Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 24

1/2 Asleep

Don’t the best ideas come just as you are falling asleep or wake you up in the middle of the night? “Oh, wow, that would be the perfect -whatever- I’ll have to remember that in the morning.” And then….you can’t…remember that is.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this loss of the best story line idea. I know that some people sleep with a pad of paper and pen/pencil beside their bed to write these ideas down. It is a good plan, but as inspiration doesn’t strike me at this time of day that often…nah…no pad of paper or pen.

Well, get up then and go to the other room and write it down! “This bed is so warm/cool (which ever), I just want to stay here. I’m sure I’ll remember it in the morning.”

I wonder how many earth-changing ideas have been lost due to a warm bed and forgetful memory? Then again, maybe it is just as well. Perhaps, if we had written them down and tried to decipher it in the morning, we would wonder if we are on drugs.

How about you?

Store Names that Make Me Go Hmmmmm?

Sitting at supper I looked out the window at stores across from where we were dining. I’ve looked at them before, but tonight I finally crystallized why their names bother me. We’ll work our way up to what I consider the worst.

Foolish Things – Bar Kind of describes the situation perhaps?

Pure – Food/Juice Bar Well I hope so.

Black Optical – Since optics depend on light and black is the absence of light, I don’t know how the glasses in this place work.

And the winner.

Blue Mercury – skin care, spa – Really? You’re going to use in your name one of the deadliest of elements that can be absorbed through the skin, Mercury. There is no suggestion that they are referring to the planet or the god. I really think a better name for a skin spa could be found.

So, do you have any store or product names that make you wonder?

3 On Thursday –

As I’ve miscellaneous thoughts today, it seemed like a 3 on Thursday would take care of them.

1 We were watching KRSU TV last night, “Midsomer Murders” the BBC mystery show and one of the murder weapons involved in an astronomy related story was the Nebra Sky Disk. They didn’t call it that, nor acknowledge it as such or it’s true location – Germany. But there it was big as life…if you know what I mean. I had one of those moments where you are jumping up and down and going, “I know that object!” Well, I’m feeling rather smug. The last year we lived in Germany we took a trip north from where we were by Weiden to a town called Nebra.

There in 1962 was discovered a bronze and gold disc that was created about 1800BC. It shows a sun(or full moon?) and a crescent moon with a star constellation The Pleiades. It is believed to be a device to determine when to synchronize lunar and solar years by inserting a leap month. Most moderns can’t tell one phase of the moon from another, these people were recalibrating their calendar without written words! So cool, says the science nerd! People in the past weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have as much knowledge available as we do today.

So there on Midsomer Murders was the Nebra Sky Disk!

2 Checking on reviews and ratings of the various books I’ve written (Hey, they’re my ‘children’ I’ve got to see how they are doing and what people are saying!) There was a great review of Dark Queen. That will make a writer’s morning great, even before coffee! As it was one of the early books I am pleased. And if you want a copy of it or other books I’ve written, click on the link and it will take you to ecopies and you may see all of my ‘children’.

3 Weather and Whether plants? – My husband says autumn in Oklahoma is over. I’m not so sure. Right now we’re getting rain and it is 70oF. I’ve been hauling my ‘porch plants’ in to the bay window in the living room. I use pet ‘pee pads’ to protect the floor from accidental watering accidents. I don’t plan to miss the pot, but you know how leaves can sometimes get in the way and redirect the flow. Since the floors are hardwoods I don’t want to ruin them. I’ve still a couple of more to bring in. One is a fig in a pot that I’m not sure I’ll bring in. It should be able to weather the winter protected on the porch, but if the roots freeze (occasionally it happens to get cold enough) that will kill it. Better decided soon? Meanwhile my climbing roses (Don Juans) are still blooming enough for my neighbor to comment on them. However, they are looking a little ‘leggy’ as the leaves are starting to drop. This picture is from earlier at the beginning of summer. And the ‘pencil’ cactus near the bottom of the picture has a spot in the dining room west window. It’s hard to tell here, but that is a ‘big’ plant.

“Ruined”

Another of my books is available on Amazon. This is in the Georgian time period of the 1750’s-1760’s. Boy meets girl, ruins girl, decides he really wants girl and girl is doing her best to say no. Will boy regret his decisions?

Please remember this is fiction so…

‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ W. Shakespeare.

I could not say it better myself, Bill.

Find an ebook copy on Amazon.

And while you’re at Amazon, ‘Uptimers’ is free this week until the 11th October.

