Funny I’m not getting any links or offers or comments about Zen. Guess the more highly evolved spiritual creatures in our universe aren’t trolling the internet.

Maybe I should have stuck with “Shop Smart in a Dumb Economy” which was the original working title. But I had an agent tell  me in quite a serious advice letter that I should drop that title because “this whole recession thing will be over in a year.”  That was in…let me see now…2009?

It just goes to show how wrong agents can be. So cheer up authors. Those guys are not always right. What do they know anyway? Wonder if he’s still in business?

Once in while, not often, quite rarely in fact, a person comes into your life who shakes things up. Sometimes you don’t realize it at the time, but only when you look back from a new place, do you see the change. The shift might have been that subtle. But because of them, you made a life choice that set you on a new path.

Judi Moreo did that for me. Her belief in me and her words, You are more than enough, kept me going when I might have given up. Now you have a chance to meet Judi and hear her message in Las Vegas in March. And as a special little treat, you can hear me too!

Yes, I’ll be speaking on the same program as Judi Moreo. I can hardly believe it myself. So many dreams coming true! But I wouldn’t be sharing this great weekend with Judi and the other authors of “Life Choices: It’s Never Too Late” or with the keynote speakers Jeff Civillico, Anne Abernathy, Casey McNeal, Tim Goodenough and Aimmee Kodachian if I hadn’t made the choice to accept. I could have given in to my fears and doubts and said “no.”

The day I decided to speak at Life Choices: The Event, I had a nightmare. I dreamed I walked through the doors at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas and could think of nothing to say. My mind was a complete blank. Of course, I woke up in a sweat. Of course, it meant I have stage fright. I hope you won’t see that on March 25th.

If you are struggling with finding your life purpose – if you feel disappointed in what you’ve achieved – if you’ve always wanted to do something, but never dared – ACT NOW! Come to Las Vegas in March. Spend the weekend with people who have changed their lives, who have fulfilled their dreams – and with others who want the same thing, but aren’t quite sure how to go about it.

It costs a little money and effort. Most things of value do. But if you register before Jan 31, you’ll get a big discount and the chance to bring a friend at a fraction of the fee. You can pay a small deposit now and the remainder in installments. You’ll even get fed! There’s a welcome reception, a Saturday lunch and a Sunday brunch included. You can lunch with one of the Life Choices authors and have the chance to talk with them personally about the choices they made in their lives that got them where they are today.

Register Now! Get the Super Early Bird discount and bring a friend. Go to this link:  Life Choices: The Event
Please use PYPSN in the speaker code box so I’ll be notified you signed up. 

note:  The Hotel Tropicana has been recently renovated. It’s beautiful! All in white.

Isis cover for Kindle & iPad

Athena of Korinth cover for Kindle & iPad

Elektra cover for Kindle & iPad

After a several month hiatus from writing as I helped fight the Libyan Revolution through twitter, I’ve finally gotten back to editing my ancient Egyptian novels for the Red Mirror Series. Isis has been shortened and made tighter and more fast-paced. I changed some characters names to make it easier to follow in the past life and the present, dropped a character or two, and refer to Amasis, Psamtik and Setne as Pharaoh, Crown Prince and the Scribe.

I also shifted my focus from educating to entertaining. There will still plenty of meat for history buffs in the Red Mirror Series, but I’ve tried to avoid reader anxiety that there might be a test.

I’ve got Isis ready for Kindle and iPad and have been working on the promotion copy, which I find more challenging than writing novels. Is it because we authors don’t have enough distance from our story? Or is it because it’s another style of writing that takes different skills? Probably a mix of both.

Next I tackle Athena of Korinth. I’ll be doing some simplifying in that novel as well, but I’ll especially be working on making it “stand alone.” My goal is for the reader to be able to pick up Athena – or any future novels in the Red Mirror Series – and enjoy reading the ancient Egyptian novels for themselves without having to have read Isis first.

