Blood on the Moon

• Ten PDF copies of Blood on the Moon (INT)
• Blood on the Moon Bracelet (US Only)
• Key of Solomon Print Book (US Only)
• $10 Electronic Amazon Gift Card (INT)

It’s being run by the awesome Jaidis Shaw who I’ve had the pleasure of working with several times. Her author promotion company, Juniper Grove Book Solutions, offers book publicity, promotion campaigns and virtual book tours. She also offers editing, proofreading and critiques. I have to tell you, she’s an awesome proofreader and her tours are fabulous, plus she’s just an all around terrific person I’m glad to know.

Here’s the tour schedule.

• January 21^st  – BestsellerBound Recommends (Interview)
• January 21st – Parenting from a Child’s Point of View (Spotlight)
• January 21st – Reviewing in Chaos (Interview)
• January 22nd – From the Bootheel Cotton Patch (Spotlight)
• January 22nd – Keira’s Corner (Interview)
• January 23rd – Buffy’s Ramblings (Guest Post)
• January 23rd – Lunar Haven Reviews and Designs (Book Review/Guest Post)
• January 24th – Book-Marks the Spot (Book Review/Guest Post)
• January 24th – Sabrina’s Paranormal Palace (Book Review/Guest Post)
• January 25th – The News in Books (Guest Post)
• January 25th – Delphina Reads Too Much (Guest Post)

If you want to see her work, take a look at my author tour page: http://junipergrovebooksolutions.com/now-scheduling-blood-on-the-moon-by-cassiel-knight/

 If you enter the giveaways, good luck!

Enjoy Cathryn’s post!

Cathryn Cade

Hawaiian Heroes III; Blooming in the Wild

I just read a fabulous book! And it was short! Can you beat that combination? For non-fiction, I think not. If it’s fiction, of course we want the fabulousness to last and last.

The book? The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

He says we are all creative beings, in other words we do things.

• Things that are good for us; lose weight, exercise, attend church.
• Thing that expand our horizons; take classes, learn a new skill, make friends outside our culture.
• Things that make our world a better place; learn lifesaving techniques, volunteer, get to know our neighbors and help them without being asked.
• Creative things; write a book, paint a mural, garden, sew a beautiful quilt, try a new recipe.

But, to begin any new endeavor, we must stop thinking about it, and Just Do It. So simple, yet such a powerful phrase that Nike used it to power an entire ad campaign.

Why? There is an equal and opposing force to creativity. Pressfield calls it opposition. Like natural gas without the stink added by our safety-conscious power company, opposition is tasteless, colorless, odorless. It can seep around our latest project and take it down before we even know our creative space is permeated. Opposition takes many forms – fear, self-doubt and … you guessed it, procrastination.

I’m a creative person. I have art pastels with fancy paper, half-finished quilt projects, tole painting supplies and wood, cookbooks I haven’t used, and … blah, blah, blah, the list goes on. Yes, I’ve finished many projects, but there are more that will never happen. I’ve allowed procrastination to win.

And my unfinished romantic masterpieces? Oh, girlfriend, don’t even ask!  I’ve started writing as many books as Linda Howard. The difference between us? She finished more. Well, and she’s good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that good, but I know one thing, if I don’t finish the books I plan to write, no reader will ever get to compare us.

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabes don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we … work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come.”
? Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

In other words, if you have a dream, get your cute little butt in the chair, or to the gym. Because unless you start now, it will never happen. Don’t wait for circumstances to be just right … they never will be. Create anyway.

What do you dream of creating next? And when will you begin? Leave a comment!

Happy New Year,

Cathryn Cade

… red hot romance!

Goodreads, My Website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Samhain Author Page,

And sign up for My Newsletter for a chance to win goodies!

THE RESOLUTION TOUR – January 1 – 9, 2013

Maggie Jaimeson – Take a Vacation

Jessa Slade – Get Organized

Paty Jager – Volunteerism

Linda Mercury – Creating a Literary (or Creative) Life

Jenna Bayley-Burke – Eat Healthier

Cassiel Knight – No More Procrastination

Cathryn Cade – Take Time for those OTHER Creative Passions

Susan Lute – Reduce Stress: Find and Follow Your Bliss

Jamie Brazil – Shrink My Closet

As a reminder, I hope you’ve been following along and leaving comments. Everyone who leaves a comment on each post, each day gets entered into a drawing for a $25.00 gift certificate from Amazon.

Enjoy!

