Excitement of the Week

I am so EXCITED I can barely contain myself! A little bit ago, I found an affordable cover artist whom I commissioned to do the covers of three of my books - The Mahogany King's Daughter (an ebook prequel to The Disposable Noble Wife. I have one chapter finished so far, but have been too busy to write much more), Navigating Marital Abandonment and The Disposable Noble Wife.


All the finished covers are amazing and, let me tell you, it is quite a high to see your name on a professionally designed cover with an award seal on it.

Because I want to actually use the new covers on my books, I needed to take them down for reformatting. Since I received a reader comment on The Disposable Noble Wife about poor grammar (very unlikely) and since, a couple of years ago, I had a computer crash issue that left me copy/pasting my book file from a PDF (a story in itself), I decided that I would use the opportunity of my book being down to go through and fix whatever "grammar" problems I could find.

I found no real grammar issues (of course), but I did find some missing  words and quite a few punctuation errors - which I blame on my state of mind at the time I was writing. Anyway, that is what I was doing and why I was doing it when I had a brilliant idea. I have a friend who is a chef, owns her own catering business, and LOVES The Disposable Noble Wife.

I called her and suggested that if she wanted and could carve out the time to create a signature dessert named for the book, I would place its picture and appropriate text on my last page. Keep in mind that my friend, Chef Natalie, is very busy and has tons of catering orders all the time. She is always cooking, no matter what time of day I call and I really did not know if she could find time to create a dessert to name after my book, but I thought the idea was good and I figured I should at least offer it to her.

Her response: "REALLY???"

Then after I confirmed: "Honey, I can CARVE anything you want! I'll make you a Noble Wife Dessert you wouldn't believe it'll be so good!"

Her response had me grinning ear-to-ear. (I love my friends!) I languished in the feeling for about a day as I edited. Then I had another brilliant idea. A while back, I took copies of my award-winning books to my parish office as a gift. I just had a feeling that here I am in town and Church is frequently the first place injured spouses go for consolation and advice (I know it was my first stop). I should donate copies of the resources I have written to my own Church. So I did. I was quiet about my donation but it turns out that my Associate Pastor is an avid reader. He put my books on his stack of reading material and, eventually, read Navigating Marital Abandonment.

His single-word comment on the book he read was, "Wonderful!"

He did not get around to reading The Disposable Noble Wife, though, and I thought, "I wonder if Father Mike would like to read my revised copy and write a foreword for it?"

The next day, on my way home from taking my daughter, Anne, to drop off a job application, I stopped at the parish office to talk to Father Mike and extend the invitation. He was not there, so I wrote him a note and slipped it under the door to his office. Two days later (which was yesterday), I stopped by again to get his response.

GUESS WHAT!? (I love priests.) It has been a full day and I still cannot stop grinning. That's what. :-)

New Discovery

As you, my readers know, I write. In fact, I write more than is normal for a typical human being -- so much so that I have written a handful of short books that have collected a small number of fans from three continents... No, wait... Four continents. Of course, I have had the darnedest time trying to win my way into a traditional publishing house, but that is beside the point. The point is that I write -- and well. (Well enough that another author actually invited me to proofread his first book and then trusted my judgment enough to incorporate ALL of my content-oriented suggestions into it -- a trust that was rewarded by an increase of TWO FULL STARS on his Reader's Favorite review rating!)

In the past, for the handful of works I have written, I have always used my own photos in combinationn with a cover generator to make my book/ebook covers. But, I have no pictures that will work for my newest title and I have been racking my brain with how to design the cover around that. A few days ago, I found an artist online who does absolutely beautiful covers for very affordable prices. No, I will not tell you how much she charged me. But her name is Emily Lam and just LOOK at the GORGEOUS cover she turned out in 3 DAYS for my in-progress book!

I think I must have started GLOWING as soon as I saw what a superb job she did. Despite that I already have several writings in my name, two of which are award-winners, this very first professional cover for one of MY stories makes me feel just that: Professional. A real cover design for my as-yet unfinished book! I was so excited to receive it that I printed it right away and ran out to start showing people around town who know me. My first stop: the bank, where a couple of the tellers are familiar enough with me to know my name when I walk through the door.

