Wednesday, October 03, 2012
The Wolves that Watch
Monday, March 05, 2012
Snow and being Sequestered!
Grand Traverse County has been deemed a disaster area after Saturday's snow storm. More than 30,000 people were left without power when an average of 18 inches of heavy wet snow was piled on us in one 24 hour period. Today is Monday now and we are still trying to get ourselves unburied. Branches came down in my yard, pictured here. Also
my neighbor had several trees just pulled right over because of the snow. This one landed on her roof. And the last picture shows one of the trees from her yard bent over the fence and our cable line literally holding it up. I had Jake go out there and hit the snow off the tree to get it to stand back up. Saturday while we were outside trying to shovel the wind would come up and the snow would fall in big wet clumps down into the tops of our jackets, sliding all the way down our backs! We all needed hot bathes when we got the cars unstuck.
It took all our ingenuity to get them out too. There was no power so the electric starter on the snow blower wouldn't work. We had to shovel. We have an electric stove so we couldn't cook any food. We thought about the gas grill which would have worked except we went ahead and had sandwiches for lunch and by dinner time the power was back on. In this we were fortunate. Our friends were without power for more than 48 hours some of them. They were keeping warm in front of fireplaces and gas ovens.This is the first major disaster I've ever actually been in when my life was in danger, and I must tell you, I got a little scared. It's making me see that we rely way to much on electricity.
On the lighter side, with out the Internet to distract us, my family gathered around the kitchen table and played a game of Scrabble. I got interested in a good book that I've been meaning to read and everyone took a good long nap. The DVD player began to blink when the power came back on, and my husband's computer started making noises. That is what gave us the first clues that the power was back. We sighed with relief and turned the heat up!
We'd had a few days before this relative nice weather, but I was sequestered nonetheless with my writing. I managed to finish the book I had begun during last November's Nanowrimo. It is the pre-quel to "A Haunting at Mackinac." It's called "Blackburn" and is about a man who fights the war of 1812 on Mackinac Island. Those of you who have read my first book will recognize some of the characters and events. It needs a lot of work though, it needs fleshing out. There are a lot of Telling details in there, and it would be better if I could figure out how to Show them instead!
So I've put it away for a couple of months so I can get back to it with a fresh eye. Meanwhile, I'm getting back into Tessa's Travels and will do more Blogging on that sight as I get into it. So keep an eye out for that. I'm learning Scrivener now so I can be ready to use it in April for Scriptfrenzy.
Speaking of Scriptfrenzy, there is still time to vote on which project you would like me to pursue first. I'm thinking that the second choice will be a vehicle for that great actor of small stature Peter Dinkledge who most of you will have seen in the Movie Station Agent, if you missed him the HBO series "Game of Thrones". Of course I will write it two ways, one for him addressing the special problems short people have with dating, and one for normal sized actors in which case anyone from Brad Pit to Zach Ephron could play him.
While I've been sitting here updating my Blog, I noticed a yellow throated bird out here at my feeder. It's a yellow-throated Vireo. Only took about 15 minutes of Internet research to figure it out. I tried to take a good picture of it through the window but my camera is not allowing it.
Have a nice winter! In my neck of the woods it's going to last at three more days, but rumor has it it's going to be 60 degrees by Thursday. Ah, Michigan! don't you just love it!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Inspirational half week at Caroline's Sewing Room!
Welcome to Caroline's Sewing Room. This is a big front porch area that is all glassed in and very comfortable. Through the door to the left of this picture is Caroline's Bed and breakfast, and through the kitchen is the door to her quilt shop. We had the luxury of living there for three days this past week and six of us from TC enjoyed it immensely! Sue is in the picture putting up one of her latest finishes. We hung things in front of every window as we finished project after project! It was fabulous.
Caroline is a wonderful Grandmotherly type of lady who is funny and earthy and warm. She is easy going, often telling us that we could use anything we found in her kitchen or pantry while we were there, and always coming out with jars of pickles, and beets and whatever else telling us in no uncertain terms that we had to try this! On top of her very giving hospitality she also is a very faithful woman thanking God daily for her life and her prosperity.
All in all I was totally inspired by this woman and her "family" of employees. Rose, runs the store, and is from Scotland. Brenda who does the Long Arm Quilting at the shop and who bakes such special enticing treats such as bread for the soup and fruit filled coffee cake for Mardi Gras! Carolyn (not to be confused with Caroline) is the bookkeeper and the wife of Caroline's minister. Caroline always keeps her cell phone handy in her pocket so she can call someone at a moments whim to ask them a question or to get advice, like when we accidentally blocked the sink with an orange peel, and when someone wanted to know if there were cloves in the pickles she was serving us.
Then there is Cubby! Cubby is the cutest little Terrier mix that I've ever encounter since my own terrier mix died when I was in my twenties. He was the most well behaved dog I've run across since Lassie! He was just as quiet as a mouse and as easy going as his mommy. The only time we heard him bark was when someone came to the door after the shop closed. He knew they didn't belong there and he was making sure we knew that. He kept whimpering the whole time until the person left.
We decided to go for a walk on our first day and Caroline asked us if we wanted to take Cubby. Someone said, yes, they would love to. So we went out to another fabric shop two doors down and after a quick glance through I realized there was nothing in the shop I wanted so I went out to spell the lady who was walking Cubby. I took his leash and let her go into the shop. I waited there for a while but then I thought, oh why not, so I walked down the road slowly with Cubby and he did his business. We were around the corner in a very few minutes and we kept going slowly around the little block. Well by the time we got to next corner the others hadn't even gotten to the first corner yet. So Cubby and I finished out walk together. He was very good. When a car came along he came right back to my side, just like he was supposed to. Then when nothing was around I would let him go and explore. He'd sniff around once in a while so I could stop and catch my breath. Then we'd keep going. Along the highway I had him heel so that he wouldn't get too close to the road. He knew just want to do.
The next day Caroline comes down into the sewing room and tells us this story:
"I woke up in the middle of the night and Cubby was asleep on the bed. I couldn't wake him up and was getting a little worried about him because usually he wakes up when I get up in the middle of the night. So I shook him and eventually he woke up. I let him out to do his little business and he came back in and fell asleep again on the bed. You must have had a real good walk, cuz you wore him out!"
He had the cutest toys too. He had a little duck and a rooster that actually crowed when he shook it, and several other things. He brought them out into the sewing room to show us. If I had a dog like him I would walk him daily just to spend quality time with him. Oh well!
Gas was cheaper in West Branch, they have a store that sells quality cuts of beef for less than I've seen anywhere, and it's the home town of Kaye Wood, of TV fame. I could live there, for no other reason than to be near Caroline! If you would like to schedule a retreat at Caroline's here is her website: http://carolinessewing.com/
But I really shouldn't be promoting it, because I don't want her to overbook, I may not be able to get back there if she is!
More on this whole topic later! Love you guys down there in West Branch. Hope to see you soon.
Cindy K-K
Thursday, February 16, 2012
More about the Poll
At your right you can see the poll I am speaking about. I plan to write all of these stories in one form or another. I just wish to know which of them you would most like to see first. Here is a larger description of each of them:
1. Hell to Pay--Actually I also began to call this one Frozen Hell as in Hell Freezing over. A comedy about a married couple in their fifties who have always been in debt. In the opening scene we have the woman pouring herself coffee in the morning. Her husband is heard groaning in the next room and then we see him appear as well. They are both overweight, both are looking a bit low key with their morning ritual. Woman says: Hey, do you remember when we were young and first married? We used to talk about growing old together.
Man: (underwhelmed) Yeah?
Woman: (brightly) Done! Accomplished that goal! What do you want to do next?
Man smiles at the joke, then says: Get out of debt?
Woman nods dejected and goes back to sipping her coffee.
They talk about their bucket list, now that they can check off growing old together. But everything else on the list costs money. Whether its a hot air balloon ride or a trip to Yellowstone Park. So they have to conclude that the next thing on their bucket list will be to die debt free. So what are their conflicts? Everything from their son's student loan debts, to rising prices on gas and groceries, to their own poor health, until it seems they will never be debt free.
I have a lot of funny lines and some poignant moments between these two characters and I believe there is enough there to build a lot of scenes from. Just keep in mind that any resemblance to persons living or dead or who belong to my family are strictly coincidental. ((NOT!!))
MDQ (Major Dramatic Question): Will they get out of debt? More to the point, what keeps this particular couple struggling all these years together without their soul crushing debt tearing them apart?
2. Decisions: For those of you with my particular background in Literature or who have subjected themselves with Thomas Hardy's writing even by accident, you might recognize this story as a retelling of "Far From the Madding Crowd." But I didn't intend any such thing really.
It's about a woman who moves into a small town outside of Chicago for two reasons, one because it was the only place she could find a job that would pay enough to cover her rent. She is an artist and spends all of her spare time doing Multi-media found object art which is her passion. She shows her art in a consignment shop in Grand Rapids Michigan. Early on in the story she is excited because she finds that one of pieces has sold from the shop.
She works as a bartender doing the late shift four nights a week. She lives in a boarding house in a basement studio apartment. She chose this place because her landlady is allowing her to use the rest of the basement as her work area, but she has to share it with her landlady's nephew who does handyman work for her. As the weeks progress it seems that he has no other job and little job ambition.
One night at the bar she sees a young man about her age who is very handsome. She serves him a drink and he seems very kind. He looks her in the eye which is unusual for the men who frequent this bar. Usually their eyes don't get above her chin. She is intrigued and finds out that he is the manager of a computer store in town. Smart, well-to-do, and handsome, he seems to be just the kind of guy she would like to be with. Except all her new female friends think he's a light-weight and talk about him being such a geek in high school. They inform her that he was literally the guy that wheeled the projector cart from place to place. Because of that they could not see the handsome successful guy that he has become. She begins to date him.
Just after she starts her relationship with this guy, yet another fellow comes into her life. He is an older man with a southern drawl and very sexy for his age. He buys one of her pieces at an art show and strikes up a conversation with her. He wants to see more of her work so she invites him to her studio. He pulls some strings and gets her into a Chicago gallery where her work will get more exposure and he makes it financially possible for her to produce more work by paying off her credit card and setting up an account for her at a wholesale art supply distributor. At first she takes his help because she is convinced he only wants to patronize her. But all along he makes comments about how lovely she is and how he would not be opposed to a more steady relationship.
Meanwhile the nephew hangs out in the basement with her more and more often and she is getting used to him being around. They talk as friends and to most observing eyes it is apparent that he has fallen for her.
The MDQ: Which will she choose? Rich patron of the arts? Handsome, smart well to do business man? or friend with little job ambition? Which would you choose? There is a secondary MDQ as well concerning the sale of her art from the place in Grand Rapids. Who could have bought that piece? Was it one of her new friends from this small town? And if so who? (A question that has been on my mind since I began to sell books. At first I could tell you every person who bought one, but no more. Now I have no idea who could possibly be reading my stuff.)
3. Fate: Woman and her Autistic brother move to a small Northern Michigan community after the death of their parents. She is in her mid-twenties. Her brother is fairly high functioning but not able to live on his own. They move there because they have inherited their grandmother's house in this town. This woman knew she couldn't afford to keep the big house in Chicago that her parents owned so she sold that so that they could live more simply for a time until they establish themselves in the new town.
Meanwhile there is a man who has lived in this town his entire life. When he was 14 a fortune teller told him that one day he would meet a woman and from the moment he saw her he would not be able to take his eyes off her. But to beware of her because she would be keeping a secret from him.
Two days after she moves to town she goes into the grocery store and he sees her there for the first time. He literally cannot take his eyes off of her. He works at the deli counter and when she sees that he is noticing her, she goes up to him and orders more from the deli than she and her brother could eat in a week. But he is not intimidated, he just watches her as he is filling her order.
