Thursday, December 5, 2013

Happy Book Birthday L.A. Kelley! The Naughty List #Romance





Published: The Wild Rose Press, Inc; Black Rose 1st edition (August 27, 2013)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Version: eBook



Not your Mama’s Christmas story unless she drank too much egg nog or was born with a cheeky sense of humor.

The holidays had always been a magical time for Rosalie, but not this year. Stephanie, her new manager at Penrose’s Department Store, is determined to make this season the most profitable in the store’s history, even if it sucks the life out of every employee. Introducing arbitrary rules and stealing the affections of Anthony, the cute temp Santa, were bad enough, but forcing Rosalie into the stupid elf hat was the worst. The worst, that is, until she meets a real E.L.F. (Elemental Life Form) named David and gets lassoed into a desperate hunt for the stolen Naughty and Nice List. Now all Rosalie and David must do is dodge a murderous invisible demon and recover the missing artifact before hellhounds track them down.  The couple race against time for without the magical guidance of the Naughty and Nice List, the world will tumble toward eternal chaos.

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Guest Post

A sixty-four year old woman swam from Cuba to Florida. As she staggered out of the ocean onto the beach, the world stood up and took note.  Diana Nyad’s exploit was not just a physical triumph, but a mental one as well. It struck me the advice she gasped out under the hot summer sun was as applicable to writers as to athletes.

Never ever give up.
I could wallpaper my bedroom with rejection letters. If I printed out those I received electronically, too, I could staple together curtains for every window and have enough paper left over for a stylish matching bedspread. The worse rejections were emails from agents or publishers who never bothered to read my painstakingly crafted query letters. Let’s face it, a reply arriving seconds after hitting Send is an automatic response. No matter how much welcome a company website promises new authors, reality is the query you slaved over was flushed unread down the hyperspace toilet.

Constant rejection eats away at confidence.  You start to wonder if the stress is worth the long shot payoff. Learn a lesson from successful authors and consider it a test of character. Agatha Christie tried for years before scoring a first book contract while Beatrix Potter resorted to self-publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit because of a steady stream of No-thanks-this-story-won’t-do-at-all.

Take a lesson from Agatha and Beatrix. Creeping self-doubt can be as deadly to your soul as a clogged artery is to the heart, so allow rejection to seed your determination. It may take months or years, but if you have faith in your work, the work will triumph.

You’re never too old to chase your dreams.
Start writing that book today. Believe in the possibility to reinvent yourself at any age. No one’s life is determined on the day she or he is born. No school teacher, no employer, no philosophy, no well-meaning friends can tell what’s lies around the next corner of your life.  Even you don’t know for sure what’s out there. Don’t spend your twilight years living with regret for challenges never attempted because they seemed insurmountable.  Failure can be overcome, but things undone will gnaw at you forever.

It looks like a solitary sport, but it’s really a team effort.
The words are yours, but the book contract didn’t come without support. Someone may have paid the bills, or put the kids to bed, or did the grocery shopping while you stayed up late to chase a deadline. Someone offered a shoulder to cry on when the umpteenth rejection letter arrived. Someone believed in you and that belief gave you the strength to push the boulder up the mountain. Call yourself a writer not because someone bought your book, but because someone backed your dream. Be sure to thank them.


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About L.A. Kelley

 I’m married with three kids and live in Florida.  You will find me squirreled away in air conditioned comfort avoiding heat and humidity. Most of my working life has been spent in higher education writing boring technical papers. I now write fiction full time; always with fantasy, a happy ending, and at least a touch of romance. Technical papers should take note. They’d be a heck of a lot easier to read with a plucky heroine, a steadfast hero, and a little magic inserted between the ibids and et als.



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