Today Debut's An Amazing Author

It's a wonderful feeling to be able to support a dear friend on her journey to fulfilling her dreams.

I've known Farrah Rochon for many years. I met her on an author bulletin board and in person when I was in New Orleans for the 2001 RWA conference. She has such heart and such drive and she has been both a support and an inspiration to me on my own journey. You see, during this time Farrah and I have shared a common dream - to publish our novels. We would "meet" online to discuss our work and to prod each other on. We have both gone on to write several manuscripts.

Farrah has reached that next step that all aspiring writers hope to reach. She wrote the best damned book she could write at the time and she queried several agents and editors. One agent was smart enough to see amazing talent when it landed on his desk and he signed Farrah last year. Not long after, Farrah sold her first book, Deliver Me, to Dorchester Publishing and today it is officially released and on the bookshelves! Go Farrah!

I have a copy of the book in my hot little hands and while I haven't read past the first few chapters, I can tell you that the book is amazing!I Here is a summary of the book for you:

After being dumped by her boyfriend and passed over for yet another promotion, Monica Gardner moves to New Orleans, determined to make a name for herself as the new attending ER physician at Methodist Memorial Hospital. As for men--she's through with them. But when given the chance to chair the hospital's annual charity banquet, Monica must elicit the help of gorgeous Ob-gyn Elijah Holmes.

Eli will do anything to thwart his matchmaking Mama's plan to reunite him with his high school girlfriend. So, when the sexy new ER doc asks for his help in planning this year's charity banquet, Eli devises the perfect scheme: He'll help put on the best banquet the hospital has ever seen, if Monica poses as his new girlfriend. But when Eli finds himself falling in love, he realizes convincing Monica of his true feelings may be his greatest delivery yet.

So run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore...or head over to Amazon...and snatch up the debut contemporary romance novel by Farrah Rochon! And if you'd like to learn a bit more about Farrah, you can visit her website at:http://www.farrahrochon.com/

And Farrah, if you happen to catch this, I am so proud of you! You have struggled and you have questioned, but you never gave up and you did what needed to be done. I'm so happy to have been a small part of your journey and pray that God blesses you richly and beyond measure! You, my friend, deserve nothing less.

It's Freaking Cold Outside!

I'm not used to the cold anymore.

That may sound strange to those of you who know me and know I live in Minnesota, land of ten thousand lakes, mosquitoes, and icy winters. The last few years have been mild. We haven't dipped much below freezing and we haven't had much in the way of snow. Even this winter proved to be balmy, with January temperatures in the low 40's and the sun shining more often than not.

Then the cold came. That wonderful arctic chill that settled upon the Midwest, bringing with it bone-chilling winds and temperatures in the negative numbers. In a word, brrrrrr! Even my dog, who is part husky, is not immune to the cold. He usually loves to lay in the snow for hours on end, but this dip in temperatures has him hopping from foot to foot, begging to be let in mere minutes after we have let him outside to do his doggie thing. Poor baby!

I almost skipped church today so I could snuggle longer in my warm bed. I was to teach Sunday School so I decided to dress in layers, make the husband warm up the car and make a mad dash between house to car then car to church building. I swear my breath was freezing and dropping to the ground with tiny tinkling sounds every time I exhaled.

It's freaking cold here, people! I can't even focus on writing right now because my book takes place in late summer, early fall and I can't imagine ever being warm again. Ever. I know March will come and with it will come spring, or at least the promise of spring. But that's not soon enough. If the weather doesn't at least warm up to the 20's, I'm afraid we'll have to move. That will make the hubby happy. In case you didn't catch it, that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm. My husband loves MN. I think it's because he was born here. Me, I relocated after I married him. I'm from Canada, which you would think would make me immune to the sub-zero chills.

Um, no. I moved south (from the Calgary area of Alberta) to get away from the cold. The weather there is hovering just below freezing. And it's sunny. And at any moment a warn Chinook wind could blow down from the mountains, melting the snow and raising temperatures significantly. *sigh* But I live in freezing-my-butt-off Minnesota. And I'm here for the foreseeable future so I guess I better get used to it. And haul that down parka out of storage, because if the forecast is to be believed, MN is going to be the arctic for at least another couple of weeks.