I’m versatile!

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That’s right, I’ve been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award!  It’s actually the second time I’ve been nominated.  I kinda forgot about it the first time, though, which is weird because it was the first time in the nearly five years I’ve been blogging that I’d ever been nominated for an award like this.

Anyway, the lovely S.Z.W.ordsmith was kind enough to nominate me (thank you!) – evidently my poetry makes her smile.  That makes me smile, because I do so love to make others happy.  The rules say I have to say seven things about myself and nominate fifteen others for the award, so here goes! For deets and a list of good reads, follow me!

Dickens

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I write like
Charles Dickens

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

So I entered the text of my story into I Write Like the other day. Evidently I write like Charles Dickens. I find that flattering, because Dickens was a genius, but I really don’t think I write like him. Then again, I do love the classics… 🙂

(c) 2012. All rights reserved.

2012 Book List

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My book list, to be updated regularly (I hope):

Books I’m currently reading:

Books I’ve finished:

  • The Hair-Raising Joys of Raising Boys by Dave Meurer
  • 1001 Things it Means to be a Mom: The Good, the Bad, and the Smelly by Harry H. Harrison, Jr.
  • Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilheim Grimm and edited by Justin Eisinger
  • Time Enough for Drums by Ann Rinaldi
  • The Banned Underground: The Amulet of Kings by Will Macmillan Jones
  • The Myth of Mr. Mom edited by Jeremy Rodden
  • Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  • Clifford’s First Halloween by Norman Bridwell and more behind the cut!

Fudge-tastic!

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If you don’t follow S.Z.W.ordsmith, you really should.  This week’s posts have all been about her trip to the L.A. Times Festival of Books and her most recent post is about a panel she attended where Judy Blume spoke.  What childhood would be complete without reading the Fudge books?  Reading this post made me want to reread those books and more, especially since the only thing I really remember about them is that they were great books.  Same goes for Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books (although I do remember a question about a dawnzer that struck me as particularly funny).

My childhood was filled with many wonderful books.

PADDs and dead trees

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I got a new toy yesterday. It’s a Samsung Tab 2. It’s just like my phone, only bigger and better (except for the lack of 3G, that is).

Anyway, Seymour and I made a deal a couple of months back – he could get a new toy if I could and yesterday, I finally procured said toy. I’ve been playing around with it after downloading a bunch of apps last night and I think I love it. Sure, I would have adored an Asus Slider or Transformer, but I’ve had good luck with my two Samsung phones and the Asus tablets were out of my price range.

Seymour was astonished when I told him what I wanted. “You want an e-reader?!” he exclaimed. “I thought you hated them!” And therein lies my dilemma.

Thoughts on self-publishing

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I generally try to stay out of the self-pub vs. trad. pub debates because so often, what starts off as reasoned analysis/debate devolves into screeches of, “My way is better than your way!” or “My way is the only right way to do it!”  Both ways have their pluses and minuses.  For me, I think traditional publishing is the way to go and I hope I’ll be able to succeed in it.  However, if it’s not meant to be, I “have lots of friends who will help” me “through the self-publishing process,” according to one Jeremy Rodden, self-publisher extraordinaire.  I’ve been assured that I’ll do great and I’m inclined to believe him because he’s done quite well for himself in the self-pub arena, as has our mutual friend, Lisa Wiedmeier. With that in mind…

The writer’s identity

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Writing

My noon hour yesterday was much like many other noon hours at my day job.  I grabbed my computer, my wallet, and headed down the street to the local café-type establishment to quiet the beast inside (because yes, my stomach is a snarling, ferocious beast, foaming at the mouth as it waits, ever-impatient, for the victuals that will eventually slide into its gaping maw).  I took a seat, ordered my food, and withdrew my laptop from its handy-dandy carrying case to work on my story (and when that failed, to at least continue looking over one of five samples sent to me by a friend for some vicious red-penning).  As I was trying to solve a major plot problem (Ha!), a conversation caught my ear.  One of the waiters was discussing writing with the gal in the booth behind me.  He is a college student majoring in English; she is one of many people who have written a book, only to (likely) have it remain unseen by the masses, covered in dust, and taking up space in her home.  “But I sent it to so-and-so – he writes Christian books, you know – and he thought it was very good!” she proclaimed to half the bar, the waiter, and me.

