Back From the Future, Guest Post with Livia, and Celebrate the Small Things

I'm over at Leave it to Livia today for an Academy Award winning :) stop in the Champion in the Darkness blog tour! Please come visit!

However, I couldn't resist The Back to the Future Blogfest, and Celebrate the Small Things either, so look for those here

This fest is brought to us by M Pax, Nickie, and Suze.


You’re up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven’t brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you … from you.
You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox — sent from ten years in the future — and it’s filled with items you have sent yourself.
What’s in it?

- a package of Vanilla Chai tea, reminding me to go throw that nasty coffee down the sink :-)

- a tiny picture frame showing rotating photo from various world family travels, and special family events

- ticket stubs for the next three Disney Star Wars movies

- e-copies of ten books that I've published, encouraging me to keep writing and dreaming

- a souvenir from Kenya, showing that I will make it there on a mission trip

- a smaller sized swimsuit - to let me know that I will lose the extra pounds I'm carrying

- a tiny box, that once opened unfolds mechanically into a futuristic ultra-light plane that I can fly (ten years might be too soon for this, but I can dream, right?)

If you could bring something back from the future, what would it be?

1. We made it through a tough week of homeschooling, and we even had some laughs over the difference between learning other languages and learning Latin. (The link takes you to my neglected homeschool blog but you don't have to go there, go to Livia's instead!)

 

2. My book tour is going really well, thanks to visits this week with Allison, Jamie, and Livia (today)!

 

3. I started reading through my first draft of Champion in Flight (2nd book in Champion trilogy) with a red pen and sticky notes.

 

4. I had some awesome friends and family say really nice things to me about Champion in the Darkness!

 

5. You can still enter to win a free copy of Champion in the Darkness, or an Amazon gift card.

 

 

What are you celebrating today?

 

Remember, come to Livia's place and see "If We Were a Movie . . ."

 

 

 

 

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Guest Post at Jamie Ayres and An Award

I'm over at Jamie Ayres today with Clara's 18 Things, inspired by Jamie's book 18 Things.

Plus, I am waaaay behind, in giving thanks for an award. Allison at Geek Banter gave me the Very Inspirational Blogger Award a few weeks ago now. I meant to post about that on Monday, and here it is Wednesday. I'm pretty sure that Very Inspirational doesn't stand for Very Late. Despite my lateness, I am very thankful for Allison and this award!!! Thank you!

According to the rules, I have to share 7 things about myself that I have never revealed to you before. Here I go. (Wait, are there things I haven't revealed before? I have a tendency to say too much.)

1. I only have animals that can make their needs known to me by whining, barking, mewing, or by jumping on me. Why? I am a fish killer. Birds either tolerate me or hate me. I did raise rabbits way too successfully as a kid, and I think they're cute, but they are way too quiet. I just like noisy animals - currently, my beagle is barking - not a "I want you to play with me, feed me, or walk me" bark but the"I love barking" bark. I can actually tell the difference in the sound. And now, he went silent, which could mean he's found an animal to watch, or he's plotting a way out of the fence to knock over the neighbor's garbage cans. Noisy pets with big personalities always give me stories to tell, and they definitely help me meet the neighbors.

2. I like fun shaped paper clips, instead of the regular ones, but I use both.

3. I like Trader Joe's green tea mints - no one else I know likes them, but Trader Joe's keeps making them, so there must be someone else that does.

4. To celebrate the finish of Champion in the Darkness, my youngest daughter and I went to a ceramics place and I painted a ceramic box in the shape of a sword.

5. I've had three surgeries on my arms to recover the ability to move my arms, wrists, and fingers and to recover sensation in my hands. I don't take the ability to write, type, zip, button, and touch for granted. It's a gift.

6. My parents both have lifelong disabilities, but I didn't really think of it that way when I was younger, because they didn't. My mom has been deaf in one ear since birth, and my dad was born with something like hammer toes, and then had a surgery that went wrong and lost the part of his right leg as a teen. My mom has always loved to sing in choirs and praise teams, and my dad has always loved to stay active with skiing, canoeing, and tinkering on cars and motorcycles. They always find a way to do what they love. I think, or at least I hope, that gives me a different perspective on life.

