Success Versus Failure: Pick One If You'd Like, I Did by Margo Hoornstra

"You can accomplish anything you set your mind to."

Those special words were spoken to me by my mother, almost every single day as I was growing up. That late, great lady never missed a chance to boost my confidence and build my self esteem. Her positivity worked beautifully too.

For the most part.

If I wanted something bad enough to really go after it, whatever 'it' was, was mine. Cool! Gaining the above average grades I'd strive for in elementary school, high school and college. Obtaining just about every job I went after in the work force. A successful marriage, four happy, healthy, well adjusted kids.

Then one day I decided to write a book and get it published. Oh, if only we could receive our fondest desires by sheer will of striving and wanting.

NOT!

Suddenly the people I encountered (read agents and editors) sang a decidedly different tune.

Obviously, they'd never spoken to my mother. They also didn't actually sing to me either. Didn't even communicate face to face. I can't tell you how many times I'd read those many, many thanks but no thanks responses and be sorely tempted to contact 'those people' again.

With a slightly different type of pitch that would go something like this.

Okay, people, listen up. I'm not sure you're fully aware who you're dealing with here, much less the woman who raised me. According to her, I want this, I've worked hard for this. My mother said, if those two conditions were met 'this' was mine. So, go ahead, reconsider what must have been your hastily formed decision to reject my work. I'll wait.

Yeah, right. Very professional. That behavior would have certainly gotten my foot in the door of any number of publishing houses. Don't you think? More like said foot firmly lodged in my mouth and half way down my throat. Or firmly placed somewhere else by those I was striving so hard to impress.

Eventually, I did find a publisher for my work, an amazing The Wild Rose Press with my first book Honorable Intentions, scores of short stories and a number of novellas.

Now I'm on the hunt again.

Perseverance, determination, desire. All successful authors have that. The stories of how so many successful authors 'did it' abound. Doctor Seuss was rejected 27 times. John Grisham faced numerous rejections until a small press picked up his first book for a 5,000 run printing. Even Nora Roberts didn't score her first time out. Janet Evanovich either. Not hardly. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

In addition to perseverance, determination and desire, large doses of self esteem are necessary, along with a smattering of insanity. With all due respect to writers everywhere, Albert Einstein said it best. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Well call me insane, because I'm at it again. Going the cold call query route, seeking a home for STOLEN TRUST, my latest completed work.

I've even come up with a tag line.

A parolee hides her past from a bounty hunter set on revenge.

Here's an excerpt:

Brad Collins rolled the old half-ton Bridges for Hire pickup to a stop in front of the sorry looking colonial and immediately questioned the wisdom of using small town handyman as his cover.

He had so hoped to keep this operation simple. Not take on what looked like the biggest remodel job in Upper Michigan history.

White two-story with a wrap-around porch was how the lady on the phone described the house. When they discussed a porch renovation and, according to her, other minor repairs.

Minor repairs my ass.

Jamming his left foot down to set the parking brake, he snatched the ripped piece of notebook paper off the seat beside him. This was the address he’d written down.  He checked the numbers on a partially rusted mailbox. Same number.

There was no turning back now. Arriving in Cascade Lake, his old partner's lead, one Harlan Bridges, was shamelessly simple to find and pump for information. Brad concocted a story he’d heard about the place from friends and wanted to check it out. Turned out Rest Easy’s owner had just called the contractor about finishing some old repairs. Bridges went on to lament the fact he was already short-handed, soon to be over extended.

One thing led to another, and damned if the man didn’t offer him a job on the spot.

Brad’s scowl twisted into a smile. What were the chances he’d run across someone willing to hire an outsider on a handshake and little else? No background check. No intrusive questions.

Making a fist, he crushed the paper into a tight ball he tossed to the truck floor. Most people in these out of the way towns were just too damned trusting for their own good.

Lucky for me, my mother, her positive attitude and precious words of encouragement still live in my heart, guiding me to success.