My pleasure and excitement so overflowed there that it started spilling over onto both sides of the teller window. The less familiar teller who was helping me was just in the process of guessing what my book is [going to be] about by its cover when a more familiar teller came over to see what the fuss was about.

She took one look at my book cover printout, still in the hands of her colleague and exclaimed, "Is this your cover??? I didn't know you are an author!"

Yeah, well, she's not the only one. I just found out, myself. It's a new discovery for us both.

An Interesting Couple of Weeks

My last two weeks were kind of interesting ones.

First, there was my birthday. If you remember from my last entry, a friend of mine has her birthday two days before mine and we were supposed to meet up for a joint birthday celebration on the day in the middle (April 8th). What wound up happening is that Shawn got home from a week's vacation on April 7th and we had not yet finalized our plans, so did nothing on the 8th. We touched base on the 9th and she bought me lunch at the Mexican restaurant where she works. Then we went to lunch together on the 10th at the little pizza place where I enjoy flirting with all the staff and I bought Shawn's lunch. It was fun.

Note: I have been dieting and did not lose a single pound either my birth-week or last week. I did not GAIN any pounds, but did not lose any, either. I guess that just goes to show that no matter how good you are on a diet MOST of the time, just a few scattered indiscretions (like pizza and Mexican food) can HALT your progress in its tracks. So that was interesting to discover.

Then, I needed to figure out how to afford bringing my daughter and her mountain of stuff home for the summer. On the way to her first year of university studies, we rented an SUV. But my parents also came along and brought some of Anne's things in the trunk of their car. This presents rather a problem for getting everything home because I am picking Anne up by myself and can only drive one vehicle at a time. Of course, she has friends from school who live as close as Chicago and she was ready to either impose on them for what she could or go halvesies on a moving van, but I didn't like those ideas. So that was an interesting thing to figure out.

It did not take much thinking. I decided to drive down in my car and move most of her things into a storage unit. I will bring home a trunk-ful and no more. (Hopefully, the things she packs for home will include everything she needs to take for her studies in Europe next Fall.) I then spent about a week and a half trying to reserve a storage unit rental from hundreds of miles away. Groan. The process was... interesting. Good news, though -- their 800 line works well and I was and I have now talked to the district manager twice.

Then, I woke up one morning to a freezing cold house. (Not literally freezing, but very cold as the house was losing its heat to try to get down to the roughly 40 degrees that outside was keeping.) My heater had stopped working and it was 57 degrees inside! Brrr... Larry, my handiman (dubbed "The Amazing Norwegian" by my mother), came over right away when I called in distress with the dilemma. He gave me the saddest blue eyes when he could not discern how to fix it and then walked out my door without even asking for a fee for running over so quickly. Before he left, he gave me the number for his favorite heating and plumbing people, and they came over with haste to take care of it. Want to know what they did that was worth a $79 service call? They hit a reset button. The heat started working right away and Snickers was relieved of his duty to cuddle on my lap under a blanket to keep me warm. (Not that he actually gave up his warm, napping spot until a long while later.)

Keep in mind that, despite the cold, I have been having a healthy dose of Spring Fever. Every time I walk into a store that has gardening supplies, I wind up wandering out with some. In addition, I have ordered 6 rose bushes for my yard and two bleeding hearts, plus grass seed and I am already obligated to several yards of topsoil. It really needs to warm up outside so I can get out there and start working in my yard or I will wind up with way too much more work than I can actually accomplish!

Last in my list of interesting adventures is that I have started a new Youtube channel/blog combination. I figure that somebody, somewhere, has to be at least moderately interested in something that I am able to share. Yes, of course my children and friends ask me for advice and, yes, complete strangers regularly approach me with the most insane sharing of personal information/stories. (Like the lady in line in front of me at the grocery the other day who wound up talking to me about her daughter's wedding until we parted in the parking lot -- or the woman at the styling salon who started talking to me out of the blue about problems with her grandchild's mother's boyfriend -- and those were BOTH in JUST the last two weeks!) But that is not what I mean.

