Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

Free! Dakota Blues Download

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Great Saturday morning to you! If you haven’t seen the news, I’m offering a free download of my award-winning novel, Dakota Blues, today through Monday (9/28-9/30/13). If you don’t have a Kindle you can read it on your computer – or most other readers have a Kindle app. Rock out, my friends! I’m doing this in honor of my sweet grandbaby’s birthday. Since midnight 225 895 almost 14,000 people have taken advantage of this gift. I hope you do, too. Enjoy!

Click on the image BELOW to go to the free download page.

Dakota blues cover image with award

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Backstabbing Women, Part 2

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I’ve spent my life denying it, but now that I’m older, I have to raise the white flag. Women can be backstabbers. Before you respond in horror, let me explain. [Read more…]

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Boomer Achieves Lifetime Dream

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After wishin’ and hopin’ and plannin’ and workin’ and prayin’…

After earning a self-created, home-cooked degree in How To Write A Novel (with a minor in How To Build a Platform)…

After writing and throwing away hundreds of pages that just weren’t quite good enough…

After years of answering my friends and family: “Almost!” and “Pretty soon!”

Two big things happened.

I discovered a passion for the topic of aging powerfully, and

On July 17, a date that would have been my mom and dad’s 63rd wedding anniversary,

I published my very first novel!

Dakota Blues is about:

  • midlife reinvention,
  • the quest to find meaning and empowerment in the second half of life,
  • the need to feel a connection with our ancestors,
  • dealing with the issues that hit without warning as we age,
  • whether we’re too old at a certain point to start something new,
  • whether it’s selfish and ungrateful to want more, and
  • finding the courage to change later in life.

Or, putting words into pictures, here’s what you’ll find in Dakota Blues (available now in paperback, and on Kindle in the second week of August, +/-):

I can’t tell you how much this means to me, to have reached this goal, and to have done it at fifty-eight. This is a time when many of us are rethinking our lives, and wondering whether to break through the age limitations placed on us by an earlier set of beliefs.

This is what we’re supposed to be doing, folks: chasing our dreams like there’s no tomorrow, excited as kids, refusing to lie down and let the culture of low expectations steamroll us. This is how to live in the second half. This is how to live, period. That’s what my character, Karen Grace, struggles with, and that’s what Dakota Blues is about.

I hope you buy a copy, and if you do, I hope you love it enough to add a rating to the Dakota Blues page on Amazon or Goodreads. Ratings mean everything in this online, digitized society, where there’s far too material to sort through without help.

Thanks for standing by me while I struggled. I hope I can do the same for you someday.

PS Today is the fourth anniversary of my father’s passing. I hope he can see what I’ve done. I miss him more than I can say.

Love,
Lynne

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The Writing Life – An Update

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Tentative Cover Shot for Dakota Blues

I usually post every Friday about issues facing us older women, but I’m also a writer and occasionally I’ve got to spout off about that, so bear with me.

I’ve been working on my novel, Dakota Blues, for a few years now. It’s taking a long time because I’m learning as I go. That’s cool; I’m teaching myself to write. I read everything I can get my hands on, attend conferences, and ask for feedback from my critique group. Recently I hired an editor.

Wendy’s feedback was really helpful. She made some observations relative to pace, tension, and the believability of characters. Like a wise professor, she also complimented me and I felt empowered. With the changes she recommended, my manuscript will be perfect.

I’m not as disciplined as some people. My friend Kathryn for example will get up at four in the morning and write until lunchtime almost every day. She’s a Ferrari; I’m more a touring convertible.

I sometimes wonder why I’m working so hard to create a work that, in this publishing environment, will probably not earn a lot of money, if any. I could be playing with my granddaughter,

or golfing.

What would my life be like if I weren’t, in effect, starting a small business at the age of 57?

What drives me? Am I stupid?

Well, maybe. But here’s what else:

  1. I have four more books in my head about the experiences of middle-aged women. I want to share these with you, but they have to wait their turn and Dakota Blues is first.
  2. I don’t know.

That’s right. For a girl who hates the idea of sleepwalking through her life, I cannot tell you what drives me to write. Mom says I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid. If I stopped writing, I think it would be hard to get out of bed in the morning. Now that I’m immersed in Dakota Blues, I love my characters. To me, they’re like real people who are in prison, slipping notes to me through the bars. I have to set them free.

Kindle readers can contact me at LMSpreen@yahoo.com.

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I’ve Got the Dakota Blues

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Tentative cover art for Dakota Blues

Most of you know me as a dabbler in issues relating to life as a middle-aged woman, but I’m also a writer, and I’m wondering what to do next with my book, Dakota Blues.

The manuscript is finished, and I’m ready to introduce it to the world, but given the state of the publishing industry at the moment, I’m not sure how best to go about it. So much has changed.

In the “old days” the writer would send off her completed manuscript. Then the phone would ring, champagne would flow, and the check would be cashed. If I go through the traditional process of finding an agent who finds a publisher who gets the book into bookstores, it can take a couple of years. Who knows what the publishing industry will look like by then? At the rate publishers and bookstores are going under, my book could get buried under the rubble of yet another bankruptcy.

On the other hand, if I publish it myself, it could be available in a few months. I’d have to market it myself, of course, but more and more, authors are expected to do all that anyway. I’d have more upfront expenses, but I’d keep a higher percentage of the sales. If there are any. Worst case scenario, at least there would be an actual book to prove to family and friends that I really was working on one these past few years.

As a third alternative, I’m tempted to sit on the manuscript a while until I see how things shake out. Also, I’m eager to start my second book which, like Dakota Blues, is about a woman who’s been sleepwalking through her life and awakens to find she’s middle aged! I’m calling it Stockholm Summer.

Do you have any thoughts on whether I should go the traditional route or self-publish? Sit on it or shoot it out there? Thanks for helping me with this.

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“Boomer Lit” Should be Compelling, not Childish

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writer, author, dream, inspirationI have looked for good books about middle-age, but 95% of them seem to be frothy upgrades of young adulthood. [Read more…]

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