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Friday Celebrations August 7, 2015


It’s Celebration time with Lexa Cain‘s blog hop celebrating the small things.  The blog itself, started by VikLit, is something to celebrate.  Visit our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.


 I am celebrating the end of the week, which should have started Tuesday afternoon, when I acquired the niggling notion that the next day was Friday, and each succeeding day I woke up to learn that it was nothing of the sort, and I had more days to go.  At least I did not run mad waiting and the weekend is (almost) finally here.


That is not to say that my place of employment is a nasty place to be.  Far from it.  But there’s something about  Saturday…


I will, once again, pack up and head out, this time to the lovely state of Vermont, traversed by the Green Mountains, a branch of the Appalachians, if I recall correctly.

The Green Mountains of Vermont

I grew up all over the United States, including Hawaii, but Vermont, my maternal grandparents’ home, was a sort of ‘home base’ for me and my siblings.  Grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles are gone now, but the mountains are still there, and I’ll be packing my camera.

I’ll be bringing a manuscript with me, involving  huge crocodile (see upper right of my blog page), that is in First Final Edit mode.  It’s a fable, and enjoyable.  Long enough at ~50,000 words to have complexity, but short enough to be relaxing.  And at the moment I’m doing what I love: taking a red pencil and making corrections and such.  Somehow, digital manuscripts are nice enough, but there’s nothing like  marking up paper.  And I have two colors of markers along with a ball point pen.  What more can you ask for?



Free champagne!  Well, that ain’t gonna happen, but one can dream!


What are you celebrating?  

August 5, 2015 – The Bonehead Blog Hop!


THE BONEHEAD BLOG HOP!


Welcome to the Bonehead Blog Hop!

This is the idea of Cherdo, who tells stories that make you laugh like a fool, the point of which are that she meanders through life being a bonehead, and it never crosses your mind (while you are laughing) that she’s about as boneheaded as a fox.



Your hosts are Cherdo, of Cherdo on the Flipside.
And me (Diana Wilder)

Our motto:
“Confession is good for the soul…it may not
be your soul, but trust me – it’s good for someone’s soul.”

I have spent the past week plus battling a dying computer that has stumped the good folks at my local computer store, crossed swords with Windows 8, which I am convinced is a plot by Microsoft to destroy civilization and drive it mad in the process. I wish I could think of something I did during all this time to show what a dope I have been, with this whole episode, but I honestly can’t. Unless it is that I have been stupid enough to underestimate the tendency of computer-type folks to keep fiddling even after they have come out with a product that is splendid in its simplicity, easy to use, and magnificent in its capability.

…This from the person who has tweaked a book cover for the umpteenth time until my nearest and dearest have inquired, sweetly, whether I am thinking of putting my hero in a dress for the cover and spring a surprise ending on everyone a la Bruce/Caitlin Jenner.

But, truly, I have had my share of truly dopey moments.  Let me tell you of one.

Picture a lovely lake by moonlight (on the border between South Carolina and North Carolina. Lake Gaston:



…Imagine me, tanned and fit, wearing my Camp Counselor getup. Imagine the boy who filled my dreams, cute grin…

We were walking together in the moonlight, talking of things. Of what? Well… things. I don’t remember. He was so cute, and the moonlight was so lovely and I was walking with him. I mean, really, how rare is it that the object of your crush gives you even the time of day?

So, we walked along, the breeze rose and teased my hair (I had long hair back then), I could smell the pines somewhere around there, and Debussy’s Moonlight Sonata was playing in my mind along with ‘Kiss de Girl’ from The Little Mermaid.
Yeah, definitely kissable…

I knew – just knew! – that he would kiss me as we went into the shoreside curve, heading back toward the cabins. A little footbridge was before me, we moved onto it, walking slowly, I looked up at him –

The world went forty directions, the earth came up and smacked me in the stomach, something seized my leg, and my face hit the dirt. I couldn’t move my one leg, and the other, making the motions of running, seemed to be doing it in a vacuum.

