Wednesday is IWSG Day because it’s the first Wednesday in July. IWSG stands for Insecure Writers Support Group and was founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh.  You can read and follow other IWSG members here or on twitter using the hashtag #IWSG. We also have a Facebook page. The purpose of IWSG is to share and encourage, and members have the option of answering questions in our post. 

The awesome co-hosts for the July 3 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe,Natalie Aguirre,Jennifer Lane,MJ Fifield,Lisa Buie-Collard,and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor!

Our July 3 question is: What personal traits have you written into your character(s)?

I always incorporate many of my own traits and beliefs into my characters. In my short story that was published in Legacy Letters, my character was a procrastinator. So am I.

In The Last Daughter, I gave Trent Jones, the hero, more of my traits than the heroine, though I did make her a vegetarian. Trent (known as a picker) and his family owned antique stores, and frequented auctions, estate sales and garage sales—something I’ve always enjoyed doing. I’m a collector (or a packrat) of just about everything. It was fun showing Trent’s excitement over valuable (or interesting) items he came across, and what he could sell them for. By the way, The Last Daughter isn’t available any more. I have the rights back from The Wild Rose Press but I haven’t finished my revisions so I can get it back out there. Hopefully soon.

WHAT’s HAPPENING IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW:

The days are zooming by. I’m getting older by the second. I’m a July girl—my birthday is the last day of the month. I never imagined getting old; I still can’t and here I am leaving 70 behind and turning 71. Of course, there was a time I couldn’t imagine being published either. Here are some wonderful things I’ve got going these days:

I speak at The Woodlands-ACFW on July 13^th on article writing. I was supposed to have spoken in May but the weather was horrific from Louisiana to Houston so we postponed. I’m looking forward to visiting with this ACFW chapter.

Secondly, I sold an 800 word romance to Woman’s World magazine. It will be out around July 11^th, maybe a little sooner. I titled it Summer Promise but according to the contract, the title has been changed to The Promise of New Love. I’m pretty excited about this sale. I’ve been trying to sell stories to them for years.  Don’t ask me how I did it. I just hope I can do it again!

And that brings me to—I have a guest blogpost coming out some time in September telling everything I did to “crack the Woman’s World code.” Yeah, right! That’s a hoot! I’ll remind you so you can learn my secrets.

On another note, I just finished my second Christmas play for my church. (If you’d like to see my first Christmas play and my debut acting go to other media; Its posted there.) I haven’t submitted this new endeavor to our Music Minister so I have no idea if it’ll fly. It may not be joyful enough; or Christmas-y enough. Sometimes I tend to get too serious.

I guess that’s all the news I have except…maybe you’d like to sign up for my newsletter? It doesn’t really exist yet, but I took a great newsletter course called A What-to Course for Author newsletters and I’ve been wanting to create one ever since. So sign up if you will and I promise, I won’t bombard you with unnecessary news about me, Me, ME.

Hope everyone is doing well, writing, submitting and selling! Let me hear from you!