School starts next week for one of my kids, which means summer is almost over and I’m looking back to see what I’ve accomplished. I had some really big goals, but I’m afraid I had to narrow them down a bit. I did manage to:

1. Potty train my daughter! (Yay!)
2. Finish the first draft of my work-in-progress. Now the editing begins.
3. Start shopping around another completed manuscript. It’s with an agent now. I’m trying not to bite my fingernails off while I wait!
4. Spend a lot of time with my kids. My oldest is ten and starting fifth grade next year. I know if I blink for too long, he’ll be heading off to college, so I’m trying to keep my eyes wide open and enjoy every second he can stand with me.

This season wasn’t a total wash. I’m refreshed and ready for the fall. My youngest starts preschool next month, which will leave me three mornings a week free for writing. I have plans to make the most of those mornings and maybe get away from the late nights. Late nights plus early mornings do not equal a happy mom, wife, writer, editor or friend!

Just a quick update to let anyone I haven’t already told know that I’ll be chatting live tonight from 9 to 10 p.m. on Coffee Time Romance. Here’s a link: My First Author Chat. Yep, you read that right. It’s my first live chat as an author. I’m a little nervous, but I know it’s really going to be fun. There’ll be lots of other Lyrical Press authors there, too, so come join us!

My good friend AJ Brown interviewed me for his blog Type AJ Negative, and it was really painless! No collapsed veins or anything but fun. Check it out here: Michelle Garren Flye Pricks a Finger and Kills Commas. While you’re over there, check out AJ’s other, much more entertaining, interview with author Steve Lowe. I’ve never read any of Lowe’s work, but I’m likely to look him up now. That just goes to show what a skillful interview can do.

Here’s hoping AJ’s interview with me has that same effect on others!

The amazing Kathy Fish, who is taking over the literary world one flash at a time, has done it again! She’s written a novel in a paragraph and the smart folks at Quick Fiction have snagged it. It’s up right now. Check it out: WATERMELON. I bet you can’t read it just once!

Writing is lonely work, maybe the loneliest of all arts. First, you spend months laboring over a novel, then you search frantically for a publishing outlet, then you sit and wait. After all that hard work, you wait and wonder if anybody’s even reading what you’ve written, or if they ever will.

Already, I’ve been fortunate to receive two very thoughtful and kind reviews. (My thanks to Single Titles and Happily Ever After Reviews for those!) I’ve also had a couple of people drop me an email to let me know they read and enjoyed the book. (A special thanks to those readers, too!) I am very grateful for all the feedback I’ve received, and it’s probably more than an author should expect for her debut ebook.

If you’ve read my book and would like to offer feedback without writing a full email or review, however, the internet and most retailers make it very simple. You can easily rate Secrets of the Lotus on the following ebook retailers:

Amazon
Books on Board
Mobipocket
Fictionwise
All Romance eBooks

You can also rate Secrets on Goodreads. If the spirit really moves you, write a two or three line review on my page at Lyrical Press. Every rating may help somebody else find my book, so if you’ve got a second to click a few stars, please do!

Just a quick note to let everyone know I’ve gotten a new review of Secrets of the Lotus by Happily Ever After. Secrets gets three tea cups and a heat rating of one. I’m pretty much okay with that heat rating. If you’re wondering why, check out my blog post from about a month ago: 28 days and the dreaded subject.

Anyway, check out the review for yourself: Happily Ever After Review.

My thanks to the folks at Happily Ever After for reading and reviewing! I’m thrilled to know it when people read and enjoy anything I’ve written, so please, don’t hesitate to send me an email if that happens to you. You can reach me at michellegflye@gmail.com. Hope to hear from you!

Hi all! Well, I’m one week post publication and staying as busy as possible to keep from obsessing about my book. After all, it’s in your hands now. I wrote it and edited it and subbed it over and over again until it found a home. Now you have to do the work!

As a side note, I did enjoy my first ever “book release” party, which basically just means I went down my Christmas card list and invited everybody and we had a great time eating and drinking and toasting my book. It went by too fast, though! Here’s a picture of one of the decorations I created for the occasion (I’m kind of proud of it!):

So what am I up to? In no particular order:
—Finishing up the first draft of my work-in-progress, hopefully this week. Then the long, arduous rewriting process begins!
—Pulling out an old draft of a novel to see if it has any possibilities.
—Editing for Dark Recesses. I have two really chilling stories waiting for my tender attentions. If horror is your thing, keep an eye on darkrecesses.com over the next few weeks. There are some really good fiction pieces coming your way!
—Figuring out what to do with my promotional postcards and bookmarks. Any ideas? Drop me a line at michellegflye@gmail.com.
—Playing with my kids! We’ve only got a little over a month left of summer!

Ha! Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun. Yes, Lyrical Press has released my book a day early, so if you need something new to read for the fourth of July, check it out. I also found a new review, and though the title is wrong, the reviewer was very complimentary. You can find the review here: Single Titles review. If that review so impresses you that you simply must have the book, go to this site: Secrets of the Lotus. And when you’ve read the book, drop me a line and let me know what you think. If you don’t have my email, you can get in touch with me at michellegflye@gmail.com. Or leave me a comment here. I’m looking forward to hearing what you think. I’ve waited a long time for this!

According to Wikipedia (Respiratory rate), the average adult breathes 12 to 20 times per minute. With one week to go before publication of Secrets of the Lotus, I’m determined to count a few of those breaths and make even more of them count for me.

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between writing, reading and editing. I know a lot of writers want a “first reader”, someone who can read through a rough draft and give impressions of what parts of the storyline do and don’t work. I had several good first readers for Secrets. (Thanks, guys!). My work-in-progress, however, is a different story. I am my own first reader for this one.

I really can’t believe how well this one is progressing right now. I’m at 64,000 words and I know what happens, where the characters want to end up. I’m a little surprised by the turn it’s taken, too. I thought the story would be the romance, but at least as important in this story are the main character’s relationships with the other female characters. Unfortunately, I actually fought that until I was three-fourths of the way through, so I’m going to have to do some heavy re-writing when I make my first pass through the manuscript. I really, really love the female characters in this story, which I guess is no real surprise. I’m lucky enough to have a lot of great, strong female characters in my real life, a fact for which I am grateful.

It’s funny, but I’ve been writing this story for so long, I have almost forgotten some of what I’ve written. I scan through it and am a little startled when I read something I really like — but I don’t remember writing it. It’s almost like somebody’s written half the story for me. Somebody has, in fact. Me from six months ago. Me from three months ago. Me from today.

So, as my own first reader this time, I have an idea what it’ll be like for anyone brave enough to read my book. Readers know only what’s on the cover of the book, not really what’s inside. To invest time and energy in the creation of a writer in the hopes of getting some small satisfaction is truly what I have always called a “leap of faith”. It’s a little humbling for me to hope that in one short week, at least a few readers will be willing to take that leap for what I have written.

Breathe in, breathe out.