I came back from vacation to a little surprise waiting in our mailbox….
Hmmm… Air Mail addressed to me, in a padded envelope…
It claims to be a book! I think I know what ‘book’ this is!!!
And I know some of those “fellow bloggers!”
Not sure about that signature, though. Hopefully it’s legit.
Stay tuned for a book review, all ye others who are also expectantly excited. I will finish tonight.
![THE KIRKWOOD SCOTT CHRONICLES: Skellyâs Square by [Black, Stephen ]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51jslnfSUoL.jpg)
(Dude; you could be reading, too! Click here for the Amazon link.)
Kevin Parish at What Words May Come gifted me The Sunshine Blogger Award. Thanks, Kevin!
Here are Kevin’s questions:
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Mostly I use this next part to introduce any of my readers to any of my other readers whom I find excellent to read. The main snag is that I’ve already ‘nominated’ a fair number here, here, here, here, and here. If you’re looking for some great sites, scroll down to the bottom of those links and also check out these:
If any of you whom I’ve named get the notification and wish to respond, here are my questions:
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RULES:
1. Use the sunshine blogger award logo
2. Give thanks to the blogger that nominated you
3. Answer the 11 questions given to you
4. Nominate 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 questions
Photo Credit:
Saray Jimenez
Jose Rago
* This is not his name, but is close.
** This is not what he wore, but is again close.
©2019 Chelsea Owens
“Your blog is like lounging around the house and watching TV, maybe picking up some sticks in the yard. It’s you, and you have a casual vibe going on. A book is like going out for a big evening. You want your hair, nails, and makeup right. Maybe you spring for a new dress, which is like your cover art.
“You may not like the work that goes into it, but you’re going to like the reception when you finally get to the party.”
-C.S. Boyack, “So it begins“
“…If we had locked ourselves in a prison of failure and self-pity we were the only jailers… We had the only key to our freedom.”
-Og Mandine, quoting lessons learned from Simon Potter, The Greatest Miracle on Earth
“Too late, I found, you can’t wait to become perfect. You got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”
-Charles Halloway in Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
You’re at a burial, dressed in shoes you didn’t have time to polish or lace up correctly. It’s a grey sort of day, overcast with rain coming soon. They’re lowering the casket into the ground and all you can do is stare at the stubborn knot in your shoelaces.
Someone lights up a cigarette after the service is over and you move away to avoid the smoke. Your heels slip into the soft ground and you get mud on the hemline of your clothes. You stop to catch your breath after a long day and close your eyes. You smell rain in the air.
There’s a piano you can hear in the nearby chapel playing a soft tune. You think they’re playing “Amazing Grace” and then it changes. A sudden thought strikes you: “I must get back into the car before the last note. Once the last note plays, it’ll start raining.”
You’re heading back to the car when you see a man standing at the fence. He’s dressed in overhauls and a flannel shirt, looking directly at you. You glance away but are drawn back by the man’s intense stare. He’s holding something in his hand. A letter? A book? You can’t tell. You feel you must find out, before the last piano note…
Dodging headstones and mushy half-buried plots alike, you walk to the fence. And the man. Conveniently, they are both in the same direction. As you walk, you wonder at the prevalence of recently-turned earth. Just how many people have died lately?
The eerie piano playing from the chapel plays background beat to your even tread. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” will do that to a person, even if it’s a piano cover version and therefore lacks that awesome bass guitar.
Your attention draws back to the overall man who is fascinated with staring. Some people clearly need a hobby, especially since there are a lot more interesting things to stare at than a muddy-hemmed, sneaker-clad burial-crasher like you. You get closer and closer, noting his lack of blinking; his lack of attention on a bird that poops on his shoulder or on a passing dog that relieves itself on his trouser leg.
Just before you call out to him, his image blips and reloads. He is a clean, staring man again, proferring a flat object that is meant to look like a book. Thunder rumbles nearby, and he finally glances to the grey and heavy clouds. His gaze returns to you, who have stopped just before the projection of him.
“244224,” he says, monotone. “42,” he adds. Then, “2442.” He beeps.
You roll your humanoid eyes, reminded of how your familial assigners could not be happy with a short sequence like all the others. “Yes?”
“Precipitation imminent. Nirvana ending. Accept reanimation.” *Beep*
Your eyebrows raise. “Reanimation??”
“Affirmative.” He pauses, then remembers to *Beep!*
You look back and around at all the mounds of dirt, and swallow. It’s not easy considering the difficulties the body emulators had in transferring your normal shape to a humanoid form, but you manage. The sky growls again. A spot of earth near you seems to as well, but perhaps it’s the simulated imagination you’re equipped with.
Whipping back around to the hologram, you place your right forearm directly over the outstretched object in its hand image. The flat object glares a red light of warning. You realign. Still red. The growling from below ground is definitely not just your imagination now and you grit your teeth in frustration.
“Please align to shape,” the ‘man’ intones.
You try again and get the angry light again.
“Please align to shape,” he repeats.
Just as a very visible hand claws through the mud to your side and just as the final lingering notes of the piano are played, the tablet magically accepts your forearm’s outline and turns blue. “Code accepted.”
