Month: October 2013

It’s here!

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Dear Readers,

Giving Myself Away is finally here, published, for real!  I am going to write as myself today rather than Adrienne… She’s funnier and sassier, but she also gets into a whole lot more trouble than I do.  I’m the one with common sense.

I highjacked Adrienne’s blog today to tell you what it means to me to be published.  Until two years ago, I would never, ever show anyone the fiction I had been writing.  It sounds funny, considering I’ve had more than a hundred articles published, but they were all nonfiction and they were observations about people around me rather than characters I had made up.

With the help of a life coach (thank you, Cathy Colangelo!), I decided to make my theme for 2013 to “Put yourself out there.”  Whenever I had a choice to make, I applied this standard and went for it in both my professional and personal life.  I joined a small group of friends and work colleagues in a writer’s critique group and I remember panicking before emailing them my first pages, but they encouraged me to send more.

Then I saw an ad in Writer’s Digest for the The Write Stuff annual conference of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group.  I registered for the conference and met lots of other published and hoping-to-be published writers there.

It was here that I met Deborah Riley-Magnus, an editor for Assent Publishing who asked me to send my manuscript.  A few months later, I got a call from Les Denton, publisher at Assent, with the news that she’d like to publish my novel.

Since then, it’s been a crash course in “putting myself out there,” something that would normally be uncomfortable for me, except that I am willing to do what it takes because one of my fondest dreams from as far back as I can remember is to be able to bring others the same kind of comfort I’ve always gotten from reading.

One of the best feelings is to come home from a long day of work and know there’s a good novel waiting to get back into before bedtime.  Or to wake up early on a weekend morning, make some coffee, and let the characters envelop me in their stories.  I love finding the next book that will keep me company for a few days.

I hope you will enjoy Adrienne’s story.  She’s as real as anyone I’ve ever known and I made a promise to her that I’d do whatever I could to bring her out of my head and into other people’s hearts.

Thank you for your support.  If you’d like to purchase Giving Myself Away, here are some helpful links.  If you enjoyed it, I’d be ever so grateful for some good reviews!  The publishing market is huge, and books, like everything else, are sold by word of mouth.

Available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle format

Available at Barnes and Noble in paperback and Nook format

Coming soon to Apple iBooks, Sony Reader Store, and Kobo Books

GivingMyselfAwayCover

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Sexy texty and the single mom

gretedeangelo 1 Comment

Adriennes blog 8 oreosHi, I’m Adrienne.  The last time I was single, there was no such thing as sexting.  I doubt anyone would care if shown evidence that I have dirty thoughts, but I can’t help but mistrust men who want to get right down to business.  I sense potential blackmail in my future.

I have a problem with Oreos and pretty much everything else made primarily of carbs, so when I’m feeling virtuous, I keep an online food diary.  Since we dieters need support, you can meet other people crazy enough to keep journals of everything they eat.

I never thought of this as a place to meet guys, but boy, you better be careful of what picture you post in your profile.  Workout clothes are apparently quite the turn-on these days because a lot of guys on this site want to be “friends.”  The first time I got a friend request from a man, I figured the guy was on this site for the same reason I was, which is trying to lose those last ten pounds (okay, fifteen).

However, it got weird when my new diet buddy started asking me more personal questions, like, “If you could sleep with any actor, who would it be?”  Wow, to be honest, I had never even considered that because the possibility of sleeping with any actor was not on my radar.  I tried to be nice about it until he asked me whether I fantasized about him… uh, I don’t even know you, so… NO.

Then he proceeded to say a few explicit things to me involving parts of his body and mine.  I was kind of flattered, because let’s be honest, no one had talked to me like that in a looong time, but on the other hand, I was a bit alarmed.  At this point, I was really glad he didn’t know where I live.

Am I that out of it after being married for so long?

I stopped talking to that guy because he seemed too aggressive and even though he was older, it made me feel old to be so put off by sexy talk.  He didn’t even bother to ask my name before he got to the nitty gritty.

But because of him, I realized that texting men who live far away has its advantages and I began to be more open-minded.  I realized this was a safer re-entry into the world of dating than actual dates, both physically and emotionally.

Plus I have two kids at home and I don’t have to arrange babysitters or explain why I’m going out for dinner with a man who is not their father.  The only explaining I have to do is why I occasionally have a goofy smirk on my face for seemingly no reason.

Maybe I’m not ready for a relationship, but writing suggestive texts to a guy makes me feel like I’m still a woman with some charms.  You can read all about how I got dropped back into the dating pool in Giving Myself Away, being released next month.  Thanks for reading, and please share your thoughts on sexting.

 Adriennes blog 8 lingerie