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I’ve always been a big believer in being prepared (yes, I was a Girl Scout all those years ago).  I don’t like hectic mornings, so everything is organized the night before to make sure the mornings go smoothly.  My kids know that in the evenings before bed, they have to have all their homework done,  essays printed out, homework collected in their backpacks downstairs,  and have a handle on what they want to wear the following day.  Lunches are made the night before.  The more time we invest at night, the better and more stress-free our mornings are.

The Lifehack blog recently ran a post by Timo Kiander: “Do You Do This Common Mistake When You Start Working on Your Tasks?”  In it, the writer gives tips for people who open up a document, daily goals firmly in mind, and then basically waste their writing time through lack of preparation.Continue reading

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The past few days haven’t been terrific and the fault for this lies squarely with me.

So…I dropped my phone in water.  Apparently, this is not a good thing to do to smart phones.  Not only did I drop it in water, I didn’t even realize I’d dropped it into water.  There was no quick rescue, so the phone was submerged for quite a while.  Once I discovered it, I tried sticking it into a bag of quick-rice, but boy, that thing was dead.

I have also broken a plastic container that was full of leftovers (yes, this is hard to do! But somehow…), chipped a bowl, ran into a doorjamb, and burned two things I was cooking.  Even for me, this is a long list of issues.Continue reading

My daughter has been horseback riding on the weekends for years now. I love that she loves it, I love the way she excels at it.  I love that it’s an outdoor activity in a digital, indoor age.  The barns are interesting places and the people who hang out in barns are very different from the people I’m ordinarily around, so that’s very stimulating.  And, of course, the horses are gorgeous.

But I really just didn’t get the whole horse thing.  My daughter would talk about the horses while we were at the barn and continue talking about them during the week.  There was lots of personification going on…in my mind, anyway.  “Dusty worries about the jumps when they’re in different locations than usual.  That’s why he kept trying to look at them as we were cantering around the ring. I had to really make sure he was looking straight ahead,” she’d say.  And I’d nod and ask more about Dusty’s proclivities and his outlook on the world, and think, “What a creative child I have!”  Because I’d look at Dusty, the largest horse in the barn, and all I got out of it was… “My Lord, what a massive animal that is.”  And hope she always stayed on the horse.

I’m perfectly capable of telling people what’s on my dog’s mind and my cats’ minds, but I couldn’t get into the horses’ heads at all.  Until my daughter started riding Sweet Pea a month or so ago.  That was when I started getting into horses.

Sweet Pea was curious.  My daughter would be trying to tack her up and the horse would hear someone coming and crane her head to peer around and see who was there with this intelligent, interested, curious look on her face.  She attentively watches  the pasture, when she has a view to it, to spy on her horse buddies.  Actually, I guess Sweet Pea is more nosy than curious.Continue reading

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

 

Check out the new resource for writers.  It’s Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group website.  There you’ll find pages of links to resources—writing tips, publishers, agents, queries, self-publishing, marketing, contests, and publications for writers.

 

Friend and fellow mystery writer Margot Kinberg has put together a crime fiction anthology: In a Word–Murder.  The ebook retails for $2.99 and proceeds from its sales benefit Princess Alice Hospice, in memory of Maxine Clarke, a supporter of and good friend to the crime writing community.  One of my stories is in the collection, too…my first attempt at short fiction. :)

 

Have a great week!

 

6 Tools That Stop Computer Distractions and Help You Stay on Task: http://dld.bz/cTK5m @TrekityContinue reading

A few years ago, I got an email from a middle school student.  What was the theme of my book?

At first I was just a little startled that students just wrote authors about this kind of thing.  It would never have occurred to me to do that…but then, I guess the internet wasn’t around at that point, either (at least, not to the general public).

And then I was startled when I realized that…hey, the book in question didn’t really have much of a theme.  Maybe that’s why the kid was having such a hard time. :)  I mean, you could go with a ‘good will triumph over evil’ type of thing.  It was basically general crime fiction.

Now my Myrtle Clover series does have a regular theme throughout all the books and aside from any other thematic elements in each separate book.  Don’t discount the elderly.   If you do, Myrtle might be walloping you with her cane.  Or revealing you as the book’s murderer.Continue reading