She decides to buy her groceries in the bigger town 20 minutes away from then on. A few weeks later she is walking downtown in this little town. She's decided she has to try to find some sort of a job, she wants to get herself established in this community and she thinks that a job will get her out into the public and meeting people. A brand new deli has opened up next door to the grocery store and there is a help-wanted sign in the window. She goes in to apply for the job and sees that it's this same man who has now opened up his own deli. She gets the job, needless to say. And the two of them start working together. But what is the big secret? He knows there is one, but he is too in love with her to worry about what she could be hiding from him.
MDQ: What is the secret? Is it something that will tear them apart or once shared bring them closer? And what impact will it have on this little town?
I've extended the dates on the poll, so come back and vote again and often (this isn't a national election). Tell your friends!
Cindy K-K
1. Hell to Pay--Actually I also began to call this one Frozen Hell as in Hell Freezing over. A comedy about a married couple in their fifties who have always been in debt. In the opening scene we have the woman pouring herself coffee in the morning. Her husband is heard groaning in the next room and then we see him appear as well. They are both overweight, both are looking a bit low key with their morning ritual. Woman says: Hey, do you remember when we were young and first married? We used to talk about growing old together.
Man: (underwhelmed) Yeah?
Woman: (brightly) Done! Accomplished that goal! What do you want to do next?
Man smiles at the joke, then says: Get out of debt?
Woman nods dejected and goes back to sipping her coffee.
They talk about their bucket list, now that they can check off growing old together. But everything else on the list costs money. Whether its a hot air balloon ride or a trip to Yellowstone Park. So they have to conclude that the next thing on their bucket list will be to die debt free. So what are their conflicts? Everything from their son's student loan debts, to rising prices on gas and groceries, to their own poor health, until it seems they will never be debt free.
I have a lot of funny lines and some poignant moments between these two characters and I believe there is enough there to build a lot of scenes from. Just keep in mind that any resemblance to persons living or dead or who belong to my family are strictly coincidental. ((NOT!!))
MDQ (Major Dramatic Question): Will they get out of debt? More to the point, what keeps this particular couple struggling all these years together without their soul crushing debt tearing them apart?
2. Decisions: For those of you with my particular background in Literature or who have subjected themselves with Thomas Hardy's writing even by accident, you might recognize this story as a retelling of "Far From the Madding Crowd." But I didn't intend any such thing really.
It's about a woman who moves into a small town outside of Chicago for two reasons, one because it was the only place she could find a job that would pay enough to cover her rent. She is an artist and spends all of her spare time doing Multi-media found object art which is her passion. She shows her art in a consignment shop in Grand Rapids Michigan. Early on in the story she is excited because she finds that one of pieces has sold from the shop.
She works as a bartender doing the late shift four nights a week. She lives in a boarding house in a basement studio apartment. She chose this place because her landlady is allowing her to use the rest of the basement as her work area, but she has to share it with her landlady's nephew who does handyman work for her. As the weeks progress it seems that he has no other job and little job ambition.
One night at the bar she sees a young man about her age who is very handsome. She serves him a drink and he seems very kind. He looks her in the eye which is unusual for the men who frequent this bar. Usually their eyes don't get above her chin. She is intrigued and finds out that he is the manager of a computer store in town. Smart, well-to-do, and handsome, he seems to be just the kind of guy she would like to be with. Except all her new female friends think he's a light-weight and talk about him being such a geek in high school. They inform her that he was literally the guy that wheeled the projector cart from place to place. Because of that they could not see the handsome successful guy that he has become. She begins to date him.
Just after she starts her relationship with this guy, yet another fellow comes into her life. He is an older man with a southern drawl and very sexy for his age. He buys one of her pieces at an art show and strikes up a conversation with her. He wants to see more of her work so she invites him to her studio. He pulls some strings and gets her into a Chicago gallery where her work will get more exposure and he makes it financially possible for her to produce more work by paying off her credit card and setting up an account for her at a wholesale art supply distributor. At first she takes his help because she is convinced he only wants to patronize her. But all along he makes comments about how lovely she is and how he would not be opposed to a more steady relationship.
Meanwhile the nephew hangs out in the basement with her more and more often and she is getting used to him being around. They talk as friends and to most observing eyes it is apparent that he has fallen for her.
The MDQ: Which will she choose? Rich patron of the arts? Handsome, smart well to do business man? or friend with little job ambition? Which would you choose? There is a secondary MDQ as well concerning the sale of her art from the place in Grand Rapids. Who could have bought that piece? Was it one of her new friends from this small town? And if so who? (A question that has been on my mind since I began to sell books. At first I could tell you every person who bought one, but no more. Now I have no idea who could possibly be reading my stuff.)
3. Fate: Woman and her Autistic brother move to a small Northern Michigan community after the death of their parents. She is in her mid-twenties. Her brother is fairly high functioning but not able to live on his own. They move there because they have inherited their grandmother's house in this town. This woman knew she couldn't afford to keep the big house in Chicago that her parents owned so she sold that so that they could live more simply for a time until they establish themselves in the new town.
Meanwhile there is a man who has lived in this town his entire life. When he was 14 a fortune teller told him that one day he would meet a woman and from the moment he saw her he would not be able to take his eyes off her. But to beware of her because she would be keeping a secret from him.
Two days after she moves to town she goes into the grocery store and he sees her there for the first time. He literally cannot take his eyes off of her. He works at the deli counter and when she sees that he is noticing her, she goes up to him and orders more from the deli than she and her brother could eat in a week. But he is not intimidated, he just watches her as he is filling her order.
She decides to buy her groceries in the bigger town 20 minutes away from then on. A few weeks later she is walking downtown in this little town. She's decided she has to try to find some sort of a job, she wants to get herself established in this community and she thinks that a job will get her out into the public and meeting people. A brand new deli has opened up next door to the grocery store and there is a help-wanted sign in the window. She goes in to apply for the job and sees that it's this same man who has now opened up his own deli. She gets the job, needless to say. And the two of them start working together. But what is the big secret? He knows there is one, but he is too in love with her to worry about what she could be hiding from him.
MDQ: What is the secret? Is it something that will tear them apart or once shared bring them closer? And what impact will it have on this little town?
I've extended the dates on the poll, so come back and vote again and often (this isn't a national election). Tell your friends!
Cindy K-K
Sunday, January 29, 2012
I Finally got some honest feedback!
Two people have now told me some honest feedback about "A Haunting at Mackinac." I find this good for two reasons:
1. People are reading it, actually reading it!! And paying attention to it!
2. So far I've heard how good the story is, and how interesting it is, and everyone is encouraging me to get out a print version. But before the print version comes out I wanted to make sure it was as perfect as it could be. Well, each time I go through it I find more to change. It's never going to be totally perfect, I began writing it almost 20 years ago or more. It's just not ever going to be my best work. But some of the things people have come up with are continuity errors that should have been caught by a previous read through. The funniest one is this: apparently in the first four days they are on the Island, they hire the same carriage driver for a week at time on three different occasions. Each time they are pleased and surprised to see it's the same carriage driver and at the end of the trip they pay him for a whole week. Now, even the most greedy cab driver will let someone know that they already paid him a fair wage. This was clearly a problem with me forgetting as I was writing that I had already had the characters hire the guy for the week.
So I am in the process of reading through it again for continuity errors before I put it out in print. I will also update the Kindle version. So anyone else who buys it for Kindle will get the corrected version. I don't know how it will work for people who have already bought it. So I apologize about that but I can't do anything about it.
I have also added quotations to the beginning and a glossary of Ojibwa and Algonquin words and phrases. So I will keep you all informed as to when this whole process will be finished so you can go to your local bookstore and ask for them to order my book for you in the print version! Can't wait to hold it in my hand!
On other newsy fronts: I have three new ideas about screenplays that I could write for April's Script Frenzy. I'd love some feedback about which one would interest you the most. See the sidebar for a short synapses of the three projects.
Thanks for your input!
1. People are reading it, actually reading it!! And paying attention to it!
2. So far I've heard how good the story is, and how interesting it is, and everyone is encouraging me to get out a print version. But before the print version comes out I wanted to make sure it was as perfect as it could be. Well, each time I go through it I find more to change. It's never going to be totally perfect, I began writing it almost 20 years ago or more. It's just not ever going to be my best work. But some of the things people have come up with are continuity errors that should have been caught by a previous read through. The funniest one is this: apparently in the first four days they are on the Island, they hire the same carriage driver for a week at time on three different occasions. Each time they are pleased and surprised to see it's the same carriage driver and at the end of the trip they pay him for a whole week. Now, even the most greedy cab driver will let someone know that they already paid him a fair wage. This was clearly a problem with me forgetting as I was writing that I had already had the characters hire the guy for the week.
So I am in the process of reading through it again for continuity errors before I put it out in print. I will also update the Kindle version. So anyone else who buys it for Kindle will get the corrected version. I don't know how it will work for people who have already bought it. So I apologize about that but I can't do anything about it.
I have also added quotations to the beginning and a glossary of Ojibwa and Algonquin words and phrases. So I will keep you all informed as to when this whole process will be finished so you can go to your local bookstore and ask for them to order my book for you in the print version! Can't wait to hold it in my hand!
On other newsy fronts: I have three new ideas about screenplays that I could write for April's Script Frenzy. I'd love some feedback about which one would interest you the most. See the sidebar for a short synapses of the three projects.
Thanks for your input!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Was today wasted? You decide!
I started out today with the simple mission of getting enough ink to print out my next novel manuscript for my Editor Clover McKinley. She's read 250 manuscript pages of it out of about 1500 pages. I went to Cartridge world and got three new refills of ink. Came home and installed one. Started printing and managed to print about half of the first part before I had spooler problems. After rebooting the computer and the printer both about three times, I finally got so it would print the rest. But while waiting for all of those reboots, out of habit, and out of pure joy, I began to read what was in front of me.
What was in front of me was my own novel. I just started picking it up and reading right where it was.
I got the printing done and kept on reading. Now, let me tell you. I have re-read this book about fourteen times. Each time I was in some mode, clear the clutter, read for typos and misspellings, read for wordiness (yeah like that works!) I even read it through once to find out if the dialog was plausible. You have to read that out loud to discover it.
But today I just kept on reading out of the pure pleasure of it. I wonder now if Stephen King ever picked up a copy of Cujo by accident in a library and just opened the book at random and at once was pulled into that world and got caught, a world of his own making? Or maybe Dan Brown in a hospital waiting room happens to see a copy of Angels and Demons in a staff book exchange shelf and started reading chapter 16, just to have something he wouldn't have to concentrate on and then get caught. Or maybe Dickens, in one of the endless handwritten re-writes looked at David Copperfield with new eyes and lost himself in the text instead of copying it.
All at once Jake came out into the living room and said, "Hey mom, are you busy?"
I didn't know how to answer him. I wasn't doing anything I needed to do. I've been through this manuscript a dozen times. Now it's up to the professional editor to have at it. One part that I had read this afternoon had already been printed out for the editor so any changes I made on it would not be on her print out. How useless is that? I went to see what my son wanted and he suggested that the bananas I was saving for banana-nut muffins, were already at their optimum amount of black-peeled ripeness and should be made toot-sweet or they may soon turn into garbage. So I quickly made a double batch (I do nothing in singles) and as I put the first pan of them into the oven to bake, I realized that I had been hurrying that job so I could get back to the book.
I don't know why this book has me this captivated. Unless it's the two main characters. Nick and Sarah. Nick is a very hurt man. He was betrayed by his friends and took the rap for them. He did two years and eight months in prison on a five year sentence for breaking and entering. He admits to being there but wouldn't say who else was in the building with him. When he gets out he clings to the one thought that he never wants to go back, not for any reason. Yet, within a year he is again arrested. Why?
