The Cozy Page
Readers, kick back and get cozy with multi-published romance author Amber Leigh Williams!
Friday, March 8, 2013
Rethink Breast Cancer Awareness...
As this video was originally published in 2011, I'm shamefully late to this party, according to its five million plus viewers but I had to post it anyway. I'm a huge advocate of breast cancer awareness as well as shirtless, ripped dudes who dance around in their underwear. Anyone with the same likes will LOVE the Your Man Reminder campaign from Rethink Breast Cancer Awareness. Although the app isn't all its cracked up to be, the video is so worth it. For those who haven't seen it, you're welcome. To the little sister who introduced me to it over the weekend, thank you!
Monday, August 20, 2012
A Cautionary Tale...
The third trimester is underway so I am becoming
less and less mobile. This is good news for my TBR pile, great news for my WIP
and not so awesome news for my exercise regime. The good news is that I have
plenty to keep me occupied, including certain electronics….
| The hub standing in a little slice of lake heaven last week.... |
Is it just me – or is the power cord on every laptop
the first thing to go? Three out of my last five laptops have had problems with
the power cord. This one is no exception. In fact, this is my second power cord
for this computer. It’s lasted a year. The hub has done all he can to rig it so
the computer is still getting a charge and thankfully the cord itself isn’t so
misshapen that there’s a risk of frying the computer itself with a bad surge
(that, too, I’ve experienced before). For a device that is supposed to be portable,
though, it sure does seem to have a lot of issues.
This is me hopping off my box to tell a cautionary
electronics tale. A little over a week ago before the hub and I took a trip to
the family lakehouse, we were dozing very early one morning when a small
thunderstorm passed over our area. The storm cell was a minor one; nothing near
the crazy, wet weather we’ve experienced here throughout July and August on the
Gulf Coast. So we’re dozing…we’re dozing…I hear thunder rumbling in the distance
and think that if it gets closer I should get up and unplug my computer. No
sooner had that thought left my head then KAPOW! Out of nowhere, a lightning
bolt hit very close to our house. There was no delay between the blinding flash
of white light and the unbelievable noise. Added to it, the fire alarms started
to go off. The dogs started to go bonkers. The hub and I bolt out of bed. He
says, “That hit something in the backyard.” It takes forever to get the fire
alarms to cease. The ceilings in our house are pretty high. Even he, at six
feet tall, had to have a stool to reach each one.
By this time, we realize that the lights in the
garage don’t work. The garage is on the opposite side of the house as the backyard
where we thought the bolt hit. I walk back toward the bedroom to grab a
flashlight and start to smell something a little…well, off. I soon discover
that none of the lights in the guest section of our house are working. Even
worse, the strange smell was coming from the bedroom closest to ours. Anyone
who has ever experienced a close lightning strike knows exactly what ozone
smells like. The closest thing I know to compare it to is the offensive, rubbery
smell of the white smoke that pours out a vacuum when the motor is caught and
the belt keeps spinning. It’s pretty unsettling, particularly when it begins to
permeate your entire house and won’t seem to go away. It’s at this point that
the hub realizes that the lightning didn’t hit something in the backyard – it hit
our house, right above the wall that separates the master bedroom and the guest
bedroom where the worst of the ozone smell was coming from.
The rain is gone now. The lights are working
throughout the house again. He’s starting to dress for work. At this point, it
occurs to us to check the electronics throughout the house that were plugged in.
The garage door was my main concern because my parents’ house had a similar
experience years ago when I was still living at home and I remember the garage
door having to be replaced…along with half of the electronics in the house.
Thankfully, the garage door was working just fine as was most of the
electronics that had been left plugged in overnight…but unfortunately the same
couldn’t be said for the two devices plugged into the phone line on the side of
the house closest to the strike – our DSL box in my office and the hub’s Xbox,
which we use as a DVD player in the master bedroom. Ouch.
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| The roof of our house the morning after the storm.... |
Before the hub left for work, he took a stroll out
back with the dogs to check to see that everything in the yard was okay…and
this is when he discovered the gaping hole in the roof over our bedroom where
the lightning hit the house. The bolt ripped through a whole patch of shingles
and the plywood underneath, and there was officially no mistaking that it hit
the house directly. Thankfully, the hub took off work to patch it up before
another storm blew through.
I tell you this story, Cozies, because if you live
in the stormy south like we do, it’s good to back-up your hard drive. My
computer could have very easily been plugged into the DSL as it was an hour or
so before we went to bed the night before the strike. I wouldn’t just have lost
an expensive piece of office equipment; I would have lost months of work. So if
you’re reading this, do me a favor. Take five minutes out of your schedule
today and back up your hard drives. Also? A surge protector is a really good
thing to invest in, but we couldn’t protect those items plugged into the phone
line. The Xbox was covered by an extended warranty, but it’s interesting to note
that when we did take it back to the store, neither the Xbox itself or its
power cable worked. So the bolt came through the phone line, took out the DSL,
traveled through the DSL cable, fried the Xbox and its power cable.
