This week's post is going to be late . . . So instead I hope you will enjoy this picture.

Changes

Late last week I found out that my publisher has been sold to another company. (Well not the woman who was my publisher, but her company, this is not a blog about human trafficking.) 

To be honest I have mixed feelings about this. I enjoyed being able to say "my publisher" and I worked with many wonderful people in the company, but I have also given into my independent wild child and have already taken the plunge into self-publishing.

To be honest, my age has a lot to do with my decision, to self-publish. It takes a lot of time to submit your work to a publisher and it can take a very long time before you receive a response. Then it can take up to a year or more before your book is ever sees the public. I like the instant gratification I get when I put a book up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and itunes. 

There are many advantages to having a publisher. One of them is the community of writers that is built around the publisher.

Through my publisher we had an active author's loop. We weren't allowed to promote or even talk about books coming out through another publisher (that includes self-published works). That was understandable, but we were not supposed to include the books in our signature either. That was a little more difficult to obey. We all tended to have automatic signatures with our books and social media addies in them.

It was sad watching the goodbyes on the loop. People were promising to keep in touch and trying to record the contact information of others. It felt like the end of the movie Grease!!!

And then, one brilliant woman started a yahoo group! No more sad goodbyes.

However, it was sad taking my books down from here and my website. Don't worry, they'll be back in a few months, with new covers and maybe even a friend or two. (Spirit Board is still available and The Counterfeit Bride will be released on April 1.)

In the meantime, I hope you will stop by my new website! 
http://imawit2015.wix.com/liberty-blake-#!books/cnec 

P. S. 

Before you leave here today, if you could please hit the "follow" button (if you haven't done so already), I would greatly appreciate it. 

Hair

http://youtu.be/7dyl0j3WU6Y


If you went to the link above you had the pleasure of watching the song Hair from the musical of the same name.

My thoughts have been revolving around hair. 

My hair grows very fast and as a child my mother kept it short. I hated it short!!! Then the 60s came and I remember the girls around the Beatles all had gorgeous, long, straight hair. Well, I had straight hair, and I didn't have to iron it to get it straight. If I could keep my mother's hands and scissors away, I could even have long hair.

I had a mission! I was going to grow my hair long. And I did. It didn't take very long to grow my hair down to my waist. When I had a baby she never pulled or yanked on my hair, until I cut it. 

I began to wonder if there was something to the Samson story. Did I become stronger with the length of my hair? 

At one point my hair reached below my knees. That was a challenge. The children were constantly getting lost in my hair. Sticky fingers pulled out braids. Tear streaked faces buried in the hair, seeking comfort and getting their tears (and noses) wiped at the same time. I spent a fortune in shampoo.

I have cut my hair several times and donated the hair, but still it grows back. I like long hair. I like the way it looks. The way it feels. I like the soothing feeling of the brush gliding through my hair.

Now we come to my dilemma. I always picture my heroines with romantically long tresses, but now I am thinking my current heroine might want to have short hair for work reasons.

I have consulted with an expert in the field and she said she kept her hair long while on the job. 

Eeeek! It sounds like a petty trifle to be fretting about, but I have to get a picture of my heroine in my mind.

And now I can't get that song out of my head!!! 

The Leprechaun

Today I launched a new website http://imawit2015.wix.com/liberty-blake-#!books/cnec. Stop by and see it when you get a chance.

Anyway, the Leprechaun stopped by while I was putting it together and said that it was time to give away some green in honor of Saint Paddy's day. So I am giving away a nice fresh $10 bill, United States currency. 

So instead of using the time honored method of throwing the names in the hat and have one of the little guys pull out the winner, I am trying out rafflecopter. Please forgive me if I don't get everything right. I'm kind of a trial and error kind of girl sometimes.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Take it for a test flight and let me know how it works for you. And please pass on the news of the contest. I'm planning several for the spring and I would really like a big turn out.

No New Blog ;~{{

Hello, my friends.

I am just popping into the spellroom to let you all know that there will not be a new blog this week. I am writing to deadline and my wee little brain cannot concentrate on anything else at the moment.

However, I do have big news!

The Counterfeit Bride will be released on April 1. It is my first full length novel.

