and added, even though she knew what she was implying, “Are you saying you couldn’t get a nice girl if you wanted one?”

Dan sighed. “Yeah, I’m as much of a dumbass as old Eric. Here I stand with the same terrific girl in my arms and we’re just friends.” He smiled at her. “Completely platonic.”

A rush of feeling washed over her, as if the Northern Atlantic had turned tropical and a tidal wave had overtaken her. In that breathless moment, she wanted desperately to kiss him. The feeling was terrifying and exhilarating at the same moment. In another second, he would bend his head and she would rise up on her tiptoes to meet him…

“Banzai!” Three shadowy forms flung themselves out of the shadows beside the sand dunes.

As a writer, I’m very interested in words. In fact, in my work-in-progress, I use this interest a couple of times to add a new dimension to my female lead character. She’s an educated woman who loves slang, so she sometimes uses really long words and other times she’ll burst out with a slang term that catches her friends off guard.

I’m also interested in the way words are used in the media. Of course, if you follow my blog at all, you know how obsessed I am with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Yesterday I noticed a report that called BP’s stopper and pipe mechanism that is, as of the last report I read this morning, siphoning off about 40 percent of the oil, a “contraption”. No really. And it wasn’t even on a site that should be considered anti-BP or pro-environment. It was a report on MSNBC. You can view it here: MSNBC.

This amused me in a darkly funny way. It was like the reporter was letting just a little of his/her own doubt about BP’s abilities leak through. I’ve read dozens of articles, possibly a hundred or more. The first thing I do once I get my kids off to school is have my coffee and peruse the oil spill news. I read articles from all over. I read articles by Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, The Huffington Post, CNN, NBC, whatever. And I’ve noticed a number of odd word usages, and some that made me downright mad. “Dispersants” as we all know by now, are chemicals, possibly as harmful as the oil itself. When Tony Hayward, Chief Executive of BP, told a newspaper that the amount of oil and dispersant being added to the Gulf of Mexico was “tiny”, I was enraged. You can see that report here: FOX News. An oil slick that is visible from space is not “tiny”, and we can only see what’s on the surface from space. Recent reports have oil plumes stretching miles under the surface. Not tiny. Not small. Big. Bad. Important.

No matter what the issue or how I feel about it, I look at the words being used. How do they make me feel? Who’s putting them out there? The media’s use of “contraption” might make me feel less than confident that BP can do anything at all to clean up the mess they’ve made. BP’s use of “tiny” might be supposed to give me a sense that too much is being made of this thing, but when I examine other sources, I have no choice but to believe my own eyeballs. I’ve seen the oil plumes under the surface, I’ve seen the oil slick on the surface. I’ve seen images of dead dolphins and sea turtles and oil-soaked birds. And recently we were allowed to see the oil pouring from the pipe underwater. It looked evil.

We’re being played by words. “Dispersants.” Right. “Tiny.” Sure. “Siphoning.” Maybe, but is it too late? “Contraption.” Probably the most true word I’ve heard in connection with this event.

Hey all! Good news, if you’re waiting with baited breath for the release of Secrets of the Lotus. Lyrical Press, Inc., my publisher, has posted an excerpt. You can read it here: Awesome Excerpt. I totally expect you to be online to download Secrets at midnight on July 5, 2010!

In other news, I had the extreme pleasure of attending two excellent workshops at the New Bern Literary Symposium on Saturday. My thanks to the Craven Arts Council and the organizers of the Symposium. It was so wonderful to have the opportunity to attend such high quality workshops taught by super-fantastic writers here in my own backyard! Speaking of which, a special shout out to the multi-talented, charming and extremely funny (!!!) Ben Watford and Diane Merlin, whose grasp of both the ability to write romantically and the reality of the publishing industry taught me so much. Thank you both for your time and shared wisdom.

Best to all of you, and may you have a fantastic week!

Oh, boy, I hope one of my journalism professors is reading this, because it’ll prove some of what they taught me actually stuck!

Wikipedia defines the “Marketplace of Ideas” as: “a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market.” I couldn’t have put it better. Well, a little more simply, the ideas you talk about the most have more of a chance of existing in our freely expressive society than the ideas you’d rather push under the rug. Make sense? In our capitalistic society, it should.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure some worthy ideas are surviving, and that’s partly due to human nature. We have a herd mentality. We’re influenced by our friends and neighbors and society at large. Often, we’re lulled into submission to ideas we really don’t care for by the fact that “everybody else does it.” Don’t you remember your mom saying, “If everybody else jumped off a cliff, would you do it?” Mom was right. We aren’t lemmings, even if we sometimes act like it.