Ignoring the woman, I asked the waiter what he enjoyed writing and what he wanted to do as a writer.  He was where my interest lay because he is at that point in his life where he still has the world at his fingertips and anything is possible.  Sure, anything is always possible, but at 28 with a husband and four kids, it’s not likely that I’ll be able to study abroad and learn French through immersion or spend a summer backpacking through Germany absorbing local culture anymore.  Anyway, he replied that he had wanted to be a novelist and he liked sci-fi, but that he’d been fighting depression and not writing as prolifically as he’d done before.  I mentioned that I’d just finished a fantasy novel and that my own depression had made me want to lock myself in my room to write.  Naturally, this piqued the woman’s interest, so she turned her curiosity away from the waiter and onto me.  “I’m sorry, what do you do?” Click here to find out!

Out like a lamb

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Well, the old adage rang true this year – March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.  A sheared lamb, but a lamb nevertheless.  It was supposed to be in the mid-70s yesterday, but I don’t think it even reached 60°.  Thank goodness I had the kids dressed warm when we left to run errands.  The day was mostly cloudy, but at least it wasn’t raining.

The last few days have seen quite a surge in views here, which has me pretty excited.  I don’t know what it is that’s attracting so many lovely visitors (aside from posting more regularly than I have in a long while), but whatever it is, I’ll try to keep doing it. Formatting guidelines and what one publishing house had to say are this-a-way!

This post is chock-full of books!

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Things that gave me a good laugh this morning:

All I want is a library full of books and a prince telling me to pick one*…

*Book, that is.  Not monks.

Also:

TC: Mommy, can we go outside to play?
Me: No, it’s all mucky and gross outside.
TP: Can we sit on the porch?
Me: No, you really don’t need to be out there.

Both give me their best pout.

Me: If you really want to go outside, one of you can get the diaper bag and the other can get my computer bag and you can take them out to the van for me.
TC & TP: Okay!

Oh, kids. 🙂

Speaking of kids, Cricket’s new favorite word is book.  If all we did all day long was read Clifford’s First Halloween, I think he’d be in heaven.  I, on the other hand, have grown quite tired of reading yet again about Clifford going trick-or-treating dressed as a ghost, getting a bath after eating a candy apple, and traipsing around a haunted house stuck in a glove.  But this, too, shall pass, and I know from experience that once these days are gone, I’ll miss them terribly.  Cricket’s a boy after my own heart.  I’ve got a couple of pictures from story time a few days ago that I’ve been meaning to post on Facebook, but I haven’t done it yet.  Maybe I’ll get to it over the weekend, if I’m not buried under a mountain of laundry.  *sigh*

In other book news, you can now pre-order White Mountain, Book 1 of the Darkling Chronicles by Sophie E. Tallis.  The book is set to come out in September from Safkhet Publishing.  I predict it’ll sell faster than hot chocolate in a blizzard. 🙂

Also, I think I might have fixed a major plot problem in The Lokana Chronicles.  Some more detail was needed in one place and hopefully I’ve fixed it now.  I’ve tried twice already; I hope the third time’s the charm.  But if it’s not, well, then I’ll just have to put my stubborn nature to good use and make it bend to my will.  The Great and Powerful Seymour will yet be pleased. 🙂  I say that only because I think his crit made a lot of sense and I’m determined to tackle the problem head-on.  As it says over at der Wendighaus, “Time to load the guns, brew the ink, and get to work because I am a writer and I am done fucking around.”

I think that’s about all I’ve got this gray Friday afternoon.  Have a happy weekend!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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