Mmmm, food: Part Four

Ready to eat? Time for some fabulous food!

Link here.

Mmmm, food: Part Two

How to roast a duck, part two of four:

Link here.

My mouth is watering already. How about yours?

Blast from the past.

Here's a  post from December 2009. Yeah, I've been here a while now!

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu

The most powerful myths are about extremity. They force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when we all, in one way or another, have to go to place we have never seen, and do what we have never done before. (p. 3)

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne

[Myth] enables us to place our lives in a larger setting that reveals an underlying pattern and gives us a sense that against all the depressive and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.

Best of...

For my retrospective, here is a blog post from November 22, 2009. Enjoy!

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No fear?

A dear friend of mine has characters and stories roaming her head. She wants, no, yearns to write.

Just like the rest of us, she is frightened.

Writing is scary stuff. Let's list a few of the things that scare her.

1. Rejection by publishers.
2. Rejection by agents.
3. Rejection by friends and family.
4. The possibility that you really DO suck.
5. The possibility that you might learn something about yourself that you didn't want to know. (I was pretty surprised that I wrote vampire stories. I wanted to write screw-ball comedies).
6. Bad reviews.
7. Good reviews.
8. Not getting published which leads to...
9. Feeling like you've wasted your time.
10. Not making money.

These fears are real. They stop people in their tracks every day. They even stop me from time to time.

I have no easy answers about how to not be afraid. In fact, these fears are important. You have to look at them and say, "Well. What if I do suck? What if my work does gets rejected from now until the end of time?"

The payoff might not be worth the pain. If so, then congratulate yourself, and realize that there are many other dreams waiting for you! Maybe you will find fulfillment in improv comedy or Linux open-source work.

Make your fears work for you.

The Best of....

Guess What! This blog is FOUR YEARS OLD! It's hard to believe, but I've been attempting to make sense on the Internet for that long. To celebrate, I'm going to run a few of my 'Greatest Hits'.

Sit back, grab a beverage and enjoy our thrilling ride through yesterday.

From February 10, 2009, The Care and Feeding of an Author.

It's a sad fact that I have to learn a lesson many times before I truly get it (I guess that makes me normal, huh?!). And today, the lesson I learned again is what makes me the most productive.

Being relaxed, well-rested, pain-free, and generally patient with myself means I have a day that rocks hard. I'll compose and edit with great ease and pleasure. Writing is a joy to me and makes me feel amazing.

The minute I tense up and start nagging myself at how much I need to get done and how lazy I am and how much I suck....

Well, let's just say I'm better off going back to bed and calling it a done day.

So to this end, I do a wide number of things to put myself in the best possible place.

I work out five days a week (don't get too excited about this, somehow I'm still a super curvy girl). I give myself permission to take naps.

The hardest thing, though, is to remember that writing is not just Butt in Chair, Fingers on Keyboard. Everything feeds that fire - reading, watching movies, doing research, even taking a long, hot, scented bath - fuels the writer.

Nagging? Not such a good motivator.

Pleasure? The best motivator ever.

What are your pleasures? What motivates you?

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Dracula's Secret, Blood Wings #1
Dracula's Desires, Blood Wings #2
Dracula Unleashed, Blood Wings #3, to be released March 21, 2013