JQ Rose Visits with GIRLS SUCCEED!

Inspiring and empowering girls to achieve success in their dream careers.

It is my great pleasure to have fellow writer, J.Q. Rose visit my blog today. She's written some wonderful books including Girls Succeed. So without further ado, here is  J.Q. in her own words. (And don't forget to enter the contest, details below!)

Hi Conda. Thanks so much for hosting me today.  I appreciate the opportunity to shout about my ebook for girls, Girls Succeed: Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women. It is an interactive e-book filled with dreams and passion to inspire, entertain, and empower girls. Fifteen remarkable career women in a variety of occupations share their stories in these pages. Readers explore careers which include women who have discovered cures to stamp out disease, made people laugh, earned Olympic and Paralympics gold medals, and crossed the country in the cab of an 18 wheeler.

Hello Readers. Thank you for stopping by. I’m excited to visit with you today. Please leave comments to enter a random drawing for prizes after the tour is completed. More information about that later.

Careers Today by J.Q. Rose

The glass ceiling for women still exists in many careers, but let’s face it, women are entering professions never imagined when I was graduating from high school. Have you talked with a college student lately about his or her major? What an amazing choice of degrees to earn these days. Majors are in recreation, hospitality, business leadership, marketing, all those computer technology majors, and even how to engineer packaging for products.

With so many choices available, I want to encourage girls to dream big for the career they want to pursue and follow the dream by working hard to make it a reality. The stories in the book are about careers, but also the path the women followed to make their dream profession come true. 

This is non-fiction and was written as a reference for gathering information and inspiration about different occupations. If a career catches a reader’s eye, then I hope she will read about it. At the end of each chapter, there are live links to the subject’s websites, videos, books, and articles which will enhance and update the information provided.

It was a privilege to interview these remarkable women. I felt very special to have them trust me to tell their stories. Now I look forward to getting the ebook out to readers and hope to inspire them to follow their dreams.

The Table of Contents lists all the women and their careers. How about you? Do you still dream of success in a new career? Go for it!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1--Horse Trainer/Competitive Dressage Rider, Pati Pierucci

True Love

Chapter 2--Bike Racer, Mackenzie Woodring

Speeding Around the Track

Chapter 3--Children’s Book Author and Illustrator, Jane Stroschin

Practice, Practice, Practice

Chapter 4--Medical Doctor, Cate Bradley

Role Models Rock

Chapter 5--Chef, Sue Chef

Cooking Up a Career

Chapter 6--Technology Expert, Diana Stoneberg

Keep Your Sense of Humor

Chapter 7--Christian Minister, Laurie Haller

Serving God

Chapter 8--Horticulturalist, Sharon Loving

Thank You Very Mulch

Chapter 9--Medical Scientist, Juanita Merchant

Confidence Counts

Chapter 10-Olympic Gold Medalist in Women’s Ice Hockey, Angela Ruggiero

Showing the Boys

Chapter 11-Semi-Truck Driver, Barbara Totten

Freedom of the Road

Chapter 12-Teacher/Coach/Athletic Director, Barbara “Chili” Chiles

Aim Higher

Chapter13-Social Worker, Lenair Correll 

Overcoming Obstacles

Chapter 14-Entrepreneur/Product Developer, Veronica Bosgraaf

Find the Path to Success

Chapter 15-Professional Clown, Brenda Marshall

A Big Red Nose

After writing feature articles in magazines, newspapers, and online magazines for over fifteen years, J.Q. Rose entered the world of fiction writing with her first published novella, Sunshine Boulevard, released by Muse It Up Publishing in 2011. With Girls Succeed she returns to her first love, writing about real people.  Blogging, photography, Pegs and Jokers board games, and travel are the things that keep her out of trouble. Spending winters in Florida with her husband allows Janet the opportunity to enjoy the life of a snowbird. Summer finds her camping and hunting toads, frogs, and salamanders with her four grandsons and granddaughter.

Connect with J.Q. Rose online at

Girls Succeed blog http://girlssucceed.blogspot.com/

J.Q. Rose blog http://JQRoseAuthor.blogspot.com

Author website http://jqrose.webs.com/     

BOOK LINKS: If you would like to download a sample which includes the Table of Contents listing all the careers in the book, please go to

Amazon Link  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NY6ZAS

Smashwords Link http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/241825

 

Contest Information Janet will be drawing winners from visitors who leave comments during the tour. The prizes for you or a girl in your life are a $10 Amazon gift certificate, a copy of the Girls Succeed e-book in your choice of format, a “Succeed” beaded bracelet kit, and inspirational note pads. (See the Girls Succeed and J Q Rose blogs for photos and blog tour information.). Winners announced on her blogs on Sunday, November 18 at 9 pm EST. Good luck!

