Two Awards and Apologies for the Long Silence

Inspiring Blogger Award from
Julia Hones

Liebster Award from Sandra Cox
See below the info that comes with
the Inspiring Blogger Award

First the apologies for not blogging. 

1.) I've been busy working on my mystery. My goal is to finish this draft by mid-September. There's 24-25 chapters in mind, and I'm on chapter 17 so far. 

2.) We've had company and made a couple of out-of-town trips to visit folks we hadn't seen for a long time, due to travels. 

And 3.) We are getting ready for another long trip to Spain and Portugal. (I haven't even finished blogging about the last trip, but that's how it goes sometimes. Oh, the stories I'd like to tell!)

Meanwhile, two very nice blog friends gave me awards that you can see at the top of this page and read about below. Thank you so much, ladies!

Julia Hones gave me the Inspiring Blogger Award, which I find quite an honor. Julia has a marvelous blog called My Writing Life that I love to read and find inspiring in its own right, and you will too, so do check it out. She's also had many short stories and poems published and is the poetry editor of Southern Pacific Review. 

As a recipient of the award, I'm supposed to reveal 7 things about myself and then pass the award on to others whose blogs I find inspiring. Hmm. 7 reveals . . . Okay, here we go.

1. In my junior year in college, after finals, I let a girlfriend talk me into bleaching my hair blonde. (She was bleaching her hair, and we were hyper from finals, so I thought, "Why not?") Because I have a lot of red in my hair, it went red instead of blonde. Because I have a few freckles, everyone who met me as a redhead thought I really was a redhead -- to the point that when I got tired of it and decided to dye it back to dark brown, I was told, "No, don't do that, it won't look natural."

2. My favorite dessert is a cookie. Forget pies, cakes, and rich creamy custards. Give me a cookie. Any cookie, although I like sugar, shortbread, oatmeal, or peanutbutter the best.

3. I am a crossword puzzle nut. I love the New York Times crossword puzzle. I can't always finish it (Fridays and Saturdays), but I usually start the day with it. For one thing, it wakes me up and gets the wheels turning for writing later in the day.

4. My husband and I met through a cat named Meathead. That is a ve-r-r-r-y long story, that only some of our friends know and would take up too much space here. But we have very fond feelings for our feline cat-alyst from long ago.

5. I used to write everything in longhand first, but the computer has spoiled me. Cut and paste is so convenient. Even so, I miss that feeling of connection between pen or pencil and heart, and I still write my poetry first in longhand.

6. This is probably a horrible confession for an author to make, particularly one who writes children's books, but . . . I never liked The Wind in the Willows. I know, I know, one of the world's great classics. What's wrong with me! But I never could get into it, no matter how many times I tried. 

7. I loved Edith Nesbit and Edgar Eavers, though. And they stand the test of time. I re-read a couple of their books recently and still found them so funny.

And now the nominees:

1. Keith Wynne has a truly inspiring blog called Musings of an Unapologetic Dreamer . He'll also send a little blurb via email called Thought of the Day, if you sign up for it at his site. I bookmark nearly everyone of these blurbs, as they are quite pithy and inspiring.

2. Catherine Ensley is an author of inspirational romance novels and is writing a four-part series. On her blog she "shares her thoughts on country life, simple living, adventure, reading, writing and faith that transforms." I think you will find it very enjoyable. 

3. Victoria Lindstrom's Writ of Whimsy blog is rich with Middle Grade book reviews, poetry tidbits, thoughts on writing, and a section I love, "Whimsical Word of the Week." Check out her site; it's great fun.

4. Lynda Young has a wonderful blog called W.I.P. It: an Author's Journey in which she addresses many issues for writers with insights and reminders that are so helpful to all of us on this common journey. 

5. Check out Carol Riggs, a published YA author with a personable writing style. Her blog, Artzicarol Ramblings, is full of writing tips, YA book reviews, and shares of her own personal journey with agents and publishers. 

6. Renee Hand's The Crypto-Capers Review is a children's book review blog as well as a platform for her radio show, Stories from Unknown Authors. Renee also writes winning interactive mysteries. How cool is that? Check out her site, and you may find yourself being interviewed if you've written a children's book.

7. Mark Noce has a rather eclectic blog, sharing news about his flash fiction publications, gardening, music he likes, and news about other writers. It's always a feel-good experience to read one of his posts. 

