Category Archives: Literature

February 28, 2013 · 10:12 pm

The ‘e’ word, part 2

MSClipArt MP900390083.JPG RF PD Epilepsy.

My oldest daughter had a grand mal seizure when she was 26 years old, and has not had any issues since. She also deals with obsessive compulsive disorder, and is doing well because she is on a good treatment regimen for her conditions. she is a beautiful, happy woman of 39, with a 6-year old child (The Boy who frequently appears in this column.) Early on, Daughter 1 decided to face her problem and deal with it appropriately. The Boy will be her only child, as she had to go off her meds for that year in order to have a healthy child, and she isn’t going to chance that again.

Adult Onset of Epilepsy with no discernible physical cause is more common than I once thought, though it is still rather rare. It is hard to find information on it. Many adult seizures are caused by tumors, alcohol and drug abuse, or aneurysms, and frequently these can be cured.

However, many times there is NO PHYSICAL CAUSE that is discernible via MRI or EEG. This is the case in two of my children.

My son, who shares the same father with Daughter 1, always showed the same intensity of thought and purpose, combined with obsessing that his father and his sister had. He recognized early on that his OCD was crippling him, and sought treatment for it.

He will be 35 in a month, and has only had his seizure disorder for 18 months. He had trouble accepting it, refusing to believe it could occur again, since his sister had only had the one seizure that we knew of. Then, when he was forced to see that he had “a problem with seizures” he believed he could cure it with the proper diet, and exercise. When that notion was proven wrong, he at last went on the meds that his doctors prescribed, and he went 10 months with no seizures.

Because he is an analytical man, he wanted to see if the meds were working, and went off them for 5 days, and had 3 grand mal seizures and at least 1 minor seizure in 2 days. Fortunately, he was in the hospital, and they were able to get him on a good regimen for his meds.

Now he has faced the reality that he has epilepsy for no apparent reason, and there is no way to cure it. To my everlasting relief, he is making good decisions and going forward with life, instead of letting his epilepsy rule him.

On occasion, a physical cause can be found for the random seizures that characterize this disorder, but frequently no cause can be found. In my children’s case, no root cause can be found, but their father’s side of the family has had some history with random aneurysms and other odd occurrences, such as clinical Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Medication treats the symptoms, but also frequently has other effect that are not so desirable.

Thus, the dilemma that all people who must take these medicines face.

As an author, I have the perfect positive escape for the stressful things in my life. I write, I play games, I read books, and I reorganize my spoon collection–I stay busy. My chosen career is one I can carry with me, so when a family member is having a crisis, I can pack up the laptop and go to the rescue for however long it takes to help them work through the problem.

For a Vegan, this is an adventure, indeed! I have found ways to travel and dine on the road without having to go hungry.

My advice to those living with epilepsy still stands. Take the poison, and live the life you are given to its fullest. Deal with the problems when they arise and put them behind you. Happiness is a state of mind that must be cultivated.

Many people spend hours thinking about where they went wrong, and reinforcing the negative thoughts. This makes them negative, unhappy people!

To be happy, one must deliberately cultivate the positive things that are ALSO happening in their life, and give them more importance than the negative. Make your face smile, even when you aren’t being watched and you might be surprised at how much better you feel!

We all have random bad things that pop in and out of our lives. We live in a sometimes hard world, but we have this wonderful, glorious opportunity to see the real beauty of the world around us.

Grab it, and don’t let go!

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Filed under Battles, Epilepsy, Humor, Literature, Vegan, writing

Tagged as battles, fiction, humor, living with epilepsy, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 24, 2013 · 10:29 am

The ‘e’ word

Letting go is never easy.

You are grown up now, you’re a big boy. You make your decisions, right or wrong.

You’re thirty-five years old.

You have a seizure disorder. It’s okay to call it epilepsy. It’s okay to say the ‘e’ word. It’s not like we are naming Voldemort. Nothing caused it. Nothing will cure it. It will come and go, and yes it’s a bastard to deal with, but we deal with it. When you take your medicine, the symptoms are controlled. When you don’t, they are not.

You have this epilepsy thing and you have trouble accepting it, but I believe in you. Nothing has changed, except you have this problem sometimes.

Don’t choose to live your life looking at what you don’t have–so caught up in where things went wrong that you can’t see where they went right.

Life is so beautiful.

Your life is out there, waiting for you to claim it, waiting for you to wrap your arms around it and embrace it.

