A Journey Into Readership

I spent about three days this week traveling to and from Oklahoma to visit my sister and her husband for Thanksgiving. Everyone in our family went and it was my first time to go up there to see her. I went by car on the way there and by train on the way back and did a lot of eating and family time together in between. I had never been out of my state before. I have traveled to foreign countries, but not other states in the US, since Texas is so big that it takes a while just to get across it. 😊 Besides, I’ve never been a big traveler—I would definitely call myself a homebody. So getting to see the beautiful state of Oklahoma was a first for me and I am really glad I went. Soon after crossing the Red River I snapped this awesome moment of a row of wind turbines silhouetted against a low afternoon sun. Fantastic. Next week I'll post some pics of places we visited, including a Christmas lights show and a park with a waterfall. But I didn't have time to go through the photos before sending off this newsletter.

Getting out of the house made me reflective about my writing. Sometimes I spend so much time locked on the computer screen worrying if I am expressing myself clearly and communicating my message that I don’t think about people outside the writing bubble. Seeing all the people on the train and in the places we visited in Oklahoma made me wonder if they would be interested in my books. I imagined describing books to them and making a sales pitch—although I didn’t actually do this as I didn’t want to distract from the holiday time with my family. Many writing coaches recommend getting a really targeted visual image of your reader in your mind, almost as detailed as a specific person. While that focus hasn’t been 100% absent from the last few years, it hasn’t been at the forefront as I was more zoned into the actual mechanics of putting the books at a good level of writing. Journeying to a new place always creates a new story for me—and it also inspires me to get my books out there even more for people to read.

Review copies for the next 2 weeks are Victoria: A Tale of Spain and A Year with the Harrisons. If you complete a 5-star review and put it on 3 or more retailers, you can email me with your mailing address and links to the reviews and I will mail you a complimentary signed paperback copy of the book you reviewed. This isn’t an “incentive” just a thank you, and should not encourage you to put up a favorable review unless it is your real opinion.

Victoria: A Tale of Spain Review Copy
A Year with the Harrisons Review Copy

And there will be more updates.