Susan Lute

Dragon’s Thief

This is so funny, because I don’t call leaving things to the last minute procrastination. I call it the steamroll of life. Though admittedly it looks like procrastination. My old to-do list would have been lengthy, starting with the most urgent and working down to the least squeaky wheel. Thanks to advice from Cassiel early on in this tour, I now have three items to do at any given time. Today it’s 1. Finish writing and publishing Resolve 2013 posts; 2. Get meds; and 3. Do banking. Three tasks I can do without raising my stress level.

So how do very busy women…and men…stop procrastinating?

You could make a collage – No More Procrastination and see what that looks like.

You could take some of the load off your plate. What bits and pieces do you REALLY WANT in your life, and how much is squished in because of obligation, or habit. Like Jamie Brazil cleaning out her closet, sometimes we have to clean out our lives. That’s what I’m doing, and I’m only keeping the things that help me play more and work less.

Don’t let your to-do list get out of control. Life should not rule us. We should rule life. Easier said than done, I know.

What one thing are you willing to give up to lighten your load and by doing so stave off procrastination? With that pushy…and challenging…question, I can hear breakfast on the stove.

You can find me at Goodreads, My website, Facebook, Twitter and See Jane Publish. Sign up for my newsletter and have a chance to win a gift card to Amazon or BN. And don’t forget to support your local authors by becoming a “fan” on Goodreads.

THE RESOLUTION TOUR – January 1 – 9, 2013

Maggie Jaimeson – Take a Vacation

Jessa Slade – Get Organized

Paty Jager – Volunteerism

Linda Mercury – Creating a Literary (or Creative) Life

Jenna Bayley-Burke – Eat Healthier

Cassiel Knight – No More Procrastination

Cathryn Cade – Take Time for those OTHER Creative Passions

Susan Lute – Reduce Stress: Find and Follow Your Bliss

Jamie Brazil – Shrink My Closet

Jamie Brazil

Manyana!

I want to say that I have completely, totally and thoroughly enjoyed being included in this blog tour. What fun to compare and contrast our views on different resolutions. And what a relief not to have to come up with all the ideas! This one is great. No more procrastination!

I gave myself three days to write the nine blogs. And NO MORE PROCRASTINATION was the first one I decided to tackle.

Day One: I created a computer file for the nine blogs. I put the file on my desktop and have it backed up on a thumbdrive. Nine blogs. It’s far more than I’ve attempted to write in a row before. A bit daunting. A Chinese lunch with my critique partner would really help, followed by a little Christmas shopping.

Day Two: Crunch time. The keys are calling. It’s time for the magic. My door is open to my muse, Ernesto. Have I mentioned Ernesto? My husband and I named our muse after a hotel custodian inLos Angeles. Ernesto was full of energy and life, and surprised by every little thing that could go wrong in a poshL.A.hotel, like a truck in the underground parking taking out the hot water pipes for the entire hotel, or the handles coming off the tub in the bath. My husband and I love to reminisce about that adventure over margaritas.  Oh, look… it’s 3 p.m.  Happy hour!

Day Three: Butt in the writer’s chair. Like concrete. Glued to it. Unmovable. Is the rear tire on the car flat? It can’t be. We fixed it last week. It had two screws in it. A double puncture. They absolutely, positively guaranteed us that they fixed both of the holes. It turns out that they did patch one out of two. Fifty percent isn’t bad, right? Oh well, they have cable TV at the tire dealership and it’s conveniently located near a mall.

Day Four: Oh dear, what was the topic of this blog again?

Let’s connect on Goodreads and Facebook!

Maggie Jaimeson
ETERNITY

Did you know that, historically, procrastination has not been regarded as a bad thing? In Greek and Roman times, the wisest leaders embraced procrastination. Think of Plato and Sophocles. They would basically sit around and think and not do anything unless they absolutely had to. (This definitely fits my initial style of starting a new book.  Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.) The idea that procrastination is bad started with the Puritans—specifically with Jonathan Edwards’s sermon against procrastination and then the American embrace of “a stitch in time saves nine.” The Puritan work ethic required immediate and diligent action.

Procrastination is a universal state of being for humans and I believe is even more pronounced in creative people because the process of creativity is so different from building a widget. The question is not whether we are procrastinating, it is whether we are procrastinating effectively. In my mind there are two kinds of procrastinators: energy people and stop-the-world people.

