Touchstones to the Past

Do you have touchstones in your life? I have a few. In redecorating my dining room, I uncovered several collector plates and items that connect to my mother and aunt and decided to group them. My post about it is at The Barn Door on this rainy Indiana day. 

Hoosier Ink Post Today

Today I'm at Hoosier Ink giving 10 Tips for writers at writing conferences. Are you going to a writing conference soon? ACFW (The American Christian Fiction Writers) is coming up later this month and those writers are excited about the opportunities presented there. (I won't be able to attend this year.) Hoosier Ink is the blog of the Indiana Chapter of ACFW and we have many published Indiana authors--I'm hoping to showcase them soon.

If you're interested in writing, do check out the Hoosier Ink blog. You'll find many of our authors and writers listed there with tons of informative articles.

At The Barn Door Today

Well, I put up a post about the drought and now it's pouring down rain! Hope it keeps it up since we are 8 inches behind in our rain. But this is what is going on in Indiana.

The Barn Door

Getting an Eyeball on Your Writing at Hoosier Ink Today

Today I'm writing at Hoosier Ink about finding your perspective on your writing. Come on over! 

Hoosier Ink

Pimento Cheese!

Pimento cheese is a comfort food for me--it came from my childhood. Lately I've been craving it so I brought out my recipe and have been tweaking it. 

Basic recipe:

Half lb. (8 oz package shredded) sharp cheddar cheese

Half lb. (8 oz package shredded) mild cheddar cheese

½ cup Hellman’s Mayonnaise (I don't believe in substitutes here, but you can, if you want.)

¼ cup pimentos (2 oz jar)

1 tsp. pepper

Pinch of sugar

Ok, here’s where you embellish it any way you wish:

Use any kind of cheese you like (I like to use Kraft Triple Cheddar Cheese with Philadelphia Cream Cheese, but you can even use American Cheese, whatever.)

I use 4 oz. or ½ cup of pimentos and do not drain them—I like the moistness and like pimentos.

I add a little kosher salt and a little more sugar. 

I add as much pepper as I like.

I mix it in the mixer and like it a little more creamy than chunky, so texture is a personal thing.

Do refrigerate it for a period of time. It’s best overnight. If it dries out a little, you can always add a little more mayo.

Serve it like you would any dip or spread. I’m really keen on the Meijers’ Baked Sea Salt Pita crackers right now, but breads(white bread takes me back!),crackers, on cucumbers, with tomatoes, celery, a spoon….LOL, your taste is your guide.Some people have even made grilled pimento cheese.

Do you have a favorite comfort food? Do you have a pimento cheese recipe to share? 

~Crystal 

Come Visit Me at The Barn Door Today

Today I'm blogging at The Barn Door about mourning, plants for memory gardens and blooming where you are planted. 

Come visit! The Barn Door

Over at Hoosier Ink Today!

Please come by Hoosier Ink today as I'm talking about Goodreads and how authors can use this social media! 

Hoosier Ink

I'm blogging today at Hoosier Ink about my writing space with links to photos of other writers and their writing spaces. Come tell me about your writing spaces! 

Hoosier Ink: Where Do You Write Right?

Posting About Lily of the Valley at The Barn Door

Today is my day to post on The Barn Door. I'm talking about grief and Lily of the Valley. 

My Lily of the Valley

My Post on Hoosier Ink Today

Just a note to let you know that I'm posting on ACFW Indiana's blog, Hoosier Ink today about author Sally Wright and what she had to say about writing in the middle of dealing with pancreatic cancer. Important words.

http://hoosierink.blogspot.com

 

Author Sally Wright

About Sally Wright

Sally Wright started writing “adventure stories” at the age of six when her mother taught her to touch-type so Wright would amuse herself while her parents worked at their small family business. Wright turned to writing songs when she was sixteen, performing them in the late sixties and early seventies while she got her degree in speech at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and she did graduate work at the University of Washington in Seattle.  “Making music helped me learn to write prose.  Shaping lyrics in a rhyme scheme, in a tight concise framework, helped me to understand rhythm and how to use images in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Wright wrote while she raised two children “on a flat piece of Ohio farm land” where she still lives with her husband of almost 30 years and a boxer dog named Maggie.  She writes eight hours a day and then walks her dog or rides her one-eyed horse.

