Marie Harte

Ensalada Mixta

| Melia Alexander

Happy Food and Wine Wednesday!

Personally, I love ice cream. Like, really, really, REALLY love ice cream. (What can I say? I’m my father’s daughter!) If I could get away with it, I’d have ice cream at every meal. Heck, there’s a pretty good chance it’d be all I’d have! But that fantasy comes with a price – mainly at the waistline as well as feeling yucky-tired all the time. Who wants that?

Since ice cream for the rest of my life isn’t happening, I have to figure out a way to balance it out, so I turn to my fave standby: salads! An awesome combination of greens and protein makes for a happy tummy. 🙂

A few weeks ago I was in Central Oregon where I met with fellow romance author-pal Marie Harte for lunch at La Rosa. I found this on the menu:

20140824_130242Ensalada Mixta. Crunchy lettuce and cabbage, pickled red onions, avocado, marinated beef. And instead of the creamy dressing that was served, I opted for the house made salsa which led to extreme happy-dancing in my mouth!

Really, I couldn’t think of a better meal to go with the great writing conversation! And, yeah, I had ice cream later. . .. 😉

Are you a salad fan? What’s your fave combination?

Happy Eating,
Melia

 

From Writers . . . With Love

| Melia Alexander
Left to right: Melia, Paty, Ella, Diana, Marie, and Karen

I made a special trip to visit my writer-friends in Central Oregon over the weekend.  Aside from the total confusion whenever I drive there — I swear, even a navigation system doesn’t help! — I always have a great time with my fellow chapter mates (RWA’s Rose City Romance Writers).

Sure, the drinks flowed.  Sure, there were a ton of laughs.  And, yeah, there was some conversation about the, umm. . . attributes of the perfect, mouth-watering hero.  (Well, duh.  We are romance writers, after all!)  But through the three or so hours we were together, our conversation was dotted with serious discussions about the business end of writing.  Taxes, anyone?  To incorporate or not?  And what about marketing for authors who write in multiple subgenres?  Is this any more of a challenge?  (Think Paty Jager who writes Western historical, Western contemporary, and Native American romance.)

One of the last questions we tossed around: When we hit the bestseller lists 🙂 what advice would we offer fellow writers?

Ella Zane:  You’re writing to entertain.  Go ahead and be excited about your character, but know your plot!

Paty Jager:  Learn craft, and read the genre that you write.

Karen Duvall:  Always ask “why” as you’re writing.  Why is the character doing this?  Why are they saying that?  Why do they want this?  Everything a character does has to be motivated, tied together, and the reader has to be clued in.

Marie Harte:  Entertain yourself, and you’ll entertain your readers.

Diana McCollum:  One word – perseverance.

Melia Alexander:  Write with passion.  Live your characters as you write their stories.  Allow them to shine through the words you put on the page so that they  invoke emotion in the reader and she lives the story, too.

All in all, re-connecting with my Central Oregon Roses was a fabulously, fantastical, stupendously awesome evening!  (Beat that Marie Harte!  🙂 )

And it turns out even sassy, sexy, fun writers can be serious, too.

Sometimes.

But not too often —  heaven knows life’s too short to be taken seriously most of the time. . ..

-Melia