Workspace Wednesday welcomes
May 29th, 2013 | 
Author: I am so pleased to welcome Cynthia Woolf for today’s edition of Workspace Wednesday. In my view, Cynthia epitomizes the talented, hard-working indie author, and she is always producing new material. She’s an active blogger who has done a ton to try to help other indie authors achieve some profile. I’m happy to have the chance to try to do the same for her. Please welcome Cynthia Woolf.
CYNTHIA WOOLF: Thanks for having me on Workspace Wednesday. I think it’s a fun idea but I was hesitant to show pictures of my workspace. I’m a bit of a pack rat and so my desk and wall is cluttered. My husband has the other half of the office and his workspace is worse than mine.
We turned the smallest of our three bedrooms into an office. Me on one side of it and him on the other. It usually works out pretty well. Sometimes we’ll knock each others’ chairs when we both try to get up at the same time but that doesn’t happen too often.
The frames on the wall are of awards and my rankings for my last three books. They reached up to #1 in Books-Western on Amazon and I wanted to commemorate it. I’m actually a #1 bestselling author. In Western’s anyway. Someday I hope to be number one over all. Which is exactly what we all hope for.
I don’t have a view from my workspace, I face the wall, but if I did look out the window it would just be at the neighbor’s house so we keep the curtains closed all the time. What I’d like to do, eventually, is move my office into the breakfast nook. The view from there is great. It’s of Longs Peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park. For me, having grown up in the mountains, being able to see one as unique as Long’s Peak, everyday from my desk would be heaven.
If you look hard at the picture of the wall you’ll see the cover for my WIP, Fiery Bride. I think the cover is beautiful. Of course, I love all my covers. Currently, my husband is printing them all out and we are going to frame them and then hang them around the top of the walls just below the ceiling. When that gets full (notice I say when and not if) then we’ll start on the second row.
I’ve got my latest release, Heiress Bride, in a frame but not on the wall yet, otherwise I’d have it prominently in the picture. You can see part of it on my monitor, which I just bought. My vision is bad and even with new glasses I wasn’t able to see the stuff on the monitor clearly. So we went and got me a new monitor. A 27” monitor. It’s huge and I can see everything. It would probably be too big for most people but for me, it’s perfect.
Thanks again for having me. Hope everyone has a wonderful day. Oh, I almost forgot. I’m giving away two prizes today. One lucky commenter will receive a copy of Heiress Bride, my latest release and another commenter will receive a $5 Starbucks card. Be sure and leave a comment and put your email address in the comment to be entered into the drawing for the prizes.
Heiress Ella Davenport survived a carriage accident that killed her father. Her life saved in exchange for savage scars marring her beautiful face. Her friends, socialites, showed their true colors, casting Ella aside like damaged goods and leaving her a social pariah. Even her wealth can’t buy her the kind of marriage she wants. Desperate to find a husband who can accept her despite her scars and, without knowing about her money, she seeks to become a mail order bride. Matchmaker & Co. is her one chance to start over and leave the pain and betrayal far behind her.
Nathan Ravenclaw was run out of town by the father of the girl he was courting once he discovered Nathan’s Arapaho heritage. It didn’t matter that Nathan was a successful rancher, businessman, and a positive member of society. The white community suddenly saw only a half-breed. Even his money couldn’t buy him a wife. That was ten years ago. He moved and rebuilt everything that cold rancher once took from him. He has it all…except a wife. Matchmaker & Company promises to send him a woman willing to start a new life with him. But Nathan’s battered heart lacks the ability to trust. He longs for children, not romance. His new bride, scarred and cast aside like himself, promises to be perfect for him. Until he meets his mail order bride. Fierce desire and an even more dangerous hope roar back to life within him. Two things he swore never to indulge in again.
And love? For these two battered souls, that’s the biggest risk of all
Thank you, Cynthia! And OMG, i can’t imagine working in such close quarters with my DH. Our workstations aren’t even on the same floor! LOL. But I love that monitor. I find I need really good lighting these days. I have a giant sun-strength light on my desk, but maybe a better idea would be a giant monitor…
Before I turn it over to comments to win Cynthia’s fabulous prizes, here is some contact info for her:
Okay, let’s get to it! Comment for a chance to win Cynthia’s latest book or the coveted $5 Starbucks card.
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Thank you for having me here today Norah.
Add me into the big monitor club. My dh got me a 32 inch. (Yes, it’s a tv too.) But I love it.
Thanks for showing us around Cynthia!
Thanks for stopping by, Lynn.
Sales are down in the residential hosiung industry, but those dollars have to be going somewhere. Your business has to find out where they are going and be adaptable, to follow those dollars into related markets. Think outside the box.Are those people who would otherwise be buying houses, renting instead? You might open up a new line of business offering something to them.Or are people just buying cheaper houses? Smaller houses? Is more of the money going into the lower end of the market? Can you concentrate your efforts on those areas?There are many places where some of this information is available, like searching news websites for headlines like: Home sales fall again in January . Ultimately though, the best way to answer those questions is to ask your customers.
