When I couldn’t turn on the news without getting hit with an anxiety attack, I realized it was time to make some changes. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still watch the broadcasts, my family is addicted but, I have decided to focus on gratitude for my blessings instead of fear and hate that is rampant across the globe.

Once I sat down with a pen and paper it wasn’t hard to make my list. At first, I put down the typical things you would expect. My husband and kids, my house, career and good health. Then I decided to delve deeper because, let’s face it, there are times I’m one wet towel left on the floor from killing someone! I can hear you laughing, yup we’ve all had those days and even though we are all blessed in so many ways. Sometimes…. we forget.

So over the next week I rewrote a separate list for each item. What was it about my husband that I was grateful? There was a ton of things from the fact that he does dishes, gardening, pays the bills, tells corny jokes, understands the remote control and always handles calls to the cable company. Who wouldn’t be grateful for a man who takes on 800 number calls? (why do they take 45 minutes and when you get disconnected they don’t call back?) I also listed things I’m grateful not to have in my life such as abuse, drug addiction, etc.

Then I put things we all totally take for granted with the understanding how different life would be without them. Clean air and water, bountiful supermarkets, farmers, the post office, highways, electricity, medicine, all the details of my healthy body and ditto for my family, etc…

Perhaps you find it difficult to count your blessings. That’s when it's even more important because, when things are bad, remembering our blessings helps get through the day and motivates us to take the step to improve our situation.

(Earlier I mentioned I am grateful for good health, no one is perfect but so many struggle with painful scary diseases. I have aches and pains like everyone, I take hormones for menopause, my vision is blurring more and more, I have several herniated discs, a frozen shoulder, and I’m 25 lbs overweight…..But I’m thankful my legs while a bit larger and more jiggly then I like still take me where I gotta go, my left shoulder may be frozen but I carry my granddaughter with my right arm….you see where I’m going with this?)

I write books about wounded warriors who face a multitude of challenges during their service and when they return home. I am grateful and consider their hard work and sacrifice as my blessings.

Eventually, I transferred my list from paper to a cute mini journal I found in the dollar store and I flip through it daily. I have discovered it boosters my spirit and is a great way to start and end the day. In-between, I have assigned myself to give out ten genuine compliments a day to people I encounter. (Friends, family and strangers alike) I’ve come to think of it as a gratitude scavenger hunt and let me tell you, it feels amazing. There is nothing like seeing their faces light up.

So I ask you to join my Compliment Challenge. Give out 10 a day. It may take getting used to if you’re not already accustomed to praising people. Here are some examples of things I have said:

You have a fantastic haircut! (to a stranger)Your little boy is such a good helper to you. (in a store)I really appreciate your help!You make that look so easy, yet I know how hard it is.The color of your blouse is so pretty on you!You did a great job cleaning up the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, etc.

I invite you to my Challenge and hope the smiles you receive invigorate you and show just how rich and bountiful your life can be when you embrace gratitude.

One last thing I am grateful for is you….my reader. Thank you for inspiring me to put my stories in print and share. Reviewers have said they laugh, cry and experience a dozen emotions while reading and it makes me happy! Thank you!

Wishing you a blessed life.....Leigh Robbins

What do I do when writers block plagues me? It’s a question I am asked often by friends and fans who can’t imagine having to write more than a grocery list or personalization on a greeting card. “How do you come up with all that?” They want to know.

Well friends, I will share my secret. I listen to country music and look through the photos I have saved in boards I create for my WIP (work in progress) on Pinterest.

Here’s the link so you can check it out for yourself. https://www.pinterest.com/LRobbins_Author/

If the sexy guys and gals, images of love and laughter, quotes about hope, love and second chances aren’t enough to get me typing again I ask Alexa to play me some Country Music.

Not exactly the kind my grandma and grandpa used to play. (Yes, I know the correct lyrics are ‘Mountain Music.’) My grandparents were all European immigrants and wouldn’t have known country music if it bit ‘em in the butt. My Grandma Elsie knew one song in Hungarian and hummed it endlessly. Did I ever tell you about the time as a young girl I was sleeping over their house and accidently ran into the bathroom without knocking to discover Grandma giving Poppa a bath? Yes, later on I was kind of freaked out to discover those afternoon baths were practically legendary in our family, everyone had heard of Grandma’s naughty pleasure of bathing her man.