I levered myself to a half-raised position, wondering why my right leg was being caught and held while my left leg scrabbled in the dust and scree that covered the bridge. A pair of sneakers in front of me indicated that my escort was still there, though I found myself wondering if he, like Lot’s wife, had been turned into a pillar of salt.

Behold, the Snapping Turtle
In those moments of wondering what had happened and why Doofus wasn’t trying to help me when he weighed, probably, fifty pounds more than me, most of it muscle (between his ears, I was beginning to think) I realized that I had somehow managed to put my leg straight into a hole in the paving and was flat on my stomach, essentially trying to push-up myself to a sitting position with my leg waving in the air over the water (which, I did know, contained the occasional snapping turtle).

The Hunk as he truly was
I managed to extricate myself and get to my feet. Handsome, before me, said, “Why did you do that?”

Have you seen Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the scene where Belle watches the Beast morph into a handsome prince? Well that happened to me, but in my case the Handsome Hunk morphed into Mortimer Snerd.

I gave him The Look and walked back to my cabin alone.



The Look
I told this story to my sister and she said, “You weren’t a bonehead. He was.”

 “Yeah,” said I, “But I was a dope to have a crush on him.”



Go visit Cherdo’s site and grab the links (I am still trying to figure out my new computer, including how to make the images smaller now) and then look around. You’ll laugh, think, and generally have a great time!

Losing it – Really! (IWSG Post for August 5, 2015)


This is my monthly post for

IWSG started and continued beautifully by Alex and his friends and cohorts. It is a wonderful group, and the insights, reassurance and laughter have been priceless. Why don’t you try reading it?


Destruction…



Little stinker
This post illustrates a very important insecurity that I have about my writing. What if it is (shuddering at the thought) lost, destroyed, sent off into the ether, blown to bits, burned up or just plain fouled up? What then? I’ve been writing for years. I have manuscripts that are older than my family, started when I was still a little stinker of a child. I’ve saved them. Every word.

So… So what if it is all Lost?

The easy thing is to remind myself of why I write in the first place (see this blog post ) That’s why I’m doing it. And, if all I wrote was destroyed, I’d have to soldier on. Moby Dick was lost (pity Melville found it)and he wasn’t destroyed. I know of a lot of manuscripts that were lost, starting with Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, accidentally burned by a friend’s illiterate servant who mistook the written word on paper for paper to be used to light a fire. Gibbons was charming about it, no one was hurt, and the book was rewritten.

Kerflooey!

Well, something like that sort of happened to me. Did you notice how the post looks a tad clumsy? Text and color not as usual? Photos wonky? Not up to my usual mediocre style? Well, there’s a reason for that, and a lesson.

My computer went kerflooey (conked out, blew up, took a long walk off a short pier, committed seppuku) – pick one; the effect is the same.

 



The Geek Squad!
I tried to get it fixed but with no luck. It is gone, unless The Geek Squad (copyrighted name for BestBuy Tech division) is able to repair it.

The computer had everything on its capacious hard drive, and losing it is (or should have been) a real blow. Except that a few safety features were in place: 
  1. I had backed everything up on flash drives. Several of them. Duplicates.
  2. Microsoft gives everyone one Terabyte (how much? never mind. It’s BIG!) of free memory up in the ether. All my work is saved there. And a few other places. 
Someone said you have to ‘keep on keeping on’ (sounds like Yogi Berra), and that’s what I’m doing I’ve seen the worst that can happen (sort of) and I survived it. When my Cloud finishes uploading my storage, I’ll be fine. I survived.  It happened. and I am okay, though frowning at the learning curve.


I guess I’ll need to find something else about which to be insecure. After I accustom myself to the changes on this new system of mine. It should be fun.
 
Dang! Now to find something else to worry about.

Celebrations, July 31, 2015



Today’s post is part of Lexa Cain‘s blog hop celebrating the small things.  Visit our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.


Today I am celebrating nothing in particular (the best kind of celebration) that ended up as an exercise in creativity (the best kind of exercise, since you aren’t likely to fall and break an ankle as you are if you are doing strenuous physical exercise).


