My Two Blessings

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and happy tomorrow where ever you may be.  Welcome to my new followers and hi to my loyal readers.  November was a very busy month for me and I wasn't blogging much as you can tell by the lack of posts. I won National Novel Writing Month by the skin of my teeth with 50,049 words. Eyes in the Ashes is flowing along and I will be going back to look at what I wrote, outline and finish the story.   Halfway through I could tell I needed to go back and expand on the story a bit, include more details and yes, some background to how some of the characters knew each other.  Little details that when mixed in with the rest, added to the mystery and provided clues. My art history class started the first of November and I had to write a project paper last week as well about an Egyptian work of art.    Reason number one why I did a major push with Nano to get it done early.  Fortunately and surprisingly, we h...

50049 words in 30 days Phew! This year was a little bit more stressful than others but I did it. The story is far from finished and I'm already thinking of changes that need to be made. However, I will keep writing, making notes when I think of new things and chapters to add until the story is completed. Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!!!!

Becky of Becky's book reviews is hosting a Celebrate the Author challenge . The challenge is to celebrate author's birthday's by reading one of their books: 12 authors - 12 months = 12 books. The challenge runs from January 1st through December 31st, 2010. Not difficult, right. You can read the books in any order you like, but I'll probably be reading them in their birthday month. It took me some time to figure out which authors I wanted to read and what books I wanted to read. I gave myself one goal however. The books had to be one that have been on my shelves and just have not gotten around to reading. I've come up with an interesting list and look forward to reading the stories. January: Wilkie Collins 1/8/1824 - The Moonstone February: Charles Dickens 2/7/1812 - David Copperfield March: Sarah Ruskin 3/13/1928 - Westing Game April : Lois Duncan 4/28/1934 - Don't Look Behind You May: Daphne DuMaurier 5/13/07 - The House on the Strand...

Yep. 18,263 days old Fifty I think it is Fine Fantastic Fabulous Fitting and first class I will celebrate it with Flare Fun frivolity and flash I will live it with familiarity flexibility fluency and fancy free I refuse to bow down to Fatalism fury foreboding or funks Fifty is freedom to be me, to make of it what I will Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time. Jean Paul Richter

The 40th edition of Bookworms Carnival hosted by Literary Escapism Urban Fantasy and Gothic Literature There are some great links to great reviews about great books Including a couple of my own

I'm half way there at 25806 The story is rocking along and good guys are turning into bad guys and the one you think is a bad guy maybe a good guy. No one is who they seem with surprises around each corner. The story is unfolding as I write and some of the characters are surprising me. In the midst of writing, I've gotten very behind with book reviews.  I've decided not to pressure myself and try to write reviews on the books I read in November, except for review books. The only other review book I read so far is "Holiday Grind" by Cleo Coyle and the rest were just for personal pleasure. Yes, I'm still reading.  However, I'm done with Take a Chance Challenge. There isn't any way I'm going to finish by the end of the November. I couldn't get into "The Venetian Affair" by Helen MacInnes, nor do I favor reading "Dear and Glorious Physician" by Taylor Caldwell. They are both being shelved until 2010. My wrap up post ...

The Recipe Club A Tale of Food and Friendship by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel Front Flap: Loyalty, loss and ties that bind. These are the ingredients of The Recipe Club, a 'novel cookbook' that combines an authentic story of friendship with more than 80 delicious recipes. Lilly and Val are lifelong friends, united as much by their differences as by their similarities. Lilly, dramatic and confident, lives in the shadow of her beautiful, wayward mother and craves the attention of her distant, disapproving father. Val, shy and idealistic -- and surprisingly ambitious -- struggles with her desire to break free from her demanding housebound mother and a father whose dreams never seem to come true. In childhood, "lilypad" and ValPal" form an exclusive two person club, writing intimate letters in which they share hopes, fears, deepest secrets--and recipes, from Lilly's "Lovelorn Lasagna" to Valeries "Forgiveness Tapenade." Readers can co...

Lynda Barry's pep talk is all about writing by hand. It hit home for me because that is what I am doing - writing the story by hand, then typing it up. I like this particular quote: " Writing by hand is like walking instead of riding in a car. It's slower, to be sure, but you'll smell the smoke if you're near a house that is about to burst into flame. You'll hear the shouting from a fight about to break out in a back yard. You'll be able to help the dog who comes running by with his leash attached and dragging behind him, and be able to help the person who has lost him calling his name. This will make writing more like living and less like watching television." Lynda's Pep entire talk courtesy of Chris Baty of NaNoWriMo, plus a link to see it the original handwritten form. (Lynda wrote her pep talk with a pen. You can see a PDF of it in all its handwritten glory here .) Dear Writer, Reconsider your hand. Reconsider writing by hand. There is a ...

