Self-Pubbing or Traditional Publication? We got it! Take a short trip, designate the time as yours on March 14, 2015. Chesapeake Romance Writers is hosting a writers conference in lovely Williamsburg, VA. Just a few minutes' walk from Duke of Gloucester Street, the main street of Colonial Williamsburg, speakers will guide you in improving your manuscript and self-pub best practices. Editors will take your pitches. We will make valuable connections with other authors. All for $40 (PayPal button below registration form). For more info, click here. Please join us! PhotoPin- Free Creative Commons images for bloggers When I write a blog post, I love to include a fabulous photo or image to drive home my point. Who doesn't? But I do not have the mad skills that painters, designers, and photographers have. I use PhotoPin frequently. Easy to search, you can choose the size image you want and you just have to credit the artist. As a writer, I want others to credit me if they use my work. PhotoPin makes it super simple with an HTML file to load at the bottom of your blog post. Try it! I wanna go where it's warm!Our challenge this week comes from A.S. Fenichel - "It's cold in most places. What's your favorite vacation spot? This can be someplace you've been or someplace you dream of going. If you have a book with a terrific vacation spot, work it in, too. :)" Welcome to visitors from Jamie Denise's blog. She is awesome and I am sure you enjoyed her answers. If you missed her, hop back!
I'm sitting here, next to a crackling fire, making contingency plans for power outages, and thanking the good Lord that the girls' school division had the unusual good sense to call off school for tomorrow. I am more than happy to share with you my top five vacation spots. !. Australia- This is such a fabulous country. First, Australians are wonderful, friendly, hospitable people. Accommodations on the Gold Coast are amazing and a great launching point for a trip to dive the Great Barrier Reef. A must visit is Uluru (or Ayer's Rock). The last time I visited I only got three days. Not nearly long enough as it was so spiritually uplifting. 2. The OuterBanks of North Carolina- Mid-summer, October or winter, I adore this oversized sandbar. It is easily accessible from where I live and I used to rent a colleague's beach cottage on the off-season. Rain, sleet or balmy weather, life is truly better on the beach! 3. I saved the best for last. If I won several million dollars, I would high-tail it to the Florida Keys. No matter which key is this long archipelago you choose, you'll find an eclectic collection of folks who have escaped the lunacy of the world to reside in paradise. Others might prefer the culture and glitz of Miami (which is great to visit) but give me tank tops and flip flops any day. Coincidentally, I have a story set in Marathon but it's not complete. More women's fiction as it's a group of four women who find way more than they expected during their summer break. So which are your favorite vacation spots? Tell me, I'm dying to add to my to-visit list! After you share, head over to Victoria Barbour's blog to discover her favorite escape!
Beef Stew and fresh breadThe beauty of beef stew is that you can clean out your fridge or pantry and still come up with fabulous comfort food. It's frigid today and my 10-year-old was up last night feeling nauseous. And I, like most mothers, don't sleep well when my kid's sick. Therefore, we needed comfort food. This is what I threw together with few ingredients, intending to add barley. Ended up, I added so many potatoes that I didn't need more starch in the stew.
Voice RecognitionAbout two years ago I bought Dragon Dictation. Spent roughly an hour to an hour and a half setting it up. It was pretty accurate after the time spent training. I was not thrilled that I had to speak punctuation. And then it was, well, bitchy, when it need the latest update, etc. And it was not inexpensive, to say the least. With the growth of the Chrome Store and the Apple App Store, other apps, free and way less expensive are available. I like the Chrome apps because they make all files available through my gmail account. And for recording scenes quickly while making dinner or folding laundry (as I sadly have to do these jobs in my home for the mini humans who live with me), a free app that does a great job is perfect. Try VoiceNote II for full editing options within the app. You can choose your language and even dialect of that language. Add to the dictionary to teach the app words it doesn't accurately recognize, that you regularly use. And it can run offline, too! For simple and fast voice notes, use Dictation io app from the Chrome store. Not fancy, not difficult. Just a voice note to save those brilliant flashes of creativity that we all get at the least convenient moments! Try one or both! This week we're taking the question from Brenda Margriet - How do you choose the setting for your book? Does where you live inspire you? this can apply even to books set in paranormal worlds - what do you use from "real life"? If you've popped over from the amazingly talented Ronnie Allen, welcome! If you missed her, head on back to read all about how she picks her stories' locations. The setting is integral to the plot, to the conflict. It sets the context of the story, it anchors the backstories. My first novella Guarding His Heart and upcoming second novella Sorcerer's Legacy in the Wiccan Haus series takes place on a mystical island off the coast of Maine where shifters, vampires, mermaids come to heal their souls and bodies alongside humans. I pitched a different manuscript and she told me about the shared world series. I was intrigued, read the novellas and immediately was inspired to write a story with a unique shifter.
