A Place to Read

Do you have a favorite place to read?  I have a couple.  One of them is in my back yard.  Quiet and peaceful I can relax, read, check out nature -- once I had a deer walk right by me -- and just enjoy the solitude.

This is also a great spot for me to sit down when I'm out walking to reflect and think about the book that I am currently working on.  Where is it going?  How am I going to get my character out of that tight spot I got her in?  Do I really think she's in love with that guy?

Sometimes, something totally new, out of the blue, comes to me. 

Reading to Imagining

While outside weeding in my very over-grown gardens I realized that I could imagine perfectly and on a tremendously small scale relate to the book I had just finished reading.

My Dad transplanted these yellow flowers from the house that I grew up in.  Yes, they are over my head and have not bloomed yet but they are taking over everywhere!  I needed to thin them out and in doing so thought about Lost In Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff.  A very good read.  Survivors of a plane crash in New Guinea during World War II, I pictured myself in the jungle and what it must have been like.  Besides the wild animals that roamed the island they had to worry about cannibals and the Japanese.

My biggest threat was possibly finding a garter snake.  

The survivors in all their physical pain still had to walk to a clearing -- a landing site.

I am not minimizing what they went through but I love when I can really get into a book.  When 'I'm there' with the characters. 

Have you ever read a book where you could put yourself right in the pages?

Lovina's Pressed Flowers again

Almost done!  Only one more block to make.  Have the fabrics picked out.  
Then finish making yo-yo's, put them on the hexagons that don't yet have them and sew together.

  

The hard but fun part will be rearranging the blocks.  Several times.

Breaking my string, Part 2

In my last post I talked about people at book signings asking me if I had swear words in my books or were they Christian/spiritual?

Now I am heading in the other direction . . .

Recently a mother and daughter stopped at my booth.  "Oh, look Mom!  An author!" said the daughter.  She picked up one of my books.  "We both love to read.  Don't we, Mom?"

The mother, somewhere in her 70's or 80's, hurried over, "Yes, yes, we do.  Listen, are these anything like 50 Shades of Gray?"

"Mom!"

"I just loved that --"

"Mother!"

"I read all three books inside a week.  So, are these books anything like that?"

"Umm," I looked at the daughter with her mouth hung open and then back to the mother, "No, but I have swear words."