Up early this morning, after a late night last night. First thing was breakfast with several friends, Sandra Chastain, Anne Howard White, Doreen Graham and some new friends as well.

Then off to the first workshop to hear Nina Bruhns, aka Nikita Black, talk about her journey as a best seller in traditional, e-pub, self-pub, digital and now indie publishing. Her workshop was called "Indie is the new Black: A Digital Publishing Pioneer Shares Over a Decade of Experience." Nina did not hold back, she told it all and answered all questions to the best of her knowledge. Great information, Nina is a spectacular author and great speaker. She is also a fellow member of Kiss of Death, got to get my little plug in here for KOD.

Next I had to change gears, settle my nerves and focus for my pitch to the Kensington editor. Pitch went well, got a nibble on the WIP.

Took me a few minutes to calm down after revving up for the pitch, but once my breathing returned to normal I went into the last half of Haywood Smith's "How to Write Comedy" workshop. Haywood is a scream and her books are not to be missed. If you love great southern writing and witty humor Haywood is your girl.

Lunch again with great friends and met new ones. Even found one blogger who actually follows Scarlet on Facebook! Imagine that, we were talking over lunch and suddenly she said, hey wait, I think I follow you. Sure enough, she remember reading about the release of "5 Easy Lessons to Improve Your Child's Reading." Amazing! This wonderful new friend has a wonderful blog that you simply must check out! Ravishing Romances is the blog and Musing Sallie is the blogger. Be sure to check her out. www.RavishingRomances.com.

Junkyard Forensics was the next workshop I attended. Sheryl McCollum gave hands on demonstrations of how to take latent finger prints and use super glue to make them show up as if by magic. I am speechless this workshop was so good. Heheheh we took a field trip with a black light. Ask me where we went.

Finally, I attended Julia Quinn's Dialogue Workshop and enjoyed every minute. She does not hate all adverbs. Thank you Julia. As MM will tell you, I am quite found of my adverbs. The structure for creating all the taglines, action tags, emotion tag and how to place action tags was great information for future reference.

The cash bar and cocktail party is going now, and Scarlet absolutely must make an appearance! TTFN

Today we celebrate the emotion that has inspired songs, poems and novels through the ages. Love.

Out of all the days in the year, why was Febraury 14th chosen as the date to celebrate? And by whom?

The tale begins in the early days of the Roman Empire during the short rule of Claudius II(Marcus Aurelius Claudius.) Each February, a celebration called the Lupercian festival was held to honor the God of Fertility. During this festival young men could chose their brides.

Roman was expanding. Fearing his men, would not want to pick up their swords and go into battle for the Empire, Emperor Claudius outlawed the practice of marriage.
However, young couples continued to fall in love and wanted to marry. With the help of Catholic Bishop Valentine who understood the power of love they did, secretly.

When Bishop Valentine’s actions were revealed, he was jailed and Claudius gave the order to put the young man to death.

While waiting for his fate, Bishop Valentine started to write the jailer’s daughter, and they soon fell in love.

On the day of his death, the young man wrote his love a last letter and signed it From Your Valentine.



*****
If you'd like to read a few great free Valentine stories presented by several of my fellow Wayback authors, please stop by my blog. Here's the link.
http://www.autumnjordonsnotes.blogspot.com/

Romily Bernard, a member of Georgia Romance Writers, is our guest blogger today. She's new at this, so be kind to her. Hey, girl, go for it!

Real life in our books?

Maybe it’s because my manuscript has been sitting on an editor’s desk without comment for the better part of two months, but everything is starting to parallel the writing process for me. Can’t get my dishwasher to work? Neither did my last hero. Husband recently set himself on fire? Yeah, well, who hasn’t envisioned torching an entire manuscript? Incapable of selling my latest project horse? Well, that one isn’t much of a stretch. Except it is, because we’re talking about Lucero here. Or Lucifer as we are prone to calling him when his owner is out of earshot.

It’s Saturday afternoon and Simon is using one half-finished cigarette to light another. “Now listen to me,” he announces. “I want you to sit in that saddle like your butt crack itches.”

The directive makes me pause as I tighten Lucero’s girth. Simon is especially evocative when nervous and half-lit and most people would object, but we’ve known each other for so long I only hear the prayer in his command. (Please, dear God, just don’t let the damned horse buck you off.)

I nod, because there really isn’t anything else to say. My prayers happen to be circling the same theme. It isn’t that Lucero is evil, but he is a problem horse. High-strung and opinionated, he kicks like the storied mule and missed my head by inches last week during a particularly expressive temper tantrum.

That being said, I like him. Very much. But it remains to see if the waiting couple will. The waiting couple has the checkbook and the ability to put another financial wall between Simon and a retirement spent eating Fancy Feast.

I hang back to adjust Lucero’s leg protection and Simon strides out of the barn with a wide grin plastered across his face. I recognize the look. Used it at my last editor appointment, actually. It’s the only shield you have when you’re about to present something you’ve made for someone else’s approval.

But for all of our worries, Lucifer did well. He trotted and jumped and cantered and made it all look effortless. Except for the corner where he did, in fact, buck, but Simon and I smiled it away. The couple passed anyway though, and the disappointment teethes on both of us as we walk our problem child back to the barn.

Their excuse was that Lucero “just wasn’t what they were looking for.” Put that on a form letter and any writer will recognize it. The implication is that there’s nothing wrong with Lucero. He’s quite lovely, but he still isn’t right. There is something fundamentally lacking in him.

Writing can be the same way. You can be lovely and still not right. You can do all the revisions in the world and still not be what they want because our fundamentals, our bones, our selves just aren’t “what they were looking for” and that is what scares me the most. We cannot change who we are and we certainly cannot change who we are on the page. The words can shift and morph, but the bones stay put. And what if that isn’t good enough? What if it will never be good enough?

But we soldier on if only because the alternative is to give up. After all, I have that new idea that just won’t leave me alone and Lucero’s younger brother is coming up for training. His name is Soleil, but his groom calls him Satan.

We have horse folks and writers here, so make your comments or ask Romily questions. And give her a hand! I hear applause and cheering!