MANIC MONDAY – My Writing Day by Marilyn Meredith

Have you ever dreamed of being immortalized in print? Well, here’s your chance! Award-winning author Marilyn Meredith is running a contest during her Lingering Spirit Virtual Book Tour, which runs from July 6th through July 30th. Marilyn will name a character in her next Rocky Bluff P.D. book after one reader who leaves the most comments at any of the blog stops during her virtual book tour. This book is currently scheduled to be released in 2012. Leave more than one comment and get your name in Marilyn’s next Rocky Bluff P.D. book!

Follow along on Marilyn’s tour at Pump Up Your Book!

Buy a copy of Lingering Spirit at Amazon.com

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Nicole Ainsworth’s husband, Steve, has a premonition of his death and moves his family to a mountain community where he serves as a deputy sheriff. He is killed in the line of duty and his wife, Nicole, is left behind to struggle with the changes forced upon her life. While trying to cope with her grief, raise her two little girls, her husband’s spirit visits her on numerous occasions. She soon learns that someone else is watching over her too.

My Writing Day
Over the years, my writing day has changed many times. While I was writing the first book that was published, I was babysitting three grandchildren, five years, three years and one and a half. I sat at the end of the dining room table with my typewriter and wrote away, while they played with their toys in the living room. Of course I had to stop to make lunch and snacks, change diapers, all the things you do when babysitting. But I still managed to write.

Later, my husband and I bought and took over a licensed residential care facility where we lived and cared for six women with developmental disabilities. We did this for nearly thirty years. I wrote nearly every weekday beginning at 6:30 after the women left the house to go to work and day programs. I also did the laundry while writing. I stopped at noon to do things I needed to do for the business. Of course I cooked and cleaned, and took some days off to shop for groceries and sometimes took the women to the doctor and other appointments. Evenings and weekends I devoted to the women. After the women went to bed, I edited what I’d written during the day.

During this time period, we also provided a home for older grandchildren, one boy stayed with us until he was twenty. We did all the things a parent is expected to do when these kids lived with us too. And I wrote.

Retired from that business, I still write in the mornings when my brain works the best. I’ve always had lots of interruptions and still do. Hubby comes in and sits in the chair in my office and I know he wants to discuss something or ask a question. We have another grown grandson living with us now, and though he’s gone to work a lot in the daytime, he does the same thing as his grandfather when he wants my attention. Fortunately, I’m able to return to whatever I’m working on without a problem.

Lingering Spirits was written a long time ago, back when we still had the care facility. It appeared first as an e-book. Resurrected by Oak Tree Press, it is now a trade paperback too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marilyn Meredith is the author of nearly thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the latest Dispel the Mist from Mundania Press. Under the name of F. M. Meredith she writes the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, An Axe to Grind is the latest from Oak Tree Press.

She is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.comand her blog at
http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com

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First Draft to Published

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