ALL LEMONS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

 ALL LEMONS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

It's Meyer Lemon season. The season runs from November to March. The lemons you see in the grocery store are called Real lemons. A Meyer lemon is the marriage of a Real lemon and a Mandarin orange. They are smaller, rounder, and more orange in color.

You probably won't want to eat them plain. They are still a lemon, but they don't have the pucker power of a 

Real lemon.

To take advantage of their diversity, squeeze the juice in salad dressing, make lemonade or add some punch to a cocktail or tomato juice.

Here are a couple of  places to get wonderful Meyer Lemon recipes. 

Foodie Crush

100 Things to do with Meyer Lemons- LA Times

DO YOU HAVE A GREEN THUMB?

These lemons are extremely easy to grow. 

Keep the biggest seeds out of the lemons and put them in a small pots with potting soil. Set them in a sunny window. Keep them moist. If you grow more than one, you could give them to your friends. A lemon tree is not actually a tree, it is more the size of a Peace Lilly or a Schafferla.

When your newly planted tree reaches about 6 inches tall re-pot it.

 Our tree is in a ten inch pot.

Put it outside after the last frost and bring it in before the first frost.

Our tree bares 8 to 10 pieces of fruit at a time.

It is my goal on this segment of my blog to teach you to broaden your eating horizons and how to grow most of the food I write about.

Please leave a comment below. 

I'd love to hear what foods you are most interested in. 

We won't be able to grow all the foods .

Learning in the car

Writer's are a strange lot. We are in awe of our friends, we cheer their successes and we try to make them feel better if they get down.

Authors love to share information. A friend of mine, told me time and time again, I should listen to the Creative Penn podcasts by Joanna Penn. I told myself I had heard it all before. My time would be best spent creating the next bestseller, working on my blog, website, Facebook page or the fifty other things my publisher listed that would bring me along in the marketing department.

On a recent trip to Tulsa I  intended to listen to my IPod. Thing is, I couldn't find it so I listened to Abraham/Esther Hicks CD's  a friend from church gave me. I learned a lot so I don't feel like I wasted my time.

I learned long ago the value of listening while driving. When I worked for Sears Roebuck and Co. I traveled. Did you know that if you stay in the range of the same radio station, they play the same song in the top twenty every forty-seven minutes?

Anyone who has traveled for their job knows that windshield time is a real downer. Before I transferred here from St. Louis, I listened to all the tapes in the St. Charles County Library system. When I moved here, I listened to every book in the Springfield Library system.

I went through the contemporary novels first, then self- help,  the classics and finally the philosophers. Time in the car flew and I wasn't nearly as tired as I was when I remained bored listening to music. Music is great, but one year I drove 24000 miles for my job.

FYI, I am the person you want on your trivia team. For some reason, odd facts stay with me and odd facts come up in trivia games.

Yes, I have a point. Some of you already do this, for the rest of you, I am going to make a suggestion. Use your driving time to learn. You need not be a writer to expand your horizons. There are many CD's on gardening, knitting, bookkeeping, beekeeping, photography, star gazing and on and on.

In just a trip to the grocery store, you can get in a chapter or two.

For those of you who write, I suggest Hugh Howie's podcast, The Creative Penn or Steven King's writing. Those will send you off chasing other fine offerings by the guests on these venues.

Lastly, listening to successful people in your field keeps you motivated. They are upbeat, entertaining and informative. I bet gardening or photography CD's would do the same thing.

Okay, back to the Twisted Mind of Cletus Compton, my latest novel. I promised myself I would have edited by the end of this week so someone can read it.

(Once you meet Cletus Compton, you will sleep with the lights on!)

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, no not Arithmetic: MARKETING.

There are as many ideas about how to market your book as there are books. For those of you who don't know, 900 books a day come onto the market. That is about 386,000 books a year. Of those, most sell about 500 copies each.

We are all sure we wrote the great American novel. Our characters are unique, our story is one of a kind, and we have edited it into a fine tuned piece of literature. The rub is: so did most of the other people in those 386,000  cases.

So what do we do to make our novel, book, short story, thriller, romance, non-fiction, soon to be classic stand out in the crowd?

I am becoming an expert in this field. At least an hour or two a day, I cruise Google, YouTube, marketing sights, and blogs, trying to come up with new ideas.
Here are some of the best so far.

1.Write a press release. Make it no more than 300 words and write it in 3rd person. This lets you avoid the "I" word all the time. 

2. Send a picture of you with your book any time you do a correspondence. If they have the story AND the picture, you have a better chance of getting your article in the paper, magazine or whatever venue you are addressing.

3.Take signed copies of your book (s) to the local library and donate them. Try to make this a photo op and ask them to put it on their bulletin board so everyone coming into the building can see it.

4.Offer to read your book at the library if it is a children's book. If it is an adult book, offer to give a book review. If you don't think you are an expert, think again. You are a published author. That carries weight and everyone wants to know what inspired you, how you developed your characters and chose your location.  Remember, everyone thinks they have one good novel inside them. You could be the inspiration to get them started.


5.Take books and business cards everywhere you go. Don't be afraid to tell people you are a writer.

6. Call schools, offer to read your book  (children's) to classes. Don't charge, but tell them to let the parents know you will be there and how much the book is, and WHO to make the check out to if they are paying by check. Believe me, if the check is made out to the school you will NEVER get it and will have to resign yourself to the fact that you just donated your proceeds.

7.Talk to schools about speaking to older children about writing books. They love it, they ask great questions and again, they won't have money with them so take cards, and/or bookmarks, and hold you book up a lot so the cover  makes an impression on them.

8.Have a Face book presence and post tidbits about your book.

9. Look at trailers on YouTube and make one yourself. They don't have to be as elaborate as some you see.

10. Take copies of your books to popular local shops. Offer them 10-15% of the cover price for selling them on consignment.

11. Visit your local bookstores and do book signings. They love having you.

Okay. That's enough for today.
Good luck, happy selling and don't forget to support each other. No one knows more than we do how good it feels to see a friend or acquaintance has re-tweeted or re-posted our stuff.