Liebster Love

It's been awhile since I've done one of these blog award posts. Very often I tend to thank the person who gave it to me and then ignore the rest. And it isn't because I don't like the awards. I'm always honored whenever anyone thinks of me when handing out a little blog love. It's just...they're a lot of work and I don't always like the part where I have to single out people to pass it on to. First, because some people don't like doing them, and, second, it means I have to exclude lots of people in order to mention others when in fact I think you're all awesome and deserving of some blog love.

But I thought, since I have some new friends who perhaps don't know much about me, maybe I should answer a few questions. Both Jill Haugh at I Had a Little Nut Tree and Suze at Subliminal Coffee have bestowed the lovely Liebster on me, so I am going to do a little careful combining of their questions to get out of this as painlessly as possible. Thank you, ladies, for your questions.

Jill asks:

1) What was your favorite book when you were eleven?

My Side of the Mountain. I grew up in Colorado, and my family backpacked in the summers. I was absolutely enthralled with the idea of a kid setting out to live on his own in nature. I totally believed you could live in the hollowed out trunk of a tree. My other favorites were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Where the Red Fern Grows.

2) What did you want to be when you grew up? 

I had the usual fantasies of being an actress or rock star, but I also thought seriously about becoming an astronaut at one point. Until someone told me you had to pee into a vacuum device in space. That did it for me.

3) What was your favorite TV show when you were a kid? 

I liked all the fantasy shows: I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Batman and Robin, Star Trek...we're talking syndicated reruns here!

You know I had a pair of hot pink harem pajamas as a kid.

4) How old were you at the time of your first (real) kiss. 

I assume by "real" you're not talking about the time when I was ten and took my neighbor into the laundry room and smacked my puckered lips against his in a quick millisecond of contact? Unfortunately, I seem to recall a decade long dry spell for kisses after that.


Er, the rest of Jill's questions seem to be about sex and accidentally discovering your parents doing it, and gah...moving on...

Suze is a recycler and these are some of the questions she answered and then passed on to me:


5) Where are you living right now? 

I live in the smallish town in northern Colorado, but usually I tell people I live ten miles outside of Boulder. People seem to know where that is because of these guys:

Mork and Mindy

6) Last movie you watched?

I haven't been watching a lot of movies lately, but I recently checked out this Canadian sci-fi series, Continuum. Have you seen it? Very smart time travel/cop show set in Vancouver. I'm hooked. Season two is debuting on SyFy channel in June. I'm excited for it to start again.

7) What book are you reading now.

Well, um, I'm still reading The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton. I'm a slow reader, but I'm even slower when I only have time to read at night. I get about ten pages in and then fall asleep. But, wow, is it well written. Highly recommend.

8) What are you listening to right now?

My dog's snoring. Seriously. She's a Boston Terrier with a very pug nose. Every inhale is a loud snort when she's sleeping. Listen for yourself:

9) Greatest struggle as a writer?

I'm a pantser, so finding the story as I write is the biggest struggle. It can take me awhile to decide which direction to turn in the story, and I end up doing a lot of backtracking when I mess up. I've also been made aware by critique partners that I (allegedly) have a problem with using too many similes. Pfffft. But that's like saying my dog has had too many bacon treats. Never enough!

10) What is one book you think everyone should read?

Well...I won't inflict The Complete Works of Shakespeare on you, but Macbeth is a damn fine story, as is Hamlet. And I know I go on and on about Shakespeare sometimes (he'll always be this guy to me), but his plays, not unlike the Greek myths, are the touchstone for so many modern stories. Even the series Sons of Anarchy, with its hardcore biker gang, is an ode to Hamlet.

11) If you could be one of the Greek gods, who would you be and why?

Oh, come on. Athena, of course:

"Goddess of intelligence and skill, warfare, battle strategy, handicrafts, and wisdom. According to most traditions, she was born from Zeus's head fully formed and armored. She was depicted crowned with a crested helm, armed with shield and a spear, and wearing the aegis over a long dress." -- Wikipedia

Athena: the original badass woman warrior.

Thanks again for the Liebster Love, ladies. I really do appreciate it. And to anyone who made it to the end of this post, this Liebster is for you too. Really, I'd love to see some of you tackle these questions, but I'm not going to name names. Check my sidebar for some awesome new people to follow, if you aren't already doing so.

Have a great weekend!

