Well, today we are off to a funeral in Peabody- my former college roommate and best friend's mother passed away last week. This is a sad day for us as now we have both lost our mothers, and for women who have been close to their mother's through the years it is a loss that resonates throughout the remainder of ones' years. My mother died in October 2000 and there are still days I ache to pick up the phone and give her a call to talk about everything under the sun and then some, and then ask her advice and wise counsel on other matters. I see her and hear her voice in me and it's jolting at times, comforting at others.
My best friend's mother was an RN like my mom was. She was a school nurse. She raised a son and daughter and had her share of joys and heartbreaks before Alzheimer's began to plunder and rob her mind of memories. And then she was diagnosed with lung cancer, three primary tumors. Terminal. From the time she was diagnosed to her death was less than one month. She was a smoker. Diabetes and its myriad complications killed my mother.
My heart aches for my friend today. I have had fifteen years to adapt to being without my mother. Her journey along the path of sorrow has just begun. I hope she knows I'm there and will walk beside her into the future- will always be there for her.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
NaNo Novel Progress
I hit 100,000 words tonight. I'm not quite finished but I'm getting there. If this was a trade paperback it would be over 341 pages...more like an epic than a novel. I need to go back and clean it up and do some major editing. But that will have to wait until it's done.
Kelly and I might attend a Write-In at the Dunkin Donuts at Little River Plaza where they have some round tables in front of a cozy gas fireplace. It would be the first time in the four years that I have been doing NaNo that I would actually make it to a write-in. I'd be interested in meeting some of the other awesome western MA writers who have boosted our collective word count over the 3,000,000 mark in just 16 days! We rock NaNo once again!
Of course western MA has produced a lot of amazing writers like poet Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, songwriter Arlo Guthrie, and we can even claim Edgar Allen Poe as he lived in Boston briefly, I believe- but it may have been before he took to writing to earn his living- to name a few off the top of my fried brain. There are many, many more (contemporary) but I can't for the life of me find another name in the swirling sludge in my head. I really need to get to bed and let my brain sleep and refresh. If only my nose was a refresh button! I would be pushing it constantly! Ha Ha!
before I stagger off to DreamLand I need to relate this- I had a phone call that made me happy tonight. A few weeks ago I sent copies of Love Me Knots to my mother's cousins Ginny and Judy. Ginny's been trying to call me for a week and a half now and we've been playing phone tag. We finally connected tonight. She had something to tell me. She wanted me to know that she is NOT a reader. (She was quite emphatic when she said that and it floored me-I cannot fathom anyone in my family not reading! But there she's been all along! Go figure!) HOWEVER, she continued, she HAD READ the book, taking it out on the side porch a couple evenings and plowing through the five stories- sweet little romances all of them- and SHE ENJOYED the book! She liked it! And she wanted to thank me for thinking of her and sending it. That just made my day! And she too recited the mantra I hear about many of my books, "I don't read but I couldn't put it down!"
Everybody says that to me about whatever book of mine that they're reading...
Goodnight!
Kelly and I might attend a Write-In at the Dunkin Donuts at Little River Plaza where they have some round tables in front of a cozy gas fireplace. It would be the first time in the four years that I have been doing NaNo that I would actually make it to a write-in. I'd be interested in meeting some of the other awesome western MA writers who have boosted our collective word count over the 3,000,000 mark in just 16 days! We rock NaNo once again!
Of course western MA has produced a lot of amazing writers like poet Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, songwriter Arlo Guthrie, and we can even claim Edgar Allen Poe as he lived in Boston briefly, I believe- but it may have been before he took to writing to earn his living- to name a few off the top of my fried brain. There are many, many more (contemporary) but I can't for the life of me find another name in the swirling sludge in my head. I really need to get to bed and let my brain sleep and refresh. If only my nose was a refresh button! I would be pushing it constantly! Ha Ha!
before I stagger off to DreamLand I need to relate this- I had a phone call that made me happy tonight. A few weeks ago I sent copies of Love Me Knots to my mother's cousins Ginny and Judy. Ginny's been trying to call me for a week and a half now and we've been playing phone tag. We finally connected tonight. She had something to tell me. She wanted me to know that she is NOT a reader. (She was quite emphatic when she said that and it floored me-I cannot fathom anyone in my family not reading! But there she's been all along! Go figure!) HOWEVER, she continued, she HAD READ the book, taking it out on the side porch a couple evenings and plowing through the five stories- sweet little romances all of them- and SHE ENJOYED the book! She liked it! And she wanted to thank me for thinking of her and sending it. That just made my day! And she too recited the mantra I hear about many of my books, "I don't read but I couldn't put it down!"
Everybody says that to me about whatever book of mine that they're reading...
Goodnight!