Of course, I would love for the reader to want to go back to the beginning to understand fully the evolution of party girl to powerhouse that takes place over the three novels.

Don’t want to forget to mention that I redesigned the covers of the Red Mirror Series for better viewing on Kindle and iPad. You see those above. Also have to confess that Elektra is not written yet, but she is playing out scenes in my mind. My goal is to get Athena edited and then get to work on bringing Elektra to life!

Don’t know why I was so drawn to the sunflowers at Trader Joe’s – maybe it was the price (cheap -$4.99)  that gave the most drama for the buck. Or maybe I just needed the yellow power.

The Chinese vase I bought at Marshalls for nothing, probably $10-20 – I can’t remember now; it was years ago.  The brass candlesticks I bought in a second hand store in Copenhagen for about $20.

I wish I had adequate words to describe the rich, heady aroma with almost a hint of licorice or anise.

Sensing the potency of the taste would match the scent, I chopped it fine on a caprese salad instead of using whole leaves as I would with standard “green” basil.

Result? WONDERFUL.

Cari and Craig Clark at Chaparral Gardens in Atascadero CA grow the basil to use in their artisan vinegars. Check out their website at CGVinegar.com

The tomatoes came from a local farmer and the mozzarella cheese from DePalo and Sons Deli in Shell Beach CA. The cheese is hand-crafted daily from grandfather Dr. Tedone’s recipe. The good doctor, retired now, starting making the cheese to work out his grief after his wife passed. DePalo’s is a family affair with an excellent Italian-California style deli, tremendous wine collection and shelves stuffed with every imaginable delicacy.

But it’s on Twitter where I’m supercharged. Tweeting your point can be challenging; it requires new skills. You have to get creative. 140 characters isn’t much. No space or time to babble on. Get in. Make your point. Get out.

It’s not as hard as it might seem; think of it as techno-Haiku. Need some examples?

“Seems like one long blur with spikes of joy. Can’t imagine what it’s like for ppl of Libya.” Still 50 left.

“The right chemistry needs a movement w/ a leader. A leader can make a movement. But can a movement succeed w/out a leader?” 18 spaces short of 140.

Or here’s a tweet not directed to everyone, but to a dear follower in Holland.
“@hilliewelp Here’s a pic of the strawberry meringue tarte from last night.http://twitpic.com/4iwujz.”

Still 40 spaces left and Hillie can link to a photo of the pie I uploaded to twitpic.

Some people tweet about their dogs, their next seminars, their thoughts for the day. But for me, the power of Twitter is my chance to help shape the world, one tweet at a time. Twitter with purpose.

I touch the world and the world touches me. Twitter connects me to news articles, websites, blogs, maps, poems, songs, Facebook pages, YouTube, Livestream, Audioboo – all the tools that get the message out, whatever that message is. Weight loss, daily prayer, marketing ideas, or nuclear disaster in Japan? Earthquake and Tsunami? I didn’t wait for American TV, but went straight to the source and followed English Japanese TV HNK through a tweeted link with live feed.

Because of a tweet, I watched a young man named Mo start a pirate TV station in Benghazi on his laptop. He moved every couple of hours those first days to elude capture. When TV Libya Alhurra linked to satellite hookup, I was there in the international chat room. And I got the heartbreaking tweet the night Mo was assassinated by Gaddafi snipers one month to the day from his first broadcast. A future leader, a courageous young voice silenced forever.

My Mo story was the first on the net. That’s how my blog and Twitter work together. Material for my posts comes from Twitter. Google gives my blog high ranking for original content and I also drive traffic to my site by tweeting links to my blog.

I didn’t write Mo’s story for web stats, but because I cared for him and what he stood for. I had watched him every day and followed his bravery. I had watched him grow. His loss was deeply personal. Many of my twitter connections are closer in an odd way than to the people I see in the real world. We share the same interests. We have the same passion.