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Spock And...Um, Hot Flashes

I got waylaid this weekend by a writing project I wanted to submit and Mother's Day festivities, so I'm short on longwinded speeches (you're welcome).  But I still have a couple of things to share. First is this commercial featuring the two Spocks that had the geek in me giggling.  I'm sure a lot of you have already seen it, but it's worth a look if you have even latent Trekkie tendencies.

Second, I wanted to give a shout out to my Erma Bombeckian friend, Susan Flett Swiderski, who is releasing her novel, Hot Flashes & Cold Lemonade this month!

Living the perfect life has always been easy peasy for Pearl Bryzinski, because she’s practically a pro at ignoring the negative and putting a positive spin on the facts, but it’s impossible for her to find anything positive about Daddy skipping town with that blue-haired floozy in a flashy brown Pinto. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t ignore the fact that he’s gone… or the fact that she’s becoming a drama queen who can sweat like a sumo wrestler doing push-ups in a sauna. It’s almost enough to suck the blush out of her rose-colored glasses. Whether she likes it or not, she’s gonna have to turn some of her wishbone into backbone.

Layer by layer, assumptions and misconceptions peel away, as Pearl learns to buck up in the face of reality, and to laugh at her imperfect… but not so bad… life. Supported by a down-to-earth husband who loves her with every blue-collar bone in his body, a mother who isn’t the self-centered witch Pearl imagined her to be, three terrific grown kids… okay, make that two terrific kids, and a Golden Boy who’s a far cry from 24-carat… and a bunch of wonderful wacky gal pals, Pearl comes to realize that her mixed bag of family and friends makes her life damned near perfect. Pearl being Pearl, she’ll never give up her rosy specs entirely, but learning to handle reality also means learning to deal with death.

Connect with Susan at her blog, I Think Therefore I Yam, or on Goodreads



Ready to see the new Star Trek movie? Are you team Quinto or Nimoy? And do Vulcans get hot flashes? Just curious...

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Badass Women: Emma Edmonds

"I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic -- but patriotism was the true secret of my success."

During the United States Civil War approximately four hundred women, spurred on by patriotism, revenge, or merely a chance to earn a wage, successfully enlisted in the army -- both Union and Confederate -- disguised as men.
                                                   
In 1861 Emma Edmonds, donning short hair and a man's suit, managed to enlist in the Union army as a soldier and nurse under the alias Frank Thompson. So urgent was the need for soldiers that a physical exam was not required, and she was quickly sworn in and sent to Washington D.C. for training. From there she was dispatched south to fight under the command of General McClellan. She is said to have engaged in the Battle of Bull Run and at Antietam during her enlistment.

It's what happened after attending the burial of a fellow soldier, however, that Edmonds's story elevates her to true Badass status. Wanting revenge for her dead friend, she applied for and received a position working in McClellan's intelligence gathering network as a spy.

"I had three days in which to prepare for my debut into rebeldom, and I commenced at once to remodel, transform, and metamorphose for the occasion. Early next morning I started for Fortress Monroe, where I procured a number of articles indispensably necessary to a complete disguise."

She had already proven successful at disguising herself as a man and now, as she prepared to infiltrate the Confederate army, she took her particular talent a step further. She transformed herself into a black man named "Cuff" by darkening her skin with silver nitrate and wearing a "minstrel wig." The disguise worked and she was able to collect important intelligence on the Confederate army's defenses, mostly by blending in with the slaves in camp and listening to and observing the soldiers and commanders who took her presence for granted.

In total Emma Edmonds went on eleven spy missions. Often she went as "Cuff," sometimes as a black woman, once disguised as an Irish peddler woman selling soap, and another time disguised as a young white man with southern sympathies as she tried to identify members of a Confederate spy network. On one occasion she was shot at and injured while escaping on a stolen horse. My kind of woman.

Because she was a woman, though, her heroic story took an unusual turn at the end of 1862. While assigned to General Grant's command she contracted malaria. Unable to check herself into the army hospital for fear of being discovered a woman, she chose to leave camp and seek private medical attention. Once recovered, she set out to rejoin her unit and resume life as Private Frank Thompson -- until she discovered her name on a list of Union deserters. Unable to return, she finished out the war serving as a female nurse in Washington D. C..

After the war Emma Edmonds (Seelye) married and had three children, but her label as a deserter continued to rankle. In 1884 she sent a letter to the War Department explaining her unique experience, and Congress agreed to review her unusual case.

