Today I am a happy guest over at Jill Weatherholt’s blog. Jill is wonderful writer and also one of the nicest people I’ve met in the blogosphere. I consider her a good friend. Please enjoy my spot in the spotlight and take a tour of Jill’s blog while you are there :)
Author: Marie A Bailey
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I didn’t know there was such a event as World Cat Day, but thanks to Interesting Literature, now I do know and I also know some more facts about writers and cats. Read on and enjoy!
It’s World Cat Day! The purr-fect opportunity (sorry – we couldn’t resist) to share 10 of our favourite writer-related facts about cats.
Ernest Hemingway had over 30 pet cats, with names including Alley Cat, Crazy Christian, Ecstasy, F. Puss, Fats, Furhouse, Skunk, Thruster, and Willy. Many of them had six toes; to this day, such cats are often known as ‘Hemingway cats’.
James Joyce wrote two stories for children, both about cats: ‘The Cat and the Devil’ and ‘The Cats of Copenhagen’. You can see some of the rare illustrations for ‘The Cat and the Devil’ here.
French writer Colette started her working day by picking the fleas off her cat.
One of Daniel Defoe’s early business ventures was the harvesting of musk which he extracted from the anal glands of cats. Perhaps unsurprisingly (and thankfully for the cats involved), this venture failed.
Samuel Pepys is credited with…
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Debuting August 8th on Amazon Kindle!
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen Swords will clash and spells will fly in the newest adventure of young warrior Luke Callindor, Nyx the magic-flinging caster, and their friends.
With Sari captured by their enemies, the champions of Windemere are determined to get her back and destroy the Lich’s castle. Little do they realize, their battles in the Caster Swamp are only the beginning of this adventure. Trinity and her Chaos Elves have invaded the city of Gaia in search of a relic called the Compass Key. Rumored to be the key to rescuing Sari from a magical island, our heroes are in a race to find the mysterious relic.
Which side will claim the Compass Key? And, what will our heroes do when they’re faced with an enemy whose evil power overshadows anything they have ever faced?
About the Author:
Charles Yallowitz was born and raised on Long Island, NY, but he has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.Blog: Legends of Windemere
Twitter: @cyallowitz
Facebook: Charles YallowitzRead the Previous Volumes of Legends of Windemere!!!
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen (CLICK FOR AMAZON SITE) 
Cover by Jason Pedersen (CLICK FOR AMAZON SITE) 
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen (CLICK FOR AMAZON SITE) 
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen (CLICK FOR AMAZON SITE) -
Another entertaining Top Ten List from John Howell, author of My GRL! Click through and start your week off with a few laughs :)
Here is the 57th installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do. I put this together after observing other conference attendees in action at a recent writer’s conference I attended. Hope you enjoy
Top Ten Things Not to do if You Attend a Writer’s Conference
10. If you attend a writer’s conference, do not think you need to impress the faculty with your knowledge of the writing craft. If you do, at best you will sound ridiculous teaching best-selling authors about writing. At worst, one of the best-selling authors may ask you how many books you have sold.
9. If you attend a writer’s conference, do not volunteer to be the first to read your story out loud. If you do, at best you will finish your reading and no one will applaud since you obviously did not hear the instructions. At worst, you will finish your reading and…
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Another great top ten list from John Howell at Fiction Favorites!
Here is the 56th installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do and want you to know, I’m pretty much going it alone. With all the summer travels, I thought I would offer some advice on what not to do when you need to stop. I hope you enjoy.
Top Ten Things Not to Do When You Need a Rest Stop
10. If you need a rest stop, do not think you need to finish that 32 ounce Big Gulp. If you do, at best you will reach the rest stop with no delay. At worst, the traffic pile up on the 687 which caused you to run onto the median for relief makes the evening news with the enhancement of your handcuffed frame over the back of a police car.
- If you need a rest stop, do…
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Head over to Legends of Windemere and view an awesome trailer for the next book in the series: The Compass Key!
HERE IT IS!
THE LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE BOOK TRAILER!
HELP SPREAD THE WORD AND CHECK IT OUT ON YOUTUBE! -
Some interesting quotes from George Bernard Shaw on the Interesting Literature blog. My favorite is a quote from Major Barbara. You’ll have to read the post to find it :)
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him. – Preface to Pygmalion
When I was a young man I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work. – The Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. – Maxims for Revolutionists
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. – Major Barbara
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. – Saturday Review, 1895
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get…
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Alone (double cinquain)
Alone
So incomplete
Gazing at the moonlight
Wondering just when you’ll be here
Nearby
With me
To start our lives
Never to leave again
Becoming whole and not just half
As onePamela has written a second collection of love poems. Poetry is an expression from deep within the soul. It can be therapeutic and healing. It can bring out all the best or the worst in life. Her poetry comes from the heart, not the head. It is an outpouring of emotion and she exposes it to the reader in the pages. Love: Lost and Found contains over 90 poems representing over a dozen different forms of poetry. The poems span the angst and despair of love lost to the exhilaration and ecstasy of a deep abiding love.
