Eight Years Ago Today

Many of the most important things in my life have occurred on the 18th of the month, which has made 18 my lucky number. Both my kids were born on the 18th, and on this day in May 2005, another of my "kids" was officially born when I wrote the words THE END for the very first time in TREADING WATER. Little did I know then, during this moment of tremendous personal satisfaction and achievement, that Treading Water was an overwritten, 150,000-word, self-indulgent DISASTER. I also didn't know then that Treading Water would mark the start of the most incredible journey, filled with many soaring highs and just as many crushing lows.

Treading Water took me on a roller coaster ride of edits and revisions and rewrites and critiques and soul searching and questions for the ages: What would I do if I was in Jack's situation? Several of my late mother's friends read it, told me it kept them up all night and demanded I write a follow-on story for one of the characters whose story was left unfinished in Treading Water. I had many deep conversations with friends who'd read the book and found themselves questioning their own belief systems.

I began to think... If this book had affected the people in my life so profoundly, maybe, just maybe it would strike the hearts of others, too. I worked on that book for YEARS after I wrote THE END. Even as I wrote a bunch of other books, I returned over and over again to Treading Water, applying everything new that I learned to that first book. Traditional publishers, however, had absolutely no interest in my square peg book, which was heartbreaking at the time. I'm skipping a huge chunk of my writing career story as I jump forward to the fall of 2011 when I self-published Treading Water at a lean, mean 92,000 words. Over six years, I cut 58,000 words (!! almost another full book !!) from that first version. Talk about killing your darlings!

Taking the advice of my mother's friends, I wrote book 2, Marking Time, in three months, and have hardly changed a word since I finished it in early 2006. I learned all the most important lessons about storytelling, pacing, character development, point of view and over-writing from Treading Water. It was then and remains today the ultimate book of my heart. My company is named for Jack, the architect in Treading Water: HTJB, Inc. The House That Jack Built. Everything goes back to Jack and Treading Water.

Almost eight years after I wrote THE END that first time, I got to see my name on the New York Times bestseller list. And then it happened again, with a different book, three weeks later. I have thousands of readers who wait with anticipation for my next book, which is the absolute dream come true times a million because I never dreamed it would be as amazing as it is to have such incredible readers. I have a career I could've only imagined on that day eight years ago today. As a very special thank you to all the friends and readers I've met along the way on this amazing ride, Treading Water is currently free in e-book format. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you all.
xoxo
Marie

Kindle: http://amzn.to/10ugEpi
iBookstore: http://bit.ly/WA9Cwb
Kobo: http://bit.ly/11BZKJN

**We are waiting on Nook to make it free at http://bit.ly/WNAs3R. It's been submitted and is in the queue! So check back frequently.** In the meantime, you can get it for free in ePub format for the Nook at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98722

Dear Diary: How Did I Ever Fit a Job Into This Life?

(Note the addition of Fatal Flaw to the banner above...)

Back in the day, TGIF used to be one of my favorite sayings. I was always thanking God for Friday. These days, every day is Friday because the next day, I get to do what I most want to do: WRITE! Happy dancing all around! As the third week of "new life" comes to an end, I'm already wondering how I ever managed to fit a day job into my hectic schedule. Here's how yesterday went...

7 a.m. Wake up and see off the kids and hubby, snuggle with Brandy, take care of some e-mail, write a blog, do some Facebooking and tweeting.

8 a.m. Plug in the backup hard drive I bought last week to fully back up my hard drive for the very first time. As 1.3 million items made their way onto this tiny device, I gave some considerable thought to producing a TV show for computer horders. For surely I must be one with 1.3 MILLION items on my laptop.

9 a.m. Talk to my dad, who is in Florida for two months, for half an hour. As my self-appointed director of productivity, he wants daily reports on what we're up to in the office. At the moment he called, Brandy and I were having our second snuggle of the day. Shhhh, don't tell him! He'll be so jealous. Brandy is the one he misses most when he's away.

9:30 am Open HOPING FOR LOVE and get to work. Wrote 2,500 words over the course of the day that came rather easily, which is always nice. Things are heating up between Evan and Grace!

10:30 am Admitted the carpet guy, who was back for a third day to do the upstairs. Had a freakout when I saw the carpet going in because, as feared, it's way too light for the high-traffic area. Reminded myself that it's really a very small area we carpeted (hallway and dining room), so if it doesn't work, we'll live with it for a while and then redo it. Why sweat the small stuff, right?

Moved downstairs with Brandy and her food for the rest of the day. The new carpet smell from the recently installed basement carpet gave me a headache, but I kept working as the hard drive kept moving 1.3 MILLION files. The laptop got kinda hot during the big transfer, which made me hot as I toiled away in the COLD basement.

11 am Call from a close friend who just realized HER boat is on the cover of my book READY FOR LOVE. Now how crazy is that? Seriously....

Noon Got a text from a friend that led to a 90-minute catch-up lunch with many laughs. We sat in the sun at lunch so I would get some photosynthesis. You gotta kill two birds whenever you can.

2 pm Rushed home to be here when the high school girl got home since there was a guy working in the house. Now I've got a dog and a teenager in the room with me while I'm trying to work. She buried herself in the iPad for a while, so that was great until the carpet guy started on the basement stairs, quickly driving us out of the room with the banging. Upstairs we go with computers, backup hard drives, backpacks, dog bowls. Are you getting the picture? We were refugees in our own house! Yet I still wrote 2,500 words. (Just needed to get that in there again in case you were thinking TOTAL SLACKER at this point...)

