Radio Interview HereERE. ​

My interview is between about 25-35 minute marks. 

I'd love to know what you think!

Comment below.

​Lara

I am delighted to report that since my unfortunate mishap with the book signing getting cancelled, I have since had the pleasure of doing TWO book signings at local bookstores. I did one at Old Capitol Books in Monterey, and one at Friends' Community Bookstore in Marina. 
While I didn't sell out, I had a great time and the people who came were engaged and asked great questions. I hope they had as much fun as I did. 
Funny enough, for one of the signings, the professor of a creative writing course at a local college, offered extra credit for any students who came to the signing. 

I am grateful for the experience I had of presenting. When first asked to give a 45 minute presentation, I felt a bit apprehensive, but it wasn't an issue. (No surprise for those who know me, since I have a much harder time NOT talking than I do with filling time).

Additionally, KRML interview me LIVE as part of their Pub Talks series. I thoroughly enjoyed the venue, atmosphere, and the opportunity to discuss some of my reasons for becoming an author, and my forthcoming work VIOLET INTRIGUE. You can watch the live video 


Have a fantastic day/night/evening/whatever-time-of-day-it-is!

​Lara Hues

Great news! I finally have a handle on Instagram. I'm even taking an online course on how to properly run things there so I can have awesome pictures and interesting content.  I'm excited to see how it goes. So far, I'm having a fun time. 

I'd love to have you follow me @lara.hues.writes

There, I share what I'm reading, some tips for writers, and pet peeves of YA works. 

Ever since I was a teen (writing what I see now as a pretty crummy story) I have dreamed of doing a book signing. 
On Feb 7th, 2018 I finally scheduled my first book signing. I was so excited that I called the local radio station and I set up an interview on their LIVE show.  I was on cloud nine. I got a book signing and radio interview. My self-perception as an author changed. Suddenly I wasn't this austere wannabe. I was someone worth hearing from. The bookstore wanted me to speak for 40 mins before the signing. Some people might find that to be a bit overwhelming, but I was delighted.  I began my presentation right away. I ordered 60 books online for the event. I even looked at plane tickets to fly my little sister out for the signing. 

But then, on Feb 20th, I got an email letting me know that the signing was cancelled. 
Cancelled. Not even rescheduled.  The flyer didn't get made and so the marketing didn't happen. And the event was cancelled. 
Hence me making the flyer I posted above. I sent it to them twenty minutes after receiving the email, but it was too late apparently.
I'd be lying if I told you that I kept it together. I didn't. Tears welled in my eyes as I read the email the fourth time. I felt like a total failure. Like a total loser for even thinking that a bookstore, a real brick and mortar store, would invite me to come out and speak and sign my books. 
Embarrassment welled in my chest as I debated how to tell the radio station that the signing would be cancelled.
Then, I got an email from them the next day. They too were cancelling me, having known nothing about the status of the book signing. Apparently someone more important became available for the interview.


Just like that, my hopes and dreams were crushed.

But then, I identified something over the next few days.  I had been pushing my ambitions onto other people. I had assumed it was a bookstore's job to get me to do a signing. Or a radio station's job to do an interview.  I had dreamed that someone somewhere would pluck me out of obscurity.

How ridiculous, right?  
Right. 
I had a realization that I am completely in charge of what I accomplish. I am in charge of promoting myself and if I want to have any chance as success, I need to get up again and put myself out there again.

That realization led to me writing this song.
A song that I plan to record and make a music video of at the end of the year.

I'm really looking forward to it, and in some ways, this let-downs have inspired me to get back in the fight even more than before.

If one bookstore was willing to do a signing, I'm willing to be there's another one that will. I just have to find them.
Anyway, here are the lyrics!

Up Again
 
I’ve learned living all over the world that
you’ve gotta have your own back. 
Nobody’s going to watch it for you
 
I’ve learned if you’re gonna last through the night 
You’ve gotta fight your own fight.
Nobody’s gonna hand it to you. 
 
 I’ve been let down far too many times
But I just restart
 
I get back up again up again every time I slip or they trip me 
Up again up again.  They don’t see the future that I see 
I know I’ve got what to takes to win
I get right back up again. 
 
I’ve learned not to rely on a team 
After all I’m the one w a dream 
Guess I’ve got some trust issues 
 
Haters, they don’t want to believe 
But I know it’s all within reach 
Still I’ve got some work to do. 
 
I’ve been pushed down so many times 
But I don’t let it show 
 
I get back up again up again every time I slip or they trip me 
Up again up again 
They don’t see the future that I see 
I know I’ve got what to takes to win
I get right back up again. 
 
I’ve spent some time at rock bottom, rock bottom 
And felt the sharp sting of failure so often 
I’ve had days when I swear I can’t take it anymore. 
But I get up cause I’m worth fighting for. 
 
