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Showing posts from 2015

Holidays! Year's End and Sunrise Photos

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ear's end... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you! Denise Covey has some yummy dessert and drinks that I've just partaken of, and it's feeling quite festive around the blogosphere. Not exactly the right time for a year-end review of tasks and goals, is it? That can wait 'til January. Instead, I'll do a quick recap of some of the other events: Back in January, I held a contest to celebrate my 900th post ! I'm now at 970 and for 1,000, I'd really like to compile a list of all my posts sorted into groups, especially all the book reviews. I need an intern to copy all those reviews over to Amazon! This needing an intern thing is an ongoing issue for me. I noted in a book review post: "The trouble is, because I've been reading since long before the Internet, I find my Amazon, Goodreads, and LibraryThing profiles are not an accurate representation of all the books I own, have read, and have enjoyed. LibraryThing comes the closest,

End of ROW80, and Two Stories by Kait Nolan!

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ow, another round of A Round of Words in 80 Days has come to an end. My ROW80 goals for this round kept changing -- which is the best part of ROW80; it's the "writing challenge that knows you have a life". First I was knitting, then NaNoing. I've got some notes and five pages of Larksong still to type, Druid's Moon notes to check and editing to do, last year's NaNo story to type up, and this year's NaNo to finish (plus I should try to finish my CampNaNo story from July as well). Also some blog tidying and some more knitting... Meanwhile, I've recently read two lovely stories, a short story and a novella, by the founder of ROW80 herself, Kait Nolan : Be Careful, It's My Heart : The first book in Kait's Wishful series (though not the first book in the chronological timeline of the town of Wishful). This series is Kait's "love song to the South, showing everything I love about my home state of Mississippi. I hope you'll jo

Annual Books Read Statistics!

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t's here: the Annual Books Read Statistics! Here are the statistics for 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , 2011 (and the list ), 2010 , 2009 (and the list ). First off, here's the full list , sorted slightly into author groups (I can't keep up with alphabetising or italicising all this though): 1. Be Careful, It's My Heart by Kait Nolan 2. HELP! Food Allergies Coming To Dinner by Kait Nolan 3. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (annual reread) 4. Beowulf and Sellic Spell by J. R. R. Tolkien 5. The Story of Kullervo by J. R. R. Tolkien 6. The War of the Ring - Book 8 in the History of Middle Earth series by Christopher Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien (reread) 7. Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien (reread but new edition) 8. Smith of Wootton Major by J. R. R. Tolkien (reread but new edition) 9. Sauron Defeated - Book 9 in the History of Middle Earth series by Christopher Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien (reread) 10. The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne (rerea

End of NaNo for IWSG Day, and Snow in the Village

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ongratulations to everyone that's completed NaNoWriMo! Today being Insecure Writer's Support Group Day, I wouldn't want anyone to feel badly; congratulations to those that started NaNo, to those that worked on other projects, to those that survived the month! We're heading into the time of end-of-year wrap ups and looks back to previously set goals and so on. I hope to put together my annual Books Read post soon. Sometimes it's nice to feel slow. We're always measuring our tasks and words and days; every once in a while it's nice to look back without weighing up the value of projects, or to work on something specific without thought of a deadline. Or so I try to remind myself on days when I feel as though there aren't enough hours. I started NaNoWriMo with a bang , but it became difficult as the days went on, mostly because I only had two 20-minute snatches to write in during the day; just when I got some momentum, the train pulled in to the sta

Guest Post and Giveaway by Mark Koopmans to Celebrate Revival -- The Donald Braswell Story

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ello, Mark! Mark Koopmans is on a blog tour to celebrate the release of Revival -- The Donald Braswell Story . Scroll down for his guest post, and further down for the giveaway! REVIVAL - The Donald Braswell Story How a Tenor Lost his Voice, but Found his Calling by Donald Braswell with Mark Koopmans From Juilliard to jumper cables; from wasting all the talent in the world to America's Got Talent, this is the story of the Texas opera singer who lost his voice -- but found his calling. Pen-L Publishing Also available on Amazon Five years removed from his 1990 Juilliard graduation, Donald Braswell is set to be "the next Pavarotti." Braswell's successful career ends, however, not with a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall, but alone, lying in a dirty ditch. Following the hit-and-run accident that steals his voice and future, the "Texas Tenor" struggles with depression and despair—until the night his daughter, Aria, is born. Understand

Writing Inspiration for NaNoWriMo and ROW80

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he first two weeks of National Novel Writing Month have gone by and I'm... halfway there but starting to lag behind. If I lose even one day of writing, all momentum falls by the wayside. I had a really good first couple of days, and those have kept me afloat on drier days (I shouldn't obsess over stats, but I can't help but feel better if my daily average is higher than the bare minimum). I've had fun tweeting some inspirational moments -- and had fun again just now putting them into Storify , which is wonderfully easy to use. Please scroll down if you'd like to start chronologically (and I see it's been divided into two pages as well -- skip to the photos if you'd prefer!). [ View the story "Deniz Does NaNoWriMo2015" on Storify ] Hope everyone's having a good week! We just got back from a short vacation, so I hope to share more photos as soon as I get them organized, and have some book blog tour items coming up. Also, it's my

The Descent of the Cows, and ROW80

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or the final installment of the village photos (scroll down to visit Tolochenaz, Rolle, and Morges), I'm featuring St Cergue, up in the Jura mountains, and the descent of the cows! The yearly desalpe is the descent of the cows from their summer pastures to their winter pastures. The cows are decorated for the event, and there are also lots and lots of very loud bells...   Off to see the cows!   Hmm, these loud bells are less than impressive...   Pretty!   Flags of Switzerland and the canton of Vaud   View from a hill   Haze over Lac Leman The event is very evocative, as it's a tradition that goes back many hundreds of years. It's lovely to imagine the fathers and grandfathers and many times great-grandfathers of the farmers bringing down the cows every year, from one year to the next. And the grandmothers too! Both men and women farmers were present. I'd love to sit around a farmhouse kitchen, helping to create the decorativ