Marilyn's Musings

as Part of 4,000 Mile Cycling Trek Students Embark on 70-Day Ride Raising Funds to Fight Cancer (I received his message and asked what Springville they were talking about, couldn't believe they would be coming to Springville, but they assured me they are and asked me to put it on my blog--so here is the information.) AUSTIN, TEXAS (June 14, 2013) — The longest annual charity bicycle ride in the world, the LIVE STRONG Texas 4000 team, will be rolling through Springville on June 14, 2013 just 14 days after departing from Austin, Texas on to their final destination of Anchorage, Alaska. While in Springville, the 2013 LIVE STRONG Texas 4000 Team will celebrate and share Hope, Knowledge and Charity with friends and family before continuing on their 70-day journey.  Sixty-nine, undergraduate and graduate, students from the University of Texas at Austin brave the rain, sleet, wind, snow, heat and will pedal over 4,500 miles in support of the fight against cancer...

That is a good question and sometimes I truly don't know the answer. Is it fun? No, it's work. You come up with a plot, the characters and have to weave everything in together. Is there a reason for everything that happens? Are there any boring spots? Does the dialogue move the plot along and reveal character? Are there any surprises? Will the reader want to keep reading to the end? Do I make a lot of money? Ha ha. Maybe enough for a dinner out when the royalties come in. Isn't it frustrating when you read about these other authors who are raking it in? Yes. Are you even a little bit famous? Not really, though I do have some loyal fans. Then why, for goodness sake, do you keep doing this? Several reasons. First, I love my characters and I want to know what's going to happen to them nexts. The second reason is I love the writing community. I have so many good friends who have been infected by the writing disease and I love when I have the opportunity to hang ...

Most publishers want you to have a photo for the back or inside of your book. So what are you going to do? A professional photograph is no doubt the best. The photograh I used for years was one of those glamor shots where my hair and make-up was done ahead of time. I brought my own what I thought looked "authorly" tops to wear. I used this photo for a long time, until someone asked me how long ago I'd had it taken. Since that time, I've used photos that others took that I thought looked good. And that's probably what I'll keep on doing. Since I'm old I am never going to look like a movie star, but I do want to be presentable. Use a photograph that looks like you. You don't necessarily have to be smiling. Make sure the photo isn't blurry. It can be a headshot or a head-to-toe shot. Having a pet in the photo with you is always a good touch. Save it as a .jpg so you can easily send it to someone whether it be for a guest post on someon...

by Morgan St. James I’m one of those people who definitely is a workaholic. When I’m asked what I do for fun, I often reply that I write — and I read. How lucky is that? Being an author, speaker and columnist with ten books and over 500 published columns to my credit is something I really enjoy and look at as fun. Until last year I mainly wrote funny crime fiction. In the mid-1990s my sister Phyllice Bradner and I came up with the idea for the Silver Sisters Mysteries featuring identical twins born in different decades, different years, different months and on different days. They look like silver-haired Mae Wests and have a talent for solving mysteries, but lest you get the wrong idea, they don’t go looking for trouble, it finds them. Although identical on the outside, they have two very different personalities and lifestyles. One is a wealthy Beverly Hills widow who writes the “Ask G.O.D.” syndicated advice column from her luxurious estate. The other is an over-the-hill fl...

In a memorable Finding Forrester movie scene, William Forrester sits down at a manual typewriter opposite teen prodigy Jamal Wallace, rolls in a sheet of paper and begins to write. Wallace is supposed to do the same, but confesses that he doesn't know where to begin. Forrester mentors him: begin with a sentence, any sentence, and write. "No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!" Rule #4 in Pixar's famous 22 Rules of Storytelling is (fill in the blanks): "Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___." Put these two powerful concepts together and your imagination can turn a simple idea into an all-consuming tale. In my case, it was escape from the boredom of an hour-long commute. The radio had grown stale, the recorded music old, the ...