Thankfulness and Transitions

Pacific Cup, Whonnock Lake, B.C. Canada on July 13th, 2015 - between races.

Although I wasn't really prepared for a big book celebration for Dynamic Writing 1, many wonderful bloggers and tweeters gave my book a shout-out or several tweets! I'm am humbled and thankful for your encouraging support!!!

And - this just in - Melissa Sugar-Gold wrote the most amazing review of Dynamic Writing 1 and posted it on her blog yesterday. I was so overwhelmed with thankfulness for her kind and encouraging words that tears came to my eyes. And now, I just feel like blushing and saying, "wow, wow, wow" over and over again. Thank you, Melissa!

The weekend before my official celebration of Dynamic Writing 1, I had the chance to cheer on 17 athletes from the Gig Harbor Canoe and Kayak Development Team and Racing Team at Pacific Cup at Whonnock Lake in Canada. The regatta is for novice athletes and athletes under the age of 15 (as of January this year). My oldest daughter was too "old" to attend, but my youngest raced and brought home a fistful of ribbons. It was a good weekend and since my oldest stayed home solo for the first time (with grandparents next door), it was one more reminder of all the transitions we are going through as a family.

For 12-16 years now (depends on if you count starting at birth), my kids have home-schooled. This year, we are doing things differently.

(Enter a really long mom brag moment - sorry, but my girls are a huge part of my life and my writing life - impacting my stories in ways that they don't even realize.)

This year, my oldest is off to running start, our state's community college dual credit program. She intends to get an associates degree and a high school diploma over the next two years. She already has enough almost enough credits to graduate since she works hard and has a variety of interests. And, I'm still making her read several works of literature (plays, novellas, and novels) and write several projects (essays and play scripts) for me over the next two years because I'm determined to have her prepared for writing in any academic or career field. Currently, she is interested in bio-engineering, theater, film production, and dance. (How would you put those together?) Oh, and she enjoys canoeing and coding, too. (She finds coding, relaxing; I don't get it, but I'm glad she likes it.)

My youngest is attending the local high school for just two classes, Chinese and Pre-AP English. She wanted to take Chinese and since she was placed into an English class accidentally, she wanted to see how someone else other than me would teach it. Of course, because I'm a "mean" mom, I'm expecting her to read several novels and write several essays for me this year, too. They only read one novel and one play in a year for her class. So far, she's interested in interior design, special effects design, and other areas that include art and some science or math. She's good with language and loves to read, but doesn't want to include those in her career/academic plans. She creates bead necklaces symbolizing character development in books that she loves and she also really wants to be able to compete internationally in flat-water sprint kayak races. 

My kids are starting to take flight with their multitude of interests, and at the moment, I'm actually busier than I was before. I think once we get past the transition point with the new school schedules and fall into a routine, life will get back to a more regular (normal-busy) pace. Until then, I may post erratically through the end of October.

Again, many thanks to all of you who have encouraged me and helped spread the news about Dynamic Writing 1. Please let me know how I can help spread the news about your books!

And, I'm still looking for hosts for a book blog tour from December 7th through December 18th for Champion's Destiny. A few spots are filled, but I still need more help! If you are interested, please e-mail me at tyreantigger (at) gmail (dot) com

And, if you've ever wondered why/how I'm so busy . . . well, I have an incredibly busy family and a desk-sized family calendar with multiple entries every single day. Everyone chips in to clean and everyone has to help with dinner.

And now, I'm off to run errands/write/teach/drive my youngest somewhere . . .

If you have time after reading this overly long post, please check out Melissa Sugar-Gold's review. 

Forgetful, but Thankful, Friday

I thought I had a post pre-written for today. Where is it? hmm. Not certain. I moved a couple of other posts back a few days so that today was free for . . .what?

I honestly forget.

So, in honor of my original blogger status as a post pantster, I think I'll just go with what's on my heart at the moment:

Thankfulness

image found here

The sun is shining bright, the sky is a perfect blue, the dappled sunlight and shadow on the trees outside my window makes my heart sing, and I am thankful for my family, my friends, my blog buddies, my wonderful life, for people who care enough to make a difference for others, for organizations made of individuals who give life to the lifeless and hope to the hopeless. I'm thankful for my writing, and for all the great books there are to read. I'm thankful for life. I'm thankful for my savior, Jesus. I'm thankful for love.

What are you thankful for today?

And do you plan out every one of your blog posts, or do you post by the seat of your pants?

Critiques and a Launch Party for Closed Hearts!

