A #Holiday #Gift and Greeting for You

Writers Life

FROM THE ORR HOUSE TO YOUR HOUSE

seasons-greetings-1Happy Happy Merry Merry.

Here is my Christmas/Hannukah gift for you. A Free eBook copy of A Villain for Vanessa at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533185050. “I was gripped before I was off the first page.” That’s what one reviewer says. I hope you will agree.

More important, dear friends, it is the most blessed season of the year, and at the Orr house we’re feeling grateful for the grace and good will that have carried us through the past twelve months to this present good moment.

Jonathan and I continue to enjoy our cozy city apartment and to run Orr and Orr Contracting with Jonathan as Project Manager and me as CFO. I continue to write romantic suspense novels with A Time of Fear & Loving – Book 5 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series, in progress. We are both glad to be productive and doing work we love.

Our family remains our abiding joy. We will all be together here at Christmas and my birthday on the day after. An added blessing is granddaughter Maya nearby as a freshman at NYU. If we could only get grandson Julian to the city as well, this would be entirely paradise. Meanwhile, daughter Kathleen and son-in-law Luis live just blocks from us, and son Ed and daughter-in-law Deborah aren’t far away in Boston.

Our friends are beloved sustenance as always. We feel privileged to have each of you in our lives. And, finally, our faith lives embrace us and remind us to dwell in gratitude, kindness and love.

We look forward to a new year in the light and wish you, your friends and family joy, contentment and heartfuls of the truest satisfaction life can afford.

Love and Blessings. Alice

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com – Delicious Suspense Spiced with a Love Story.

Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 4 – A Villain for Vanessa and Book 1 – A Wrong Way Home – A FREE eBOOK – are both available at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000APC22E.

 

Stay on Board or Tumble into a Wallow? #MondayMotivation #MFRW_author #IAN1

Motivation, ,

smooth-sailing-imageReturned to earth after annual orbit through the Thanksgiving galaxy. Food leftovers provisioned out to freezer or jury-rigged concoctions, some less savory than others. Guest leftovers packed up for mailing, especially the grandson’s electric toothbrush. Extra table leaves packed up also until next feast day.

Re-entry into my newest project also after two weeks’ hiatus and several hiatuses before that one. Lots of reading in between with the comparison bunny hard at work reminding me how far short I fall. My last post here was titled “Your Brain on Doubt.” We write what we need to read.

Prominent among those reading experiences, because of its potential to inspire me off my duff, On Writing by Stephen King. His basic advice vis-à-vis doubt and the comparison bunny et.al. Sit down every morning and do the work. Two-K words minimum. He actually advises more K’s but offers this fallback, perhaps because he is a compassionate man. Or not.

If he were truly compassionate he wouldn’t rob me of my most righteous rationale. The gods of the health glitch, each a miserable so-and-so, have rendered me pretty much housebound. When asked how my work is going I simply say that word, “housebound,” or maybe “shut-in” with the hardliners. Nobody questions me again. They’re too busy offering condolences.

In response to which Mr. King tells the story of his own home incarceration. Leg encased in a medieval-style torture device. Confined to a back hallway. Sweating out a heatwave record breaker with only a small oscillating fan, as opposed to legions of the life-sized variety, for relief. Meanwhile, he’d written the very book I held in my hands.

In my own meanwhile, I was back in Chapter Six. Amanda and Willow race across the countryside propelled by fear of a phantom biker who may or may not be on their trail. I’d lost enthusiasm for their story right up to the moment that same morning when I took the King’s advice and forged ahead, hampered by homebound-ness or not.

“Keep on writing whatever may occur.” I’d signed my own book with those words many times but I hadn’t really paid attention. The phrase was a PR ploy. The thing I should say to be admired or maybe even loved a little, especially by beginners who give love so generously. That morning, at long last, I followed my own admonition.

Afterward I felt good, maybe even fabulous. I contacted my editor to ask if Amanda and Willow can expect her to jump on board, as she has so effectively in the past. But the most crucial questions are these. Will I stay on board myself? OR Will I tumble off into a wallow, as I’ve too often done? Only time, and the status of my word count, will tell.

RR

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4 is available from Amazon HERE. A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 is a FREE EBOOK HERE. All of Alice’s books are written while on board rather than wallowing.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/. 

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Your Brain on Doubt & What to Do About It #MFRWAuthor #Inspiration

Motivation, ,

flat-tire-image“I’ve watched you grow smaller,” an observant friend once said to me. “as if you are deflating.”

I was stuck in a period of deep doubt about almost everything. I didn’t know what to do with my life or my work or me. “I’m between things,” I’d say to anyone who appeared to care. Actually, I wasn’t anywhere. My friend was right. I’d deflated and needed desperately to pump up again.

Unfortunately, a deflated spirit lacks not only air to breathe but the will and stamina to refill its lungs in the first place. Doubt had taken those good things from me. I was a flat tire. More to the point, my brain was a flat tire, and flat tires don’t get us anywhere.

We all end up in the hardly-moving lane now and then, and doubt is often the vehicle that takes us there. Especially doubt about ourselves. Doubting seems to be an inevitable consequence of living. The trouble is it can zap the will to live, and the joy of that life, flat out of us.

I’m re-inflated at the moment. The last thing I want is another blowout, or even a slow leak into a bad-year tire again. How did I get from flaccid to full-up? What can I do next time I misplace my air lock valve? Here are five specific remedies for my self-doubt days and yours.

Specific #1. Get out from under the comforter. My comforter is blue, the color of melancholy. I hide there and bring other comforts with me – unhealthy food, binge TV and the occasional bourbon coke with a splash of lime. I must drag my bemoaning behind from under all of that.

Specific #2. Cut the to-do list to size. Nothing lengthens a ride in the doubt mobile as fast as piled-on expectations. What needs to be done feels like being expected to prepare a holiday feast by suppertime. How about toast instead? I think I can manage a slice, maybe even multi-grain.

Specific #3. Create a feel-good list instead. What makes me feel better? What ACTivities? I must stand up, get dressed and move. Yoga on the purple mat I bought myself last Christmas. Or a walk around a block or two without my comforter, like Linus’s blanket, trailing behind.

Progress Report. I’m out of the bedroom (#1). I’ve been to the kitchen where I consumed some multi-grain nutrition (#2) and came up with a feel-better action plan (#3). Time to suit up, but first a stop in front of the bathroom sink.

Specific #4. Stare straight ahead. What do I see? I see the hero in my mirror. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already survived many comforter-craving moments. I chose the choices and did the work that got me to this place, which makes me the hero of my own life story.

Specific #5. Produce a memory of the hero in the mirror. Deep breathing in a yoga pose or puffing down the street, I recall a time I lifted myself toward where I needed to be. I watch, hear and, most important, feel the moment. “I did that,” I say, because I did. No doubt about it.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com/

RR

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4 and Alice Orr’s other books are available from Amazon HERE. A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 is a FREE EBOOK there also.

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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

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