The All New, All Dancing, Singing, Performing Blog

It's time to throw beads! Happy Mardi Gras! Opps, that was last month, wasn't it?

Happy April Fools’ Day! The blog title is no joke. I’m attempting a new format with my blog(s) and this seems as good a time as any to implement it.

I’ll admit it right here and now: I was born sometime B.C. (before computers). I’m not so keen on the daily blog thing. Sure, many people blog daily, but having worked as a columnist in the time B. B (before blogs), when words were actually printed on paper, monthly postings worked best for me. I’d come up with one good idea (or even one not so good), write it and post it on the blog. I’d write several hundred or a thousand words on a topic and hope to get some sort of feedback from readers. Most of the time I heard only crickets chirping in the distance.

Times change. People don’t have time to read long blog postings. Short blog postings are perceived as being more entertaining than one longer, in-depth rant. Short blogs also more conducive to promoting one’s other writings I’m told. Being unemployed, I need to promote and sell more books in order to survive, so it’s time for me to bite the bullet of blogdom and attract more readers to both my blogs and books.

On our way to Sesame Street, Mardi Gras style!

A lot of what I use to send out in my monthly e-newsletter for many years now, I’m going to post here whenever it happens. I enjoy sending out the e-newsletter, but I understand how much email you read everyday for work, play and other groups. From now on, the newsletter will be very brief and direct you to where the information can be found online. That way, you can pick and choose what interests you most and skip the rest if you’re rushed for time. If you’re not already one of my general e-newsletter members, sign up for it at http://groups.yahoo.com/cindyappelnewsletter If you just want to know what’s going on with my erotic-romance persona Celine Chatillon, you can join that newsletter at http://groups.yahoo.com/celinesdreams

Since I possess “multiple personalities” (I write in multiple genres), I host separate blogs for them. But time and health issues have kept me from making them all that different lately. That will change over the next few months. This blog will continue to feature the “G to PG-13” rated writings of Cynthianna and Cindy A. Matthews. The hot, adult-oriented, erotic-romance excerpts and book news will be found exclusively at Celine’s Dreams: http://celinesdreams.blogspot.com . Please become a “follower” of any and all of my blogs by clicking on the “follow this blog” button on the right hand side. Thank you.

What is it? Whatever it was--it works!

I used to share lots of fun and fascinating articles and web sites I came across on the ‘net in my e-newsletter, but in this day and age of Twitter, I tend to “tweet” them instead. If you’d like to follow my infrequent tweets, I invite you to become one of my followers. http://www.twitter.com/cynthianna3

I enjoy interacting with my readers, my friends, family members and other denizens of the electronic age at my author page at Facebook, too. You can “like” my author page at http://www.facebook.com/cynthianna.celinechatillon This past month, I sponsored a contest for new members of my Facebook page. (You can read about it there.) A free e-book prize has been awarded to Linda for joining my Facebook page and leaving a comment. I plan on doing some more giveaways and contest promos again in the future, so keep checking back here for details.

Slowly I’m becoming more in tune with the digital world around me… And I am publishing on a more regular basis again. Many of my books are now available in Kindle format (especially Celine’s titles), so if you got a Kindle for Christmas or your birthday, can I entice you to give them a try? You can find direct links to my Kindle books at my Amazon author pages:
Celine Chatillon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002CQY3BM
Cynthianna: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002CQZYGK
Book reviews and “tagging” and “liking” of my books at Amazon is appreciated.

Mardi Gras tip #6: If you're nice to the parade marshals and the cops, you get more beads!

I’m still updating my author pages at Goodreads. I should get there in the end, but if you’re tech-savvy and can walk me through it, feel free to drop me a line and share your sage advice. Thanks! So far, I think I’ve discovered Celine’s author page and updated it at http://www.goodreads.com/celinechatillon_cynthianna
If you’re a Goodreads junkie, please feel free to become my “fan” and rate/review my books.

Okay, now’s the time to actually blog a little about my upcoming releases…

Slowly catching up with the digital book revolution—I discovered my writer’s how-NOT-to from Uncial Press, The Curse of the Manuscript Eating Slushpile Monster, is now available for the Nook reader at Barnes and Noble. Just do a search for it by title at bn.com and it should pop up. It’s also available in print with a shorter title, Defeating the Slushpile Monster, from Smiling Assassin Productions.

