Raine Balkera - Romance Author

2018, 1-16 Meteorite over SE Michigan Well, it's been an Up/Down start to my 2018, let me tell you. While I felt that 2017 was probably one of my better years, a lot of people claim otherwise. 2018, for me, is starting out on a pretty rocky road, and I'm not comfortable with it, either. For starters, my birthday falls on the 1st of January, so every year I get to celebrate the notion of getting older, which comes with its share of fear, dread, and "This can't be happening to me!" thoughts. I was alone on New Year's Eve and forgot to buy a bottle of champagne, so to have to believe that I'll be lonely and bored for the rest of the year is a bit daunting (if you or I believe in such nonsense, that is). But, then my eldest and his girlfriend announced their engagement just a week later, and it was happy time for a while. Selfishly, the joy ended when I realized it meant that when their wedding rolls around, I am going to be forced to have t...

Hello, again. Sorry about missing last week's challenge (Favorite Novel Quotes) AND not being able to read or comment on the posts from the week before! I don't know what happened, but not only couldn't I open the MFRW Author Blog page to find the links, the links refused to appear on my blog, so I had no way of joining the hop and was very upset. Last week's challenge was not something I would have been able to participate in since I'm not one to quote anything... because I can't remember what "I" said ten minutes ago, much less what I read ten years or months or hours ago. MY total recall is along the photographic line; not the literary. My son can watch a movie ONCE and then verbatim quote it for years after, leaving his mother in awe of such a skillful talent! And here's me, trying to remember the movie title and who starred. What I recall most from both books and movies that I truly enjoyed is the setting that evolved in my ...

When life feels more like a sport in which you suck at, everything tends to get skewed (make biased or distorted in a way that is regarded as inaccurate, unfair, or misleading), as I'm sure most are already aware. As Moses once said, "I am but a voice crying out in the wilderness." For me, that wilderness is Social Media . Being my own worst enemy, there always comes a time in my writing endeavors when I stop typing, pull back from my efforts, and start to see things in that skewed vision. I feel like Moses in the desert. For several years now, I've made countless attempts at reaching out to people, making friends, and learning how best to 'market' myself in order to attract people to me and my novels. With zero in the way of progress. Facebook seems like a bowling alley now... abandoned, hollow, and aged. Tumblr fell in on itself once the SJW crowd took over and left zero in the way of space for any other type of 'socializing' or...

A lot to cover today. WORK My extended Sub assignment ended on Tuesday, so after five weeks teaching First Grade, I took the last three days off 😜 Wasn't able to sleep IN any of those days, but I did make a few attempts to stay up later than normal, which just worked to make me very sleepy during the day. It was a fun assignment, the kids were adorable (for the most part), and it is the first elementary school in this district where I can honestly say I'd love to go back again some day! Not to go into a long dissertation on Public Schools and Everything that is Wrong with Them, but I know for a fact that the reason I enjoyed the work so much was because of the Principal, the staff, and the simple fact that everyone who works there is on board with the rules and guidelines set forth by the administrators. Instead of showing me to the classroom and then walking away, leaving me to feel alone, desperate, and tossed overboard without a life line, this school worke...

Week 11 - Plot Away... My Writing Process ...and I say PLODDING (not plotting) because it's what I do when I write. I've tried being disciplined and even bought a white board, pretty colored white board markers, the eraser, and lots of colorful sticky notes with the intention of pasting them all around my monitor for referencing. But it never works out that way. My kids take the sticky notes and use them for their own purposes, the white board is somewhere in my writing room (the den), and the markers are still unopened in a wicker basket stuffed with other assorted pens, pencils, and colored markers. Still, there is a method to my madness. IDEAS I'm usually careful about jotting down any/all ideas that pop into my head because most of us probably know the old saying about THAT, right? Still, there are times when I forget to write it down, but eventually the thought will return at some point, so I don't worry too much about forgetting things. RES...

AUTHOR BLOG CHALLENGE To be honest, some of the Post Topics for this challenge do not apply or interest me (right now) so I'm skipping around with this one. Character Inspiration A lot of different factors go into the creation of any, one character in any of my novels. Most often, however, they are based in-part on someone I actually know who went through some type of adventure-mishap-calamity that intrigued me to the point of devising an entire novel derived from said instance. For example, in Sing to Me , Liv is loosely based on a girl from my high school years who was attacked for being 'too pretty' as the truth became known. She was transferred to Franklin after the insane kidnap and hours of mindless torture the girl suffered at the hands of an immature girl who couldn't quite deal with her own insecurities. Liv's circumstances in my novel are not dramatized but my own idea of something similar in order to avoid a lawsuit. Neal, th...

Because I Want To It is true that I read a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, but the only genre that interests me enough to want to write my own versions is Romance. www.zazzle.com Because I Love to Read  I've enjoyed reading Romance novels since I fell in love with them at age fourteen, which was around the time I began to notice boys and my head became filled with silly, zany things like appearance, body contours, eyes, mannerisms, and sex. Because I Want to Experience True Love While romance itself has managed to elude me all these years, I still find the topic fascinating and want to pursue the fantasy versions via my imagination and the ability to write. Because I Need This Outlet I still beat myself up for not pursuing this dream much earlier in life, but that I let too many outside sources dictate my life is neither here nor there anymore. One day I decided to stop the unhappy merry-go-round and take back what I'd let s...

Of the seven Deadly Sins, invidia (envy) is probably high on my for-shame list. And despite what you've been told, it happens to be a 'healthy' emotion and not as you're-going-directly-to-hell as most want us to believe. As long as the person feeling this way doesn't act on the negative outcome, that is. Although voodoo dolls are an acceptable form of anger management whenever the green-eyed monster rears it's ugly head. Pictures used as a Dart Board are okay, too. Anything else and you risk being labeled as petty or sounding like sour grapes. Unlike most other negative personality traits, Jealousy is probably as easy to control as it is easy to let get out of hand. As with ALL vices, though, it depends on you and how you deal with it. No, it isn't. J ealousy can become an issue of self-confidence if you lack self-control -- which can be said for everything else in life that is difficult to overcome. Overcome it we can, but it...

I pronounce it with the L, but whatever A woman is at the club with some friends when she notices a guy staring at her, and he smiles. Minutes later, the guy approaches the woman and asks if she'd like to dance. The woman politely declines and the guy walks away. Stalker stalking? No. A woman is at the gym and a guy in another section notices her, makes eye contact, smiles, walks up to her and asks how she's doing, is she single, and would she like to go out sometime. The woman smiles to be polite, says she's seeing someone right now, but thanks for the compliment. The guy says No problem, he's getting together with some friends later on, and if she's interested, here's where the party is at. He then leaves. Stalker stalking? No. A man on a bus/subway train/plane notices a woman seated nearby and is instantly attracted. After summoning up his courage, he approaches the woman, asks her if she'd mind if he sits beside her -- or he a...