I'm writing away, kinds of in fits and false starts but plugging away. I'm at 7744 words right now. I figure if I write at least 2000 words a day (Stephen King does it every day), then I'll make it. I have to write it out first, because otherwise I sit staring at the screen blankly, then wander off to the internet. I just need to make sure to type up what I write the same day. That's what put me behind. I wrote for three or four days, then sat down to type it up. Takes a while to type up, especially when more ideas hit you while typing. I actually cheated a bit, printed out what I had and ran back through. Expanded every scene adding more detail. At least it helped with the word count. Forward only from here on out. Since we started homeschooling, we have fallen into the pattern of taking a break from lessons during the two weeks of my Birthday and Thanksgiving. Each year, I swear we are only going to take a couple days, but it never works out. Something a...

K.I.S.S. Keep it simple sherlock or shurley or sally or silly - you choose the s word. How do you like my new look? I'm a person who can't work in clutter, can't read when there are too many pretty things on a page, overshadowing the words, can't write with music going because it totally relaxes me. So, the blog reflects me. It was getting a bit cluttered and had been thinking of making a few changes, plus coming up with a new challenge blog. However, not in the midst of nano and starting a new class. Oh well. I've been writing, however I don't know my word count because I haven't typed it up yet. I'm taking my laptop and notebook with me to work today and will work on that between customers. And because of the fact I have something else I want to do, it will be ultra busy. Murphy's law, you know. Paying customers - who can complain about that. My online art history class - art from the ancients up to the 14th century j...

I unintentionally blew her up. Yep. If you think my blood pressure was high before, I think I just sent it out of the stratosphere. I was playing around with templates for setting up the Hugo Award challenge. Picked the wrong blog. Of course, I hadn't backed up in a while, so.... I'll be reconstructing from bookmarks and what not. At least I didn't lose my posts. I was getting slightly bored with the newspaper template. So guess now is the time to make major changes - whether I like it or not. I knew I should have waited until November was over before thinking about the Hugo award challenge blog.

Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine recently had a giveaway promotion for bloggers. I managed to score one of 15 advance copies of the December issue. Lucky me! As everyone knows I cut my reading teeth on fantasy and science fiction books growing up and keep going back to my true love time and again. This magazine is awesome - I love and have already signed up for a one year subscription which is $34.97 for 6 big issues - Jan/Feb, March/April, June/July, Aug/Sept, Anniversary Oct/Nov and one big issue for December. The magazine started publishing bimonthly with the april/may 2009 issue. Each issue has Novelets and Shorts Stories, plus features book reviews by Charles DeLint, and other authors, a section about curiousities, films and a bit of humor. The December 2009 is the size of a paperback novel with 258 pages full of short stories and novelets. Not a magazine to read in one sitting. I'm still not done reading all the stories, but have thoroughly enjoyed the ones I ...

Welcome to November - the month of writing madness After a month of research, character development, outlining and writing the story in my mind, I gleefully sat down to start writing "Eyes in the Ashes." The goal is 50,000 in 30 days. The story will probably end up being longer than that - between 75,000 to 100,000. The goal for now is at least 1666 words per day to make the 50,000. I did cheat a bit today and didn't exactly turn off my internal editor. I wrote about 1300 words this morning, then when I went back in this afternoon, added to and expanded the scenes a bit. Which brought it up to 1751 words. Hey, if it works, it works. At least the scenes don't sound totally stupid and disjointed. In the next few days, I'm going to write as much as possible to give myself a buffer. Because this is going to be a busy month since in addition to everything else, my next class - art history up to the 14th century starts tomorrow, Also my 50th birthday is ...

Challenges (Note: Post rotates to first of every month) Hosted by Callapidder Day's September 22nd through December 20, 2009 Link to book reviews Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (banned book week) Vanished - Joseph Finder (Take a Chance Challenge) (400) The Arc, The Reed and The Firecloud - Jenny Cote (Random Reading Challenge)(464) The Brutal Telling - Louise Penny (review book) (384) The Red Siren - M.L. Tyndale (288) Kill Her Again - Robert Gregory Browne (320) Nightwatch - Sergie Lukyanenko (464) The Wyndham Case - Jill Paton Walsh (223) Silent Thunder - Iris Johansen (384) A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin (674) Hosted by Jenners June - November 30, 2009 Done Random Book Selection : Blood Dreams by Kay Hooper Random Word : Lady Liberty by Vicki Hinze Birth Year Book : 1959 Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell (shelved) Judge a Book By Its Cover : Vanished by Joseph Finder Phoning An Author: The Venetian Af...