One of my great joys is the learning that happens when I'm researching topics for a novel in progress. I'm still working on the fifth book in my "Bruce and Friends" series--Bruce and the Road to Freedom—and I needed some information about one of the characters.

Horace is a dragonfly. He's a minor character, although he and his dragonfly family and friends feature prominently in the last few chapters of the book. I needed to know if dragonflies have a good sense of smell. I took a look on the internet and this is what I found.

​An article in Science Magazine explains that, though they lack what we understand as a normal sense of smell, that doesn't deter them from using odors to hunt prey.

Human noses use scent receptors, each of which responds to a specific scent. These receptors send signals to our brain, where they're interpreted as coming from a specific item (a dog, a flower). Scientists have known that dragonflies don't possess these scent receptors, so they assumed they didn't have a sense of smell. New research has determined that they smell in a different way. They have tiny sensory neurons that emitted nerve impulses when the insects were exposed to various scents.

Knowing this, I was able to have the dragonflies​ in my story use their sense of smell to do some tracking—to locate Horace and Bruce, both of whom have gotten into trouble and are in need of rescue. 

Bruce and the Road to Freedom​ (Book 5 of the Bruce and Friends series) will be out in time for Christmas.

Those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter have heard this news, but I'm still flying high with the most recent award for Bruce and the Road to Courage: it won the ONEBOOKAZ Award for 2015 in the kid's category. This award is presented by the Arizona State Library to one children's book judged best of all those submitted by Arizona authors. Awards are also given for the best young adult and adult books. 

Last night at the Civic Center Library in Scottsdale, AZ, Joan Clark (pictured with me, top right), Director of the Arizona State Library, presented all three authors with certificates. We also took part in a panel discussion about how we create our books, our general writing process, and the difficulties and rewards of being self-published.

While Bruce and the Road to Courage received other awards in the past, I prize this one more than the rest. The judges reviewed all eligible submissions based on quality, creativity, originality, style, grammar, and whether they felt the content would be enjoyed by a wide range of Arizona readers. Winning authors must reside in Arizona.

The goals of the ONEBOOKAZ program are to encourage writing, reading and thoughtful interaction with literature in digital formats. To this end, they are providing copies of our books free of charge to all Arizona residents via their website (www.onebookas.org)  through the month of April. Books may be read on the computer or downloaded to digital e-reading devices.

They are also providing an honorarium allowing me to travel to nine different Arizona cities during the months of April and early May. The goal is to have communities across the State of Arizona read the same books at the same time and participate in discussions and programs centered around those books.

Beyond that, they created a wonderful teacher’s guide for Courage that will make it easier for teachers to incorporate it into their curriculum. I had begun work on such a project myself a few months before, but their help turned my guide into something extraordinary—truly a great tool and a wonderful gift for me as I strive to reach out to more schools and students.

Finally, they are in process of creating an audio version of Courage for the visually or physically impaired to enjoy as well. I’m excited to hear what a professional reader will make of the voices of Bruce and his friends.

My first stop on the tour will be Yuma on April 15, followed by Prescott, Sedona, and Cottonwood from the 16th through 18th. If you have friends or relatives in those areas who might wish to attend, the details can be found on my website calendar.

By the way – I’m still writing while all of this is transpiring. Don’t give up hope that I’ll turn out another book one of these days. I was very busy for a number of months working on the novels of others (see the Two Cats Press website to learn more about these great books), but I’m back to working on The Rift, my Young Adult book series, which is going very well! (Bruce and the Road to Freedom is on hold until I can get book one of The Rift finished.)

Mom's Choice, one of the groups that gave my books an award, is a great organization because they help parents select toys, books, and other products that meet their criteria of excellence. The group is also good to their awardees because they help with marketing in various ways. Yesterday, they posted a topic on their blog asking, "What do you love most about marketing?" 