Life is good. Don’t become a small, angry person just because things aren’t perfect. Don’t build walls around the you that I love so much. Don’t hide behind stubborn anger, because life doesn’t care if you’re mad or not. Life goes on, and the only way to live, REALLY live is to grab it, and learn to love the life that exists despite the ugly bits.

It’s the contrast of the good and the bad that makes the good in life so beautiful.

Embrace every minute and see the beauty around you. Live in the moment, because you only get one moment, ever–and that moment is now.

Don’t let the ‘e’ word steal your “now.”

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Filed under Battles, Literature, writing

Tagged as Art, battles, dragons, literature, living with epilepsy, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 22, 2013 · 5:36 am

“Spam the Vegan!” shouted the Queen. “No quarter!”

One of the things I’ve noticed on all of my blogs is the number of strangely phrased, oddly ambiguous but pleasant comments from random “people” with email addresses and links referencing pictures of “hot young high-school girls, all of legal age” in compromising situations.

Yeah, right.

Strangely enough, these comments are frequently quite garbled as if they were translated to English by an old version of Google Translator. Another interesting thing is they frequently say, (and I quote,) “I need information of this more. I have search how can I get more.” Well now, that really pertains to the conversation we were having about +Orson Scott Card and character development, doesn’t it…

And these comments are frequently addressed to much older posts, as Johanna Garth, author and blogger from Portland Oregon, has also mentioned, possibly in the hope we wouldn’t notice. (She blogs on the most interesting things, over on Losing Sanity – you should check her out!)

These enterprising hawkers of underage hookers think that if they say something nice and ambiguous I might believe that it pertains to my blog. They think I will post their comment without checking to see what sort of links they have embedded in it! Heh – heh – wrong!!! Grandma wasn’t born yesterday. The internet is my business, and I take business seriously. I’ve learned quite a bit about the wolves in sheep’s’ clothing who lurk in the dingier alleys of the old web since I first began this crazy journey.

Strangely, this barrage of spam has really escalated since I began occasionally mentioning the word “VEGAN”.

I can only assume that their antiquated version of Google Translator has interpreted that word as implying that I am a “VIRGIN” and they are kindly offering me hope that one day I will no longer be afflicted thusly.

Now, we know Grandma has lived long and enjoyed every minute of her life and with four marriages behind her and 11 grandkids she is not a candidate for sainthood. I intend to keep on enjoying life to the fullest until the universe explodes, or whatever, so party on! Play that funky music, and dance the way you feel like dancing, but don’t try to trick me into being a carrier for purveyors of sleaze.

Really, one would think that scouring the internet all day and posting random comments with sleaze-links in unknown blogs would be awfully time-consuming. The return can’t possibly be worth the effort they must put into it. All their work in trying to insinuate links to their sleazy drivel, everything from porn to cold remedies on my blog is barking up the wrong tree, because I use Akismet here on WordPress and verify every comment that slips through so that my blog doesn’t accidentally become a festering boil on society’s rump.

I also do the same on my other blogs. What fun! It’s almost humorous the lengths folks will go to get you to be an unpaid advertiser for them.

Still, at least I’m doing well enough that 6 – 12 spammers a week feel my blog posts are worth wasting their time on. Maybe it’s the same person, who knows, but hey – in this business, attention is attention, even if it’s negative attention!

I’m so happy about the extra attention that I wrote a poem:

Spam, Wonderful Spam – they know I exist, so therefore I am!

Spam, Fabulous Spam – The Nigerian Prince need MY helping hand!

Spam, marvelous spam – the meat I can’t eat as it’s not Ve-gan!

(It rhymes if you say it just right! Honest!)

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Filed under Adventure, Books, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as adventure, fantasy, humor, literature, Spam, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 19, 2013 · 2:57 am

The Crazy Things

My good friend, indie author Stephen Swartz, had a blog post today about creativity, music and productivity. I love his blog, DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire, and find his dry sense of humor to be rather invigorating. He has been extremely prolific lately in getting the work out of his head and onto the paper, and I am quite impressed with his output! I’ve been more easily distracted lately by the shiny things in life.

Anyway, he was talking about the types of music that forms the soundtrack to his writing. As Stephen is also an accomplished musician, music is very important to him, and he is like me in that the right background music can improve the flow of ideas.