Energy People use procrastination to prioritize tasks and to gather information before taking action.  Energy people also like/need the deadline to keep them on task. The closer the deadline gets the more it focuses their attention. Energy people use that focused deadline to really produce, in fact they need it to produce. Energy people rarely miss a deadline, even though they procrastinated a lot. This is good use of procrastination. The key here is that even though procrastination occurred, action was taken. 

Stop-the-world People, on the other hand, use procrastination out of fear—fear of failure, fear of success, or fear it isn’t perfect. This type of procrastination does not give you energy and is truly detrimental. Fear of failure is behind your procrastination when the thought of putting in effort makes you anxious, so you choose avoiding and procrastinating instead. In this way, when your project fails you can rationalize that it wasn’t a true test of your abilities anyway-if only you’d had more time. Fear of success procrastination protects you from the higher expectations and greater responsibilities that may come with succeeding. Like those who procrastinate because they fear failure, you keep yourself safe from facing your true limits by avoiding challenges and putting things off. Finally, fear it isn’t perfect Because you believe that things should be done perfectly, the result is that nothing gets done at all. When faced with a task, you become overwhelmed and frustrated-paralyzed by impossible standards.

For stop-the-world people, procrastination doesn’t work because avoidance doesn’t erase anxiety-it just delays it and in the end not only is no action ever taken, but the person feels miserable about it.

Research from the American Psychological Association says 80% of people fall into the effective use of procrastination category, and 20% fall into the procrastination is making their life difficult category.  If you fall into that 20% range, the good news is there are effective strategies to overcome anxiety and procrastination through cognitive therapy.  If you fall into the group with the 80% then you can decrease your guilt by understanding you are using procrastination effectively.  As long as you are still taking action and meeting deadlines you are okay.  Embrace it as your unique way of being creative and effective.

A good resource for people who find procrastination is really making life difficult is the book The Worrier’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination: Breaking Free from the Anxiety that Holds You Back by Pamela Wiegartz and Kevin Gyoerkoe  It has questions and exercises. For a cost of $12-$14 it’s much less expensive than therapy if you are the kind of person who can benefit from a book.

As for me, I’m going to continue to be a happy procrastinator. It works for me. It helps me manage time, prioritize, gives me that “thinking” time and, though I may seem angry with myself when I’m writing 5,000 to 7,000 words a day for a week to meet a deadline, that focused energy serves me well.

 Contact Maggie: Website | GoodReads | Facebook | Twitter | Blog

Jessa Slade
The Darkest Night (A Marked Souls Christmas novella) 

Here’s the ugly truth: Procrastination works. Well, it only works until it doesn’t. But while it’s working, it’s soooo much more convenient and efficient than actually, ya know, doing the work.

Sigh. The second ugly truth is that procrastinating has gotten me into trouble. I rarely miss deadlines, but hoo-boy, I sure do like to race right up to their edge. And I know that someday, a miscalculation is likely going to send me plummeting over with a long, drawn-out “But waaaaaaaait!”

I’ve read articles about how to stop procrastinating, but studies have found — just like I have — that husbanding your energy is actually a very adaptive technique a lot of the time, which makes it hard to extinguish. Still, I’ve found a couple tips can help me stop the stopping:

1. Just do it: I hate to say it because it sounds too simple, but often, if I actually say aloud the thing I’ve been avoiding and then JUST GO DO THAT THING without another word, it gets done.

2. Make a list: I hate to say this one too because it also sounds too simple, but I adore crossing things off lists. I often keep identical lists just so I can cross things off twice. Knowing this about myself, making a list that includes the thing I’ve been putting off can trick me into doing it just so I can chortle and cross it off.

3. Don’t do it: Admittedly, I’ve only done this a couple times. But sometimes I find out the thing I was avoiding DESERVED to be avoided. And this is why I find procrastinating such a hard bad habit to eradicate.

Sigh again.

How many lists do you have going RIGHT THIS MINUTE? Please share in comments.

Goodreads, My website, My newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
And follow my A LITTLE NIGHT MUSE blog tour for a chance to win goodies

Remember, commenting on each posts gets you entered for a $25.00 gift certificate to Amazon.

Paty Jager
Secrets of a Mayan Moon

This is a hard topic for me. I don’t procrastinate. Never have.  As a child I always had my assignments done ahead of time.  It is like a game to me to make sure I’m the first one to finish. 

Am I competitive? Growing up with brothers, you bet I am.

I’m always early to appointments, to meetings, and anywhere I have to be at a certain time.  If I sign up for blogs, I always try to send my posts early. I don’t work well under stress and waiting until the last minute to get somewhere or do something would stress me out. Life is too short to be stressed and it’s so easy to be on time.