I am doing a beta-read for a friend from a writing board.  She has a collection of short stories with a Sci-Fi bent that will be coming out in the next few months.  I’ll ask her if I can feature it here.  I haven’t done more than skim, since I just got it yesterday, but one of the stories, featuring a cat, got me thinking about designs, cats, night, the stars, and the moon.

I started thinking how I might express a ‘Night Cat’ (not her term), and spent a happy hour or two doing it.

First you need a cat.  There’s this beautiful photo that I’ve loved for a long time:


This is a Maine Coon cat, arguably America’s original longhair.  DNA tends to show that they came over with the Vikings.  They are formidable mousers, very laid back, smart and almost dog-like.  Mine, now dead at a grand age and sorely missed, certainly loved the dog, but tended to thwack him with a paw.
I needed a night sky, which was a fairly easy assignment.  There are plenty of images available.  In my case, I wanted darkness and stars as a nice background.  I went to an old favorite:

I generally like a sky with a very dark blue tint, but in this case, I thought, black would be fine.  So I used it.

The cat would be a shadow against the sky, invisible unless you knew where to look, the embodiment of midnight (very amusing, if you happen to be acquainted with Maine Coons, but still…

I fiddled with things, adjusted shadows and highlights, frowned, tweaked, and came up with an image that isn’t a bad first effort.  I’ll fiddle more later:

I’m off to visit family this weekend.  One of them has learned that she will need a hip replacement operation.  This is not a bad development: the rest of the family has known it for a long time.  Now I must get her to understand that it will ultimately help her.  The fact that she is in my life (she’s my mother) is a very good reason to celebrate.

What are you celebrating?  

A Silent Soliloquy Blog Tour -July 11


I am delighted to be hosting L. G, Keltner for the blog tour for her new release, A Silent Soliloquy. 

 I’d like to start by thanking Diana for allowing me to stop by her blog today.  I’m happy to be here!  While I’m here, I’d like to talk about how I see my main characters, and what I envisioned for the cover and how it came about. 
 

Words can paint a stunning picture, but it’s up to the reader to make that picture come to life through their reading.  The physical description of a character on a page, no matter how detailed, is simply an outline for the reader’s imagination to fill in.  How much they make use of your descriptions in their visualization is entirely up to them, and as a result, every reader is bound to have a different idea about what your characters look like.  That being said, as I was writing, I did have a specific idea of what my characters looked like.  I visualized TIPPIE as being built like River from Firefly, except with natural dirty blond hair.  Of course, she frequently changes her hair color for various missions, so that is not a terribly important aspect of her character.  David is in his mid-twenties and has black hair and green eyes.  I didn’t necessarily want to picture him as any one actor while I was writing him, because I wanted him to look like any guy you might normally see.  When he was in high school, he would have been one of the guys his classmates considered cute, even handsome, but still relatively normal.  Some muscle tone, but not overly done.  You know what I’m talking about.  During the time our story actually takes place, he’s scrawny.  Almost skeletal.  Just looking at him, you can tell he’s had it rough.

Writing descriptions may be something I can somewhat pull off, but I knew from the beginning I couldn’t do the cover art on my own.  I needed someone else to help me in that department.  When I first envisioned the cover, the bloody flower was there.  However, I envisioned it in many locations.  One idea involved it lying crushed on the pavement beside someone’s boot.  Another had it lying in the palm of someone’s hand.  I also envisioned it in the garden where it grows in the story.  The only truly important thing to me, however, was that the flower be there.  To me, it’s an important symbol in the story.  This fact was passed on to the artist, who sent an initial sketch of the flower.  I was in love.  The following week, I had the completed image, and I loved it.  The most important thing I wanted from the cover came through beautifully. 