 
I get back up again up again every time I slip or they trip me 
Up again up again 
They don’t see the future that I see 
I know I’ve got what to takes to win
I get right back up again. 
 
 

"

Here I relate the time in college that I had to pee my pants in order to get an A in the class. 
Enjoy!

As an army wife, I have lived in 10 different homes in the past 5.5 years. It may seem that with such a nice full number like 10, that I'm rounding up, but I'm not. The place I currently reside in Texas is the 10th home in my married life. And it’s the very first one that we bought.
I'm delighted. With Army life being so unpredictable and unstable, we weren't sure if we would ever buy a home or if it would be financially wise to do so. But having watched the first season of Fixer Upper, and my natural need to be productive and ambitious, I wanted to buy a home to do a few minor changes in.
For the first time in six years, I feel like I'm home. I'm sure it’s a culmination of having my husband live with me, having a great group of friends, awesome neighbors, and a home that is my home. Owning is different than renting. For me, largely because it gives me authority to paint the wall if I want to. And rent money so often felt thrown away.
The first project I did was repaint the kitchen cabinets. They look pretty dang great.
Then I decided to tackle the tile. I wouldn’t have replaced it, since it didn’t look bad with the new cabinet color, but I needed to do something with it because five different tiles were popping up. Every time I swept my kitchen, I swept up new grout. And since we were replacing the flooring (carpet) in the dining room, (with vinyl planks), I figured why not just dig out the old tile.
Just.
Just dig out tile.
It's it adorable how niave I can be in my ambitions.
I went over to my neighbor's house and borrowed her crowbar and sledgehammer and sent my kids upstairs so I could give this tile removal a go.
The first tile, a loose one, I pried up with a butter knife and my bare hands. The second one, also loose, came up in a similar fashion. Then I decided I should try to use the sledge hammer. And hey, since I have "Candid" in the title of this blog I'll confess, I like to hit stuff.
Should be evident by me having loved training MMA last year.
I raised the hammer, let it fall, and shards of porcelain flew everywhere. I looked at my hands. I had two small lacerations in my fingers and a deeper one in my knuckle.
Then I looked down to my leg. For a brief moment, it wasn’t bleeding at all, but the gash, oh dear the gash was deep. Not long, and I couldn't see any shrapnel in the wound.
"Why am I dumb?" I said aloud as a set the hammer down and ran upstairs. Halfway up the stairs the blood had soaked into my sock.  I pulled down the first aid kit and first went for a band-aid. Two seconds later it was soaked through and still leaking down my leg like a leaky faucet at an old gas station.
I pulled down the plastic bins I had full of medicine and some gauze. I placed a big piece of it over the cut and decided to call my friend.
"Hey, is it your husband who likes to do stitches?" I asked with a bit of a chuckle.
"Yeah, are you kids okay?"
"Yep, just me. Got a big cut in my leg. Think he can come over?"
"He is on his way home from work right now. I'll send him over."
So with the thought of my friend who is an army dentist en route to see if I needed stitches, I hobbled back down the stairs to put some ice on my leg.
Ten minutes later he showed up with two of his kids to keep mine occupied upstairs. At first glance he said he thought it would heal up okay. We decided he should flush it out to make sure no tile pieces were stuck inside. I climbed onto my kitchen counter and held my leg over the sink. When he started flushing it, that's really when it started hurting. Immediately he said, "Actually it's pretty deep. Let's put a couple stitches in it to keep it from getting infected and to stop the bleeding."
He numbed up my leg with a local anesthetic and I watched as he looped the c-shaped hook through my leg. I held the needle while he tied it shut. Meanwhile my neighbor came over to help, feeling guilty for letting me use her tools.
Two stitches later I was all cleaned up, and the world started to fade real fast. "I'm gonna pass out!" I exclaimed before teetering off the ledge of the counter. My friends caught me, set me on the tile, and gave me an icepack to hug and some water.
Not my favorite part of the story, since I had been so hardcore the first half, but I can't leave out details like almost smashing my face open on the tile I wanted to remove.
Few minutes later I moved over to the couch and gave everyone the green light to go. I called my kids down and we watched a movie together.
You'd think that would be the end of the story.
Oh, it's not.
You see, while I was getting stitched up by a dentist on my kitchen counter, my three-year-old found the exlax chocolate in the first aid kit and downed.
The whole package.
Which I discovered a few hours later when she cried, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, poop is coming forever!"
To spare you the details, let it suffice to say that poop is coming forever. Everywhere.
Fear not, I called poison control and they said to watch her and keep her hydrated.
Now, 48 hours later, the pooping is done, my leg feels not great but not awful, and I have two men downstairs right now removing my tile for me.
I asked my husband if it was okay for me to hire some guys to do it. He said, "It's cheaper than ER visits."


Note: Moderately graphic pictures below.