That’s why I buy organic food as often as possible. Do I like paying $2 for a green pepper? No. And organically grown apples don’t last as long as regular, pesticide-sprayed apples, so I have buy fewer at a time so they don’t go to waste. But I believe that organic food is better for me and the environment (y’all know I support the honeybees!), so I do it whenever possible. Because more and more people are buying organic, grocery stores are stocking more of it and wa-la! The marketplace of ideas at work.

I’d like to encourage everybody who reads this (most days that’s about two or three people, but hey, maybe you can spread the word) to talk about an idea that’s something important to them today. And more than that, do a little research. Look up articles, post interesting ones on your Facebook page or Tweet about them, if you do that. My friends will tell you I’ve been boring the hell out of them with all the articles I’ve posted about the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. (I won’t call it a spill anymore — spill reminds me of milk, and that ain’t milk out there killing dolphins and sea turtles.) I won’t stop googling it anytime soon, either. It’s important to me that this subject not be swept under BP’s multibillion dollar rug. And if everybody stops looking, that’s what will happen.

So Google or Yahoo or whatever you do. And if you don’t do any of that, find a paper or magazine that has an article in it about something you believe in. Because, believe me, Big Brother is watching, but we can use him to do good if we put our minds to it.

Just saw an advance copy of my upcoming ebook Secrets of the Lotus and those are the only words I can think of to describe it! Stay tuned for more info about the release. I’ll pass it along to you as soon as I have it.

Sorry to take so long with this update. Work in general has been difficult for me this week as I’ve had a hard time concentrating on anything. Whenever I sit down at the computer, I have to check on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and I’m often sidetracked by that for some time. How could something so awful happen and how come it’s not on everybody’s mind 24-7? Are we really so shallow we can forget so easily about death and destruction in our own backyard? Shouldn’t Americans be watching each development with baited breath, much as we’ve watched so many catastrophes unfold before it?

But I digress.

Back on the writing front, I approved my galleys for Secrets of the Lotus, so yay! Now Lyrical Press works a little magic on it and turns it into an ebook, which is scheduled for release on July 5, 2010. You can check out a sneak peek here: Secrets of the Lotus.

Next weekend I’m looking forward to attending the New Bern Literary Symposium. I’ve signed up to attend two workshops on Saturday, including one on Paranormal Romance. Should be a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to it.

Finally, I’m still working hard on my next novel. This one’s been much more difficult to write than Secrets of the Lotus was, despite the fact that I’m certain I’ve got a good feel for the story and the characters. I keep finding ways to shift the focus a little and make it better, though, and that usually entails going back over the 40,000-some words I’ve already written, cutting here and inserting there. I can’t exactly say this one has been as fun to write as Secrets was, but I do believe it will be better. If I ever finish it.

Soapbox time.

Okay, it’s another instance of “not in my back yard”. But honest-to-God, today I watched my children playing on the beach and I wanted to cry. They ran and swam in the water and built sandcastles and chased each other around, laughing. So much joy.

But what if the time comes when that’s no longer possible?

It could happen and the thought terrifies me. By lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling in my state, the president I helped elect may have numbered the days we have left to play on pristine beaches.

The number of days we have left may be even less than you think, too. The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is growing by the day because Big Oil thought they’d never have to worry about an oil rig blowing up. Big Oil thought they didn’t need to have a fail safe.

Big Oil was wrong and the ecology and economy of at least four states are suffering. Fishermen can’t fish in oily waters. Fish can’t live in oily waters. Water birds can’t fly with oily wings.

Now scientists and environmentalists fear the oil will get caught in the Gulf Stream and be carried around Florida and up the Eastern seaboard. Thousands of miles of coastline may be affected. Including mine. Including the beach I took my children to today.

Right now I look out on crystal blue water. Seagulls glide effortlessly over the rich ocean beneath them. If I sit still long enough, a dolphin or two may pass by. How much longer do we have?

If you’d like to help preserve America’s shining seas, click here: Environment America.

If you’re from North Carolina, you can find more information about preserving our coast here: Environment North Carolina.