My First Blog
I wrote this earlier and it has since vanished from my page. This website thing is a little new to me. Bear with me.
The title says it all! Everyone says they have a blog these days and I have thought to avoid that. Lately though I’ve been thinking it might not be so bad. This way the reader gets a little insight into my life and you get a chance to see my writing style. The basics are I was born in Anderson, SC. I’m the middle child. All you middle children know how hard that can be. I’m the baby girl, but my baby brother is the one who is spoiled! He was then, some by myself and my sister, and he still is! My mother is one of 15! Can you imagine having 15 children? She had 10 brothers, one who didn’t live long, and 4 sisters. She has a twin brother. My dad is one of 9 children. Unfortunately, 4 of them didn’t make it past infancy. He is the only surviving boy with four sisters. Yes, he is spoiled too! My grandmother, my dad’s mom, lived to be 99.
I grew up in the in between; the place between two towns. I was closer to Townville, but my address was Seneca. I know you’re thinking where are these weird named towns? If you really want to talk weird you should hear how my Siri says them. I have the male Australian voice for Siri and the first time I asked for directions to a location in Seneca, it said South East Neca. It took me a minute to figure out what it was saying.
Anyway, I wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. But as I got older I realized I wasn’t cut out for that. I would probably end up smacking a smart mouthed kid and then guess where I’d end up. That’s right! And I don’t look good in orange! No matter what you may have heard, orange is not the new black!
I have always been more of a loner. My sister was the brain and my brother was the cool dude. If I could have stayed in my room all through my childhood, I would have. I know some of you can relate. Unfortunately I had no choice but to go to school and deal with the bullying. Back then it was bad, but nothing like since the internet came to be. Yes, I am that old! I ended up quitting after my third year in ninth grade. My first year through, we moved and I couldn’t get use to the new school and making friends. The second year I just wasn’t in the mood to go to school. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s true. Excess absences meant failing. The third year I quit and went to Adult Ed. I lucked up and I got to take all the end of the year exams. I passed and didn’t have to take the course. I got my my diploma and was suddenly looking at my future and what I wanted to do.
I can hear it now, she quit school! She went to Adult Ed! That’s right I did and I don’t regret it! Does that mean you should do the same? I would never say that! What I did in my life may not be good for you. I would never tell anyone to follow in my footsteps. You never know what I might have stepped in! Y’all stay safe and keep reading!
Blog #2
What can I say I have a way with titles? Seriously, though I rarely am, I’m going to give this another try. Let’s talk about how Spellbound came to be. I’ve told you a little in other sections of this site, but I haven’t given you all the details. I don’t think. I may have and don’t remember. I’m getting older so…
As I have mentioned before I began writing stories with myself and my friends and our celebrity crushes. Most people just fantasize about those things. Me, I write them down to read as I get older to see two things. First, how my writing has improved and two so I can cringe at how young and foolish I was. What better way to make your writing better? Trust me there have been many cringe worthy moments in some of my early work. I have edited some through the years, after I’ve read over them. I make note of the date I edited them. Just so a few years later when I read them again, I can see how I still had much to learn from the last edit. Why am I telling you this? It is because of one of these stories, Spellbound came to be. That and I have ideas to turn a few more of them into longer stories with the names changed of course. For those you’ll just have to wait and see. But I digress. Getting side-tracked is easy when you’re a writer.
Once upon a time, about ten years or so ago, in a galaxy far far away… Oops, wrong story. In all seriousness, it was about eight or nine years ago, when I gave my dad all of the Smallville DVD’s for Christmas. We had planned on watching the show when it was on, but something had interfered, probably another show we were watching, and we’d failed to watch the show when it was on. Anyway, we watched them and me being a writer as well as a romantic, the idea for a Fanfiction of sorts popped in my head. I combined my love of witches and and the idea of Clark Kent in high school and wrote a little story I called A Sprinkle Of Magic. Instead of Clark falling for Lois or pining away for Lana, he fell for Chloe’s cousin Layla. Layla was a witch.
