Celebrating the Small Things

Here we are at another Friday, which means it's once again time for another Celebrate the Small Things hop. This fun weekly hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to find out how join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

There wasn't much going on here this week, but I'm celebrating that I have a three day weekend ahead. The college where I work is closed today so I am off for three days. Always something to celebrate, right?

I'm also celebrating the return of The Walking Dead! I love this show and was so anxious for it to return for the second half of its 6th season. The premiere episode didn't disappoint! It was shocking and scary and so tense I thought I would have a heart attack more than once. In other words, it was everything I love about TWD. My Sunday nights are once again complete. :D

Finally, I'm celebrating that I'm heading up to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow for a meeting with a writing group I belong to, the regional chapter of Sisters in Crime. I always enjoy these meetings and feel fortunate to belong to such a great group. Plus the weather is supposed to be beautiful so it should be a nice day for a drive. I actually like driving when the weather is nice and I'm not fighting traffic so I'm looking forward to the trip.

I hope everyone had a week filled with lots of things to celebrate, and has a great weekend coming up.

Library Lovers' Month & The Bexley Public Library

February is Library Lovers' Month, which has inspired me to start a blog series celebrating some of the libraries I love. Some of my very earliest memories are of going to the library with my parents and getting to pick out my own books, which nearly always included at least one Beatrix Potter title. I've loved libraries ever since so I figured what better time to celebrate that than during Library Lovers' Month?

The first library I'm spotlighting is the Bexley Public Library. Bexley is a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and a charming little village in its own right. The library definitely adds to that charm.

I have been there twice in the past year for meetings with the Sisters in Crime regional chapter, of which I am a member. Maybe it helps that I've really enjoyed these meetings, but for whatever reason I am totally enchanted with the Bexley library.

I love the building itself, especially the gold door. The library was built in 1929 by architects O.C. Miller and R.R. Reeves, who were influenced by 17th century French and Italian architecture for the design, and I love that the original building is still in use. I love old buildings and the history they bring with them, and it often seems like we are all too quick to tear down and rebuild in this country.

When you first walk into the library, there is a reading room off to your right that is a book lover's dream. I didn't get a picture of it, but found this from the State Library of Ohio site. The room is gorgeous!

Source: State Library of Ohio

The basement holds the brightly colored children's area, and I have no doubt I would have loved exploring these shelves as a kid.

Source: State Library of Ohio

Right outside the library sits this statue. I couldn't make out the inscription on it, but I like it just the same.

To me the Bexley library has the feel of an old-fashioned library in an era when those are becoming increasingly uncommon. Both times I have been there I've felt like I was returning to the libraries of my childhood when I entered the building. That alone is reason to love it.

I hope to share more libraries I love even after Library Lover's Month has ended. Do you have a favorite library?

Celebrating the Small Things

Time really got away from me this week and I couldn't believe it when I realized it was Friday and time for another Celebrate the Small Things hop. This fun weekly hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to find out how join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

I think the main reason the week flew by was because I was busy writing, which is always good. So today I am celebrating that I finished the first and second drafts of the children's story I am writing. I'm so excited!

Once I started writing this little book I couldn't stop. I had such fun writing the animal characters and I found myself smiling almost the whole time I was writing. It's hard to beat that feeling!

I hope you all had a good week as well and also have a good weekend coming up. Happy Friday and Happy Valentine's Day!

Source

Celebrating the Small Things

Happy Celebrate the Small Things day! 

This fun weekly hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to see what to do if you want to join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

This week I'm celebrating a few book birthdays. My first book Polar Night will be three years old on Sunday, February 7. I can't believe my baby has been out in the world for three years. To say it's been an amazing few years is an understatement. Also, Polar Night's sequel Polar Day is one year old today.

So far I haven't succeeded in coming up with another sequel, although I spent most of last year trying to make one work, but I still hope to continue this series. For now though I will just wish both books a happy birthday. :)

I'm also celebrating that my other book, The Ghosts of Aquinnah, is part of TB Markinson's monthly giveaway this month. I'm very grateful to TB for including me in her event! If you'd like a chance to win my book along with four others, visit TB here or enter the rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

Finally, I just want to thank everyone who left kind words and good wishes about my mom's birthday and one year anniversary of being cancer free. We had a great time taking her out for her birthday and she really enjoyed the day. So that's one more BIG thing to celebrate. :)

Happy weekend, all!

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

IWSG & Ringing Out the Old

Today's the day for the February meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. Visit here to see this month's co-hosts, a list of group participants, or to join the group yourself. The IWSG is a welcoming and supportive community and if you decide to join I know you won't regret it.

I know New Year's is generally the time we "ring out the old and ring in the new," but I am doing that a month late this year.