3 on Thursday

That title almost ended up as “E on Thursday”. Only because my touch typing is so-so.

So before the day gets completely away, what do I have? Things I like?

Naps – not sure how they became so much of my day. Never could take one when working/teaching. I don’t mean during the work day, but after the work day. If I went home and went to bed, I was dead tired and/or sick. It did not happen often. Now, ‘Oh…let’s take a nap.’ I will confess that taking a nap with the afternoon sun streaming over you is the height of hedonistic behavior in my opinion.

Reading and the Printed page. – Earlier today we had stopped at the big box bookstore and I picked up about 5 magazines to read. There is always the morning paper and many books stacked around the house. No shortage of reading material in this house. Why not ‘ebooks’ etc. I don’t like reading that type of material off the computer monitor. It bothers me. I confessed that to students a few years ago with the disclaimer that it must make me ‘old school’. I was surprised when they actually agreed with me that they preferred the ‘hard copy’ in their hands to reading ebooks. So, it’s not me, it’s us?

I’ll select a cover of one of my own.

Nature – Gardens, animals, wild birds, observing all the previous and more. It was one activity my parents shared. We had a bird feeder in the small yard outside the kitchen window and binoculars and bird identification books were kept handy. Taking a drive near sunset while at their property in Wisconsin was a ritual. (Granted it might end at one of the local bars…to get the local gossip, you know.) This interest, even love of living things and nature was definitely passed down to my brothers and I.

I’m sure I could come up with more, but these are making me happy today.

“Is there anything new under the sun?”*

October’s question for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group: It’s been said that the benefits of becoming a writer who does not read is that all your ideas are new and original. Everything you do is an extension of yourself, instead of a mixture of you and another author. On the other hand, how can you expect other people to want your writing, if you don’t enjoy reading? What are your thoughts?

First – I don’t think you can be a writer of anything without first have been a reader. Just thinking of those primary grade teachers and the progression of learning.

Second – Once you are an avid reader I think some of us reach some point where we say (with all confidence and bluster), “I can write better than that!”

As to new ideas. You are immersed in society and media. Memes, tv shows, movies, you can’t get away from their influence and even if you try to be ‘a free thinker’ you are going to be influenced. So, no, I don’t think the big ideas are generally ‘new’, but I do think you can put an unique twist on old ideas. What comes to mind quickly are new takes on ‘old stories or fairy tales’ such as “Wicked” or “Enchanted”.

Most stories are going to follow predictable lines and that’s okay with most readers. My mother read through a ton of ‘bodice rippers’ that she and her friends read, enjoyed, and passed around. She sometimes found herself reading the same book so she put her initials discretely on a particular page so she knew she had seen that book. Each story was different but the same, boy and girl meet, something keeps them from staying together, that hurdle is overcome, “AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.” (Unless in a sequel they didn’t and get a second chance.)

I think by being a reader first, you know what would be the most ‘predictable’ story line for what you are writing and you might therefore be able to avoid the clichés.

And one last comment, by reading widely you are also exposed to lots of styles of writing and through reading them find your own ‘voice’.

So be a reader! Find out what you like and what you don’t and remember ‘copying is the sincerest form of flattery’. Of course I mean that in terms of style!

Go to The Insecure Writer’s Support Group for other responses to this month’s prompt.

Link

*And you might note my header isn’t that new either. I kind of stole it from Ecclesiastes.

Cobwebs

Sometimes they are mental.

But this time of year (at least in Illinois when I was growing up) any open field with tall plants (milkweed, goldenrod) will have spiderwebs strung between plants. It was always a ‘danger’ to walk into one if you weren’t looking. I’m not crazy about spiders, but since they do good for the environment I don’t like to screw up their webs either. By fall the spiders have grown into the good sized arachnids with big webs.

The house my father built, when I was a toddler and we lived in until I was in sixth grade, was set into the side of a hill. The main floor exited onto Walnut Drive at street level and the basement level at the back on to an alley .

Having planned ahead, my father installed a yard light in the peak of the back of the house. That put it at 2 1/2+ stories above the backyard. Just as well, because it was inevitable for some spider to find this perfect set up for a web. The yard light drew moths and other flying things and no one was likely to come along and bump into or knock down the web way up there in the air. Honestly how did the spiders ever find the location in the first place?

