Lynn Nicholas's Blog, page 4

January 31, 2020

LIFE LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN

Picture I unload the back of my SUV: stocks for my grandmother, pansies for my mother, snaps for me and a white geranium just because. In the garden, my focus narrows and my senses broaden. The frilly, pink stocks fill my head with a spicy scent that’s somewhere between cloves and cinnamon. My hearing zeros in on individual bird voices as they tease and court. They tell each other it’s spring, but our desert spring is coquettish—flirting one minute and withdrawing the next. Today the sun is warm,...
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Published on January 31, 2020 16:08

January 4, 2020

LOBBING THOSE BALLS

Picture Here we are, not quite a week into the New Year, and both my holiday-inspired energy and my adrenaline surge from seeing my novel in print have receded. I’ve finally crashed from the high and I've flat-lined.This morning I slept late, made myself some scrambled eggs and coffee, and took everything and the dogs back to bed. I wanted just to veg in front of some mindless TV show. Can’t get much more mindless than “Married at First Sight.” Yup. That says it all.

By now my 2020 to-do list should...
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Published on January 04, 2020 14:53

December 1, 2019

A PEEK UNDER THE COVER

To answer the question, "What's it about?", here's a short blurb about the story line of Dancing Between the Beats. A bit more info can be found under the NOVEL tab. The book's narrative unfolds from three main perspectives:

Twenty-four-year old Paige Russell, still grieving the death of her single mother, defines herself as an orphan. Her obsession to find the father she never knew takes her to Tucson, AZ, where she settles in as the newest ballroom instructor at Desert DanceSport. But Paige’...
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Published on December 01, 2019 10:00

November 12, 2019

TURNING THE COLOR WHEEL

Picture I grew up part of a small, somewhat dysfunctional family—parents, paternal grandmother, one sister. By the time I was into my sixteenth year, we’d lived in two cities and four neighborhoods in Canada, and had made the big move from Canada to Arizona. After I married at nineteen, my family’s moving and shifting continued.

But home to me—the place I grew up—will always be the redbrick house on Harris Place in the suburbs of Ottawa. The neighborhood was so new, old farmhouses and fields of sheep...
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Published on November 12, 2019 09:44

October 15, 2019

ABOUT THE PROCESS

Picture The publication process of Dancing Between the Beats is underway. The book’s cover art is the first piece of many pieces to fall into place. It was important to me for the cover to suggest movement, and I couldn’t be more pleased with what the designer came up with. Thankfully, with this publisher, Wheatmark Inc., it’s acceptable for me to offer my opinion on everything from cover design to book layout. I’m guessing that those of you who’ve been exposed up-close-and-personal to my Type A...
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Published on October 15, 2019 14:14

September 14, 2019

A LONG GESTATION

Picture After years of writing, revising, editing, and refining, my novel is a wrap. I recently signed a contract with a publishing company. Depending on how quickly the gristmill grinds, Dancing Between the Beats will be a hold-in-your-hands, honest-to-God book (and an e-book) by the end of 2019, or possibly early 2020.

It was eight years ago, just after my mother passed, that I wrote the first rough draft of DBTB. Eight years is one hell of a long gestation period; elephants, move over. Trust me...
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Published on September 14, 2019 00:00

August 25, 2019

shredding summer

Picture
The only southern Arizonans out and about in midsummer are the bright-eyed, early-morning people, of which I am not one. Summer is when I hermit (yes, in my world, hermit is a verb ) Venturing out in the pounding heat, when the interior temperature of a parked car can reach 150 I-can’t-breathe-degrees, is right up there on my “No Bloody Way” scale with driving through a desert monsoon storm. I concede that the dramatic skies and bolts of lightning are spectacular, but. . . . No. Can’t deal...
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Published on August 25, 2019 13:30

July 29, 2019

UNFORTUNATE CONVENTIONS - SOAPBOX RANT

Picture Maybe I just get irritated easily, but I find myself gritting my teeth and forcing a polite smile almost every time I venture out into the public domain. Far too many bland, annoying, contemporary phrases have become acceptable norms for social interaction. For me, most of them are cringe-worthy.

Let’s start the list with one of the worst offenders: Free Gift. These two words together make me want to strangle the marketing pros who came up with this idiotic combination of words. Isn’t a gift,...
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Published on July 29, 2019 19:54

June 26, 2019

THE NO-SUBJECT POST

Picture Maybe the heat of summer is addling my brain, but trying to settle on what to share is like looking at a garden full of butterflies. As soon as I focus on one idea, it waggles its wings and flits to another flower. I need a butterfly net of sorts: a fine-mesh cerebral strainer. I could toss everything in, run water, and see which thoughts dribble away and which settle to the bottom of the basket. Or maybe I just have undiagnosed ADHD? (D votes for that one.)

I thought about discussing the...
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Published on June 26, 2019 15:15

June 2, 2019

PUSH DOWN AND TWIST

Picture Bloody Hell!

“So what’s she on about now?”

Well, if you must ask, packaging, and let’s not forget, warning labels: my pet peeves of our modern world. Our government’s attempt to protect us from ourselves, and to protect manufacturers from law suits, has far exceeded an acceptable level of ludicrous government bureaucracy.

Let’s start with shrink wrap. Take the 11 x 14 frame I just bought. It was so tightly wrapped in impervious layers of plastic, I couldn’t fit the tip of my pointiest knife...
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Published on June 02, 2019 13:25