Happy Easter!

Easter is symbolic of new beginnings. Conveniently timed to coincide with things like dogwoods in bloom, longer days and warmer temperatures, Easter is the holiday I’ve always viewed as a renewal of my personal hope and faith in things to come. Please understand that my faith is sort of like the waves of the ocean; it rises high at times, falls low at others, but through it all, there’s a strong undertow that’s pulling me in one direction. I figure my early Sunday School education has something to do with that undertow.

So why, when my faith is being renewed not only by Easter but also by the fulfilled promise of spring itself, am I thinking of the end of the world? Could it be my old horror roots are seeping into my consciousness again?

Far from it. I happened across an article about end-of-the-world bunkers, designed to help you survive the 2012 doomsday many predict because of the end of the Mayan calendar. I couldn’t help but smile. If the end of the world really IS coming in 2012 (and I doubt we’d have a calendar to tell us so), do you want to survive buried in the earth? Could you hide from God down there — and why would you want to?

So, on the next to the last Easter on the Mayan calendar (and the Mayans didn’t celebrate Easter as far as I know), I’m renewing a resolution I try to remind myself of every so often. Tomorrow is never a guarantee, regardless of the date, so I will live today the best way I know how.

That’s right! My next book is officially “Coming Soon”! You can see its status on my Lyrical Press Author Page. I’ve had so little to report recently, I jumped at the opportunity to update my blog, of course, and I also made a slight change. The tab that used to be called “Secrets of the Lotus” is now called “Books”. For now it just has the Lyrical Press “Coming Soon” image, but I hope to have some cover art to reveal to you soon.

In the meantime I’m hard at work on my next two, ALWAYS FAITHFUL and DUCKS IN A ROW. DUCKS IN A ROW is still very much in a first draft stage, but I hope to begin sending ALWAYS FAITHFUL out into the world very soon.

ALWAYS FAITHFUL is really waiting for me to concoct that perfect query letter. In spite of all the advice on how to write the irresistible query letter, it is far from an easy task. If only there were an exact science, an ABC to follow! I nearly failed high school chemistry, but if I could pull out a pipette and a Bunsen burner to cook up a perfect query, I’d do it in an instant. Nobody would measure the perfect amounts of persuasion and enticement than me. No one would adjust the flame for heating my concoction more carefully, and when my letter was removed from the beaker, no agent (or publisher for that matter) would be able to resist. Every agent I sent it out to would immediately request at least a partial, if not a full manuscript.

Of course, if I don’t stop dreaming and get to work on said query, ALWAYS FAITHFUL will continue to molder on my desk and that doesn’t get us anywhere, now does it?

SECRETS OF THE LOTUS is my first novel, released in ebook format by Lyrical Press in July 2010. It’s received a lot of great reviews and I have personally gotten a lot of great feedback from readers. For more information on how to purchase SECRETS OF THE LOTUS, check out this page: SECRETS OF THE LOTUS. If you want a better taste of what my writing is like, see SHORT ROMANCE and FREE FICTION.

And if you want a tiny taste of SECRETS OF THE LOTUS, check out this excerpt:

“You told me once the lotus flower had some significance to you. I was thinking about that. What does it mean to you?”

Josie hesitated. Thinking he’d asked too personal a question, Dan said quickly, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“That’s not it.” She bit her lip. “I was looking for the right words. I guess the lotus fascinates me in the same way it has fascinated people for centuries. It grows in muddy water and blooms on the surface without a spot on it. You have this beautiful, pure flower blooming on top of mud and muck.”

“So that’s why it symbolizes purity.”

“Purity and spiritual awakening. And new beginnings.”

“New beginnings,” Dan echoed.

She shrugged. “Yeah. It’s silly, probably. I’m sure the flowers get dirty once they’ve bloomed. I mean, if a dirty toad jumps on one, the dirt’s going to stick, right?”

“Maybe.” He thought how beautiful her hair looked in the morning light. “Or maybe it’s just there, blooming perfection in the middle of all the nastiness, and no matter how the dirt tries, it can’t stick to the lotus blossom.”

“You should have been a poet, Dan.”

“Who says I’m not?” Dan sat back and took a sip of his coffee. He thought how perfect the lotus blossom was as a symbol of Josie, but that made him wonder if he was the toad threatening to splash muck on her. He knew if she ever found out about Morrow, she would think he was worse than a toad and he realized how much he cared about that now. He decided it was finally time to make some changes in his life.

All this is old news, though, right? Well, I hope not for everyone checking out my blog. I personally love my little romance novel, and I have lots of reasons to think you will, too. And if you do (or did) love it, consider reviewing it! You can post your review on whatever website you bought the book from or on Goodreads, if you’re a member. And if you email me a short note at michellegflye@gmail.com and tell me it’s okay, I’ll share your review right here on my blog! I’m that confident you’ll like it.

Amanda Von Hoffman, author of BEHIND GREEN GLASS, has officially joined our HONEOWP movement this month. Amanda is donating 10 percent of the cover price of her book to the American Organ Transplant Association. You can read more about her HONEOWP effort on her blog: Gossamer and Lichen.

Moving on, I should have an update for you on my own efforts in a week or so when I receive my March royalty statement. Here’s hoping we’ve raised lots of money for Share Our Strength. Remember you can donate directly to Share Our Strength and find out about their effort to end childhood hunger on their website here: Share Our Strength.

Also, remember that there are so many ways you can help support my HONEOWP effort. If you’ve read Amanda’s or my book, post a review on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble’s websites, blog about us or mention it on your Facebook page. It’s not just about selling books for us HONEOWPs. We want to make a difference doing what we do best: writing.

For more information about HONEOWPs and what we do, see my HONEOWP FAQ. For more information about buying SECRETS OF THE LOTUS, go here.

I have ten minutes to make a badly needed update! Sorry but the afternoon looks busy here, and it’s been MONDAY in all caps. Started out setting off the alarm because I forgot it was on and opened one of those “instant alarmed” doors. Then I took my eldest son to school only to find out it was a teacher workday I’d neglected to make note of. Sigh. THEN I make plans to pick up my daughter from preschool and have a “picnic” in the car with her and my son before her dance class only to have her decide she needs desperately to go to the potty when we’re parked outside the dance studio waiting for the teacher. I had to run her into the Italian restaurant next door to visit their potty, and a big thank you to the folks at Paula’s Pizza for being so understanding about a 3-year-old’s bladder.

So that’s why I now have five minutes left to update you on what I’m doing. Fortunately, it won’t take much more than that. Still hoping to have a lot of folks buy my book this month since all royalties go to Share Our Strength, dedicated to ending childhood hunger in your neighborhood, mine and the ones all around the United States. It’s a worthy cause, so consider buying my book. For tips on how to do it, check out the SECRETS OF THE LOTUS tab at the top of this page.

About two minutes left before my next kid pickup, so I’ll just say I’m having a great time reading all the latest releases from my friends. I demolished Ellen Meister’s THE OTHER LIFE and Kevin Wallis’s BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THINGS (more on this one later) and I’m loving CRYER’s CROSS by Lisa McMann with G.C. Smith’s WHITE LIGHTNING waiting in the wings. Gotta come up with a plan to get myself out of reading and back into writing, though! I’m working on it.