I am ecstatic to report that my related books

“A Touch of Destiny” and “Whisked Away”

have been contracted by Total-e-Bound!

(Both to be released sometime next year.)

Once I sign the official contracts, both  books

will have their own pages on my site.

Look for those within the month!

Blessings and (((hugs))) to you -

A VERY happy G.

If there is one thing America will never lose, no matter how low the economy sinks, it’s our entrepreneurial spirit.  Artists, writers, inventors, designers . . . Americans have been taught for generations to follow our dreams. This constant entrepreneurship is the cornerstone of the American business archetype – it is also the envy of global industry leaders around the world. But there is a difference between the “get rich quick” schemes and actually following your heart’s desire.

In my sexy Victorian romance “Whisked Away: Book one in A Touch of Destiny” (now up for publication at Total-E-Bound) our heroine, Virginia Clarke, has just graduated from the New York Cooking School (originally established in 1867 by Julia Corson, specifically for working-class women in hopes that they find employment using their education) with aspirations of being a pastry chef.

Meanwhile, back in the present    my friend and fellow rabid Jude Deveraux fan, Chrys Wilkins, owns a bakery in Indianapolis, Indiana called “All Mixed Up” (and yes, they ship most of their goodies!)  Please help me welcome Chrys Wilkins!

GdG: Hi Chrys – Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today!

CW:  Hey Genella!! The pleasure is all mine. Totally not just saying that either.

GdG: So tell us, what enticed you to open a bakery?

CW:  Well, I have always loved to bake and to cook. Then one day I came across this book called “Cakepops”.  I decided to try and make them. It was a success.  Then everyone I know kept telling me I should have my own bakery. Not just because of the cakepops, believe me, they have had my baked goods before, just this time I let it all sink in.  I thought why not work at something I enjoy doing for once.

GdG: Sounds like a tasty plan – Now, it was bad enough that while I wrote my book, “Whisked Away” that I probably gained ten pounds just doing the research,  LOL – but I can’t imagine being around yummy foodieness all day long! How do you do it?

CW:  Surprisingly enough, it’s easy. The more I am around it, the less I eat. I experiment with new recipes all the time, and I think that after I do my taste testing that I am just not in the mood to eat the treats. But I have plenty of volunteers to be my test group.

GdG: Ha! Yeah, I’ll bet! Where did you pick up your love of cooking?

CW:  I would have to say my Father. He is retired from the Army and is now a teacher. But a bunch of his free minutes are spent watching the Food Network and experimenting with his own recipes. Meal recipes, not baking ones like me.

GdG: Very cool. Where (if anywhere) did you learn your craft?

CW:  Mostly watching my grandmother and my aunt bake around the holidays. Other things I have learned were either self taught or by practicing recipes that I enjoyed.

GdG: Your website says that you recipes have been handed down in your family for generations. Has anyone in your family ever owned a bakery or restaurant?

CW:  Nope. Not a one. I am the first one to take the risk.

GdG: Sweet – no pun intended. Are you the only one who cooks at All Mixed Up? What time do you get up in the morning?

CW:  I am the only one who does the baking on a regular basis, but I do have helpers who come in to help me with the bigger orders. I usually get up around 4 am.

GdG: 4 AM is way too early, unless one is excited about their day. Please share with us your marketing techniques.

CW:  Word of mouth is my number one advertisement. Also, when someone orders from me they take extra of my business cards with them. Referrals are another of my main clients.  I also run contests on my Facebook site and Coupons on my Bakery site.

GdG: Nice! Your website says “We do custom made orders as well as have our own custom made items. Basically, if you can dream it, we can make it.” Can you tell us about some of your favorite sweets to make and perhaps tell us what people have asked for?

CW:  I love making Caramel Swirled Creams.  You know the old fashioned cream filled caramels?  They have to be done just right, but they are fun to make.  I also love making new designs for Cakepops. My most popular items have been the Cakepops, Caramels, Fudge, Cakes and Dessertizers.  Dessertizers are miniature cakes that look like coffee, shakes, ice cream and I even have one that looks like a Bloody Mary drink.

