Defending Jacob and Oprah’s Book Club

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I know it’s kind of a silly thing to be excited about, but this totally made my day:

I mean, really – Oprah’s Book Club?  How cool is that?

But now, if you’ll excuse me, ’tis time to go! After all, I’ve got a book to read and a novel to write. I’m like a kid in a candy store. 😀

(c) 2013. All rights reserved.

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Greetings from somewhere in Chapter 15!

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Well, since it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update, here’s what’s new with my WIP:

  • I’m working on Chapter 15.  The holidays killed my writing schedule.
  • I’m mostly writing during my lunch breaks.  This means I’m not getting much writing done outside of that one hour a day, and I feel like I should be doing more.  It’s causing some angst.

  • This is how I look when I’m editing, when I’m thinking about editing, and occasionally when I’m writing.

    The urge to edit is rearing its ugly head again.  I’m fighting it, but wondering if my fight is in vain.

  • I’m also revising The Lokana Chronicles again with help from the wonderful Ryan Holmes, and have caught a couple bad habits popping up as I write.  It’s so much easier to just stop myself from writing them in the first place than it is to go back and fix them later.
  • I seem to have hit that point where writing becomes work.  The new has worn off; my story and I have left the honeymoon period where everything is all butterflies and rainbows and unicorns and love.  Now we’ve hit the teen years, where I find it annoying and it hates me and is all, “God!  Parents just don’t understand!” and I’m all, “Teenagers!  So irresponsible!” in my best Sebastian voice (you know, from The Little Mermaid), even though I really suck at voices.  But we’ll get through it, I know we will, and then the really hard work will begin. *sigh*

And now, the snippet!

Cuz it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life…

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We undecorated our office today at work.  It looks so barren without all the Christmas things up!  Despite being unable to find my Christmas spirit this year, I hate taking the decorations down.  It’s always struck me as a sad act.  Lights and garland and fancy colored balls are so cheerful that one can’t help smiling, and Christmas music almost always brings a smile to my face at some point during the season.  Putting everything away feels like mourning.  I suppose that, with Lent and Easter coming up, this feeling is perhaps appropriate, but I still hate taking everything down.

Also, I may or may not be given to occasional bouts of laziness.  I suppose that could also account for my dislike of undecorating.

Speaking of things that are bitter sweet, check this out!

What six looks like

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While perusing my Facebook feed a couple weeks ago (which is actually when I started writing this post, but then life happened), I stumbled across a link to this article on the Huffington Post called “What Six Looks Like.”  Written by Jennifer Rowe Walters, it details her reaction to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and a conversation she had with a friend that clarified that reaction.  It’s a very moving post.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely check it out.

What does six look like?  I think Ms. Walters does a pretty good job of showing us what six looks like.  But what about ten?   What does ten look like? Or nine? Or two? Or one?

Happily Ever After

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Photo by Kay Kauffman</em

Photo by Kay Kauffman

The pretty princess
In the beautiful ballgown
Waltzes down the aisle.

The pretty princess
Holds court with friends both old and
New on the big day.

Baby blues sparkle
With mischief and merriment
As she plots her reign.

The pretty princess
Did not expect a handsome
Prince to thwart her plans.

But now the pretty
Princess has her prince, and they’ll
Live for each other,

For now, for always.
At last, the pretty princess
Has her happily

Ever after. The end.

(c) 2013. All rights reserved.

Prophecy

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I went out for lunch today and ate at the local Chinese place. This was my fortune. I've had one fortune cookie come true already; why not two?Photo by Kay Kauffman

Photo by Kay Kauffman

I went out for lunch today and ate at the local Chinese place. This was my fortune. I’ve had one fortune cookie come true already; why not two?  I think I’ll post this up at my desk so I can see it every time I sit down to work on something.  It will be my mantra.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know I’m a little bit late, but I hope you all had a very merry Christmas!  I don’t know where the time’s gone, but I really hadn’t intended to go so long without posting.  Then I started cleaning and my computer took a three-day vacation while I spent time with family and friends (and kleenex and cough syrup).  I still seem to be under the weather – I don’t know why I can’t shake this bug – but at least I found a little of my Christmas spirit before the big day rolled around.  After three days spent celebrating with family, I spent all afternoon yesterday sleeping in a feeble attempt to recover.  I desperately needed the rest, but I would have liked to get a few more things done around the house (like the mountain of dishes sitting in my kitchen).

Hopefully the end of the holiday season will mean a return to normal blogging for me, but possibly that will not happen till next week.  I’ll be hitting the road Friday with the fabulous Miss Tara for a mutual friend’s wedding festivities in the Great White North, also known as the Land of 1,000 Lakes.  Then it’s another family Christmas celebration on Sunday.  After all of that, I think I’m gonna need another three-day weekend just to recover!  Sadly, I’ll still have to work on Monday. *sigh*  Something tells me I won’t be staying up to watch the ball drop this year.

So in case I don’t see you before then, I hope you all have a terrific rest of the week, a wonderful weekend, and a fabulous start to the new year!  I’ll see you all in 2013, if not before!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Top 10 Reasons You Should Be at Home Instead of on the Road

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Well, the Class 3 Kill Storm arrived in the night and is even now shrieking outside my window with a passion even a banshee would envy (or possibly admire).  Since I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of getting to work today, I am snuggled up under my favorite down blanket while the boys play games and Seymour bakes Christmas cookies (I’m still sick – I have no business baking).

I’ve seen worse winter storms, but this one is truly nothing to sniff at.  I braved the weather to make a quick trip to the grocery store for chili supplies and go juice with a side trip to the gas station to procure some go juice for the snow blower as well, and it’s fierce out there.  I’m glad I decided to stay home today and not brave the weather all the way to work and back.  I’m even more glad that Seymour was able to turn around safely and make it back home after the snow plow he was following got stuck.  For the record, that was the third one this morning – two others went in the ditch just outside of town early this morning and the accident shut down the highway for a while.

But enough doom and gloom.

The mummy, she lives!

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I started this nice little post about this article I read this morning after following a link someone posted on Facebook and it was really very touching, so it made me want to write my very own little post on the same subject but then I got busy at work and didn’t have a chance to get back to it and now I have the time to work on it, but since I have neither the inclination nor the capacity to do so (although I suppose it could be argued that the coherence of this incredibly long run-on sentence means that I very well could write the dang post – I’m just too lazy to make my brain cells actually work), you’ll just have to wait till tomorrow to read it when hopefully the kids will won’t have a snow day and I can get some rest and kick the crap out of this stupid bug that has me in a choke-hold.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Time flies

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My little Tomcat at the tender age of fourPhoto by Kay Kauffman

My little Tomcat at the tender age of four
Photo by Kay Kauffman

My, how time flies!  Without my even realizing it, this little blog o’ mine has turned five years old.  That happened somewhere around the tail end of last month and I forgot all about writing my planned retrospective about my time in the blogging world.

Five years.  My, how the years have flown!  I started blogging about six months after my divorce was finalized.  I wanted to write passionate political spiels of great depth and insight; I wanted to pen fantastic short fiction that was sure to catch the eye of someone important, that elusive one right person who could make all my lifelong literary dreams come true; I wanted to create a wildly successful blog that would spawn book deals and syndicated columns and who knows what else.

In short, I had high hopes.  I was young, bright-eyed yet jaded.   Possibly I had delusions of grandeur.