7. I have a coin "can" that is shaped like big ben and has a picture of Peter Pan flying on it that I purchased in London in 2000.

I'm supposed to name seven people, and I did try to figure out who had received this award already and who hadn't . . .but I don't like choosing just seven people. You are all VERY INSPIRING bloggers to me. So, if you haven't already received this award, please take it and make it your own.

Please come visit with me at Jamie Ayres, and discover Clara's 18 Things!

Level Up Blogfest, Progressive Book Club, and Champion Blog Tour

I'm spending my time in three places today (not sure how it's possible but I'm trying). I'm gaming with Level Up Blogfest, reading with ML Swift's Book Club, and I'm touring at Laurel's Leaves for the Champion in the Darkness Book Tour. Oh, and I put my She Said What? Post yesterday. I think I'll have to more of a realist with my time one of these days, but it's Midwinter break, so it's all good, right? If you don't have time to read all the following, just scroll until you find what you're looking for:

 Brought to you by Allison at Geek Banter and Jamie from Mithril Wisdom, Level Up Blogfest gives us a chance to share our favorite games.

I had a tough time choose just one favorite. I love games. I'm not a huge video game player like my husband and kids, because if I got sucked into playing one of those ongoing games I would never come out. I stick with little ones like Fruit Ninja . . .only 60 seconds. (Then I make myself stop.)

As a kid I loved Monopoly, War, Rummy, Slapjack, and pretend Star Wars. My favorite video games as an early teen were Zaxxon, and Joust. (I'm old)

Then I learned to play Ditch'em, which is kind of like what my kids call Home Free. Two teams. One base. One team hides, and tries to run to the base, while the other team guards the base and tries to tag the runners/hiders. If a person doesn't get found or if a runner gets to the base, then the hiding/running team wins. However, if the base team finds all the hiders or tags all the runners, then the base team wins. I spent hours and hours playing Ditch'em during the summers with my neighborhood friends so in a nostalgic way I consider it my favorite game of all time.

For my 14 year old daughter's recent birthday, we played games for six hours in a ballroom sized dance studio with 21 kids. (Awesome fun for all of us) The games: Capture the Flag, Birdie on a Perch, Foot relay, Draw relay, Signs, Wink, Everybody's It Tag, Shuffling Bums/Chairs, Human Knot Race (two teams), I've Never Ever, Group Charades, 4 Corners, Tap, and Partner Everyone's It Tag. Later, the fun continued with Pass the Story, Mafia, and Pictionary.

If you haven't guessed yet, we are avid game players in our house, from Catan and Chess, to Pictionary and Nerts. If you meet us, and we have a deck of cards or an open space to play in, Game On!

What are your favorite games? Do you like video games, board games, card games, group/party games, or all of the above?

 The Progressive Book Club, brought to us by ML Swift is focused on books about the craft of writing, with a few fiction books thrown in for fun!

Our book this month is: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

 

 

Ages ago, a college professor of mine recommended Bird by Bird to me, and I found it and read it right away, awed by the way that Lamott gets to the throat and heart of writing in this book on writing and life. Reading it this time brought back both memories, and some reminders that I truly enjoyed. As with the first time, the most memorable section of the book for me is the first on on writing. I love the chapters on short assignments, sh-y first drafts, and polaroids. They remind me to keep it simple, and not try to write an entire "perfect" novel in one sitting.

 

When overwhelmed by the big idea of writing a novel, Lamott says, "I remember to pick up the one-inch picture frame (that she keeps on her desk) and to figure out a one-inch piece of my story to tell, one small scene, one memory, one exchange."

 

Although I find many other parts of Bird by Bird to be compelling, hilarious, interesting, and helpful for writing, the image of the one-inch picture frame sticks with me. I even used to have a picture frame like that on my desk in college. The question is now, in the midst of messy, busy life, where did I put that thing? Now I look out the window and that window frame reminds me of the same idea - except the window frame is way too big.





Have you ever read Bird by Bird? Do you use a picture frame, or a window frame to help you focus your writing time?

Next Month for Progressive Book Club, we're reading Save the Cat! and I'm already one chapter in and taking notes.

Please, stop by Laurel's Leaves for the Champion in the Darkness book tour stop!