Love: Lost and Found has already received a five star review that says
“Pamela Beckford writes with her heart as much as her mind. She makes me feel things when I read her work that usually stay buried beneath the surface. Her way of expressing emotions that usually aren’t captured for later evaluation is amazing.
I also enjoy that she uses a lot of different styles and forms of poetry in her collections, making the book varied and interesting. Some are shorter and some longer, but all of them carefully constructed. Her ability to say so much in so few words is a indication of her talent as a writer.
If you are looking for an excellent poetry book, look no further.”
Pamela’s other books have also garnered some great reviews and both are available on Kindle or paperback as well.
Season of Love (tanka)
First there is summer,
Followed by fall, winter, spring
But lest we forget
The season of love appears
Bringing hope for all lost souls -
Jump on over to John Howell’s Fiction Favorites and enjoy this week’s top ten list!
Here is the 55th 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 you will at least know some thought has been put in how to behave. Of course, the person who needs to behave is ME. If you would like to guest post a list of your own, contact me at johnhowell.wave@gmail.com
Top Ten Things Not to Do While Trying to Lure Attract Other Authors to do a Top Ten List
10. If you are trying to attract other authors for a top ten-guest appearance, do not make them believe they will become rich and famous. If you do, at best they will overlook the one “like” and still speak to you. At worst, they could find a way to troll your blog for the rest of your life.
9. If you…
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Yesterday (Wednesday, July 16, 2014, to be exact and to be ever etched on my mind), I made a mistake. And not just one mistake. Actually, I made several. And all of them in public. Vis a vis my blog.
Mistake #1: Multitasking. I’ve never ever been good at multitasking. In fact, I hate multitasking (my hatred of it in direct proportion to the current societal expectations that I will engage in it). Yet, at work I do it all the time. If I’m looking up, say, ICD-9 diagnosis codes on the internet, well, hell, I’ll just pop over to my personal email account for a quick look.
Mistake #2: Checking my personal email at work, regardless of device. At best, checking my email will distract me even more than I already am because I might find a message from a friend and so respond, and in the process of responding forget about the task I was supposed to be working on. At worst, all I see is “junk” email and I get depressed.
Mistake #3: Not paying attention (due to multitasking) to which email account I was logging into. I was in the middle of writing a SQL query when a thought about my blog popped into my head and so, of course, I decided to take a quick look at my email. Apparently, I logged into my email account with my blog name, forgetting that I actually have an email account with my blog name. One that I have not checked in over a year. Do you see where I am going with this?
Mistake #4: Having a meltdown. I can choose whether or not to have a meltdown. It doesn’t always feel like I can choose, but I can. When I saw the strange organization of my email account, lists of subscription emails that I thought I had turned off months ago, nothing in my Trash folder and everything on my Primary tab and Gmail acting like it’s a brand-new day in email management … I yielded to the usual anger and angst that I experience whenever I think technology is failing me. Hence, the meltdown.
Mistake #5: Making my meltdown public. As I wrote in yesterday’s blog post (thank god I used my WP app on my iPad so I kept it (relatively) short), a little voice in the back of my head warned, “Don’t publish. Don’t publish.” I’ve written blog posts before that I’ve left in draft and either published much later or just deleted. I could have done the same here. I should have done the same.
If you’ve gotten this far, then you understand that my primary Gmail account (marieannbailey) is really okay. Yes, it has those annoying tabs that really don’t help me in organizing (especially since sometimes Gmail forgets which tab a message should go to), but I had adapted. And that change was a year ago. What I saw yesterday was a different email account that I had forgotten about and so it was not yet organized.
When people started to comment on my blog and nobody complained of having the exact same problem, that’s when I slowly started to realize that I might have made a effing ass of myself. Well, we should learn from our mistakes, right? I thought about deleting yesterday’s post and just saying, “What? Who me? Meltdown in public? Never!” But if I could erase every mistake I’ve ever made, I’d never learn anything.
There is an upside to all this. I’ve found a few things to be thankful for. I have a friend who makes a point of being thankful for something, even when her day totally sucks. You should check out her blog. She’s a good example of how to find the positive in a world of negatives.
So, taking a cue from Pamela, here’s what I’m thankful for after making an effing ass of myself in public:
- Yoga: Wednesday night is Flow and Meditation class. 45 minutes of vigorous flow followed by 30 minutes of meditation. I started class feeling angry with myself and ended with acceptance of myself.
- Gmail: I still don’t care for their email management, but at least it wasn’t Gmail that messed up, it was me.
- My online friends: I am most thankful for the wonderful friends I have here, and all of you who rallied support, offering me suggestions and/or empathy. Because of you, I have some ideas for how to improve my email management. I also suspect that you all are more forgiving of me than I am of myself.
So, false alarm. Gmail is not challenging my sanity. I’m perfectly capable of doing that to myself without any technological assistance.
Cheers and TGI(almost)F!
Marie at 1 Write Way 