Micki Clark's Blog, page 6

Camp NaNo, Here We Come!

It’s almost April, and that means we’re just days away from the start of Camp NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo, for those of you not in the No (sorry, couldn’t help it), means National Novel Writing Month.

Many people have asked me when I found the time to write Don’t Ask Me to Leave. I actually wrote it during NaNo several years ago and then sat on the manuscript. NaNo isn’t a “real” contest in the sense that you “win” a prize when you’re finished. It’s more a way to motivate you to get into a routine of writing every day.

April is like “NaNoLite”–it’s a little more friendly for young writers, but it’s still a good time to get involved and challenge yourself to write.

I will be NaNo-ing the plot I’ve outlined for The Soldier’s Wife, my retelling of the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah.

Will you NaNo? If so, share with me so I can help encourage you on your path! Visit campnanowrimo.org for more info!

From Trim Healthy Beginner to Trim Healthy Believer

I’m a mom of three beautiful kids. I love my kids. But three very difficult, pre-eclamptic, bedrest-inducing, weight-gaining pregnancies in four and a half years pretty much destroyed my health. It was horrifying, really, when I looked at myself in the mirror after my third was born. So, I decided it was time to “get healthy”. After all, I was thirty years old, and it should be easy, right?

Oh my goodness. I have never been more wrong about ANYTHING in my life. It was a nightmare. I tried a lot of things, even some that were absolutely ridiculous. I increased my physical activity and have, in that seven years, burned through a Fitbit Charge, a Fitbit Charge HR, and am currently sporting a Fitbit Alta. I also killed my Fitbit scale due to overuse (alas, poor Bob the Scale, I hardly knew ye).

I tried several recognized diet plans and methods. I Slim Fasted for a while, and then I Weight Watched. I tried Zija and decided that if I were going to drink grass, it would be more efficient if I just mowed my own and tossed it in the blender. I tried Plexus, and “drank pink” for almost a year.

The thing is, while all of those things worked for me in the very short run, none of them gave me the lasting results I was looking for. That combo of experimentation and exercise helped me drop roughly 20 pounds. That’s it. 20.

…I realize some of you, at this point, are saying, “But hey! That’s 20 pounds that you’re not carrying anymore!” Yeah, okay, but it shouldn’t take seven years to lose twenty pounds, know what I’m sayin’?

What really frustrated me the most about all of this is that I wasn’t eating badly. I wasn’t–I promise. I could have understood the stubborn scale if I were snarfing down ice cream and cookies every time I turned around. But literally, I’d eat a salad, run five miles, ride six miles on my bike and weigh three pounds HIGHER the next day.

It didn’t make sense, especially since I knew other people were being very successful on all of the plans and products I was trying. I knew there had to be more to it than just calories in, calories out.

About a month and a half ago, I finally decided to cave and read this “Trim Healthy” thing that people kept recommending. I wasn’t really interested in another diet plan, because I’d pretty much given up on dieting. I couldn’t eat much more “healthy” than I was, and that clearly wasn’t working.

What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the science of Trim Healthy Mama. Finally, it made sense–I wasn’t eating the wrong foods, I was just eating them in the wrong combinations. There was nothing inherently wrong with the foods I was putting on my plate–I just needed to assemble my meals in a different WAY.

[image error]Yep. Bring it, mini-goal. You’re almost done.

So, I bought the Trim Healthy Cookbook and Trim Healthy plan book and picked out a few recipes to try. I figured I’d see if the food was worth eating and we’d go from there.

It’s been amazing. Really. In two months, I’ve lost 2/3 the amount that it took me seven years to lose.

I’ve officially transitioned from Trim Healthy Beginner to Trim Healthy Believer.

So, I want to address a few of the things that were holding ME back that I think hold some others back from trying Trim Healthy Mama:

It is expensive.

[image error]I think the first thing I was afraid of is that THM was going to cost money. I mean, pretty much everything else I had tried either had a membership fee or required you to buy expensive drinks, supplements, etc. from the company. The thing is that you can do THM without buying a single thing FROM the THM company (although I really do think you need to buy and read the plan book, and the cookbook is super useful).

A lot of the mamas on the THM newbie Facebook group also talk about how “spendy” the special ingredients in THM recipes are. So I thought about that for a minute and then I decided to go back through my Walmart Savings Catcher receipts and do a shopping cart comparison.

The first thing that I noticed is my shopping cart is noticeably more empty now that I am doing THM. I’m bypassing several aisles in the store completely, and I am buying very few “boxed” and prepackaged items. We’re also generating less trash, which is making my husband very happy, since he’s the one who hauls off the waste and recycling. But look at this comparison of a typical shopping receipt from Walmart from January and my receipt from today:

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And you know what makes that REALLY interesting? My receipt from January was all grocery items. My receipt from today included three makeup items (which are not cheap, as I’m sure you know) and several extra household items (my pregnant cat decided my carpet was FAR too clean and she should ensure that she throw up in the maximum number of areas to help me with that egregious oversight on my part).

