Inspiration For the Day

❤️February is HEART MONTH! ❤️

It's February!! One of my favorite months!! 

And guess what? President Obama declared February as American Heart Month! 

How awesome is that?

I've always loved Valentine's Day, but it wasn't until doctors discovered my congenital heart defect that I learned to truly appreciate and embrace it.

Never in my life had I expected to say that I'm 1 in 100--a CHD survivor. 

Born with a broken heart. It is what inspired me to write my latest children book, BROKEN HEART. 

February is more than a special month for me. Always will be. 

HOPE. LOVE. CURE. 

Let's spread some CHD awareness and save a heart. ❤️ 

Sending you all much heart love! 

Hope you have an amazing February! 

#CHD #HeartMonth 

When seven-year-old Stephanie learns her twin, Julia, has a broken heart and the doctors have to mend it, she tries to make sense of things. Doing her best to stay strong, she helps Julia face her fears. 

It's up to Stephanie to be Julia's biggest cheerleader. If she had only one wish, it'd be that doctors would fix Julia's heart and make it all better.


Will Stephanie get her heart's desire?

Click HERE to view/buy BROKEN HEART on AMAZON.

BROKEN HEART GIVEAWAY!!

The amazing Sharon K. Mayhew is graciously giving a copy of BROKEN HEART away on her blog!  

Check it out HERE. 
THANK YOU, Sharon!! 

Sharon is an awesome freelance editor over at The Manuscript Maven and helped edit BROKEN HEART. 

**CONGRATS TO CONTEST WINNER!!*****
*THIS CONTEST IS CURRENTLY CLOSED***

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

*My Maui Sunset* Photo by Martha Ramirez

Wishing you the very best in 2015! 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 

May it be filled with lots of love and 

happiness and great health! 

Let's make 2015 count!!!

Photo by E. Ramirez

Happy Holidays!

I'm looking forward to sharing new projects with you in the new year.

Wishing you all the very 

best for 2015.

May all your dreams 

come true!!

Thank you for all your support and for being the best readers ever! 

Blessings!!!!

XO Martha Ramirez

Back It Up

I wrote this post back in the summertime. Hope it’s helpful!

I used to refer to my laptop as ever faithful, but recently my ever-faithful laptop made a liar out of me.

I was in the middle of working on a printing project and got a little distracted. I stepped away for a minute and when I came back to finish working, my ever faithful fell asleep.

I went to wake it up, but nothing. Dead asleep. I held down the power button and still nothing. Nada. Totally knocked out.

Not good.

I swallowed hard, dismissing the thought today may very well be the last day I see my ever faithful power up.

I took a deep breath and thought about how it survived two drownings and then some. Yes, two. 

I thought for sure she had at least seven more lives left. At least.

My mischievous little son who was a toddler at the time, drowned my ever faithful with a water house in the backyard. 

But miraculously, despite the drench, she revved up back to life.

*NEVER trust a toddler with a hose no matter how far away they are*

A few years later, my son knocked over a glass of water and again, drowned my poor baby.

But she never let me down.

Not until now.

Long story short. We tried everything. Powering it down by holding the power button for minutes at a time — taking out the battery, etc. Anything and everything you can think of.

So why am I sharing this all to you?

Because even though I lost my baby, even though I lived through a writer's worst nightmare, a glimpse of light still glowed through that dark tunnel.

Two words: Back Up.

No excuses.

Okay, four words. Four REALLY important words.

I feared this day from the first day I started writing. And because of my fears I made certain to back up my work everywhere possible.

I'd email myself the latest copy of each of my novels.

I'd then upload them to the free version of Dropbox.

Then I'd save them to an external hard drive.

And lastly, I always made certain I renewed CrashPlan (a paid cloud storage).

This all kept me from losing all my stuff, but it was still a HUGE nightmare to get everything straightened out.

The most important thing is to get a cloud storage back up because no matter what, it's never any fun to lose important documents and precious pictures.

Along with all the things I've done above, here are a few things I wished I would have taken care of as well:

Bookmarks- I lost mine. All of them. It's best to import them while you can and make note of your favorite sites.