And my Back in the Boondocks trilogy (beginning with a to-be-named ghost story) is set in a Virginia County where families can trace their roots back to the original settlers. Those who can't are "come heres." The county, Yates County, is a compilation of the county I grew up in and those adjacent to it. I love places like that, where the roads are long, curvy, and narrow. Where people smile and speak to strangers, all the while hiding family secrets as old as the colonial churches and Revolution War earthworks. Now it's time to check out what simmers in Sarah Hegger's lush creative mind when it comes to her settings! Random Writing Prompt Generators Occasionally we all need a jolt of creativity. Maybe even with a cattle prod. Here are some fun random writing prompt generators. Writer Igniter, a feature of the DIY MLA website, makes it easy to fire up your creativity by spinning the slot style widget.
Props: Tickets to a sold-out event Setting: Halls of a museum Another random writing generator comes from Writing Exercises.co.uk. There's something for everyone. Need a scenario? Got it. A first line? Here's a random one to challenge you. Even characters and town names are randomly generated for your writing pleasure. A must try!
Springhole.com provides a fun, really out there group of generators. Try the genre blender, the prophesy generator or the Fairy Tale Plot generator.
What fun prompts did you get? Welcome! I love visitors and if you're popping over from J.J. Devine's blog, I'm sure you enjoyed a peek at her idiosyncrasies. If not, head back after your time with me and check her blog out! Collette Cameron would like to know - What quirky habits (superstitions, must haves, etc.) do I have while writing? Most of the time I compose on my laptop, hopefully soon to be former laptop. But I plot rough scenes on paper, in script, with a Tul pen. I need my Tul pens. I'm addicted to Tul pens. Also, I have a love of notebooks, pretty spiral ones, stitched leather ones with parchment paper. Superstitions? In general, I'm pretty superstitious. With writing, though, I'm not terribly superstitious. Murphy nails me in every other part of my life so I guess he gives me a pass in writing. I'm thankful for that!
Veronica Forand is next on our blog hop. You will enjoy her company. She is funny and engaging and amazing! When a motion picture is adapted from a book, I'm frequently disappointed with the movie. How much was left out. How much creative license was taken to translate text to film. The poor choice of actor/actress who barely fits the physical description the author crafted so carefully so that we the reader could see him or her as clearly in our minds as they did.
And, if I really lived the book, the movie better be pretty damn good. I picked up the book during a work trip and finished it the day Chris Kyle and his buddy Chad Littlefield were killed reaching out to a fellow soldier. I cried for this man I did not know but who had served his country with the utmost patriotism. For Chad Littlefield who laid down his life helping an ailing veteran. For their families, grieving at the senseless loss. It better be a damn good movie. It delivered. Clint Eastwood delivered with gritty honesty the horrible responsibilities of war and the lasting effects on our military. Bradley Cooper valiantly portrayed the complexity of Chris Kyle along with simplicity of his belief that he would protect his country and his brothers any way he could. So much was left out from the book, but the film captured the essence of his personality, snapshots of his service, moments of joy and strife with his family. It was a damn good movie. And a damn great tribute to a hero. A great tribute to every man and woman who lay their lives on the line for the defence of their country. Spiked Hot Apple CiderToday's recipe is simple: fresh apple cider and honey bourbon or honey whiskey. Yum! I'm not much of a drinker because it tends to make me more tired than a mom of two preteens already is. But with a chilly winter taking its toll, I've taken to imbibing one of these every few evenings. Enjoy! 6 ounces fresh apple cider (the kind you find next to refrigerated orange juice) 1 ounce honey bourbon or whiskey (I use Evan Williams and only half an ounce 'cause I'm a lightweight!) 1 cinnamon stick This is perfect for those cold evenings. |
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Shifters & Spice (e-book 99 cents!) AuthorRomance writer. Paranormal and contemporary. Mother of two and wife of perfect husband. Love the environment, travel and reading. Subscribe:Archives
May 2017
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