Then there is Sarah, she has also been hurt, in the worst way a girl can be hurt and still survive. She wasn't even able to confront her attacker because she was whisked away from the area without even putting forth an accusation. When she meets the hurt man, Nick, she is at a crossroads in her life. Nick too is at a crossroads in his life. Will he be able to make it outside of prison, and keep his word to himself? Will he find something to live for and be happy about? Will Sarah be able to heal herself from her abuse and go on to lead a productive life? I already know the answers to all of these questions, but still I found myself drawn up into their stories, and wishing to experience it again.
Is this vanity? Is this like that one girl in high school looking in the mirror and saying, "Oh my, I'm so cute today!" Is this me saying I'm God's gift to literature? Maybe? All I know is I love what I write. I was experiencing pure joy today re-reading the most emotional parts of this book.
I have never been in a position of self-aggrandizement before this. I was never the cutest girl in school, or the smartest, or the most talented, or the best dressed. But I know one thing, and that is this. I love this book!
So did I waste my time today, re-reading just for the joy of it? Or did I need to do this today to boost my self-confidence and self esteem. Now that I'm out there, being read, (and I am being read. Someone shared with me that they got their book club to read my book) maybe what I really needed was to reassure myself that what I write is good, enjoyable, worthy. Maybe I needed this today. Tomorrow it goes to the editor.
Cindy K-K
What was in front of me was my own novel. I just started picking it up and reading right where it was.
I got the printing done and kept on reading. Now, let me tell you. I have re-read this book about fourteen times. Each time I was in some mode, clear the clutter, read for typos and misspellings, read for wordiness (yeah like that works!) I even read it through once to find out if the dialog was plausible. You have to read that out loud to discover it.
But today I just kept on reading out of the pure pleasure of it. I wonder now if Stephen King ever picked up a copy of Cujo by accident in a library and just opened the book at random and at once was pulled into that world and got caught, a world of his own making? Or maybe Dan Brown in a hospital waiting room happens to see a copy of Angels and Demons in a staff book exchange shelf and started reading chapter 16, just to have something he wouldn't have to concentrate on and then get caught. Or maybe Dickens, in one of the endless handwritten re-writes looked at David Copperfield with new eyes and lost himself in the text instead of copying it.
All at once Jake came out into the living room and said, "Hey mom, are you busy?"
I didn't know how to answer him. I wasn't doing anything I needed to do. I've been through this manuscript a dozen times. Now it's up to the professional editor to have at it. One part that I had read this afternoon had already been printed out for the editor so any changes I made on it would not be on her print out. How useless is that? I went to see what my son wanted and he suggested that the bananas I was saving for banana-nut muffins, were already at their optimum amount of black-peeled ripeness and should be made toot-sweet or they may soon turn into garbage. So I quickly made a double batch (I do nothing in singles) and as I put the first pan of them into the oven to bake, I realized that I had been hurrying that job so I could get back to the book.
I don't know why this book has me this captivated. Unless it's the two main characters. Nick and Sarah. Nick is a very hurt man. He was betrayed by his friends and took the rap for them. He did two years and eight months in prison on a five year sentence for breaking and entering. He admits to being there but wouldn't say who else was in the building with him. When he gets out he clings to the one thought that he never wants to go back, not for any reason. Yet, within a year he is again arrested. Why?
Then there is Sarah, she has also been hurt, in the worst way a girl can be hurt and still survive. She wasn't even able to confront her attacker because she was whisked away from the area without even putting forth an accusation. When she meets the hurt man, Nick, she is at a crossroads in her life. Nick too is at a crossroads in his life. Will he be able to make it outside of prison, and keep his word to himself? Will he find something to live for and be happy about? Will Sarah be able to heal herself from her abuse and go on to lead a productive life? I already know the answers to all of these questions, but still I found myself drawn up into their stories, and wishing to experience it again.
Is this vanity? Is this like that one girl in high school looking in the mirror and saying, "Oh my, I'm so cute today!" Is this me saying I'm God's gift to literature? Maybe? All I know is I love what I write. I was experiencing pure joy today re-reading the most emotional parts of this book.
I have never been in a position of self-aggrandizement before this. I was never the cutest girl in school, or the smartest, or the most talented, or the best dressed. But I know one thing, and that is this. I love this book!
So did I waste my time today, re-reading just for the joy of it? Or did I need to do this today to boost my self-confidence and self esteem. Now that I'm out there, being read, (and I am being read. Someone shared with me that they got their book club to read my book) maybe what I really needed was to reassure myself that what I write is good, enjoyable, worthy. Maybe I needed this today. Tomorrow it goes to the editor.
Cindy K-K
Thursday, November 17, 2011
The Subconscious and the Writer's Thought Process
One of my followers on this Blog, Pat Petrovich, e-mailed me the other day after I mentioned to her that I had a dream and a new story came fully blown into my consciousness. She was amazed that it could happen that way. But it does, that's exactly how it happened.
I began to write her a long post and then realized that it probably should be on this Blog. So here it is.
Dreams, according to psychologists, are windows into the subconscious. They study dreams to find out what kinds of things we are thinking and feeling. Nearly every really good idea I've had for a story has begun with a dream. Those that have not started that way soon become involved in my dreaming life as I work out the details of the story.
Writer's will often express the fact that when they are into their story good, they will experience a feeling of "not writing" but "channelling" the story, as if it's coming from somewhere else. It flows down from the mind through the hands and onto the keyboard or paper. Sometimes they claim that they don't know where it came from. Other times they get the feeling that they didn't write it at all, but someone else using them as a conduit wrote through them. What they've done without realizing it is tapped into that Sub-conscious mind while they were awake and allowed their subconscious to write the story for a time. It's still coming from them, it just doesn't feel that way.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that writing and dreaming are intimately connected. Again it's one of those things that takes practice. The more you practice accessing those dreams, recalling dreams and tapping into that so very creative source, the better you will get.
One of the tools I use is from Julia Cameron's book called "The Artist's Way." In that book she talks about doing "morning pages" where you write in a notebook, always long hand, and you must write at least three pages every morning immediately upon awakening. I usually try to do it within one hour of getting out of bed. And what you write is total uncensored nonsense. Doesn't matter what it is. For the first few years of my doing this I wrote mostly things like, "OK, here I am, I'm awake, I'm in the kitchen, sipping on coffee, man there are a lot of dirty dishes I had to move the big pot out of the way in order to make coffee this morning, holy hell, I get tired of doing dishes, oh well, that's my life, shutting drawers and doors behind people and picking up after them. Maybe I should go on strike. Anyway, NO BIGGY, so I'll just put it on the list of stuff to do today and while I'm at it, I also need to mail the bills and throw in some laundry and then I can . . ." from there it turned into a PODA list. (Parade Of Daily Activities.)
Now I have learned that the list stuff is always in my mind and I can skip over it to get to the good stuff. So Now when I start my morning pages I start with headers and I never ((((NEVER)))) use the words "No Biggy" in my morning pages any more. I hated using that phrase, if it really was not a biggy then why was it occupying so much space in my head?
Now I start usually with the heading "Dream:" Then go on to state, "Woke up thinking about:" And try very hard to capture those early morning ideas which have proven to be so valuable to me. I like waking up naturally because REM sleep is usually the strongest just before waking, but I have also had good results with being awakened abruptly by a noise in the house (not an alarm) and then been able to relax back into the dream state.
Now, I have very far fetched and unsupported ideas about how the subconscious mind in humans may or may not be related to the supernatural. Freud put forward the theory that there is an Id, or a higher self involved as well as the "lower self" of the subconscious. I admit that I have not studied psychology past the rudimentary levels, but I think that the Id as described in that field is more like the idea of the perfect self. Each of us have in our minds attributes that we assign to ourselves whether we live them or not. We have our perfect self inside our mind and we only just try to live up to it, or we get into a downward spiral and decide not to live up to it at all. That's the Id. That has nothing to do with that I'm talking about.
I see the subconscious as more of a go-between and buffer for alternative dimensions and states of consciousness.
Many years ago, a very wise woman suggested to me that when we dream we go to the place where our spirits go after our bodies die. In the state we call sleep, our spirits and minds are free to travel to those places and encounter people and other beings that dwell in those places. If you've ever startled yourself awake after a nightmare, this woman claimed, it was really your spirit getting scared and quickly slamming itself back inside your body.
Science has fairly evenly proven that there are other dimensions that co-exist possibly side by side with our own. I believe that the higher power, that being that I like to call God, has mastery over traversing all the various dimensions, coming and going as SHE pleases. We as humans are only made in HIS image. We are not gods, we only have a small portion of the substance that is God in us, and that is our soul. Each of us that has a soul is part of God and SHE us. God is the Macrocosm, we the Microcosm. As such we have lesser abilities to maneuver but we still can. We must live for a time in this physical world and as such must do what we can to perform in it, learn all we can learn about survival and love and taking care of each other and sharing what we have with others, both in physical goods and in knowledge and skills. But ultimately we will all travel to other dimensions, other levels of being where we undoubtedly keep learning and growing.
But while we are forced to exist in this physical plane of existence we have the appearance of being cut off from the rest of existence, the world, other people, and God. Some of us learn that this is not true at all, but those who don't begin to feel utterly alone. Nothing could ever be further from the truth.
This is one of the life lessons that we are put on the physical plane to experience, and the subconscious mind is the buffer zone between our waking physical state and the truth of the fact that we also can exist in other dimensions. Our subconscious minds are there to connect us to these other dimensions which are our natural state of being, as well as to protect us from the idea that they are real. Only the most enlightened people among us know that they are there and that we are tapped into it. The rest of us need to live in the real world and not be distracted by this idea. It's easy to do, all you have to do is pretend that what you experience in dreams comes from your own wild imagination and weird unbounded feelings, hopes, and desires. Then you can dismiss them as just being fantasies, thus buffering you from truth.
Undoubtedly some of what you dream is fantasy because that's how the mind works. You can dream about having sex with your boss, but next time you encounter him you will say to yourself, that was just a dream, and go on and interact with him as if it never occurred, which it didn't. That's fine and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
And that's why the subconscious mind is the way it is, so that we can put plausible deniability on whatever we wish to plausibly deny.
I didn't just sleep with my boss.
I didn't just see my dead father on the street and talked with him.
I didn't just travel to another dimension where I interacted with elves and dwarfs and they gave me a good idea for a story.
Or did I? It all gets mixed up in the subconscious mind, the truth with the fictions with the facts, and gets mushed around in there until we don't know what to believe, or can choose what to believe and what not to believe.
By the way, these are some of the ideas that I have permeating my latest novel, "A Haunting at Mackinac." The main character, Alina, is a psychic trying to control her skills at the same time fighting evil on an Island which seems to have the ability to telescope psychic powers. It's available for the Kindle on the Amazon website.
If you are wondering how I came to my conclusions here is a shortened version of that story:
My father died when I was 17 years old and I remember laying in bed the night after he died and wondering where he was. Somehow, the Christian view of heaven was leaving me cold. So I began to search. That night I started a spiritual search that ended years later with the writing of this novel. During this search I studied all the major religious beliefs of the world as well as spiritualism, paganism, Native American philosophy and the occult. What I came to believe is not in any one given religion, but a truth made up of a deep belief that I am a spirit and a part of God. I liken myself to a hand that is trying to learn a new skill, possibly knitting. The hand has to learn how to hold the needle and the yarn and manipulate it in a certain way to gain a certain result. I am God's hand, learning to do something that God wants to learn to do, and wants me to learn how to do. The way I see it, that's what we all are. It's like the hippies used to say, we are all connected because we all have that spark that comes from God, the spark that gives us life in this physical world but cannot exist apart from the supreme creator from whence it came. Therefore, what does it matter if we are Catholic or Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu, Muslim or Christian. We fight wars over these separations when we should be acknowledging the fact that we have all arrived at the same place from different roads. Gandhi said, "I am a Hindu and a Muslim, and a Christian and a Jew, and so are all of you."