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Buttons and Books
I went to a button show yesterday. I'm doing a program on the theme "Cute As A Button" for my local button club in January. I was on the hunt for cute buttons at the show, going from dealer to dealer asking them to show me their cutest buttons. I discovered that we all have our own idea of what cute means.
Since it's my program and my card of buttons I'll be taking along I decided that the card should have buttons I like and consider cute. The card is filling with what buttonologists or buttonphiles call goofies and realistics. I have a little princess in a pink crown, a grinning pineapple wearing sunglasses, an orange elephant with yellow polka dots on his butt, a silly looking frog, a glittery winged adorable lady bug, a big-eyed crazy cat and more on the card already. I have to complete it by prowling through all the buttons in my own collection now since this was the last button show of this year for us.
I am researching the phrase now and will write a little piece about it.
Kelly updated my Good Reads page adding the pictures of both Talon books. We ran down the street to the gift shop to try to retrieve the unsold copies of Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales and swap them out for copies of Yuletide Stories since the shop has been switched over to Christmas and Thanksgiving now, but we missed the owner who had to dash out the door to get to her son's game.
After all the errands were run and the laundry was finished it was time to get back into the NaNo novel. I am, at the moment 94,104 words into my novel. I'm about ready to wrap it up but they have this last crisis to get through and then the wedding. I can't leave Remy and Lissa dangling after the long road we've walked together since their series of development stories. I owe them this chance to tell their story. I'll keep going until they're done.
I'm proud of Kelly for hitting the halfway point with her novel this evening! Way to go, Kelly!
Time to go wrap it up for the night and then off to bed. Mondays come too darn fast!
Since it's my program and my card of buttons I'll be taking along I decided that the card should have buttons I like and consider cute. The card is filling with what buttonologists or buttonphiles call goofies and realistics. I have a little princess in a pink crown, a grinning pineapple wearing sunglasses, an orange elephant with yellow polka dots on his butt, a silly looking frog, a glittery winged adorable lady bug, a big-eyed crazy cat and more on the card already. I have to complete it by prowling through all the buttons in my own collection now since this was the last button show of this year for us.
I am researching the phrase now and will write a little piece about it.
Kelly updated my Good Reads page adding the pictures of both Talon books. We ran down the street to the gift shop to try to retrieve the unsold copies of Miss Peculiar's Haunting Tales and swap them out for copies of Yuletide Stories since the shop has been switched over to Christmas and Thanksgiving now, but we missed the owner who had to dash out the door to get to her son's game.
After all the errands were run and the laundry was finished it was time to get back into the NaNo novel. I am, at the moment 94,104 words into my novel. I'm about ready to wrap it up but they have this last crisis to get through and then the wedding. I can't leave Remy and Lissa dangling after the long road we've walked together since their series of development stories. I owe them this chance to tell their story. I'll keep going until they're done.
I'm proud of Kelly for hitting the halfway point with her novel this evening! Way to go, Kelly!
Time to go wrap it up for the night and then off to bed. Mondays come too darn fast!
Thursday, November 12, 2015
71,000 Plus Words into NaNo and Where do I go From Here?
I have been typing like a fiend for days it seems. I have 71,421 words so far, and that doesn't include the 27,000 plus words I scraped after the first three days. So that's like 98,500 words written since the 1st of November on weekends and after working all day and running around doing stuff that needs to get done...and I don't really have a clue where this novel is going or how it will end.
Life Study is based n a series of short stories I wrote- the same characters, but in Life Skills they were a little younger, still in high school. I've changed what happened to Lissa from a bike accident that left her near death with a mangled left leg to an unplanned for child who is 9 years younger than her next oldest sibling, and she is her mother's love child by another man, but she doesn't know this. The man she has always known as her father does know this and he starts abusing her when she is twelve-thirteen years old after emotionally wearing her down.
Lissa is drawn to a troubled young man named Remy Brice who has had his own share of abuse in his life. He's nearly four years older than her and was still in high school when she was a student there, as a condition of his last arrest where he would have been charged as an adult if things had not gone his way for once.
Lissa has an emotional breakdown in front of Remy who understands better than anyone what abuse in the home is all about. He takes her in and is protective of her, drawing his Uncle, cousins and his cousin's mother into the circle of protection he builds around her- exposing them all to violence from her father and his friends, who happen to be policemen who do not hesitate to harass Remy because of his juvenile arrests in the past.
Remy, meanwhile is trying to move forward in his life. He is going to buy his uncle's bungalow and fix it up. He's busy restoring and customizing cars, making good money. He has goals and plans, but now he is modifying them to include the girl he has always adored--Lissa.
The novel is about how two damaged young people bond and struggle to find a path out of their troubled pasts into a brighter future together. Like in Life Skills class, life provides them with some real challenges that they must deal with and find a way through. They have rough spots, both have post traumatic stress syndrome but they have found ways to cope with bad days and look ahead to good days.