What I mean is that I am making yet another stab at using my accumulated knowledge/experience to try to earn some passive income. I have begun putting my recipes online. They are FREE to watch/read, of course. If I earn anything from them, it will be through my product recommendations and click-throughs. If not, at least I will have already done the work for my daughter to get copies of my recipes. She has asked for them, you know. :-)

But, regardless, I have been spending time on photographing my recipes as I make them and then recording voice-over instructions for them. Interested in seeing what I have done so far? Here are links to check it out: CLICK for Video - CLICK for Print

You might be wondering: Will I keep writing books? Well, I have two in process that I need to finish, The Mahogany King's Daughter (1st chapter already available in Amazon Prime's lending library - CLICK HERE) and The Legend of Lord Randall Castle. So, I will try to at least get those done. But, at this point, it is a race to see which vehicle, recipe channel or ebook sales, (if either) will produce enough income for me to keep them going. It will be interesting to see which one (if either) does that.

My Second Tall Tale Video

I have found a new form of storytelling that keeps me quite entertained: Tall Tales on Video! Of course, I have my botched attempt at the Toastmasters' Tall Tale competition to thank for that. You see how things can turn around for the ultimate good?

 

Yesterday evening, I finished another tall tale video to promote a friend's fundraiser concert. I thought my readers might like to hear and watch me personally tell the story. (The Youtube link so you can give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down is: http://youtu.be/Su4m_qQk-mM Thanks, in advance!)

 

Enjoy :-)

 

 

More progress on the project house

The last couple of weeks have been mildly busy for me. After three weeks of preparation, I finally delivered my Toastmasters "Tall Tale Competition" speech. It ran a few seconds too long and I did not move on to the next round. (Reminder to self: Make sure to include several extra seconds for people's laughter.) Unfortunately, my camera did not start recording when I pressed the button. So I did the speech again after the meeting for you to see my final product, if you are interested. It is here:

 

 

Looking at myself on video, I decided I needed to go on a diet before attending Darryl Markette's 2013 Pinko de Mayo fundraiser concert. I am not sure yet if I will go, but I know I WON'Tgo if I don't drop a few pounds. So I paid for a 3-month membership to a diet website. (I have lost roughly 10 pounds now... and most people cannot tell. But my pants are now a little looser, so I am happy.)

 

Then, the weekend before Easter, my parents and nephew came to help me install laminate flooring in my project house. I have been living in it and walking on luan (like a thin plywood) since July, so the installation of flooring is very welcome. My brother and his wife surprised us all at the last minute and joined us for half of Saturday. That was really good because many hands make light work and we got a LOT done that day!

 

Somehow, I sprained my ankle on Sunday after church. (I got to introduce my dad to my pastor... who did not remember the meeting when I saw him on Thursday and mentioned it. LOL Poor old guy.) I'm not sure if my ankle got sprained before or after the service, but it was sometime in the morning because by the time we ate lunch (out -- totally BREAKING my diet), I was hobbling. My nephew went home on Sunday evening and my parents worked with me on Monday until a little after noon. Mom also drove me to the chiropracter to adjust my ankle on Monday morning. It started feeling better very quickly.

 

Here is what we did.

 

 

Living Room

Kitchen

  Still some work to do but do you remember what it looked like when I bought it?

 

 

 

BIG progress. Huh??

 

By Tuesday, my ankle was feeling so much better that I over-exerted it and sprained it again. I suffered all that day and the next, hoping it would get better but it didn't and I was having a lot of trouble getting around my house, especially with only my little dog to help me. So I went back to the chiropractor on Thursday and he fixed it again. (Thank goodness!) I nursed it through Easter weekend and it feels much better now.

 

Yesterday, I got a touch of Spring Fever and bought some flower seeds and garden tools. Note that the temperature outside yesterday was 29 degrees F (-1 C). But... It was April 1st! That means Spring is here, no matter what the temperature. It also means my birthday is upcoming. (I will be 21 again.) My friend, Shawn, is having a birthday on the 7th, two days before mine, so we are trying to decide what to do for OUR birthday.