If you have been reading my blogs from the beginning, you know this is the same grandma, Elsie, that got me hooked reading Harlequins as a teenager! But yikes, after opening that door without knocking, I was scarred for years. Today, I’m a total shower girl and honestly, is it any wonder why?

Why country music you may ask. It never fails, once I turn on a good station and the words of a love song flow around me, I can’t help but imagine it’s the strong arms of a lover singing his heart out to me. The emotions pull at my heart strings and more often than not my eyes tear up. I figure if it touches me so, those emotions will come out in my writing.

So far its working, Book three is releasing mid-April and according to your letters and reviews the romance is capturing your hearts as well.

Thanks so much for reading, I love hearing from you and appreciate your sharing my books with your friends. Social media has become so mired down lately with current events, it always lifts my spirits to see a post about a great new romance novel! I hope you will share my posts and help pass the love around.

Happy Passover and Easter to all those who observe, even if your just in it for the chocolate! Something both celebrations share in abundance!

Happy New Year Dear Readers!

With final edits, last minute cover changes, and all the other details that go into publishing Indie- style the last quarter of 2017 was crazy. Crazy good! But I wanted to use this month’s blog post to thank my readers. The response to Darkness Before Dawn and After Sunrise has been overwhelmingly amazing, reaching far beyond anything I expected when I wrote the books. So thank you for taking a chance, and spending your time and money on my work. And especially for taking the time to review it so favorable on the various sights that mean so much to an author as Amazon, Good Reads, Book Bub, etc.

I am also so very grateful for my family who has been so patient and understanding as I wrote the series. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write a book and get it ready for readers. My family has been super supportive and helpful. We’re a bunch who I’d like to believe, if we weren’t related, would still be friends! I’m sure you know what I mean. Loud, somewhat opinionated, nosey. Mostly because we care so darn much and want to help anyway we can.

My husband surprised me with a wonderful trip to Hawaii for the holidays and it gave me the chance to take a deep breath, relax and review the past year. There were several highlights and I am unable to rank them in any specific order as each was a dream come true and equally amazing.

My little granddaughter has completely stolen my heart and I doubt the 16-month-old will ever give it back! Every point of her little finger, each wide-eyed “ooh” of discovery, and every time she calls me “Maga” instead of the grandma I’m working on….I love her more and more.

My younger daughter Lauren, (Name sound familiar?) graduated after years of hard work and study as a Nurse Practitioner. I couldn’t be prouder. I remember her playing doctor with dolls as a toddler, and rushing home from school each day to do homework until after midnight most of her life. Her patients are lucky to have her.

The third amazing bucket list item of the year was becoming an author! Yes, after reading avidly my entire life, I finally wrote my own stories! The first two books in The Never Lose Sight series are available now, the third will be published Feb 2018.

Today, updating my website, www.AuthorLeighRobbins.com I thought about goals and wishes for the new year. I did manage to lose 25 pounds in 2017, so that is one item off the 2018 list, of course I will write maintaining the loss on my new list, but it won’t be at the top.

This year, top of the list will be to live in the present. 2017 was a difficult year for many I care about. Friends have passed away and several others dealt with pain and illness. After my daughter was rear-ended on her way to work one morning, I was reminded how precarious and precious each day is. The accident could have been much worse, but the whiplash she sustained is painful. I was in Hawaii and when she called me in the wee hours one morning, crying from the scene of the accident “Mom, I’m okay.”, my priorities came into focus. The call could have gone completely different.

In my stories, the strong men and women experience how a moment in time can change everything. A step to the right or left, meeting someone by chance, or a stop for coffee on the way to work can change the course of your life forever.

I will not take another day for granted, nor miss another opportunity to let my loved ones know how special they are to me.

I have several writing goals for 2018 which include writing Hunters love story, currently titled “Into the Night”, and then continuing the series with Madison’s life. I’ll let my readers tell me if they want to know about Collins. A few months ago, I had an unbelievably sexy, dream that demanded 5 hours of furious note scribbling once I awoke. It was a new post-apocalyptic story of survival and a woman’s love of two men. (M/F/M ménage) It may need to be written.

Wherever the new year takes you I hope there’s time for snuggling into your comfortable reading nook with an exciting, romantic page-turner.

Thank you for your readership in 2017, I wish you all the best in the exciting years to come!