Critiques
So, I'm in the midst of my 4th revision. My characters and plot-line are finally feeling right to me but I've re-written my first chapter at least seven times and it's changed every time. I've gotten to the point where I can't even see my first page with any kind of clarity.

So, when I found two offers for free first page critiques, I wanted to shout out in thankfulness. By participating in the Oh, Those High School Dances Blog Hop, I earned a first page critique by Emily at Get Busy Writing and then I discovered that Carol at Artzicarol Ramblings gives away free first page cirtiques all the time (I just somehow missed that on her sidebar right under her picture). So, thanks to these two ladies, I'm seeing my first page with clear vision.

If you would like to see Carol's critique of my awkward first page and help me out by pointing out anything you think needs to change, I would greatly appreciate it. Just visit ArtziCarol Ramblings today.

Closed Hearts Launch Party

Susan Kay Quinn's second book of the Mindjack Trilogy is officially out today!!! Woohoo!

My daughters and I were eagerly waiting with anticipation for this book, and it did not disappoint.

What? I've read it already? Well . . .since I've been lurking around Amazon for this book, I discovered that I could have it delivered to my kindle a few days early, and we've been having an all out readathon in our house, as my kids and I wrestle over my kindle for the right to read this book. The bad part is . . .we've all finished it, and now want the third book . . . and now we have to wait again. No worries. We'll just reread Open Minds and Closed Hearts again in our wait time.

And yes, they are that good, and no, I can't really give details because I'm afraid I'll spill spoilers all over this post. Hmm. What can I say without giving up much?

Kira is a compelling character with flaws, and new, exciting abilities who must struggle to keep those she loves safe and find her place in a world of people who either fear her abilities, or want to use them for their own purposes.

Book Two of the Mindjack Trilogy by
Susan Kay Quinn

When you control minds, only your heart can be used against you.
Eight months ago, Kira Moore revealed to the mindreading world that mindjackers like herself were hidden in their midst. Now she wonders if telling the truth was the right choice after all. As wild rumors spread, a powerful anti-jacker politician capitalizes on mindreaders' fears and strips jackers of their rights. While some jackers flee to Jackertown--a slum rife with jackworkers who trade mind control favors for cash--Kira and her family hide from the readers who fear her and jackers who hate her. But when a jacker Clan member makes Kira's boyfriend Raf collapse in her arms, Kira is forced to save the people she loves by facing the thing she fears most: FBI agent Kestrel and his experimental torture chamber for jackers.
Check out Susan Kaye Quinn's blog for more information on the awesome launch party, and for rafflecopter prizes!!!

Oh, and if you missed my entry for the Flash Fiction Blogfest, check it out here or just scroll down to my last post.

Thankfulness for Life!

In the last five weeks, I've been caught up in specific blog challenges, fests, hops, and a wonderful guest post by Karen Lange. I'm thankful for all the wonderful hosts of those challenges, fests, and hops, and I'm thankful for Karen's gracious wisdom about blogging.

Meanwhile in the non-cyber world, life is barrelling along at a breakneck pace, and I feel like I'm bursting with thankfulness for life!

So I thought I would share a few bits of that with all of you with some pictures.

In our homeschooling life, my oldest daughter and my husband have been joyfully creating different experiments for her homeschool co-op Backyard Ballistics class. Their most recent creation for that class was a carbide cannon, but I have pictures of one that they made earlier: the potato gun.

This photo was taken in the last week of March, when my daughter had just undergone minor foot surgery (see note at bottom), so that's why she has a sock over one foot (it's actually over a big bandage) and a crutch on the ground next to her.

My youngest daughter has been building all our own science experiments with very little help (she doesn't want it). This last week, she built her own balance. We have one but she wanted to build her own from her science kit.

With a small group of homeschool friends we went out this last Tuesday and celebrated a particularly low tide in our area. These were just a few of our discoveries:

Plus, five girls, one boy, and three moms managed to bring home a few buckets of sand in our shoes.

And in our dance life, my youngest got her first full pointe shoes (slightly different than demi-pointe)

My oldest is up for her first pair of full pointe shoes, but her feet have this tendency to grow in May, so we are going to wait through the month and see if her feet get a size bigger in the next thirty days. We inevitably buy her new shoes the week before the June recital. Soft shoes like ballet slippers, and jazz shoes just stretch. Tap shoes and pointe shoes don't.  Their ballet teacher simply said to move from demi-pointe to pointe when they needed new shoes . . .so she has to wait.

*Her foot surgery involved removing what the foot doctor thought was a wart, but turned out to be a small bit of metal or glass cocooned in protective skin tissue. She recovered enought to ski in one week, and recovered enough to dance in two weeks, although her foot doctor just said last week that she is fully recovered.