GdG:  Drooling* Where would you like to see yourself business-wise in 5 years?

CW:    I would love to have my own store front location, with secret rooms in the back for nifty parties. I would also like for it to have a nice outdoor dining area where people could relax and enjoy my treats.

GdG: How fun would that be? Would you please provide your website and any other info you may wish to share about All Mixed Up?

CW:   www.allmixeduptreats.com is the main website. I am still constructing it. I would like to announce that the new Christmas Gift Basket Area is almost finished. I am hoping for a big Christmas Gift order to really get the store going.

GdG: I also understand that in addition to your bakery, you sell Avon. Gotta love a gal with that good ol’ American entrepreneurial spirit!

Readers, if you haven’t checked out Avon lately you really should. Besides their awesome beauty products, they have lovely unique jewelry, and gifts at fantastic prices for everyone in the family.

Chrys, would you please provide us with your Avon link?

CW:  I would love too. It’s www.youravon.com/chryswilkins  I love that I can sell Avon anywhere in the world thanks to my site. I have met even more people that way.

GdG: And don’t forget peeps, anyone can sign up under Chrys to sell Avon – she seems like a great person to network with and I’ll bet she’d be a fantastic leader with lots of valuable advice.

Thanks for sharing your story with us, Chrys!

G.

Click the picture to purchase.

Peace and light be with you ~

G.

Now, I’ve always looked at Hawaiʻi as if it were a totally different planet – or the moon . . . A beautiful place I would NEVER get to visit. When this came along – out of the blue, I pretty much figured it would be my only shot to go. So I took it.

Wow. ME. In Hawaiʻi. I’m still kinda shocked. My entire childhood (in fact, I don’t even remember NOT knowing how to swim) and a goodly portion of my adolescence was spent either in the pool or at the beach. I’m quite surprised I don’t have webbing between my fingers and toes, so much time did I spend in the water.

I still have two months to wait – but, being the most exciting thing in my life at this moment, it’s the only thing I can think about. I’m nearly obsessed. (Heh, nearly. OK, totally. But who’s quantifying?)

Now the problem with all this is: I may never want to return.

I didn’t want to come back from Venice, Italy when I visited – how in the heck are they going to get me back on that plane at the end of my [entirely too-short] trip to Hawaiʻi, for gawdsakes?

Ha! Yeah. Good luck with that one.

More later ~

G.

PS: I HAVE been to Tahiti, however, let me just say that the company was so lacking that it wasn’t hard to get me to leave French Polynesia. But that’s a different post for another time.

Left to right: Chris Winters (2008), Len Gunn (2011), Jamie Ungaro (2010), Charles Paz (2009).

These winners are from all four RT’s I’ve been to.

(in the column on the right hand side of the page)

to see the awesome cover Resplendence Publishing made for me:

G.

 It’s a problem all authors are familiar with, whether you compose fiction or non-fiction, poetry, articles or children’s books. Allow me to introduce you to a writer, who is also a hypnotherapist. She claims she has found the cure for writer’s block. With me today I have the founder of MaeDawn Wellness Center, Gina Henderson.

Hi Gina! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

Gina:             It’s my pleasure, Genella, and thank you for having me as a guest!

Genella:       How long have you been doing hypnosis?

Gina:             Honestly, since I was twelve years old! I picked up my first book of hypnosis at that age and I’ve been hypnotizing people and studying hypnosis ever since. I had a break from studying about ten years ago, and then just recently picked it up again and this time I got certified. So now I’m official and get paid to do what I love to do!

Genella:       Since I know you personally and have been hypnotized by you, I know this isn’t true, but isn’t there an obvious concern people have about hypnosis and being controlled?

Gina:             You’re absolutely right. It still shocks me because I’ve known the truth about hypnosis from the beginning and never developed any misconceptions. The truth is we go in and out of a state of hypnosis every day when we drive a car, go in and out of sleep, read a book or watch a movie, just to name a few examples. Hypnosis is just a natural occurrence when your mind shifts into a different state of consciousness AND you are in complete control. As a hypnotherapist, I cannot tell you do something you don’t want to do…period!

