The tea kettle began to whistle, it’s high-pitched steamy hiss making Lucy wince. She was in charge tonight. She was the one to hold forth, to represent all young women everywhere, as the Widows’ Book Club met again. She wondered if they would find it amusing or impertinent, maybe even juvenile, calling their book club The Widows’ Book Club. But they were all widows, she argued with herself. Well, three of them. (more…)
The is the best Top Ten List ever! Join John in the “fun” and consider trying your hand at writing a top ten list.
Here is the 54th installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do. I decided to publish this list in case anyone wants to do a Top Ten. If so, contact me at johnhowell.wave@gmail.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbdMPezWN0
Top Ten Things Not To Do While Creating Top Ten Lists
10. If you are creating a top ten list, do not wait until the last-minute before publication. If you do, at best you may have to go with nine. At worst, you might get stuck after two items which will lead to severe writer’s block which might transfer to your latest novel.
9. If you are creating a top ten list, do not ask your significant other how they like it. If you do, at best you might get an honest answer. At worst, you may find out your significant other and you have nothing what so ever in common and finally decide…
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If you like to swim (or not) and if you think there may be something in common between writing and swimming, check out Cinthia Ritchie’s post here.
It was dark, and there was no sound, no smell. When I opened my eyes all I could see were silver bubbles escaping from my mouth.
It was about 9 p.m. and I was swimming across DeLong Lake on a windy evening, the sky still light but overcast, the temperature, which had been close to 80 degrees earlier, cooling off so that the few people on shore wore jackets and baseball caps.
My goggles had fogged over and I could see nothing but the grey and choppy water, and my partner’s bright blue inflatable pack raft/boat. The waves were high enough that water splashed on my face and in my mouth. It was difficult to breathe and soon I lost all sense of where I was. I simply swam, my arms and legs moving through that cold water.
Yet when I opened my eyes on the underwater strokes, it was…
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Check out the latest Top Ten List, this week written by Charles Yallowitz, author of the Legends of Windemere series. You can also read the list on Charles’ blog at http://www.legendsofwindemere.com!
This is the 53rd edition of What Not to Do. This week Charles Yallowitz famed Fantasy author of the Legends of Windemere series of Fantasy novels and blogger extraordinaire has authored the list. If you would like to join the fun e-mail me at johnhowell.wave@gmail.com. This list will appear on Legends of Windemere post as well as on Fiction Favorites.
Top Ten Things Not to do When Writing with a Toddler Around
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqqaVDlqezk
10. If you are trying to write your book while supervising a hungry toddler, do not give them the entire box of their favorite cereal in lieu of cooking dinner. At best, they will scatter the contents of the box around the room and give you an hour of focused vacuuming to do during your break. At worst, their cereal will be high in sugar and you will spend the rest of the week gluing all of…
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Another interesting post from Interesting Literature: writers’ quotes about life. My favorite is one by T.S. Eliot. It is the way I am trying to live my life now. What is your favorite, dear Reader? Do any of these quotes reflect the way you live your life, or wish you lived your life?
You ask ‘What is life?’ That is the same as asking ‘What is a carrot?’ A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more. – Anton Chekhov
Live all you can – it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. – Henry James
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. – Edith Wharton
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. – Samuel Johnson
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which. – George R. R. Martin
Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage. – Anaïs Nin
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing…
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Rosie Amber’s Book Review Challenge continues along with an opportunity to be on a volunteer book review team!
A couple of months ago, I wrote a Dear John letter. This was a true Dear John letter in that it went to my friend and fellow blogger John Howell (author of the thriller My GRL), to tell him that I was bowing out of our Monday collaboration at the end of our first year. My throat was so tight I could barely swallow when I hit the Send button, my eyes moist as I accepted the finality of that message. I had been slowly turning down or turning off projects in an effort to slow myself down and gain more time to write. This was the last project to let go, and it was the hardest to let go.
I’m not done with blogging. But to John and a few others, I’ve mentioned feeling overwhelmed, at a chronic loss for time to get anything done. I spend my days at work and at home, “satisficing,” that is, doing well enough and just enough to get through to the next day. I don’t like living or working like that. (Although at my day job, that is often standard operating procedure.)