I could go on all day, in fact, I have spent the entire morning writing this. So it's time for me to get some work done since this doesn't count toward my Nanowrimo word count!
For those of you who have read through this entire tome, thank you! We'll talk again.
Cindy K-K
I began to write her a long post and then realized that it probably should be on this Blog. So here it is.
Dreams, according to psychologists, are windows into the subconscious. They study dreams to find out what kinds of things we are thinking and feeling. Nearly every really good idea I've had for a story has begun with a dream. Those that have not started that way soon become involved in my dreaming life as I work out the details of the story.
Writer's will often express the fact that when they are into their story good, they will experience a feeling of "not writing" but "channelling" the story, as if it's coming from somewhere else. It flows down from the mind through the hands and onto the keyboard or paper. Sometimes they claim that they don't know where it came from. Other times they get the feeling that they didn't write it at all, but someone else using them as a conduit wrote through them. What they've done without realizing it is tapped into that Sub-conscious mind while they were awake and allowed their subconscious to write the story for a time. It's still coming from them, it just doesn't feel that way.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that writing and dreaming are intimately connected. Again it's one of those things that takes practice. The more you practice accessing those dreams, recalling dreams and tapping into that so very creative source, the better you will get.
One of the tools I use is from Julia Cameron's book called "The Artist's Way." In that book she talks about doing "morning pages" where you write in a notebook, always long hand, and you must write at least three pages every morning immediately upon awakening. I usually try to do it within one hour of getting out of bed. And what you write is total uncensored nonsense. Doesn't matter what it is. For the first few years of my doing this I wrote mostly things like, "OK, here I am, I'm awake, I'm in the kitchen, sipping on coffee, man there are a lot of dirty dishes I had to move the big pot out of the way in order to make coffee this morning, holy hell, I get tired of doing dishes, oh well, that's my life, shutting drawers and doors behind people and picking up after them. Maybe I should go on strike. Anyway, NO BIGGY, so I'll just put it on the list of stuff to do today and while I'm at it, I also need to mail the bills and throw in some laundry and then I can . . ." from there it turned into a PODA list. (Parade Of Daily Activities.)
Now I have learned that the list stuff is always in my mind and I can skip over it to get to the good stuff. So Now when I start my morning pages I start with headers and I never ((((NEVER)))) use the words "No Biggy" in my morning pages any more. I hated using that phrase, if it really was not a biggy then why was it occupying so much space in my head?
Now I start usually with the heading "Dream:" Then go on to state, "Woke up thinking about:" And try very hard to capture those early morning ideas which have proven to be so valuable to me. I like waking up naturally because REM sleep is usually the strongest just before waking, but I have also had good results with being awakened abruptly by a noise in the house (not an alarm) and then been able to relax back into the dream state.
Now, I have very far fetched and unsupported ideas about how the subconscious mind in humans may or may not be related to the supernatural. Freud put forward the theory that there is an Id, or a higher self involved as well as the "lower self" of the subconscious. I admit that I have not studied psychology past the rudimentary levels, but I think that the Id as described in that field is more like the idea of the perfect self. Each of us have in our minds attributes that we assign to ourselves whether we live them or not. We have our perfect self inside our mind and we only just try to live up to it, or we get into a downward spiral and decide not to live up to it at all. That's the Id. That has nothing to do with that I'm talking about.
I see the subconscious as more of a go-between and buffer for alternative dimensions and states of consciousness.
Many years ago, a very wise woman suggested to me that when we dream we go to the place where our spirits go after our bodies die. In the state we call sleep, our spirits and minds are free to travel to those places and encounter people and other beings that dwell in those places. If you've ever startled yourself awake after a nightmare, this woman claimed, it was really your spirit getting scared and quickly slamming itself back inside your body.
Science has fairly evenly proven that there are other dimensions that co-exist possibly side by side with our own. I believe that the higher power, that being that I like to call God, has mastery over traversing all the various dimensions, coming and going as SHE pleases. We as humans are only made in HIS image. We are not gods, we only have a small portion of the substance that is God in us, and that is our soul. Each of us that has a soul is part of God and SHE us. God is the Macrocosm, we the Microcosm. As such we have lesser abilities to maneuver but we still can. We must live for a time in this physical world and as such must do what we can to perform in it, learn all we can learn about survival and love and taking care of each other and sharing what we have with others, both in physical goods and in knowledge and skills. But ultimately we will all travel to other dimensions, other levels of being where we undoubtedly keep learning and growing.
But while we are forced to exist in this physical plane of existence we have the appearance of being cut off from the rest of existence, the world, other people, and God. Some of us learn that this is not true at all, but those who don't begin to feel utterly alone. Nothing could ever be further from the truth.
This is one of the life lessons that we are put on the physical plane to experience, and the subconscious mind is the buffer zone between our waking physical state and the truth of the fact that we also can exist in other dimensions. Our subconscious minds are there to connect us to these other dimensions which are our natural state of being, as well as to protect us from the idea that they are real. Only the most enlightened people among us know that they are there and that we are tapped into it. The rest of us need to live in the real world and not be distracted by this idea. It's easy to do, all you have to do is pretend that what you experience in dreams comes from your own wild imagination and weird unbounded feelings, hopes, and desires. Then you can dismiss them as just being fantasies, thus buffering you from truth.
Undoubtedly some of what you dream is fantasy because that's how the mind works. You can dream about having sex with your boss, but next time you encounter him you will say to yourself, that was just a dream, and go on and interact with him as if it never occurred, which it didn't. That's fine and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
And that's why the subconscious mind is the way it is, so that we can put plausible deniability on whatever we wish to plausibly deny.
I didn't just sleep with my boss.
I didn't just see my dead father on the street and talked with him.
I didn't just travel to another dimension where I interacted with elves and dwarfs and they gave me a good idea for a story.
Or did I? It all gets mixed up in the subconscious mind, the truth with the fictions with the facts, and gets mushed around in there until we don't know what to believe, or can choose what to believe and what not to believe.
By the way, these are some of the ideas that I have permeating my latest novel, "A Haunting at Mackinac." The main character, Alina, is a psychic trying to control her skills at the same time fighting evil on an Island which seems to have the ability to telescope psychic powers. It's available for the Kindle on the Amazon website.
If you are wondering how I came to my conclusions here is a shortened version of that story:
My father died when I was 17 years old and I remember laying in bed the night after he died and wondering where he was. Somehow, the Christian view of heaven was leaving me cold. So I began to search. That night I started a spiritual search that ended years later with the writing of this novel. During this search I studied all the major religious beliefs of the world as well as spiritualism, paganism, Native American philosophy and the occult. What I came to believe is not in any one given religion, but a truth made up of a deep belief that I am a spirit and a part of God. I liken myself to a hand that is trying to learn a new skill, possibly knitting. The hand has to learn how to hold the needle and the yarn and manipulate it in a certain way to gain a certain result. I am God's hand, learning to do something that God wants to learn to do, and wants me to learn how to do. The way I see it, that's what we all are. It's like the hippies used to say, we are all connected because we all have that spark that comes from God, the spark that gives us life in this physical world but cannot exist apart from the supreme creator from whence it came. Therefore, what does it matter if we are Catholic or Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu, Muslim or Christian. We fight wars over these separations when we should be acknowledging the fact that we have all arrived at the same place from different roads. Gandhi said, "I am a Hindu and a Muslim, and a Christian and a Jew, and so are all of you."
I could go on all day, in fact, I have spent the entire morning writing this. So it's time for me to get some work done since this doesn't count toward my Nanowrimo word count!
For those of you who have read through this entire tome, thank you! We'll talk again.
Cindy K-K
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Nanowrimo news, self publishing woes, and Thank yous!
I had two comments about my Blogs within the last week and I want to thank everyone who reads me. I will post another "Tessa's Travels" Blog this afternoon!
I keep telling everyone that my Novel "A Haunting at Mackinac" will be out on Kindle in a matter of days. The only problem is I've been saying that for more than a week. LOL! I am working toward that goal. It's a matter of learning the technology, a feat that I am very slow about. There is still the feeling that if you do something wrong on the computer things get deleted and never are found again. Or you get a virus and screw up the hard drive or any of the other things you get warned about in spam e-mails happens, all of which will make you gasp and give you headaches and wish you had never seen a computer before. And yes, I'm being melodramatic so I can get it all out of my system at once and never think about it again.
Whew, now that that's all gone!
I am now going to relate this whole issue with my real world experience of Applique! When I first wished to do applique, it was because I saw a beautiful quilt that had applique on it. I thought, no prob, I can do this. Well I began to do it and found that it was kind of chore. I hated it. I got to the point on the project where I had to only do applique before I could go on and finish the whole quilt top, and I just got stuck! I put it on my UFO list and there it sat for over a decade.
Meanwhile I picked up a few hints and lessons from other quilters and I took a class with Elly Sienkiewicz, and after that I decided that I needed to teach a class, because as all teachers know, if you truly want to learn something the best way is to teach it to someone else. So long story/short, my skills began to catch up with my ambitions and I now love applique and would never give it up! Now I have the skills to go back and finish that UFO on my list that I began 15 years ago. And I will, as soon as I have time!! LOL!
That's where I am with this whole Kindle thing. I have a book, it's been edited and now I feel confident enough about it to put it out there for you all to read. But what's stopping me is this whole self-publishing software issue. It takes me about five read-throughs to get what they are trying to tell me. But when I do get it it's so simple, why it takes all that explanation to say so little is what has me bogged down. I've been jumping back and forth between the Amazon website and the Microsoft website trying to figure out step by step everything that I need the manuscript to have in order to self-publish this thing. That's the hold up. What I really need is a mentor! Someone who has done it already and who can guide me. My husband is the computer genius in the family and he is too busy playing WOW to help me with this issue. I have to figure this out on my own. But that's OK, I figured out E-bay and Netflix on my own, so I don't doubt, given time, that I can do this too.
In other news, Nanowrimo is going great! We had our first social event last night and everyone got their Nano-social badge. We made our goal word count of 10,000 words before I even got my computer properly set up. I had to work until 5 and didn't get there until it was half over! Our sponsor had to shell out the whole $100 he had pledged! Next year we are thinking about getting more sponsors and leaving the word count open ended. Maybe asking for a Dime pledge for every 100 words the group does or a penny pledge for every 10 words or something along those lines. Our total from last night was well over 20,000 words.
We had a great time! We again played the game where someone started a story with one sentence and then the story travels around the room and everyone adds a sentence to the story. It's a very fun exercise.
Last nights story had lots of blue shining and flashing objects, stones and swords and dragons and flashing lights and blue vortex portals, it was very cool!
I'll sign off for now, go see the Tessa's Travels Blog. I'm going to work on that one next!
Thanks again,
Cindy K-K
I keep telling everyone that my Novel "A Haunting at Mackinac" will be out on Kindle in a matter of days. The only problem is I've been saying that for more than a week. LOL! I am working toward that goal. It's a matter of learning the technology, a feat that I am very slow about. There is still the feeling that if you do something wrong on the computer things get deleted and never are found again. Or you get a virus and screw up the hard drive or any of the other things you get warned about in spam e-mails happens, all of which will make you gasp and give you headaches and wish you had never seen a computer before. And yes, I'm being melodramatic so I can get it all out of my system at once and never think about it again.
Whew, now that that's all gone!
I am now going to relate this whole issue with my real world experience of Applique! When I first wished to do applique, it was because I saw a beautiful quilt that had applique on it. I thought, no prob, I can do this. Well I began to do it and found that it was kind of chore. I hated it. I got to the point on the project where I had to only do applique before I could go on and finish the whole quilt top, and I just got stuck! I put it on my UFO list and there it sat for over a decade.
Meanwhile I picked up a few hints and lessons from other quilters and I took a class with Elly Sienkiewicz, and after that I decided that I needed to teach a class, because as all teachers know, if you truly want to learn something the best way is to teach it to someone else. So long story/short, my skills began to catch up with my ambitions and I now love applique and would never give it up! Now I have the skills to go back and finish that UFO on my list that I began 15 years ago. And I will, as soon as I have time!! LOL!
