Breaking News

The low-budget news team reports on a disturbance at the home of Aspiring Author.

Yes, it’s true. This round of revisions is done. But, you say, how is that possible? You were on vacation! Indeed I was, but it turns out sunshine and sand and family time and good books are all fine fuel for revising. Who knew? And now, the manuscript is off to my trusty crit partner and then should be winging its way to Brilliant Agent’s desk sometime next week (eek!) (um, unless trusty crit partner has devastating news for me after reading the manuscript… time will tell).

(Vacation pics under the cut.)

Bliss

(See you in two weeks.)

Happy Canada Day!

The Traditional Christmas Turtle

I have a Christmas tradition involving a turtle. Not this kind:

or this kind:

although those are good, too. No, this turtle is waaaay different.

I’ve been making my traditional Christmas turtles since I was a kid. Or at least I think so – my siblings swear they have no memory of this unusual tradition. Did I dream it up? Maybe. But despite the fuzzy date of origin, this tradition is going strong. I’ve passed it onto my kids, thereby making their friends think my kids are as crazy as I am.

I don’t think it’s crazy. And probably there are tons of people who make traditional Christmas turtles, right? In case you’re not one of them, I share with you the fine art of turtle-making. [ETA: You make these with a mandarin orange, which is a traditional Christmas treat in my corner of the world. The oblate shape of the orange makes the "turtle" roll with a great wobble.]

Wishing you peace and joy….

The last bit of summer…

My parents have a cabin-in-progress on a tiny lake in the middle of nowhere. It’s a really wonderful middle of nowhere. I’ve been going there all my life, and I love it, but somehow a bunch of years passed without me getting there. So last week I went! A ferry to the mainland, several hours driving on highway, an hour on logging roads, and then this:

Yup, that’s the sign that signals the start of “our” road. 4×4’s only from this point on.

Oh, but it is so worth it! Here’s the view from our deck:

It was sooo relaxing. Visiting family, canoeing on the lake, staring at the myriad stars at night, listening to the creek gurgling and the loons calling… awesome!

After a few days chillin’ in the backwoods, we headed to Shuswap Lake for a family reunion (hubby’s mom’s side). Hubby has great relatives. Lots of laughing and eating and story-telling all weekend. Then it was on to my brother’s place for a quick visit (and more laughing and eating and story-telling) before heading home.

Now I have a few days left of my holiday time to read and hang with the kids and do the back-to-school prep stuff. Then it’s back to work at both the day job and the writing — revisions are waiting for me!

Hope the last bit of summer is wonderful for you.

Peace….

Nerdfighters and holidays

How cool is it that hordes of young people are absolute fans of a YA writer and an eco-geek? Let me tell you, it’s very cool! Check out this news clip about “nerdfighter” brothers John and Hank Green:

Reading, education, saving our planet. Yup, teenagers care about this stuff, which only goes to show that teenagers are made of awesome. (By the way, a nerdfighter is a self-professed nerd who fights against world suck, who fights for awesomeness… or something like that. And another btw, if you haven’t seen the Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, you can check it out here.)

In other news… I’m now on holiday from my “day job” for two and a half weeks — w00t! And life is good.

• running in the a.m. before it gets too hot
• working on revisions to my WIP
• heading to the lake or the ocean when the house hits the completely-oppressive-heat level
• hanging out in the basement in the evenings, watching the Olympics and working on my youngest son’s baby book (he’s so not a baby anymore… this task is just a tad overdue).

So it’s been very pleasant, I gotta say. In a couple days, we’re heading out of town and will be visiting relatives in the Cariboo and Okanagan areas of BC for a week. Then it’ll be time to get ready for **gasp** back-to-school. Yikes. I don’t even want to think about that yet. I think we need another month of summer. Show of hands, people? Yes? The ayes have it. More summer, here we come.

Obsessive… who, me?

I’m back! Did ya miss me? We had a super relaxing week camping here:

And I finally got some reading done — wanna see what I read?

Now I’m in the reading zone and am loving working through my huge TBR pile. So many great books! Soon, though, I have to turn my attention back to writing, cuz I’ve got some major revisions that I want done by the end of September. I don’t do the reading-and-writing-at-the-same-time thing very well (I’m more of a get-totally-obsessed-about-one-or-the-other kinda girl). I figure I’ll read a bunch more this week, and then get serious about revisions in August. Maybe with a little reading on the side….

