Monday, May 31, 2010

The Well

Today the well was finally opened. I sat down and realized that I have nothing hanging over my head: no classes to prepare for, no papers to grade, no meetings to attend. So I ran up to my computer to write.

And I did.

Oh, I've been writing all along, but not like today. The pictures were vivid in my head, and I was in the world. My world. It was so liberating, so wonderful.

So happy summer everyone. I know it isn't even June yet (tomorrow), but happy summer anyway. Do you remember that feeling you had as a kid when school was out? Grab onto that memory and enjoy life.

--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
Soulless by Gail Carriger
Rogue in my Arms by Celeste Bradley

Monday, May 24, 2010

Reviews

So that thing that was supposed to be resolved two Wednesdays ago wasn't, and it's totally distracting me. I'm not going to announce it here because I don't want to, but I could use all the good thoughts you have to spare.

Meanwhile the reviews are coming in for THE WISH LIST. I don't really know how book sales are going (they don't share that info with authors often, and extrapolating from Amazon numbers doesn't tell you anything--although I am obsessing about them) but I've had several wonderful e-mails from readers telling me they love the book, which thrills me to no end. For the most part, the reviews have been fair and I can accept them. The majority have been good. As for the bad ones...well, they happen. Frankly I don't want to appeal to everybody. I'd rather elicit strong reactions one way or the other. Tells me I have a strong literary voice. I know I should just ignore all reviews, but that would take a stronger personality than I have.

The only reviews that do bother me are the ones that say something like "I wish this or that happened in the book instead." Excuse me? It's my book. You want a different book, write your own. I can understand if you say my logic is bad, or if you hate a character, but it's MY story. My story goes just as I wanted it to (although I could get into a debate on whether my characters tell me the story or I manipulate it). And I like it.

I hope you pick up THE WISH LIST and decide for yourself.
--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
Stormfront by Jim Butcher
What I did For Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Soulless by Gail Carriger

Sunday, May 9, 2010

MIstakes

I've been so busy blogging everywhere, that I've forgotten about my own site. Oops. Sorry.

So today I want to talk about mistakes. In the past two weeks I've written at least ten blogs for different sites. The easiest were the ones where the owner posed questions and I answered them. But the ones where I came up with original content weren't too bad either. I felt it important not to repeat myself and send the same blog to every site (although I will confess I did repeat a couple of them because it's also the end of the school year and I'm crazy busy. Plus I have something going on in my personal life that's occupying a great deal of my attention but will be resolved on Wednesday, and no, it's not the puppy.) So I hope you've all been able to find me all over the 'net, and that you found the content interesting.Repetitive perhaps, but not just the same stuff over and over again.

As I visited the sites I blogged at, the one thing that irritated me so much were the mistakes I found. I can't believe the number of errors I made in my content. I want to go back and correct "un" to "fun" and take out the misplaced words and the partially erased sentences. I've done it all in my blog file (I keep my blogs in a file just in case someday someone wants me to put together a book on my magnificent self --Hahahahaha. Had you fooled for a second, didn't I?), but I can't go to someone else's blog and fix mistakes. So now I'm just cringing and hoping that people realize that everyone is human and mistakes happen.

There is a lesson in this. I really need to proof my blogs. But as I said earlier, I've been crazy busy and I didn't always have time. Of course I also believe excuses are lame.

And I do have a puppy.


Her name is Pixie, after THE WISH LIST, my book that came out last week.

--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
The Mephisto Club by Tess Gerrtisen
Devil in my Bed by Celeste Bradley