Oh my...

This morning I rolled out of bed and mosied into the kitchen only to stop, glance back into the living room, blink a couple times, then nearly shriek! I love my cats, but I DO NOT love the presents they bring me. My dear sweet Tazzy, who just recently learned how to use the dog door, seems to have come into the idea that she needs to either earn her room and board, or she simply wants to show me she's thinking of me because, this morning I found, neatly set out on the rug for me, a dead baby mouse. Not only that, but while I was writing at the kitchen bar counter last Wednesday, she brought home a live bird. Luckily I was able to catch the it before it flew into too many windows and release it outside where it will hopefully become a little more wary of cats. It kinda made me feel like a modern day Snow White though, cradling the poor thing out to safety. Hehe. J At least now it's safe.
Speaking of Wednesday, I had my first official critique with my new critique group in Bend. It went great and we even had a little of everything to look at too, which was really nice. ^^ There's some great writers in our group and I can't wait to see what they bring next time! Speaking of writing, I should be getting back to mine. I hope everyone is having a great weekend and staying cool with these toasty temperatures here in Oregon. Until next time! ^^ J

Vacations and Happy 4th of July!!!

Vacations are very nice, but sometimes so is coming home. After 5 days at the coast, it was kind of nice to come home and relax before getting back to day to day life and what better to be home just in time for the 4^th of July! J Last Thursday after three hours in the car we arrived at my aunt and uncle’s beach house for our family reunion and headed straight to Mo’s. On Friday we enjoyed cheese cube samples and ice cream at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. If you’ve ever been curious about how they make and package cheese, I’d highly recommend you take a trip down there. They have a viewing area in which you can watch the factory employees cure, package, and box up the cheese. It’s pretty educational for anyone interested in learning about cheese. J



The next afternoon my brother, future sister-in-law, and I headed out to Netard Beach and tried our hand at clamming for the first time. We actually turned out to be pretty successful! ^^ We pulled up 24 Purple Varnish clams and 6 ghost shrimp. The shrimp didn’t have much to them, but the clams were absolutely delicious and tasted fresher than any store bought clams I’ve ever eaten. Digging through all that sand though made my arm awfully sore, which didn’t help at 4:30 a.m. the next morning when my step dad, brother, and I stumbled, bleary-eyed out of bed and headed to down to Tradewinds Charters in Depot Bay and boarded the Amigo to go deep sea fishing. With a crew of fourteen we set out passing three fat and sassy seals basking on the rocks, enjoying a comfortable life of ease. Maybe twenty minutes out, we dropped 10 crab pots, one of which I got to throw out personally, and headed out to catch some monster fish. All in all we reeled in about 10 fish. ^^ I pulled up four; three were sea bass and the other a tiny fish I didn’t catch the name of. For bottom fishing it was actually pretty quiet and when the wind started to pick up, the fish stopped biting.

What we didn’t catch in fish, we hauled up in crab. Altogether the total tallied up to 70 keepers (you can only keep males that are over a certain measurement). From there we headed back to the bay and disembarked. They cleaned the fish and cooked the crab right there by the docks were seagulls and seals gathered around in hopes of catching a stray morsel. Once we got back to the beach house, I took a good looong nap hehe. ^^
The whole weekend stayed pretty overcast with quite a bit of rain here and there, but the sun did make a nice little appearance on Sunday afternoon for the tail end of our fishing trip. Now I'm home much to the relief of my two cats, although they aren't very happy at the moment with all the fireworks going off.

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July and set off plenty of fireworks!!! Now it's time for me to go to bed. It's waaay past my bedtime. ^^ J

Save The Lemmings! Cover Reveal by Kai Strand

As an author, one of my biggest dreams is to someday get published, but in the meantime, I'd like to shine the spotlight on a great friend and amazing author already seeing her dreams come true and congratulate her on the cover release of her upcoming book Save the Lemmings! :)

When Natalie’s Texty-Talky invention makes her an overnight sensation, the media digs until they find a way to smear her goody-goody image. When her best friends start believing what they read, Natalie’s sunny spirit is pushed to its limits. How will Natalie stop the lies and win her friends back? And who will SAVE THE LEMMINGS?

