I've gotten most of my reviews for my first book, Wellington Cross. There are some really good ones on there and also some really bad ones. It hurts to read the bad ones, but there are a lot more good ones to make up for it. I've come to realize that you can't please everyone, and most people who leave reviews are either really positive about it or really negative. I share the good ones on social media to try and get more people to read my books. It's our best marketing tool.
I have a "day job" outside of writing, so fitting in time to write can be difficult sometimes, but I believe if you want to keep focused on the book you're writing, it's good to spend at least an hour a day (or five days a week; I often take weekends off). In that hour, I might do actual writing or I might do research related to the book, or I might write/organize notes for my chapters. By keeping the ideas and stories in my head fresh, it's easier to get to the end.
I have experienced not exactly a writer's block, but a writer's hold, I'll call it. That's when I know where I want to go with the book eventually but I'm not quite sure how to get there. To help, sometimes I put off writing for a few days and let it stew in my brain a little. Or I will take a walk and focus on my characters and what I think should happen next. Finally, one of my favorite ways to get inspiration for writing is to travel and explore a new place. Seeing new things often gets my creative juices flowing again.
Yes. I try to add real-life experiences in my books if I can, whether it was something I experienced or someone close to me experienced. In my latest book, Whispers From the Past, I did a little of both. I myself joined a small gym and we did many things together outside of exercise, including going to wineries, which I wrote about in the book. I also experienced an overindulgence of wine once and wrote about that in the book, too, through my main female character, Sarah.
As a child, I enjoyed making up stories and situations when playing with my friends or by myself. Then when I was in college, I bought a Southern Living cookbook with all these cool old plantations along with recipes, and I thought it would be fun to write a romance (I've always been a romantic at heart) novel during the Civil War time period. I wrote my first book just for me on an old manual typewriter. After moving to Virginia Beach when I got married, my husband and I liked to visit old plantations and historic sites and I began to imagine stories about the people who could have lived there. So I wrote again, Wellington Cross, which had been changed many times over the years before I decided to self-publish. It was completed and published in December 2012. Since then, I have added to that series, six-and-a-half books in total, and also wrote three books in a modern-day paranormal romance Angel series. I am now starting another historical romance series set in the 1700s.