My science fiction-romance novella, Unalone, is coming soon from Devine Destinies books. I don’t have a release date for it yet, but you’ll be the first to know if you follow this blog. A brief synopsis can be read on my web page: http://www.cynthianna.com

Both my romantic fiction persons are working together on another science fiction book series along with several other writers. We’re still in the preliminary planning stages and we don’t want to spill the beans just yet—sorry. Keep it tuned here for updates… particularly if you’re a fan of vampires, steampunk, action-adventure and romantic-suspense.

Here’s something different I’ve written lately—I’m writing sketch comedy and I’ve seen it produced onstage at a local night club. My husband, author Adrian J. Matthews, and I know Brendan Allen, an up and coming actor. We thought we’d like create some new material for him and his fellow cast members. Our sketch “2011: A Fridge Oddity” was performed this past week by The Non-Prophets Theater group during their “Non-Prophet Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine” sketch night at Lemmon’s in St. Louis. We really enjoyed seeing our work performed and thought the cast did a great job. They might even do another sketch we wrote next month.

This new blog post has gone on long enough! If you want to see what Celine Chatillon is up to bookwise, head on over to her Celine’s Dreams blog—now. And be sure to leave me a comment here telling me what all you'd like to see in upcoming blogs.

February Impressions

What does a writer write about when she’s not feeling particularly inspired to write about anything at all?

Well… uh, nothing. She doesn’t write much of anything. And then she gets the idea that it’s time to change the name of her monthly column from Every Day Is Mother’s Day to Confessions of a Blonde Writer. After that, she draws yet another blank and she reaches for her calendar to see what is going on in the next month.

For a cold, short month, February is certainly loaded with holidays—Groundhog’s Day, President’s Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, Chinese New Years (Happy Year of the Rat!) Leap Years Day, Black History Month… Why should such a short month have more special days than say August? August really doesn’t have any internationally known holidays, does it? Why is pipsqueak little arctic-like February hogging them all? Cough one up!

There seem to be no reasons for these sorts of things—like there are no reasons why poor February winds up with only 28 days most years and 29 this year just for the heck of it. Yeah, yeah, I know. There’s a perfectly legitimate excuse for why we add an extra day to February every four years—something about the earth’s rotation around the sun and the year not being quite 365 days. Sure, but why do we have to have 365 days in a year anyway? Why not 182 and ½? There’s no law saying the year has to be certain length is there?

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one.
Except for Leap Year—that’s the time
When February’s days turn twenty-nine.

These things race through a blonde writer’s head when she’s under a deadline, and she can’t think of anything in particular to write for her monthly column. Sure, she could revert back to the funny bits about Valentine prezzies that didn’t quite say “romance” and the dangers of gorging on chocolate, but those topics have all been done to death. There’s got to be something original to say about February, right?

What about not concentrating on the shortness of the month or the multitude of the holidays or the silly heart-shaped boxes of candy and dozens of roses? Let’s just look at the month itself: In the northern hemisphere, it’s mid-winter, usually the coldest time of the year. Kids really don’t get a vacation from school for any of these holidays, but they occasionally get snow days off. And if you’re lucky enough to be born on Leap Day… Well, you only celebrate a birthday every four years.

Now that I’m middle-aged that actually sounds pretty good to me. Every four years you have a legitimate excuse to party hard—you might even received four times the average number of gifts, too?

March brings spring, and in its own peculiar way February brings hope. Hope that it’s only a short time left in the harshness of winter before the warmth and promise of spring arrives. Perhaps that’s its biggest contribution to the calendar after all. Short and sweet as those heart-shaped Valentine message candies, February is about hope, hope that all these holidays will sweep us happily and healthily into the rest of the year. (Editor’s note: Chocolate has been declared a health food, by the way. It’s one of the major food groups now… It ranks up there right under ice cream above fruits and veggies. Honest.)

And, now that the Blonde Writer has made it through the first column of her newly renamed blog site, she feels somewhat more inspired. She might get through those book edits in her inbox after all… in a few weeks’ time. The muse, once lulled asleep by stress and constant life change in the last year, takes a bit of rousing to get back on track. But hopefully come the shortest month next year, she’ll have found her writing rhythm once more, and, as they say in the fairy tales, “She lives happily ever after."