That's where I am with this whole Kindle thing. I have a book, it's been edited and now I feel confident enough about it to put it out there for you all to read. But what's stopping me is this whole self-publishing software issue. It takes me about five read-throughs to get what they are trying to tell me. But when I do get it it's so simple, why it takes all that explanation to say so little is what has me bogged down. I've been jumping back and forth between the Amazon website and the Microsoft website trying to figure out step by step everything that I need the manuscript to have in order to self-publish this thing. That's the hold up. What I really need is a mentor! Someone who has done it already and who can guide me. My husband is the computer genius in the family and he is too busy playing WOW to help me with this issue. I have to figure this out on my own. But that's OK, I figured out E-bay and Netflix on my own, so I don't doubt, given time, that I can do this too.
In other news, Nanowrimo is going great! We had our first social event last night and everyone got their Nano-social badge. We made our goal word count of 10,000 words before I even got my computer properly set up. I had to work until 5 and didn't get there until it was half over! Our sponsor had to shell out the whole $100 he had pledged! Next year we are thinking about getting more sponsors and leaving the word count open ended. Maybe asking for a Dime pledge for every 100 words the group does or a penny pledge for every 10 words or something along those lines. Our total from last night was well over 20,000 words.
We had a great time! We again played the game where someone started a story with one sentence and then the story travels around the room and everyone adds a sentence to the story. It's a very fun exercise.
Last nights story had lots of blue shining and flashing objects, stones and swords and dragons and flashing lights and blue vortex portals, it was very cool!
I'll sign off for now, go see the Tessa's Travels Blog. I'm going to work on that one next!
Thanks again,
Cindy K-K
Monday, October 31, 2011
New writing projects on the horizon
I have been writing daily letters to a dear friend of mine, who is away at her first year of college. Today I wrote my last letter to her telling her about my new writing project that I plan to begin tomorrow which is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, better known on the web as NaNoWriMo. So I thought I would share my ambitions with all of you as well.
I am literally days away from publishing my first novel on Amazon which will be available through the Kindle. The book is called "A Haunting at Mackinac" and it has been professionally edited so I'm hoping it fairs a little better than other books that are similarly published. But all that aside, the book is about a girl who is psychic. She is riding the wave of the "spiritualists" of the twenties when table tapping was a common parlor activity for people who wanted some excitement in their lives. However, this girl is the real deal. She can not only read other people's thoughts but she can also talk with spirits. She also tends to open up these gifts in other people around her.
When she arrives at Mackinac Island she awakens a sleeping evil spirit which begins to haunt the Island. The very fact that she is there is what triggers this to happen. But once it does, she has to figure out why it is happening and how to rid the Island of this evil entity. She makes some friends who help her along the way by doing research for her and protecting her in various ways both physically and spiritually. One of these helpers is a 100+ year-old Ojibway Medicine Man by the name of Kineekuhowa. Kineekuhowa helps her discover who the evil spirit is and gives her the means by which she can destroy it.
For Nanowrimo this year I intend to write a book that I have been wanting to write for a few years now. I got the idea while I was working at Polk. It started while I was compiling info for the city directory and I came across the name "Blackburn." I thought about what kind of fictional character someone named Blackburn would have to be and soon I had the main character for a book. Then I transported this character into an idea to write a fictional version of an incident that happened on Mackinac Island during and after the war of 1812 which was fought, in part, on the Island. In the years that passed since I have fleshed out the story several times and now it is fully realized inside my head and awaiting the time it will take to write it down. So now is my opportunity! Starting tonight at Midnight, I will be writing it!
Kineekuhowa is a minor character in this book too. During the War of 1812 legend has it that Kineekuhowa's mother went into premature labor giving birth to him in the same hour that the redcoats took the fort on the Island. In fact this is not so. Kineekuhowa was a boy of about ten years of age when the fort was taken. He had been sent down to the town with a message by his father who was a soldier at the fort, a tracker by the name of Gitchi Mug-wa, or Great Bear. The message was that the Ojibwa people needed to leave the Island at once, because the red coats were battering the bluffs. All the Native American people's got in their canoes and went to the mainland. It wasn't long before the American soldiers joined them.
I am nearly finished with a book called "Tessa's Travels" (for more about this book see my Blog of the same name, linked to the right). In this book, Tessa meets up with the descendants of Kineekuhowa who adopt her into their tribe. When they tell her about Kineekuhowa it is because the Windigo (evil spirit) who is after Tessa in this book is also expected of killing Kineekuhowa in the early sixties. It is said that Kineekuhowa died the same week as John F. Kennedy, and that he died under unusual circumstances. He did not die of natural causes like a man of 150 years probably should. It is said that he might have had the blood of the Bird People in him. I will talk more about the Bird People later as I develop these two stories.
So for a Character that started out in my first novel as a minor after-thought, Kineekuhowa has developed into a full-fledged icon of my writing. I would love for someone to come up with a drawing of Kineekuhowa for the release of my novel. He is about 112 years old when this story takes place, and he is described as looking a lot like the actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman who played Ten Bears in Dances with Wolves. He has white hair that is braided in a thin braid that hangs down the middle of his back past his waist and is tied with a piece of leather. In the book his great-grandson makes him a medicine headdress out of a carved piece of a hollow log worn as a crown and has embedded dear antlers. To announce his coming he sends Alina a Mandala made with a rabbit skin, and decorated with Buffalo wool and bird feathers. These are all elements I would like on my cover art.
I will try working something up on Paintshop Pro. I am told that cover art is very important for book sales.
I'll write more on my progress toward this goal later. Meanwhile I have one novel that I want to try to finish as best I can tonight before Midnight and then after midnight a new novel!
I got my work cut out for me!
Cindy K.-K.
I am literally days away from publishing my first novel on Amazon which will be available through the Kindle. The book is called "A Haunting at Mackinac" and it has been professionally edited so I'm hoping it fairs a little better than other books that are similarly published. But all that aside, the book is about a girl who is psychic. She is riding the wave of the "spiritualists" of the twenties when table tapping was a common parlor activity for people who wanted some excitement in their lives. However, this girl is the real deal. She can not only read other people's thoughts but she can also talk with spirits. She also tends to open up these gifts in other people around her.
When she arrives at Mackinac Island she awakens a sleeping evil spirit which begins to haunt the Island. The very fact that she is there is what triggers this to happen. But once it does, she has to figure out why it is happening and how to rid the Island of this evil entity. She makes some friends who help her along the way by doing research for her and protecting her in various ways both physically and spiritually. One of these helpers is a 100+ year-old Ojibway Medicine Man by the name of Kineekuhowa. Kineekuhowa helps her discover who the evil spirit is and gives her the means by which she can destroy it.
For Nanowrimo this year I intend to write a book that I have been wanting to write for a few years now. I got the idea while I was working at Polk. It started while I was compiling info for the city directory and I came across the name "Blackburn." I thought about what kind of fictional character someone named Blackburn would have to be and soon I had the main character for a book. Then I transported this character into an idea to write a fictional version of an incident that happened on Mackinac Island during and after the war of 1812 which was fought, in part, on the Island. In the years that passed since I have fleshed out the story several times and now it is fully realized inside my head and awaiting the time it will take to write it down. So now is my opportunity! Starting tonight at Midnight, I will be writing it!
Kineekuhowa is a minor character in this book too. During the War of 1812 legend has it that Kineekuhowa's mother went into premature labor giving birth to him in the same hour that the redcoats took the fort on the Island. In fact this is not so. Kineekuhowa was a boy of about ten years of age when the fort was taken. He had been sent down to the town with a message by his father who was a soldier at the fort, a tracker by the name of Gitchi Mug-wa, or Great Bear. The message was that the Ojibwa people needed to leave the Island at once, because the red coats were battering the bluffs. All the Native American people's got in their canoes and went to the mainland. It wasn't long before the American soldiers joined them.
I am nearly finished with a book called "Tessa's Travels" (for more about this book see my Blog of the same name, linked to the right). In this book, Tessa meets up with the descendants of Kineekuhowa who adopt her into their tribe. When they tell her about Kineekuhowa it is because the Windigo (evil spirit) who is after Tessa in this book is also expected of killing Kineekuhowa in the early sixties. It is said that Kineekuhowa died the same week as John F. Kennedy, and that he died under unusual circumstances. He did not die of natural causes like a man of 150 years probably should. It is said that he might have had the blood of the Bird People in him. I will talk more about the Bird People later as I develop these two stories.
So for a Character that started out in my first novel as a minor after-thought, Kineekuhowa has developed into a full-fledged icon of my writing. I would love for someone to come up with a drawing of Kineekuhowa for the release of my novel. He is about 112 years old when this story takes place, and he is described as looking a lot like the actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman who played Ten Bears in Dances with Wolves. He has white hair that is braided in a thin braid that hangs down the middle of his back past his waist and is tied with a piece of leather. In the book his great-grandson makes him a medicine headdress out of a carved piece of a hollow log worn as a crown and has embedded dear antlers. To announce his coming he sends Alina a Mandala made with a rabbit skin, and decorated with Buffalo wool and bird feathers. These are all elements I would like on my cover art.
I will try working something up on Paintshop Pro. I am told that cover art is very important for book sales.
I'll write more on my progress toward this goal later. Meanwhile I have one novel that I want to try to finish as best I can tonight before Midnight and then after midnight a new novel!
I got my work cut out for me!
Cindy K.-K.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
My new Writing Career!
See this quilt? I won first place in the 2011 Patchwork in the Pines quilt show, for best group quilt!In other news, my arm is now healed properly, this time. I finished hand therapy yesterday and I accomplished all my goals. And now I am looking forward to yet another Nanowrimo coming up in just 13 days! I want to be finished with my novel entitled "Tessa's Travels" by then so I can set aside the second draft for proofing and editing at a later date, so I can write a novel that has been in my mind for many many years, a novel about the war of 1812 called "Blackburn."
That, in a nutshell, has been my life for this past year.
Oh yeah, there is one other tiny thing.
I am giving up quilting as an obsession! Quilting is going to be downgraded to a hobby only and not one that takes up so much space in my thoughts, my life, and my house. I have changed the desk that I used to quilt on for my computer desk, I am sitting at it right now, in fact. My sewing machine is now only an occasional visitor on the scene. I take it to Interquilten on Tuesday afternoons for open sew and do most of my sewing there. Puts a limit on how much I can actually get accomplished. I still relax in front of the TV at night with hand work, that's something that will always happen though. It's part of having a hobby!
My profession is now writing and as such, I invite all of you to be part of my journey. I will be trying for a greater on-line presence in the near future so . . . tell your friends!!
I am short days away from publishing my novel entitled "A Haunting at Mackinac" on Amazon for the Kindle. I am hoping for some publicity for that work of fiction on their site. But I know for sure that I have several friends who will buy it as well. I need to do some cover art for it. Anyone know anything about that who can help? I would appreciate a shout out. Otherwise I may just end up with a stylized photo of the Grand Hotel, which features prominently in the book.
Well, at least, while striving for a greater on-line presence, I will be Blogging more often.
Thanks for reading,
Cindy K.-K.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sadly Missing A.J.
My local Family Video film expert, A.J. (see his picture to the right) has left town for a lucrative position in Cadillac Michigan. You will be missed big time my friend, but it will be a good move for you. And you can bet that whenever I find myself in Cadillac I will be looking for your truck!
Nanowrimo is happening again. Beginning tonight at midnight. I just opened a Blog for my main character. This will double as the beginning of my book. I'm having fun with this. My characters usually take on a life of their own, but rarely do they start that way. Tessa Gates is a fully grown character with a life of her own already. More on that later. Her Blog address is now in the links file on the right.