Yet, while she brushes Max, the horse, or walks the woods with Maggie, she’s thinking about character and personality.  “Even as a kid, I loved asking adults about their lives and their family history. That’s why I’ve enjoyed writing biography articles for magazines—I like interviewing people who’ve done things that never would’ve occurred to me.  That’s one of the best things about writing the Ben Reese novels—I interview all sorts of people and learn all kinds of new things that help me come up with stories that seem worth telling to me.”

Good mysteries make us turn pages, and Wright’s definitely do that with cleverly crafted plots that vivisect human nature.  For Wright’s novels “grow from the characters,” with a depth and detail that makes them real and compelling.

Although Wright does read mysteries in her spare time, it’s the classics – Austen and Tolstoy and many others—that she returns to again and again.  The works of C.S. Lewis have been of tremendous importance to Wright too, his fiction as well as his non-fiction.  “I’m trying to do with mysteries what he’s done with children’s books and science fiction—talk about life in its largest context while telling an exciting story.”

 

Bibliography

Novels

Publish And Perish

Pride And Predator

Articles

“The Pilgrimage of Malcolm Muggeridge” Chronicles, December 1992

“Robert Woodson: Establishing Enterprise In the Inner-City” The World and I,  May 1992

“Legacy Of A Dark Lord A review of Russell Kirk’s novel, Lord of the Hollow Dark” The University Bookman Vol. 30, Number 4 1990

“Nikolai Tolstoy: Writing in the Tolstoy Tradition” Chronicles, April 1989

“The Vision and Inventions of Albert Calderon” Metropolitan Toledo, March 1988

“Clyde and Marian Sluhan: Building a Business Together” Metropolitan Toledo, July-August 1988

“The Mind Behind the Machines” Metropolitan Toledo, September-October 1988

“Hunter’s Run: A Home for Both Horses and Riders” Metropolitan Toledo, Spring 1989

Leap Year 2012

I couldn't let this day pass without posting. So, here's a photo from about a year ago:

I live in Indiana and this is what we normally see in February. However, today was a little different. Our windows were open, we sat outside in summer lawn chairs and enjoyed the day. It was almost 70 degrees and I had to toss aside my snow boots and dig out my sandals. 

I did get some deadline writing done, some emails done and I'm getting ready to become coordinator for the online ACFW Bookclub (Anyone can join.)

Join ACFW Bookclub at http://www.acfw.com/book_club/

Anything else just didn't get done. Sorry.

If you want to join the book club, we're discussing these books starting March 20th. 

Freeheads by Kerry Neitz

Discussion Leader: Shawna Williams

http://www.marcherlordpress.com/books/freehead.html  Marcher Lord Press $14.99.

Marcher Lord Press

442 pg. |

ISBN: 978-1-935929-38-3

Having escaped the storms of Betelgeuse and the schemes of Jannah's inhabitants, Sandfly and HardCandy make their way back to Earth. They have a message to deliver. A society to free.  And A~A³ is with them. Their mission is simple, and just. What could possibly go wrong?

Unexpectedly, DarkTrench drops into normal space. He is malfunctioning, wounded, and the only people who can fix him are still hundreds of light years away. Sand and Hard scramble for a solution while catastrophe hurtles blindly toward them.

They reach Earth to find a different world, an unexpected domain. One they can no longer connect with. 

They are stranded, hopelessly separated beneath a wasteland of death and a planet of rules. Debuggers amidst a cloistered community.

Ultimately, Sandfly is alone, and Earth's freedom relies on him and his newfound faith. But does his mission even matter anymore?

He's a misfit, and a throwback. A symbol for all that's evil.

Perhaps he's the last freehead?

Shadows by Michael Duncan

Discussion Leader: Rachel Bradford

  280 pages

  Publisher: Harbourlight Books (October 1, 2011)

  ISBN-10: 1611161207

http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Book-Aleth-Part-One/dp/1611161207

A stolen text... When the Book of Aleth is stolen, Aaron, captain of the Royal Guard, is ordered by Emperor Therion to reclaim the ancient tome. The mission thrusts Aaron into a world he's never known--a world of elves and dwarves, races long thought extinct; a world where everything he has known and believed is a lie.