Now, everyone knows Grandma loves Heavy Metal, but let’s be real–Rammstein and Rainbow aren’t really conducive to a meditative state, so they are mostly for editing. And while I love John Adorney, I have a problem with some new-age music, in that it puts my brain to sleep. So I have certain playlists I pull out when its time to write. Sibelius, Mozart, Karl Orff – these great composers of classical music provide the soundtrack to Mountains of the Moon, now that we are approaching the end of the story.

In the beginning, when I first started writing Mountains of the Moon, the music that inspired me was Robert Plant’s Band of Joy album, along with Steve Martin’s ‘The Crow”. Butch Baldassari and David Schnaufer’s album, ‘Appalachian Mandolin and Dulcimer’ also figured prominently in my playlist at that time.

I know.

From Banjos and Dulcimers, to Cellos and Violins, to Stratocasters and Korg Keyboards. Throw in the occasional big choral piece like Carmina Burana and there you have the entire repertoire.

I find that at each stage in my work, a different sort of music is required. Once the structure of the story is laid out and the actual writing begins, I need light-hearted fare, sort of like the salad course at a fine restaurant. You can’t get much lighter than Steve Martin’s incredible work. Here is the link to the YouTube video of Steve Martin, Bela Fleck, and Tony Trischka playing The Crow.

During the both the initial imagining of a tale when I am world building, and also in the editing process, I need to keep on my toes. I find that Joe Bonamassa’s channel on You Tube is conducive to that.

So is this lovely YouTube channel I found with 87 (!!!) tracks for Rainbow. (I guess you know now what I listen to quite often when I am in need of inspiration.) I love YouTube!

So often random inspiration comes from my grandchildren, from my friends, and from the world in general. It never emerges out of my head the way it goes in. It always amazes me, how in the long run it’s the crazy things that spark my creativity, but the music always sustains and nurtures it.

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Filed under Books, Fantasy, Literature, Music, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, Mozart, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 15, 2013 · 11:18 pm

The Sedative Box

Alas, I find that the week spent with my grandson didn’t advance my manuscript any further. I didn’t even get any book reviews done this week, although I did find Nemo.

And Waldo.

And the last shred of patience I ever had.

The Boy is six, and is off-the-chart-smart, requiring no entertaining on my part what-so-ever. He is a real firecracker, and just listening to him as he is playing is a hoot. Batman and Darth Vader teamed up with The Green Lantern to kill Smeagol, thus saving Bilbo from a dreadful death.

I’ve mentioned before that The Boy is a sponge and literally soaks up everything he sees and hears. This child repeats EVERYTHING he hears or even thinks he has heard. He is VERY verbal with a huge vocabulary (of which he knows the meaning and proper use of every word), extremely sassy, and regularly loses his precious, carefully monitored television privileges, which he is deeply remorseful for, but not enough to remember to curb his lip when talking back to Mama (She Who Controls The TV.) Curbing his commentary is both time-consuming and all-important, as it has led to some trouble in social situations.

For the most part, Grandma’s role when babysitting is to gently but firmly remind The Boy that we show respect to everyone when we speak to them, and when he responds with verbal abuse, I respond by parking him in the corner for some quiet time. Grandma sets the timer on the stove for five minutes and we both rest our ears. When the timer goes off, we hug and make up our quarrel, OR he goes back to the corner to reflect on where he miscalculated and went wrong for just a while longer.

Oddly enough, The Boy doesn’t like tofu in his stirfry. Go Figure! And Grandma doesn’t do mac and cheese–what a tragedy! We did find something he would eat, and we agreed to disagree.

I have ten grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The Boy is the only one of my grandchildren that requires special handling, although the others are just as talented and amazing as he is. Unlike the others, this child can’t be left to his own devices, or mayhem WILL ensue. Because he requires more intense handling, I’ve had a lot of individual time with him that I’ve not had with the others.

I can honestly say he is not my favorite grandchild, because they are ALL so awesome and so individual that I could never have a favorite. They range in age from 23 years on down to to 5 months and fall into 3 batches. The great-granddaughter is 4 years old and is amazing to me–we’ve developed a special friendship bonding in Grandma’s kitchen.

In the first batch, the oldest is attending college full-time and raising her child as a single mother and doing exceedingly well at both jobs. She inspires me to do better at my own work. The next oldest is my ‘Fairy Goth-Daughter’, an artist and musician, who hooked me up with Rammstein and Appocalyptica. The third oldest is 20, an actress, and has found work in HBO documentaries and even a straight-to-video movie. She is also managing a fast-food restaurant to pay her bills, since acting pays as well as authoring does! (insert ‘lol’ here.)