My strategy:

Leave early for appointments.

Don’t start tasks that you know will take more time than you have.

Always give yourself an extra ten to twenty minutes for every task you plan to do during a day.

Start projects as soon as you get them and continue on that project until you complete it before starting anything new.

Places where you can connect with me: 

Website              Blog        Goodreads       Facebook        Twitter        Pinterest         

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Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m writing this post two days before my deadline. I had plenty of time to do it. I had a general draft written. And I found myself staring at my Spam filter on Gmail rather than type it up.

What the hell is up with that?

I had to take a good look at my to-do list. I found I had committed the very mistake I wanted to write about – my ideas were not specific enough.

I procrastinate when I don’t know what is the very next action I need to take. 

Any productivity guru will tell you that “Write Chapter One” is a terrible list item. It’s too vague, too big, too overwhelming. It doesn’t allow for mistakes or take into consideration your time constraints. A better next action would be, “Draft three hundred words of the Heroine’s reaction to seeing the Hero for the first time” or perhaps, “Write for ten minutes on how the Hero’s thirst for revenge interferes with his ability to show love”.

When you are looking at videos of cats or killing on more monster on NetHack, take a look at your To Do list. Is it clear? Is it specific? Or does it say things like, “Write on how procrastination sucks”?

Linda Mercury, Author of the Blood Wings Series from eKensington

Dracula’s Secret

Dracula’s Desires

Dracula Unleashed

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About Linda

Linda Mercury left behind her varied careers as a librarian, art model, and professional clown to pursue writing. She’s interested in writing, romance, Middle Eastern History, reading, organizing, cooking, hand-made silk Turkish rugs, and the Nike of Samothrace.

Happy New Year! Today marks the first day of the Resolve 2013 tour I spoke about yesterday. My New Year’s resolution is all about procrastination, and I’m so excited about having eight wonderful authors giving me advice on how to handle this beast.

Please join me in welcoming Jenna, author of Drive Me Crazy as she shares her thoughts on my New Year’s resolution–No More Procrastination.

Thanks Jenna!

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I’m thinking I need to read your blog all week for tips! Procrastination is my middle name. Actually… I think Excuses is my middle name. I have such a long list. And most of them are valid – health issues, kiddo activities, family dramatics. Still, I used to get things done.

I find I get more done when I make a list, especially when I put things on the list I’ve already done. It feels better to think I’m already on my way.

I also give a line to the steps I need to do to accomplish the task. For example:

• Write Resolve 2013 blog posts
  • Vacation
  • Organization
  • Shrink Closet
  • Volunteer
  • Literary Life
  • Creative Passions
  • Procrastination
  • Reduce Stress

I might not be able to check off the top item, but surely I can knock off a few things so there is less to do tomorrow. I hope!

Find Jenna : Website | GoodReads | Facebook | Twitter | Blog| Pinterest

Starting tomorrow, nine of my fellow authors banded together to offer 10 days worth of New Year’s resolutions advice. Many of them will be familiar – maybe you’ve had one or two of them yourselves.

The goal is to help each other with one of our New Year’s resolutions. (Special thanks to the fabulous Jessie Smith for suggesting this to us!)  Each resolution is different. Mine is to stop procrastinating.  I have such a hard time with this and know that if I could get a handle on procrastination, I’d be exactly where I want to be – writing and editing full time and making money while I do it. <grin>

Each of my nine friends are guest posting on my blog about this resolution and their approach or ideas. After the other eight authors have posted, I will wrap up with how I’m going to make this resolution work for me. In turn, I will be posting on each of their blogs to help with their resolutions too.  The list of writers and resolutions is at the end of this post.

Make sure you read to the end — there’s a special prize

And after reading the posts here, go check out my friends’ sites. You’ll find a variety of stories, some humor, mystery and thrillers, paranormal and more. You won’t regret the stops.

Happy New Year!

THE RESOLUTION TOUR – January 1 – 9, 2013

Maggie Jaimeson – Take a Vacation

Jessa Slade – Get Organized

Paty Jager – Volunteerism

Linda Mercury – Creating a Literary (or Creative) Life

Jenna Bayley-Burke – Eat Healthier

Cathryn Cade – Take Time for those OTHER Creative Passions

Su Lute – Reduce Stress: Find and Follow Your Bliss

Jamie Brazil – Shrink My Closet