On to the Liebster Award, which Sandra Cox kindly gave to me. Sandra's blog is called, not surprisingly, Sandra's Blog  . Sandra is a prolific blogger as well as a prolific author. Spend a little time at her site. Her pictures will make you smile. Meanwhile, the Liebster Award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers, ferreting out blogs you think are worthy of more followers. (Thank you, Sandra!) The rules for accepting the award are to share 11 random facts about myself, answer 11 questions posed by the blogger who nominated me, nominate 11 bloggers who qualify, and pose 11 questions to them. Happily, Sandra modified the rules, asking 6 questions, and nominating 5 newbies. So I am following her lead:

The questions she asked:
1. If you were an animal, what would you be? Probably a dog. I love animals, but dogs have a special place in my heart. They are so loving and loyal.
2. What is your favorite genre? That's a hard one. Mysteries and historical novels are about equal.
3. When reading, do you prefer paper or a hand held device? Paper, for sure!
4. What's your favorite vacation spot? Galicia, Spain. 
5. What's your favorite charity? Another hard one. We contribute to a number. I suppose Southern Poverty Law Center, a remarkable organization that goes after hate groups in this country and prosecutes hate crimes.
6. If given the choice, where would you live? Right where we live now. As a runner up, Galicia would be next, but we are quite happy where we are.

Okay, my nominees are:
Richard Hughes at Writing and Living by Richard P. Hughes , is an eclectic blogger, sharing thoughts about writing, art, life in general, publishing issues. Right now he's running an interesting series of interviews with other bloggers, called, "Where I Live and Why I Like It.

Rosi Hollinbeck at The Write Stuff reviews children's books, interviews authors, and does a wonderful job of culling and sharing links to help writers in every sphere of writing. I always look forward to her posts, and you will too.

Kenda Turner at Words and Such posts book reviews, interviews, and shares rich thoughts about the writer's journey. Always a good read.

Loretta Proctor at Books and Other Things blogs about books, art, and music, "and all things creative and beautiful." Her current post is about Seamus Heaney, one of my favorite poets.

Jeanmarie Anaya's delightful blog, Jeanmarie Anaya is definitely worth your while. Humorous, pithy, eloquent. She writes about a number of writing issues, and wrote a lovely tribute to Robin Williams. 

And here are my six questions for these worthy recipients:
1. Where is your favorite place to read a book?
2. When beginning a new W.I.P., do you write by hand or wordprocess?
3. What are three of your favorite books? 
4. If you could be a character in a novel you've read, who would you be?
5. Which author, living or dead, do you wish you had the opportunity to meet?
6. When did you begin to write for yourself (as opposed to doing early homework assignments)?

And that's it, folks. I look forward to your comments, (feel free to answer any of the questions I posed for the nominees), and I do hope you check out the blogs in both sections of this post.

Ciao for now . . .

This Was The Week That Was

This week I hardly did any writing for three reasons: 1) We had more company than we've had for awhile (and boy was I ready to see emmisaries from the outside world again!)  2) I was going through the procedure to set up my book, The Fourth Wish, on Kindle. 3) I was answering interview questions (via email) about writing The Fourth Wish (quite fun.)

I'll work backwards:
Interview: Diane Gross writes book reviews for Sacramento Book Examiner and will be reviewing my book later in the week (I'll tweet it when she does). The two part interview is prelude to the review, and you can read part one of her interview here.


Kindle: Ah, Kindle! Friends have been telling me I should put my book on Kindle, and so I decided to do just that. Originally, I self-published The Fourth Wish through CreateSpace, a very user-friendly publishing site with links to Amazon -- you can sell your book through both sites.  CreateSpace also offers incredible technical support. (I speak gratefully, since I am one who can be one click away from disaster whenever I try new ventures in technology.) They helped me immensely when setting up the original publication, and they helped me set it up for Kindle (charging a small fee to first format the book for Kindle). By phone, a technician walked me through the whole process of  downloading a free Kindle for Mac from Amazon, downloading my formatted book so I could read it to see if it looked good (it did), and then uploading it into my Kindle account. This was last Wednesday, and CreateSpace will connect the two links so that all reviews, etc. go to both sites, and both the paperback sites and the Kindle site are shown together, giving one a choice of which way to purchase. (The paperback sells for $14.95; the Kindle for $6.99.)


Visitors: I have been truly lucky, even before this week.  One of my classmates from art class has stopped by a couple of times with the teacher's demo pictures she saved for me. She also brought pasta, pasta sauce, and fresh basil. My wonderful neighbor has stopped by several times with books to read, a bag of  eats and treats, and a beautifully potted African Violet. (Visits I especially appreciate, as she has had surgery of her own to deal with.)

But last week's visits came all in a bunch: A writer friend stopped by with a beautiful potted succulent plant whose name I can't pronounce. Our nephew out from New York and stayed overnight. Friends from Colfax brought us lunch -- tortalini, salad, fresh bread, fruit salad, berry pie -- we are still marvelling over their kindness. (Especially kind for Sir Husband, as I am not cooking yet.) And yesterday my picture book writing group met at our house, since I also am not driving yet.

But I will be, and soon! I'll be doing all of it, and then my news will encompass more than the state of my foot. Until then, I look forward to visiting your blogs again and catching up on your news.

And please leave some recommendations for good reads.  I'm reading again.

I'm Back -- Sort Of . . .