 

I will try to let you all know if we make up our minds. Meanwhile, I am working on another Tall Tale. That first one was FUN! ;-)

Just do it.

Whew! I did it. I RESISTED the warm, corned beef sandwich being sold by the grocery store at lunch today. Didn't go anywhere near it. . . went to my Mexican restaurant for a SALAD, instead. I skipped the chips, too. So, tomorrow morning, maybe I will have maintained my weight loss and my diet will not have been TOTALLY blown.

Did I say, "weight loss?" Why, yes, I did. For the past week, I have been on a new diet. About a week and a half ago, my mom informed me that she has been diagnosed with celiac disease. That means that not only does she need to monitor her carbohydrate intake because of her type 2 diabetes, but now she also has to steer her eating habits away from gluten (a type of protein). Concerned that I do not want to follow in Mom's dietary-restriction footsteps, I decided to look online for information.

Believe it or not, that is how it dawned on me that, without children or a husband in the house (at least for now), I can not only cook what and when I want, I can UTILIZE that freedom to finally diet without inconveniencing my family! (Geesh. It took me long enough to connect the dots. Didn't it?) My excuses that a diet can NOT work are now less that my reasons to MAKE a diet work.  I decided right then and there that it is time to just do it.

I was already online and looking up the word "diet" because of wantng to know what Mom should no longer eat. Diet plans were already popping up on my screen. I found myself looking at one on FormulaZone.com that looked very doable to me. I bit the bullet and spent the money.

I have tried ediets before and failed at losing weight. Of course, that was also when I was taking care of the dietary needs of other people in my household. I cooked things I could not eat, felt hungry all the time and watched as my husband munched on candy bars that he brought home from work on almost a daily basis. NOT my idea of fun and I lost almost nothing.

I also tried Atkins. My husband went on that one with me. Meat is masculine, so that diet was cool. HE lost pounds quickly and was able to reintroduce carbohydrates into HIS menu without ever really missing them. I, on the other hand, dropped just under 10 pounds and then hit a plateau I could not get out of -- even though I was still eating ZERO carbs. I began being able to smell the sugar in EVERYTHING, all foods, especially the ones I cooked for my spouse and could not eat. I was completely miserable. When we went on the cruise I had been dieting for, I gained my weight all back -- and then some!

Then, there was a diet from Quick Weight Loss. That one actually worked really well. I was dropping pounds and inches, and I had great support -- both from the plan providers and at home. It turns out that when a guy has to shell out a HUGE chunk of cash so that his wife can manage to lose a few pounds, he becomes VERY supportive. The problem with that diet, though, were 1) It cost a LOT and I am now beyond broke 2) I needed to buy specific, proprietary "supplements." 3) It went very heavy on meat, which gave me some problems with constipation and 4) There are no offices anywhere near me for weigh-ins and measurements and 5) The foods I could eat were so limited and the recipes provided were so few that it was always hard for me to figure out what to cook each night. (We ate LOTS of chicken, a meat my daughter detests to this very day!)

In contrast, my newest diet was affordable ($25 for 3 months), provides meal recipes with menu plans, allows me to chart my weight online (SO COOL), and even prints out my shopping list for me! With all those tools to help me succeed and nobody around to sabbotage my efforts, my biggest problem is controlling temporary cravings and urges to eat lunch out. Last week, I did alright. I lost five pounds in one week!

At this rate, I will definitely fit into my "little black dress" for Darryl Markette's "Pinko de Mayo" fundraiser concert.... I just need to maintain my will power and DO it. I think I can, I think I can.... [channeling The Little Engine Who Could.]

My Competition Speech

I have been diligently preparing my competition speech over the last couple of weeks and cut it to video today. Good thing I did! (Video really helps me to work out my bugs.) This is the second speech I have given in over 20 years and it still needs a bit of work to get it just right.

The story I am telling is kind of fun, as this is a "Tall Tale" competition. But like most of my stories, it is rooted in events of my real life... events that I posted to this blog. Can you spot the bits of truth in my speech? (Definitely the unicorn.)

(In case it does not load, you can find the video at: http://youtu.be/wP8Li0qvcpo )