Leigh Robbins

Several of my friends and acquaintances have asked what it feels like publishing a book. It seems writing a novel is right up there in bucket list items along with owning a restaurant, skydiving, and getting a tattoo! Now that Darkness Before Dawn is complete and I have checked off all of the above, I can speak from experience. (Okay, it was indoor skydiving in Vegas, hoots of fun but yes, I did hurt my back and limp for days after! I’m not crazy enough to jump from a perfectly good airplane!)

When someone inquires what the publishing experience is like, after writing 125,000 then editing it down to 84,000 I surprisingly found myself at a loss for words! Perhaps they are among the 41,000 that were deleted?

Words like amazing, fantastic, exciting can’t really convey accurately enough so I have tried using analogies. The first one that came to mind was that I felt naked, with only a tiny hand towel to hide behind leaving all my cellulite in plain view. There was no hiding my faults or insecurities under clothing. My women friends nodded in understanding glad it wasn’t their vulnerabilities on display while the men looked at me a little strangely. I tried a different tactic so the men could understand.

“Imagine,” I set the scene, “Imagine you’re in a bar, looking cool and feeling snappy. You walk up to a group of beautiful women laughing, drinking and having a good time, you laugh along and then ask if anyone would like to join you for a dance or a drink but instead of agreeing, they all giggle at each other and turn their backs while your buddies watch you strike out from the shadows of the bar.”

“Shit, that’s rough they agreed.” I could see their Adams apples move as they swallowed, their mouths suddenly dry, nervous at just the mere thought. I could tell they were silently relieved and happy to be out of the dating scene, their wives safely nearby.

My young nephew congratulated me and wanted to know if he could read my book about the soldier and to know how I felt now that I was on Amazon. (He loves finding things he needs on Amazon!)

“It’s really cool.” I replied and blushing, let him know he could read it after his twenty first birthday. Then having coached his little league basketball team last year I explained using terms he would easily understand. “But I kinda feel like now that I’m part of the league, all the players are lined up and the captains are choosing their teams. I’m just hoping I am going to be picked quickly and not the last choice left on the field.”

“Oh,” he said his nose scrunched up in uncomfortable memories. “Yeah, it’s fun playing but that part really stinks.”

Out of the mouths of babes!

I alternate between feeling like I am on a huge roller coaster, though I haven’t been on one since Disney’s Space Mountain back in 1982, I can still remember the feeling of excited anticipation as the little car climbed to the top of the track, only to swoop down at an intensely high speed and feeling your stomach bottom out before whipping around the curve to do it all over again.

Basically, I am walking on clouds 24/7.

I still pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming, and now I keep a copy in the paperback in my purse to peek at whenever I start to believe it’s too good to be true. But it’s not. It is true, and that’s good. Amazing, fantastic, exciting and very, very good.

Dreams do come true...they can happen to you!

I started reading at a very young age. By the time I was nine, I always had a book on my night table. I didn't realize then but they were romance's in a way, Sue Barton, Cherry Aimes, Senior Prom...stories of spirited young women who broke convention searching for careers and discovering love!

In college, I had a three hour break between classes and my Grandmother lived close to the university so I would spend the break with her three times a week. Grandma Elsie worked hard her entire life so in her retirement, her days were filled with true confessions magazines, Harlequin romance books and watching The Guiding Light on television. I began to read the Harlequins....and OMG my grandmother was reading those books!!! Even back in the eighties they were pretty darn hot, and at 16- 17 (I went to college early) I thought they were deliciously scandalous and loved every single page.

Needless to say my love of books was solidified. I did have to sidetrack into the extremely boring, sleep inducing world of text books for several years while working toward my degrees, but later I was able to expand the genres I enjoy.

I have my favorite authors who are more dazzling to me that any Hollywood star and like all fans I had secret aspirations to join them one day on the "bookshelf walls of fame" at my local bookstore. I will be honest with you, it was always a dream. I must have used "I want to write a book" hundreds of times over the years when asked "greatest wish" questions, but now I no longer can.

The pressure is on to come up with a new "One day I hope to...." response because Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to announce the publication of my first novel, "Darkness Before Dawn" the first book in the Never Lose Sight Series by me...Author Leigh Robbins.

I hope you enjoy the book. It is based on a true life story, and is about surviving, switching gears after tragedy and becoming someone new, discovering the important things in life and making your dreams come true.

Stranger things have happened...It can happen to you.