I started writing a new book this week, I've written 8 pages.  I'm happy to have it started, but a bit distracted and feel like I'm not giving it the attention and "heart" it deserves....

Every notice that some days, words don't express a sentiment quite like music does?

I started my day off today with some super strange dreams....then on my way to work, I sang...and I don't mean a little, I sang a lot!  Loud!  and with gusto!  I sang this..

...this little tune just makes my heart happy...you know...that kind of song that just gets in your blood and is like fizzy happy bubbles coursing all through your veins?!  This song does that for me.  Also it kind of reminds me of "The Notebook"...when the chorus belts out "you're my sweetheart" I could just hear "Noah" telling "Alley" she was his sweetheart.

I love how a great novel/movie, makes characters real.  Like Alley and Noah are real people, and I know them.  Their voices are familiar to me, their story a wee little bit part of my own because of how well I know it and have connected with it.

I love Nicholas Sparks for writing it.

Did you know that the very first novel I ever read by Nicholas Sparks was "Message in a Bottle"?!  Yep, I bought it, I read it and then upon completing the last page, in a rage, I threw the book across the room and into the trashcan.  I don't believe I've ever been so mad at an author in my entire life. 

*laughs to self*

(No hard feelings Nicholas Sparks, but you broke my heart that day!)

I mean, what's the point of a great love story if one of the beloved's dies and leaves the other broken hearted?  

What was the point?  

Is pain the point?

I guess for me, Nicholas Sparks points out the cold hard truth that nobody gets "forever" with their loved ones.  One day, we all die.  Some people get 50 years together, while others only get 5....while others are taken away before it even gets a chance to get started.

Just something to think about....

Squeeze your loved one a little tighter today, bet they'll love ya for it!

Enjoy the video I've posted here...I hope it makes your soul sing the way it does mine.

Happy Friday.

~HeatherLynn~

It's a dark and dreary day in Northwest Ohio today....it's pouring down rain, then going to turn to snow, and it's going to be windy, and possibly tonight, between the wind and the snow have "white-out" conditions....

Welcome to Ohio in December.  40 Degrees today, White-out tomorrow.  My sister in Wisconsin said they were calling for 16 inches and BLIZZARD conditions where she lives, all of this and the apocalypse on Friday apparently....but enough about the weather.... *smiles*

Lets kick things off with a Television recommendation:

I've found a fantastic new television show that I am loving, and am quite addicted to and that's 

Downton Abby on PBS!  

I just love how addictive this show is!

It is set in 1912, England.

The mansion depicted in the picture is Downton Abbey.

The people in the picture are the family that live there, and the caretakers of the family and the estate.

One thing I love about watching this show is that immediately following or while watching the show, I cannot help but to talk in an English Accent and my text messages are oh so proper sounding!  I love it! *laughs*  Now not everyone loves English time pieces quite like I do, but I truly believe the show has a lot to offer any type of television enthusiast.

This concludes my television recommendation.

Lets see now, I've covered the weather...

Current Events....

Now what?

Love life?

Hmmm...what can I tell you about that?

Well the good news is, I STILL think my boyfriend of 3 years, Jerimy is the greatest thing since sliced bread....and it's not because I think he's perfect, or because I've put him on a pedestal so high that if he were to fall off of it, he'd die from the impact of the height of the fall.

No..no....I think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread because he's my person, ya know?  He's the guy that no matter what comes between us, eventually....he's always willing to reach across it and pull us back together....or willing to allow me to reach across and pull him back to me.

These sorts of statements used to be really scary to me to profess to anyone, much less an audience of whomever might me reading here.  It would scare me to death to be sitting here saying how wonderful he is, and then BAM, the next day he dumps me, or I'm swooning and he's thinking of ways to get away from me? I unfortunately have had the experience of loving someone who just never loved me back....WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD IT IS!

Nobody likes to look like a complete idiot, and nothing makes you feel like a complete idiot MORE than being head over heels with someone who doesn't know you're alive! OR someone, who doesn't or is incapable of treating you with love and respect.

