Ah my friends, thank you so much for your comments and personal e-mails regarding my post Cyberlife.

So many of you were worried that perhaps my apology meant I would curb my tongue in the future. I can’t say that’s not the case, because as I mentioned at the start of that post, I debated for many months about writing it. Again, no particular recent event tipped the scales toward speaking out. In fact, recently my dealings online have been quite pleasant, because I’ve limited my exposure to the yuckiness. I’m quite happy with the groups I am a member of now, but I do occasionally venture outside those boxes and I’m usually sorry I did. In any case, just to clarify, I’m not apologizing for my opinion or for expressing it. I meant to apologize for wording my post and comments in such a way that they could be misinterpreted as one commenter had suggested.

I stand by my comments. (Just kidding! *g*)

Did you guys miss my Easter present to you?

My contributing blogger HelenKay has set up her own fabulous blog. *sniffle* I miss her already, but she says she’ll come back and liven up my blog occasionally. *sob*

Did I tell you about my Stepford children at the dentist? They LOVE going to the dentist. LOVE it. We got in the car to leave and my 3 year old says, “Mommy, I miss the dentist.”

Just a reminder: We’re doing a WORD Challenge in April. If you’re interested, think of a goal and sign up . You can also sign up simply to root the participants on , if you’re not needing a challenge yourself.

Also, the message board has blogging capability. For those of you who already have a blog, log in to your control panel, change the drop-down to say “link to external blog” and save so it will appear on the list of blogs. For those of you who don’t have a blog and aren’t sure if you’d like having one, it’s a great place to try out the format (keep the drop-down box on “local blog”). You can keep your posts personal or make them public, so if you have a public blog and would like one for more personal things it’s available. Just thought I’d let you know.

Happy Easter everyone. I hope the Easter bunny delivers lots of chocolate to your house.

I’ve had two days to absorb the news that I’m a finalist in the Golden Heart. Thank you for all the congrats. My hands have stopped shaking and it finally seems real, but I’m still blown away. The reason for that is two-fold: a) I was sure it would be Sylvia who finaled and not me (I’m not kidding) and b) I’d convinced myself this was not the year.

I’m a re-writer - one of those people who writes the first draft in a couple weeks and then spends months polishing it. So, despite all the rosy ideals I had when I mailed in my entry last November, I had re-written so much of my ms I was sure the GH version was crap.

When I heard I’d finaled, I was amazed …and incredibly touched that five judges - at least a few of them my peers in PRO - had read my partial and thought it was good enough to grace with a high mark. Thank you, if you were one of those judges. It was a wonderful validation. I swear I get tears in my eyes and goose-bumps just thinking about those 5 people liking my story.

Yeah, I know the GH is as subjective as any other contest (Sylvia not finaling is a case in point :???:), but it still feels good. It’s helped stoke the fire I know I’ll need to reach the finish line - publication - which still might be some distance away.

For those of you who’ve considered entering the GH, or any other contest, and haven’t yet found the courage, I hope my experience will show you that anything is possible. But you have to enter. You have to get your stuff out there.

Go for it.

My Easter gift to you. Enjoy!

There a few topics I swore not to discuss on my blog for fear of coming off completely odd sounding, but then I spent my shower (where I’m usually plotting my stories) thinking about this post.

I don’t understand the online romance community. Really. I don’t get it.

Annette McCleave, a contributing blogger on this blog and one of my fabulous cps, got the call this morning notifying her that her ms is a FINALIST in the GOLDEN HEART!!!

I read a book the other day by Trixie Koontz. Trixie is blond, beautiful, wealthy and living in a big mansion on the water in Orange County, California. The book was charming and well written. Devoid of flowery words and phrases. The pictures were pretty cool, too. But, ummm, Trixie is a dog. Now, she’s uber author Dean Koontz’s dog so I’m thinking she had a leg up (so to speak) on finding an agent and a publisher. But, still. We’re really publishing works by golden retrievers instead of, say, me?

…the Golden Heart and RITA finalists?

Here you go.

Best of luck and fingers crossed for everyone who entered.

Hugs.