I’ve been feeling frazzled (not to be confused with Fizzle, the delightful creature in Charles E. Yallowitz’s The Legends of Windemere series). The word frazzled comes to me from a news article in The Seattle Times, “One Man’s Year Off Social Media.” Last year, David Roberts, a staff writer at green magazine Grist.org, decided to go offline. He explained: “I think in tweets now. My hands start twitching if I’m away from my phone for more than 30 seconds. I can’t even take a pee now without getting ‘bored.’”
Granted, my condition is nowhere near as serious as Roberts’ was, but the potential is there. My loyalties were becoming divided: loyalties between my self, my work colleagues, my online community were frequently in conflict.
After a year offline, David Roberts made these observations: “How nice it is not to have an opinion about everything. How dedicating himself to immediately beneficial real-world activities–even just washing dishes–feels more productive […].”
When I’ve gone offline for a vacation, I find I don’t miss the grid as much as I initially think I will. It’s not that I don’t miss people. My dearest blogging friends are always with me in my mind and in my heart, even when I don’t access their blogs. I just don’t miss being tethered to my computer.
I ask for your patience and understanding. I will be less active in the blogging community, but I won’t be gone. If I Like your blog post but don’t comment, you can be sure that I actually read your post and did like it but I needed to move on. Perhaps I simply didn’t have enough time to write a comment. Or I was interrupted by a cat fight.
Let me share a secret, but you have to promise not to tell anyone: Writing is very difficult for me. I often wonder why I do write when a two-sentence comment might take me 10 to 15 minutes to compose. This blog post will go through several revisions (5 6 7 8 to be exact) before it sees the light of day (or, more accurately, the light of your computer screen).
Maybe I have this wrong. I’ve been able to write 50,000 words in 30 days so maybe it isn’t the writing. It’s the publishing. I can’t let my writing go out into the world without making sure that I’m saying exactly what I mean to say. I will spend a ridiculous amount of time on one comment before I hit the Reply button. Too often, my real-time comments, off-the-cuff, rough draft, stream-of-consciousness utterances have been misunderstood. After awhile, a person gets tired of having to explain that she meant this in her comment, not that.
So this post marks a turn in my life as a blogger. My original posts may become farther and fewer between as I get into a groove that (I hope) enables me to refocus on my writing and (again, I hope) make some sense of the piles of printed pages taking up space on my bedroom floor.
And, Gwen Stephens, please don’t recommend that I get up at 4 AM. That time is my sweet spot for sleepy time :)
A FREE Book Promotion of Twilight’s Indian Princess begins July 1 and ends July 5. It’s a Kindle edition so get over there and get your copy!
As part of the launch of this title and to introduce the series to the widest possible audience, CHP is running a FREE BOOK PROMO JULY 1 – 5 for the Kindle edition.
Now is the time voracious readers! If you are presently feeling a bit impecunious and pinched, you can snap it up gratis with one click.
http://www.amazon.com/Twilights-Indian-Princess-A-Story-ebook/dp/B00L9Q1TC2
Now Available for Kindle on Amazon.com
Oh, you want to know what it’s about? About! Okay …. the skinny:
So you think you’re too stressed? You think you’re too busy, stretched too thin, have no time for anything, let alone any time for yourself? Think again, weaklings, and quit feeling sorry for yourselves (wink):
Sarah Sloan McCorkle of Piney Point, TN is a smart, hard-working schoolteacher, a good wife and great mother with a hair shirt conscience who “married down”—according to her Southern aristocrat mother. Way down.
She’d tried…
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It’s the last guest post for Rosie Amber’s Book Review Challenge! This post is by Lizzie Lamb!
Here is the 52nd installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
10. If it is your first wedding anniversary, do not think your spouse will find it funny if you pretend to forget your wedding date. If you do pretend to forget, at best your spouse will forgive you after you’ve recited a dozen mea culpas and treated your spouse to a romantic candlelit dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town. At worst, your spouse will demand, in addition to the mea culpas and romantic dinner, you be solely responsible for cleaning out your cat’s litter box until your second wedding anniversary.
9. If it is your first wedding anniversary, do not assume your spouse will want to celebrate the anniversary with all your family, friends, and the same people at your wedding. If you do, at best your spouse will grudgingly put up with the crush and noise of partygoers. At worst, your spouse will commit a disappearing act (sneaking out of the house to have that nice, quiet dinner your spouse really wanted), leaving you to be solo host, as well as clean-up crew after the party.