The next age group ranges from 14 to 6 and their interests are still varying. Two want to write, one loves to draw and he is awesome at drawing any sort of car you would want. The other three don’t have any particular area of focus yet, but I see glimmers of artistic and musical ability in them all.

The littlest, at 5 months, is really into the cat and his dog. He tries to sing when you sing with him, which I find quite entertaining–it keeps grandma busy and out of trouble for hours.

But what I love about The Boy is his imagination. He let’s his imagination fly freely, and I can see the seeds that, with good direction, will grow into a filmmaker or author or scientist there. The Boy thinks WAY outside the box because it hasn’t occurred to him yet that there is a box!

It ‘s my job, as The Grandma, to see that they ALL realize there are NO BOUNDARIES to what they can do or be. Success isn’t measured in how many toys and possessions you gain. It’s measured in your happiness quotient.

Are you happy? When you get home from earning your daily bread do you look forward to a chance to spend an hour or two at your real work? My happiness quotient is very high, and always has been, even when I was working as a hotel maid. Happiness is a state of mind you must deliberately cultivate.

When you get home, why not simply forget to turn on the TV? (Or as I like to think of it, the sedative-box.) What has it ever done for you besides offering mindnumbingly similar programs interspersed with commercials designed to make you feel you aren’t complete without the product they are hawking. Bored and discontent is not how I want to live, so I find myself reading and pursuing other hobbies in the evening.

Today, I am also looking up. Two asteroids, one imploding over Russia and one doing a close fly-by is quite enough entertainment for one day! For all my friends in Russia, I hope you were not affected by the event this morning!

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Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, fantasy, fiction, literature, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 8, 2013 · 8:47 pm

Redemption and the Wayward Pen

I started my day today by reading Alison DeLuca’s great blog, Fresh Pot of Tea this morning, and her topic is Redemption. She has written an awesome post on villains and redemption, and I suggest you pay a visit to her blog and read the post.

Redemption in your villains is a topic that interests me, because in the Tower of Bones series I have a nasty villain, Baron Stefyn D’Mal, who is, in many ways modeled on the original Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know man, Lord Byron (if he were wholly devoted to the God of Darkness and was crazy on steroids.)

In the first book, Tower of Bones, we discover some of D’Mal’s history, and there is some reason to feel bad for the child he once was, but he is in no way a good guy.

In Forbidden Road, Stefyn D’Mal interacts with the protagonists somewhat less directly, but his influence is no less profound on the outcome of the tale, and his evil God has him firmly in hand.

Why are we attracted to tales of Redemption? Is it because we are aware of our own frailties and when we are immersed in the redemption of the fictional evil genius, whom we have secretly admired, we are some how redeemed ourselves? I think for me there is a secret relief in the notion that by one selfless act of heroism a person can counter a lifetime of misdeeds.

I’ve had a novel on the back burner since 1998 that will probably never be published, because it is terribly flawed and pretty outdated now. But I love the characters. In this tale there is one character who is not really a central character but her stubbornness causes no end of trouble for her family. But in the end, she jumps between the shooter and her niece because the desire to protect those you love is sometimes stronger than common sense.

I think that having a really great villain makes a story compelling. Great villains are why we read Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time has great villains–a LOT of them– which is what drives the plot(s). When I read a book with villains that really frighten me I return to it later and analyze what it is about that character that inspired such an emotional reaction in me. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what Robert Jordan did with the Forsaken. Lanfear and Asmodean were frequently pleasant, engaging people and one could feel a certain sympathy for them despite the knowledge that they were evil. Even Demandred had a certain cachet that one could relate to.

This makes writing your villains complicated. They are bad, or they wouldn’t be villains, they’d be the heroes. But it is a rare person who is completely consumed by evil, and so when we see the softer side of the devil we grudgingly like him.

Who knew Satan was a cat-lady?

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Tagged as adventure, Alison DeLuca, battles, fantasy, humor, literature, Lord Byron, writing

February 1, 2013 · 6:35 pm

It’s Official

It’s official – Forbidden Road is now available as a kindle download! I’ve even made a tweet:

FORBIDDEN ROAD-bk 2 in #TowerOfBones series http://amzn.to/ForbiddenRoad Sorrow, Peril and Magic in the Valley of Mal Evol!

This is where it gets strange. I have this weird feeling of being disconnected from the process, even though I am in the middle of doing it. I’ve done everything I can think of to get the word out, and now I can only hope for the best. I think people who like Tower of Bones will be curious as to where the story goes.