Here is what I’ve found in the past. Your home is where you live. It’s where you will spend most of your time. You should chosoe the home that suits your family best. The decision should not primarily be based on distance to amenities. When you move into a new home you almost always find yourself needing new furniture to fit your new space. I can tell you right now if the rooms and the house in general feel small now you will grow out of it quickly. Sooner rather than later you will feel like the walls are closing in on you and despite being close to town, going to the pool, park and grocery store will not make your house feel bigger when you get home.For this reason I vote for house number two. I have lived outside of town about 20mi. The drive starts to feel less and less the more you travel it and before long it doesn’t seem like your that far out at all. Now days I’m back in town and granted I love being close to everything but I miss the simple life of living in an outskirts community.
Hi Cynthia,
Heiress Bride sounds like a winner! I like the fact that you have your awards on your wall…great inspiration!
Continued Success!
One more thing. I really beleive that there are a lot of travel insurance web-sites of reputable companies than enable you to enter holiday details and acquire you the estimates. You can also purchase this international holiday insurance policy online by using your credit card. All that you should do is to enter your own travel particulars and you can view the plans side-by-side. Only find the program that suits your finances and needs after which it use your credit card to buy the item. Travel insurance online is a good way to begin looking for a respected company for international travel cover. Thanks for expressing your ideas.
You really found a way to make this whole process easier.
This is a tremendous ottprounipy and it sound like you both are taking full advantage of it. You are making great memories! Have few opportunities go by that you later regret not taking. This is a once in a lifetime learning experience. Have fun!
Cynthia, I’d love a view of a mountain, any mountain out my workspace window. Alas, no mountains in or near Fort Worth, Texas. It’s pretty much flat as a pancake.
Heiress Bride sounds like a great read. I love stories about physically or emotionally handicapped individuals. They tug at my heart.
Loved the story about you and your husband knocking your chairs over. When they make the movie of your life, you’ll have to include that bit.
Since there is so many fields of spietaliecs that I have a choice of, I still really can’t choose one. So I am going base on my personal experiences. My original goal back in high school and maybe even before that, was to work in a Neonatal ICU! I had a brother that passed before he had his first birthday from heart complications, and that year I spent a lot of time at hospitals with my parents. My goal the first couple of years was to work with babies just like him. That was until I had my own children, I would of still loved to have worked in that career field but the heart ache I would most likely endure when one of those babies did not make it home. I could not have handled!On to more positive experiences, I have worked with the elderly and Geriatrics interests me very much. Being surrounded with people that have lived a fulfilled life is so much more rewarding. Even though at times it is the ending stages of their lives, and it is sad when someone does pass. It’s less of a heartache to know that most of the time they are ready to move on. They are still very dependent on you and when you are able to help them with their needs that’s the most rewarding of all, plus you form a special relationship with the patients and their families.
I see your dilemma. Personally if it was me, I would cshooe #2. We have an acre and a third and I LOVE it! We are a little far down in Pasadena and it takes us a while to get where we need to, but at the end of the day, I love to come home and have privacy. We have wonderful neighbors who we see, but they are not all up in our business, well except the nosy lady across the street, but we are the same age as her kids so she “looks out” for us. We see lots of wildlife and it’s nice to sit on the deck, with a glass of wine and relax w/o looking in someone else’s backyard. The one thing that makes me say #1 for you is that you are a very social person, so if having things to do close by is important, then you will survive in a smaller house. You also have to decide if this is a long term or short term decision. Don’t settle, wait for the right place and you will know when you find it! Good luck!
I love your cluttered desk! I think it shows your vast sense of creativity! LOL at knocking into your husband with the close proximity. Besides my computer hutch, I have a desk in my husband’s office and we do the same thing. 🙂
I liked the photos sharing what your writing space looks like. Mine looks mostly like a bomb dropped on it, a combination writing nook and home production studio. You can see it in my book Vidmaker 101, all about how to make storytelling videos. Not that you would want to do that; I should put that picture up on my page, me fishing frantically for some notes on time travel or the venom of a poison toad. Hey, better than finding the toad itself.
That looks like a great workspace..everything to hand. No grubbing around in boxes, bookcases or under things in closets in another room in hopes of finding that article/photo/printout of research you put SOMEWHERE. Although that mountain view does sound inspiring. Perhaps when you make the move you can have the best of both.
Cynthia, thanks for sharing your office and letting us know! I love visiting other people’s space.
Cynthia’s been in my corner since I met her online over a year ago. Awesome author, uber cool person. She hooked me with her centauri series and I can’t stop. Keep up the great work and my ereader full. I keep at least one of her books on my site’s carousal.
Cora Blu
This is a fun post. I never gave much thought to my work space other than making sure I had enough room to retreat, fit my two monitors, and books; oh and of course be able to get my work done – hee hee. I will admit for years it was like a cave and more recently we added on an enclosed area to our patio so I now have windows with distracting view of the backyard. I admire your ability to share the space with the hubs, as I find I have become quite proprietary LOL Thank you for sharing a bit of you with us 🙂
dz59001[at]gmail[dot]com
You’re work space looks better then mine. I seem to have chaos going on….lol
Fun post! 🙂
Thank you all for stopping by today. Norah will pick the winners and I’ll contact you privately.