Your humanoid form releases a sigh of relief just before dematerializing. Your normal self, meanwhile, has a final, comforting thought. I am so glad that finally activated. Earth’s a real downer during a zombie apocalypse.
From the story prompt beginning shared by the highly-imaginative, amazing, wonderful, and fantastic Peregrine Arc.
You can play, too! The submission window closes on April 12.
Photo Credits:
Daniel Jensen
Wendy Scofield
Many thanks to Peregrine Arc for this here Liebster Award.
In answer to her questions:
And again, here are a list of sites you ought to read and follow. I try not to repeat people I’ve suggested from past nominations (here, here, here, and here):
PK Adams. Writes about running, religion, and life.
Bruce. The best at writing bad endings for his characters; recently taken to composing songs and sharing them.
Roberta Writes. She lives in South Africa and writes some creepy (and good) stuff.
John L. Malone. John’s about quick punches, short stories, and the nonsense that makes them.
Michael B. Fishman. Michael is funny, and a fantastic terrible poet.
Nominees, here are your questions if you wish to answer them:
According to P’Arc:
What is the Liebster Prize?
“The Liebster Prize is an award that exists only on the Internet and is awarded to bloggers by other bloggers. The first case of the award goes back to 2011. Liebester in German means sweet, kind, kind, dear, charming, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing and welcome. It really is an excellent way to meet other bloggers and gain more visibility in the community.”
Use the links below to follow the rules and find the submission page:
Photo Credits:
Image by suju from Pixabay
Image by Виктория Бородинова from Pixabay
Thanks to Beckie of Beckie’s Mental Masterfulness for nominating me last week; and on my birthday, no less!
Here are my answers to Beckie’s awesome queries:
I may have more than this.
Cute; but, UGH!
Some of my favorite posts I giggled to myself over include “Encounter in the Alley,” “Silent but Tardy,” “Everlore,” “My Muse,” and “A Spoonful of Limericks.”
Any stragglers-on to my blog know I’m not a huge fan of this chain mail thing, so my nominees are more a list of blogs I follow that I highly recommend you all check out. If they want to answer the questions, more power to them.
Len of Len’s Daily Diary. Brilliant mind, touching observations, and excellent story-teller.
Treeshallow Musings. She’s a gifted poet and word-painter.
Geoff. If you haven’t read Mr. LePard yet, that may be better for your health.
H.R.R. Gorman. Also an excellent writer; delving into a little sci-fi, a little horror, a little fun.
Beverly Hughes. One of my favorite people. She writes moving and insightful posts about mental illness and her journeyings.
Official Nominees: you may choose to answer my questions:
If interested, here are the rules and such:
Rules:
I love words, and I always have.
Whilst pregnant; my mother swallowed Agatha Christie and James Herriot and Ogden Nash, sending their formatted prose intra-umbilically to my formatting body. After I was out and able to lay still; the fare included A Child’s Garden of Verses, Shel Silverstein, Ramona Quimby, and Twig. Once literate by my own merits (and from my mother’s example); I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder, Arabian Nights, Bruce Coville, and Anthem.
I vowed to read every book ever written. I thought my goal an attainable one.
In the meantime, my literary diet supplemented my grammatical learning. Unlike many writers, I do not have a degree in the craft. My teachers were Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, and Douglas Adams. They taught me by example and expanded my lexicon to precocious measures.
In this way, I blame them for my problem.
I love words and am not afraid of them. I play with adjectives, verbs, and nouns like a small child with a treasure chest of his favorite playthings. Yes, I sometimes smash them together and finger paint a Jackson Pollock-worthy story. Yes, I sometimes roll terms into shapes like Play-Doh and end up with noun-verbs and adjective-nouns.
Every now and then I step back from my mishmash meter, sigh with contentment, and behold a magnificent mural.
Between times, however, my words have a tendency to cause mischief. I’ve used strong words to accurately describe my feelings, and inaccurate words in feeling ways. I’ve intentionally poked and stabbed to incite a reaction. A handful of times, I have drawn on The Power of Words to move a people to action.
I am, naturally, a novice at wordweaving. I worry at trying a spell when I haven’t passed all the levels. I tell myself not to dabble until I become a master.
I have also ticked some people off.
And yet, I cannot stay away. The bubbling brew of prosaic verse simmers warmly, invitingly, lovingly. Come hither, it tempts, I will not harm thee…
What say ye, wordspellers? How do words speak to you, how do you listen, and how (in turn) do you release the power that builds as you chant your incantations?
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We’ve crafted for another week. Here’s what I created:
Wednesday, February 20: Is Harry Potter a good book? Read what I thought and what many insightful comments determined in “To Potter or Not to Potter?”
Thursday, February 21: “The Cure for Depression: Don’t Be Hatin’ on Medicatin’,” another suggestion in a series originally posted over at The Bipolar Writer Mental Health Blog.
Friday, February 22: Winner of the Weekly Terribly Poetry Contest. Congratulations to Peregrine Arc!