A secret past... Forced to challenge his long-held beliefs, Aaron and his companions, two soldiers of the Royal Guard and two men of the Dwarvish kingdom of Brekken-Dahl, set out on a quest to recover the Book. Aaron resolves to discover the truth, and rescue the empire he is sworn to protect.

 

 

From God's Heart to Yours

Posting at The Barn Door today also:

God gave me a little love message when the electric company cut this tree down.

Back several years ago, author Rachel Hauck (Love Starts with Elle is one title)challenged from her blog to look for the love from God that He conveys to us every day.For an entire month we were to wake up each day and say, "Jesus, here I am, Your favorite one.God likes me and I look good to Him." 

She went on to say you may need to repeat it throughout the day, six, seven, eight times. "Take a moment to meditate on what you are saying. Hear Him respond!" she said to us.

 

It's hard to allow someone (including God) to love you if you know nothing about yourself and if you close your heart and mind to the signs. Even if you have people in your life who say "I love you" every single day, isn't it true we sometimes feel we are unworthy of that love?  Maybe if you find things to love about yourself and admit that you are indeed, God's favorite, you'll soon be looking for the love messages God sends to us each day. 

But it really is a tough concept in my opinion. If it weren't tough, then the whole world would have accepted God's love by now. How could they not?

My very favorite verse in the Bible is: "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners,Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8 NIV)

My heart is racing already with anticipation! I think in the Midwest it's easy to find little love notes from God, don't you? If you're really looking for them, it will be like opening little gifts all day long. 

God says, "You are the apple of My Eye." 

 

Crystal Laine Miller

Come on over for the party at When I Was Just a Kid blog to read about Janice D. Green, children's author

Also, looking for interviews with authors on this blog and also with the Kid blog, so email me if you are interested.

Lynda Schab: Mind Over Madi!

I've known Lynda Schab for a few years now. She's a delightful writer and person who now has published a fiction book called Mind Over Madi. And I can say I've known her back in the day when she was winning contests before all this fame and fortune. (See certificate above. So, all of you who've asked me if you should enter the ACFW Genesis Contest, see what Lynda did!)

I asked her some questions about writing, gave her some prompts to finish...and as usual, she was an open book. She gives her perspective as she now is writing the next books in the Mind Over Madi series.



What’s your favorite part of writing a book?
Definitely the beginning. Coming up with the concept, planning my opening, thinking of a title. 

When the well runs dry, how do you recharge your creative energy?
Nice follow-up question to the last one. Though I start my books with a bang, I tend to peter out around the half-way point. I find what helps me is taking some time to sit down and plot out the next few chapters. I come up with ways to make my story more interesting, perhaps by throwing a curveball, such as a death, pregnancy, or another unexpected element.

Do you keep regular hours in writing? What’s a typical day when you’re writing?

I wish I could say I am one of those insanely disciplined writers who sinks into my computer chair every morning and doesn't come up for air until I reach a specific word count. But that's not me. I write when I can and try to schedule writing time a few times per week. However, now that I'm on a deadline for book number two in the Madi series, my "typical" day may start to look a little different. I have a feeling I'll need to scrounge up some of that discipline I so desperately need.
The biggest enemy of my writing is….. Time! Not enough of it, that is. Continuing from the previous question, I need to learn how to better organize my time and exercise more discipline.
My best ideas come from or when….. real life.
People I know - personality traits, quirks, habits, looks - provide me with plenty of ideas for characters and plot lines.

I still can’t get the hang of…. comma placement.
Seriously! Fortunately, I have critique partners who are comma Drill Sergeants  and love to keep me in line.

What’s your favorite way to celebrate the accomplishments? Ice cream!

What do you know now in writing that you wish you had known in the beginning?
I know now how to follow my gut and not listen to every piece of advice thrown at me. At first, I tried to follow everyone's suggestions and I ended up making a mess of my story. Of course, it's always good to receive good instruction and input, but no one knows my book like I do. Listening to too much advice can sometimes cause the unique voice to get lost. It's important to stay true to your own personal writing style.