To profess your love for someone is a sentiment you cannot retract once it's out there.

However, one thing I learned over the past three years of being with Jerimy, is that...I have to trust and believe in him, in us, and in love that everything's gonna be OK even when the FEAR of it grabs ya by the throat and starts squeezing the life out of you.  Does fear ever do that to any of you?  Just get you by the throat and make you act a little nuts every once in awhile?  

I'd like to think I'm not alone in this phenomenon.  Am I?

As a divorce' and a child of divorce, and in world where all my favorite couples are getting divorced all around me...it's easy to be a scared-ey cat when it comes to love, and commitment, etc.

And God knows I used to be!!  

When I got divorced, wow was I sketchy! *laughs to self*

THE LAST thing I wanted was to FALL IN LOVE....

What a scary notion.

I was just never going to do that again.

I was no masochist, no way was I going to give my heart away and have it ground up in a meat grinder again!

And then years later....years of not allowing myself to be committed to ANYTHING or ANYONE....

My little old, now deceased dodge neon needed a timing belt.

Easily an $800 job, and I was a single broke girl living pay check to paycheck like most single broke girls.

So my friend Jim says to me one day...."hey, I bet my friend Beef might be able to do it for you cheaper!"

and I said "Beef?  Like the Beef I went to school with?  My classmate?"

"Yeah, that's him....I'll ask him"

One timing belt later, and oh, like 400 text messages later, yeah, I was feeling that twinge of un-explainable joy every time I got a text from him.

I'd not seen the guy in years, and when I finally went to pick my vehicle up, and I saw him for that first time after so many years had passed, yep, I was done.  Right then.  Put a fork in me, it was over for me then and there.  As crazy as that sounds!

It didn't happen over night for him though however, it took MONTHS, nearly A YEAR to finally start DATING the stubborn mule of a man, but eventually, I think I grew on him, and we've been together ever since.  THANK GOD!

We have our share of discord with each other, we've had our ups and downs, but what makes this relationship different than any other I've ever been in....I always love him MORE than whatever bothers us.

And I always ask myself in every situation, "if you did this to him, how would you want him to react to you?" That seems to really help keep me on a good track.

Plus it helps that he has THE MOST AWESOME smile in the whole world, so I do my best EVERY day to keep that smile on his face....and surprisingly, that NEVER gets exhausting to me.  Challenging sometimes, but never exhausting.

If we would break up tomorrow, I'd never regret a single moment we had together, and that's not fluff, that's the God's honest truth.

So there you have it, the weather, an apocalypse, love....what's left?

Oh, BOOKS...OMG, I nearly forgot, ya'll don't care about my love life, the weather or that we all might die tomorrow....I'm supposed to be writing about "book stuff" here....

Um, lets see..book stuff.....book stuff....

*rubs temples thinking*

Um, I don't know if you've heard,

but I wrote a book.

Yeah, no joke!

It's getting good reviews on Amazon

and

it's cold outside, good time to read probably...

So yeah, maybe uhhh....buy one today?

To Amazon we go! {just click here}

That's all I got.

I'm so not a salesman!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

~HeatherLynn~

Being an Author

BEING AN AUTHOR.....is a scary thing.  It truly is your heart and soul and sweat and tears on paper for all the world to see...and to put it out there knowing that you're opening yourself up to unknown response, well, to say the least it's frightening.

I've had people stopping by the house all this week to pick up their book orders and they all want to know "so how does it feel to be a published Author"....and somehow I feel that telling them I'm scared shitless is likely not the answer they're looking for.

Granted "Scared shitless" isn't the only feeling of course, you go through a ton of different emotions, excitement, joy, RELIEF every time someone you know is reading it tells you that they enjoyed it instead of hated it, giddiness, you have HOPE that the little novel will find itself in hands of unknown parties who also enjoy it and then pass it on to someone they know and love.  But to know that so many people have MY story in their hands and heads, well it's humbling to say the least.