Last night, I actually closed my book long enough to watch the first two episodes of the first season of Prison Break. Since Gilmore Girls disappeared, I haven’t been much of a TV watcher at all (aside from hockey and the occasional DVD movie), but I fear I may get hooked on that one. I wonder how many episodes my DH rented? I’m terrible with those series that take a whole season to tell the story — I rent them and then watch like crazy ’til I get through them all. I think I’ve watched whole seasons of 24 in about, um, yeah… 24 hours. Not so disciplined. But not watching them all would be like stopping a movie in the middle! Can’t do it. Guess that’s another page in my gets-totally-obsessed story. Sigh.

Well, it’s good to be back here in blogland, but I’ve got a couple chapters left in the book I’m reading, so I’m outta here. Take care, y’all.

[ETA: Okay, I was wrong. I just watched two more episodes of Prison Break and I'm already tired of the over-done uber-sleazy bad guys. I'm not hooked. Back to my books....]

Delinquency and Holiday Heaven

What a delinquent blogger I am. And, yes, I’m unrepentant. It’ll be at least another week before I get back to a regular writing and blogging schedule, because tomorrow morning I’m heading out for a week of camping by the beach. Yay! Sleeping outside and reading in lawnchairs and cooking over campfires and playing in the ocean… heaven, I tell you. Pure heaven.

On Thursday, I’ll be sneaking away from my holiday heaven briefly, so that I can get online and register for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. I’m so excited to be going to this conference again. I went in 2006 and it was fantastic! (One great thing that came out of my conference experience that year was meeting another writer from my very own small town and then founding the River Writers critique group with her.)

And now, it’s time to pack. Wishing you all some lazy hazy crazy days. See you in a week or two!

Peace.

Beaches and books

Anyone remember that Steve Miller song — time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin, into the future…. (Okay, so that dates me just a tad.) But, yeah, that’s how it feels right now. The weeks are zipping by (and the blogging ain’t happening — oops). I’m on the brink of a slow-down week, though, cuz I’m going camping by the beach. Got my sunscreen, my shades, my big stack of books, and I can’t wait! That’s my ideal relaxation time. Is there anything better than sea air and sleeping outside and losing yourself in a great story? Oh yeah, and cooking on the fire and no phones and wandering lazily along the sand? It’s gonna be wonderful.

One of the books in my pile is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I can’t believe it’s been out for a week and I haven’t read it yet! At least I’ve managed to avoid spoilers so far. (I’m glad the book is finally here, not just because I want to read it, but because I’m tired of all the hype. I mean, it’s just a book. Does that make me a Harry Potter heretic?)

I hope you’ve got some great relaxation time (and some great books) to look forward to this summer….

Peace.

Celebrating in island style

Wow! Two posts in one weekend. (Two, two, two posts in one!) (If you don’t get that allusion, you must think I’m pretty weird right about now….) Anyway, I hope you’re duly impressed by my prolificness (prolificacy?).

When I was in town today, there were crowds, and revelry, and traffic (small town traffic, but to me, still too much traffic!). Part of me said gee, it would be fun and jovial and what-not to wander through the masses and soak up the celebratory atmosphere. Another part – a bigger one – said aahhh, get me out of here! Yeah, I don’t do crowds well.

Found a fab alternative to the Canada Day celebrations, though: my middle son and I went down to the beach near our place, which happens to be on a bit of a point, and sat on a piece of driftwood, looked north toward the downtown area, and watched the fireworks from there. There was only one other guy on the beach near us, and one couple with a beach fire not too far away (wish I’d thought of it sooner, and I would’ve had a beach fire and s’mores and all, but just sitting was nice, too). The fireworks were set off from a boat offshore. We had a great view, albeit a distant one. The sea was a bit choppy, and we couldn’t hear any but the largest fireworks due to the soothing sound of breaking waves. It was lovely.

I came home to a dog who yelped with every move of his back end. Oh dear. Poor thing. I can’t figure what’s wrong – he walks normally, but won’t go up the stairs. Hmmm. He’s sleeping now, curled up in his usual way, so I will leave him be and see how he is in the morning.

And now I should go to bed, too. I had a productive writing afternoon, and last evening was very productive, too. Lots of revisions done – yay! Tomorrow will be half clean-this-disaster-area time and half writing time. Should be good.

Peace….