On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent blog post:

Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no totally wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.

All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the messy times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself…

“How in the world did I get through all of that?”

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, author and editor Kathryn Craft shared a unique approach to the writing life. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

For the 22 years I’ve been meandering up Author Mountain, I’ve been taking what you could call the Johnny Appleseed approach to the writing life: I keep seeds in my pocket wherever I go, and sow them wherever my spirit leads me. Which, let’s face it, is often into a library, bookstore, or a gathering of writers—I’m a writer, so my writing life enriches all of my life.

In fact, if I knew of a secret elevator that could be taken straight to the peak of Authordom Mountain, you wouldn’t find me taking it. There’s no view! No interesting people! No…story! I’d gladly tell you where to find it, but then you’d tell someone else, who would tell someone else, and soon that elevator would be so crowded it wouldn’t work anymore.

Truth is, there isn’t even an identifiable staircase. Each of us must pick our own way up the mountainside, exploring the deer paths, rock scrambles, and switchbacks; surviving the backslides and flash floods; and appreciating the flora, fauna, and vistas that will enrich your life and make your voice sing. Only by following your curiosity and staying keenly alert for the opportunity that’s right for you can you build a career that is uniquely yours.

Source: Writer Unboxed Blog

Writers can find inspiration almost anywhere, and they don’t have to go too far to find those ideas. Checking Twitter or Facebook feeds, reading a daily newspaper, watching a movie or television program, visiting an art gallery, attending a workshop, eavesdropping on conversations…

Which ideas work best?

Sticky ideas…those ideas that simply won’t go away.

Once that idea takes root, it’s like a song you can’t get out of your head. You wake up thinking about it, dream about it, and fantasize about it. You can even imagine the A-list actors who will star in the screenplay based on your novel. You may seek validation from family and friends: “Don’t you think that would make a great novel?” Unfortunately, too many ideas remain fantasies and don’t reach the next step: transforming an idea into a premise.

Continue reading on the Soul Mate Authors blog.

I’m happy to welcome multi-published author Kirsten Weiss. Today, Kirsten shares her creative journey and new release, The Mysteries of Tarot.

What was your inspiration for this book?

I was taking a class in flash nonfiction, and we had to come up with a piece each week. I was stumped, and not feeling very interesting. So I pretended to be Hyperion, the Tarot reader from my Tea and Tarot cozy mystery series, and wrote essays based on Tarot cards and Hyperion’s imaginary life and clients. One of the other students in the class was a Tarot reader, and she encouraged me to turn the essays into a book. But I couldn’t imagine publishing a book, even a Tarot guidebook, that didn’t include a murder mystery. So I decided to weave in “editor’s” notes, with the editor experiencing a murder mystery that paralleled the themes of each card.

What is the best part of being an author? The worst?

I love the freedom–creative and otherwise! Being my own boss is fabulous. Not having a steady paycheck can be a little stressful, but I wouldn’t give up this job for the world.

Describe your writing space.

In the summer, when it’s hot, I work in my downstairs office. It’s got a lovely view of the hillside, and occasionally deer will stop by to check me out. In the winter, I move upstairs to my dining room table (where it’s warmer), and which has a view of Pikes Peak.

Besides writing and reading, what are some of your hobbies?

I enjoy martial arts, though I can’t claim to be very good at them. And I love cooking, which is handy since I have to make up recipes for some of my other mystery series! You would not believe how many scone recipes I’ve got…

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Keep working on craft. Don’t settle. Writing is a craft, and you can get better at it, and it’s worth getting better at it. I’m still reading books on writing and taking courses, and I suspect I always will be.

What are you working on next?

Right now I’m hard at work hammering out four Paranormal Museum mysteries. I don’t usually write so many in the same series in a row, but the paranormal museum is growing and changing, and once I had the ideas in my head of how the museum and its curator’s, life was evolving, it made sense to just keep going. This June 30th, the first of the four, a novelette called Deadly Divination launches. The next full-length cozy mystery in the series, Dead End Donation, launches July 31st.

Blurb

The Mysteries of Tarot: A Work of the Imagination

How to Read the Cards for Transformation

When Tarot reader Hyperion Night sent his manuscript, The Mysteries of Tarot, to a friend to edit, it was a simple guide to reading Tarot. Hyperion couldn’t anticipate that his editor’s notes would evolve into a murder mystery, or that his friend would go missing. Shockingly, the annotated manuscript eventually made its way back to Hyperion, who forwarded it to the authorities.

