Starting today, you can enter to win one of two signed copies of Flicker, or three ebook versions, at PeopleReads.com! The contest runs through Saturday so if you still haven’t bought a copy, now’s your chance to get it. (I realize ALL of my regular readers have read it —— RIGHT?! —— but you can …
Melanie Hooyenga
The Great Pumpkin Analogy
This post originally aired in October 2011. I thought it was worth resharing. While perusing the pumpkin “patch” (shelves) at my grocery store last weekend, this one struck me as the roundest, cleanest, most pumpkiny pumpkin of the bunch. In fact, I was so pleased with nature’s work that I considered leaving it alone and …
It’s Not a Toomah
One of the benefits of working for a large-ish company is we have lots of perks that I never had when working at ad agencies. A couple weeks ago the Spectrum Health Betty Ford Breast Cancer Bus paid us a visit so I bit the bullet and scheduled my first mammogram. Wheee! Can you feel …
FLICKER Available at the Dollar Store!
Not really, but while I’m plugging away at the sequel to FLICKER (I’m 1/6th of the way done! Woohoo!) I thought I’d celebrate by offering FLICKER for 99¢! I wanted to do it for free but you have to join Kindle Select, which means I can’t sell it anyplace other than Amazon. I’m all about …
Getting Over the Wall
Getting started is the easy part. You have an idea, you jump in with both feet, and then…. and then… you hit a wall. This is me at our local mud run last weekend. My husband and I ran it last year and I immediately wanted to build an obstacle course in the backyard. We …
Children’s, YA, & MG Blog Hop!
It’s blog hop time! For the uninitiated, a blog hop is when a group of writers (or otherwise connected bloggers) answer the same series of questions then tag both the people who tagged them as well additional people. You know, to keep you hopping from blog to blog. My good friend June “Bug” Kramin asked …
I Am Not Bryan Adams…
…and yet I almost wrote his lyrics in a conversation between my MC and her father. OOPS. I bust my butt to avoid cliches, doing my best to think outside the box and write realistic dialogue, but every now and then a commonly-used phrase slips past my defenses and finds its way into my manuscript. …
Making New Habits
Everyone knows how difficult it can be to break bad habits. Smoking, over-eating, cracking your knuckles (not that I would EVER have a problem with cracking my knuckles…) can take more effort than some people are willing to give. And slipping up makes it even harder to keep at it. One night of binging can …
The Sequel
It’s official, I’m writing the sequel to FLICKER. I’ve had the idea for over a year and while I could give you the list of excuses why I hadn’t started (bought a house, got married, was trying to juggle two jobs) all those are in the past and I’ve finally begun! There’s more Biz, more …
This Time I’M a Guest Blogger… with Shenanigans!
The lovely Colby Marshall, who you met last month, invited me over to her neck of the internet. Pop on by to learn a few of my favorites, what I’d rescue in a fire, and something you might be surprised to learn about me. FLICKER: An A to Z Shenanigan Because who doesn’t love shenanigans?