Hello, happy Monday to you :)

When I first started out writing, I was the queen of the thirty page dead novel – I’d start writing, and then the story would lose its spark and die on me.  After one too many of these, I read up on story structure, but though my drafts got longer, they stayed incoherent.

 Happily, once I learned the trick of what I describe in my post at The Magic District, I started completing what I wrote, and selling it soon after.  I want to save you the time it took me to learn what I describe, so head over there and check it out!  Here’s the link:

 http://magicdistrict.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/story-mapping-how-i-do-it/

See you there!

If you are like me, you’ve been watching and reading about the Haiti earthquake and wondering what any of us could possibly do to help those caught up in that disaster.

Amazingly, a Marine named Jake Wood was also watching TV footage of the earthquake when it first happened, asked himself the same question — and came up with a brilliant, inspiring answer.

This guy started a rapid response self-deploying team of individuals with combat, military, search and rescue, and medical training, and got into Haiti by landing first in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and moving overland to the Haitian border, thereby bypassing the bottleneck at Port Au Prince airport.  Since then, they’ve been profiled on the BBC, CNN, NPR, ABC and other news outlets.

You HAVE to check out the website for this team: http://blog.teamrubiconhaiti.org/

These brave souls have been liveblogging their efforts since they embedded with a Jesuit mission based in PaP.  The amount they have been able to do is, frankly, incredible.  If you write adventure fiction, or romance, your heroes will be put to shame by these awesome warriors!  I guarantee these folks will inspire you.

Check them out and consider donating to their efforts — I sent them a donation and it’s been gratifying to see how much good they’ve done so far.

Rock on, Team Rubicon!

As you can see, the place is starting to look classy!  The gorgeous artwork you see is by the brilliant artist Anne Cain, and the website design is by the fabulous Frauke at CrocoDesigns.  I will give you the heads up once I’m done sprucing up the place, and then we will have a massive party to celebrate all the new happenings around here :)