Saturday, February 23: Announced the 14th Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest. We’re doing parodies of pop songs. PLEASE ENTER!
Sunday, February 24: “Dot on the Brown,” my poem response to the famous Frank Prem’s “speck on the blue.”
Monday, February 25: “Wilhelmina Winters, Eighty-Three.”
Tuesday, February 26: An inspirational quote by Maya Angelou. Smile at home, everyone.
Also, noted that I now have 500 Followers! Thanks again, everyone!!
Wednesday, February 27: Today‘s post.
I also posted all this week at my motherhood site. My favorite (and the internet’s) was my poem, “A Poem About Socks.”
And, I wrote a piece for Kids are the Worst titled “12 Fun and Easy Cabin Fever Fixes.” Don’t worry; there’s plenty of my good, old-fashioned sarcasm to keep things interesting.
Photo Credit:
Amaury Salas
It’s time to really let the fur fly around here, because I am going to ask the question no one ever should: Is Harry Potter a good book?
If you have been living in a bubble or under the age of twenty for the past 21.5 years, you might not know what I am referring to. In that case, I speak of a book series published by an unknown woman (at the time) that EXPLODED into ultimately selling more than 450 million copies worldwide.
I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the recommendation of my former sixth-grade teacher. I really liked the book. It had interesting characters, magic, an unseen parallel world, and enough British elements to tickle my anglophiliac bones.
I purchased and devoured each subsequent book as it came out, and cried on opening night of the first film.
A few years after that point, however, my English professor in (my return to) college ran us through an interesting exercise. “What makes a good book?” he asked, and wrote our responses on the white board. After looking over the items listed, he announced, “Harry Potter is not a good book.”
Since I do not live in a bubble and am not under the age of twenty, I was also not completely ignorant to the idea that others didn’t love Harry Potter as much as a large pocket of Potterheads. As a consequence, I was not floored at my teacher’s conclusions.
I instead experienced a wider perspective. His announcement released me from the godlike worship I had for authors everywhere and allowed me to acknowledge the series as one written by a human, with flaws. It was written by the first and only billionaire author human, granted, but still had flaws.
In turn, I was able to grasp the hope that someone like me could write. Someone like me could even write something that another person might read, or purchase.
Which is all very interesting, but doesn’t answer the main question of this post.
Is Harry Potter a good book? Why or why not?
My own husband dislikes that J.K. Rowling neglects a basic rules structure for her magic system, that Dobby exists, and that most of the stories are just not interesting.
For myself; I notice some literary no-no’s in her writing like adverbs, POV changes, and …say, a rule she introduces about non-verbal magic spells that she seems to abandon in later novels. I also think (and thought) that it’s really not feasible for a young wizard who can shout two spells to consistently beat someone who literally murdered older, gifted wizards.
But maybe I’m being nit-picky with that last one.
Ever the devil’s devil’s advocate, though, I say that J.K. Rowling’s series could be considered perfection. She hit the sweet spot across age, race, gender, nationality, and class. She wrote characters REALLY well. I’m just a medium-level admirer and would gladly jump on a train, attend Hogwarts, marry one of the Weasley twins, and go out to lunch with Tonks.
As a final thought to any still in the haters camp: last year, my son’s doctor complimented my son because he was sitting in the waiting room reading a novel. I believe it was Magician: Apprentice. “When Harry Potter first came out,” the doctor noted, “I used to come out and find kids’ noses stuck in books. I haven’t seen that since.”
Say what you will, but I’d love to bring that sort of book love back. Wouldn’t you? Perhaps there’s a spell for that.
Until then, do you say it is a good book? Do you only say so because you love it?
Do you only disagree because you hate it?
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I solemnly swear that you may read below to see what I wrote for the last two weeks:
Wednesday, February 6: We discussed the deep subject of baths vs. showers in “A Serious Question Concerning Hygiene.”
Thursday, February 7: “The Cure for Depression: Get a Paid MEDICAL Friend,” the slightly-third suggestion in a series originally posted over at The Bipolar Writer Mental Health Blog.
Friday, February 8: Winner of the Weekly Terribly Poetry Contest involving Nursery Rhymes. Congratulations to Violet Lentz!
Saturday, February 9: Announced the twelfth Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest, with a prompt of love poems.
Sunday, February 10- Thursday, February 14, plus Sunday, February 17: Various terrible poetry contributions of my own on the subjects of my backup camera, my absent appendix, black clothes, a first date, Costco, and Half-Price Chocolate Day.
Thursday, February 14: Wrote “Freddy and Teddy’s Valentines” for Susanna Leonard Hill‘s Valentiny contest.
Friday, February 15: Posted the WINNER of the love poem Terrible Poetry Contest: Geoff LePard.
Saturday, February 16: Announced this week’s Terrible Poetry Contest prompt. PLEASE ENTER IT!!
Also re-blogged Peregrine Arc‘s creativity contest.
Monday, February 18: Shared a quote from Joseph B. Wirthlin about finding a direction in life.
Tuesday, February 19: “Wilhelmina Winters, Eighty-Two.”
Wednesday, February 20: Today
