M.J. Fredrick's Blog, page 60

Goals for the First Week with the Kids

I won't teach Monday—I'll be in PE with the coach. Music and PE are the same time for the kids. I take one class and he takes the rest, and he wants to give all the kids orientation at once. Which means I'll be in the hot gym all day. It's going to be 102!

 

Our new couches came and the cats do not understand why they're not allowed on them. I know eventually we'll cave and let them on, but for now…

I can't arrange them the way I want, so we had to rearrange everything and now I need a new DVD case because mine broke to bits. And DANG we have a lot of DVDs and CDs.

This week:

1)      Get used to teaching music again!

2)      Finish final line edits for my December book

3)      Finish revisions on my novella

4)      Decide what to do with my Bluestone books. Submit or self-pub?

5)      Keep up house/cook/exercise. It's REALLY hot in the room with the exercise bike when I come home. I've been dragging it into the living room to use, but with the new arrangement that won't be possible.

6)      Get ready for dinner with my very first CP. She and her daughter have moved back to San Antonio, so they're coming for dinner on Saturday.

7)      Learn how to use my new sewing machine. Make something simple to start

Feeling Crafty

I spent an hour and a half at JoAnn Fabric with my mom today. Simplicity patterns are on sale for $1 each, and there was one I really wanted. I bought four others, too, and a crochet pattern book and scrapbook paper. NO, I'm not going to start scrapbooking, but I saw this REALLY cute project and I have clipboards at school. I always love looking at scrapbooking paper but never really knew what to do with it. Also, I bought two pieces of fabric to make a knock-off Chaps skirt. Okay, it's not going to look much like this at all, on second look, but it will still be cute. I still have 4 other pieces of fabric to sew, as well.

All this, with starting school and working on revisions on one project and final line edits on another…see why I'm never bored?

What cool projects have you seen lately?

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Wrote 125,000 words—two books and a novella

Made 8 ½ skirts.

Read 21 1/2 books

Self-published a book

Saw two other books released

Took two trips

Saw Harry Potter and Super 8 (wanted to see more, but…)

Painted my living room

Breakfast with Mom once a week, and three day-long road trips

Stimulated the economy (LOTS of shopping!)

Jeez, I have to go back to work to rest!

Goals for the Week of Back to School

Okay, I admit I'm kinda excited to get back to work. I'll miss my big green chair and my jug of iced orange water and my naps and having time to write AND keep house, but I'll get to see my friends and wear my new clothes and get my room ready. This week is all inservice/workdays. No kids yet.

This week:

1)      Get back in the groove

2)      Get room ready

3)      Start revisions on novella

4)      Figure out how to work cooking/cleaning/exercising back into the day.

That's enough for now, I think.

Something About Me

I usually start twitching when I see fall things coming into the stores after Fourth of July. It's because I'm a teacher, I'm sure, and don't want to rush my summer. But about now, this last week of summer vacation, I start anticipating fall. (It helps that every day in August has been 100-plus and the forecast is the same for the next week.) I look at magazines and ads and see yarn and scarecrows and pumpkins, and the new fall shows previewed, and I start anticipating the cozy nights and cool mornings.

Then in the winter, the ads are showing flowers and bright colors and picnic baskets and outdoor activities and I start anticipating the warmer days and wearing sandals and hitting the nurseries. So I'm always looking forward to something, though I'm trying not to wish my life away, as my dad cautions.

Today's my last day of summer vacation. We're getting another painting estimate, then I've got to run to JoAnn Fabric for some thread, then I'm going to get my eyebrows done, then get my last McD's lunch of the summer and eat it while watching All My Children. See? Anticipating. Tomorrow I'm speaking at SARA. NOT anticipating that, actually. Dreading. Dreading that.

The Story Behind A Ghostly Charm, Releasing Today

A Ghostly Charm, releasing today from The Wild Rose Press, started as a dream. I was REALLY into Supernatural at the time, and I dreamed that Dean was running a ghost tour for Halloween, to help support he and Sam's demon-fighting job. I started writing it, may even have finished it that way, but it didn't really work for me. I know I completed it, but let it sit. It wasn't ready. Then another writer friend came up with the idea of having connected stories, based on a cursed object from an antique shop, and I pulled this up and started again. This time I thought–what if he led the ghost trips and DIDN'T believe in ghosts? That made writing the story a lot more fun, as was cutting the word count to pick up the pace of the story.

Here's the blurb:

An isolated island off the coast of South Carolina, a cursed Celtic symbol, a ghost tour led by a handsome charlatan, and a reporter determined to debunk anything supernatural come together in A Ghostly Charm.