It's basically a love story about two young people who have had difficult lives bonding and trying to make a better life for themselves together- and their struggles not to let the past haunt them.
How it's going to end? I have to clue!
Life Study is based n a series of short stories I wrote- the same characters, but in Life Skills they were a little younger, still in high school. I've changed what happened to Lissa from a bike accident that left her near death with a mangled left leg to an unplanned for child who is 9 years younger than her next oldest sibling, and she is her mother's love child by another man, but she doesn't know this. The man she has always known as her father does know this and he starts abusing her when she is twelve-thirteen years old after emotionally wearing her down.
Lissa is drawn to a troubled young man named Remy Brice who has had his own share of abuse in his life. He's nearly four years older than her and was still in high school when she was a student there, as a condition of his last arrest where he would have been charged as an adult if things had not gone his way for once.
Lissa has an emotional breakdown in front of Remy who understands better than anyone what abuse in the home is all about. He takes her in and is protective of her, drawing his Uncle, cousins and his cousin's mother into the circle of protection he builds around her- exposing them all to violence from her father and his friends, who happen to be policemen who do not hesitate to harass Remy because of his juvenile arrests in the past.
Remy, meanwhile is trying to move forward in his life. He is going to buy his uncle's bungalow and fix it up. He's busy restoring and customizing cars, making good money. He has goals and plans, but now he is modifying them to include the girl he has always adored--Lissa.
The novel is about how two damaged young people bond and struggle to find a path out of their troubled pasts into a brighter future together. Like in Life Skills class, life provides them with some real challenges that they must deal with and find a way through. They have rough spots, both have post traumatic stress syndrome but they have found ways to cope with bad days and look ahead to good days.
It's basically a love story about two young people who have had difficult lives bonding and trying to make a better life for themselves together- and their struggles not to let the past haunt them.
How it's going to end? I have to clue!
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Suppose You Wrote a Blog and No One Read It?
Writing from the black hole of anonymity tonight before going back to this year's NaNo Novel.
In my little sphere here in western MA I have accumulated a number of followers and fans. Most of them have free books lining their bookshelves. I can be overly generous with my family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. I have taken small stacks of books with me to appointments to gift the receptionists and lab girls. I gave books to the clerks at the post office who have helped me mail packages to the Library of Congress. I have left books in mailboxes at houses where people really decked their homes out for Halloween.
What I haven't done yet is get my books into the hands of an interested agent. Or a publisher.
I fail miserably at self-promotion. I am riddled with self doubt like Swiss cheese. You can hear the wind whistling as it blows through me.
It's a chilly, raw, rainy night here. I have had two bad nights of disturbing dreams. On Sunday night I dreamed I was in a Victorian era hospital/asylum like building, not as an inmate, but touring the place. The walls and doors were the color of cooked oatmeal. The cell doors were open. There was a man in a black suit walking ahead of me, the Administrator? He never turned around so I never saw his face. As I passed rooms/cells I would look into them. There were people who looked like zombies lying on their sides on the floor with tortured faces, using large knives to carved wedge-shaped chunks of flesh from the jaws and throats. It was not heart-pounding scary but it was disturbing enough that in the dream I had to walk outside. I was wearing a red dress. (In real life I never wear a dress.)
Last night I was riding a bike on a rather narrow bike path in a low gear so I was struggling along. About every twenty five feet or so there was a snake lying across the path. Different snakes. It made me apprehensive because I had to ride close to them or fall off the path. There was a girl riding behind me. Further along the path there was a great big yellow dog lying on the path we had to get past. It didn't seem aggressive but had small beady eyes for such a large dog. I reached the end of the path and recognized I was someplace I knew and wanted to peddle home on the main roads despite the traffic, but the girl who had been behind me convinced me it would be faster to get home going back along the bike trail. I woke up as we started back along it.
Both dreams didn't wake me up feeling terrorized- just disturbed and uneasy.
I don't know what they mean or why I am having such strange, vivid, unsettling dreams.
In my little sphere here in western MA I have accumulated a number of followers and fans. Most of them have free books lining their bookshelves. I can be overly generous with my family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. I have taken small stacks of books with me to appointments to gift the receptionists and lab girls. I gave books to the clerks at the post office who have helped me mail packages to the Library of Congress. I have left books in mailboxes at houses where people really decked their homes out for Halloween.
What I haven't done yet is get my books into the hands of an interested agent. Or a publisher.
I fail miserably at self-promotion. I am riddled with self doubt like Swiss cheese. You can hear the wind whistling as it blows through me.
