Monthly Archives: March 2012

Five stars for WEEDS AND FLOWERS!

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A reviewer finally made me cry. I’ve always heard it could happen, but I didn’t really expect it to. I’ve developed a pretty thick exterior skin about my writing. Yeah, inside I wince sometimes but outside, I appear quite stoic. Say what you will about my writing, I can take it. Immature, too much sex, not enough sex, trying to be something it’s not, never going to sell…whatever. I guarantee you whatever negative you can come up with to say about my writing is nothing worse than the negative voices I hear in my head all the time. I’ve had to ignore those inner voices, and I can ignore you, too.

So how did Dolce Amore of Booked Up Reviews finally bring tears to my eyes? Well, if you hadn’t noticed, WEEDS AND FLOWERS is pretty important to me. It was the first novel I ever wrote (and finished) and it sat unread and unappreciated on my computer until last Christmas. Then I did something I thought I never would. I self-published it, because an unread book is nothing, and I didn’t want WEEDS AND FLOWERS to be nothing. Still, sending something so dear to me out into the world was difficult. What if it’s not ready? What if the other books don’t play nice with it? What if it sits alone on the Amazon playground, unread, unwanted?

Dolce Amore, who has written very thoughtful and positive reviews of my other two books as well, set my mind at ease at last with her review, the first official review of WEEDS AND FLOWERS. The part of her review that made me cry (just a little, I swear) was this part:

It’s a wonderful story that makes you stop and think. It’s about love, loss, and life. So well written it makes you feel like you were there, seeing all with your own eyes. It’s different from the other books by Ms. Michelle Garren Flye, but no less wonderful. I love it and I rate it 5 stars.

Thank you, Dolce Amore and Booked Up Reviews!

Booked Up Reviews Gives SECRETS OF THE LOTUS Four and a Half Stars!

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I discovered, to my surprise, that Booked Up Reviews just did a review (yesterday, coincidentally on my birthday) for SECRETS OF THE LOTUS. I am happy to report the reviewer, Dolce Amore, liked it enough to give it four and a half stars. Yay! I am thrilled by the thorough job Ms. Amore does with her reviews, even going so far as to quote some of her favorite passages, and though she didn’t find quite as much to like in this one as she did in WINTER SOLSTICE, she did say it was “a lovely and wonderful story”. Thank you, Ms. Amore and Booked Up Reviews!

Celebrating My Birthday: WEEDS AND FLOWERS is free again!

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I love getting flowers. For my birthday, Valentine’s Day, whatever. I think it stems (pun intended) from my school days when you could get flowers at school and you’d be called to the office to pick them up. For the rest of the day, everybody knew you were special because SOMEBODY sent you flowers.

Well, it’s my birthday, and I can’t send everybody flowers to make them feel special, but I can do another giveaway of WEEDS AND FLOWERS on Amazon. Click here to download your free copy. And enjoy!

An Excerpt from WEEDS AND FLOWERS

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My bike leaned against Jeff’s metal building, but I didn’t know he was there until I smelled the smoke. I froze, looking guilty, almost as if I were the one who’d been caught smoking. He looked back at me, removed the white stick from his mouth and blew a smoke ring. “Wanna smoke?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” He turned away from me.
I hesitated for a moment, looking curiously at the cylinder and thinking about Marleen’s remark that Jeff was smoking “something”. Curiosity got the best of me. “What is it?”
His mouth quirked. “Just a little weed.” I must have gasped because he laughed a little. “Cigarette, idiot. You want some or not?”
“No,” I said, but I sat down on the wall next to him. The weeds had died back a little, but the spot still felt secluded. I wasn’t sure why I was sitting there with Marleen’s greasemonkey brother, but I was uncertain about leaving until I knew Marleen had returned from her chat with Brian. And it felt rude to sit somewhere else when I knew Jeff was already sitting here.
Jeff made no comment, but continued to smoke his cigarette and blow smoke rings. I admired his ability in spite of myself. “You’re good at that.”
“Lots of practice.”
“Why do you sit back here all the time?” I looked at the rusted back of the metal building. I couldn’t imagine the draw.
Jeff shrugged and took a long draw off his cigarette before answering. “Because nobody else likes to sit back here.”
“Because of the weeds and bugs.”
“Yeah.”
“You like weeds and bugs?”
“No.”
“So why sit back here with them?”
“I don’t like people either.” Jeff glared at me.
I nodded. “That makes sense. If you don’t like people, the only place to go is where there aren’t any. The only place you can be sure there won’t be any people is where people don’t like to be.”
“You talk a lot,” Jeff said. Our eyes met and I realized for the first time that he had very nice eyes. Blue green with flecks of gold. They reminded me of a description I’d read once about the Mediterranean Sea.

Breathing moment: Quotes about writing

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One of my favorite authors who I am grateful to be able to call a writing buddy, Ellen Meister, recently posted an inspiring quote from J.D. Salinger on her blog. You can read it here: Side Dish.

I’d never read this particular quote, but I found it very inspirational. I love quotes, especially by writers or about writing. When I hit a roadblock in my writing, I troll the internet for inspirational quotes. Every year I put a quote in my Christmas card—something that means something to me and that I hope will mean something to my friends and family.

Anyway, Ellen’s quote got me thinking about some of my favorite writerly quotations. One of my absolute favorites and one that I try to live my writing life by:

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” — Elmore Leonard.

Here’s one that’s a little less light-hearted, but one that I also love:

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” — Maya Angelou

That quote right there is why I rewrite and rewrite some sentences. I don’t know if I’ve written sentences that go straight to my readers’ hearts yet, but I’m working on it.

But I have to give one of my favorite authors credit for really nailing why I write, and why I try to write something new every time. Mark Twain said it best, didn’t he, when he said:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

I hope one day I will have broken new ground in the writing game. If not new ground for other writers, at least new ground for me.

Don’t forget to breathe today!