[Spotlight Post] Marilyn Eudaly – Rising Talent and Birthday Girl
So Friday is spotlight day. And after a week of hectic running around, housecleaning, family birthdays–with one still to go which means I have to keep the house clean until Monday–and it’s a gray, gloomy day before a 3-day weekend. I admit to being a bit at a loss of who or what to spotlight. But it occurred to me that a lot of the stuff I’m working on now is with or because of my mom, Marilyn Eudaly, I thought I’d spotlight her.
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Marilyn Eudaly, besides being a big influence on my life as both a person and a writer, is a writer in her own right. In fact, she published the first piece she ever wrote–which I pushed her write. It’s a humorous anecdote on weight loss that was published in the Healthy Living subset of Chicken Soup for the Soul. She’s then moved on to devotionals and other inspirational subjects, like The Ultimate Gardener and Joy and Laughter, a Mary Hollingsworth devotional. She’s moving into inspirational fiction and has been working with various writers’ groups to learn her craft. She’s involved mostly with Inspirational Romance.
Marilyn has used her “day job” training in conflict management to teach other writers about using personality traits to improve characterization. She’s a trained critic for judging book contests. And she’s, getting involved in conventions and networking and being basically indispensable. So if you’ve ever wondered where I get it? There ya go.
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I’m featuring Marilyn not just because she’s my mom, or because she’s moving into a new phase in her life/career, or even because her birthday is next week (September 6th for those who want to bug her). But because for all she’s learning a new craft and trade, she’s also helping me continue in my career path.
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You see, where I can help her figure out some things writing-related, like my work in inexpensive marketing techniques. She can help me with the vagaries of romance genre publishing. I have a cross-genre novel, and if I want to pursue the romance angle, there’s a whole lot of stuff that the romance industry does that Science Fiction does not. For all you’d think writing would be fairly uniform? Yeah, not so much. The things that work for SF don’t for romance and vice versa.
There are a lot of things in the CRAFT that cross-over. We talk about some of that to make sure we’re on the right track, but when it comes to getting published? Yeah, those are totally different. And it’s the knowing that makes it all work.
We’re doing our first joint book show next weekend in Tyler, TX. She was the one that told me about The East Texas Book Festival. We’ll both be there selling books. If you’re in that neck of the woods come see us. It’s one of the few times we can be part of the same signing/event.
1 Comment
Ahh, thst’s nice. Thank you.