My days to blog here are the 11th and 23rd. For more about me and my stories, please visit my WEBSITE

A Question for Our Readers by Amber Leigh Williams

While pondering my subject for this month’s “possibilities” post, I came across an intriguing question I wanted to ask our readers here at the Roses of Prose. While exploring everything that possibility means to me as a fiction writer, it occurred to me that all roads lead back to the reader. Before I was a writer, I was an avid reader. After I became a writer, reading remained one of my favorite pastimes. Wherever I can find the time nowadays, I still love to lose myself in a good book. When you crack open a new read, the pages breathe possibilities. Anything could happen. And when turning the last page of a truly unforgettable novel, sometimes we feel a bit sad – a sense of longing that the story would continue…or we could keep reliving it word for word again and again. I believe this sense of longing is why we so often go back and re-read our favorites. Whether a book is good or bad, we feel a bit sad at the end of it because all those possibilities we were so thrilled to uncover in the beginning have been revealed to us. Whether we’re disappointed in how it turned out or satisfied that all the plot threads and character arcs were tied up, that sense of longing is usually there.

 

This all meanders back to my question for readers, just as a line from Nathan Fillion in an early episode of the television show Castle. When finding out that a suspect is suffering from amnesia, the lead character, Richard Castle, contemplates one of the few benefits of profound memory loss: reading your favorite books for the first time all over again. Think about it. We can re-read our favorites again and again and achieve some of the thrill and satisfaction we received from their pages to begin with. But we can never go back to that moment we cracked open their spines for the very first time and sensed all those possibilities beckoning us forward. We can never really relive the rush of watching all those plot points unfold before our eyes and in our imaginations. We can never fly into the unknown of these stories again and grasp that knowledge in the end that we’ve discovered something amazing. Just like falling in love for the first time in our lives, we can sadly never get these moments back.

 

This brainstorm leads me to my question for you, readers. If you could go back and read any book for the first time again, what would it be? Think carefully. If I could go back and read the Harry Potter books for the first time all over again, other than reliving my first love, I can’t imagine anything more exciting! How about going back and finding what seemed like the words of a kindred spirit in The Diary of Anne Frank in eighth grade? Or Pride and Prejudice junior year? Or perhaps I would go back to the summer I was fourteen when I went to my mother and complained that I was bored of my own reading material and she handed me my first romance novel – Carnal Innocence by Nora Roberts. That was definitely a game-changer. Or maybe I could go back to that book I read in third grade literature class that made me want to be a writer to begin with….

 

There are others, more guilty pleasures than those pivotal books mentioned above. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. The J.D. Robb books. (Rediscovering Roarke for the first time all over again? Sign me up, please!) Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s Ashes in the Wind. The Black Dagger Brotherhood. The Enchantment by Betina Krahn. Nora’s romantic suspense Honest Illusions, her western romance Lawless, or any of her Irish trilogies. Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon. Jillian Hart’s Homespun Bride.

 

I can’t choose. The possibilities are endless. Now you try! I’m dying to know what book you would choose to read for the first time all over again – and why….

 

Happy choosing and may spring shower you with many blessings!

Amber Leigh Williams

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT CAN YOU LEARN ABOUT WRITING FROM READING?

Vonnie Davis

I love reading romance. Now that I’m writing full-time, I only get to read a book a week. However, for forty or more years, I used to read two to three, so as you can imagine I’ve forgotten more characters, emotional angst and plots than there are stars in the sky.

Yet a few have remained in my memory. And those few, I read over and over to study why. Why did they make an impression?

I’m currently reading Linda Howard’s Mackenzie’s Mountain, a romance I first read twelve years ago and once nearly every year since. I read it last week and as soon as I finished, I started it over again, hunting for the “whys” of its appeal. There are point of view shifts within the paragraph. Dated philosophies. Said tags galore (my pet peeve). Yet, for me, the book creates all the warm fuzzies I want from romance: The strong alpha male and the plucky heroine who goes toe-to-toe with him.

Nora Roberts’ MacGreagor series is a favorite, too. She taught me the value of secondary characters, of weaving family into the romance.

Jill Shalvis is a master at internal dialogue. I’ve learned a lot from her writings, too. Her description of Wade in Slow Heat as he leans in an open car door to talk to the heroine is a lesson in itself. Thank you, Jill. 

While I also enjoy historical romance, some are so shallow in research that the story could be set in any era or any country. I love the stunning details of historical research that transport me almost from the first paragraph. Beth Trissel, Susan Macatee and Claire Ashgrove excel.

In her Plum Series, Janet Evanovitch taught me ways to write humor. I’ve read every installment, and every time I do, I sleep fitfully. I think it bothers my romantic mind that she won’t or can’t choose between Morelli and Ranger. Go figure.

Do you enjoy learning the craft of writing from other authors? What things have you learned in your pleasure time of reading?

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