Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Solstice Publishing is celebrating the Summer Solstice this weekend. In particular, the romance imprint Summer Solstice is setting up some great giveaways. We've all donated copies of books to be given away in a series of ultimate romance swag bags. We've also been working very hard on a free ecookbook. The cookbook will be a free download on the site starting on the Solstice. It will have a bunch of recipes just perfect for summer entertaining. There will be other giveaways throughout the year for the other imprints. I'm looking forward to Solstice Shadows, the fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal imprint's celebration this fall. So, as you can see there are a lot of great things we're planning at Solstice. So, stop by, check it out. Download a freebie, toss your name in the proverbial hat for some great books! Summer Solstice's FB page--Contest Central!

My students are always tossing books back into the pile because they don't like the covers. While I chide them to read the back, give it a flip through, or scan the first page I have to admit that I'm as guilty as the next of the same thing. Therefore, when Solstice opened the door for us to contract for our own cover artists I ran with it. I loved the cover I got from Solstice for The Shattered Prism . It was so cool and such a neat fantasy cover. I actually requested the same artist when it was time to design the cover for Walking With Shadows . I was told, at the time, that first artist no longer worked for Solstice, so I went with another. The second artist tried. She really did, to match the look of the first cover. It was alright, but never thrilled me as much as that first one. Fast forward almost an entire school year. I finish Dark Rainbow's End and start shopping around for cover artists. I track down the artist from book one and ask her to do the cover for boo...

The end of the school year is always bittersweet. There's this bewildering mix of joy, relief, sorrow and boredom. Joy because the kids you've worked so hard with have crossed the stage and gone on to high school. Relief because teaching 8th graders in May is like being a lion tamer with steaks hanging from your neck. Sorrow because you realize that no matter how many times they made you want to strangle them, you're going to miss those kids and you know nothing or next to nothing about the new group coming up to you. Boredom because after graduation there's nothing to do, but clean your room and to tell you the truth, sitting in a stripped down classroom waiting for the time to run out on the year is really boring. There are points in every school year when I want to bang my head against the concrete wall and ask why I'm doing this to myself? Test scores hang like a headsman's ax over my neck and my very evaluation will be eventually, at least partially based...