Catching Up!

Well, vacations are nice, but the headache of catching up when you get home can make you wonder if the vacation was worth it. We do love Las Vegas and traveling around in Nevada (after all, the state is full of “Old West” historical places that I love to explore). We returned a week earlier than planned (the last week of February) because my aging mother fell quite ill and I feared for her life. However, she’s much better now but will have to spend the rest of her years in a nursing home. Thus, besides catching up on the things I do for our family business, catching up on visits with grandsons, catching up on the many facets of my writing and the advertising that goes with it, catching up on unpacking and housework – I have also been helping my sisters clean out my mom’s apartment – a very emotional experience, let me tell you!

Now, I am working hard at preparing for a workshop I will be conducting at the Romantic Times Convention April 11th through April 15th in Chicago – lots to do! On top of that I have to prepare for yet another conference just 12 days later – our Mid-Michigan Romance Writers annual RETREAT FROM HARSH REALITY. What fun! Be sure to visit our Mid-Michigan web site to learn more about this wonderful weekend retreat and how you can join us!

In addition to all of that, I have just received the paperwork to finalize my new contract with Amazon.com to publish all my Savage Destiny books in e-book form. Getting those books configured into the necessary font and form for KINDLE e-books will, I can see, not be an easy effort; but I am thrilled that my wonderful SAVAGE DESTINY series, still in demand after 30 years, will now be fully available to new readers through Amazon.com – and eventually it will also be available for Barnes & Noble’s NOOK.

I’ve been writing for nearly 30 years, and it’s wonderful to realize that readers out there still enjoy Rosanne Bittner. I sometimes wonder how and when I penned those millions of words and created 57 novels (equivalent to one book for every year of my life from when I was 10 years old!) – how and when did I do all that research and take hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes and do all those re-writes and attend all those conferences and conduct all those workshops and still find time to be a wife and a mom and work full time and travel the west and do all the daily things working moms do?

Whew! I’ve slowed down the last three or four years, but I guess I have that right. I am still working on new material, and my passion for the Old West and American history has never waned. In fact, the workshop I am holding in Chicago in April at Romantic Times is titled THE POWER OF PASSION. In mid-May you can start reading the context of my workshop when I begin posting it in four parts on this blog, so keep an eye out! It should inspire those of you who are aspiring writers, and those of you who might be experiencing a bit of a sag in their writing careers. It happens to all of us, but you can get through it if you keep in mind how much you love to write and keep the passion for your genre alive in your heart. Come back in May and get inspired!!

Happy spring to all!

Rosanne