As a protest against the removal of my dear friend A.J. I have joined Netflix. I've been thinking about it for a long time now but when I heard A.J. was leaving I decided to look more closely. It's the best thing I've done. I still have access to new movies on DVD sent to me through the mail at the rate of about 2 per week (which is the average I was getting at FV) but also I get unlimited downloads of movies, documentaries, and films that have been on Starz. I filled my instant queue with dozens of films that I can just peruse at my leisure. My mailing queue I'm trying to limit to about 40. Which will take about 6 months to complete. But no biggy. I've been watching as many movies as I wish daily, almost too many, since I have been practically living in my arm chair over the past few weeks since I got it.
I managed to watch several documentaries that have been featured at our film festival over the past few years including "The Cove" about the systematic destruction of Dolphins in one place in Japan and how stupid it is, because it's not done for any real reason. Their meat is too high in Mercury to be eaten safely, they do not harm the environment or the food source of humans, and this practice promotes the industry that makes Dolphins into captive entertainers.
Another Doc I watched was an inspirational doc called "Paperclips". A group of Middle School children, started this project with the help of their teacher/mentors to help them understand diversity in a rural Appalachian Tennessee town. They couldn't understand what the Nazi's had done because they couldn't imagine what six million was. So they began to collect paper clips. There was a social reason why they chose paperclips that was significant to the time and peoples of Europe. The children did Internet research concerning this. They began a letter writing campaign asking for paperclips and eventually the project grew and expanded exponentially. After Four years of this project they had collected more than 28 million paperclips. This project put these small town kids in contact with the greater world and taught them to treat others the way they would want to be treated. The end of the project is a German cattle car that was purchased for them by people who believed in their project and they refurbished this car to house their paperclips. It has become a physical monument to the lives lost in concentration camps during the forties. They decided to include Eleven million paperclips to commemorate all the lives lost, not just the Jews, but the Gypsies, the Homosexuals, the Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses, and political prisoners who all died in the camps at that time. A must see for a good cry!
Someone in line at the film festival last year thought that the best film they had seen this year was a Doc called, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" which is about Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in the sixties, which proved in essence that every president of the United States, as a pre-requisite for the job, it seems, is a liar! This documentary shows conclusively that beginning with Harry Truman and continuing on through to the leaders at the time, lies that had been told to the American Public by their elected leaders. The pentagon papers are the reason we no longer trust our government and also the reason we assume our leaders are all keeping things from us.
All of these films are worthy of being seen, but I'd also like to tell you about a few other films that are more entertaining.
If you have a chance, pick up "Departures" a film from Japan. "Castaway on the Moon" a Korean film that is not on DVD as yet, but soon will be (I hope) and "Kontrol" an Eastern European film about a man who feels his life is at a dead end, but eventually finds reason to live in the struggle between good and evil, this allegorical film is a must see in my book and is available on Netflix for a download.
Have fun and go see a good film this week, OK?
Cindy K-K haunting in her arm chair crocheting a new afghan.
Nanowrimo is happening again. Beginning tonight at midnight. I just opened a Blog for my main character. This will double as the beginning of my book. I'm having fun with this. My characters usually take on a life of their own, but rarely do they start that way. Tessa Gates is a fully grown character with a life of her own already. More on that later. Her Blog address is now in the links file on the right.
As a protest against the removal of my dear friend A.J. I have joined Netflix. I've been thinking about it for a long time now but when I heard A.J. was leaving I decided to look more closely. It's the best thing I've done. I still have access to new movies on DVD sent to me through the mail at the rate of about 2 per week (which is the average I was getting at FV) but also I get unlimited downloads of movies, documentaries, and films that have been on Starz. I filled my instant queue with dozens of films that I can just peruse at my leisure. My mailing queue I'm trying to limit to about 40. Which will take about 6 months to complete. But no biggy. I've been watching as many movies as I wish daily, almost too many, since I have been practically living in my arm chair over the past few weeks since I got it.
I managed to watch several documentaries that have been featured at our film festival over the past few years including "The Cove" about the systematic destruction of Dolphins in one place in Japan and how stupid it is, because it's not done for any real reason. Their meat is too high in Mercury to be eaten safely, they do not harm the environment or the food source of humans, and this practice promotes the industry that makes Dolphins into captive entertainers.
Another Doc I watched was an inspirational doc called "Paperclips". A group of Middle School children, started this project with the help of their teacher/mentors to help them understand diversity in a rural Appalachian Tennessee town. They couldn't understand what the Nazi's had done because they couldn't imagine what six million was. So they began to collect paper clips. There was a social reason why they chose paperclips that was significant to the time and peoples of Europe. The children did Internet research concerning this. They began a letter writing campaign asking for paperclips and eventually the project grew and expanded exponentially. After Four years of this project they had collected more than 28 million paperclips. This project put these small town kids in contact with the greater world and taught them to treat others the way they would want to be treated. The end of the project is a German cattle car that was purchased for them by people who believed in their project and they refurbished this car to house their paperclips. It has become a physical monument to the lives lost in concentration camps during the forties. They decided to include Eleven million paperclips to commemorate all the lives lost, not just the Jews, but the Gypsies, the Homosexuals, the Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses, and political prisoners who all died in the camps at that time. A must see for a good cry!
Someone in line at the film festival last year thought that the best film they had seen this year was a Doc called, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" which is about Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in the sixties, which proved in essence that every president of the United States, as a pre-requisite for the job, it seems, is a liar! This documentary shows conclusively that beginning with Harry Truman and continuing on through to the leaders at the time, lies that had been told to the American Public by their elected leaders. The pentagon papers are the reason we no longer trust our government and also the reason we assume our leaders are all keeping things from us.
All of these films are worthy of being seen, but I'd also like to tell you about a few other films that are more entertaining.
If you have a chance, pick up "Departures" a film from Japan. "Castaway on the Moon" a Korean film that is not on DVD as yet, but soon will be (I hope) and "Kontrol" an Eastern European film about a man who feels his life is at a dead end, but eventually finds reason to live in the struggle between good and evil, this allegorical film is a must see in my book and is available on Netflix for a download.
Have fun and go see a good film this week, OK?
Cindy K-K haunting in her arm chair crocheting a new afghan.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
TC Film Festival
Here is the outdoor "theater" in the Traverse City open space, right next to the water. It's THEE best single place to watch a movie, and I spent three nights there last week, watching great films like Twister, Help, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We do a little bit of tailgating before the film and the following is Sharon's genius idea on how to keep popcorn fresh and tasty!As you can see I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, I also saw plenty of indoor films as well, and still have two more to go to tonight yet.
My favorite one so far is a very low budget film made by some film students in Austin Texas called, "The Happy Poet". Ask me sometime what the poem in the film is about. It's called Chasm, and is one of the funniest moments in a very very funny film. When the library gets it in be sure to go check it out! I'm praying nightly that it finds a distributor, because it's truly great. It's about a guy who has a lot of bills who thinks it might be a good idea to open a hotdog stand that only sells health food. He sells vegetarian food and at first people don't get it but then it starts to catch on. He runs into problems because he doesn't really know anything about business and eventually he finds he has to "sell out" and start serving hotdogs because they are cheap and he can't afford anything else. It ends well though. I love a happy ending where the main character is an English major! It gives me hope!
I also attended a film school session on Screenwriting, and got some helpful pointers about how to re-write my screenplay. Do you know that every time another person becomes interested in your screenplay you get more money? They hire you to do a re-write of your original, tweaking it here and there. Sometimes they even ask you to do something to it that you approve of! But each time it goes to a new producer, director, studio, gets sold, or traded or researched, you get to talk with someone new and re-write the whole thing, for more money. Of course the object that all screenwriters go for is to get their plays produced, but a writer can make a living just re-writing their old scripts endlessly. I was so excited just listening to this man speak, that I wanted to go home right away and start re-writing my screenplay. His name is Jim Bernstein, and he wrote the script for "Renaissance Man" staring Danny DeVito.
He told some great stories about his experiences on the set with Penny Marshall. He also gave a lot of great advice on Story, Character, Theme, Dialog and action. He showed film clips that demonstrated examples of all these things, incorporating how you need to end the first act to drive into the second and how to end the second act with the character not really knowing what he is going to do, and how he has to figure it out on the screen in front of the audience.
The example he showed for this was the scene in Rocky where he goes to the arena the night before the fight and the promoter tells him that he's going to give everyone a heck of a show. He is devastated and goes back to Adrienne and tells her that he can't win. He doesn't know what to do, so we watch him figure it out, and he says the great line about how if he gets to that final bell and he's still standing he'll know for the first time in his life that he's not just another bum from the neighborhood.
Jim said that if we can learn how to do that, we will be successful screenwriters.
I'm really glad I went to that class on the first day, because I still had the entire week to keep asking the major questions he taught us about. The question, "What does this character want?" Because every script in the universe can be boiled down to this sequence. Someone wants something really bad, and he is having trouble getting it, and in the end he either does get it, or he doesn't. That's it! So I went to all the films thinking, "OK, what does this guy want?"
The Happy Poet--The main character wanted to make money by selling health food from a hotdog cart.
Solitary Man--The Micheal Douglas Character wanted to deny the fact that he was dying any way he could, and ended up destroying his whole life.
A Brand New Life--The Little girl wanted to be loved by her parents and to stop losing the people that she loved.
The infidel--Man finds out he is adopted, and his birth father is a different religion than he was brought up. He wants to know who he is, and to see his birth father.
Me and Orson Welles--Young man (Zak Ephrem) wants to live the life of an actor in the Mercury Theater under the tutelage of the great Welles.
The Concert--Former Director of the Bolshoi orchestra wants to heal himself of a past failure by stealing an opportunity to perform again in Paris.
I'll tell you about the other films I saw some other time. Like I said, I still have two more to see and I also saw two documentaries. Not very dangerous ones though. One, called "His and Hers", was about women in Ireland and their thoughts about the most important men in their lives, their fathers, their husbands, and their sons. This is a doc that is going to stick with me for many years.
The other one I saw was called "Reel Injun" and it depicted the roll of Native Americans in film. How white people in red face portrayed Indians in the early days of film and how Dances with Wolves changed all that. I'm not doing the topic justice here because there were so many good points made about how now Indians are beginning to make films from the inside. Whereas Dances with Wolves, and the Last of the Mohicans were told from the white POV, now more and more Indian film makers are starting to make movies from their own insider POV. They profiled one film which I am going to look up while I'm here at the library. And I will report on that later.
So for now, it's still me Haunting Dubiously in the Film Festival!
Cindy K-K
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Another Mola!
Many of you know that I love Molas. I believe they are the most beautiful form of needle art that exists and one that coincidentally I have never tried. A friend of mine, Nancy Crow brought this one in for me to see.
And what's great is that this tag was with it that tells a bit about Molas and where they come from.
Here is a detail of this wonderful piece of art. Notice the tiny little dots of color that are appliqued on top of the background, and also the decorative stitching and the little tiny zig zags that are reverse appliqued. This is a magnificent example.Aside from this I also wanted to let my faithful readers to know that even though I don't post as often as I should (and this trend is bound to continue for the future), I will not be gone for long.
The film festival is coming up and I am sure that I won't be able to keep myself from sharing my opinions on the films I have tickets for. I went and bought 11 tickets mostly to Independent movies across the world, but I also have a couple of documentaries on my agenda.
Speaking of which, HBO has been showing a very dangerous doc called "Gasland" which is also being shown at our film festival. I sat down and watched it last night and it got my blood boiling. I want to write my congressmen now to make sure he knows that I want him to always oppose deregulation in any form. It has become fairly clear to me that anytime someone is striving to rid themselves of regulations it's because they think they can make more money without those checks and balances and usually end up hurting people in the process. It also made me want to check out alternative ways of heating my house in the winter. Definitely I'm going to get rid of the "clean burning" Natural Gas! I know better! That phrase definitely smacks of advertising propaganda!