Now this astonishing Tarot guide is available as a book. The Tarot guidebook features:

• Tarot basics―How to manage different interpretations of cards in a spread, how to read court cards, and a clear and simple method for dealing with reversals.
• Detailed card breakdowns― Keywords, flash non-fiction narratives, and a deep dive into the symbols of each of the 78 cards of the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.
• Questions to apply to the cards for transforming your life―Insightful questions for each card to help you dig deeper into your Tarot reading practice.

Bonus feature: the guidebook also includes his editor’s comments on the more esoteric and philosophical interpretations of the Tarot, as well as his notes on the baffling mystery that engulfed him.

Gain deep insight from the cards, transform yourself, and solve The Mysteries of Tarot with this work of experimental fiction that’s part Tarot guidebook, part murder mystery.

Excerpt

The Moon

Messages from the unconscious. Mystery. Confusion. Dreams. Illusion.

Last night, I dreamt of a departed aunt I’d had a contentious relationship with. She walked down the hallway of my apartment and sat beside me in the living room.

Suddenly I remembered she was dead and understood I was dreaming. But instead of the dream ending, like it usually does when I become aware, we talked—the kind of talk we’d never been able to have when she was alive. She apologized for some things she’d said and done and helped me understand why she’d said and done them. And her reasons weren’t awful. They made a lot of sense.

I apologized too, because I hadn’t been innocent in the turn our relationship had taken. We forgave each other. I woke up feeling lighter. Free.

The Symbols

I’m still not sure if it was “only” a lucid dream or a visitation from my relative. I don’t know if it matters. It was all very lunar, very moonlike. And not just because the Moon card can represent dreams. Moons with their waxing and waning also represents illusion and confusion, messages from the subconscious crawling up out of the muck like that lobster creeping from the water in the card. A dog and a wolf, representing the refined conscious and the more primitive subconscious, howl at the moon’s light.

And all of those things had been at play in my life. I’d created a false—or at least incomplete—story in my mind of the cause of my estrangement from my relative (illusion/confusion). But the truth bubbled up from my subconscious in last night’s dream. If it hadn’t, I’d still be carrying that burden.

What Does This Card Mean for You?

When the Moon card appears in a Tarot reading, it suggests we may not be seeing things clearly. But the truth is out there — or in there, as the case may be.

How can you bring your subconscious impulses or knowledge into conscious light? The road between the two towers in the card is long, dark, and winding. Have patience. Be brave.

Notes: The Moon

As to The Moon, I feel like I’m swimming in it. At first my father’s death seemed like an accident, a fall from the balcony outside his bedroom. He’s been drinking more than usual lately. But the servants swear he wasn’t drinking that night. And the balcony railing is low. He could have fallen by accident.

I keep replaying our last conversation. Had he been thinking then of taking his own life? Was that why he’d come to see me? Because he knew I’d been a failure when I’d tried my hand at self-deletion? Maybe he wanted me to talk him out of it?

I don’t understand. But I’ll try to keep up with the daily edits, where I feel I have something to add. I need to keep my mind busy.

Buy Links

Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | Kobo | Apple Books

Author Bio and Links

Kirsten Weiss writes laugh-out-loud, page-turning mysteries, and now a Tarot guidebook that’s a work of experimental fiction. Her heroes and heroines aren’t perfect, but they’re smart, they struggle, and they succeed. Kirsten writes in a house high on a hill in the Colorado woods and occasionally ventures out for wine and chocolate. Or for a visit to the local pie shop.

Kirsten is best known for her Wits’ End, Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum, and Tea & Tarot cozy mystery books. So if you like funny, action-packed mysteries with complicated heroines, just turn the page…

Author Website | Twitter

Giveaway

Kirsten Weiss will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

Follow Kirsten on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

While reading Bianca London’s article in a recent issue of Glamour UK, I realized that I was unfamiliar with the 2023 dating lexicon. In researching the article, Bianca enlisted the aid of dating experts Eugénie Legendre and Dennie Smith and Relationship Guru Alix Fox.

Continue reading on the Soul Mate Authors blog.