Fast forward to my reading Twilight and falling in love with it. The thing about Twilight was that the vampires aren’t like other vampires you read about. Stephenie Meyer’s vampires had a conscience, they were vegetarians and they sparkled! It was these little things that made her story about vampires different. Okay, so not only that, but that was a big thing. As I’ve said before I love vampires and witches and ghosts. I was reading A Sprinkle of Magic again and suddenly an idea popped in my head for a witch story.
When I write, I don’t plan out each chapter. I’ve learned in the past that is a pointless thing to do. My characters have minds of their own. I never intended on Ashlie to be a slow-aging witch. It just happened as I was thinking about all the normal things you hear about witches. I didn’t want my witches to be the same. From there Spellbound was born. I started it in 2010 and then would put it aside. I’d come back to it and then put it aside again. For three years! I am the queen of procrastinating! Finally I stopped writing other little short stories and went back to Spellbound. It was past time to finish it. I updated my time line to 2013 and went from there.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get Spellbound published in 2013 which ended up being an issue with the timeline once it was finally published. My editor asked if I wanted to change the timeline to 2020 for Enchanted, but it will mess up what is suppose to be happening in the series, so I declined. Once you read the entire series you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
One thing I have learned, is it’s better to write the series all at once, then get it published. Why you ask? Yes, I just read your mind and that is the question you were asking yourself. I’m amazing, I know! In answer to your question, timelines don’t need to be corrected if you finish all of them at one time. That is a major point, but also so you make sure your characters stay the same and flow with the story. I have found keeping up with things I have had happen and I want to happen slip my mind as I’m writing so I found a way to keep up with what I need. You can see it in the picture below. In case you’re wondering, yes that design is the same as the amulet Aidan wears. The most important reason to finish the series at one time is for the readers. If they are like me, they don’t want to wait a year between books. I was thankful to find Twilight after all the books were complete. Had I been reading and having to wait for the next book I would have no doubt wanted to pull my hair out. And let’s be honest, I wouldn’t look good bald! Although I could totally rock some wigs. Hmmm…my niece loves to Cosplay so maybe I’ll give one of hers a try. I’ll get back to you on that.
That is a little more about how Spellbound came to be. Maybe I’ll show you some of the information inside this book next time. Or I might tell you about Always. It is a personal story for me and I need to think about what I want to say. Plus I’m procrastinating. You knew that didn’t you? Until next time, y’all stay safe and keep reading!
Blog #3
I know, y’all saw that title coming! What shall I talk about today? The weather? No, too boring. Well that’s not exactly true. The weather her in South Carolina is bipolar. It’s clear and hot then rainy and cold. Sometimes we manage to get three seasons in one day. So that’s the weather. Now we can move on to the news. Nope, too depressing! So we will talk books! Starting with the new book magazine being done by Words Matter Publishing, The WMP Reader. This magazine is done by authors with readers in mind. I know this because I am the author who is also Editor in Chief of the magazine. Our first edition will be out March 2021.
It is a free magazine. You can sign up here http://www.wordsmatterpublishing.com Once you’ve read the magazine, please let me know what you thought. If there is anything I can do to make it better, I want to hear about that as well. This magazine is for you, the reader.
Instead of telling you a little more about how Spellbound came to be, I’m going to tell you about the merchandise related to Spellbound and Enchanted as well as Always coming out. In book three, Charmed, there is a character who owns a little shop that sells candles, soaps, and greeting cards amongst other items. Those same things will be available in reality. The candles will come with little spells. These items will be available hopefully before years end. I will post pictures of them and a link on here when they are ready so y’all can check them out.
I am going to get back to writing. Next time I will show you the sketches I did when trying to figure out what I wanted Ashlie, Ericka and Stephenie’s dresses to look like for prom. I also will show you the decorations I chose to use.
Until next time, sign up for the free magazine. But most importantly, be nice to each other and keep reading!