Another chilling side note? A mere week before this
happened to us, a house in a neighborhood just down the road from ours was
struck by lightning and burned to the ground within minutes. Lesson learned? Be
mindful, Cozies. I’d hate for any of you to have a similar or worse experience
this storm season….
Labels:
Amber Leigh Williams,
cautionary tale,
electronics,
lightning
Friday, August 3, 2012
Blog Dates & Changes...
I’ve been looking forward to telling this horse
story at Sweethearts of the West for a month! Drop by tomorrow and read "A Modern-Day
Horse Story" about everyday heroes and the animals who need them.
You might have noticed a few changes have taken
place here at The Cozy Page. Due to the recent crackdown on web image
copyrights on several other blogging sites, I have decided to take all pictures
posted here at The Cozy Page that do not belong to me down. From here on out, I’ll
only be posting my covers and photos from my personal collection. Guests are
still welcome to bring images as long as they belong to or have been purchased by
them from stock image sites. Clip-art like the one at left is also welcome. It was tough
having to go through five years of blog posts and delete several images from my
history here at the ol’ blog, but as an author it’s important to respect
copyrights and do what’s necessary to stop piracy and stealing on the web. Thank
you so much for your understanding, Cozies!
I finally finished the long contemporary revision
early last week. I’ve been trying to find some downtime for me and my little,
developing minion before it’s back to writing western romance and getting the nursery
ready for the little one’s holiday arrival. I did promise a glimpse into how I
build my characters. I have not forgotten. Stay tuned for that – as well as
Monday’s post at The Roses of Prose!
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Thank you, readers!
So yesterday I received my 1st quarter numbers from The Wild Rose Press and I simply must
give a shout-out to my readers because they were great, much better than any of
my numbers from last year! I’m so grateful for your support – I hope those of
you who have bought books from my backlist this year are enjoying them. This makes me want to work even
harder to generate more titles for you to read!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Any Relation...?
Today I journey into the past with The Roses ofProse with stories from my family tree, some that date back to Germany,
Ireland, and the American Civil War. Hope to see you there….
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Housekeeping?
I’m back to work this month, Cozies! And with this new surge of second trimester energy comes a big desire to organize. The hub and I always seem to do our spring cleaning late…but better late than never, right? The final week of May, we donated a truck-full of household and yard items to the Salvation Army to make room for the baby things that will soon be spread around the nursery as well as much of the house. I was so eager to part with some of my clutter, I even went through my shelves and boxes of books and managed to part with two boxes full of paperbacks. It did hurt some, but I just love the possibility of free space.
And an office without clutter has turned out to be a
fresh start for me and the muse. This week we hit the ground running on final
revision. At this rate, it will be finished and mailed off to the agent by
July, just in time for one last family vacation for the year. (I’ll be grounded
here close to home base for much of the fall months as per doctor’s orders.) To
make room for a bedside bassinet, my bookshelves have been moved into the
office…where they look lovely. This opened the office space up, too, because
the craft table that was on that wall previously is now in the garage. We also
parted with the derelict desktop that has been collecting dust on the desk
facing the window, my favorite spot. It feels like a much more productive
environment. In fact, yesterday I revised three chapters before getting online.
Today, I’ve completed one of the two character sketches I need to guide me
through the middle of this manuscript.
I’m looking forward to the end of this last revision
because I feel confident that it is the last. Revision has served me very well
in the past. It’s a process I believe strongly in. Most editors do, too, so if
you’re a writer and you avoid revision like the plague as I did when I began
writing all those years ago, I strongly suggest a regime change. You can still
stay true to the story’s original vision if you revise in a way that feels
healthy to both you and the text. I know cutting material as we sometimes have
to do doesn’t always feel healthy. In truth, it can be like parting with an
important limb. But learning how to safely navigate the revision process
inherently teaches you what material is necessary and what is not; what will
make the writing tauter, the flow of the story smoother.
Enough on revision for now. I’m going to talk more
openly soon about how character workshops have helped me create some of the
most helpful character sketches and plotting from character. I just wanted to
give you readers a little update on my housekeeping progress as well as my
latest revision regime. It’s back to work now!
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Life Getting in the Way (& Why That's OK)....
Something I’ve been doing a lot of lately is reading!
I caught up on quite a bit of my TBR while I was out sick. I re-read a few of
my favorite comfort reads – Nora Roberts’s second Irish trilogy. I also caught
up on one of my favorite paranormal authors’ new series – Larissa Ione’s Lords of Deliverance.
Immortal Rider was excellent! Limos
and Arik kept my mind occupied through some of the worst days of April...and
that’s saying a lot....
Before the hub and I start Project Relax...I’ll be
at Karen Michelle Nutt’s blog this Thursday, May 24 with a behind the scenes
look at western romance Blackest Heart! Hope to see you there - and hugs for being patient with me through this new journey….
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