My family took a little vacation last week to Galveston; a small island off the east coast of Texas. As much as we enjoyed seeing dolphins, finding hermit crabs, building sand castles, and swimming, it was clear that my kids had the most fun finding seashells. As a result, a fair few found their way home with us.
I decided to make a little seashell decoration for our back porch out of some of the shells from our trip. 
I'm going to walk you through how to make it, in the event that you see this decoration and fill with envy.

​Time to make: 30 mins

Supplies:
scissors
jute or fishing line or hemp
seashells
a basket

I love when I can make a craft with supplies on hand.

​We had this basket sitting vacant in our closet ever since I picked it up at the dollar store a few months ago.  I like the way the rustic look of it matches the jute, but I imagine fishing line would hold up a little better, and look equally awesome.
You can find baskets at dollar stores and in abundance at thrift stores. Sometimes you can get a basket full of seashells at a dollar store. Or at the very least, quite cheap.

-First take all the shells and group them by size. This will prevent your decoration from being lopsided.
I took the biggest shell and tied the jute to it through the hole. For the biggest or prettiest shell, tie it into the very center of the basket. You can even add some other pretty ones at slightly different lengths depending on how busy you want the decoration to be.
Most of the shells we found had holes in them, but for the ones that didn't you can usually find a good, secure place to wrap around the shell and tie it instead of going through.  

This one had a big hole I could work with.

For this shell, I just wrapped the jute and tied it.

The smaller ones I tied inside the basket, always doing my best to keep the weight evenly distributed. While I didn't measure, you certainly can. 

See how pretty they look all tied up.  (Snip off the extra strings at the knot.) 
​
- Loop some jute through the top of the basket like this, tie it, so it can't slip, and then made a large loop to tie off at the end.

Be cautious that your strings don't get too tangled, and untangle them right away so that you can avoid frustration or, worst-case scenario, you have to cut some strings and re-tie the shells. Not that bad of a worst-case scenario if you ask me.    

I love the way this little decoration reminds me of finding those shells with my little girls on the beach and our family vacation, but for you, it could simply be a nice reminder of your own trips to the beach, or a little piece of some paradise to bring to your own back porch. 

Have fun!  

I occasionally write articles for my brother's site: /theunimportantmatters.com/

Just for funsies, I wanted to share this article I wrote for that site, here.  It's meant to be lighthearted and goofy. Enjoy!

Original article available here.

The conversation starts out fine. You speak, they listen. They speak, you listen. You interrupt each other occasionally. But then IT starts happening.
They start mimicking you. Echoing your every word. At first, you may be moderately amused. Then a few moments later, you’re just annoyed. What do you do to make them stop? How can you end the torture that is hearing your words repeated back to you rather than getting a response or the pleasant silence of a listening ear?
First of all, here are a few points of what NOT to do in this terrible situation
1.     Do not stop talking.
First instinct would lead you to want to stop talking so that this individual has nothing to repeat. But that would be letting them win in this game. Whatever you do, do not stop talking. It is akin to forfeiting without even putting up a fight.
2. Do not say things to egg them on.
Some examples are, “Stop copying me!” “Why are you repeating everything I say?” or making exasperated noises for them to copy such as, “Agh!”  “C’mon!”  or “Grow up!”.
3. No violence
Although it will be very tempting, do not physically attack the irritating individual. Do not punch them in their face or kick them in the head. Do not claw their arms or push them over.  These actions are frowned upon.
Now that I’ve covered what to NOT do, here are some splendid ideas for how to cope and win this verbal game that has plagued generation after generation.
1.       Begin to sing your praises.
Though you may not be used to speaking in third person, now is a perfectly acceptable time to adopt this Sméagol-like trait. If your name is Severus, you should say, “Severus is the most handsome man of all time.” At this point, your opponent will repeat these words.  It is best to have a recording device out for this moment so that you can create a vine or a short Instagram post with them complimenting you. Another example would be if your name is Star Lord you can say, “Star Lord is the smartest and most admirable man in the galaxy.”
2.       Insult your opponent by name.
Similar to the previous suggestion, this one works well with a video recording. I mean, who wouldn’t love to see someone named Wormtail repeat the words, “Wormtail is a sniveling coward without a brain or heart.” Feel free to get creative with your words.  *note; this approach is most likely to lead to defeating your opponent and crushing their desire to echo you. However, sometimes opponents break the rules and substitute your own name in rather that giving a true echo.
3.       Speak in a foreign language.
Use this opportunity to either say large words in your native tongue, or practice the phrases you learned in high school Spanish class. If you have no memory of those classes, start quoting lines in Ewok.  If you haven’t seen enough of those movies, you deserve to be mimicked.
Lastly of all, don’t echo people. Never begin the echo game. If you’re reading this, you’re old enough to be literate. Stop acting like a child and listen when people are talking. Don’t behave like some petulant boy scout attempting to flirt with your older sister’s friends.
Or you just might find yourself miss-hissing as you try to echo Parseltongue.

