We are  past the halfway point of our event and I think I have posted all the author interviews that came in. It was optional and not everyone elected to participate but I appreciate those who did and gave us a neat glimpse behind their writing and their lives!

Here I will share a secret with our reader visitors.  As a writer and one who knows many writers, I can truly say, guess what, writers are really not that much different from you! We may have quirky imaginations and some of us do have the luxury of making writing our profession and not just what we do when the day job does not demand our full energies with our mom and wife and homemaker stuff crammed in as best we can but otherwise we are just like you. We have our little guilty pleasures and our daily life sorts of challenges and have to clean up after the kids or the dogs or other pets! We do the  soccer mom thing or tht ballet class mom or the science project mom etc. And we dream and lust after some of the gorgeous guys on the book covers or TV or the flicks or sports arenas too.  The only difference is we put a lot of those dreams into words and share them with you. I know you appreicite our efforts. You often tell us so.

Here I will preach just a little bit. There is a lot of furor today about creative/intellectual  rights and copyright violations against all forms of artists in regard to their work. Some people think that if it is digitized and on the internet it should be free but let me lay out the down side of this.

Would you go to work every day and do your best if you were not going to earn a living from it? Probably most of us would say no. So think about this–the folks who record the music, create the videos, paint the pictures or write the books you enjoy often do this for their livelihood. If they do not get paid at least a fair minimum level wage for their work, how long can they afford to do it?  And every time someone puts up an ebook on a torrent or free download site, snags a video or song or something off some website and shares it around, what they are doing is basically stealing someone’s work and labor of love and denying them a fair payment for it.

I suspect we have all been guilty at least a little bit –even just pinning something neat on our Pinterest page–but we do need to think each time we are tempted to help ourselves when maybe we should remember that someone put his or her heart into that work and needs the dollars it brings them through sales. Just a thought for you today! If you win a free book here today, I’d ask you not to share it, even with your best friend, unless you erase it from your computer or reader when you send the file to her! It’s the right thing to do!