3 pm Wondering where the boy is. No bus, no call from him that he is staying after school for something. At 3:10 I call the school to see if he stayed after. They haven't seen him. The heart begins to do that funny little pounding thing it does whenever something isn't right with one of my kids. I wait on hold while the school pages him to see if he is in the school, never realizing that the WHOLE TIME I AM ON THE PHONE I AM LOOKING AT HIS BACKPACK sitting on my kitchen table with the ballcap he wears every day resting on top of it. Being the good boy he is, he scooted around the carpet guy, into his room and out of the way. He missed the, "Hey, Mom, I'm home" part of the program. He was in his room the whole time I was organizing a search party. Mother of the Year nominee, at your service! Apparently, he called downstairs to tell me he was home RIGHT at the exact moment his sister and I were walking around the house to come in the front door. You gotta laugh. After you find the kid, that is...

4 pm Phone call from an old friend, lots of laughs.

5 pm Hubby is home, time to move all the dining room furniture back to where it belongs. Sweat, grunt, sweat, argue a little...

6 pm Get everyone fed. Decided the carpet doesn't suck after all. Phew. Carpet guy tells me he handles a customer freakout at least once a week. Apparently, buyer's remorse is common in the carpet business. Who knew?

7 pm Leave for daughter's swim meet one town over. Pools are insanely loud, hot and smelly during swim meets. Bleachers make you back and butt scream for mercy. Seeing your kid whipping down that lane, graceful and smooth through the water: Priceless.

10 pm Return home from swim meet, watch American Idol, Grey's Anatomy (the scene between Richard and Adele was one of the most moving things I've ever seen on that show) and go to bed to read How the Marquess Was Won by Julie Anne Long, which I am absolutely LOVING.

11:30 pm Lights out.

How did I fit a job into this life? Can you tell me that? The morale of the story is this: MORE writing. LESS of everything else.

I forgot to mention one other really cool thing that happened earlier this week. Years ago, when I was first writing books, I started referring to my writing journey as the "House That Jack Built." You've probably read the story on my website (if not, here it is). I always said that if I ever incorporated a business around my writing, it would be HTJB, Inc. Well, this week, HTJB, Inc. is becoming a reality at the advice of my accountant and attorney. While it may seem like a big pile of paperwork, which it is, underneath it all it's another bit of the dream coming true, and it needs to be celebrated as such. So, here's to HTJB, Inc. You've been a long time coming!

The House That Jack Built

Yesterday at the library event, the librarian mentioned the story I have on my website that I titled The House That Jack built. It's about my writing career, how it all started and the first character who ever took up residence in my mind as a real live person. I realized I've never shared that story with my blog readers, so here it is!



The House That Jack Built
Writers work toward the ultimate goal of publication. We stress over sentence structure, editing, agents, pitching, querying, etc. The list of things to stress about is endless. But how often do we stop to take a moment to appreciate the special journey we are on as authors? Since I started to write seriously four years ago (UPDATE: make that seven years now!), after saying for years I was going to, I've had a few amazing things happen to me that never would've happened if I hadn't embarked upon this journey. I have several anecdotes, but this is my favorite....

The first character to take up occupancy in my mind as a living, breathing human being, was a handsome, successful architect named Jack Harrington. Jack and I ran around together for a long time before I ever put fingers to keyboard to tell his story. I wanted to write about a man who has it all—a wife he still adores after twenty years of marriage, three beautiful daughters he'd do anything for, and a life most people would envy. That life is turned upside down when his wife is hit by a car and plunged into a coma. I wanted to show Jack's struggles to rebuild his life as he becomes the custodial parent for his daughters—two of them teenagers with all the accompanying issues—and I wanted to show his conflict when he finds a new love. These issues make up the core of my first book, "Treading Water," which led to two sequels, "Marking Time," and "My Side of the Street." It's "Treading Water," however, that is the book of my heart.

Since I finished "Treading Water," I've thought of my writing as "The House That Jack Built," tying into his career as an architect and the unexpected building blocks that came from "Treading Water." As I was finishing "My Side of the Street" in July 2006, I decided to drive out to Chatham, Massachusetts, so I could finish it in the town where it was set. Yes, this was a huge indulgence, but it coincided with the half-way point of summer vacation and my kids were driving me nuts. I had earned this night away! The first thing I did when I got to Chatham was drive around to check out the four streets I had chosen from hundreds on a map to place my characters' homes. I figured if there was, say, a cement factory on both sides of the street, the people of Chatham would know I hadn't bothered to come out there and check—if I was lucky enough to see the book published. I am pleased to report there were houses on all four streets, but on the corner of the fourth street, there was something else—a red house with a sign on the side that said, "The House That Jack Built." No, I am not kidding, and yes, I sat there and cried. If ever there was a "sign" that I was on the path I was meant to be on, there it was. It was without a doubt, one of the most amazing moments of my life, and I will never, ever forget it. (Thanks to my friend Janet Campbell for taking the picture for me!)

That same week, after I got home and told my sister-in-law this story, she approached me at a family party to say, "You won't believe this! I was having trouble sleeping at my friend's house the other night and got up to see if she had a magazine or something I could look at." She found an old copy of Architectural Digest, which is mentioned in "Treading Water," and there was a spread with the headline "The House That Jack Built." She had torn it out for me and that page is framed over my desk to remind me that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and it's about the journey, not the destination.

I still have fingers and toes crossed for the "Treading Water" books. Maybe someday...