Here is some of the wording from House Bill Number 5335:

Truth is ofttimes stranger than fiction, and now comes the sequel...That Franklin Thompson and Mrs. Sarah E. E. Seelye are one and the same person is established by abundance of proof and beyond a doubt. She submits a statement...and also the testimony of ten credible witnesses, men of intelligence, holding places of high honor and trust, who positively swear she is the identical Franklin Thompson...

On July 5, 1884, Congress granted Emma Edmonds an honorable discharge, complete with a twelve dollar a month pension. She died in La Porte, Texas in 1898 and is the only female member of The Grand Army of the Republic buried in the military section of the Washington Cemetery in Houston.

So why isn't Hollywood making this woman's story?  Did you realize four hundred women had joined up to fight in the Civil War disguised as men? I read tales of fellow soldiers not realizing they were fighting alongside women until some of them actually gave birth in camp. That would be a pretty strong giveaway I should think.



references: 
Spies & Spymasters of the Civil War by Donald E. Markle (Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1994)
Secret Missions of the Civil War by Philip Van Doren Stern (Bonanza Books, 1990)
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Ms. Understood

Fellow blogger M. J. Joachim had an interesting post up yesterday about being misunderstood in a comment she'd left on another blog. I admit it's something I've wondered about often (I suspect my attempts at humor often fall flat). Most of the people I interact with online are writers, and so we are naturally comfortable communicating through the written word. But even for people who are good at expressing their ideas and opinions in writing, there are limitations when it comes to communication.

Most human communication is supported by non-verbal cues, meaning we rely on facial expressions, eye contact, body language, and tone of voice to interpret what's being said to us. But all that gets stripped away in written communication so it seems only natural that occasional misunderstandings are gonna happen out of a simple lack of information.

I mean, consider how easy it is to confuse a three word sentence like this old standby:


                            Let's eat, Grandma!     vs.     Let's eat Grandma! 

That's a case where inflection of voice by a hungry speaker, or perhaps a hungry, murderous look in one's eye, might key us in to which version to believe. When it's communicated solely through writing, we have to look to punctuation and context to derive the intended meaning. It can get tricky when we're writing things in a hurry and hit "post comment" before we've had a chance to review what we've written and consider it from the reader's perspective. Things could sometimes get interpreted differently than how we thought we had written it down.

I have an online friend with whom I exchange email letters quite frequently. At one point I think we both conceded that one must allow for a lot of leeway and forgiveness when communicating only by writing, given there are none of the verbal or visual cues to accompany the words, no quick interruption to get clarification on what the other meant. We necessarily include a lot of these guys >>  :P  to reinforce that something was meant as a joke or sarcasm, as we both tend to be unrepentant smart-asses by nature and feelings could get hurt if something was taken in the spirit it was NOT intended.

Anyway, I guess my point is that unless something is said with obvious and intentional disrespect or rudeness, I think the benefit of the doubt should always be extended when dealing with each other's online comments, blog posts or even reviews. Most people mean well (Yeah, I know, except those idiots who leave one star reviews. I don't mean them).

Have you ever had a moment when you thought you were misunderstood because of something you wrote?

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Insecure Writers: Only One You

GOOD MORNING!!!

I know many of you are experiencing a little bit of an A to Z Challenge hangover today and, well, think of me as that annoyingly cheerful faerie who flits into the room early the next morning to wake you after your month-long night of debauchery. Ha!

First, Happy May Day! In pre-Christian times this was the mark of the first day of summer, while June 21st was actually the point of midsummer. Either way, it's snowing here today, so whatever. Still I'm in a good mood that even the wrathful heavens cannot ruin with their downpour! May is my month, like Ireland is this guy's island.  Yeah, it's my month.

Second, it's the first Wednesday of the month. And since I'm in such an annoyingly cheerful mood my Insecure Writers post is necessarily an upbeat one. Not that there's usually any shortage of things to be insecure about for this writer. I can be Woody Allen-level neurotic on most days. But sometimes I'm more pumped up than insecure, and that's when I think instead of focusing on the frailties we should embrace the positive (mayhap this is the sort of optimism and enthusiasm taking a month off the blog gets you?).