"Ha," I said, with a wry smile. (I'm very good at smiling wryly.) "Is that a trick question?" Nevertheless, I wrote a reply, which I thought I'd share with you.

"What do I love about marketing? Besides being an author, I'm also a decent salesperson, so I don't hate marketing—but I do hate having to do it. Like most aspiring authors, I hoped to live the dream of having people flock to my book signings and clamoring for my next novel to come out. Sadly, that dream rarely materializes.

"Sometimes, marketing seems like trying to put together a puzzle without all the pieces. With the advent of affordable and easy self-publishing, the market is now quite saturated with books of all kinds, and it's hard for one novel to rise above the rest. I'd much rather be writing than selling, creating press releases, posting blogs, or sending email newsletters, but I keep doing it, because every person's name added to my mailing list is potentially many more contacts who will not only buy this book but perhaps all my others, past and future.

"You never know where the best contact will be found. My greatest one came when I sent a book to a friend, who shared it with her friend, who gave it to a teacher who was currently unemployed, who sent it to another teacher who loved it so much she now starts her school year language arts program by reading it aloud to her class—and she shared the book with teachers in other schools, all of whom invite me to come and speak to their classes and sign books. You just have to keep plugging. 

"I don't love marketing, but I love my books, and I know children do, too. If I want the books to become known and loved by more children and their parents, I have to keep selling."

It is a lot of work, all this marketing stuff. I'm not one who would just keep pouring the words onto the screen if I thought no one would ever read them. I don't write out of a compulsion to bare my soul, and I don't want to be recognized posthumously for works I never published. I'm a storyteller, and I write for you. Without you, the stories have no life. When you (or the child for whom you chose my book) read my words and communion occurs—along with the joy of discovery and of sharing in the lives of the heroes they care about—then the words come to life. That's why I write and, therefore, why I market. 

And since it's been a while without an update: I was away from active writing while I took on two editing and typesetting projects for author friends. One of those projects is now complete, and the other is nearly so. Meanwhile, I've still been working on The Rift, and the readers in my critique group tell me they still like it. I've also come back to work on Bruce and the Road to Freedom, which is turning out to be more challenging than I anticipated. Freedom is not an easy concept, and it has different meanings for different people and depending on context. I think it will be an interesting and fun story, and I'm happy to say that some of the earlier characters who haven't been seen in a while will reappear.

I hope those of you in the southwest are enjoying this great "winter" weather. To those in the east: remember, spring is coming soon, and shortly thereafter, you can all point at us in Arizona with our 110° heat and put on a wry smile.

Moving on has several connotations. Literally, I am in the process of moving on from one house to another. We bought a new home in Sun City West, another active adult community, and escrow there should close around the end of the month. I'm looking forward to more pickleball play after we get to their courts!

But as most of you know, I'm also in process of moving on from children's literature to writing a series for young adults, called The Rift. I'm enjoying this project very much, although the time doing research is currently greater than the time writing. (If you didn't see my last post entitled "A little Orcish, if you please," take a look HERE.) I'm sure I'll come back to write more children's books in time, but I want to stretch and try some new things that I haven't done before. Writing for (young) adults poses different challenges. It's hard. That's good.

In The Rift, a young boy named Tom moves on from the technological world he's known (our Earth today) to its magic-only equivalent called Thera. A series of wars rages there, with mages fighting mages and other creatures vying for power as well. Tom's original goal was to find his sister, who had crossed to Thera earlier. To find her, he agrees to help end the wars by learning to control the magic that is his alone. 

Properly crafting the background and rules of a magical world is a time-taking process but one that brings rewards when you figure out or stumble upon something that makes sense, or fits so perfectly, that you know it is right. I've drawn from the worlds established by other writers before me and yet have created something all my own -- or more truly, something that belongs only to Tom and the other characters in this novel. 

