A week of celebrations

cj Sez: Today, March 17, is the start of a week of celebrations: St. Patrick's Day—a day when everyone can claim to be Irish. Wishing you a safe and happy St. Patrick’s Day.

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  The next celebration on the calendar is the arrival of Spring. It may or may not feel like it where you are right now, but I’m here to inform you that Spring arrives on March 19. Well then, my question is, can mosquitos be far behind? If you live where I do, they’re already here.

Now for the science behind the changing of the season:

  The vernal equinox is not a “solstice". The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, and the summer solstice is the longest day of the year.

  An equinox occurs two times every year—March and September—when the Earth’s axis is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun. It’s that instant of time when the plane of Earth’s equator passes through the center of the sun. That’s when the sun shines directly on the equator and the lengths of day and night are nearly equal.

  Seasons are reversed on either side of the Equator. The equinox in September in the Northern Hemisphere is called the autumnal (Fall) equinox, but it’s the vernal (Spring) equinox in the Southern hemisphere.

(Source Attribution: Various Google sites)

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  I'm thinking there must be a story in there somewhere. Here’s the story prompt: What if the instant the equinox occurred could trigger some kind of awful device that put all of earth in jeopardy? What if the world powers have hired the protagonist to find the person(s) holding the earth ransom, but he has only a few short days to prevent Armageddon? The characters can be in any country in the world.

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Mobile and near-Mobile readers and writers: Save the Date to celebrate:

  The Mobile Literary Festival at the Ben May Main Library is the place to be on Saturday, March 23, 2024. Come on down to see what’s going on at this FREE event.

  Here’s a copy of the schedule so you can pre-plan your day. 

  Check out the names of the prestigious presenters on the schedule—everyone from a NYT best-selling author to a Harper Lee Award winner to a State of Alabama former Poet Laureate.  

  And it’s an open-house kind of event, so come and go as you please.  

  P.S. The Haunted Book Shop will have a pop-up sales store (including some of my stories), and some local authors will be in attendance to sign your purchase.

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Writers, published and unpublished, take note:

  On Jane Friedman’s blog, the latest post by author Amy L. Bernstein makes “The Case for Pursuing a Traditional Publishing Deal Without an Agent.”

“But, dear authors, securing an agent is not the only path to getting happily published (outside of self-publishing).”

  Read more here:

https://janefriedman.com/the-case-for-pursuing-a-traditional-publishing-deal-without-an-agent 

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  You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same. Raising prayers for a happy and safe you and yours.

cj

Now some words from my sponsors:

  For your to-be-read stack: My novels, THE DAWGSTAR and DEATH ON THE YAMPA are fast-paced, thriller/suspense stories with sassy banter and a touch of romance. The books are available on Amazon or through your favorite eTailer and bookstore. Got a library card? You can read the ebooks free from Hoopla.

  TO ORDER on line from The Haunted Book Shop, contact: https://www.thehauntedbookshopmobile.com/contact-us . Tell them if you’d like a signed copy, and I’ll run down and personalize it for you.

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Get your green on !

cj Sez: Wishing you the luck of the Irish.

   I spent March 16 at the Mobile Literary Festival, and I’m sorry if I missed seeing you.

Carolyn Haines, Susan Tanner and Rebecca Barrett, the Madcatters who write about Trouble, the Sherlock of Cat Detectives joined by moderator Cj Petterson at the Mobile Literary Festival for a panel on "The value of shared characters.”

   The whole day was a fun event—complete with best-selling authors, a TV celebrity author, and the managing editor of a newspaper. We’ll have to do it again next year. Let’s plan on it, shall we?

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Tips from my personal How To folder together with points gleaned from one of today’s workshops:  

   1.      Don’t wish it, don’t dream about it, do it…Decide To Write.

   2.      Make a plan to write at least a paragraph a day for three months. (I’ve read that it takes that long to create a habit.) If you don’t have a story idea in mind on day one, start journaling. Whether it be a personal morning journal of the day’s plans or an evening journal of the day’s events, write something. You’ll find your “writer’s voice” in those journals, and you never know when the words in them might become the nucleus of your next novel.

   3.      Commit to learning the process … the do’s, the don’ts, and the must-haves, especially good grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills, either your own or a hired proofreader.

If you’re serious about becoming a published writer, those three bullet points will help you get started on that path.

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That’s it for today’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

Mirabel Campbell is a brilliant but bored scientist and amateur astronomer who wants to trade in her microscope and telescope for a career with a little more excitement. When she spots what she thinks might be a new comet in the California desert night sky, she abruptly gets her wish and her life is transformed into nothing less than high adventure. International intrigue, hired assassins, and a romantic hero with an Irish accent abound in the midst of all that fast-paced excitement.

OPENING EXCERPT:  I am not going to die. I am not going to die. Mirabel squeezed her eyes shut as the plane’s wheels lifted off the tarmac of the small landing strip on the outskirts of Mendocito, California. Her throat worked, but she couldn’t swallow her fear of leaving the ground with nothing but a thin slice of sheet metal beneath her.

NOTE: Print copies of my books are becoming scarce. HOWEVER, you can support an indie book store and order a signed copy of my books here: The Haunted Bookshop

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