Genella:       But what about those stage hypnosis shows where people are clucking like chickens and making fools of themselves?

Gina:             I know a lot of people aren’t going to like to hear this, but the truth about stage hypnosis is…it’s an excuse for people to act silly. Seriously!! They WANTED to cluck like a chicken and then they go back to their seats and say, “I didn’t have any control!” As soon as they raised their hand and stepped up onto that stage, they willingly gave that control over and committed to doing whatever the Stage Hypnotist said to do. End of story. I’ve had plenty of experiences with people I’ve hypnotized where I’ve said, “You find yourself on a beach,” and they’ve said, “Actually, I’m in a forest and I like it here. Can we do that instead?” If that’s where they want to go, then I go with it and work with them. I’m just a guide.

Genella:       Turning now to the services you do for writers…you’ve shared with me that you have helped writers eliminate writer’s block. Can you explain how that works and what you use?

Gina:             As a writer myself, I have my moments when I struggle with various elements of my stories – how to give dimension to a character; what way I should take a storyline or a scene; or how to work in new revisions my editor has asked me to do; the list goes on and it’s something every writer struggles with. In the past, I would do what most any writer does: agonize in front of a computer, trying to find the answers and getting nowhere. I had to resort to putting my writing aside and letting the ideas germinate in my brain until one would hit me a few days later and I could begin writing again. A lot of wasted time, if you ask me.

When I went through my hypnotherapy certification and learned the various techniques, I began to realize what writer’s block truly is and why we have it. Plain and simple, writer’s block is our conscious mind getting in the way of our creativity. The conscious mind is very critical and analytical. As any creative person can probably agree, criticism and analysis do not belong in the creative process. They’re too rigid and controlling. I realized that all of our ideas come from the subconscious mind, NOT the conscious mind, and my experience with hypnotherapy has shown me how surprisingly creative the subconscious mind is. That’s when I began applying hypnotic techniques to the creative process.

Genella:       Both of us being writers, I know we have our own struggles with writer’s block and we’ve heard other writers talk about the issues they have with moving forward in their stories. Some of the issues I can name off the top of my head are not being able to finish a story they’ve started–

Gina:             NOT a problem you have, (laughing) but yes, I’ve encountered that with other writers.

Genella:       (laughing) No, not a problem I’ve had. Sagging middles are another common problem I’ve heard of.

Gina:             That’s usually a middle-age issue and I can help with hypnosis for weight loss. (laughing)

Genella:       Sagging middles in STORIES, smarty pants! LOL Also Cliché characters, too. What problems have you encountered either yourself or in working with other writers?

Gina:             Shallow characters – like a bad guy who is just a bad guy and doesn’t really have a past or a good side to him. Common problems I personally experience are knowing where to take a scene so it pushes my story along, or giving layers and more purpose to characters in a story.

Genella:       With all of the problems we’ve mentioned, can you pick one as an example and how you would use hypnotherapy to resolve it?

Gina:             I would love to! I’ll pick a short one. I have a great story with one of my characters, Rosselyn, which is really fun, but very detailed. I’ll put that one up on my blog if anyone wants to read it. I just recently went through a major revision of my current book ETERNAL CONQUEST (due for release sometime this summer) and in that revision for various reasons, I needed to move Broderick and Davina’s first love scene up in the story by two or three chapters. However, moving this sensual and tender moment up put it in a very awkward place where they were talking about the villain Angus, and I had a dickens of a time trying to make a smooth transition from a tense moment to a tender moment and wasted a lot of time struggling with it.

I had JUST come up with these ideas for using hypnotherapy in my writing and said, “Now’s the perfect time to put it to use and see if it really works!” I stepped away from my computer – to get away from the place where I have struggled in the past – and sat in a room, in a comfortable chair, with the lights off. Taking a few deep and comfortable breaths, I brought myself mentally to my beach – a place of calm and peace – and I said to myself, “I’m going to be on my beach and when I turn around, I’m going to see a doorway. When I walk through that doorway, I’m going to step into the world of my characters and one of my characters is going to show up and tell me exactly what to do for this scene to make a smooth transition.”

