Susan Sands: Trying Something New

 Hello friends! I hope summer is going well so far. I love this time of year, partially because I'm not cold. But I mostly love it because there's a freedom that's a throwback from childhood and having summers off from school. No structure to the day, no place to be. It's carried over to adulthood for me as I've been a stay-at-home mom for years. Summers through the child-raising meant swimming, tennis, and chilling, with a few chore thrown in, for the most part. Until I began writing under contract a few years ago. Then, everything changed. Summer meant deadlines.

This year, by my own volition, I'm not on deadline to finish a book. I decided to take on a new project so different it has caused the writing to become excessively hard. Of course, I've had a helluva year as well, but this book is out of my comfort zone and so, so hard. I've recently come to the realization that I'm not doing what I do best. I've been trying to do what some other writers do well, but not what I do well. So, I've changed my goal for this book. I'm doing what I do. Don't get me wrong, this one has an awesome premise. It will be the best work I've ever done. But it likely won't be the book I thought I was going to write. It's going to be a mix of the two. A bigger book, but with my voice within my wheelhouse. I'm not somebody else. I'm Susan Sands and I write humorous Southern Lit. I've changed to a first person point of view for this one. The style is somewhat different, and so is the genre. Right now, it's not a romance. But in the end someone might fall in love. It's a journey book. A journey of a woman without a memory who must merge who she was with who she's been for eighteen years. It's a homegoing.

Stay tuned for more...

Now that I've decided these things about my story, I can't wait to write every day. I'm not avoiding my computer and spending all my time on social media instead of working. It has been an important breakthrough.

Have a fantastic Fourth of July, everyone!!

Susan Sands

The Best Kind of Distraction - Jeannie Watt

I'm having trouble concentrating lately.

And every time I leave my manuscript unattended...

...it seems to write itself. And not necessarily in a good way.

Introducing my new kittens, Lizzie and Fiona. Lizzie writes. Fiona likes tea. 

I'll be truthful--I'd hoped to get a couple of Siamese-mix kittens when I headed to the Human Society to adopt my new babies. The Siamese were all spoken for, but there were a pair of tabby sisters in the next cage over. One of them reached through the bars at me and that was it. Lizzie and Fiona became to the newest four-footed members of my family. 

I also got a two-footed member, Bitsy, to keep my two-year old budgie company after he lost his companion.

The moral of this story is: Do not get babies while on deadline. It's distracting...but in the very best way.

Have a great day,

Jeannie

For more information on my latest releases, please visit my website.

New Year -- New Books by Susan Sands

Hello All! I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season. We celebrated Christmas in our household, just barely. We nearly missed most of it due to my trying to finish writing the new book. I'd promised to have this baby finished by the end of the year, but too late I realized that the end of the year involved writing during Christmas vacation, which also included time normally set aside for decorating, shopping and cooking. Oh, and I'd made plans to travel between Christmas and New Years. So, yeah, Christmas was a near miss.

For the first time ever, the only decor we had in our house was a lovely tree decorated by my sixteen-year-old daughter (she did a fantastic job), and the gifts purchased in haste on Christmas Eve by yours truly. We did manage to make our traditional homemade cookies somewhere between my manuscript completion on the 23rd and Christmas Day.

Sufficed to say, I don't recommend an end-of-year deadline, self-imposed, or otherwise when you have competing loyalties.

I'm now in Louisiana with my parents for a few days enjoying the food and my hometown. Yesterday it was seventy-five degrees; today it's forty. My suitcase contents don't reflect the changes in temperature, sadly. 

As unprepared as I was for the change in weather here, I'm more than ready for all the exciting changes the new year holds as I prepare for the release of my second novel from Tule Publishing. I can't wait to share the details as they are finalized. I can say that this book is a connected  story to my first, Again, Alabama, and our target date is sometime in April.

I hope you all have a wonderful new year with lots to look forward to and celebrate!

Susan Sands

e-mail snsands@gmail.com

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/susannsandsauthor

Twitter: @SusanNoelSands

Blog:  Sweet Home Alpharetta at: http://susansands.com