Title: A Silent Soliloquy

Author: L.G. Keltner
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian
Length: 28,000 words
Cover Art: Devross
Release Date: July 6th, 2015
Blurb:
TIPPIE was created to be a weapon.  By all appearances, she’s an ordinary girl of 18, and she uses that to her advantage in her work for The Facility.  What no one sees is that there’s another girl buried deep inside.  She can’t speak or control the movements of the body she inhabits.  As TIPPIE’s silent passenger, she can only observe.  She uses the details she learns from TIPPIE’s work to reconstruct the stories of other people’s lives.  It helps her feel a little more connected to the world she can only watch. 
When TIPPIE’s work leads her to David, a young man with a haunted past and information that The Facility wants, TIPPIE uses her skills to earn his trust.  The silent girl beneath the surface knows that TIPPIE is only going to hurt him, but she can’t help but feel for him.  Those feelings only grow, but she knows all too well that TIPPIE’s work will soon come to an end. 
Bio: 
L.G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband.  Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six.  Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good.  
Her non-writing hobbies include astronomy and playing Trivial Pursuit. 
You can typically find L.G. lurking around her blog, on Twitter, or on her Facebook page.
Purchase Links: 
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
Kobo 
You can also add it on Goodreads.
 
 

Celebrating the Small Things – July 10, 2015


Welcome to ‘Celebrating the Small Things’, started by VikLit (bless her!) and now run by Lexa Cain, our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonya Drecker at Kidbits.  Go visit them!  

Today I am celebrating surviving a hectic week at work and the weekend that will include an overnight trip to Maine, the land of craggy coasts, charming towns, some nifty cities and some really good food!  My charming old Labrador Retriever, white face and all, is at what he seems to think of as ‘summer camp’ where he gets to snooze, romp, stuff his face, get fussed over, bark, slobber, and generally act like a happy old doofus of a dog.





Where I’ll be

My car is packed and ready, I’ll be topping the gas, and tomorrow morning, early, I’ll be heading north (pronounced ‘nowath’ by the natives).  Why not leave tonight?  Errr…  Well, only a fool heads toward Main and the Mountains on a Friday night in July. 

Lovely place to lunch or dine…

I will be snatching lunch on Saturday at a little place called Azure Cafe in Freeport.  I stumbled upon this my last visit, when I was hungry and asked the local folks for a lunch recommendation.  This was one of them, and I liked the patio.  The food was simple but with a little spark that indicated to me that the chef had a real understanding of taste, flavor and presentation, and had imagination and a sense of humor.  Surprise!  I learned later that it had won quite a few awards.  The food was great and the people were just lovely.  So I will be lunching there tomorrow.

Incidentally, there’s a website called ‘Tripadvisor’ (www.tripadvisor.com) that is by and for travelers who give feedback on their experiences.  I have a few reviews there, and I have not been steered wrong when I looked things up.

Lots to celebrate!  How about you?  

Small Celebrations, June 19, 2015



Today I am ‘Celebrating the Small Things’ in this delightful blog hop, started by VikLit and now run by Lexa Cain, our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.

Today (Friday, June 19) I am celebrating surviving a hectic week at work, the advent of the weekend, and the feeling of renewal that has come to me in the past few weeks.  It has been a time of hurry, bother, harassment (as in crazy busy), and wondering why on earth I’m doing this nonsense when I would so much rather be somewhere else doing something else.

John Denver was associated too much with ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ to be taken seriously by many.  He had a lot of depth to him, and he died too young.  His song “Looking for Space” expresses how I sometimes feel:

What’s the point of puzzling over things?  the lyrics express it well:

              On the road of experience, join in the living day.
              If there’s an answer it’s just that it’s just that way,

That’s good enough for me.  I just keep on keeping on, chipping away at projects, savoring the good moments, and trying to convey the peace.

What are you celebrating?  

That’s Why I’m Here…


I was taking a break from some intense (not writing-related) work, and decided “I’ve got a minute, I’ll check my email.”

So I did.  There was a message with the title:

New Form Entry: Contact Form


The message starts:

You’ve just received a new submission to your Contact Form.

There is a name and an email, which I will not retain after I respond to the contact. (I promised)

And a message:

I have read the 1st two books in the Memphis cycle and enjoyed the story lines. My daughter loves studying about ancient Egypt so will pass along to her.

