Mailbox Monday - Jan 2

Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you had a nice holiday season. I'm spending this last day before getting back to full-time work organizing my office and enjoying some peace and quiet.

It's also goal setting time. I've set my writing goals and reading goals. My first business planning meeting of the year is Friday. While my business plan has been set for a few weeks now, I need to nail down my goals to achieve that plan by then. As for personal goals, I have just two (and one of them is related to my work schedule):

• Dedicate time each week to what I enjoy most: family, reading, cooking and gardening;
• Continue my health and wellness plan from 2016. 

I think Tuesday will be my day off from real estate. Weekends are usually busy for agents, so that's not feasible. Eventually I hope to have a couple of agents working with me so that I can take weekends off, but until then I must plan Saturdays and Sundays as work days.

Last year, I lost 14 pounds to bring me to my goal weight. In the past couple of months I've been so busy I haven't exercised much, but better food choices have allowed me to maintain my weight. This morning, I decided to exercise and plan to time block three days a week to exercise going forward. 

As far as my mailbox goes, it's been slow since Christmas. I did, however, download a couple of writing craft books on character development.

Character development can be one of the hardest aspects of great writing. You may have a great plot and story line but if the characters aren't real or just don't fit in--the whole story is a flop.

This short workshop will help you develop meaningful, true-to-life characters. Get personal with them, get inside their head and learn to create compelling characters from the inside-out.

How do you create a main character readers won't forget? How do you write a book in multiple-third-person point of view without confusing your readers (or yourself)? How do you plant essential information about a character's past into a story?

Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by award-winning author Nancy Kress answers all of these questions and more! This accessible book is filled with interactive exercises and valuable advice that teaches you how to:

•Choose and execute the best point of view for your story
•Create three-dimensional and believable characters
•Develop your characters' emotions
•Create realistic love, fight, and death scenes
•Use frustration to motivate your characters and drive your story


With dozens of excerpts from some of today's most popular writers, Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint provides you with the techniques you need to create characters and stories sure to linger in the hearts and minds of agents, editors, and readers long after they've finished your book.

That's it for this week. Wishing all of you a year filled with health and happiness.