This is only the beginning...

Welcome to RIDING WITH THE TOP DOWN! This is a brand new group effort. We are seven published writers, friends from a wonderful writers' group--Midwest Fiction Writers, Minneapolis--who write in a variety of Pop Fiction subgenres. We're here to blog, blog, blog about anything and everything, from the writer's life to family life, from getting published to getting the garden in, from crowded to empty nests and crowded to empty heads. Not that we're ever really empty-headed, but there comes a time in the writing day when there are no more words, and you start looking for distractions. You want to jump in the car, boat, ferris wheel, or on the back of a horse and take a ride. If you can get a friend or two to go along, so much the better. When writers get together--especially after they've been locked in the garret trying to make a deadline--man, do they talk.

First of all, I've only ever posted to one Blog, ever, so I'll have to get "broken in." I'll confess to not being a fan of chat rooms. I've been a "guest speaker" a few times, and I feel like I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of people I can't see. Terrified. My dear friend Jane--who is blind--would high-five me about now. And I'm a slow reader and slower typist. But maybe I can handle this blogging thing.

We have some ideas that should make this journey interesting. Yes, we'll talk about our books and how we wrote them. When you're in "deep write," you're practically living and breathing the book. It's almost all you can think or talk about. But we do have real lives, too. We're going to invite bloggers to pose questions for us. We'll choose a question each week, and each of us will give her thoughts. And, of course, we'll look forward to getting other bloggers' thoughts. In addition we hope to highlight each contributor's special interests and experiences. And, trust me, we run the gamut. You can tell that just from our book covers. We're all kids at heart, but some of us are also grandmas. So yes, Jimi, we are experienced.

We're still getting set up--three of our contributors are up against deadlines as we speak--but I thought I'd post a welcome and see how it looks on the page.

Oh! I just figured out how to make italics! It's old dog, new tricks time.