I always miss my mom. Mother's Day would be just one more day I'd feel her absence but for the relentless commercialization. Thanks to that, this day is even harder to deal with.

Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.

Don't add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answered a note you wrote to them. Don't put your address book into your newsletter database. Let your readers sign up.

To be a consistent winner means preparing not just one day, one month or even one year - but for a lifetime.

I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She's a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries.

The release date is just one day, but the record is forever.