I looked up with the start of a smile.  How lovely to receive this!  It is funny how these seem to come when they’re needed.  I’m going flat out to finish the crocodile story (see upper right of the screen), have little time to do much else, even posting and commenting.  This is like a sip of cool water.  Or perhaps a glass of red wine.

That’s why I’m here.  That’s what I live for, in part, knowing that someone enjoyed what I offered.

James Taylor says it beautifully. The fortune and fame will probably never find me, but still:

     Fortune and fame’s such a curious game.
     Perfect strangers can call you by name.
     Pay good money to hear fire and rain
        again and again and again.
     Some are like summer coming back every year,
     got your baby got your blanket got your bucket of beer.
     I break into a grin from ear to ear
     and suddenly it’s perfectly clear.
     That’s why I’m here.

A Silent Soliloquy – Cover Reveal!


I am delighted to participate in the Cover Reveal blog hop for L. G. Keltner’s new novella blog (address below).  L.G. Keltner is a regular contributor on her blog, and her observations and point of view are always enjoyable.

She is now preparing to release A Silent Soliloquy, a Sci Fi/Dystopian work that has me intrigued:

TIPPIE was created to be a weapon. By all appearances, she’s an ordinary girl of 18, and she uses that to her advantage in her work for The Facility. What no one sees is that there’s another girl buried deep inside. She can’t speak or control the movements of the body she inhabits. As TIPPIE’s silent passenger, she can only observe. She uses the details she learns from TIPPIE’s work to reconstruct the stories of other people’s lives. It helps her feel a little more connected to the world she can only watch.
When TIPPIE’s work leads her to David, a young man with a haunted past and information that The Facility wants, TIPPIE uses her skills to earn his trust. The silent girl beneath the surface knows that TIPPIE is only going to hurt him, but she can’t help but feel for him. Those feelings only grow, but she knows all too well that TIPPIE’s work will soon come to an end.

A Silent Soliloquy is a 29,000 word novella.  If you enjoy Science Fiction/Dystopian work, this one is definitely for you.  And if you are not sure, it’s a wonderful way to try the genre.

Personal information:

L.G. Keltner

L.G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband.  Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six.  Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good. 

 
Her non-writing hobbies include astronomy and playing Trivial Pursuit.
You can typically find L.G. lurking around her blog, on Twitter, or on her Facebook page.

Interested?  Of course you are!

Pre-Order Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Time’s A-Wasting (IWSG June 3, 2015)



This is my monthly post for IWSG = Insecure Writers’ Support Group (click for the link).  Alex J Cavanaugh (may his tribe increase) started it and it has, for me, provided wisdom, understanding, laughter, and a lot of thought.  Sign up!  Read!

I used to like a song, quite a few years back, when I was convinced that life was dire and laughter was an accident.  I think it was sung by Connie Stevens.  At any rate, it had a line in it that stayed with me:

(Tick-Tock) If time is so fleeting
(Tick-Tock) Why wait?
(Tick-Tock) Too soon we may find it’s
(Tick-Tock) Too late.

I was still in my teens, was going to be around forever, and like the poet said, I  ‘Shined in my angel infancy’.  I was invincible (well, if my Dad was on my side) I was wise (if I didn’t look too closely at what I did and said) and fabulously talented (like a whole lot of other people).

Time passed, as it will, years passed, and on my last birthday, mulling over things that had happened and would, I hope, happen, it occurred to me that, based on my genetics and my family history, I had perhaps twenty-five (that’s 25) years left to me.

Hm.  That’s not a lot of time to someone who has left their thirties behind.  And I could mention a lot of things that I would love to do, but speaking as a writer, I have to say that my first thought was:  Omigosh!  I have to finish…  And I ticked off, on my fingers, my actual works underway.

That last book of the trilogy I’m working on, with #2 due out soon.  The…let me see…four books that I know of in my Egyptian series.  The notes I’ve assembled for the paranormal mystery set in Philadelphia.  The children’s fable (which, actually, will be coming out in about a month and a half… must get cracking).

And I can dawdle like anyone.  Worse than anyone, in fact.  When would these get written?  And how could I not write them?  I had no time!

No time…

Or do I?