Writing Forbidden Road was an emotional thing in many ways. There are some serious, dramatic moments in this book. All I know is the book is done and has left the building!

Now I am taking my imagination backwards in time to finish the book Mountains of the Moon, which covers the events of forty years prior to Tower of Bones. This book is a stand-alone book as Tower of Bones was and is in many ways a comedy. Wynn, Edwin’s grandfather was a bad-boy!

Once Mountains is finished I can flesh out Valley of Sorrows. Some of the events in Valley involve John Farmer’s coming to terms with his inability to face the fate of one of Wynn’s companions, in an event he felt responsible for.

So today is the big launch, another chick has left the nest! Now I must get busy and write, write, write!

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Tagged as battles, magic, writing

January 19, 2013 · 8:53 pm

What I’ve learned from Piers Anthony

The book, A Spell for Chameleon, first published in 1977 was my introduction to Piers Anthony. I was immediately bewitched by his fantastical vision of a truly magical world, and I loved the fact that he placed it in Florida. His world of Xanth was a world where magic is as intrinsic to life as is oxygen, and that notion has intrigued me ever since. The concept of making magic a fundamental requirement for life is one that makes complete sense to me. Not only that, he did it with laugh-out-loud humor using puns and hokey jokes that were transformed into hilarious prose under his pen.

At the beginning of the novel Bink is facing exile from the magical land of Xanth and separation from his fiancée Sabrina for his lack of a magic talent. All human residents of Xanth possess some unique form of magic that ranges from incredibly powerful (such as the current King Aeolus’s ability to summon and control storms) to relatively useless (such as the ability to make a spot appear on a wall). In the hopes of discovering his talent Bink sets out to see the Good Magician Humfrey, a magician whose talent has to do with the gathering of information. Of course, things don’t go the way Bink hopes–it wouldn’t be a good story if they did!

Bink meets three women: Wynne who is pretty but stupid, Dee an average girl and also the sorceress Iris, whose power is the creation of illusions. Wynne and Dee are actually different aspects of the same woman, Chameleon, although Bink does not realize this at the time. Chameleon’s intelligence and beauty vary inversely according to the time of the month and she has been unable to find a man who is willing to be with her through all 3 phases. He also meets the Evil Magician Trent, and discovers that he actually likes him.

This book is one of the better books I had ever read, and I began a lifelong love affair with the works of Piers Anthony. Besides the witty prose and creative plots in this series, the COVERS of his books were AWESOME. I have been well-known as a person who will buy a book for the cover, and that is exactly how I stumbled onto this series. The Xanth series is one long running pun after another.

I bought A Spell for Chameleon for the same reason I purchase any book–I saw it on the rack in my local Albertson’s grocery store and fell in love with the cover.

I learned several things from Piers Anthony and his Xanth series, the first of which is that Great Covers Sell Books. I also saw that a true artist can take the most common, overused puns and turn them into the framework for a really fun adventure. I admit I did lose interest at about book ten, but even so, Piers Anthony still manages to have fun with it, and he still sells books. The Xanth series is incredibly popular, and deservedly so.

The series Anthony wrote that really captured my imagination, and which in my mind still reigns as his best works is the Apprentice Adept series, beginning with Split Infinity, Blue Adept and Juxtaposition.

This man has had one of the most prolific and highly regarded writing careers ever, with more than 150 published works to his credit. His sharp wit and amazing gift for world building are legendary, and he has won numerous awards for his work.

But what reading his incredible body of work and following his career has taught me is that even when things around you have gone to hell (as things are wont to do) the writer has the craft of writing fantasy to provide his mind with an escape from the TRUE weirdness of real life. Anyone who has read his official Wikipedia biography knows that Piers Anthony has had a long life with many personal challenges, through all of which I am sure writing was and is his refuge. This gives me hope and the impetus to just keep on doing what I can, trying to make silk purses from the sows’ ears of my work when I feel a bit discouraged.

Writing is a journey and you never know what lies around the corner.

If a writer is lucky, his works will eventually be beautifully covered and on sale in the racks at the local Albertson’s store, just waiting for a girl like me to pick it up for the art.

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Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, dragons, fantasy, humor, literature, Piers Anthony, writing, Xanth

January 18, 2013 · 2:03 am

Mucking out after the dragon

I thought I had The Last Good Knight all cleaned up. I was SURE I had it as straight as could be! Many eyes have looked at it, and still there are places that need attention! Fortunately, Carlie Cullen is applying her red pen to the hitches and halts in the flow, without changing the story or the structure since it has been published for so long. It’s a good story, probably my favorite but it has had a rough life.