I’m just one of thousands of “citizen journalists” who tweet. My followers come from every continent – all ages and all professions. Some of them are most unlikely, but they follow me because they like what I say, learn from my connections and trust me as a reliable source. Trust is always a huge factor in human relationships, virtual or real.

Active followers “retweet” my tweets to their own web of followers, sometimes adding comments. Passive connections are readers who just want to be in the know. But active or passive, there’s a place for everyone in the Twittersphere. What are you passionate about? Get a handle. Change the world a little. Start tweeting with purpose.

Follow me at my handle @LVview. Note: Although Twitter was designed for cell phone use, hence the 140 character restrictions of texting, you don’t need a Blackberry or iPhone. I tweet on my laptop.

To read some of the hundreds of tweets from all over the world the day after Mo’s death go to: Twitter Tribute to Mohammed Mo Nabbous | Off the Strip for free thinkers and adventurers.

*************************************************************************************************************************

Here’s link to the original article “Twitter with a Purpose” published in As the Pages Turn.

I love to cook and my favorite approach is to make something out of whatever ingredients I have in the fridge.

Today I prepared some Tilapia fillets which were on special in the fish department of the local supermarket.

After sauteeing slim rondelles of white onions and small, whole garlic wedges in olive oil, I tossed in the last of my yellow baby bell peppers, sliced also in rondelles.

Next came sprigs of fresh thyme from my herb garden.

I scraped the veggies to the side and put the tilapia in the pan, turning gently after one minute. Remember, these are fillets and very thin and delicate.

Of course, I salt & pepper to taste before adding a generous amount of dry white wine to cover. A Charles Shaw Chardonnay is just fine for cooking this dish. Why spend more? Let simmer very gently to boil off the alcohol from wine and reduce sauce. DO NOT overcook fish.

At the last minute, I sprinkled with cubed papaya which warmed slightly by the time I got the pan to the table and served. This really turned out delicious and was so fast, simple and cheap.

I served the tilapia with steamed green beans and a romaine salad with a vinaigrette and chunks of fresh parsley. The parsley also comes from my herb garden. We’re trying to watch calorie intake, so I didn’t serve any bread or rice. Obviously both would be great with this.

The white wine is Panilonco, a Chardonnay from Chile – crisp, dry and very reasonable at $4-5 a bottle.

Bon appetit! Velbekomme! Guten Appetit! Buon appetito! Smacznego! Bom apetite! Dobru chut! Smaklig maltid! Buen provecho! Bonum appetitionem!

Michelle’s radio show is “The Beauty Blueprint”
LIVE at www.hayhouseradio.com
Time and Date: Next Monday, July 18 at 12:35 EDT, 9:35 am PDT

If you miss it, you can listen any time during the week after at this link: http://www.hayhouseradio.com/show_details.php?show_id=216&episode_type=0.

I’d love for you to tune in “live,” but there’s always the archive if you can’t. The show will only be available from July 18th thru the 25th, so if you want to listen, tune in during that week.

HAYHOUSE Radio is billed as “radio for your soul.” Denise Linn, spiritual coach and Feng Shui master, is one of the many turned on and high-level consciousness radio hosts.  HAYHOUSE Radio also has outlets in the UK, Australia and India.

Michelle Phillips, radio show hostess, celebrity make-up artist, life coach, author, speaker, wife and mother

Michelle Phillips is just another multi-talented, dynamic, beautiful wife, mother and superstar! Sigh. Are you green with envy yet? OK – Here’s the whammy: Her new book “The Beauty Blueprint” is due out soon. Go girls! We are good!

Check her out at: www.michellephillips.com and Michele Phillips Fan Page.

And don’t forget to tune in to our interview: Sex and the Zen of Shopping. Woo Hoo!

Now it’s time to announce the book launch in Las Vegas of the newest in the Life Choices anthologies, Life Choices: Pursuing Your Passion. Twenty-six great authors and speakers got together to produce a collection of amazing life stories of sacrifice, dedication and hard work to achieve personal goals.

