A Christmas Carol…what a wonderful story.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but out of all of the Christmas specials and stories, that one makes me feel the Christmas-iest.  Written by Charles Dickens and published in 1843, it is so Christmas-y, that it wasn’t until after its publication that people began to commonly celebrate Christmas as a festive holiday. We all know the story, I think.  But just in case: It’s about a nasty, stingy, old geezer named Ebenezer Scrooge who has disdain for every human being on the planet.  He treats his only employee, Bob Cratchit, like dirt and refuses to have anything to do with his only remaining…

I have to admit that a lot of the topics I end up writing about come from the posts that I see on Facebook.  Sometimes I see a post and I think, “Hmmm, that’s a good topic to write about,” but I want to think on it more, so I put it in my brain’s filing cabinet and let it sit there until I’ve got more to add to it.  This week’s topic has been filed away for almost a month.   I recently came across two separate posts from two different people and both of them were of this nature:  This year, my main goal is to believe that I’m…

November…it’s “no-shave” month (for men only, please) and also a month to express gratitude for all of the wonderful things we have been blessed with.  In previous years, I’ve seen daily posts on Facebook during the month of November, in which my friends posted about what they were thankful for.  The most common posts have always involved family, friends, and pets, of course; I agree 100% that it’s our loved ones that make life grand.  What I’ve never seen though, is thanks for blessings in disguise, so I decided I’d write about being thankful for the things we wish for but never get…you know, put a little spin on the…

There are three reasons I’m writing today.  One is because I just created a separate Facebook page for my writing and it’s pretty empty, so I need to put something on it.  The second reason is because I’m off today, so I can.  The third is because I’m super-duper excited about a phone call I just had and I want to talk about it. Let me back up, though, and start at the beginning: This whole blog thing began because I wrote a book.  I started the book in December and finished it in January.  It went through a whole bunch of edits and is (hopefully) in the last, or…

“Smooth seas never made a skilled mariner.”  I went on the internet to find out who gets credit for that saying, but I couldn’t find a definitive answer.  One article said it was Franklin D. Roosevelt, while another said it was an English proverb, so who knows?  But hats off to FDR, the English-proverb-maker, or whoever else really said it, because it’s a good one. One of my favorites, actually.   When my father was diagnosed with cancer, my sister convinced him to come to her house and stay in her spare bedroom.  She, my brother-in-law, and I would take shifts caring for him. When someone is terminally ill, it’s not…

The other day, a friend asked me what I planned on writing about this week.  I said, “I don’t know yet.”  I had no clue.  Being unable to think of something to write about happens to me a lot, but then I’ll talk to someone or see something and voila! – I’ve got my topic.  Unfortunately, this week’s topic is inspired by a friend who is going through a rough patch.  Someone told him, “This too, shall pass.”  And it will.  It always does.  It may not seem like it right now, but things really will get better. Over the years, I’ve had some people come into my life and I…

A few weeks ago I wrote about editing.  Between then and now, I’ve finished the edit and have sent it to the publisher.  She is doing another read-through and then is giving it to some beta readers.  If you know what beta readers are, forgive me for telling you something you already know, but if you don’t know, beta readers are like a test group of readers in an author’s target audience.  My book is a Young Adult Contemporary novel, so my target audience is 12 years to 18 years old, although a lot of adults also read YA.  The beta readers she has selected are middle school students.  So…

Shortly after I finished my book, I was speaking on the phone with Erika, the lady who was going to edit the book for me.  She said she was excited and that she couldn’t wait to read it.  I told her not to get too excited because I didn’t even really know if it was any good.  I mentioned that I’d been reading a novel by Pearl S. Buck and (because Pearl S. Buck was a brilliant writer) I was having a lot of self-doubt over the slop I’d written.  She told me that I shouldn’t compare my writing to anyone else’s.  Although I knew she was right, I still…

“Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”  Ah, the famous line that probably everyone in the world has heard.  It’s so famous, you still hear people say it almost 25 years later.  Of course, such wise words could only originate from the equivalent of a sage…someone’s mother.  In this case, it was Forrest Gump’s mother. When I got up this morning and took my dog out, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how cool it was outside.  I even ended up putting on a long-sleeved shirt.  Fall officially arrived on September 22nd, but when it’s 80+ degrees out and summer refuses to move…

I think I’ve been subconsciously putting this one off.  I was going to write about this last week, then decided on something else.  Same thing the week before.  And the week before that.  It’s a topic that is highly debatable and what I have to say about it is likely to piss some people off.  No, politics isn’t the topic, but if you want to argue politics, I suggest you close this window right now and jump on over to Facebook…at the moment, there’s plenty of people to fight with there.  This one is about heroin addiction/addicts.   The reason I chose to write about heroin addiction (here and in my…