IWSG & Thirty-One Loves of October

Geez Louise! I've been a day late on two post so far this week. It's a theme, what can I say.

So I haven't been feeling INSECURE lately. No, I'm not bragging... I just haven't been writing so there is nothing to feel insecure about I guess. Oh, but don't think I have been away from my writing or anything, I've been deeply involved in fact. But I haven't been writing in the "writing" sense.

I haven't added words to my manuscript, I have been adding inspiration. And no, that isn't a euphemism. I haven't added a single word. I can't. I can't find my muse... so I'm finding her in the glimpses of pictures - still frames.

In the place of letters and symbols that make up words and sentences, I am finding pictures which express the way I want to feel in a scene - what I'm picturing in my movie-reel-head.

She [picture of girl] walking through [picture of woods] looking for [picture of creature or boy]. But without the words. Do you get what I'm meaning? A storyboard but for a novel. My mind always works more like a movie than a book.

Example:


http://www.pinterest.com/thornsidhe/inspiration-badass/

http://www.picstopin.com/2560/sun-forest/http:%7C%7Cwww*usernetsite*com%7Cdepot%7Cwallpapers%7Cbeautiful-forests%7Cmist-forest*jpg/

http://monstersandbeasts.blogspot.com

 And this is just a small snippet of the WIP I am working on. Have I piqued your curiosity? I posted a while back a Flash Fiction piece about Rena, her sister, and the Baquarat. Here you see Rena holding her spear trying to summon her "spirits", The Dark Forest with her "spirits" approaching, and the Baquarat.



Thirty-One Loves of October:
Day 3: Pumpkin Patches

Who doesn't love to rummage through a Pumpkin Patch to find the perfect orange, white, or multi-colored gourd? I'm not talking about the Smashing Pumpkins... I've seen them in concert and loved every minute it! - in 1996. Though watching someone actually smash a pumpkin would be right up my alley but unfortunately I'm young enough to have missed out on Gallagher but old enough to know who he is. My favorite part now is the looks on my kids' faces when they get the perfect "fit" for them. Large to small, mean looking to adorable and sweet. All so different and fun.

What's your favorite kind of gourd?

Thirty-One Loves of October - Days 1 & 2

Today is the first official day of my month long dedication to the month of October - and not in any particular order. Yesterday should have started the whole thing off but my little one is battling her allergies and the allergies won. So I stayed home to snuggle her yesterday and didn't attempt to make her grumpy by venturing close to the computer.

My little blurb for Oct. 1st, is for the Changing of the Leaves. It's usually something everyone enjoys and loves. Lots of people around here and even a few from afar like to travel to Brown County, Indiana to peep them a show. The leaves like to slip into something a little more comfortable... or should I say, colorful! I love leaves. Every year my kids go out and collect a few of their favorite shapes and sizes, we laminate them on stockcard with the saying, "Jesus never leaves". Not that I'm super religious or anything, and this can be done with almost any religion (sub out the name Jesus), but I think its cute.

For today, Oct. 2nd, my second highlight is the Weather. I love how the breeze comes waltzing through the windows and washes the old air away and replaces it with refreshing and new particles to enrich our lungs... or in my daughters case... enrages hers, causing her to cough.

I love how it also varies from day to day. One day it can be in the high 70's or even low 80's and then next it's in the high 60's. Never a dull day around here. And I love that about Indiana, now come winter time... I won't be loving it so much. In fact I will be cursing it to High Heaven. When it's cold... it's just damn cold.

There are other reasons why I love the cooler weather so much, but that is for another post this month.

Stay tuned!

Express Yourself - EYM Birthday Week - Rewind

Express Yourself is a weekly Meme hosted by my friend Jackie and myself. We do this every week to learn more about our fellow bloggers and so far we have met some very talented and wonderful people!

This week marks the One Year anniversary of Express Yourself Meme!! Happy Birthday EYM!

Jackie & I would like to know; What has been your favorite question during the first year of EYM?


Oh, this is hard for me. So many questions have come and gone. And so many badges and banners have blessed this screen. Plus, I have slept a few nights here and there since this whole thing started.

I think some of my favorites were from last October...

• List 5 movies/books which cause the hair on your nexk to stand up.
• List 5 favorite monsters throughtout history (fictional or non-fictional).