It's a chilly, raw, rainy night here. I have had two bad nights of disturbing dreams. On Sunday night I dreamed I was in a Victorian era hospital/asylum like building, not as an inmate, but touring the place. The walls and doors were the color of cooked oatmeal. The cell doors were open. There was a man in a black suit walking ahead of me, the Administrator? He never turned around so I never saw his face. As I passed rooms/cells I would look into them. There were people who looked like zombies lying on their sides on the floor with tortured faces, using large knives to carved wedge-shaped chunks of flesh from the jaws and throats. It was not heart-pounding scary but it was disturbing enough that in the dream I had to walk outside. I was wearing a red dress. (In real life I never wear a dress.)
Last night I was riding a bike on a rather narrow bike path in a low gear so I was struggling along. About every twenty five feet or so there was a snake lying across the path. Different snakes. It made me apprehensive because I had to ride close to them or fall off the path. There was a girl riding behind me. Further along the path there was a great big yellow dog lying on the path we had to get past. It didn't seem aggressive but had small beady eyes for such a large dog. I reached the end of the path and recognized I was someplace I knew and wanted to peddle home on the main roads despite the traffic, but the girl who had been behind me convinced me it would be faster to get home going back along the bike trail. I woke up as we started back along it.
Both dreams didn't wake me up feeling terrorized- just disturbed and uneasy.
I don't know what they mean or why I am having such strange, vivid, unsettling dreams.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
A Writing We Will Go! NaNoWRiMo Update from My Kitchen Table.
Have been doing my NaNo Novel. Started one on the first and wrote like mad thru the 3rd then after some deep thinking overnight decided to scrap the 27,000 plus words I had written in three days and start anew. I now have 57,361 words written of this new novel. I met goal yesterday- seven days into NaNo (50,000 words), a new record for me. But I really did it in 4 days since I started this new version on Wednesday afternoon.
I am brain fried but happy because this is more like the book I had in mind although it is not anything like the synopsis I wrote. I will have to go back and update that.
Meanwhile, Kelly is doing well. She hit 15,000 words tonight. I can't wait to read her novel. It sounds interesting. A writer writes best when they write what they know. That's why it's so difficult when you're young- you don't have a lot of life experiences yet, but now that Kelly has been through college, has traveled and is more involved in trolley restoration and is working full time she is absorbing stuff like a sponge and able to write more because she has grown as a person and a writer. I like seeing how she's come along since her first attempt at NaNo in college. I'm really proud of her.
I know she gets frustrated with me because I can write so fast- but it's just that my brain is always going full throttle. And I can probably type faster that her. I made more mistake and have the tedious task of going back and removing my excessive commas and fixing up typos and grammar issues and so on and so forth whereas she probably doesn't have as many mistakes to correct because she takes her time and is more careful.
Anyway-NaNo is going well for both or us at this point. I'm about two thirds done. Still plenty of time before November 30th!!
I am brain fried but happy because this is more like the book I had in mind although it is not anything like the synopsis I wrote. I will have to go back and update that.
Meanwhile, Kelly is doing well. She hit 15,000 words tonight. I can't wait to read her novel. It sounds interesting. A writer writes best when they write what they know. That's why it's so difficult when you're young- you don't have a lot of life experiences yet, but now that Kelly has been through college, has traveled and is more involved in trolley restoration and is working full time she is absorbing stuff like a sponge and able to write more because she has grown as a person and a writer. I like seeing how she's come along since her first attempt at NaNo in college. I'm really proud of her.
I know she gets frustrated with me because I can write so fast- but it's just that my brain is always going full throttle. And I can probably type faster that her. I made more mistake and have the tedious task of going back and removing my excessive commas and fixing up typos and grammar issues and so on and so forth whereas she probably doesn't have as many mistakes to correct because she takes her time and is more careful.
Anyway-NaNo is going well for both or us at this point. I'm about two thirds done. Still plenty of time before November 30th!!
Monday, November 2, 2015
NANOWRIMO HAS BEGUN!
NaNoWriMo has officially begun (as of yesterday) and I got out of the gate quick and wrote 13,156 words before crashing and going to bed at 11:11PM last night. Tonight I will not be so prolific but I hope to at least reach 14,000 before bedtime! Have no clue where this story is going because it's really different from how I envisioned it when I wrote the synopsis. Guess we'll see.
I laughed like crazy when I posted my word count last night- they predicted I'd complete my novel at my current rate of writing on Wednesday, November 4th! Ha Ha! That would certainly be a new record for me- 4 days! I've finished past novels in 15 days, 18 days and 10 days.
A-writin' I will go!
I laughed like crazy when I posted my word count last night- they predicted I'd complete my novel at my current rate of writing on Wednesday, November 4th! Ha Ha! That would certainly be a new record for me- 4 days! I've finished past novels in 15 days, 18 days and 10 days.
A-writin' I will go!
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