I am thrilled to be sharing with you my new website. It has been a long time in coming but the wait was well worth it.
In designing the site, I worked closely with my web-designer and graphic artist, Alex to produce a website that reflects my personal style along with those of my genres. His extensive knowledge and amazing artistic skills have made an attractive author website that I previously only dreamed of having. Aesthetic, simplistic in design, and ease of usage were our main focus – I think we accomplished all and more.
Thanks, Alex! Great job. It was a pleasure working with you on this new site.
The timing of the launch matched perfectly to my soon-to-be released thriller “The Sussex Deal”. This edge-of-your-seat thriller deals with the purchase of the Sussex property by real estate tycoon, Dominic Lombardi and the deadly conspiracy that follows.
With the lengthy break that I had taken from my writing for personal reasons, I am excited to finally be back and creating full-force. I have several novels to be released in the upcoming months, and I will work diligently with my web-marketer to make them and my future novels a success.
New Year’s is just around the corner, and like many, I couldn’t help but reflect on the year gone by. As I do so, I realize it hasn’t been that great of a year. Personally, it was a stressful year as we were building a house on top of all our other work. Anyone that has built a house knows the stress involved. I chuckled when a friend of my asked whether my husband and I were still together during the nerve-wracking ordeal. We lost six people very dear to us; God rest their souls. With our teenage son, there were a few grey-hair moments that we would have preferred not to experience. And even with my writing, I had missed a number of great opportunities that literally put me into tears.
The more I thought about all the things that were terrible about 2012, the more depressed I got. To get out of that depressive mode, I began to make a list of all the good things that happened, or things I learned from the things that did not go well, making me a better person.
• All the effort, time, and money that we put into our new house, produced a beautiful dream-home for us, and the stress our relationship as husband and wife endured made us closer as a couple.
• There is nothing nice about losing a loved one, but we cannot stop the circle of life. We have our cherished memories that enrich our lives, and others are expecting new bundles of joy to help fill the gaps.
• Through the trying ordeal, that we endured with our son, in the end, it worked out and made our relationship with him stronger and better, something that could have easily taken a turn for the worse, causing us to lose him.
• As for my writing, my husband said, “Don’t cry over spilt milk.” And he is correct; there will be many more opportunities that come along. The time was obviously not right for me, and it gave me the opportunity to be better prepared to find those opportunities and be ready for them when they come my way.
• In the greater scheme of things, my problems seem miniscule and unimportant when I compare them to some of the catastrophic events that have taken place across the globe in 2012, shedding a new light on what I should be focusing on.
Trials and tribulations will always come along; it is, after all, a part of life. I guess what is important is not to dwell on hardships, but to learn from them, being better prepared for them, and maybe even avoiding some from happening with the wisdom that has been gained.
I look at the coming year of 2013 as being a new opportunity, allowing me to clear the slate and start a new year with optimism and hope. I need to remind myself that ‘viewing life as the glass half-full’ makes it a far better ride.
I wish all of you a happy and healthy New Year! May all your dreams and wishes come true in 2013.
Jamie rushed up to his best friend, excited about the prospect of making the football team at school. Tryouts were the next day, and he had signed up.
“Hey, Sam! Guess what? I’m trying out for the football team this year.” He was hopeful, having trained all summer to be in shape.
“You’re joking, right?” Sam asked, shaking his head. “There’s no way, with your size, that they’ll pick you. Have you seen the size of the guys they choose?”
That was not what Jamie wanted to hear. He’d had such high hopes on making the team after training so hard. Doubt wedged its way into his thoughts.
He had grown several inches in the last year to reach five-foot-five, and his scrawny physique had filled out considerably with all the weight lifting he had done. But Sam was right, he was short compared to the five-ten-plus players that usually made the cut. Would talent be enough? Maybe at his height, it wasn’t enough to get him on the team. Maybe he should wait or pick another sport. If only he loved another sport as much as he loved football.
How often has someone said to you, “That’s impossible!” or “You can’t do that,” instilling doubt of success in your mind, perhaps even causing you to give up.