I have also plotted another book in my mind. This is not a great habit to be in. I spend a lot of brain time on this and I can't possibly keep up with it in reality and get all these ideas down on paper.
I do have progress to report on this front. I finished the Nick and Sarah novel, the working title of it has been changed to "Crossroads" which is the name of the quilt pattern that Sarah and Katie use to make Nick's quilt. It's also very descriptive of both Sarah and Nick's lives. They are both at crossroads in their own lives.
The book has been sent to my dear friend Clover McKinley who is editing it. She's a professional editor at Village Press and I'm feeling very fortunate to have her. She's going to get a really nice acknowledgement in the front of my book!!!! LOL! I need to keep making statements like that to remind myself that publication is a forgone conclusion. Someday someone is going to see that I'm a prolific writer and they will want to make money off my writing and at that point, I too will start making money off it and be encouraged to quit all my other money grubbing pursuits in favor of sitting in front of this computer all day!
So those of you who actually talk to God on a regular basis, maybe you could put in a good word for this lofty goal of mine in passing! I would certainly appreciate it.
That's it for now. I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer, and are doing the things you all love as well.
Haunting the Festivals,
Cindy K-K
Friday, March 12, 2010
Is anyone wondering about my writing career?
Besides me that is?
I have once again put my writing career on hold while I got a paying job. This sucks because I now have things that I could try to sell.
So here is an update and a challenge!
Every year at the time of the Oscars I say one thing, it's now kind of a tradition. My family makes Oscar night into a real event. We get dressed up, (I have a t-shirt that says "Vera Wang" on it, so I can honestly say I am wearing Vera Wang! LOL!) I make pulled pork sandwiches because Joan Crawford once said that the best place to watch the Oscars was in bed with a sandwich. We log on to Oscar.com and print out the ballots, one for each of us, to use as a score card. We try to win the trivia contest on the website and we talk about the current events that we've heard about that concern the program and who may or may not win. We have had an IN lately in the Documentary category because of our local film festival. All of the films in that category except one were at our festival. We try to second guess the Academy on who will win in each category as we watch.
Which brings me to my point. (and I do have one!)
Every year I say, "Next year I won't have to print out the ballot from the website, I'll have a real one and I'll have to send it in to Price Waterhouse to be tabulated!" My family looks at me and smile indulgently.
So what is stopping me? I wrote a screenplay last year during Script Frenzy. That contest is coming up again next month. It occurs to me that I have done nothing with the first script so why am I thinking about writing another?
Meanwhile, another Nanowrimo has come and gone and I am nearly finished with the book that I wrote during that contest last November.
Not only that but I have another novel that is totally finished already and just needs to be printed out and sent. I plan to do this every time I buy a new black ink cartridge for my printer.
As you faithful blog readers know I also have several more ideas that I want to explore which I have enumerated to you all in the past. to those I need to add another that I've been working on daily whenever I am in the car during the long drives to my job and back. I have been able to discipline my mind into going directly to my story line every time I get into the car for a drive longer than 15 minutes. As a result I have plotted out in my mind a story about a girl and her werewolf! (Again I blame Sookie Stackhouse and to this I might add Bella for refusing her own werewolf.)
So, am I to just tell myself these stories endlessly and then die not having shared them?
No I say! So here comes the challenge!
I Challenge myself, before the end of this year to find myself an agent and be on my way to publication of some sort.
I will begin by writing a great query letter and sending it out to one agency. Everyday that I don't have to work I will endeavor to spend an hour on this project. I will continue to go through the entire book of agents and agencies until someone agrees to take me on.
Furthermore I am determined to finish the Nick and Sara Novel and get it to an editor. I have parts of it edited already. But it still need to have the finishing touches put on it. I will start querying it as soon as I get it done.
Since today is one of those days that I don't work, I will start right now. Before the day is through I will write the query for "A Haunting at Mackinaw" and maybe another for the screenplay, "The Ghost of Dixboro" and send them out to Agents.
There's the plan! Keep me honest you guys! I'm counting on you!
Cindy K-K
I have once again put my writing career on hold while I got a paying job. This sucks because I now have things that I could try to sell.
So here is an update and a challenge!
Every year at the time of the Oscars I say one thing, it's now kind of a tradition. My family makes Oscar night into a real event. We get dressed up, (I have a t-shirt that says "Vera Wang" on it, so I can honestly say I am wearing Vera Wang! LOL!) I make pulled pork sandwiches because Joan Crawford once said that the best place to watch the Oscars was in bed with a sandwich. We log on to Oscar.com and print out the ballots, one for each of us, to use as a score card. We try to win the trivia contest on the website and we talk about the current events that we've heard about that concern the program and who may or may not win. We have had an IN lately in the Documentary category because of our local film festival. All of the films in that category except one were at our festival. We try to second guess the Academy on who will win in each category as we watch.
Which brings me to my point. (and I do have one!)
Every year I say, "Next year I won't have to print out the ballot from the website, I'll have a real one and I'll have to send it in to Price Waterhouse to be tabulated!" My family looks at me and smile indulgently.
So what is stopping me? I wrote a screenplay last year during Script Frenzy. That contest is coming up again next month. It occurs to me that I have done nothing with the first script so why am I thinking about writing another?
Meanwhile, another Nanowrimo has come and gone and I am nearly finished with the book that I wrote during that contest last November.
Not only that but I have another novel that is totally finished already and just needs to be printed out and sent. I plan to do this every time I buy a new black ink cartridge for my printer.
As you faithful blog readers know I also have several more ideas that I want to explore which I have enumerated to you all in the past. to those I need to add another that I've been working on daily whenever I am in the car during the long drives to my job and back. I have been able to discipline my mind into going directly to my story line every time I get into the car for a drive longer than 15 minutes. As a result I have plotted out in my mind a story about a girl and her werewolf! (Again I blame Sookie Stackhouse and to this I might add Bella for refusing her own werewolf.)
So, am I to just tell myself these stories endlessly and then die not having shared them?
No I say! So here comes the challenge!
I Challenge myself, before the end of this year to find myself an agent and be on my way to publication of some sort.
I will begin by writing a great query letter and sending it out to one agency. Everyday that I don't have to work I will endeavor to spend an hour on this project. I will continue to go through the entire book of agents and agencies until someone agrees to take me on.
Furthermore I am determined to finish the Nick and Sara Novel and get it to an editor. I have parts of it edited already. But it still need to have the finishing touches put on it. I will start querying it as soon as I get it done.
Since today is one of those days that I don't work, I will start right now. Before the day is through I will write the query for "A Haunting at Mackinaw" and maybe another for the screenplay, "The Ghost of Dixboro" and send them out to Agents.
There's the plan! Keep me honest you guys! I'm counting on you!
Cindy K-K
Monday, February 01, 2010
Molas~!
As most of you know, I love hand work of every kind. I came across this Mola a while ago at a yard sale. I bought it for $5. I recognized it as a piece of unique hand work. But it wasn't until I read about them at our last retreat that I began to understand the full meaning behind these intensely rich pieces of folk art. Here for your perusal is a collection of Molas shared with us at that retreat.
They are made in South America, mostly in Guatemala. They are appliqued using only bright solid colored fabrics. They use both onset and inset applique or reverse applique to create the layered effects. They are often embellished with embroidery stitch, mostly the stem stitch or the back stitch, but also the seed stitch and the running stitch is used frequently. Embroidery is used to clearly define the facial features and other details such as teeth, claws, beaks, eyes, etc.
This one is the same pattern as above, possibly depicting a llama or horse. You can see the difference in workmanship between the two. It is possible that the second one is unfinished or possibly done as by a younger girl practicing her stitches. 
A lizard? Because of the colorful scales and the shape of the claws? this piece is unfinished because of the lack of background features.
This is a very finely made specimen, and depicts many different beasts, often with human looking appendages suggesting possibly that they are depictions of mythological creatures or creatures that have a specific divine quality. 
Mostly they depict birds and animals but this one very unique orange and green piece has human figures pictured in. The humans seem to be dressed in their Sunday best, women in fluffy dresses and men wearing big hats! And they seem to be dancing!
Once the main figure has been stitched in, slits are made in the background fabric and colorful patches are layered underneath. The slits are then turned back and stitched into place making these horizontal and vertical lines in the background. This is what makes it a Mola. 
In this depiction of the birds, the background is filled in with spirals. Every inch of the picture is covered with stitching on the finest Molas.
I'm certain that if I were more familiar with South American birds I would probably be able to identify these just by their depiction alone. 
This one seems atypical because it doesn't seem to depict a central figure, but just a geometric pattern. But again, it's considered a Mola because if it's use of every inch of space stitched into place.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
My Haunts since New Years!
Hey look what got finished on New Years Day at about 8 pm! This project took twenty years in the making, but now it is off the list! I'm doing well on the new blog. I haven't let a single day go by without finishing something. Sometimes it's a block, sometimes it's a twenty year old Hand Pieced and quilted quilt! Yeah!New Years eve we went downtown to the State theater and watched Grease with some friends. the movie got out at 11:45 pm and we walked outside to the dropping of the cherry! It was fun to be in that crowd. I was kind of glad we had been in the theater because we were all warm. Of course when we got out to the crowd there were so many people there that we didn't get cold at all! It was fun!
Take a look at the other Blog (link to the right) to see what I've been doing.
In other news, we are now in the process of packing up the old store to move into the new one. I just cleaned out the store room and got the front counter cleaned out and packed up, but it beat the heck out of me. Moving is very hard work. So if any of you readers out there want to do a good deed, we could use some help moving things tomorrow, Monday! If you ask nicely she might give you a discount on something if you help. Worth a shot!
We will be open again later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday, at the new store. It's very neat in there. Lots more storage and bigger area saved for classes. We will still be carrying Miche Bags, and we will be introducing several new lines of Yarn. So come in and take a look.
I'm working on Freemo today so I'll report later on stuff that I get done today. There is also a little matter of Eurorails with our friends, Vic and Sharon.
Talk with you soon,
Cindy K-K
Happily Haunting in Interlochen!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
New Blog! Check it out.
OK, so this is why I have that CHAO syndrome (Can't have anyone over). My living room is overcrowded with projects. So I've decided that I'm going to put an end to it. I have to get this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt finished by a week from yesterday. I signed a contract! Yes, I did! so that's the plan. forget the fact that I broke my thumb nail a week ago and have been waiting for it to heal and grow out before doing any quilting on it. But I do need to get it finished. This other picture: 
yeah, this one, is the other side of the room and this whole pile is unfinished projects. It will all be gone if I can finish these projects. Boy that would be nice! Mostly in that pile is about a dozen bags worth of plarn in various colors. Check out previous posts to find the definition of plarn! As I finish each project I am blogging about it on my new blog. check out the links section of the side bar for the link to my new blog. I am going to try to finish one project every day for a whole year. My friend's think I'm nuts, but they don't realize what kinds of things I have in this house. There are lots of things that I can finish in one day if I work on them diligently. There are other things that I can break down into one day segments and finish one whole section of them in one day. Other things I will have to work on for several hours and then finish them some other time. But I think I have enough to cover a whole year. I have an open ended list. It's going to be interesting.
On other fronts: We are planning a nice New Years Eve with friends, Vic and Sharon. We are planning on seeing the movie Grease at the State and then staying to watch the cherry drop! Sounded like fun so that's our big plans, we will see what happens. I'll post on Sunday after the event.
Tawni is in the throws of planning for her big move. Interquilten is moving across the street into a nice building that is bigger than the space we have now. I think it's going to be a very good move, the new building has more room and is a much nicer space, more character and more personality than the generic place we are in right now. Moving day is the 12th of January and we will probably be re-opened on the 14th in the new space.