BOTTLE CAP PINS! EASY! FUN! CHEAP!

One of my first bottle cap pins with the title of my mystery novel.

Bottle cap jewelry is a blast to make. I discovered quite by accident, while researching what to do at my craft sessions at the Bouchercon conference this year. What could up to 30 people make in less than an hour? Answer: see above. Then I realized that bottle cap pieces could be wonderful as gifts for all sorts of occasions. Each unique. A baby shower? Give a bottle cap pin with the photo of the new mom as a baby! Maybe pins for all the attendees! How about making a bunch of Christmas bottle cap ornaments? Give out a bottle cap magnet for a Halloween treat! A project for your child's class? The limit is your imagination.

This post is a quick and dirty primer to making these.

First, the materials: I would suggest going to either Beadaholique or Amazon for these supplies:
50 Mixed Color Bottle Caps Craft Scrapbook Jewelry
1" Circle Epoxy Stickers For Bottle Cap Pendants 
EK Success Papers Shapers Nesting Punch 1" (or any other brand, as long as 1")
Glue Dots Super Strength Multi-Use 1/2" dots

Images:
use photos, images from magazines and greeting cards, draw your own, stencil, use stamps, stickers, glue small objects that fit within the one inch circle, there are inexpensive bottle cap images for sale, or a combo of, well, whatever you want!

Yes, it is possible to do bottle caps the old fashioned way, cut out the image with a pair of scissors, recycle used bottle caps if not bent, glue and then use clear varnish on the top, but most of these supplies are inexpensive and if you're like me you'll keep coming up with new ideas for these things. And it makes it much faster and easier.

How to:
Take your 1" paper circle image and press it against a Glue Dot. Press the circle into the bottle cap. Holding by the edges, place a 1" Circle Epoxy Sticker on top. DONE Now you need to attach whatever to the back, whether it be a pin back, or hanger for pendants, or magnet. DONE.

Here's how I made a demi-parure of a pin and earrings using part of the cover image from The Mall Fairies: Exile (artist Kaytalin Platt, great cover art, so pretty!):

The arrows are for knowing how the images face because ...

...it's impossible to tell when they are face down!

Then I glued the pin back and earring pieces on and here I am wearing the finished product:

So simple and easy! Doing these at the craft sessions is going to be a blast!

And dear readers, do you have any craft projects like this? Would love to know!

Why Authors and Readers RULE the publishing world.

A short story in my tween fantasy series The Mall Fairies, released September 14. If you pre-order here, then it's only 79 cents! Cheap!

Yes, I just had to crow a little about this new release! However, it slips into my main subject of this post. Since several of my stories are being released from several different publishers in the next couple of months I've been going promo mad. Then I saw a post on an authors'  facebook group where another author asked, (I'm paraphrasing), "Isn't all this promo to other authors just belly button gazing? Does any of it reach the readers?"

And my answer is threefold.

First, authors are readers. I find all my reading off of social media now. And I read a lot.

Second, readers also follow a lot of this social media by authors. Why? For the simple reason that readers are fascinated by authors. I know I'm fascinated by other author's lives. 

And this brings me to the third point. It used to be that the only author's lives we could know about was the famous ones, and only read/buy a current release--but now authors and readers rule the publishing world! They can find out all about, everything (like a story being on sale if pre-ordered). 

I love this world of TMI. I've found lots of great reads! What about you, dear reader? What do you think? Do you love or hate this new world?

Colors Like Memories, A Review and Being God

Colors Like Memories is by Meradeth Houston, a YA fantasy about a member of the Sari, which are angels made up of babies born who never breathed before death. Julie, the Sari, struggles with her own overwhelming grief as she tries to keep a teen from suicide.

I read Colors Like Memories as a great break while I was prepping my workshop "Being God" for the Fandemonium conference. And reading it helped tremendously with the prep. Meradeth creates an excellent fantasy world with the right balance between the elements of the "real" world and the fantastic. Julie has abilities (and wings, I love wings) but she also has to eat and sleep--and has other human failings that are more important, the primary of which is that she's stuck in grief. Another excellent balance in the novel: the world was created with just enough back story and details for it to come alive, and not so much it bogged down this wonderful tale.

Reading Colors Like Memories reminded me to teach that one of the most important guidelines for being a god and creating your own world was to only provide necessary information at the point where the reader needs to know that information.This is true with whatever style of fiction you're writing.

Plus, it was an excellent read.

So, dear writers, what other ways can we be good gods (and goddesses) of our worlds?