How To Survive Your Best Friend's Baby

There are periods in our lives when it feels like everyone you know is getting married. But just when you think, "thank God, no more wedding invitations"; your friends procreate.

When you’re still single, or you’re married and nowhere near babyville, how do you cope with your best friend’s pregnancy and baby? I’ve been on both sides of the coin: the clueless but well-meaning friend, and now the new mom, which is why I created this new blog, How to Survive Your Best Friend's Baby. I want to bridge the gap so there's no more "us" or "them." There's just us girls who want to keep our friendships strong and long-lasting.

Check it out and spread the word!

And now I bring you a game we call...

Good and bad.

Yesterday I had a living room picnic with good family friends and we played a game called, "Good and Bad." We took turns saying the good things that happened to us. But we were only allowed one bad.

Only recently have I been able to look at the books I couldn't sell as good things.

For the record: I'm 4 out of eight (four published out of the eight I've written ... the novellas count as half a book).

Anyway, I've come to realize that the four unpublishable books are not wasted efforts. They're my organ donors.

For example, the scene when Isela dances with Sebastian in "My Favorite Mistake", came from a book I wrote six years ago. Isa Avellan's storyline in Hot Tamara served as the back story for In Between Men.

This morning, as I was thinking about a problem with a new story idea, the answer popped out of my subconscious. I realized I could finally use a part (my most favorite part) of Baby You're The One in this new story.

When Baby didn't sell, I grieved for weeks. Thinking it would be my triumphant entre into young adult fiction, the experience really shook me up. I questioned if I'd be a one-hit wonder. But now I see that one bad thing has given birth to so many good things. It restores my trust that things happen only if they're supposed to. Now I hope that when this new idea is fully born - with a fully functional donated body part - you'll finally get to read it.

Knock ... knock ... knock! That's was me knocking on wood ... just in case.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mary

Currently reading: Pop! by Aury Wallington (it's like she snuck into my 17 year-old self and excavated all the things I'll never tell my mom ... read it!)

Well, the proposal is in...

...and now I wait.

But that's a good thing! I can now focus marketing the new books and all the stuff I had to keep at bay while I wrote a proposal for a paranormal young adult novel (that I hope will become a real book someday). Hey wait a second ... I can go shopping! I can read another book without the sound of mu subconscious revving in the background! Even better, I can sleep through an entire night without waking up from a dream about my story.

Ahh the quiet when the writer is not writing.

Not that it will last for long. I have this thing about writing a historical and now that I have stumbled upon an idea for a mystery series, the itch will get worse. I can already hear the heroine whispering in my ear.

So much for shopping in peace.

And then there's my character, Isela Vargas from Friday Night Chicas. That bitch won't shut up about getting her own book. Every time a reader asks what happens to her, Isela's right there impatiently sighing at her nails.

There goes the quiet pleasures of book reading.

I'm beginning to suspect that writers never retire. We die at our keyboards.

Currently reading: The Girl's Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky (awesome!) and Mean Girls Grown Up by Cheryl Dellasega (sobering)

"It's not having what you want...

...it's wanting what you got."

- Sheryl Crow, Soaking Up the Sun

When I was up on stage at the Head to Toe Women's Expo in San Diego, I talked about my rocky and rewarding road to publication. I've always been an ambitious soul with long lists and five-year plans of all the things I wanted to achieve before I died. But when Hot Tamara came out in February 2005, I realized that success can be very traumatic. Instead of celebrating, I worried about the things that weren't happening - why wasn't I on the New York Times list, why was so-and-so on The Today Show, why oh why oh why. It wasn't a pretty place to be. But then I had moments of clarity like when five really wonderful women came to my booksigning in Phoenix, Arizona. Those moments were fleeting until I wrote a book titled, Baby You're The One.

No one would touch it. Never mind that I had been on TV, that Hot Tamara was Cosmo's Red Hot Read, etc. For months all I could think about was the book that would not sell. But then Sheryl saved me with that line from her song (see the title of this entry). I realized that my success traumatized me because I forgot to be grateful for it. Once I counted my blessings - and I mean, I wrote a list about twenty-five pages long - I came back to life. To me, entitlement and ingratitude are like cinderblocks chained to all of your limbs, and when they throw you off the boat, you sink right to bottom. But gratitude unchained me and I wasn't limited by all this "why not me?". I saw unlimited possibilities.

So I want you to know that I was humbled to be at the Expo Friday afternoon. I didn't go just to sell my books; I went to give something of myself to the women who took the time to listen. I think authors get really caught up in what our agents, our publishers, our publicists and our booksellers don't do for us. I'm telling ya, knock it off. I'm not suggesting we become stagnant or passive. Rather, we need to be actively grateful for what we have, and actively responsible for what we want.

I'd like to say thank you to Rosemarie and Debbie and their team who put on an amazing event and allowed me to attend. Thank you to my family and friends who cheered me on even though I actually contemplated hiding in the girls' room! Thank you to everyone who listened to my presentation, who came up to my booth and who purchased my books. I hope my personal story and my fictional stories at the very least, gave you a good laugh.

Mary