Maddy Saunders has come to McDavid Island on assignment for a new magazine, wondering how she'll ever rebuild her ruined reputation by writing about ghosts.

Mal Sheridan leads a ghost tour to bring business to the island for his sister's New Age shop. Business is good as long as no one is looking too closely. When his creative stories start to come true, he has to figure out why there are ghosts where there weren't before.

Maddy decides to help Mal figure out why this is happening, while fighting her attraction for this inappropriate man. She has to put her faith in Mal, in something she never thought she could believe, to break a curse.

Clothes Horse

When I was a girl, my favorite back-to-school routine was getting the Seventeen Magazine fall edition. Anyone remember that? It was the thickest of the year, full with fun styles and ads and make-up. I would study that thing like crazy. I would very rarely get any of the clothes, but I loved dreaming. And I could sew, so I could imitate some of the styles, and I shopped at Ross and Marshall's, who had layaway, and I could dress myself pretty well. But I remember wanting riding boots and Candies sandals.

I remember one year my mom made me these GORGEOUS prairie skirts (remember those?) and they were a LOT of work. One was blue chambray, and heavy. The other was a checked blue-and-black with tiny cowboy boots. I loved those skirts, and I had the cutest blouses to go with them. Whenever I think of going back to school, I think of those skirts.

This summer I've been a sewing fiend. I've made three and a half skirts (still sewing the half), and have fabric for three more skirts and a dress. I've bought a skirt and two blouses and two pair of shoes (outside of the Croc sandals). I also have four newish shirts from the end of the school year and a newish pair of sandals (which will go GREAT with one of the skirts. I have two new nail polishes (blue and purple) and new lipstick. So I'm allllllmmoost excited about going back.

Do you use clothes to fire you up? Do you buy new clothes every season? Do you still wear skirts? Only two of us at my school still wear skirts.

Chasing Genres- For the Love Story: Guest Blog by MJ Frederick

Chasing Genres- For the Love Story: Guest Blog by MJ Frederick.

Goals for the Week A Ghostly Charm Releases

So it's my last week of summer vacation. I love being home, but I have lots of fun new clothes to wear to go back, and it will be interesting teaching music again. We got our welcome back letter last week and have a few staffing changes. It looks like we'll have a second reading specialist, which is awesome. Reading was our weak point last year, and the current reading specialist only had time to work with 2 grade levels. Two reading specialists means more kids served. I'm surprised, because of budget cuts, but glad.

I got 12,000 words on a new story last week. It was meant to be a novella, but may go close to 40K, which is still novella length, but longer than I expected. Also made 2 skirts, 2 pair of earrings (would post pictures but they all come out blurry) and a purse.  AND I painted the living room and a wall in the kitchen.

This week:

1)      Another 14K on the novella

2)      Deconstruct that danged second book with an eye to revisions.

3)      Speak to SARA on Saturday—probably should prepare for that, huh? Why oh why did I say yes??

4)      Make 2 new skirts. I still have fabric for another 2 skirts and a dress.

5)      Make a necklace organizer with a corkboard, fabric and pushpins.

6)      Day with Mom and stepdad.

7)      Pack up all the stuff I need to take to school.

8)      Keep up house/cook/exercise. I barely cooked last week because the boy was gone, but he's not working so should be home most nights for dinner.

9)      Grocery/library

I probably should start working on going to bed earlier, too. Or enjoying the last week of staying up as late as I can.  One of those.

A GOOD Movie and a GREAT Book

I didn't have high hopes for the movie Soul Surfer. I was more looking forward to the DVD of Last Night, which had Sam Worthington and Keira Knightly. Well, Sam was cute and all, but didn't like that one.

LOVED Soul Surfer. It was a little slow to start, setting up our heroine's ordinary life, her surfer family, her mom who homeschooled so the kids could spend prime surfing time on the waves instead of on the bus, her friends, her competition.

And then the attack. It was a split second but the emotion that followed had me in tears. The doubts the young girl had, the determination, the support of her family…it was just a really great movie. Very very clean, too. I could show it to my class.

I'm also reading The Iron Duke, and honestly, I can't read too much at once because I will never be this good. It has such intricate world-building, and the characters are such a part of this world, created by the past conflicts, put in opposition by them. The heroine is a steampunk Eve Dallas, only with higher walls and a family. The hero is–don't kill me for saying this–hotter than Roarke, a former pirate who becomes England's hero. The mystery is underlaid with the heroine's concern for her brother. I'm really hoping to finish reading this book this weekend, and you can bet I'll buy the next one.

I wrote 22 pages yesterday, so I'm caught up. Today–8 pages, a newsletter, sewing, cleaning and exercise. May even get to go in the pool!