And one from last November...

• List 5 perfect imperfections about yourself; things which bug others but are a part of what makes you - you.

If you would like, you may go ahead and revisit these in the comments below. Movies, monsters, imperfections... OH MY!

*Starting tomorrow, and every day following until the 31st, I will be highlighting ONE "thing" I love about the month October since it's my favorite month and all. I'm calling it "Thirty-One Loves of October". You are more than welcome to join. Just spotlight something each day that reminds you of October and makes you love it even more!

Cheers!!

Celebrating My Week is Almost Over

Ahhh, it's Friday! I can't believe it's here already! Woot!  VikLit always puts on a great Friday celebration! 

This week... hmmm I really don't have anything way over the top to celebrate. Let see what I can fish out of my memeory banks... 

• Well Jackie and I always seem to wait until the last week of each month to come up with our Express Yourself Meme list for the following month. I think we have silently agreed that we both work better under pressure. Maybe? *shrugs* But nonetheless the October EYM list is ready and is as follows...
  

• Another stressed out week this time for heath issues dealing with my husband. We will hopefully find out answers today. He already has Crohn's which might have contributed to this little stint. It's just one of those things.
• A friend at work let me borrow his Star Trek movie so I watched it over the weekend. I couldn't sleep one night so it was like 2:30am when I started watching it. Scottie is definitely one of my favorites! Right off the bat I knew what was going to be used to save someones life. It was predictable but I still teared up. I'm such a geek. And then in return I let him borrow my World War Z.
• My 13 yr old wanted to watch WWZ and I let her, it's not gory and I thought if she can handle The Walking Dead then she can most definitely handle WWZ. She literally sat on top of parts of my body - you know, "just in case". But she really loved it and even shouted at the screan a couple of times, "DON'T LEAVE THE CROWBAR YOU DOPE!" and even caught on to the little things that some adults didn't even get the first time around, "They just past him up. He must have something." I was rather surprised at how much she was calculating in her brain. Usually she is the child who says, "I don't get it," or, "I'm confused," but she's also the one who brings home straight A's. My 15 year old said he had too much homework and would watch it later.

Express Yourself - Author Luncheon

Express Yourself is a weekly Meme hosted by my friend Jackie and myself. We do this every week to learn more about our fellow bloggers and so far we have met some very talented and wonderful people!

This week Jackie and I are asking: What author(s) would you love to have lunch with?

I would LOVE to have a sit-down luncheon with Neal Shusterman. By the time I was done with him, he would hate any line ending with a question (?) mark and the sound of my voice. I find that man uber interesting.

Non-Fiction Series

Dark Fusion, Darkness Creeping, Skinjackers Trilogy, Star Shards, The X-Files Universe, Unwind Series

Novels

[The Shadow Club] (1988), Dissidents (1989), Speeding Bullet (1991), What Daddy Did (1991), The Eyes of Kid Midas (1992), The Aliens Approach (1996) [Easton Royce], Mutiny (1996) [Easton Royce], The Dark Side of Nowhere (1997), Downsiders (1999), The Shadow Club Rising (2003), Full Tilt (2003), The Schwa Was Here (2004), Antsy Does Time (2008), Bruiser (2010), Ship Out of Luck (2013), Tesla's Attic (with Eric Elfman) (2014)

Picture Books

Piggyback Ninja (1994)

Collections

Mindquakes: Stories to Shatter Your Brain (1996), Mindstorms: Stories to Blow Your Mind (1996), Windtwisters: Stories To Shred Your Head (1997), Mindbenders: Stories to Warp Your Brain (2000)

Games

How To Host A Murder, The Grapes of Frath (1997), Roman Ruins (1997), The Good, the Bad, and the Guilty (1998), Tragical Mystery Tour (1999), Saturday Night Cleaver (2000), Maiming of the Shrew (2001), An Affair to Dismember (2003), How to Host a Teen Mystery, Hot Times at Hollywood High (1997), Barbecue with the Vampire (1999), Roswell That Ends Well (2002)

Nonfiction

Guy Talk (1987), It's Ok to Say No to Cigarettes and Alcohol (1988), Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story (1989) with Cherie Currie, Kid Heroes: True Stories of Rescuers, Survivors, and Achievers (1991)

Poems

Shadows of Doubt (1993)

Essays

Afterword: Where They Came From (Mindquakes: Stories to Shatter Your Brain) (1996), Where They Came From (2000), Foreword (Darkness Creeping: Twenty Twisted Tales) (2007)

Another man I who would tickle my fancy to eat brunch with, Cormac McCarthy. He has some of the best novels and most of them have been turned into some of the best films.