Kai Strand is the author of the children's book The Weaver. You can find her at her website here or on her blog here.

Strands of Thought - Children's Author, Kai Strand: Cover Reveal - Save The Lemmings by ME: Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you Natalie Isabelle Cailean Edwards. The N.I.C.E. girl who doesn’t always finish last – though ...

Tips and Tricks when Self Editing

Do you ever get bogged down when editing? Find it all a little overwhelming? Try a few of these tips and tricks and see if editing your piece becomes a little simpler. :) Grab a pen and paper, as well as a copy of your story (or even article!) and lets get started!

To make things easier, start with just the first page of your manuscript. Go through each sentence and tally up how many words are in each one. I'd recommend recording the numbers at the end of each sentence, but it doesn't really matter where you write them down so long as you know where it is and can reference it easily. Do you have multiple sentences one right after another that are almost the same length? Try shortening or breaking them into two different sentences! Make sure you like the way they flow, but still be sure that you get some variation in there. :)

Next look at the first three words of each sentence. Do you notice any patterns? You want to avoid starting too many sentences the same way or else you'll sound like a broken record! If you find you've started two sentences that are next to each other with "I" then maybe try rewriting one so that it starts with something else. The goal is to make sure you aren't repeating a lot of the same sentence openings or, if you can, not repeating any at all.

Lastly, take your piece for a spin and read it out loud. How does it sound? Does it flow well? Does the dialogue sound natural? If you have a tape recorder, record yourself reading and listen to the playback. I don't recommend videoing though, only because you really want to listen to the words, not think about how funny it is to be watching yourself and asking, "Does my hair really stick up like that?" ;) Ask a good friend you trust to read it back to you and see how it sounds coming from someone who hasn't read it a million times. ;D

Did any of these tips help you? Have any tips you'd like to add? Share them in the comments below! ^^ :)

Maps

I like maps. :) Not the kind that tells you where North Street and South Street cross, but book maps that usually show you the winding streets of a perilous city or where a kingdom sits nestled against a gargantuan mountainside. It seems like I'm forever making maps that are attached to one story or another. They help me, for lack of a better word, map out the story and world my characters live in. The map below is the one in which my current novel is set. For now it's mostly a rough map, but I plan to add to it as I fully flesh out my story world. ^^ :)

When I do finally get published, I hope you'll find a much prettier version just inside the cover of my book. ^^ :)

Do you have any habits that help you flesh out your story world? :)

Adventures in Short Stories

Yesterday as I was editing and reediting the first chapter of my novel, I started to become a little bogged down and decided to step back and think about some long term goals. A novel, depending on the speed at which you write, can be a long endeavor! You have multiple chapters to fill, plenty of characters to flesh out, and after all that, you have editing. For a beginning writer like myself, it started to look like a rather daunting task! Working through my writing course with the Institute of Children's Literature I mostly wrote short stories. The whole time I kept thinking to myself, I don't like short stories. How can you become invested in a story that's only five pages long? Where's the build up? The plot? The adventure? The romance? I was simply not interested in such short works of fiction.

Now that I've been able to seriously commit to a full length novel, I'm beginning to see the value in short stories. When you've been working at the computer, hammering out all those little details, a short story is like a nice little breather. You can step away from that big daunting project, focus on something a little simpler, and just enjoy a shorter, less complicated piece of fiction. That's why I've decided to revive my first assignment for the Institute and make a true blue effort to get it published! ^^ :)

Strange Medicine, is a short story about two twins who go on a journey in New York to find a cure for their mother's sickness. After countless doctors have tried and failed to help, all seems lost until Tansy hears in her mother's whispering delirium, the name of a single doctor. Doctor Skiff. When Tansy and her brother Brett raid their mother's address book all they find are three words: Skiff Central Park. And so their adventure begins...

I heard somewhere that if you make a goal, you should either write it down somewhere you can see it or tell someone about it so why not do both? :) Getting Strange Medicine published is mine. What's yours? :)