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In her new release, The Answer to Anxiety, New York Times bestselling author and Bible teacher Joyce Meyer shared the following story about peace:

There once lived a king who announced a prize for the artist who would paint the best painting depicting peace. Many great painters sent the king several of their best art pieces. One of the pictures among the various masterpieces was of a calm lake perfectly mirroring peacefully towering snow-capped mountains. Overheard was a clear blue sky with fluffy clouds. The picture was perfect. Most of the people who viewed the pictures of peace from various artists thought it was the best among all.

But when the king announced the winner, everyone was shocked. The picture which won the prize had mountains too, but it was rugged and bare. The sky looked very angry, and there was lightning. This did not look peaceful at all. It looked like the artist had mistakenly submitted his painting depicting a storm rather than peace. But if anyone looked closely at the painting, he could see a tiny bush growing in the cracks in the rock. In the bush, a mother bird had built her nest. In the midst of the rush of angry weather, the bird sat on her nest with peace.

Peace does not mean being in a place where there is no noise or trouble. Peace means to be in the midst of all the chaos and still be calm in the heart. Real peace is the state of mind, not the state of the surroundings. The mother bird at peace and calm, despite her chaotic surroundings, indeed was the best representation for peace.

Source: The Answer to Anxiety by Joyce Meyer, pp. 102-103.

I’m happy to welcome back Wild Rose Press author Shirley Goldberg. Today, Shirley chats about second acts and her Starting Over series.

Here’s Shirley!

Since my series, Middle Ageish and Eat Your Heart Out, is called Starting Over, my characters are familiar with second acts. Their first acts ended in breakups or divorce; one character is a widower.

They all reinvent themselves, change their work, their love-lives, but also their attitudes about themselves. One of the biggest challenges, when you are of a certain age––as the French call middle age or older––is acceptance. This means accepting oneself as well as others. The time for molding others––if that was ever possible–––is over.

In A Little Bit of Lust, we meet the two main characters, Lucy and Deon, and their friend, Phoebe, at O’Donahue’s, their Sunday afternoon hangout and dance spot. It’s named after Donahue’s, a restaurant in Madison, CT I used to frequent. Yes, on Sunday afternoons in real life. There’s nothing like dancing in the late afternoon when the sun is setting on the beach across the street, and you’ve got a great view from the dance floor.

To show how second chances happen when you least expect them, here’s a micro-scene from the beginning of the book. Lucy and Deon, friends for four years, are dancing.

“I haven’t felt like singing for…a while anyway.” Deon turned her gently and pulled her in again, sang about rivers flowing and fools rushing. “I am annoying you, aren’t I?”

“Not at all.” Dancing with Deon was…intimate. Lucy lifted her head. His lips were six inches away, full lips.

“You have Elvis lips,” she said and put her head back down on his chest.
In A Little Bit of Lust, the characters have to work hard to come together. No spoilers, but second acts are almost never smooth. What would be the fun in that for the reader?

Author Bio and Links

Shirley Goldberg is a writer, novelist, and former ESL and French teacher who’s lived in Paris, Crete, and Casablanca. She writes about men and women of a certain age starting over. Her website offers a humorous look at dating in mid-life, and her friends like to guess which stories are true. A Little Bit of Lust is her third book in the series Starting Over, although all her books are standalone. Shirley’s characters all believe you should never leave home without your sense of humor and she agrees.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Bookbub

***Middle Ageish and Eat Your Heart Out are on sale for $0.99***

Buy Links

Middle Ageish | Eat Your Heart Out | A Little Bit of Lust

Help yourself to one (or more) of our favorite recipes: Appetizers, Beverages, Breads and Rolls, Desserts, Meat and Main Dishes, Salads and Soups, Side Dishes and Vegetables. All from the kitchens of The Wild Rose Press authors.

I’m happy to share my recipe for “Cranberry Muffins” on page 62.

Happy Holidays!

I’m happy to welcome back bestselling author Judy Penz Sheluk. Today, Judy shares ten facts that inspired the Marketville Mystery Series and her new release, Before There Were Skeletons.

Here’s Judy!

After a three-year hiatus, Calamity (Callie) Barnstable is back in Before There Were Skeleton, book #4 of my Marketville Mystery series. I like to consider these “Cold Case Cozies,” but while there may be no sex, violence or bad language, the plots tend to be more complex than a traditional cozy. I thought it might be fun to tell Joanne’s readers 10 things that inspired the stories. Here goes:

1. Marketville is a fictionalized and smaller-town version of Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, located about an hour north of Toronto. Considered a commuter community, Marketville is (according to protagonist Calamity (Callie) Barnstable), the sort of town where families with two kids, a collie, and a cat move to, looking for a bigger house, a better school, and soccer fields.