Judi Moreo of Turning Point International edited and published the Life Choices series: Navigating Difficult Paths, Putting the Pieces Together and Pursuing Your Passion.

“The Muses Whisper” is my own personal journey from ordinary (well, kind of) person to writer, author and novelist. It’s also a statement of my hope that the muses continue to sing in my ear.

Look for my story in the first Life Choices book, Navigating Difficult Paths. “A True Love Story” is a wild tale of chasing my man across continents and how that odyssey turned into a fairy tale. Knights in shining armor do exist!

The launch is at the Tropicana Hotel, Saturday June 11 in the Monte Cristo Room from 10am – 4pm.

Authors will be speaking throughout the day and available for book signings. They’ll also have their other books, tapes and courses on hand for sale.

But first Egypt, then Libya happened and I was caught up in the birth of new nations. It’s irresistible for me. I love this part of the world. North Africa was my home for a few years. There’s not much about it that I don’t find fascinating.

I had kept www.sandraoffthestrip.com barely alive for a couple of years. But I had good standing with Google cause the site has been up since 2007. In my heyday, I had thousands of unique visitors a day from all over the world. I had lost most, of course, but surprisingly still had 600 a day – mostly search engines and spam.

It took Egypt for me to use Facebook. It took Egypt for me to tweet. I’m still not into the phone thing with Twitter, but read hundreds a day online. I’m right on the ground in Libya, following all the news – trying to sort fact from rumor. There are some great tweeters from all over the Middle East.

At the moment, I am concentrating on Libya, while still following events in Egypt closely. Yemen and Bahrain are not far from my thoughts, but I am only one person!

The exciting thing for me personally is that I’ve written over 100 articles since Feb 2. So much for a furlough from writing! What’s immensely gratifying is that my last dozen or so articles are on page 1 of Google. I have two or three that are #1 on page 1. My piece on the Gaddafi sons and their interview with Cristiane Amanpour comes right after ABC news and before Huffington Post.

Of course, it’s all about keywords. But “Saif Gaddafi Amanpour” brings me right up as does “Saadi Gaddafi safari” and “Gaddafi drug jokes.” I’m right at the top with “Safiya Gaddafi wife” and “Gaddafi Amazon Guard.” I could go on, but we all know the internet and Google is fleeting fame, so here today – gone tomorrow.

I didn’t start out reactivating the blog to get high Google rankings. It’s just a pleasant and surprising outcome of a labor of love.

FREE LIBYA!!!

You can follow me on Twitter @LVworldview.

www.sandraoffthestrip.com

elements:
computer hacking
defection of Russian spy
inner circle government conspiracy
criminal and journalistic investigation
sex trade
brutality towards women (even in Sweden!)
child pornography and abuse
explicit violence and implicit sex
motorcycle gangs and drugs
heroine has unlimited money
heroine is a dominatrix-type who ties men up (there’s a lot of tying up over all – bondage theme)
lots of video game type action that goes on without relief

Wow – no wonder it sells!

What struck me most was that the female protagonist Lisbeth Salamander gets rave reviews from men. I wonder if that’s because she is as little like a woman as possible, while still having all the right parts? Is it a fascination with girl-women? Or are men secretly attracted to a dominatrix who puts them in their place?

I’ve been doing a lot of research for Elektra, exploring the Roman fascination with death in the arena. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Nothing was apparently too horrible or bloody for them to cheer and enjoy. They, too, liked lots of leather.

That dark part of our psyche is now channeled into shooter games and TV shows like Criminal Minds.  We love the graphic autopsies on CSI. Law and Order Sexual Victims Unit had higher ratings than plain old Law and Order. How many crime and police programs are on every night? We want to hear all the details in sexy murder cases. We really love Nancy Grace if a child is both missing and abused. A movie like Inception gets nominated for an Academy Award when most of the film is permutations of automatic gunfire.