One thing I wanted to commend everyone for on their A to Z posts was how original they were. As an observer I saw very few repeated topics and, of course, people's individual personalities shone through even when things did overlap. And that's something I've noticed about the stories you write, too. I've sampled enough of your novels now that I recognize just how intertwined blog personality and writing style really are. It's no surprise I suppose. Our voice is our voice, whether it's how we organize a blog post or choose to relate a story. It's deeply individual, and the more we hone that quality that makes us unique, the stronger our appeal will be as writers.

Of course, author Barbara Kingsolver says it a little more succinctly than I do:

"Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer."   

Yeah, that. Now who's ready to blog again?!! 

This annoyingly cheerful post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. We post the first Wednesday of every month with enthusiasm!




*Spirit of the Night painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1879)

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Party Crashing With Books, Breaks, and Bad Boys

Invites are for losers

I'm not A to Z'ing this year, but that doesn't mean I can't sneak in the back door and steal a few hors d'oeuvres from a passing waiter (or cabana boy, as the case may be).

And today I have a couple of really good reasons to crash the A to Z party. Books by fellow bloggers!

First is The Begonia Bribe:  2^nd in the Garden Society Cozy Mystery series by Alyse Carlson (aka: Hart Johnson) 

Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment …

A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all.

But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb.

Available May 7, 2013.

Pre-order on: Amazon Barnes and Noble Find Hart/Alyse at: Confessions of a Watery Tart Facebook Author Page or Profile Twitter

Second is the release of Solomon's Compass by Carol Kilgore. 

A missing belt -- her uncle's prized possession. The lure of buried treasure. And a sexy former SEAL who makes U.S. Coast Guard Commander Taylor Campbell crazy. What more could any woman want. Right?

Taylor is in Rock Harbor, Texas, on a quest to unearth her uncle’s treasure—a journey far outside the realm of her real life. There’s one glitch. Taylor's certain the buried treasure was all in Uncle Randy's dementia-riddled mind. Now he’s dead.

Former SEAL Jake Solomon is in Rock Harbor under false pretenses to protect Taylor from the fate that befell her uncle and the other members of a tight circle of Coast Guardsmen called the Compass Points who served together on Point boats in Vietnam.

Jake is definitely not supposed to become involved with Taylor. That was his first mistake. Taylor is attracted to Jake as well, but she refuses to wait for him to locate the killer when she knows her plan will force her uncle’s murderer into action.

But the killer's actions are just what Jake is afraid of.

SOLOMON’S COMPASS is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Carol writes a blend of mystery, suspense, and romance she calls Crime Fiction with a Kiss. Always at least one crime; always a love story. You can find her here:

blog . website . facebook . twitter . goodreads . amazon

And finally, I had a visit from the Goon Squad. Okay, maybe it was more like the Avengers Stud Squad. They looked at me with those wounded, superhero eyes and said:

I don't argue with bad boys like them, so I'm taking off from the blog for the rest of April. I'll still check in on all the A to Z action, er, intermittently. You know I can't completely unplug from the blogosphere. It'd be like taking that weird electromagnetic device out of Tony Stark's chest. See you in May. 

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A Word From Our Curmudgeonly Sponsor

That's me on the right. 

I had planned to share a beautiful poem by William Wordsworth, just to say Happy Spring and have a nice weekend. But...then it occurred to me that there was a another message I needed to post on this last Friday before the big A to Z Challenge gets underway.

I am not participating in the A to Z Challenge this year. I have done it the last two years (never missed a post!!) and had the best time doing it, but I've just got too much writing I have to get done this year to devote that much time to blogging in April. However, that doesn't mean I won't be dropping by your posts occasionally to see what you came up with. I love a good theme.

But here's the thing...

You've got to make it easy for me to comment. That means NO Captcha/Word Verification. I'd even love it if you'd turn off moderation. I promise you won't get bombarded with crazy spammer people selling Nike footwear out of the back of their virtual van. Well, you might get a comment like that once or twice a year, but there's so much satisfaction in deleting their comments, I can't tell you how enjoyable that is! The power! It's everything Galadriel thought it would be when she walked away from the ring. :)

So that's all. For those about to A to Z, I salute you! And, what the heck, I'll even toss in the Happy Spring stuff, too. Maybe it will act like a fertile chant to banish all the snow and crappy weather once and for all. Bah!

                                              Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure: --

But the least motion which they made

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man? 

Now get off my lawn!! 

creative commons photo of bird by Enric Martinez

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