2. Marketville’s Cedar County, which includes the fictional towns of Lount’s Landing, Miakoda Falls, and Lakeside, is loosely (and I do mean loosely) based on towns in three municipalities/towns in York Region (Newmarket/Marketville, East Gwillimbury/Holland Landing/Lount’s Landing, and Georgina/Keswick/Lakeside). Miakoda Falls is the exception, inspired by my childhood memories of our family cottage on the Gull River between Moore Falls and Elliot Falls, with a hint of Fenelon Falls tossed in for good measure.

3. The idea for a series set in Marketville came to me while my husband and I were waiting for our lawyer to return from Newmarket court. We were there to update our wills and I wondered, “What if I was there to inherit instead? And what if there were strings attached?” By the time our lawyer arrived, I’d scribbled down what would become the first two chapters of Skeletons in the Attic.

4. Calamity Doris Barnstable is named after Calamity Jane, famous for her nineteenth-century Wild West shows, and Doris Day, who played a very fictionalized Calamity Jane in a 1950s movie. I wanted a name that was both unusual and could be shortened; Calamity/Callie just worked. I wrote a bit about Calamity Jane in the Facts in Fiction section of my website

5. While the series starts with Callie as an amateur sleuth, by book two, Past & Present, Callie puts her new sleuthing skills to work, opening Past & Present Investigations. Her first case, looking into the murder of Anneliese Prei in 1956, was inspired by 1952 travel documents I found in my mother’s closet, shortly after her death. My mother’s first name was Anneliese, and Prei was her mother’s maiden name.

6. A Fool’s Journey, book 3, was inspired by a newspaper article I’d read about a young man who left home 15 years earlier to “find himself.” The article was accompanied by a photograph credited to Ontario Missing Adults. The character of Brandon Colbeck, the missing young man who Callie is hired to find, is a compilation of several missing persons’ profiles on the site.

7. In Skeletons in the Attic, first published in 2016, Callie is 36 years old. I’ve always admired the way John Sandford ages Lucas Davenport in his acclaimed Prey series and decided to do the same thing. In Before There Were Skeletons, Callie is now on the cusp of 42, still single, but finally accepting that her self-proclaimed “loser radar,” is actually a fear of commitment.

8. I’ve also admired the way authors like Michael Connelly and Tana French take major characters from one book/series and employ them as walk-on or minor characters in another book/series. The inclusion of The Glass Dolphin Mysteries protagonist Arabella Carpenter, her ex-husband, Levon Larroquette, and references to other Glass Dolphin characters in the Marketville series is inspired by their work, and it’s been great fun to include these characters in a meaningful way.

9. We sold our house recently and in packing up I found some of my husband’s old university yearbooks. That gave me the idea for a subplot in Before There Were Skeletons, where Callie delves into her mother’s (Abigail Osgoode Barnstable) teenaged past after her grandmother gives her the five high school yearbooks belonging to Abigail. Callie knows there’s no such thing as closure, but she finds herself looking for it anyway.

10. While the police often make public appeals for information about cold cases, sites like Ontario Missing Adults, Canada’s Missing, and the Doe Network provide a permanent plea for assistance, a portal for families who are looking for information about police processes, or who may be hesitant to make first contact with police. It is my hope that Before There Were Skeletons leads to the awareness of compiled websites, and possibly, information on, or the resolution of, a cold case.

About Before There Were Skeletons

The last time anyone saw Veronica Goodman was the night of February 14, 1995, the only clue to her disappearance a silver heart-shaped pendant, found in the parking lot behind the bar where she worked. Twenty-seven years later, Veronica’s daughter, Kate, just a year old when her mother vanished, hires Past & Present Investigations to find out what happened that fateful night.

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable is drawn to the case, the similarities to her own mother’s disappearance on Valentine’s Day 1986 hauntingly familiar. A disappearance she thought she’d come to terms with. Until Veronica’s case, and five high school yearbooks, take her back in time…a time before there were skeletons.

Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqXVze

About the Author

A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and the Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served as Chair on the Board of Directors. A longtime resident of York Region, she now makes her home in Northern Ontario, on the shores of Lake Superior. Find her at https://www.judypenzsheluk.com.