Propoganda

Once again I was brought down by some very nasty germs and they kept me from you, my lovies.

Welcome back to the Spellroom.

I had wonderful plans for columns, but today they've been side-railed while I voice my political opinion and back it up with historical fact. I hope you will stay with me and read this post, but if you choose not to, I will understand and hope you will be back for the next post which will return us to less controversial subjects.

Today's topic is Gun Propaganda.

This is not about gun control! This is about the use of propaganda and outright lies to scare the community into letting the gun and ammunition companies continue to run wholesale muck through our lives.

If you are active on Facebook, then you have seen all the memes (posters) such as "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

While it is true, people who really want to kill someone can use any object to do so, it is not as easy as picking up a hunk of metal with a bore hole in it, pulling on a little piece of metal, and pointing the hunk of metal at the object you wish to annihilate with a burning piece of lead. Lead that rips apart muscles, tissues, blood vessels, and shatters bones.

If you have to use your hands on your victim, you have to get up close and personal, maybe even have to look them in the eyes as you strangle them, put a pillow over their face, or hold them under the water until there are no more air bubbles. You have a chance to change your mind before you have completed a heinous act.

It also gives you the disadvantage that the victim may be able to fight back and might even be able to take you. So if you are thinking murderous thoughts, it might be best to put your actions into a book rather than into practice.

A knife, hammer, or ax is very messy, you will end up with blood gushing all over you, and makes it harder for you to proclaim your innocence when the authorities arrive. (Most murders committed by knife, hammer, or ax are acts of extreme passion. People don't usually die after one strike of a knife or hammer. You have to repeatedly plunge that weapon into your victim. It is not a task for those who faint at the sight of blood and are afraid of gore.)

If you drop a knife, hammer, or ax on the floor, you might wipe out someone's toe or foot, but you won't obliterate their life. If you drop a gun on the floor it can discharge a bullet which could kill your wife, child, friend, or yourself. Accidents do happen and there are many careless people out there that have access to guns.

So no matter what the memes say, Guns do kill people! 

We often hear that all women should carry guns. Then there would be no rapists. Rapists do not walk up to you on the street and boldly announce, "Hi. I'm here to rape you." They don't give you time to reach for a gun or pepper spray. They sneak up on you from behind or they creep through a window and surprise you in your shower or your bed. A rapist could grab your gun before you had a chance to get it, remove the safety, and try to get a target on him. Suddenly you have to fear for more than your virtue. Your rapist now has a weapon that could massively destroy you and anyone else around you.

Today I saw the worst of the worst in gun propaganda.

Individual gun ownership would not have stopped the Holocaust. One or two Jews with guns would not have been able to fight off Hitler's armies that were dispatched into the ghettos to find the Jews. And those armies were supported by the people of Germany. 

There were a lot of contributing factors to Hitler's rise to power. Germany was going through a time of extreme inflation and overwhelming poverty due to war reparations forced on them by the Americans, English, French, and Russians. Hitler was able to use the lack of money for the common people to raise up hate and suspicion for anyone who didn't fit the norm of society. The Jews were known to have "wealth". They were the money lenders. (Even though most of the Jews were middle class people struggling to make a living, just like everyone else. Hitler was able to use rumor, innuendo, and suspicion to turn neighbor against neighbor.) Jews were different. They had a special language, they prayed differently, they had a different God! They had your money! Hitler used ancient prejudices and superstition against the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Gays and transferred blame onto them.

By getting the Germans to blame their misfortune on the Jews, the Gypsies, the Gays, the people who were different, it kept the people from blaming the government for their woes. They were told the government was working on solving the problem by getting rid of the source.

Guns in the hands of everyone may have saved some people from the gas chambers, but it is more likely that the guns would have led to a civil war as seen in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Somalia. Neighbor against neighbor.

I am not advocating for or against gun control. I am merely warning you against the lies found in propaganda. Do not buy into the memes, and understand that they are being produced by a very lucrative industry, that sells to both the victims and the criminals. 

Make your decision based on intellect, not on emotions raised by lies.

