A Life in the Day

Be mindful of what you say but careful of what you write. My parents used to tell me this as a child all of the time. It was likely due to the rather disturbing stories I'd write as a child of inanimate objects flying around the house and as I got older the "forbidden" love stories I'd scribble about on the dozens of notebooks in my bedroom. As a teen, I didn't understand why my parents were so controlling of my words and often rebelled against them in my writing. As I grew older, I realized why the pen is truly mightier than the sword and it's something I'm often surprised to find many people online forget. You can scream at the wind and howl at the rain but the moment those words are on paper (or screen) they are immortalized and the world's perception of you is forever changed by them. People believe what they hear but they SWEAR by what they read! Celebrities live with this fact of life as their words are often twisted in tabloid TV, e-zines and ...

We went to visit my aunt last week in Tampa and found that she's not been able to swallow anything for several months. Doctor ordered endoscopy and found a mass in her esophagus. They did a biopsy and found the mass to be cancerous but also found that the tumor had spread down her esophagus into her stomach. The prognosis is not good without surgery and aggressive radiation and chemotherapy. She's 70 and while she was strong in her earlier years, she's grown frail in the past few months. She's my Mom's eldest sister (Mom's the second youngest of seven) and the one she's closest to since they were born on the same day, ten years apart. Her lease is up next week and her daughter is moving them out of their apartment and needs help. So we're heading back down to Tampa this Saturday to help pack up their things. This comes at the heels of my uncle being diagnosed with Alzheimer's last summer and learning a few weeks ago that he no longer recognizes a...

2010 flew by in a gust of work, work and more work. 2011 proves to be just as busy... always a good thing! :D My clients have been doing fantastic this year and in the next few days we'll start working on goals for the next 18 months. I'm really looking forward to 2011! Many of my clients were debut authors in 2010 and have had great success with their debut novels including Kele Moon and Diana Copland . This week is going to be fun to get back into the swing of things after the holiday break. Have several contracts to finalize and queries to open up to... not to mention a slew of status calls and emails to my clients. Things at home have been going well too. We ended the year on a high note with the entire family at home for Christmas. Though, my brother-in-law ended up in the hospital with a bout of pancreatitis. He will remain there for a week but is in good spirits and should be released back to active duty once his enzymes return to normal. His base was hit by a to...