Genella:       Why did you describe that process to yourself before you did it?

Gina:             Our subconscious needs a little set-up, so to speak, so it knows where it’s going. Your subconscious has the answer to all your problems – including your literary ones – but it does need a general idea of what path to follow and then it will have the answer ready to go when you get there.

Genella:       But isn’t that really your conscious mind doing the work? Just listening to you, I’m already coming up with ideas of what would happen when I walk through that door.

Gina:             Good question! And yes, so did I! I actually thought, and even wanted, to see either Broderick or Davina, in the room where they have their scene, when I walked through that door. However, my subconscious did something completely unexpected – the villain Angus showed up! I stepped through the door into the wooded area where both Broderick and Angus hideaway during the day (they’re vampires). As I walked into the woods, Angus walked up to me and I said, “What are you doing here?”

He said, “Gina, you don’t need me.”

I said, “Yeah, I know. So, what are you doing here?”

He said, “No, you don’t get it. You don’t need me. You keep trying to pull me into this scene with Broderick and Davina by having them talk about me and how I’m impacting them and their lives. This scene is about Broderick and Davina. This is the scene where they declare their love for each other. Stop bringing me into it.”

I said, “Ohhhh! I get it! Thanks!”

He said, “No problem!”

I was done in less than five minutes. When I came out to sit back at the computer, my husband said, “Done already?!” I said, “I KNOW! And you’ll never guess who showed up!” He said, “You’re kidding me!”

Genella:       Have you ever had your conscious mind get in the way while you’re doing these trances? If so, how do you know the difference?

Gina:             Another great question! And yes, I’ve had that happen several times during these private trances and one of two things usually happens for me: One – Events go nowhere and they make no sense and I feel very frustrated when I’m going through the experience. Frustration and senselessness are key indications that your conscious is trying to control things and not letting your subconscious reign free. Two – My characters will tell me that I’m getting in the way. I met one of my characters in a scene I didn’t expect to enter and began asking her questions. “But how can this be happening right now? Isn’t Nasir going to protest? Isn’t Talon going to–” She turned and interrupted me, saying, “Are you looking for answers or are you just going to stand there and try to run things?” I shut up and let her lead me and had an amazing experience!

Genella:       If that happens, what do you do to get your conscious mind out of the way?

Gina:             Take a few deep and comfortable breaths and relax. In whatever scene you’ve walked into, imagine yourself sitting down or stopping and notice the scenery. Don’t do anything but be in the scene. Once you feel the tension gone, then you can proceed with the trance. And you’ll know when you’re tense and when you’re relaxed.

Genella:       I think I can relate to what you’re saying, but I don’t know if this is the same thing. I was lying in bed a few mornings ago. I had just woken up, I was relaxed, and was letting my mind drift and wander and a new story idea just hit me! BAM! I immediately wrote it down.

Gina:             That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about and you just proved that anyone can do it! What happened to you is what happens with these trances – your critical mind had not become active for the day just yet. You were lying there, letting your mind wander, and your creativity just took off.

Genella:       So, what happens at these workshops you’re doing? Can you explain what they are and how they help?

Gina:             Sure! Writing Workshops in Wonderland – “Wonderland” being the subconscious mind – are designed to give writers a personal experience with these trances. We have twelve workshops that cover those common issues we spoke of earlier. The first four workshops focus on Writer Development – helping writers overcome common insecurities about their own writing, such as fear of failure or success, calling on your creativity when you NEED it, and memory recall techniques. The second set of workshops deal with Character Development – you can become your character to learn more about how they think; you can interview your character or interview the Master Teacher of your character, just to name a couple of the workshops. And the final set of workshops deal with Story Development. Most of these workshops have you step into the world of your characters and watch a scene unfold. All of the workshops begin with a discussion and then we do a group guided meditation. After the meditation, we all discuss what we experienced and we give writers the chance to write their ideas down while they’re fresh in their mind. We also conduct the workshop in a way that teaches the writers how to take this tool home with them so they can do it themselves.