Pictures- Make sure you are saving them in a cloud storage and external hard drive or even a flash drive as well for more added confidence.

I did transfer everything to a flash drive years ago, but I am still not certain if I have all my pics. Having everything organized regularly will definitely help with reassurance.

Organize, organize, organize, and make 100% certain you are backing up everything you can't live without.

Music/iTunes

I completely lost ALL my playlists. Every one of them. It still hurts thinking about it. All those years creating lists after lists and now they're gone.

One way to protect your playlists is to purchase Match and sync to your other devices. An iCloud also can keep it in tact. I have no idea what happened, but hope it doesn't happen to you.

Last year, I took the time to burn some of my playlists on CDs just in case, but I didn't burn all of them. You can also create screen shots and place them in folders for secure keeping. At least then you will know the order of the songs.

Sticky Notes

Keep a copy of all treasured notes as well. I had some To Do Stickies that I kept with important links and they are all gone as well.

External Hard Drive

When I transferred my files from my online storage cloud, all my files merged together. A few things I could’ve done here that would’ve made life a little more bearable:

#1, I could’ve taken the time to make folders in my external hard drive and sort ALL my files. ALL files not just some. It’s a nightmare when everything merges together.

And please be sure to update files with proper titles.

Do not use the same characters.

Years and years ago, I’d capitalize the title and add hyphens for an easy search. i.e. ---My Awesome Novel---

My best advice for this technique? PLEASE drop the hyphens (or any similar distinct text) and lowercase the title before moving to a folder.

Only have your CURRENT work with distinct text such as the hyphens and keep the current title uppercased. Otherwise if your PC crashes like mine did and all the files go into one place you won't be left trying to figure out which is the newest version. I’d search for hyphens and come up with old several old drafts. I hadn’t realized I never changed it.

*Nightmare alert*

And yes, there's a way to look up Properties but trust me, it's much less complex to just keep it all 100% organized.

So take the time and clean up.

Delete stuff you don't need and rename files as needed.

Don’t be a rat pack. Yes, I'm talking to you, Hoarders.:D

PLEASE, PLEASE whatever you do BACK IT UP!!!

Enter to Win a FREE EDIT!

Photo by The Manuscript Maven

Feeling lucky?

The fabulous, Sharon Mayhew has launched her own editing services over at The Manuscript Maven and is graciously doing a drawing for one winner!

One lucky winner will receive the choice of a 250 words of a picture book, a query letter, or first 500 words of a manuscript, line edits, and critique.

Sharon worked on my children’s book Broken Heart with me and I just loved her insight!

Winner will be announced after January 7^th, 2014.

Please leave a comment with your name and email below if you would like a chance to win!

Good luck!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have an AMAZING one!! XO

Heart Love, Prayers & Support For Baby Blog Hop

PLEASE PRAY for Baby Thad and help any way you can. This little guy has a very special place in my heart. Not only did he have the same congeintal heart defect as I did (I had PAVR, he had TAVR) but he's a heart surgery survivor. But he now needs a new pair of lungs and medical treatment.

I just created a Heart Love, Prayers & Support page HERE. Please Like and support. 

Click HERE to read his heart story. 

His beloved mother Lacey Boldyrev and family need all the support they can get. Please show some #HeartLove and pass this along and spread the word!! 

Thank you!

Lacey's Post: 

"I'm not very good at accepting help of any kind...but I'll happily take a prayer, a happy thought sent to the universe, some distant reiki. Anything."

 **Fellow authors. PLEASE SHARE*

Where's Lenny Birthday Bash!

HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY TO LENNY LEE! 

We hope you are having an amazing birthday! 

We miss your sunshine filled blog posts. 

We are all sending you lots of love, hugs, and sunshine. 

To send Lenny a birthday wish please leave a comment. 

To learn more about the amazing Lenny and get to know him 

better visit him at Lenny's World HERE.

To learn more about Lenny's Birthday Bash click HERE

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DUDE!!! XO