Day 11 of 100 Days of Revision Update

Aagh. I'm about 1,000 words behind my goal today. And the last bit of revision still left me with an extremely awkward conversation . . .need to fix it, but I need to move on and fix the rest of the mess too. There is only so much rewriting a scene can take before it just shatters into meaningless bits.

Eyes WIDE Open

"Hey, look, it's a woodpecker," exclaimed a young girl at my daughter's 13th birthday party, as we stood outside our house.

"Oh, yeah, we see them all the time," I said.

The day went on, and I dismissed the conversation, until a few days ago, when some friends and I were talking about every day things and thankfulness.

When we first moved to our house 10 years ago, in this area that mixes suburban and rural life, with a small wooded area in our backyard, we exclaimed over every woodpecker, coyote, deer, racoon, owl, heron, crane, rabbit, newt, butterfly, and stinkbug. Sometime between now and then, most of those sightings have become commonplace.

I used to wake up at night, awed by the sounds of deer calls, coyote howls, and owl hoots. Now I wake up, roll over and go back to sleep.

On spring mornings my family and I used to be surprised by the woodpeckers' determination to knock their heads against not only trees but metal ladders, and other objects. Now we know that the loudest males get the best mates, and we wish they would just find someone else's house to bang their heads against.

When did I lose my sense of wonder?

When I woke today and noticed the glorious wonder of a blue sky Northwest morning, I decided I wanted to regain my wonder. I'm going to keep my eyes wide open today.

What wonders do you see around you? Do you overlook them sometimes?


Also, I wanted to thank all the awesome people that stopped by for IWSG. The encouragement given is sweet, and I just want to send a SHOUT OUT of THANKS to Alex J. Cavanaugh for starting it. THANK YOU ALEX! Now, go, read his new book, CassaFire!

A Call to Give Thanks

In the spring of 2010, I felt called to count my blessings, to give thanks in all circumstances, and to post it here. I considered it my own 365 Days of Blessings Challenge.

It opened my eyes to the amazing number of blessings I have in my life . . . things that I often take for granted too regularly.

It opened my eyes to my own sinful inclination to be crabby, doubtful, and full of worry . . . that was a bit uncomfortable. There were far too many days during my blessings challenge when I struggled to get beyond counting four blessings, and my challenge was to find ten new ones each day.

Lately, through prayer, study, and life circumstance (God's providence), I have realized that just because my personal challenge year ended I am still not done learning about the need for giving thanks.

So, I'll be giving thanks every day for the rest of this month for at least ten blessings each day, and every time I post on my blog, I'll add them on at the end of my posts.

On December 1st, I'll be revealing a new challenge for 12/1/11 through 12/1/12 - and welcoming any who would like to join with me on a year long challenge . . . anyone interested?



Today I'm giving thanks for:
1. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8

2. Laughter with friends and family in an interactive theatre experience. I love laughter, and laughter with friends is sweet. Laughter with friends we haven't seen in a few months is even sweeter. I can't quite describe it, but I hope you know what I mean.

3. Seeing three actors and one actress show off their amazing talent while they performed various roles for a re-telling/showing Robin Hood. 12 roles, 4 people, theatre in the square kind of performance but done at Seattle Childrens' Theatre by professionally trained actors.

4. Reading the playbill, and coming across this job: Fight Director. I knew they had fight directors for movies, but for a Childrens' theatre production? Wow. I had been extremely impressed by the smooth exchange of pretend blows by the cast, and wowed by some of the more extreme stunts, but I didn't know that they hired a fight director. It made sense. (oh, and on the "kid" side of things - they did a great job of having intense fight scenes and yet making sure the audience knew that no one was "really" hurt)

5. Eating at the Crab Pot on the Seattle waterfront and having a great time, even if no one in my family eats seafood. They make awesome burgers too, and we enjoyed watching our friends crack open their crab, mussels, and clams with wooden mallets and giant bibs.

6. After weeks of beautiful, flame colored leaves flickering against a blue sky, we had a Northwest rain and wind storm that didn't cause many power outages, and now is gone with the new dawn.

7. Days and days of no clouds on the horizon, one day with them, and another without . . . I am so thankful for that. I love rain. I just don't like the overhang of gray from horizon to horizon that made up our winter last year. Rain is a good relief, and even better when followed by clear skies.

8. Scented candles that smell like apple pie.

9. Three types of chocolate chip cookies: Otis Spunkmeyer (from pre-made dough) for my sweet husband, bean and sorghum flour with no egg and little dairy for my daughters and I - split into dark chocolate and white chocolate varieties. Seriously sweet and yummy.