Genella:       This sounds really exciting! How have you helped other writers so far? What has been their experience?

Gina:             As an example – I have a writer friend up in the San Francisco Bay area and I taught her these techniques over the phone. She was having problems trying to work out a seminar she was going to teach and I told her she could use these techniques for non-fiction as well. One of the workshops is called “Journey to the Caterpillar” and you walk through the woods, following this floating smoke that is almost “alive” and it leads you to Absalom, the caterpillar. He sits atop his mushroom, puffing on his hookah, and tells you exactly what you need to hear or know about the problem you have. She used it and said she couldn’t believe how easy it was, how fun it was, and how Absalom did indeed have the exact solution to her seminar problem. I’ve introduced this to over a dozen writers and they have all come back telling me the same thing – how much fun they’re having and how easily they’re getting the answers they need to continue writing.

Genella:       If you don’t live in the Los Angeles area to take the workshops – or you can’t make the workshops due to schedule conflicts – how can a writer learn these techniques?

Gina:             Like I did with my friend in SF, I do phone consultations and private sessions. You can visit my web site and click on the calendar tab at the top where you can check my availability. Under the calendar, I have an appointment request form they can fill out and I’ll contact them for arrangements. The request form can also be used to request me as a guest speaker at your writer’s group where I can perform one of the workshops and teach some of these techniques. Additionally, in the next couple of months, I’ll be releasing the entire series of workshops in MP3 format. They’ll be recorded guided meditations with sound effects and intro tracks to explain the process of each meditation. So, with the phone consultations, private sessions, writers group workshops or MP3s, anyone anywhere in the world can learn these techniques to free their creativity and eliminate writer’s block.

Genella:       Where can someone find out more information about the pricing, dates, times and descriptions of the workshops?

Gina:             If you visit my web site at www.maedawn.com, click on the “Workshops” tab at the top. You’ll see complete descriptions of each workshop and there’s a link to the Meetup.com page I have for the Upland Writer’s Group where you can view the calendar to see the workshop schedules and sign up. I’m teaching in Upland at The Healing Shoppe and also in Marina Del Rey staring in February at The Goddess Body Shop.

Genella:       Any parting words of advice for my blog audience?

Gina:             You can do and be anything…and I mean anything…you put your mind to. If you don’t believe that, then contact me and we can work together to get your subconscious on board with that idea. Don’t let doubt get in the way of achieving your goals.

Genella:       Thank you, Gina! I believe you will be blessed with abundance for helping others—*Teaching* people to fish as opposed to just handing them a meal.

 :)

Think you have what it takes?

Contestants needed

for Mr. Romance Competition

April 5-10, 2011, Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure Hotel

For information go to www.rtconvention.com and click on the

Mr. Romance tab or contact

northamextreme@yahoo.com

Deadline for entry is

January 31, 2011.

Mostly, I write straight historicals; fictional characters in a different time period
than the one in which we dwell. From there, it could go paranormal, mythological,
erotic romance, fantasy. . . It all depends upon the story.

The voice is the same, but my stories are separated by different sub-genres. For instance, you won’t find the spiritual/supernatural qualities of “Remember Me” in any of my other stories. Please see “What’s in the Can” for a brief blurb from my other completed works.
 
Erotic romance vs. regular romance 

G.  

That’s exactly the feeling – YOU ARE THE WINNER!

Oasis of Eden was a really fun book to write. The high-concept is a 1920′s Flapper meets Stargate.

The picture on my Oasis of Eden page is an actual shot from the 1920′s.

I love the fact that this girl has long hair and didn’t opt for the popular bob.

So aside from her not being as curvy as Miss Jaden Poole, heroine of my story, that pic was my inspiration for Jaden.

More to come – More books to sell – More heroes to fall in love with – Thanks to Resplendence and my editor – Thanks to my readers.

So much to be thankful for!

G.