So yeah, some of the natural ingredients are more expensive than the fake or processed varieties, but when you truly get on board with THM, you aren’t buying nearly as much junk. I’ve become a MUCH more efficient grocery shopper, and that’s clearly saving us enough money to justify me buying Truvia instead of sugar and so on.

It’s too much work.

Yeah, I get this one too. I’m a mom of three, I’m a teacher, I’m an author that just launched a book… But again, it’s a matter of perspective. Before I went to the grocery store this morning, I sat down with the THM website and planned a menu for the week. Sundays I’ve got time to cook. Mondays and Wednesdays are usually sheer and utter chaos at my house. So, when I planned my meals, I selected crockpot meals for Monday and Wednesday. I built a menu that uses similar ingredients (for example, two of my recipes use chicken breast) so that I could buy ingredients in bulk. I’m not going to lie–I get in a rut with breakfast and lunch. I only get a small window of time to eat at school, so I usually do something like make muffins that I eat on for breakfast most of the week and have a similar type of salad all week for lunch. Easier to prep.

Speaking of prep, my weekly meal prep doesn’t take long. I wash and chop some romaine, spinach, and spring mix and put it in a bowl in the fridge that I use all week to make the salads to go with my E lunches. I boil some eggs on Sunday to use for breakfast and the occasional S salad lunch. I divide out my big bulk packages of chicken breast into freezer bags and that’s pretty much it. We’re talking maaaaaybe twenty minutes. Maybe.

I print out my recipes and meal plan for the week and stick it on the fridge. Then, as we go along through the week, I just rotate the recipe for that evening to the front and stick it in a binder I made for THM when I’m done. I promise, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of work, but it really does make your week go so much more smoothly. By the way, most of my evening meals are S. It’s my husband’s type of meal, and it’s easy to turn it into a crossover for my kids, so my breakfast, lunch, and snacks are where I get in my Es and FPs.

It doesn’t work.

You know what? Maybe it doesn’t for everybody. I sure did try a lot of things that didn’t work for me. But I think for a lot of people that struggle with the plan, it’s because they are so used to following a diet strictly and religiously, and that’s not really what THM is. THM is more about understanding the science of your food and helping use it as fuel for your body (like selecting regular versus premium at the gas station). I see so many people on the THM Facebook freaking out about having a “cheat meal” or accidentally eating a crossover and WHAT DO I DO, FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESECAKE???

You move on. You make sure the next meal is healthy and forget about it.

What I’ve noticed is that I’m making smarter choices every day. Even when I’m not 100% on plan, I’m WAY closer than I used to be, and that’s still moving the scale in the right direction, even when it’s not moving as fast. For example, we ate at Fazoli’s last night, and my eyes naturally slid past all of the stuff I used to order. Was my meal still a crossover? Uh, yeah, because BREADSTICKS and butter, people! Was it a disaster? Nope. I didn’t overeat anything. This morning, I had my Fat-Stripping Frappe and went on about my business.

[image error]Hello, roomy waistline!

The most exciting thing for me is that I FEEL awesome. I’m so proud of my shopping cart at the grocery store. I almost want to flag people down and be like, “Oh my goodness, look at these beautiful vegetables! Don’t you want to come to my house for dinner? I mean, you can’t, because I don’t know you and that would be weird, but dinner at my house is AWESOME!” I have so much more energy that now I find myself thinking about exercising instead of thinking of ways to avoid exercising.

As I type this, I’m wearing a pair of jeans that just three weeks ago, I had to stretch out on my bed and suck my gut in like there was no tomorrow just to fight the zipper up. They “fit” in the sense that they didn’t burst right back off my body, but they were horribly uncomfortable and left glorious indentations in my skin. Not really my most attractive look. But check me out today!

The food’s gross and the ingredients are weird.

[image error]GGMS my way… and I like that the strawberry slices turn it pink

Inspirations: Gregson the Gorgon

One of the first questions I hear is: “Where did you get the idea for…” and “Who did you base (character) on?” One character in particular that my friends want to know “who” she is? Gregson the Gorgon.

While I’d like to dish a juicy secret and say that Emily Gregson’s based on some hideous soul from my past, she’s actually just an amalgam of character traits I am not a fan of. I wanted her to be someone that Rachel would never gravitate to and lean on, but instead someone that she would find off-putting, with just the right touch of repulsion. So, instead of basing her character on any one person in particular, I made a list of character traits. So, what makes Emily so detestable?