My cobwebs now are of the ‘manmade’ variety. I saw the idea a few years back, before we had moved back to Tulsa. I kept it in mind, because I knew I had the perfect porch for spinning a gigantic cobweb for the Halloween season. It is done with cup hooks and bulky, white, CHEAP yarn.

So here is MY start to Halloween. Just have to find the ‘fake’ spider I stored away in the basement and it will be finished.

(The opening image is not mine. But it is just too cool not to use.)

Coffee Day

According to Bing it is Coffee Day. For many people every day is coffee day!

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my thirties. It was almost in self-defense. I was living in Italy…see what I mean ‘self defense’? And my science room had the band room on one side and the second science room on the other, both teachers were espresso drinkers and on base was a mensa bar (not the brainy group) but the coffee bar for the Italian workers and any one else. In less than fifteen (okay maybe twenty) minutes we could drive down, order a drink, drink it and get back to school.

My ‘gateway’ coffee was cappucchino. The half coffee half warm milk/cream, named after the Cappucchino monks because their uniform was brown robes with a white hood. I also like a lot of sugar in my coffee. I moved up to espresso after several years of the music teacher popping into my room early to see if I wanted some. I took that with A LOT of sugar to the point he would tease me with “Did I want a little coffee with my sugar?”

So I was hooked on caffeine and supplied by the music teacher…until…tragedy. The school district build him a new band room/performance area a block away and he moved over, taking his espresso maker with him!

What’s a person to do? I bought my own machine, and since the other science teacher was also an espresso person now, we put it in the storeroom between our labs. Before any science person starts shaking at the idea of food in the store room…this was the physics storeroom, not the biology or chemistry storeroom. Just old dusty pieces of equipment some of which my brother Al commented on at the time, “Should be in a science museum.”

So then, which ever one of us arrived first would make a small pot of espresso. It was so nice to arrive and find a cup (demi) of espresso on my desk with the saucer on top of the cup to keep it warm.

Now, my hubby has his own coffee maker as he likes his coffee Americano style. I make espresso which means I have enough to make 4 breaks for coffee. That coffee is going to get cold between trips to the carafe and rather than ‘heat’ the coffee/espresso in the microwave…the thought curled the toes of one friend when I mentioned drinking reheated espresso, I heat the milk/cream and then add a ‘dash’ of espresso.

Which brings me to ways to drink this thing called coffee. The Italians seem to have as many ways to drink their coffee caffeine as Eskimos have names for types of snow. Espresso, Latte, Latte Macchiato, Americano, Doppio, Cappuchino, and of course Iced.

I don’t remember all the other possibilities, but more than shown above.

So enjoy your coffee beverage of choice on “Coffee Day”.

Free – Book

If you are interested in reading “Dream Warrior”, it will be free September 30 through November 3 through Amazon. (Click on the highlighted title above.)

—Teryn has to protect the heir of Gengria, but it may cost the warrior in ways both physical and personal to do so.—

It may not be the next ‘Great American Novel’, but it still has a soft spot in my heart. 1) It was the first fantasy novel I completed. 2) My husband liked my main character enough that he asked to use Teryn in a book idea he was working on (we were just friends at the time).

I wanted a warrior that was tough and vulnerable. I also tried to write the first chapter with no indication of their sex. I wanted them to be a fighter first and their gender was secondary. As I’ve mentioned in another post, my mother tried to point out at the end of the chapter that I had used the wrong pronouns when it was finally clear, then she realized I had pulled a fast one with the reader.

Why a female fighter? After all it is done all the time now, especially in fantasy and sci-fi, but still… Aren’t all characters an extension of their creators’ desires? I think this is the draw of Dungeon and Dragon games. You can be some other person and act out your fantasies. Pretty much what writing is about.

So go to Amazon if you are curious or want a copy, FREE. And if you read it, would you be so kind as to leave a review. Thank you!

3 on Thursday

Socks – Two pairs with one almost done of each. Sitting at doctor appointments makes for a lot of knitting time especially when one appointment is for 3 and the doctor isn’t seen until after 5. (Doctor was in surgery until 3.) And there is only one of each because I get bored and switch to another pretty yarn.

Yarn for Socks – I keep buying it. Most of what I buy comes as skeins and I’ll sit watching tv and wind the skein by hand – although I do have a swift and ball winder.

Patterns for Socks – all over the place and on Ravelry, but then I just end up knitting my own combination.

What I should be doing on Thursday – finishing up socks…and starting on more? I certainly have enough yarn and those companies keep dyeing up more color ideas!