We've all been there, biting our nails, looking around the room at items for inspirations on giving something or someone a name. Maybe inspiration strikes as you scramble letters within your line of sight or as you browse through baby name websites. Sometimes you look up words in foreign languages. I've even had my 2-year-old pick five random letters for me to work with.  However you go about finding names, it's hard and there's no single tried and true method. I've yet to meet an author who didn't struggle finding names. Especially for characters. You want something original, yet memorable. Something that suits their personality and hasn't been overused.  Creative juices are flowing until you meet up with that new character named……(four hours later)……..

I know how it feels to want to have a character whose name is clever and catchy and as rugged as he is but without seeming like a jerk. You find it. Paul. It's perfect. You get to typing. Then you remember. Your sister's ex was named Paul. All of a sudden the name is off limits and now you don't even want it because turns out Paul was a jerk.

Back to the drawing board. 

I also find myself recycling names. I don't know why but all of my female extras end up being named Jennifer, Jessica, or Ashley.  Of all the names in the world and I keep using the same three.

Then you find the perfect first name and find yourself asking do they need a middle name? Real people have middle names so why wouldn't they have a middle name? Should they be named after their father, or should their mom hold a grudge and name him after HER father? Suddenly you're trapped in family drama of people you're just barely introducing because you want all your characters to be well thought through with their own back stories. Before you can even name the cashier at the grocery store you have to draw his family tree back three generations. At what point does too much become too much?

So, you start soliciting opinions from family, friends, strangers on twitter, whomever.  But nothing fits Nothing is right. By and by your brilliant plans for what would definitely become your NY Times bestseller sink out of sight all because you couldn't name that main character's ex wife's best friend.

Russell? No that won't do because my character is a bit of a sleaze ball and my cousin Russell would take it personally. Rachel? No because this Rachel is nice and that one Rachel from the swim team in high school was a total brat. If I have to use the name Rachel it will be for the bratty girl. But then you remember all the nice Rachel's that you knew. 

Next you invent names or change the spelling. Jason will now be Jaysen.  Amber will now be Aymbur. No real people have these names, at least you never met them, so you have no worries. Except now your normal people have weird names that no one will ever spell correctly.

Non-writers don't get it. "What's in a name?" "Who cares what they're named?"

You lose your cool. "You don't understand! What's in a name? Everything. EVERYTHING!"

Deep breaths. Count to ten.

Names are important.  The pressure is on. There's definitely a power in names, so while you try to find or invent the perfect name for all your characters, here are a few pointers.

1-    Don't let names become writers block.

When the words are flowing through your fingers too fast for you to even stop for a bathroom break, by all means, don't let a new characters name stop you. Type a filler. Type NEWGIRL  or UGLYNOSEGUY or XX or whatever, but type it and move on with your story.

2-    Watch out for filler names- you might become attached.

If your character is named X, you probably won't end up keeping it, but let's just pretend that you had to name seven dwarfs, and let's just say that you couldn't think of names right off the bat so you called them after their other traits. Sleepy. Grumpy. Sneezy. Happy.  I'm not saying that's how these guys got named but it's possible. I've had a few characters with filler names that ended up sticking whether for better or for worse.  I've even done this with book titles and once I get attached to a name, it becomes quite difficult for me to detach and reattach to another, better title.

3-    Ease off on the pressure.

 What's in a name after all?  Yes, it's cool if your serial-murderer has a middle name that means danger in Czech and doubles as a homophone for his preferred weapon, but not every single name has to have deep hidden symbolism to Greek gods and patron saints all while exacting a vengeance you have on the bully from middle school.  "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…"  Well, the rose would smell the same and it wouldn't change much if it switched names with the daisy or the lily, but can you imagine if someone brought you a bouquet of "bullthistles" or "tumbleweeds"?  It wouldn't matter so much how beautiful the flower smelled if it had a name like "Crappetals."  There are usually lots of wrong names, but here are also certainly multiple right names. I don't believe in soul mate names for characters. If Harry Potter were named Roger McIntire, we would still love him.  Even if Roger in grade school ate his erasers.

4-    Don't go crazy.

 Please, and this is especially for you high fantasy and science fiction authors, ease off on the names. When the main characters are named Zebizchulagainch and Aeniaepillainae and they come from planet Zinnaquieth and Arboineug, readers detach from your characters. At that point it doesn't matter how likeable your characters are, we are too exhausted from trying to sound out the names to do any actual reading. I'm all for short names and/or nicknames. Imagine people are meeting together in a book club to discuss your book and characters. If half the time is spent discussing the pronunciation of names, you have a problem.

 

Anyway, enjoy the journey, enjoy the writing, and may your muses never leave you alone.

-Lara Hues