Physically, I imagine her a little bit like Roald Dahl’s Trunchbull. This is a woman who only cares about her personal satisfaction, and definitely not how she appears to others:

She flashed the perma-grin at Rachel again, displaying coffee-stained teeth as she hefted herself into her desk chair, causing it to groan in protest. … With a shrug, Emily unwrapped a chocolate and tossed it in her mouth. “‘S why girls like you stay skinny. You don’t eat the good stuff.”

She’s also narrow-minded and condescending, and has no problems making generalizations about others:

“What made you choose history, anyway? I mean, you were lucky to get a job. Everybody knows that history teachers are coaches who’d rather play ball than teach.”

“Not all history teachers are coaches.” Rachel closed her planner and traced a finger down the edge. “I enjoy history. I think we can learn a great deal from our past.”

Emily barked with laughter, spraying a fleck of chocolate onto the surface of the desk. “Aren’t you the idealistic one?”

As a teacher, people like Emily are one of my greatest frustrations. You can never judge a teacher honestly unless you’ve really been in their classroom (and I mean for more than five minutes), but Hollywood and everyone else are quick to shoehorn teachers into stereotypes.

Will Rachel be triumphant, or will Gregson the Gorgon get the better of her? The only real way to find out is to pick up a copy of Don’t Ask Me to Leave, available in digital and print formats on Amazon and other retailers.

Bucket List

Today is a big day for me, personally and professionally. Today’s the day that I put a big, fat check next to one of the longstanding items on my life bucket list: PUBLISH A BOOK.

Many people have dreams in life. Some of those are realistic, and some not so much. I know for a fact that a few of mine won’t come true. For example, I will never be Bugs Bunny, and my chances to become Princess were thwarted by Kate Middleton (oh, and the fact that I’m already married, not British, and not rich, but hey, let’s not split hairs).

However, today is the day for me. Since the age of four, I have loved the written word. I don’t read books; I devour them. The joke was once made that I can read faster than you can think. Maybe not, but I do love a good book. And I always hoped that one day, I’d write a book and be able to sign the inside.

For a long time, our school systems in America have promoted a specific version of the American dream. We want our students to go to college and “be all they can be”–but that wasn’t always practical.

When I was in high school, I thought I was going to be a doctor when I grew up. I was a smart kid–maybe too smart–and I had a full ride to college and a National Merit Scholarship. Why waste that intellect on anything less than medicine (or maybe law)?

But that’s not where my passion lay. I love the written word. I love helping other people foster that love for the written word. If all the world’s a stage, then for me, my classroom is Broadway.

I chose to be a teacher, and I never gave up on my dream of being a writer. Could I have chosen more lucrative careers? Certainly… but I wouldn’t feel nearly as satisfied or content with my life as I now do.

Let’s encourage our children to pursue their bucket list. Let’s help them find a career that is equally sustainable and worth loving, and make that their life goal. Tell them to spend their high school years preparing for future happiness, whether that’s trade school, college, or an internship.

I may not be “all that I could be” in the eyes of others, but I have definitely reached my own goal. Anything beyond this moment will just make it that much more special. Logging in this morning to Amazon and seeing my book… that’s the moment I’ve been waiting for since childhood.

Yes, let’s help our children make a bucket list… and let’s do what we can to get them there.

Just one week away! TRAILERS!

We’re just one week away now from the release of Don’t Ask Me to Leave! A few lucky people have early copies, but you can have yours starting March 16. I can’t wait to share this love story with you!

Have you seen the trailer?

There’s also a video for the location scenery:

Once you read the novel, be sure and write a review! Thank you so much for your support!

A Writer's Brain Never Sleeps

One of the most frequent discussions I have with my students when I assign a creative writing piece is “I don’t know what to write”. As someone who lives immersed in the literary world, that’s always a bit hard for me to comprehend. My problem is usually the opposite–which story should get to fall out of the jumble in my brain and land on paper? There are so many different kinds of intelligence in this world, and what I find fascinating is how the brain operates for each. My husband, for example, is mechanically inclined. When he can’t sleep, it’s because his brain is busy telling him 18,489 different configurations he should try with one of our vehicles. Me, on the other hand, well…a writer’s brain never sleeps. Need proof?

Yesterday, as I was teaching Act Two of Julius Caesar to my sophomores, we were talking about anachronisms. An anachronism occurs when something is included in a work that’s not chronologically appropriate to the time period (such as when the characters direct us to pay attention to the chiming of the clock, a thing that simply didn’t exist in that way in ancient Rome).

To help give my students examples of this in modern times, we talked about two examples of anachronisms I’ve seen in various Western movies. In one case, a costumer (or actor) forgot to remove a very modern-day watch. Anachronism! In another, an extra, set designer, or some other such person was captured in the background of the movie on a–gasp!–cell phone.

After that conversation happened five times, it was pretty ingrained in my brain.

Then, right before bed, I settled down with my Kindle to play a few rounds of various puzzle games. I really believe in keeping your brain active, and while I don’t really enjoy the social aspect of most games, I do enjoy solving the puzzles. Usually. When they aren’t impossible. Candy Crush, I want a divorce.