8. If it is your first work anniversary, do not think you should necessarily expect some congratulations from your boss and coworkers. At best, you will get some recognition for having stayed in the job for a year since no one else (including your boss) has, an insight which might cause you to start looking for another job. At worst, you try to throw your own party during lunch time in the conference room which coincides with your boss’s own planned luncheon with the CEO, CFO, CIO, and COO, and you wind up playing caterer to them since you are now too embarrassed to admit the food was for your own party.
7. If it is your first work anniversary, do not insist on going to the most expensive restaurant to celebrate with your boss and coworkers. If you do, at best, no one will complain about the fact that all any of them (except your boss) can afford is the Caesar salad and a glass of ice water. At worst, in honor of your anniversary, your boss will publicly suggest you pay the bill for the entire table since your anniversary grants you a 1.0% raise which, after taxes, translates to a 0.3% raise which after a year will cover the cost of the meal.
6. If it is the first anniversary of your first date, do not think your significant other will be unaware of the fact. If you do, at best, your significant other will accept your apologies for forgetting and you make a promise to yourself not to forget the second anniversary. At worst, your significant other will accept your apologies and then suggest perhaps it’s time to see other people, letting you know in no-uncertain terms there will not be a second anniversary.
5. If it is the first anniversary of your first date, do not think a simple greeting card will be enough to celebrate the event. If you do, at best, your significant other will simply sigh and make arrangements for a nice dinner at the restaurant where you had your first date. At worst, your significant other will make reservations at a very expensive restaurant you’ve always wanted to go but never had the money and then after dessert tell you it’s time for you both to see other people. For the cherry on top, your significant other will abruptly leave, grabbing the foil wrapped coq au vin, but leaving the check which, of course, you cannot pay except with long hours of dishwashing.
4. If it is your first blogging anniversary, do not think no one will care if you ignore the event. If you do, at best, your readers will likely be confused when you start writing posts beginning “When I began blogging over a year ago ….” since it’s fairly common to celebrate such an event and they won’t understand why you didn’t. At worst, you’ll be out spotlighted into shame by your fellow bloggers who go ahead and post about their first-year anniversary while you sit and watch their readership grow as yours sinks.
3. If it is your first blogging anniversary, do not think you can crowdsource your way to a fancy restaurant to celebrate. If you do, at best, you’ll gain enough for a tip and your readers will just shake their heads over your impudence and continue to read your blog any way. At worst, a number of fellow bloggers will show up at the fancy restaurant expecting you to share your crowdsourced meal for one with all of them, forcing you to eventually crowdsource to get enough money to pay the bill so you don’t have to wash the restaurant’s dishes for the next month.
2. If it is the first anniversary of your book, do not think it would be gauche to promote the hell out of it on your important day. If you do, at best, an ardent fan will realize the date and promote your book for you, giving you an uptick in sales which you otherwise would not have had. At worst, you miss your window of opportunity and your post-first anniversary sale bombs since no one understands what a year and a day anniversary is all about.
1. If it is the first anniversary of your book, do not hesitate to promote the hell out of it on that important day. If you do hesitate, at best, you’ll get a lukewarm response of increased sales from your lukewarm effort. At worst, your promotion will be so tepid none of your readers will understand what you are promoting and miss the opportunity to purchase your book at less than the cost of a tall skinny Vanilla latte.
0. If it is the first anniversary … oh, wait, lists aren’t supposed to have 0s in them. Well, this one does but not for a happy reason. On this first anniversary of our Top Ten Things Not To Do lists, I have published my last list with John. I am stepping down as a collaborator on these lists and hope that many of you will now rush over to John’s blog (www.johnwhowell.com) and leave your comments about what not to do on one’s first anniversary of anything.
For personal reasons, I need to step down and step away from blogging, although not entirely; I just need to slow the pace of my postings, the weight of my own expectations. John, as many of you know, is a wonderful writer, a good friend, and the best partner in blogging that I’ve ever had. I love him dearly. I will do all I can support whatever direction he chooses to go with this venture. And for this reason I’ve disabled the comments on this post. Any comments you want to make on the list, you make them over on John’s blog. Any comments you want to make on my decision, save for later. There will be a post later this week for that. Until then, thank you for reading. Thank you for your support. And most of all, thank you for John. I might never have met him if it hadn’t been for this wonderful world of blogging.
Marie at 1 Write Way 