My loyal fans and blog followers (all two of them) must be wondering where the heck has she been these last three months? Well, I've been around, just not here on the blog.
Some amazing things have been happening: had an 'author's signing event', sold a ton of books (by my standards), had my book Options put up on the Barnes and Noble website, added another 10,000 words to the second book, but have been mostly blissfully enjoying my two new grandchildren.
Chloe Ann and Thomas George were born on September 27th. They are wonderful, mellow, happy babies. Jonathan, their big brother, and the wee man who I fell in love with over three years ago, is very accepting of the new babies and is happily ensconced in his new pre-school. New babies make it hard to concentrate on much else so the book writing hasn't been progressing as well as I had hoped. Several weekends when yours truly should have been pounding the keyboard have been spent babysitting the grandkids to give their parents some well deserved rest! January is just around the corner and new year's resolve will kick in and I'm sure I'll be back on track.
In November, as a fundraising event at my place of employment, I was asked to participate in an author's signing event with a fellow self-published author, Deborah Cholette. About a year ago in our company newsletter I read an article about Deborah and her journey of self-publishing. That story, along with a newspaper article about a month later about Mark Coker and his new company Smashwords were really the two events that sent me down the road to where I am today with my first book Options. Deborah is a wonderful woman who I have seen over the last many years at the office, nodding hello on the elevator but never getting to know her. When I decided to self-publish, she was very helpful with information. She has two books to her credit: a children's book and a romantic comedy.
I was a little apprehensive before the signing event because I had never participated in one. Deborah and I had agreed to donate all profits from our sales to the charity and between the two of us we raised almost 700 dollars! I sold almost 70 books. Unbelievable! And I'm getting lots of great feedback.
My book has now appeared in electronic format at Barnes and Noble thanks to Mark Coker at Smashwords. Mark has been working very hard for all of his authors .... next up we should be at Amazon and a few other on-line stores. When I saw my book on the Barnes and Noble website http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=rosemarie+d%27amico+options I admit I squealed just a wee bit!
The Christmas season is upon us and for me this time of year makes my heart swell (really...) and race (really...) in anticipation of seeing my family from out of town, enjoying some social time with our friends, and waiting for Santa to arrive! As I said above, January will soon be here and for me the new year is always a time to suck in a deep breath, slap myself mentally a few times, and get at it! So watch out 2010, my new book will be published before the spring and I see some amazing things on the horizon for Options!
Merry Christmas!