Is it because we can’t all go to war and experience the horrors firsthand that we want to watch others suffer through a protective veil of fiction? What is our fascination with vampires, werewolves and creatures of the night? Why is the human psyche so dark? We know it can be light too.

By the way, I’m not knocking Larsson’s success. I would love to emulate it. He does great character development; his players are real, although they do fall into the white hat and black hat categories. But that’s ok. He’s not literary fiction, but a good read if you like to teeter on the edge of the dark side.

Every Woman’s Dream

Turning Point International's new book

Turning Point International will release yet another “Life Choices“  anthology in March 2011. I’m happy to say that I’ll be a contributing author once again.

With the title, “Pursing Your Passion,”  it shouldn’t be hard to guess that my contribution, “The Muses Whisper,” is insight into how I found my passion – writing romantic, sexy and edgy historical adventures. I hope it’s also a statement about how it’s never too late to follow your dream.

The book launch will be in Las Vegas March 11. I look forward to meeting with the other 25 authors, who all have great personal stories about pursuing their own passions.

If this Life Choices book is anything like the previous two, each story, like each contributor, will be unique. I love working with such inspirational, dynamic people who have made their Life Choice to follow their dreams.

Athena of Korinth

The most important input – besides whether they like the story, of course – will be whether or not I should tone down the sex. By “tone down,” I don’t mean eliminate it, but make it less explicit. It’s been a very interesting experience for me. I had no idea there was so much fear and discomfort about sexuality. But I don’t want sex – even though my scenes are often described as tasteful and sensual – to interfere with readers enjoying the story.

I know a couple of women who have not read Isis out of fear. I had thought of giving them a redacted version with black lines through those scenes. It is really very few pages, or even paragraphs, in both Isis and Athena.

I’m looking not only at possible revisions to Isis and Athena (toning down), but also at my approach to Elektra, the third book set in Roman Egypt. The Romans were not nice people in many respects. They certainly had voracious appetites for both sex and violence, often at the same time. The character of Elektra – as I envision her – is a woman fully in charge of her sexuality. She has not  revealed herself to me, but I have strong hints of a dominatrix type. But the sex is only part of the story. It’s about empowerment and a woman using everything she has to survive and control an environment where women have very little value. I’m not that sure things have changed that much.

I like her – Athena’s smarter and more directed than Isis the party girl. The modern Isis is evolving; she’s learning to take charge of her own life. She’s learning about her own power. She learns from Athena, but Athena learns from her. Athena takes a lot more risks than she would have.

As soon as Athena’s back from the printer, I’ll get it out to my select group of First Readers for input.
Not until then can I let myself start on the third book  – at least the mental part of research and daydreaming.
Elektra has been knocking on the door and I keep pushing her away – “Not yet! Too early! Can’t go to Rome now!”

I work from such an intuitive level than I can’t really write unless I am channeling. It’s too forced otherwise. I can’t channel two characters at once – at least, I don’t think so.

Elektra scares me a little (actually a lot). I’m going to have to dig deep into places I don’t know about – or have only heard of.  Will I find my black swan?

This workshop was especially privileged. We were 4 – y es – 4 authors who had her to ourselves the whole day, from 9 to 5. Working on our pitch, our synopsis and query letter, each of us got the advantage of her long career in one dose. (Even Catherine still has to write a synopsis from time to time.)  It was totally worth the $175. Stop apologizing Catherine – you are worth it! (I’d say “and more” except I don’t want her raising her fees…)

The other workshop on self-editing was two day on a weekend with 7 authors who each brought the first couple chapters of our novels.  Excellent as well. As Catherine edited each manuscript, I learned a lot about the technical alone – especially commas, semi-colons, dialogue and shortening sentences. Of course, the group gave valuable input too. It was especially fortuitous for me as I had just “finished” Isis. I went home and immediately started the first round of editing.

I would highly recommend one of her workshops in Cambria CA if you have the opportunity. She truly is a wonderful group leader and teacher (not to mention a skilled author with a beautiful command of  language.)