Tag Archives: Burden of Breath

The Storyteller Doll

Posted on by under Ann Minnett

By Ann Minnett

My sister, Ginny Merett, is an artist. I can’t describe all the media in which she works, but my favorites are her watercolors and haunting collages. Here is something fun she made for me when I got serious about writing. The Storyteller doll is holding two babies, recounting her tale. I keep it on my desk as a reminder that I am a storyteller and how lovely it is to have a sister, talented or otherwise.

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The Storyteller has held my business cards, interestingly shaped rocks from a hike, you name it. For the past few weeks she’s displayed this “Never Apologize for Your Art” pin. When I begin to censor an authentic thought or expression while writing, The Storyteller’s message keeps me on my path.

Both of my novels will be offered as free downloads in the coming days. Check them out!

Burden of Breath Cover - Minnett

FINAL TURQUOISE FONT COVER

 

 

Burden of Breath is free on October 19th & 20th (4.2 average stars in 148 reviews).

 

Serita’s Shelf Life will be free this week on October 16th & 17th (only 3 5-star reviews so far).

August Book News

Posted on by under Ann Minnett, Book News, Gail Ranstrom, Leslie Budewitz

Congratulations to Leslie Budewitz and Gail Ranstrom! Readers of the Bigfork Eagle voted Leslie “Best Local Author” and Gail “Runner Up”!

Dates to remember:

August 10: National S’mores Day

August 14: Julia Child’s Birthday

And a few additions from us:

lemonade040

 

Join Leslie Budewitz at the Bigfork Festival of the Arts, in the village of Bigfork, on Sat-Sun, August 2-3, and at Huckleberry Days in Whitefish on August 8-10. She’ll chat mysteries and sign copies of her Agatha-Award winning first mystery, Death al Dente, and her new release, already a national bestseller, Crime Rib.

 

 

 

Book News by Marlette Bess

 

The Real Christian Grey (Conversations between Christian Grey and Dr. John Flynn) was submitted to www.fanfiction.net at the end of June. Since that time I have posted two more installments with more to come. I’ve had people from around the world read my work and also have nearly forty active followers. Please read my August blog about my experiences in navigating the fan fiction website and the benefit of feedback I’ve received.

 

From Ann Minnett:

Burden of Breath Cover - MinnettBurden of Breath will be offered as a free download on Amazon August 6th & 7th. Check out my 4.3 average stars in 142 reviews!

 

 

 

 

Look for my second novel, Serita’s Shelf Life, to be released in late August 2014. More info on http://www.facebook.com/annminnettwriter or http://annminnett.blogspot.com.

FINAL TURQUOISE FONT COVER“Serita has gone off her medications for bipolar disorder to become a more interesting person and find love.”

 

From the Heart: Love and Worry

Posted on by under Ann Minnett, Group theme posts

ImageBy Ann Minnett

My natural inclination is to worry about those I love. What a waste of time! Fretting doesn’t give my loved ones much credit, nor does it protect me from occasional pain that comes with loving another.

Worry focuses on a future that I can’t control, typically the bad stuff that rarely happens anyway. Mostly, future-tripping robs me of the love I feel today. So, when tough times arise, I’ve learned to love harder and have a little faith.

Oh, Christmas Tree

Posted on by under Ann Minnett

Ann Minnett MWW photoBy Ann Minnett

One of the romantic notions we had about moving to NW Montana involved cutting a fresh Christmas tree from our property or nearby national forests (for a minimal fee). Here’s what happened the first December. We hiked through record snowfall in search of the perfect tree, not quite getting the concept of transporting the tree back to the truck parked at the trail head. We quickly learned that the best candidates were twenty feet up—the top few feet of magnificent sub-alpines, the kind depicted on Christmas cards. We had no intention of cutting down a huge tree to scalp it. So we kept looking for the perfect tree that we could reach fairly easily in four feet of snow. After a couple of hours and increasingly lower standards, we cut down a tree… and this is where the argument started.

Any woman who has moved a couch with a man on one end and you on the other knows that you just “pick up your end” and go. I suppose we were only half a mile from the truck. I cried. We were not speaking by the time we reached the truck, let alone arrived home. We did have a tree stand waiting, and the unseen crooked trunk needed shortening just a foot to prop it up. (We once tied a tree to the curtain rod to keep it upright, so this detail presented no problem.) Neither of us verbalized how bare it was, the huge gaps between snow-laden boughs. Our unheated garage stays at 20 degrees throughout the winter. Therefore, we set the tree on the south side of the house, hoping that sunshine would melt the snow before bringing it inside.

I backed over it with my Subaru.

We put it up anyway.Christmas 2010 019

If you stuck with me through this story (don’t we all have similar experiences that lead to the purchase of a perfect fake tree?), then know that we don’t have a tree up yet. Last Friday night it hit -30 degrees in our backyard. Today should hit double-digit positive temperatures, but it also snowed about a foot in the past 24 hours.

The fake tree in our attic, the one we brought from Texas years ago, is looking pretty good right now.

Happy Holidays to All!

Burden of Breath Cover - MinnettBy the way, my novel, Burden of Breath, takes place in December, in a fictionalized Colorado mountain town. It is decidedly not a warm-hearted Christmas tale, but I’m offering it as a free download Dec. 25-27. Check it out!

11-12-13

Posted on by under Ann Minnett, Group theme posts

by Ann Minnett

Today is November 12, 2013, also known as 11-12-13. Something stupendous should happen today because a consecutive number date will only happen once again in our lifetime–on December 13, 2014.

I digress.

Today’s date reminds me that I’m a numbers person. Data analysis was a crucial component of my life’s work. My writing back then consisted of making sense of the numbers and relationships between numbers. Numbers told the story of the data. But I’m talking about the significance of specific numbers in our lives. Birthdays for sure. Anniversaries. The date your father died. The date your spouse stopped drinking. How about a signal event for us all? Stephen King wrote a book entitled 11-22-63. The event accompanied by a date and reduced to a number.

Frankly, I entertain myself endlessly with license plate numbers, time stamps, temperature, and gas mileage. What fun to check the digital time and discover it’s my birthdate (2-22). The added fact that numbers possess color adds icing to my cake: 1 is white, 6 green, 9 black, 53 and 5 are brown, but 3 has always been yellow. Who knows what this means, but it makes me happy.

So here we’ve awakened on the morning of 11-12-13. Can’t you feel the promise inherent in this magical date? Don’t you, like me, believe that the day ought to hold significance in its 24 glorious hours, 1,440 minutes, and 86,400 ticking seconds?

Last week I heard the following question posed on Montana Public Radio: What if you woke up each day and expected it to be the best day of your life?

I’m betting on 11-12-13 as top contender for best day ever.

~ Ann

Ann Minnett MWW photoI’m also consumed with NaNoWriMo word count this month–ahead of schedule at 28,739 words so far on my third novel. Yippee!