I've also written a couple of new short stories that will be published in an anthology due out in October. TheThe stories were to have a "global" theme, which didn't give me much to work with. For the first story, I settled on an idea I'd thought about for a long time: the tale of my father's German ancestors' journey from Hamburg to Buffalo, NY. Written as a series of letters from my great-grandmother to her sister, who remained behind, it is something entirely different from anything I've done before. The other story chronicles, through recipes and cooking, what it was like being the fourth-generation female living in a French-Canadian household where everyone else spoke French. I'll share these stories after they're published.

My web site has also moved on to a new provider, and it's been revised to be simpler and easier to manage. Take a look: www.galeleach.com, now hosted by Weebly.com (Morgan's new work abode).

Am I a gypsy, moving around so much? Perhaps. Each time I've moved, I said, "This is the last time. This house is it."  Yet I'm looking forward to the new start -- to moving on -- and to find some new friends in a new community. I've already found a whole new world in my writing, and I have a feeling the "moving on" process will continue, one way or the other. For those of you who have scratched out my address too many times already, add this one in pencil. I don't think I'll be moving on again, but then . . .

In March, I attended the Tucson Festival of Books. With the help of three other authors who went under the wing of Two Cats Press, we were able to afford booth space there and the travel expenses and still make enough profit to make it worthwhile.

One funny thing was that people kept coming to the booth and asking where the books about cats were. I probably should write at least one because of that.

We hustled a lot. One of the other authors had a technique I admired and copied somewhat: children would walk by, and she would go up to them and say, "Would you like to hear a story about a by and his horse who . . ." By about word six, the kids were hooked, and by the time their parents realized what was happening, they were pulling out their wallets.

Of course, this author's books (like the rest of those offered at our booth) were very good, and the people at the festival were all book lovers, so it didn't take much encouragement to sell. If you haven't been to the festival  and have a chance to go, I highly recommend it. Admission is free, and there is much to see and do besides buy books. I lamented not being able to attend more signings and workshops, but it was a wonderf

I learned some things while there, one of which is that my newest book, Bruce and the Murder in the Marsh, appeals to boys more than girls, and parents don't want to buy it until I tell them a lot about it. Once they realize it's not gory or violent (or at least not like they're imagining), they give in to their sons' request to "get that book," even though I try to steer them to Courage first. I know children of this age love mysteries -- they asked me to write one. But I realized that my choice of title might have been a bad one. Neil Gaiman can get away with it, but I have a way to go before I can ride on that type of status and declare "murder" in the title.

So I decided to change it. Nothing else -- just the title -- and now it's called Bruce and the Mystery in the Marsh. This should still appeal to boys and hopefully also to their mothers.

I've been busy, both before and after Tucson, working on the new book which is tentatively titled The Rift. I've been sharing chapters with a small group of writers once a month, and each time they tell me they like it and want to read more. I like it, too, and I'm writing this book with a combination of techniques. I have a rough plot line -- I know where it begins, generally goes, and at least one possible ending. I have about 20 chapters written for the first draft so far, all in the beginning of the story. I've now started writing the middle, skipping ahead in order to deal with the climax. This was a suggestion from another author who wrote a book about this process, and it sounded like it made sense. So far, I like the idea. Once I have that done, I'll write the ending. Then I have to fit them together. It should be interesting. It it doesn't work, I can always toss it out and write it again.

I'd hoped to have book one of The Rift finished by Christmas, but the way things are going with the rest of my life, that may not happen. It's terrible when life intrudes on writing! We have our house up for sale, and between showings, open houses, looking at other houses we might like to buy, along with other types of appointments and things like eating and sleeping, my writing time has many days been limited to thinking about doing it. However, anticipation makes the heart fonder, they say, so maybe you'll like this new book even more when it does come out. It's definitely going to be for an older age group, probably Young Adult crossing over to Adult, if I'm gauging it correctly.

Otherwise, life is good as always. I'll try to be more regular with my blog posts. It's not for lack of ideas, but just haven't had (or made) the time. I hope you're enjoying the Spring as much as I am. Take care, and keep reading!