Friday, April 20, 2012

I owe ya...

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has pushed my learning curve on "social media" straight up. I am grateful, really. It's just... when do I get time to, um, write or paint or draw or read or clean out flower beds or till my garden (still have a month or more before planting, gosh darn it!) or dust (wait, never mind that) or knit or walk or Zumba... or work!

Facebooking will not be an addiction for me, though I might be a tad prone to addictions. There's none of that "chocolate" dopamine rush for me while nosing around the web. Still, I can sooo gossip! So it's back to GGA meetings for me. (That's Gossip Gals Anonymous, and if you haven't heard of it, then the goal of staying anonymous has been very successful.) Just know that if I see any of you there, I won't really see you there...

Monday, April 16, 2012

Waiting for the dream!

You know how it's virtually impossible to outgrow the belief that if you work hard enough, your big dreams will come true? Well finally, I'm living proof that waiting for the dream can be, sometimes, not hopeless.

As you who know me can confirm, I have been waiting forever to get a manuscript I've written accepted. I even wrote a romance novel, not my first choice as I'm a literary snob (but only a bit). And last week a new imprint of Adams Media called Crimson Romance bought my paranormal romance, Smitten Image. It's an e-press edition, with print-on-demand, and will be up and running in June. And yes, I will be letting EVERYONE I know the details on how to access my tiny wee babe that took its first steps into the scary, new world. As my daughter Kate continually drones, electronic publishing is the future. But... I'm a tried and true librarian. And stubbornly have loved books since I could gnaw and drool them into mush with my toothless baby gums! Oh, that yummy papery taste...

Like old school paste. (Which, in elementary school, became somewhat of an eating disorder for me.) Can't you remember how good paste used to smell? And how, while smearing that lumpy guck on your construction paper with your fingers, occasionally you had to just sort of take a bite? No? (Well, I'd never tell 'cause, like, I'm the last person to point a sticky finger!)

My point is, I so love books and libraries and the smell and feel and turning of a page. And will forever collect paper books. But... in keeping with the times, it's evolutionary survival, as always. Hence, this declaration of the birth of my first published book, a strange little electronic alien, digital, able to fly through the ether as zero's and one's and magically turn into words on techno reader gadgets.

Is it my dream as I always envisioned? No. But let me tell you, I ain't complaining one itty, bitty byte!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Building fence and other stuff...

Easter Sunday we built a fence. Actually not in one day. It takes post holes dug, posts bought or found, posts pounded, cross pieces built, all before we stretched the sheep fence wire. Takes a lot of blood, from dozens of small cuts to the hands and wrists. Makes the hands ache and then shake later from squeezing pliers hundreds of times to close clasps. Not a "hey, let's have some fun today" project. But satisfying. And something better done in the spring after a few days of rain to make the soil soft, especially when you live on top of glacial till. Hundreds of feet of gravel left millions of years ago and topped with a couple feet of precious topsoil. Kinda puts things in perspective on an Easter Sunday, building fence does. It's not church, but it's of the earth, part of building a life, a home, a satisfied place for a heart to settle on.