Novels

The Orchard Keeper (1965) ISBN 0-679-72872-4

Outer Dark (1968) ISBN 0-679-72873-2

Child of God (1973) ISBN 0-679-72874-0

Suttree (1979) ISBN 0-679-73632-8

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) ISBN 0-679-72875-9

All the Pretty Horses (1992) ISBN 0-679-74439-8

The Crossing (1994) ISBN 0-679-76084-9

Cities of the Plain (1998) ISBN 0-679-74719-2

No Country for Old Men (2005) ISBN 0-375-70667-4

The Road (2006) ISBN 0-307-38789-5

The Passenger (forthcoming)

Short fictio

Wake for Susan (1959)

A Drowning Incident (1960)

Screenplays

The Gardener's Son (1976) ISBN 0-88001-481-4

The Counselor (2013)

Plays

The Stonemason (1995) ISBN 978-0-679-76280-5

The Sunset Limited (2006) ISBN 0-307-27836-0

Celebrate the Small Things - Bridges & Skies on Fire

Ahhh, it's Friday! I can't believe it's here already! Woot!  VikLit always puts on a great Friday celebration! 

This week... 

• I've had a busy couple of weeks. My Mon., Tues., Weds., the past two weeks have been grooling so I hope I have no more of those. And it's not like it's life and death things, it's just really dumb things that take my usual nights to a whole other place. Like my daughters' science partners don't help her with their toothpick bridge so I'm up late with her piecing the thing together and then I get up at 3am to finish it for her cause I feel bad. Stuff like that. I really hate school and I'm not even in it anymore. Or that the Jeep needed repairs so I had to drive all overs God's green Earth to deliver my husband to his desired places. Arg! (below are the pictures of my daughters finished toothpick bridge - she wanted do more but we needed more time)
  
  
   
• I am happy about this weekend though. My hubby isn't working OT and since it's a late Colts game on Sunday, I'm having a few family members over to make wreaths. And I'm hoping I get to watch the new Star Trek movie that a friend from work let me borrow.
• On Wednesday, as I was dropping my Jeep off to be repaired, I took this picture of the glorious sky here in Indiana that morning. There were all kinds of pictures floating all over FB and the local news but this was version.

  

  The sky was on fire in the East...

  
  
  
  
  

  

  ...and a double rainbow in the West. You can barely see the second rainbow just above the bright one.

Spooktoberfest and Zombies

Today I'm hoping to bring two of my favorite subjects together: Halloween, or blog-friendly, Spooktoberfest and Zombies.

Let's start with the one that involves less cardio, shall we.

With the oncoming of the spookiest holiday of the year, Jackie @ Bouquet of Books and myself are bringing sexy back – er – SPOOKTOBERFEST back this October. We had a great turnout last year and gave away some amazing prizes!

To find all of the gory details click here!

Now on to the more adrenaline related topic. Zombies  have been giving us humans a run for our money lately. And I mean that in the most punly way possible. The reanimated have made a comeback in the recent years and they seem to be going nowhere anytime soon. From comics, TV series and movies, to Zombie Walks and 5k's.

Let's talk about one of those 5k's in a little more detail. A summer ago I participated in Run For Your Lives zombie 5k which literally took my 5k experience to another level. Not only did I have to concentrate on my breathing and timing (cause I have asthma) but I also had to sprint in bursts and climb, crawl, jump, turn, scream, climb some more, be electrocuted, scream a couple of more times - you get my drift. Time flew and I had a blast while being chased by swarms of faux-brain-starved-undead.

Run For You Lives hosts all over the country and even in some other countries as well. I promise, they will be coming to a town near you! If you are interested visit their website here!

Plus zombies would be a great topic for Spooktoberfest! IMO anyways.

Have a great Thursday! And make sure you are keeping your cardio up. BTW, I bought World War Z (I watched it in the theaters) and I'm excited to have added to my zombie collection! Woot!