Weekly DiVa | Oct 22, 2023

Good Morning!

 

How've you been? I'm fine, though my belief that I can do anything has been a little dinged up after my first attempts at pizza. My first attempt got stuck inside the pizza oven and came out looking like South Africa! I am not giving up, though. At least yesterday I made both started and ended in a somewhat round shape. 

 

It's been a bit of a week, too. First off, being a sports fan is exhausting! October's got me busy with both football and baseball. Let me tell you, it is not the month to order a new sofa and then have to wait out the delivery time in a canvas lawn chair. Not that I know anyone doing that :)

The other thing going on in my life, aside from Philly sports, is Poly Monroe's upcoming return! I can hardly believe she'll be back on Tuesday. I reread the book on Friday and within pages, I was back in San Ladron, California. I wasn't sure how easy it would be to drop back into her world and pick up her and her friends, but it felt a little bit like going home. 

 

If you have not preordered, then you find whichever store link you want here and have your eBook delivered to your device on Tuesday. (Monday night if the robots are on the ball!) 

 

Also, yesterday I attended my local Sisters in Crime chapter. We had a forensic nurse come talk to us, and I could have listened to her for hours. Even though my books are character-driven and have a lot of humor, I am always interested in the detecting aspect, but I haven't fully blown this up yet. I got an idea for a new series that has me excited, but new ideas are more common than free time, so I will have to see if I can make this one happen. Stay tuned, because it's possible 2024 is to be full of newness!

I have learned to love failure. It used to be that when I tried to do something and wasn't good at it, I got frustrated--sometimes enough to abandon whatever it was I was trying to do and move on to the next. Nobody wants to be bad at anything, and when you're surrounded by people who criticize your efforts, that feeling of inadequacy is magnified. 

 

Somewhere along the way, I learned the lesson that it takes time to be good at something. Even when we start out ahead of the curve thanks to some natural talent, in time, we get better. Success isn't about hitting the ball our first time at bat, it's about realizing we love the feel of the bat in our hands. It's finding something we want to do again, and again, and again, until one day we realize we got better without actively trying. 

 

My pizza trials fall under this umbrella, but so does writing. When I wrote my first book, there was a lot I did not know about grammar, editing, formatting, storytelling. (I sometimes look back and think wow, I had a lot of confidence to send those early books out to industry professionals!)

 

Now, doing something and finding out it didn't work is a vital part of my life. I call it collecting data. Failure is as important as success; they're guide rails to help us figure out our destination, and if we only judge ourselves based on success, then at the first sign of failure we'll just stop moving. And where's the fun in that? 

 

xo,

Diane

My first four attempts at pizza :-)

The Science Fiction and Fantasy promo runs through October 31 on BookFunnel. Get introduced to a whole bunch of SF&F books here!

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