Blog #4
Am I getting predictable in my blog titles? Probably. However, have you noticed that my blogs are actually the same blog. That’s right, I have been editing the original and adding to it thinking I was doing a new blog. Face palm! It only took me three blogs to realize I did this. Now that I know, I am still going to do this blog on here and then I will change it up next time. If I can figure out how to do that.
I was going to show you some of the sketches I used while figuring out Ashlie’s prom dress for Spellbound. Instead I am going to talk about something else. Have you ever seen how something was done and wondered why is it that way? I’ve been doing this a lot lately. For instance I was breading squash (for those of you who don’t know what that means, that’s dipping raw squash in cornmeal before frying) the other day and got to thinking about how you do this with squash and okra, but why not broccoli? It’s a vegetable the same as they are so why don’t we bread them as well? I asked my mother, since she was who taught me how to bread squash and okra, and she didn’t know. I asked my father because my grandmother use to cook squash and okra a lot when he was growing up and he said he didn’t know either. So I am asking you. Do any of you know why this is?
Obviously, we do what we are taught. No one ever breaded broccoli so no one taught us to do so. That made me wonder about other things. I’m even going to do a book about it. Why do we do anything? Because at some point we were taught to do so. As a child we are taught by our parents the sounds animals make or what animal is what. We are taught our colors and numbers and the alphabet. We don’t question any of it, as our parents are older and they know. Right? What if they had been taught differently? For example, what if your Grandmother taught your mom that this was a donkey?
We know this is a cow, but had our parents been taught this was a donkey, we would have been taught the same. Had we been taught blue was red, then we would teach our children the same. So my question to you is this: Who made the decision to name things what they are named?
In the 90’s (yes I am old) there was a song by C & C Music Factory called Things That Make You Go Hmm. What are some things that make you go hmmm? For me it is things like the broccoli. Or the wheel. Think about it, out of the blue someone made the wheel. Then they decide to call it a wheel. Why? Because it was a circle? Who called a circle a circle and a square a square? We were taught that a circle is the shape of a wheel, but if someone had called it a square when it was invented that is what we would call it. This also begs the question on who first thought to take corn and ground it up to become cornmeal and then make bread out of it? The cave men ate animals they came across. That makes sense in the grand scheme of things, but what about the first time someone pulled an onion out of the ground and decided to take a bite? Or a carrot, or a radish, or turnip? The list is endless.
Along those lines, but also because I am an author, who was the first person to take a group of words and make a story out of them, then bind them together and make a book? Hmm…let me google that and see what comes up… According to google it was The Epic of Gilgamesh which tells the story of a mythical political figure. Can you imagine what that book would look like today? I didn’t see a year for this book, but it was before 1454 because that was when the first printing press was invented. Think about that. If the first printing press had never been invented what would books of today be written on? Cow hide? Animal skin of some other kind? Leaves? I am attaching the link to the page I found about this book. A little history never hurt anyone.
Along those lines, who was the first person to think that cutting down a tree would be a way to get a flimsy piece of paper to write on? Once you start asking yourself these questions, you find yourself going from one question to another. Who first thought that fluffy white stuff growing in the fields would be ideal to make clothing from?
We take so many things for granted because that is how we were taught. Imagine if someone from our time were to actually be able to go back in time to the beginning of these things. Oh the chaos we could cause. If I could travel back, I would have a little fun with it. Instead of writing a book or reading a book, I would call a book an adventure. So in this day and age, you would go to an adventure store and look at all the different adventures on the shelves. You would talk about the last adventure you read or wrote. That’s kind of how books are now. When you open a book, you step inside the pages and go on an adventure.
Maybe I should start calling these blogs My Musings or Things That Make You Go Hmm. I will think on that and surprise y’all with the title next time. For now I shall bid you goodbye… Or if I had been taught the opposite, I would bid you hello….
A little history of reading: How the first books came to be | BookTrust
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