These statements are anything but uplifting and often hold us back from experiencing our true potential. Physically or mentally, we can all be so much more if we stop putting limits on ourselves.
Here are individuals who succeeded despite the odds against them:
Michael Jordan had been cut from his varsity basketball team during his sophomore year. At 5’11”, he was considered too short back then. He went on to become a legend in the sport.
Thomas Edison, the American inventor of the light bulb, was told by his teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything. He had in his lifetime 1,000 U.S patents to his name.
Ludwig Van Beethoven was deemed hopeless and told by his first music teacher that he would never succeed as a composer. He became one of the greatest composers.
J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter Series, had her first book rejected by numerous publishers. She became the first billionaire author.
One of the things I do besides writing my novels is writing magazine articles. Although not all topics are extraordinary, I do get opportunities to write about fascinating people with unbelievable feats. One such person is Chad Netherland, 10-time Guinness World Record holder in strength. Two years ago, I wrote an article about him for the Inside Kung Fu magazine (See article below). Then already, I thought his feats were miraculous- unbelievable even. Since that time, he has gone on to break his records and set many new ones. This type of dedication to success is commendable. If people used his level of dedication to achieve their goals, the sky would be reachable.
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another. – Napoleon Hill
When Melody stepped out the door that morning on her way to work, she gasped with surprise, when she saw a fallen tree trunk lying straight across the end of her driveway. The windstorm must have knocked it down during the night. A sigh of resignation followed, realizing the trunk was blocking her exit.
How was she to get to work on time? And, she still had to drop her son off at daycare. As a single mom, she couldn’t afford to miss more work. As is, she often needed to ask for extra time off when her five year old son, Billy had emergencies.
“Mommy, what happened?” Billy shouted as he scooted out beside her, noticing the tree lying there. He rushed up to it with his backpack bouncing on his back. “Cool!” He hopped on top of the trunk and walked across with his arms spread out as if he were on a balance beam.
“Cool” is not the word that came to Melody’s mind. The word that she was thinking of was not appropriate to utter in front of her six year old. She walked up to the long trunk dejectedly. Who did one call to remove a fallen tree? And how long would it take?
Melody tossed her purse and keys onto the grass and then bent down to try and lift it. Although the trunk was not too large, the many branches made it heavier than it looked. The stump didn’t budge. “Great!” she replied sarcastically.
Just as she scooped up her purse to fetch her cellphone, Mike, her neighbor from across the street, stopped as he was jogging by.
“Hey, do you need help?” he asked, trotting up her driveway, surveying the problem.
“I’m not sure we can lift it,” she admitted.
Mike bent down to grab the trunk. He raised it slightly, but it was obviously too heavy for one man to carry away.
Melody realized, she’d have to call her boss after all and talk her way out of another late arrival.
“Wait with calling someone.” Mike signaled over. “I’ll get Greg, Bob, and Michael from up the street to come down here. I think they’re all still at home.”
Melody didn’t know what to say. She’d always been friendly with her neighbors, waved at them, brought flying garbage bins back to their doorstep and even shoveled snow from their sidewalk when she was doing her own, but she never had time to chat or socialize with any of them. As a single mom, she never had time. She felt guilty for putting them all out of their way, but before she could utter a word of refusal, Mike had already left. The only one that seemed happy about the fallen trunk was Billy who was busy jumping on and off it.
Melody couldn’t believe that within fifteen minutes, the tree trunk had been moved off to the side of her driveway by four of her neighbors. One of them even offered to remove the trunk later at no cost because he wanted firewood.
Now that is teamwork.
Just recently, through a social-network discussion group, a large group of us helped each other out. It was amazing how in a short time, through teamwork so much had been accomplished. It’s at times like these that you experience the power that comes together through group effort, and then you feel like anything is possible.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford
In designing the site, I worked closely with my web-designer and graphic artist, Alex to produce a website that reflects my personal style along with those of my genres. His extensive knowledge and amazing artistic skills have made an attractive author website that I previously only dreamed of having. Aesthetic, simplistic in design, and ease of usage were our main focus – I think we accomplished all and more.