10. Celebrating my youngest daughters' tenth baptismal birthday. Her faith, which faltered last year in the midst of too much dance competition pressure, has been renewed by rest, hope, and time to just be her beautiful self. We learned a lesson together about the hype of competition that neither of us is likely to forget. She loves to dance, but competition just isn't her style. (and I am thankful for that)

11. My oldest daughter is taller than me (finally, she says), and although I miss the warm bundle of sweetness that she was as a baby, I love the tall lengthy sweetness that she is now. She is growing into a thoughtful young woman, who still loves to be silly and laugh.

365 Days of Blessings, Days 155 and 156

1. Funday Sunday at Peninsula Lutheran Church.

2. Parachute Games with awesome leaders, laughter, and shrieks of excitement.

3. All the amazing help that my husband gives me when "I" set up stuff for Funday Sunday.

4. Mega balloons for the balloon room.

5. Trick-or-treating in Gig Harbor . . . lots of cool costumes on kids and adults.

6. Trick-or-treating in a neighborhood . . . this is the way I remember it.

7. Walking the full walk to THE Candyman's house! Really, a retired candyman, handing out giant sticks of factory made candy to kids in his neighborhood.

8. Trick-or-treating with friends.

9. Pastor Paul's bonfire in his driveway on Halloween, and the Minute to Win It games he plays with his neighborhood kids.

10. Monty's pumpkins. I wish I had taken my camera. There were at least 25 major pieces of artwork there.

11. Knowing that even though I didn't get my Velmster costume all the way together this year, and spilled dish soap on the part I had before we went out, I am that much closer to having it all together for next year.

12. Hearing my kids get compliments on their costumes over and over again. Very cool.

13. My daughters' friend is participating in NaNoWriMo, so now they are too!

14. 1,382 words written today for NaNoWriMo. I feel like they are all junk at the moment, but I am glad that I was able to get some writing in today on the busiest day of the week when I've been going since 6a.m. at full speed for everything else. I wrote for 45 minutes in a dance studio lobby, and probably missed out on five cool coversations.

15. The nickel and chocolate replacement program for corn syrup candies that takes place in our household.

16. Watching my daughters separate out candy for Daddy, candy for Grandparents, candy for friends, and candy for the church movie night . . . knowing that they can't eat a single item they received from trick or treating last night. They can't have corn syrup, but they will happily exchange all the corn syrup candies for chocolate or nickels.

17. I have big enough shoulders to cry on tonight . . . even though I wish they didn't have to get used.

18. The snuffing noise our beagle makes whenver food is set on the table. I'm not sure which is funnier - when he decides that he is interested and sits down to beg, or when he snuffs three times, twitches his face and then walks away.

19. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

20. The Lord gives us help when we need it, and gives us the strength to help when others need it.

"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, Rejoice!" Philippians 4:4

365 Days of Blessings - Day 101

365 Days of Blessings, Day 101

1. The Lord provides.

2. This post marks the 101 days of counting blessings, and keeping track on-line with these posts. I am so thankful for this project, even if there have been moments that it has been a struggle for me to write them. It seemed so simple when I started it, and it is simple. I just simply need to be thankful . . . instead of grouchy, and quick to complain.

3. Every little bit of thankfulness counts.

4. I feel changed by thankfulness.

5. When I find myself complaining, I often stop and think, "whoa, do I really want to do this?"

6. When I stop complaining, and start thanking . . . other people around me do the same. We pull each other out of the mire of discontented thinking.

7. Or, on the reverse of number 6, when I start complaining, sometimes people around me say, "hey, what about that counting blessings-thankfulness thing? You know we can be thankful for . . . " - and they point me in the right direction.

8. Thankfulness changes relationships for the better.

9. Thankfulness draws me closer to God.

10. I want to live my life with a thankful heart, and I feel like I'm closer to reaching that goal now more than ever before.

Extra Blessings:
1. My mom-in-law's birthday was yesterday! She is a wonderful woman of strength, perseverence, and faithfulness. I am so thankful that she is in my life! Happy Birthday Mary!!!

2. I water-skied yesterday for the first time in 12 years!

3. Ice is a blessing on a sore knee joint.

Writing Blessings: Check out the September Table of Contents at Every Day Poets

Scripture Blessings:

"Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields like empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights."
Habakkuk 3:17-19

My life is so blessed! Our country is so blessed with fruitfulness! And yet, do we rejoice in the Lord? Do I?

I am thankful, Lord, and I will rejoice! Amen!