My main goal, when asked by my Chief Editor what my goal for publishing the book would be, I said, I'd like to sell one book that wasn't to my mother.  She laughed.  I revised and said "ok, ok, I want to sell enough books to buy a Jack's Pizza"....again she laughed and said "seriously, what do you hope to get out of this?  Big picture?"

And honestly  I had no idea how any of this would go, so me being me, I said "seriously, I want to sell ONE book, that's not to my mother!"  And folks, I've done that.  From here on out, if I don't sell another book, I can say that I met my goal.  I accomplished what I set out to do.

Now you might say, but wait, that's not exactly a very hefty goal....ah, but yes, I assure you it is....let me explain, in order to sell ONE book to someone that wasn't my mother, I had to first write a novel, and then re-write it in some parts.  And then fix anything wrong with it story wise...check for congruentcy, edit it at least five times myself, before passing it along to my chief editor Rachel, who then edited it at least 279 times before passing it to my second Editor Deb, who then meticulously went over each and every word 421 times.  I had to come up with a concept for the cover photo, drive around on my motorcycle for miles looking for "ditchy" type locations, find the perfect location, obtain a model, have a photo cover shoot, find a make-up artist to rough her up, drive 17 miles to Bloody Bridge, throw my model on a bunch of rocks on the canal bank and then get "THE PERFECT SHOT", followed by at least 8 hours of photo editing.  Then Theresa my graphic artist spent her precious time editing my edited pictures to make them into cover quality finished products and formatted into a print ready cover!

There were approximately 3,000 emails that got exchanged, 100 hours of phone calls and meetings, 400 cups of coffee consumed, 23 hours of sleep lost, 15 panic attacks, 46 forehead bangs on desktops and walls, Rach must of lost her voice 5 times in the course of all of this, Deb lost five pounds from the stress....Mike (my IT/publishing guy) likely cursed my name and 'diad''s name 29 times over the course of 3 hours and my poor dog "Chubs" probably had 2 accidents in the house because I was so enthralled with "book stuff" that I forgot to let him out in time!  And I might as well not lie, I might of missed a couple hair shampoos in there as well!

All of that, to sell one copy.....or enough to buy one pizza. *laughs*  yeah, I wasn't expecting much when it came to sales, but if I made one sale...just one sale...I would feel like a success.

Mike, Rachel, Deborah, Theresa, Sami,...the other Rachel....we all have something to be proud of, because we did better than sell one copy...in under two weeks, we've sold close to 200 books!  Now maybe those kind of numbers will NEVER make the New York Times Best Sellers list turn and look in my direction, but who the heck cares, we have sold nearly 200 books in a week and a half!  that's not just awesome, it's miraculous!  MIRACULOUS I tell you!

The holidays are a magical time, full of love and laughter, warm houses, cold noses and the spirit of giving is everywhere...and I cannot tell you all how thankful I am for each and every one of you who purchased the book, and made not just mine, but Rachel's and Mike's and Deborah's and Theresa's and Sami's and the other Rachel's hard work....SO VERY WORTH the effort!

With warmest wishes

and the holiday spirit,

I thank you.

~HeatherLynn~

Day #2

It's 6:51 a.m. ... I cannot sleep.  Excitement and nervous happy energy is coursing through my veins.  Yesterday 23 people bought the e-book....enough to get me on the New York Times best seller list...no, who cares about best sellers lists when 23 new people are reading my heart and soul on paper!  That's just, so...., so.....well it's the kind of thing that makes a writer unable to sleep in like she wanted to, up at six in the morning, typing feverishly away to you all because if she doesn't, pacing my begin to occur.

For those of you who've left me a nice comment, or have bought or ordered a copy of the book, I want you to know that you have single handed-ly given me something to be so happy, so ecstatic about that I may not stop smiling until 2020!  I so sincerely hope you know that I take each and every one of your comments, emails, texts, whatever the form, and I cherish the kind words and encouragement you've given me.