Meanwhile, Jeff switched us from Showtime (after the series "Dexter" was over), and now we have HBO and Cinemax. It's amazing, we've been watching movies every night with this package but only watched Dexter with the last one. We are also catching up on the new seasons of True Blood and Big Love. Very Dramatic! My whole family loves True Blood, we laughed we cried, we cringed while watching the beginning credits! Yeah pretty gross. But I highly recommend it! It's like Twilight for adults!
OK, OK, so I haven't been walking. But hey, it's winter, and I'm on Coumadin which thins the blood and I'm having a really hard time staying warm. Or maybe it's because this is the first year I've had to endure the cold in my new body weight. At any rate I think a good morning walk would help me sweat and warm up. I just wish there was room in my living room for the treadmill. Look at those pictures again. No there really isn't.
Ok, I'll talk with you all later,
Cindy K-K
Haunting at home for now.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Guess what I've been doing? Good guess! Making Christmas gifts! I am picturing none of them, after all, those of you who are getting them wouldn't be surprised if you saw them on my Blog! Well, my mother might not and she got several of them.
Anyway, I'm also doing some of those "Plarn" bags. I've been making plarn for days, the plastic bags creating havoc in my living room. This is by far the weirdest project I've ever done. Making Plarn! I spent two full days just sorting plastic bags and cutting them into one inch strips. Then off and on I've been making them into plarn. For a very good tutorial on how to do this go to this website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTm2V4ssvY
So these are three of the bags I've finished this week. I seem to be able to acquire an over abundance of white bags with various colored print. Mostly with green print (Oleson's, Tom's, and Family Video) and Red print (Thank you bags given out nearly everywhere.) In order to get the white bag I sorted the strips after they were cut and put all the white ones with no printing on it into a separate container. Then as I made the plarn for this if I ran into any that had even a small amount of printing I put it into a different container so that I could keep the plarn for this project pristine. What I didn't realize though was the difference in the various bags. Even white areas of the bags are subtly colored by the dying process which can easily be seen in the subtle variations of this bag. But still it's pretty unique. I have been telling my bag gatherers (and you know who you are) that I have enough white bags for now and only want them to save me their colored bags. I use them for the stripe around the top as in the green and red bags pictured. I have several blue ones, and now that Walmart in TC is a Super Walmart I will probably be getting more groceries there and getting more white bags with the blue print. And Best buy where Jeff buys some of his computer equipment gives out blue bags. One more project on the horizon!
But all this aside. I have to get back to my applique projects. I plan to do that tomorrow. I have three blocks that need to get done for the Guild Applique project, and then I also have one block that needs to get done before Saturday for the Shop Applique BOM. So I'm working on that this week.
Also, I have a major deadline coming up. I signed a contract stating that I would get my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt done by no later than the January guild meeting. I'm doing fairly well accomplishing that. I worked on it all day Friday and here are two pictures of my progress. I have only two scallops to finish to have the edges all sewn. It's painstaking work in which I have to turn under the top and backing one quarter of an inch and then blind stitch it closed by hand. Then when it's finished I must go back and quilt the final border of white hexagons also by hand. The entire project was done entirely by hand. I hand pieced the blocks and put them together also by hand. The guild helped me hand quilt the top around each and every hexagon, and now I'm nearly finished. It's been a labor of love. Special thanks goes out to Eleanor Howard for helping with the hand quilting so very many sessions we spent on this project, and also for keeping me going on it with her good natured ribbing. She will be nearly as proud to see this project done as I will!
I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas and may the joy of the holiday season be in your hearts.
Haunting in the spirit of the holiday,
Cindy K-K
Anyway, I'm also doing some of those "Plarn" bags. I've been making plarn for days, the plastic bags creating havoc in my living room. This is by far the weirdest project I've ever done. Making Plarn! I spent two full days just sorting plastic bags and cutting them into one inch strips. Then off and on I've been making them into plarn. For a very good tutorial on how to do this go to this website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTm2V4ssvY
So these are three of the bags I've finished this week. I seem to be able to acquire an over abundance of white bags with various colored print. Mostly with green print (Oleson's, Tom's, and Family Video) and Red print (Thank you bags given out nearly everywhere.) In order to get the white bag I sorted the strips after they were cut and put all the white ones with no printing on it into a separate container. Then as I made the plarn for this if I ran into any that had even a small amount of printing I put it into a different container so that I could keep the plarn for this project pristine. What I didn't realize though was the difference in the various bags. Even white areas of the bags are subtly colored by the dying process which can easily be seen in the subtle variations of this bag. But still it's pretty unique. I have been telling my bag gatherers (and you know who you are) that I have enough white bags for now and only want them to save me their colored bags. I use them for the stripe around the top as in the green and red bags pictured. I have several blue ones, and now that Walmart in TC is a Super Walmart I will probably be getting more groceries there and getting more white bags with the blue print. And Best buy where Jeff buys some of his computer equipment gives out blue bags. One more project on the horizon!
But all this aside. I have to get back to my applique projects. I plan to do that tomorrow. I have three blocks that need to get done for the Guild Applique project, and then I also have one block that needs to get done before Saturday for the Shop Applique BOM. So I'm working on that this week.
Also, I have a major deadline coming up. I signed a contract stating that I would get my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt done by no later than the January guild meeting. I'm doing fairly well accomplishing that. I worked on it all day Friday and here are two pictures of my progress. I have only two scallops to finish to have the edges all sewn. It's painstaking work in which I have to turn under the top and backing one quarter of an inch and then blind stitch it closed by hand. Then when it's finished I must go back and quilt the final border of white hexagons also by hand. The entire project was done entirely by hand. I hand pieced the blocks and put them together also by hand. The guild helped me hand quilt the top around each and every hexagon, and now I'm nearly finished. It's been a labor of love. Special thanks goes out to Eleanor Howard for helping with the hand quilting so very many sessions we spent on this project, and also for keeping me going on it with her good natured ribbing. She will be nearly as proud to see this project done as I will!
I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas and may the joy of the holiday season be in your hearts.
Haunting in the spirit of the holiday,
Cindy K-K
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
In the Midst of NaNoWriMo
Hey everyone,
National Novel Writing Month has been keeping me very busy and very tired! Gosh it seems that the only time I have to write these days is from midnight until about 3 or 4 AM. But in the first two weeks I managed to get at least 78,000 words written on my Novel about Sarah and Nick called "Through Her Eyes". It seems strange but this month every one of my classes are going, the one month out of the year that I wish they hadn't. It would have freed up a lot more of my time to write if there had been little interest. I don't complain though. I just take this as a sign that God wants me to get out there and teach classes and make some extra money for Christmas. I'm sure He'll give me time off later on to finish the novel.
Also Rumpled Quilts Kin had their semi-annual fall retreat this past weekend. I worked on four or five different projects, got one top completed
and made huge progress on another one.
I'm now within two viewings of Pride and Prejudice of finishing my Kitty Cat I Spy quilt top. I have finished a bunch of Halloween projects but I have a few more I want to do. The goal I have in mind is to get the Halloween fabric stash down to a bare minimum so that I can fit it all into one box. It's not there yet.
I posted this photo of the project called Dancing with bats before, but now I have the companion piece for it done called Haunted Hill.
I also made this trip-tiche of Halloween goodies. this is called a split quilt technique.
Here too is a closeup of my Kitty Cat I Spy. I'll post more photos of these later as I get the quilt closer to finished.
This fine fellow is a project I'm working on for Interquilten. I got the branch couched on this weekend at retreat. I used a new thread that we are going to get in called Invisa-Fil. It's a new type of invisible thread that has enough body and pliability to be easy to work with but at the same time is fine and invisible. It worked great for couching. I used Pearl Cotton #5 in various colors of brown for the branches. Now all I have to do is fuse on the leaves and berries and well, you know, layer and quilt. It will be done and in the shop by sometime in December, I'm sure!!!
So it's turned out to be a very busy month. I am trying to get a few things done for a craft show coming up on December 3rd at Munson Hospital. Come down to the basement that day to find some interesting gifts for Christmas.
Last month Jeff updated our cable and we now have Showtime, so as a result I've been seeing my friends at Family Video a lot less lately. But I did manage to get over there yesterday to pick up the latest new releases. If you haven't seen the new Star Trek movie it's very well worth seeing, and not only to see the mean guy Sylar from Heroes depicting the much loved Vulcan, Mr. Spock. It's highly entertaining. I also got a good romantic Comedy called "The Ugly Truth." Turns out the truth isn't as ugly as all that. And the highly acclaimed depiction of the book by Jodi Picoult, "My Sister's Keeper." Don't try watching this one unless you have enough time for a good cry.
Have any of you read about the latest ideas that Michael Moore has been sending out? He wrote an article for the Record Eagle with a plan to get Traverse City out of this recession. It's worth a drive to the Library to look it up. It got sent to me this week because I'm a friend of the Film Festival.
Other than Haunting on my lap top and in Lake Ann this weekend I'm pretty much engulfed in the lives of Sarah and Nick. So stay tuned!
Yours Truly,
Cindy K-K
The Haunter
National Novel Writing Month has been keeping me very busy and very tired! Gosh it seems that the only time I have to write these days is from midnight until about 3 or 4 AM. But in the first two weeks I managed to get at least 78,000 words written on my Novel about Sarah and Nick called "Through Her Eyes". It seems strange but this month every one of my classes are going, the one month out of the year that I wish they hadn't. It would have freed up a lot more of my time to write if there had been little interest. I don't complain though. I just take this as a sign that God wants me to get out there and teach classes and make some extra money for Christmas. I'm sure He'll give me time off later on to finish the novel.
Also Rumpled Quilts Kin had their semi-annual fall retreat this past weekend. I worked on four or five different projects, got one top completed
and made huge progress on another one.
I'm now within two viewings of Pride and Prejudice of finishing my Kitty Cat I Spy quilt top. I have finished a bunch of Halloween projects but I have a few more I want to do. The goal I have in mind is to get the Halloween fabric stash down to a bare minimum so that I can fit it all into one box. It's not there yet.
I posted this photo of the project called Dancing with bats before, but now I have the companion piece for it done called Haunted Hill.
I also made this trip-tiche of Halloween goodies. this is called a split quilt technique.
Here too is a closeup of my Kitty Cat I Spy. I'll post more photos of these later as I get the quilt closer to finished.
This fine fellow is a project I'm working on for Interquilten. I got the branch couched on this weekend at retreat. I used a new thread that we are going to get in called Invisa-Fil. It's a new type of invisible thread that has enough body and pliability to be easy to work with but at the same time is fine and invisible. It worked great for couching. I used Pearl Cotton #5 in various colors of brown for the branches. Now all I have to do is fuse on the leaves and berries and well, you know, layer and quilt. It will be done and in the shop by sometime in December, I'm sure!!!
So it's turned out to be a very busy month. I am trying to get a few things done for a craft show coming up on December 3rd at Munson Hospital. Come down to the basement that day to find some interesting gifts for Christmas.
Last month Jeff updated our cable and we now have Showtime, so as a result I've been seeing my friends at Family Video a lot less lately. But I did manage to get over there yesterday to pick up the latest new releases. If you haven't seen the new Star Trek movie it's very well worth seeing, and not only to see the mean guy Sylar from Heroes depicting the much loved Vulcan, Mr. Spock. It's highly entertaining. I also got a good romantic Comedy called "The Ugly Truth." Turns out the truth isn't as ugly as all that. And the highly acclaimed depiction of the book by Jodi Picoult, "My Sister's Keeper." Don't try watching this one unless you have enough time for a good cry.
Have any of you read about the latest ideas that Michael Moore has been sending out? He wrote an article for the Record Eagle with a plan to get Traverse City out of this recession. It's worth a drive to the Library to look it up. It got sent to me this week because I'm a friend of the Film Festival.
Other than Haunting on my lap top and in Lake Ann this weekend I'm pretty much engulfed in the lives of Sarah and Nick. So stay tuned!
Yours Truly,
Cindy K-K
The Haunter
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