I've whined for probably six or eight months about the story I've been working on and finishing, then starting again, then finishing again, and then oops, still not really finished. I wrote about throwing in the towel on it more than once and also wrote about finishing it more than once. But last week I realized that it's not only not finished, it simply isn't a good story. IT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

I came to this realization while I was lying in bed enjoying the fact that I did not have to get up for work that day. For whatever reason, it became crystal clear to me that I was not going to finish that story and that was okay. Sometimes you just have to accept that something doesn't work and all the revisions in the world aren't going to change that.

It sounds crazy, but this simple realization caused me to breath a huge sigh of relief. For almost a year now I've been putting everything else on hold saying I needed to finish this story before I started on anything else. I stopped nearly all blogging and social media insisting that I needed to simply focus on this story. The story had become an albatross around my neck. So being able to give myself permission to let it go and move on was just what I needed!

Now I'm excited to be back to blogging again and giving other forms of social media another try. I've got some ideas for blog topics lined up and I even signed up for a blogfest, (see above) which I was fairly sure I'd never do again.

Source: publicdomainpictures

I'm even more excited to be working on a new story, something totally out of my comfort zone. I've had an idea for a children's book based on the farm animals I met at Sunrise Sanctuary last year and I actually started working on it now! I have no idea where it will lead but it's fun to try something totally different. My main characters are an ambitious but naive cow, an anxiety-plagued dog, and a streetwise but compassionate cat. My goal is to write a book I would have loved reading as a child.

I hope your month is off to a good start and I look forward to visiting and getting caught up with everyone!

Getting Back to Blogging & Celebrating the Small Things

For the past six or eight months I've been going through serious "blogging fatigue" and I had almost come to the point of just scrapping the blog altogether. But in the past week I've come to some writing-related decisions and one of them was that I did not want to give up on blogging. As time has gone by I've realized I've missed it and I knew that if I did quit, I would really miss the relationships I've been lucky enough to develop and the camaraderie that exists around the blogosphere.

Once I decided I definitely wanted to get back to blogging I couldn't think of a better way to do that than by re-joining the Celebrate the Small Things hop. I used to participate this hop and am looking forward to being part of it again. The hop is hosted by my buddy Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G Keltner at Writing Off the Edge, Tonja Drecker at Kidbits, and Katie at The Cyborg Mom. Visit Lexa's blog here to see what to do if you want to join in the hop yourself and to see the list of participants.

So what am I celebrating this week?

1. I'm thrilled to have finally come to some writing decisions as far as future projects, which I'll share in next week's IWSG post. In turn, I'm thrilled that those decisions made me realize how much I have missed blogging. I'm celebrating being back in blog land!

2. The X-Files is back! I enjoyed the show's return and look forward to the rest of the episodes. It was fun to have Mulder and Scully back on my screen. If you're an X-Files fan like me you may be interested in the post I wrote about my favorite episodes on Untethered Realms a few weeks back.

3. This really isn't a small thing, for my family it is a BIG thing for sure, but I'm celebrating the fact that we are taking my mom out for her 88th birthday this weekend. Not only is she turning 88, she's celebrating a year of remission from her cancer. She is happy and healthy and doing so well that I can't really believe how far she has come in a year.

Now to hop around and see what everyone else is celebrating. Happy weekend, all!

IWSG and Happy 2016!

Hello, all, and welcome to the first 2016 meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

The IWSG is hosted by our Ninja founder Alex J. Cavanaugh. Alex's co-hosts to help kick off the new year are L.G. Keltner, Denise Covey, Sheri Larson, J.Q. Rose, Chemist Ken, and Michelle Wallace.

If you'd like to join the group, just visit the list here and add your name. Newcomers are always welcome!

I'm not feeling particularly insecure this month (a miracle!) but more just excited and a little overwhelmed. I have lots of new ideas for stories and articles I would like to write and submit to markets in the coming year, but I can't seem to settle down and focus. For the past few years I've focused exclusively on my novels and while that has been wonderful, I want to go back to some other writing goals I let slip by the wayside. I'd love to write some short stories and non-fiction articles and, with luck, have them accepted for publication somewhere. I hope by the time we have our last meeting of the year I'll be able to say I did that!

For the rest of this month though I'm working hard on polishing my novel, which I finally finished on New Year's Eve, just barely making the end of 2015 deadline I set for myself. I have lots of revisions and overall polishing to do now, but I'm excited to work on those because I feel really good about the story now.

Last year I felt kind of burned out with writing of all kinds so it feels great to be excited again. Even though having lots of ideas hopping around in my head is a little overwhelming, it's a much better feeling than being stuck and burned out. So I'm hoping to keep that excitement going as we march along through 2016.

I'm looking forward to checking in with all the other IWSG members and the rest of my blogging pals and catching up with all of you. I want to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year and here's to a great 2016 for all of us.