Coffee in the Morning

Name:

I am a romance writer trying to get noticed in the market. I write inspirational and sweet historic romance. I love Regency England and most of my stories are set during that time period, 1800 to 1820.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Lookin' good...!

Why is it, when a man where's a black sweater, he is instantly attractive?

At work last week, a young man wore a black sweater. I did a double-take. I had never considered this guy at being attractive at all. Yet, while wearing a black sweater, he looked almost handsome.

Amazing....!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Pushy or an opportunity...?

The other day at work, we got a company wide e-mail from our communications department about a special offer from the Prince Pie Company. We could order our holiday pies over the phone, pay from them with a credit card and the pies would be delivered directly to our office. We would avod the hassle of driving to the store and standing in long lines.

Isn’t that a great opportunity? Aren’t they doing us a favor?
I didn’t think so. And I was not the only person who thought it quite pushy.

The opportunity came to us in a company-wide e-mail, like those used to announce carpet cleaning (move your stuff off the floor) or parking lot maintenance (move your car). We have a bulletin board for employees to sell items (like Craig’s List) or to ask for advice (I’m looking for a good dentist). I didn’t think the selling of pies should have been done in a company wide email.

If you were at a chapter meeting and a member set up a display of Avon products and passed out make-up samples, would you be offended? Is this being pushy or is this an opportunity for the members?

So why is it acceptable, no encouraged, behavior for the published members of a chapter to hold a book sale at the end of a workshop? Is that pushy or an opoortunity? Do the other members feel that they have an obligation to purchase books from the pubbed members?

I’ve been to two workshops where the book sale/autographing was done. *I* felt uncomfortable. I felt like I had an obligation to buy books. No statement was said that I had to buy any books. But I still felt like everyone knew that I had not bought anything.

I asked around what other chapters do. I was surprised to discover that the book signing was a common occurrence. Some chapters had them after special workshops and the presenter sold her books. Some chapter had them after each meeting.

Pushy…. or an opportunity…?

You decide.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Food Alergies

Newsweek this week has an article on food allergies. After I read the article, I wonder why more attention was not given to the question as to why so many more children lately have food allergies.

They mentioned some reason about how clean we've become, so the body is now attacking food instead of germs.

I believe food allergies develop because of an entirely different reason, lack of breastfeeding. I wonder how many of the allergic children in the story had been exclusively breast fed for at least six months? I would bet none. I would bet less than 10 percent had even been breast fed at all.

I see total irony in our consumer culture where parents try to buy the very best [[insert latest item here]] for their children but fail to give them something necessary for their entire life, good health. Good healthy children do not come from formula cans, but from breast feeding.

Oh, I know there are plenty of healthy children who had formula. But why would a parent "take a chance" that their child will be healthy on formula? Why not go for the known and feed their child the way nature intended.

And I also know there are some women who can't breastfeed, and those are a very small minority.

Women, please give your child the healthiest life possible, breast feed your babies!