Tag: Friends

Ich bin ein liebster!

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Hiya!  I know it’s been a few days, but after all those haiku I posted last month, I needed a bit of a break.  Also, I’ve been fighting off a migraine for the last few days, so my time doing much of anything productive has been pretty limited.  But now I’m back, more exhausted than ever, and ready to…uh…well, maybe not wow you, exactly, but hopefully keep you entertained with my stunning ability to trip over flat surfaces.

That should do nicely, yes?

No?  What do you mean, no?

What do you mean, you want substance?  Why on Earth are you here, then?  Wait!  Don’t leave me!

Okay, that was a little pathetic.  Well, if it’s substance you want instead of slapstick, how about this?  I was nominated for the Liebster Award earlier today by the lovely G. Edward Smith.  He’s got a very nice blog and it’s well worth checking out.

As usual, we’ve got some rules for this puppy. They be as follows (and you know you want to follow, right? Right!):

The bus stops here!

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WMJ-Tour-Banner

This is a big week for me, blog-wise.  See, I love to help out a fellow author when and where I can and this week, I’ll be running a series of posts as part of a blog tour for my good friend, Will Macmillan Jones as he debuts his latest book, Bass Instinct.  It’s the fourth book in The Banned Underground series, which I absolutely adore, and I hope you all will, too.

So what’s in store?  Why, a little bit of everything!  I’ll be sharing reviews of the first four books, which are all hilariously funny comic fantasies set in the UK.  I’ve got an interview with the man himself, so if you want to learn a bit more about a great author, then be sure to drop in for that.  And on Sunday, he’ll be sharing a bit about some of the musical influences behind his work.  Now that’s a post you won’t want to miss!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

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So this weekend I wanted to get a bunch of different writing projects squared away between a surprise party and visiting family.  No problem, right?  Wrong!  Well, I got one of them taken care of, anyway, but a visiting headache kept me from the others.  Our weekends are always so busy, it seems, yet they’re the only time I really have a chance to get caught up on things at home.  So this morning is going to be catch-up time till the family arrives.

In the meantime, I acquired a shiny new DSLR a while back and have been having loads of fun with it.  For your viewing pleasure until I return with a post of more substance, behold, the things with which I’ve been filling my weekend: behind the cut!

Mix tape memories

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Rumor has it that my generation was the last to make mix tapes.  And you know what?  I believe it – by the time I graduated high school, my friends and I had moved on to making mix CDs of stuff we downloaded from the internet at places like Napster and Kazaa.  I marvelled at the lightning-fast download speeds on my college campus, where you could download a song in only five minutes…while the rest of the campus lay sleeping.  Any other time, you could expect to wait at least a half an hour.  And that was if you were lucky.  It’s hard to imagine routinely waiting that long for a download now.

mixtape

Photo by Kay Kauffman

But back then, it was hard to imagine digital music ever fully supplanting physical copies of songs.  For some people, perhaps it still is.  Playlists are the new mix tapes.  Where CDs were once the height of technology, now they are as antiquated as dinosaurs.  And tapes?  Well, you might as well have crawled out of a cave.  “Tape?  What’s a tape?” the kids will say.  Don’t even get me started on vinyl.

I stumbled across some old mix tapes I made in high school the other day and have been listening to them in my car during my commute.  As a teenager, my living room boasted a stereo system that included a five disc CD changer, a digital AM/FM tuner, and a dual tape deck with auto reverse.  Now I think the only CD player I have in my whole house is in my computer.

Castle of Dreams

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Today I had the pleasure of guest posting over on my good friend Andrea Baker’s blog.  She’s been running a series called Castle of Dreams and I’m delighted to participate in it.  My contribution concerns the palace in Lokana, where my book The Lokana Chronicles and my current WIP are set.  It was a whole lot of fun to write.

I hope you’ll head on over and check it out.  While you’re there, have a look at some of the other entries in the series.  Not all are fictitious entries; there are also posts about very real castles, including Kenilworth Castle, which figures prominently in Andrea’s book, Worlds Apart – Leah, recently published by Taylor Street Publishing.

And now, I’m off to bed.  It’s been a long and busy day, full of work and good food and good friends and great family and fun and I am exhausted!  Happy Friday! 🙂

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

Related articles

Lately…

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Lately I’ve been working.  A lot.  I’ve been working a lot at work (Ooh, hello, tax season!).  I’ve been working a lot at home, too (the laundry never. ends.), both on house-type stuff and writing-type stuff.  I have my work cut out for me on the last chapter I wrote; the last third of it needs some serious help.  But that will have to wait.

I’ve also been having some fun.  With what, you ask?  Well, I’ve been messing about on Pinterest quite a lot lately.  You can find boards depicting Lokana, the surrounding area, and the people who live there.  You can also find a few laughs, if you’re so inclined, and maybe a little writerly inspiration.

I’ve also rekindled my photography habit.  Or rather, my photo-editing habit.   Behold, the fruits of my labor. . .behind the cut!

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!

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.

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.