But I digress.

No, last night before bed, I played my requisite five lives of Bubble Witch Saga 3,  a matching game from King (https://king.com/game/bubblewitch3). The level that just insisted on frustrating me was a “free the ghost” level, where you shoot the bubbles so the ghost can rise up the screen.

Bear with me here. Some of you are confused and don’t see a story. I didn’t either, that is, until about 2 AM, when my mind dreamed up this concoction:

I found myself walking through the streets of Tombstone, complete with the dress with the big poofy skirt and delicately swaying white silk handbag on a wrist. We were moving into the sheriff’s house, it seemed, and it was the day of our arrival. But, things in Tombstone weren’t all that they seemed.

The sky shifted and turned dark. We ran–cowboys, marshals, citizens all–to the end of the dirt-paved street to find a body sprawled in the swirling dust. A light descended from the heavens, and the sheriff that had been killed was hovering over the dead body, tugging and pulling on the soul that refused to leave the body behind.

He looked up at us, this blue-and-white apparition, and I realized his problem was that he was essentially a head and torso with no arms or legs. He told us we needed to go back to his house and free him so he could properly finish his job and then rise up to the heavens.

We faithfully trouped back across town, where Morgan and Louisa Earp were just coming down the steps of the house, which was pulsating with–wait. Were those electric Christmas ornament lights (bubble style)? ANACHRONISM, my brain screamed!

A little girl ran forward and touched one out of curiosity, and just like on the game, it popped, releasing a little yellow fairy who settled on her cheek and set off a flood of giggles.

The sheriff was hovering over the house now, a smile on his face, thanking the Earps for coming to town and setting things aright…and then my alarm went off.

Who knows what would have happened next? I guess I’ll have to go back to sleep and figure it out.  What do you dream of?

Don’t Ask Me to Leave is available for preorder now at Amazon.com! Follow this link or search “Micki Clark” on Amazon.

Newlywed Rachel Miller has everything she could want from life—the perfect husband, her dream job, and a cute little house in the country—but the daydream is shattered when her husband is killed in a tragic accident. Her mother-in-law, Nadine, takes her in as she tries to pick up the pieces, and their handsome neighbor Beau is willing to help…if Rachel will let him. Does she dare open her heart for a second chance at love?

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Preorders Begin TODAY!

Beginning TODAY, you can pre-order Don’t Ask Me to Leave (the Kindle edition) on Amazon.com! Go here to reserve your copy: Amazon

The print version of the novel will be available March 16, 2017.

Don’t forget, if you pre-order the novel, send me a screenshot or some form of proof of purchase via one of the following channels to claim your PDF of behind-the-scenes info!

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Meet the Characters: "Princess" Olivia

Olivia Miller would hate the phrase “last but not least”–she’d prefer I tell you that I “saved the best for last”. Be that as it may, now that you’ve met Rachel, Beau, Nadine, Eli, and the twins, it’s time to introduce you to the one and only “Princess” Olivia.

[image error]Bree Turner (Tina, from Bring It On Again), my inspiration for Olivia

There’s really no “nice” way to describe Olivia, but I suppose you might try and call her “high maintenance”. She’s a young woman that is *very* used to getting things exactly her way and in a timely fashion to boot.

Her social life is very important–so much so that she neglects everything and everyone else, often accidentally “forgetting” one social arrangement in favor of attending something more high profile or entertaining. She’s a pleasure-seeker above all.

At her core, Olivia is very childlike. She’s used to instant gratification and hasn’t had to experience much of life’s harsh realities–unlike her sister-in-law Rachel. In fact, that’s part of why they butt heads so frequently. Rachel has a hard time stomaching someone whose biggest concern in life is the color of her curtains. Will they ever get along?

A Brief Synopsis:

BEAU SAMUELS has everything he could want from life—everything except the woman he loves. He carries a torch for his best friend’s wife, but his noble heart will not allow him to come between what God has joined together.

RACHEL MILLER has no idea of his attraction; she’s too preoccupied with her joy at leaving her orphaned childhood behind for a life at the center of her new family and settling down in the rolling hills of Kentucky for a long and happy marriage to David, her very own Prince Charming.

Rachel’s storybook life takes a dramatic turn when her father-in-law, Eli, succumbs to a brutal heart attack.  Days later, her husband and brother-in-law are killed in a horrific traffic accident. Her nascent faith falters as she blames God for ripping her happiness away. But NADINE MILLER, her mother-in-law, believes that God has a plan. She encourages Rachel to work through their shared grief and understand what He has in store.

Will Rachel be able to move past her pain and face her uncertain future? Will Beau be able to convince Rachel to open her heart again? Only time will tell…

Don’t Ask Me to Leave goes on pre-order February 17 on Amazon.

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