Got shot yesterday, as part of an article for the local paper, and thought you’d like to see a fun photo of Ramona, my office manager–and oh, yeah, me! Enjoyed having our friend Julie from the News-Trib do the shoot, as she has FIVE dogs, so Ramona approved of her immediately! Note the smile on her face! You can’t help but love this dog!

I was pleased to be interviewed for this upcoming article, which tells the pleasures and pitfalls of being published, whether in traditional press form or by the self-publishing route. It was a chance to speak out and warn wannabe pubbed writers about NOT paying a vanity press to print your books, charge you a bundle, and then dump them on your doorstep!

If you, too, would like to see info on that, Novelist’s Inc. has a great position paper on our site: www.ninc.com, and click on the link “NINC Speaks Out on Recent Developments in the Publishing Industry”.

And if you only want to gaze at Ramona’s sweet smile to brighten your day, that’s fine, too! That collage in the background features the faces in my upcoming Amish series, Seasons of the Heart! These are the characters who will keep staring–er, watching over me as I write the first book of that series, SUMMER OF SECRETS. Due out January of 2011–and THAT’S something to smile about, too!

Have a good one!

As I begin a new Amish series of squeaky-clean romances, the kind Beverly Lewis and Cindy Woodsmall have so successfully published, I delve into the secrets and temptations and human inclinations that my characters try to hide from God…the sides of our souls that scurry from the light. Envy, greed, unforgiving hearts, succumbing to temptation…we’re all in there! Our dark sides are never out of reach, really, and my characters in Willow Ridge will strive to admit and reconcile these tendencies.

But sometimes…we feed our temptations, don’t we?! Like this morning, when I rifled through my recipe box looking for something healthy and saw a cookie recipe instead!
And rather than moralize or delve any further into the human condition, I’ll simply say: DARK CHOCOLATE. It’s all you really need to know about heavenly decadence.

Here’s a recipe I revamped, that would delight my Amish baking ladies. Devour a couple of these sinfully delicious dark-on-dark cookies and I’m guessing you’ll see the light (or you’ll just keep snarfing them and think “Hey–temptation! Is that a BAD thing?!”

DARK-ON-DARK COOKIES

1 ¼ C. butter or margarine, softened
2 C. sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 C. flour
¾ C. Hershey Special Dark cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
1 bag Hershey Special Dark chocolate chips.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter/margarine and sugar, then blend in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients and mix into the dough, adding the chocolate chips last. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased/parchment papered baking sheets and bake 8-9 minutes. Cookies will be soft and puffy. Allow to cool on the sheets about a minute, until they settle around the chips, and then cool on a rack. About 5 dozen.

Wow, it’s been waayyyy too long since I posted here, but in the past month I’ve had a VERY busy head life! More on that–but right now, stop and inhale the lilacs! When I went to Google for this image, I could’ve chose from 56,400 of them! Which tells me I’m not the only fan of these quaint but gorgeous flowers. Our neighborhood is in full bloom right now, with redbud trees, lilacs, tulips, spirea–and oh, yeah, oak pollen…

Moving away from that before I make you sneeze!

Since my March 8 birthday–when my agent lunched with one of my editors and presented a series idea she loved!–I have plotted/collaged SIX new books for TWO new series, as well as submitting the next book in my Love Secrets series to that new editor. My brain is AGOG with all these ideas, but one series proposal is turned in and I only need to write some chapters of the remaining new series to get that one rolling. So while I have not been writing *here*, I have most definitely been conjuring!

Even MORE fun: I got an iPad, on the FIRST day they delivered! This is SO not me, as technology is not my first love. But wow, am I excited and hooked on this! Fits in my purse. Got the wireless keyboard so I can write on it–taking it on our 15-day Panama Canal cruise next week and am totally jazzed! This is my little reward for not ever buying a laptop I wasn’t totally needing, and not spending my bucks on an iPhone when everyone else did: I now have precisely the device I want, lightweight enough to be practical for travel–AND it’s a business expense!

That’s the short version of what’s been happening lately! If I sound really happy and bubbly and glad to be living this life, doing what I love–it’s because I am! And I wish you all the same kind of wonderfulness! Have a fabulous spring! More after my cruise!

The crocus are coming! The crocus are coming!

This morning on our walk, Ramona and I saw lots of these cute little purple blooms, with daffodil leaves shooting up nearby! What a great start for a Sunday morning which was warm enough to stroll with a light jacket–no earmuffs or gloves!

I send this out especially to family and friends buried beneath 40-50″ of snow, in Iowa and Pennsylvania: you, too, will see flowers again someday! For now, enjoy these!

Right now I feel the way this beautiful fairy tern looks: soaring on the current, rejuvenated by the sea air…yessirree, it feels GOOD to send a completed manuscript off to my editor!! I entrusted it to FedEx on Wednesday and have given myself a day or two away from writing to catch up on other stuff!

But this fairy tern also gives us a sense of knowing its own POWER…and that’s my goal now as I approach a birthday, and come to the table for new contracts with ALL of my editors. I have this fine, feisty sense that I will continue the Love Secret series, with a fine new editor; that I will continue to write as Melissa MacNeal for a Kensington editor, and my agent and I also have a new proposal idea for the Dorchester editor who now works at Kensington, for whom I’ve written my Angels of Mercy series, and to whom I originally sold my Love Secret series! And–I began brainstorming with another editor at our NINC conference last fall.

FOUR editors are interested in my work–or at least interested in working with ME right now! I see that as reason indeed to flap my wings and fly high this year!!

I wish you the same sense of optimism as you test your wings and know your own inner strength and power!

Just a quick little entry here to wish ALL OF YOU a wonderful Valentine’s Day with this bouquet of roses like none you’ve ever seen before! I love these colors! They prove that even if you’re not into red and pink hearts, you can enjoy something that makes you SMILE!

Actually, these posies came with The Prayer of St. Therese, who believed in doing the little things well. “May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”

If we can just live out those two “little” things each day, think how much happier our lives would be! And that peace within–that trusting God–those are totally within OUR CONTROL, too!

So stop and smell the roses! Smile! And go for that Peace and Trust today!

Had you told me, a year ago, I would not just be blogging at Novelists, Inc. and on the Aphrodisia Authors site, but would have THIS blog on MY site–no way! But the times, they are a-changin’. And while I’m by no means the sharpest Social Media magician on the stage, I gotta keep on adding new tricks to my bag.

Could be the moon and sun and all my planets are aligned just right! My astrologer, Maria, and my numerologist, Alison, have given me glimpses of a FABULOUS year ahead. And I BELIEVE!

So I hope you’ll join in! Let me know what you think of my new site! Try one of my recipes! I’m still tweaking a bit with my fabulous site designer, Frauke Spanuth, so stay tuned for newsletters and contests and all sorts of stuff to make you smile…just like that photo of the moon and sun at the North Pole!