It will be these warm words and encouragement that I will need to re-read when I get my first bad review....everyone gets bad reviews, and I must prepare myself for the first "I HATED THIS BOOK, THIS WRITER SHOULD NEVER WRITE ANYTHING AGAIN" comment that I'm bracing to receive.

In the meantime though, I'll share with you the review/text message I received on my phone this morning:

"I'm finished and the only question i have is when does book #2 come out???  I honestly don't think I've ever read an entire book in one day...def. not with two kids running around!  But I could not put it down!  Best book I've ever read and I'm not just saying that because you wrote it.  Great Job!  Love you!!!"

So yeah, after reading that, i was so giddy, there was no way I was going back to sleep when Jerimy left for work, leaving me laying in his bed, unable to control my enthusiasm.  So here I sit, writing to you, contemplating coffee.....checking email to find I have a new twitter follower and feeling sorry for him because I'm not a savvy twitter-er....I checked my amazon account and see that I sold two additional books last night!  Couldn't be happier to see that.  And in a few hours, I'm meeting nearly the entire female population of my family on my mom's side at Baked to Perfection for breakfast, where to celebrate the wondrous week I've had I'm going to order a thick wheat toast egg, colby cheese and sausage sandwich, and a tall glass of milk on the rocks!  And who knows, due to it being a celebration, I may get wild and get me a chai tea latte too!  Why the hell not!!?!? :)

Yesterday, I put the order in for all the paperback books you guys requested, and they are saying that they should arrive here to me, by December 20th!  I close my eyes and think about what it's going to be like to open that box, and see 85 of my little baby diad's bundled up in there...I'm not going to lie, I will probably cry..and then tell everyone or anyone who might witness this that my allergies are really acting up again!  That one always is a go-to excuse of choice when I get weepy around people at my job.

Last night my old classmate and friend Eric sent me a facebook message and said congrats on the book and that he hoped I was out celebrating the occasion...I said "Does sitting on the couch watching Jerimy do the dishes while also watching a dvr'ed old CMT Top Twenty Countdown count as celebrating?"

I'm kind of holding off on "celebrating" until the books arrive and I can hold one in my hand...ya know?  Like hold it, smell it, touch it, feel the paper between my fingers....perhaps THEN this will seem real to me.  As of right now, it still seems like "is this really happening?  Is my book really on Amazon?"  If someone pinched me, and POOF, I woke up to realize that this was all just a dream, it wouldn't surprise me.  Not that I'm a pessimist by any means, but seriously, how often do you dream your whole life of doing something, something that you feel is extraordinary....and far above your capabilities, and then actually just do it!??!  When I told my cousin Rachel I was writing a book, and she said, you should try and get it published, I was like all, "no....it's not good enough for that...it's just something I was messing around with for fun, I'm not Dean Koontz or Stephenie Meyer over here...."  But Rachel wouldn't take no for an answer, she assured me that it would be fun, it would be just a little project of ours that we'd use as an excuse to drink coffee together and talk book/shop, like real writers and editors do! *smiles*...

Hey Rach, um, our little project's on Amazon!!!  I know, I know, I don't believe it either! ahahhahahhah

Ok, ok, enough rambling, I think I'm going in the kitchen to make coffee now....my dog Chubs is up and sitting next to me really looking like he needs some petting...so I better hop-to!

{you cannot ignore a face like this}

It was so nice spending my morning with you, Have a great weekend everyone!!

Hugs & Luv,

~HeatherLynn~

The day Has finally arrived:

Dead in a Ditch

is

officially

for 

sale

on

Amazon

as

an

E-book!!

Click Here to go to Amazon's Order Page

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the book should you decide to read it!

And thank you thank you thank you for all of your support, love and encouragement over the last couple years of working on this project!

It means a great, great deal to me!

All my Love,
~Heather Lynn~