Hedda Hopper

Hedda Hopper began her career as an actress in silent movies. She was a beautiful woman who appeared in more than 120 movies in twenty-three years. In the 1930's her acting career began to wane and she needed to find a new source of income. On Valentine's Day in 1938 she became a gossip columnist and Hedda Hopper's Hollywood appeared for the first time in The Los Angeles Times. Her career made her a household name and she made regular appearances on radio and television. She wrote a regular column until her death in 1966. 

Hedda Hopper was a remarkable lady with a stunning career, but this column is not actually about Hedda. The plan is to use her name as a segue into a favorite writing topic of mine...

Today we are going to talk about Head Hopping!

Yes, Head Hopping. 

What is Head Hopping, you ask.

Head Hopping is when for no apparent rhyme or reason, you switch your Point of View character. It tends to be a novice mistake. Many of our favorite authors did this when they first began, but editors and readers both dislike the habit. It jars them out of the story, and once a reader is jarred out of the story, she may never return. That is not good.

For the basis of this article the romance genre is going to be used as the primary venue, but head hopping occurs in all fields of fiction.

In a romance there are two primary characters. The hero and the heroine. If a romance is written in first person, you only get the POV of one character. (We are not going to discuss omniscient point of view in this column, because it is obsolete in romance.) In the last century most romances were told only from the point of view of the heroine, but sometime around the mid-eighties or early-nineties, the hero started getting more of a point of view and the readers ate those romances up. Sometimes you can throw in the villain's thoughts, but if you do this, you want to give him/her a strong presence, not just throw them a line of two in order to describe what the heroine looks like, how buff the hero is, what kind of shoes she is wearing. 

When you show readers the world as seen by the point of view character, make sure it is important to move the story along, for the reader sees the world through that character's eyes.

Do not switch heads in the middle of a scene. A scene should be told by the character who has the most at stake in that scene. That way you can include their inner thoughts, their inner turmoil, which you cannot do if you give the point of view to the wrong character. (Or-heaven forbid-an outsider!)

In my current WIP, The Billionaire's Counterfeit Bride, I have a scene that has six people in it. Three are window dressing and have no dialogue, the other three characters are the American Ambassador, the hero, and the heroine. It would be easy to tell the scene through the Ambassador, but he doesn't have any skin in the game. In order to engage the reader she has to know what the heroine is feeling. This scene belongs to Cassidy and no one else.

Later in the book, Cassidy has been attacked and is unconscious. Because Cassidy is out of it, there is only one person we can live this scene through, and that is Theron, Cassidy's hero. Sure, we could later learn what happened by having Theron explain to Cassidy what happened while she was knocked out, but then we would not learn how he felt while the action was happening and the reader doesn't have the chance to see what has occurred because she is being told about it later.

Point of view is how we engage the reader, how we immerse the reader into the plot, the feelings, the adventure.

If we want to tell the reader how a character smells and we give the dog a point of view, he may tell us she always reminds him of rolling around in a field of lavender. In this instance, will the reader really relate? Especially if that dog never appears with a point of view again?

Which scene of the following scenes do you think would evoke the reader's compassion more? 

A pregnant woman staggers up to a no-name cashier at the local grocery chain and the cashier thinks, "Oh no! This woman looks like she's going to have that baby right here on my conveyor belt. Gross." 

Or: 

Dulcie felt another sharp pain in her lower back. The baby had been pressing hard on her sacroiliac for months, but it had never felt this bad before. The cash register looked like it was ten miles away. She put most of her weight onto the shopping cart and allowed the wheels to carry her down the aisle. Just a few more steps and she would be able to pay for little Chelsea's lunch. Just a few more steps. A gush of hot liquid exploded down her legs. The sound of water hitting the floor was followed by her heart also dropping to the floor. It was too soon. Much too soon. The baby wasn't due for two more months!

Finally the register was only two steps away. The cashier would have to get the manager to call 911. Dulcie looked into the cashier's eyes and the girl crumbled onto the floor. Dulcie's warped sense of humor kicked in as she suppressed a giggle and wondered who needed 911 more.

Point of view is important. Don't throw it away. Give it to the important characters. You can always find another way to let your readers know that the hero has a tattoo over his heart or the heroine is wearing Jimmy Choo's.