The foot is progressing, thanks to the good care I'm getting from my wonderful hubby -- ice packs, great meals, juice, my stack of books I've saved for this period, bringing them to me on request. I've felt like a queen. So, last night I knighted him. (I tapped him on the shoulder with my hand, since we don't have swords and shields lying around the house.)

I've been reading like crazy, and in a day or two I'll start reporting on them. But today I want to pass on two nice awards Richard Hughes gave me. (what a nice thing to come back to!)  Mosey on ovr to his site and enjoy his posts.  He writes about Paris, reviews e-books, shares some of his stories and has an all around interesting blog.  Meanwhile, thank you, Richard, I really appreciate it.

Here are the awards.

 I am supposed to thank the sender and refer readers back to him/her,
then pass it on to five or more others, and then tell seven things about myself that others might not know.

So, here are my five new candidates (but, oh, there are really so many
good bloggers out there.  It's hard to choose!)

1.  Lia Keyes, the founder of Scribblerati (a wonderful writer site; come join) and an all around whirlwind wonder, whose blog keeps you informed about the writing world, tips on writing all kinds of fiction, although her specialty is Steampunk, and who manages to write a trilogy, while hosting chats . . . Oh, it just goes on and on.  Go check out her site.

2.  Hope Clark, a writer with an interesting blog who also has a fabulous newsletter, Funds For Writers, that posts new markets, new contests, new conferences, retreats, grants; you name it.  Visit her blog and subscribe to her newsletter.  I always find something of value at both sites.

3.  Michelle Fayard, blog hostess at Bird's Eye View and pre-published author, who interviews authors, reviews books, and greets the writing world with infectious enthusiasm -- and also had an agent request to see more pages of her work.

4.  J. L. Campbell, who has three different blogs, but my favorite one is The Character Depot, where she raises interesting issues that arise during a WIP, invites guest authors to address issues writers worry over, and always provides food for that.  once you are at her site above, you can explore the other two blogs as well.  (One is devoted to book reviews.)  I had the good fortune to win a copy of her e-book, Dissolution, a good read that I'll be addressing later this week.

5.  Rosi Hollinbeck, who does it all:  shares the ups and downs and angst of the writing life, passes on good articles and contests (and has been winning some of those contests as well), and writes some great reviews.

I am going to stop at these five for now, saving some others for the future.  But check them out; you won't be disappointed.  Meanwhile here are seven new things about me:

1.  This first will only be new to those who have met me online.  I'm a vegetarian.  I do eat fish and seafood and also dairy products, but nothing that runs on four legs or flies.  I was never a big meat eater to begin with, but when I started cooking for my vegetarian husband, a truly wonderful food world awaited me.  Trust me when I say "Yum!"

2.  One of the great triumphs of my life was learning to cook a wonderful South Indian rice cake called iddli.  (My husband is from India.)  You'll never know how many years that took, even with help and demos from my sisters-in-law and numerous nieces.  It's not an easy treat to make, and when it started coming out consistently right I knew that . . . I'll find an agent and a commercial publisher yet!

3.  I'm getting ambitious in my Spanish lessons: my goal is to be able eventually to read a novel in Spanish.  Well . . . maybe a novella.

4.  I confess to never having read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings.  They are on my "someday" list, but (a second confession) other books are on the "sooner than someday" list.  (I'm sure when I get to Hobbit and Ring I'll kick myself for taking so long.)

5.  I love my Mac.  I'm saying this now, because when I first got it, I had to make a complete adjustment from so many years of working on Microsoft, and I often ranted about how everything as located in different places.

6.  I have menioned before that I'm not a dessert person, but once in a blue moon, I love coffee ice cream.  I think I'm a coffee person.  I love cafe con leche, too.

7.  I wrote a poem to a spider this week.  It was traveling aross my ceiling as I lay captive in bed -- my foot elevated on four pillows -- and prayed fervently that the critter would make it to the far wall before losing traction and falling on me.

That's it for today.  Happy blog-hopping.

It's Magic!

I tweeted a new site about magic recently, but I want to discuss it at more length today:  The site is The Magic Broadcast ,  where you can read about professional magicians and their events and listen to great interviews with top magicians.  

Now why, you may ask, would a children's writer devote a post to a magic site?  Well, in my first book, The Fourth Wish , a key character is a professional magician whose magic goes all wrong when a wish enables him to do the real thing.  I'm finishing up two other books, a mystery and a historical novel, and then I've planned three sequels to The Fourth Wish  -- so I need to understand my magician, The Great Mondo (aka "Pete Garrity") in more depth.
                                                                    
The Magic Broadcast offers me (and any writer who has a magician as a character in a WIP) a golden opportunity to listen in on a professional magician's thinking about the profession or follow a professional magician's life as he or she prepares for bookings or encounters problems during performances.  It's a fun way to research, and it's quite enlightening.   

The Fourth Wish will also be coming out in Kindle soon.  I'll keep you posted.  Meanwhile, check out The Magic Broadcast and enjoy a little Abracadabra.