In the beginning there was a story idea, and from there it was inevitable that, eventually, there would be books, an author website, and a blog.

I am very excited to be to the blog point of this journey, and hope that you will join me on this adventure and help to make it great for all of us involved.  

As Samuel Johnson once said "A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it," and I hope that you will be here with me to help me finish all of my books.

I'm feeling them. Usually I can fend them off, but winter is holding on too long this year, and I'm getting the winter blues.

I woke up this morning, the first day of spring, and checked the weather on my phone. It's sunny (which is a nice surprise) but it is only 7 degrees Fahrenheit, with a windchill of -7. Words can hardly express my horror.

Last year two weeks ago we were experiencing temperatures in the 80s, and although I feel like this week last year might have been more in the 60-70 degree range, it was still much better than -7, or even 7,

I'm tired of winter. It makes me tired, lethargic, apathetic, and altogether unhappy.

I have the winter blues, and I want spring to be spring.

I need one.

Entering one of my novels in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards has made me lazy when it comes to writing. I polished off "Kingdom of the Light," but other than that I've hardly put a pen to paper for anything other than grading or lesson planning.

I'm slipping.

I need to get back to work. I need to work on the sequel to my ABNA entry. I need to finish off The Bodyguard so that I can post it here for you to read.

I need to write to get my balance back.

I need a kick in the pants.

Today is much too busy for a Tuesday, but I had to share the amazing fact that I made it into the quarter finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. My novel Talented: Fire (which for some reason shows up as Talente: Fire on Amazon) was entered into the contest back in January, and quarter finalists were announced earlier today.

If you would like to read the excerpt that has gotten me this far, just follow this link and download it onto a kindle or into the kindle cloud.

I'd love a review on Amazon, but I'd also love for you to comment here and let me know what you think.

And now back to the busy-ness of my Tuesday.

--J.R.

If you like the amusing, hilarious, or just plain sad (again in a funny way) tales of authors, check out SlushPile Hell. It's a truly fantastic blog featuring query letter fails shared by a real-life (at least I assume) literary agent who answers them on his blog with a snarky comment.

Obviously if I ever get around to querying an agent I want my query to be so awesome that the agent is literally begging me to sign on with him/her. But I'm also a believer that if you are going to fail, you should fail so stupendously that it will inspire and entertain others. (And by you, I literally mean you, or at least anyone not me.) I don't want to fail stupendously.

Everyone enjoy their Mondays and if that seems like an impossible feat (which it might if you are experiencing the weather currently smothering the Midwest), browse SlushPile Hell and be comforted by the fact that although Mondays can be awful, at least you're not the writer of one of those comical queries.

Now that you all have that song stuck in your head (and if you don't you should click on the video below and listen to the magic that is UB40) I have a confession to make:  I'm not a wine drinker.

I've tried, but I'm just not a fan, especially of red wine. White wine is better, but I'd set either aside in favor of a strawberry daiquiri or peach sangria. But this is getting off topic.

This blog post was supposed to be about the red wine that I somewhat accidentally made the other day. I'm a fan of probiotics, and since I'm also a fan of wacky science experiments, I decided some time ago to brew my own water kefir. If you don't know what water kefir is check out Dom's site, but basically it is a probiotic rich drink made from water kefir grains growing/living in sugar water and doing their thing. When you separate the grains from the water, the water (which is now kefir) is full of probiotics and ready to be flavored pretty much any way you want.

You can also brew water kefir in grape juice instead of sugar water, with the (apparent) result of probiotic rich, slightly carbonated wine. It was grape juice, it is now fermented bubbly grape juice.

And I like it. I don't like it quite as much as lemonade or apple flavored water kefir, but I still like it.

So now, in a way, I have come to like wine. And it's healthier than the grape juice from whence it came, since the kefir grains ate up a lot of the sugar and replaced it with probiotic goodness.

I wonder if I can incorporate something like water kefir into one of my books... It's been around for thousands of years, so it would be possible for my fantasy worlds to also have some sort of kefir-like drink. Hmm.

If you're still with me here after this rather long rant about my kefir experience, reward yourself with the song that started us off. And be assured that next time if I include a song I'll move up the ranks to something like U2 or Miranda Lambert. 

--J.R. McGinnity

If you're a writer looking for a fantastic writing site, you have to check out Advanced Fiction Writing by Randy Ingermanson. It has some really great articles, like his famous (or infamous) Snowflake Method article, as well as a terrific E-Zine and a lot of information on marketing as well.

Advanced Fiction Writing is one of those sites that I go to when I am in a rut and need some inspiration to get back to writing, and I suggest every writer or aspiring writer spend at least a few minutes browsing the site to see if what Randy has there can be of help to you.

I know it's helped me.