This is the one tale that never had a real line-edit, and I was so new to this business that I thought the brief once-over my former publisher gave it was a true edit. They were new at the business too, and were learning a lot as they went along. It was a good edit, in that it cleaned up certain obvious things, but it was very quick and not a true, in-depth edit. I was not involved in the actual edit, as the changes that were made were not offered to me for my approval. Thus, getting that book re-edited so that it reads more easily is somewhat like mucking out after a dragon. Just about the the time I think it’s all done, there is another steaming pile of…goodness…look at the time, I should be cooking dinner.

Having worked with two editors since leaving the former publisher, I now see what was NOT done for The Last Good Knight the first time, and thank god, one of my editors, Carlie Cullen is giving it her attention. The biggest challenge is dealing with these things and moving on, instead of banging my head on my desk in frustration when she points out something I should have seen.

But that is why these sorts of edits are SO critical. We, as authors, only see what we THINK we wrote. This is something I can’t stress strongly enough–get an independent eye on your work. If you have a friend who has worked as a paralegal for her entire career, proof-reading lawyers briefs as Irene Luvaul did, even better! If you can’t find an editor you can afford, you can do this: Print your work out one chapter at a time, and sit down with the yellow high-lighter. take an envelope and go down the page one line at a time. You will catch a great deal that way!

I don’t feel nearly so badly about TLGK once I take a close look at my earlier works though – those tales who began their lives on the old Mac in the mid nineties. Once they were transferred to disc and then transferred again to PC they were put away and forgotten. Some have great storylines, and really fun characters, but I would have to completely rewrite them in order to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear they are right now. There must be an entire library of badly written prose on those old mac floppies.

There are many flaws in my earlier works, especially the ones going back to my days of pecking them out on the old IBM Selectric.They are rife with misspellings, poor grammar, clichés, head-hopping, and hokey dialogue. But underneath all the bad fluff I see the bones of the story I was so proud of having written in the first place, and I realize that there was spark there. This is why I say don’t be discouraged by your first initial draft of any work. All it needs is a lot more attention from you and the eye of an editor.

I was once a singer in a heavy metal band, and the opening lines of one of the songs I wrote went like this:

“It’s a cold and lonely morning, the sky dawns bland and white.

The emptiness inside my heart is as chilling as the night.”

It was cheerful little tune (NOT!) but with my ex-husband’s awesome guitar solos it was quite popular among our friends. We were very hip and very serious about the craft when we played. Of course I was 26 at the time, and quite sure I was the next female Ronnie James Dio. The band as a whole took ourselves far too seriously, and it soon got to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore. It was a long time before I realized exactly why we fell apart the way we did, when we were having such a good time playing small gigs as a local band. We became too caught up with the art of the music, instead of getting on with it and we forgot why we were doing it in the first place.

I admit that I don’t need serious anymore. I don’t need to take my writing so seriously that it’s not fun.

With that said, I do need to turn out the best finished product I am able to do, and that means allowing someone I trust to look at it and say, “This just doesn’t read right. Maybe if you change this a little….” I am not married to my prose, although I am sure it is the finest prose in the world. Oh, look…more dragon poo.

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Tagged as Art, dragons, fiction, humor, literature, mythology, writing

December 28, 2012 · 8:42 pm

Party On!

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year! As my favorite author of all time, Charles Dickens,English novelist (1812 – 1870), wrote in his epic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

If that doesn’t describe 2012, nothing does! So, let the revels begin! I will be celebrating the New Year with a small dinner party as I finally make that commitment to go fully vegan for the 31 days of January. If I find my health improves I will stay on the vegan diet permanently. It just so happens that this group is evenly divided between carnivores and vegans with those bearing the Y chomosomes being the carnivores.

So on Dec. 31^st I will spend the day making a dinner for the husbands AND a dinner for the wives! This will be an adventure. I will make a chicken marsala, and mashed red potatoes with grilled asparagus for the men and a curry and maple sweet potato soup for the ladies, along with salads and fruit for everyone. I make my bread vegan now anyway. I will keep you all posted on my progress with this new (to me) way of eating.

So put on your party hats and bring out the noisemakers! What better way to start the New Year than to enjoy a fine dinner, a brisk game of Monopoly and the company of friends?