Any advice to the readers who wish to publish a book?
Find a good core group of critique partners who understand your genre. And put on your "patience hat." This is a looong process.

(Crystal's advice...Lynda and I both belong to a fabulous organization called ACFW --join up to find your soul sisters and brothers!)

Any special techniques for building your characters? I don't do any extensive character outlines, but a valuable piece of advice I received is to really get into the mind of my characters. Motivations are huge. Knowing why my characters do what they do is key to creating characters that readers can relate to.

About your book/topic/characters:
Is there anything in your book that intersects with your personal life?

There is a lot of me in my main character, Madi. Insecurity is something I’ve always struggled with. As a child, I was very shy. As a teenager, I was insecure about everything, which resulted in a lot of rebelling and contributed to hundreds of my mom’s migraines, I’m sure. 

As an adult, early in my marriage I experienced some of the insecurities Madi deals with, regarding her husband and his faithfulness. That isn’t something I deal with anymore today, but I still have similar insecurities about what others think of me, as well as doubts about God’s love for me. Other ways I’m like Madi is that we share bad eating habits, a love for coffee, a tendency to waste hours of time playing computer games, and an insane fear of spiders.


What do you want readers to take away from reading Madi’s story?

An understanding of just how infinite God’s love is. That no matter what we’ve done, God will never stop pursuing our hearts or desiring a relationship with us. His mercies are new every morning and His grace covers our weaknesses, our mistakes, our ignorance.

What were your biggest fears concerning your book? How do you feel about speaking about the topic?  

My biggest fear is how I'll deal with the negative reviews. It would be nice if everyone loves my book, but let's be real. Pleasing everyone just isn't likely. It's a vulnerable place to be. But that's okay. Lots of growth comes out of vulnerability.

I have very little experience with public speaking, but I hope to gain more confidence in this area. I'd love to speak to women about overcoming insecurity and truly seeing themselves as the princesses they are.

LYNDA LEE SCHAB got her writing start in greeting cards  (Blue Mountain Arts, Dayspring)  and from there  went on to write  articles and short stories (Mature Living, Christian Home &  School)  and in many places online (including www.Examiner.com and  www.wow-womenonwriting.com), but her passion has always been fiction. 

Mind Over Madi, her debut novel, is near and dear to her heart.  Lynda admits  she has a lot in common with  the character of Madi. Not only are they both  addicted to ice cream, chocolate, and computer games,  they  struggle with the same types of insecurities and continually require a hefty dose of God’s grace.

Lynda works behind the scenes at FaithWriters.com and is a member of ACFW. She is a regular book reviewer for FaithfulReader.com and is the Grand Rapids Christian Fiction Examiner and the National Writing Examiner for Examiner.com.  Mind Over Madi  received Runner-up in the 2007 FaithWriters Page Turner contest, was a finalist in the 2007 RWA Get your Stiletto in the Door contest, and won second place in the 2008 ACFW Genesis contest, Chick Lit category. 

Lynda lives with her husband, Rob, and two teenagers in Michigan. 


Mind Over Madi: (Published by OakTara)

Madi McCall admits her husband lacks a little in the romance department, but all in all, he’s been a good husband, a good father. Now, though, she suspects Rich is having an affair with Fawn Witchburn, the mother of one of his fourth-grade students. To say Fawn shows off her “assets” more than should be legally allowed in public is an understatement, and Madi’s insecurities kick into high gear. When, in a heated moment, she asks Rich to leave and he complies, Madi is forced to deal with her issues--issues of love and trust she’s tried so hard to avoid. Issues that trail all the way back to her childhood and make her act like a total moron.
 
Find Lynda Lee Schab:
www.LyndaSchab.com
www.on-the-write-track.blogspot.com
www.Twitter.com/Lyndaschab
Facebook Page

Also stop by When I Was Just a Kid where I interviewed Lynda on her childhood--a fun interview!

Lynda, When She Was Just a Kid, phoning her future!

Update on Lynda! She just signed the contract for two more books this week and is hard at work on book #2, Madily in Love. Stay tuned to Lynda's work.