Jan Scarbrough's Blog, page 22

Time Travel: Back to the Future

Christ Church United Methodist VBS

This week I’ve stepped back in time to my early thirties. That’s when I was mom to a five-year-old boy and his slightly older sister. For the first time since then, I have another five-year-old boy spending the week with me. He’s one of my seven grandsons. It’s been an odd re-education, one that brings back tons of memories.

I’d forgotten about the jumping and climbing, the dirty socks, cookie crumbs and constant chatter. I’d forgotten about the long, sloppy baths, the cowlicks, and the boo-boos.

You see, this weekend I’m playing chauffeur to my grandson and his six-year-old cousin by dropping off and picking up at Vacation Bible School. Their parents work and just can’t manage time away from the job. In my day, my mom and dad helped up with these chores, stepping in to provide summer “day care” and chauffeur services. Now it’s my turn in the cycle.

How easily I’d forgotten the disagreements between children, whether siblings or cousins. New is the handheld computer games. We didn’t have those things back then. “Let me have a turn.” “Please share!” New is the whining. Did my children whine? Certainly not.

I’m thankful my grandchildren have a good start in life thanks to their parents. Discipline has been easy. Probably much easier than I had it as a mom. Kids don’t listen to their own parents, do they?

I write this on “hump day.” Two nights and two days to go. I’m taking a big leap of faith and inviting the six-year-old granddaughter to sleep over tomorrow night. We’re wearing them out at the pool before bringing them home for bed!

It’s been an exhausting week for me. I haven’t had any trouble making my 10,000 step count on my pedometer or falling asleep. What’s the cliché? Children are for the young?

Yet, it’s been a good week. Will I do it next year? Let me get back to you on that.

You know what they always say? The best part about being a grandparent is you can always send them home to their parents. Can it be that Friday is just around the corner?

Inspiration. Where do the ideas come from?

I’ve written a few books and stories in my life. Some have taken years to finish, others a few months. By now I have a method that I go through when I start a story. I take out one of my plotting worksheets, a conglomeration of various classes I’ve taken over the years, and start filling in the blanks.

I want to know my two main characters and their “core decision” or “motivation.” I figure out their back stories. Since it’s a romance, I know these characters will end up together, but how they get together, I’ve yet to figure out.

Writers are always asked—Are you a plotter or a pantser? For those of you who don’t know, pantser refers to those authors who write by the seat of their pants. Because I always start with a basic chart, I never thought I was a pantser until an online instructor told me I am.

She’s right! If I try to fill in detailed character grids or create a step-by-step outline, my mind clogs up. The ideas get stuck somewhere else. The story is miserable.

My best bet is to take the bare bones and start writing. Somehow the characters start driving the story. What happens and how it happens gets fleshed out. I’ve gotten better at it over the years. I’m learning to trust what comes.

My latest manuscript, Timeless for Turquoise Morning Press in September, was written that way. It’s in the hands of the editor. We’ll see what she thinks. My medium friend told me my spirit guides were helping me write the story. They were having great fun doing it. She even tells me I channel as I write.

Sure. I like to think that what she says is true, for the ideas come from somewhere, and I’m not sure they come from my mind. The words just sort of flow from my vision through my fingertips to the computer keyboard and onto the screen. It’s like magic.

So where does INSPIRATION come from? Anyone have a clue? It’s been a topic of discussion through the centuries. A quick glance at Wikipedia will tell you that.

Inspiration (from the Latin inspirare, meaning “to breathe into”) refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavor. The concept has origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Similarly, in the Ancient Norse religions, inspiration derives from the gods, such as Odin. Inspiration is also a divine matter in Hebrew poetics. In the Book of Amos the prophet speaks of being overwhelmed by God’s voice and compelled to speak. In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 So inspiration can come from God, the Holy Spirit. I like that, for it was from God that I derived what little bit of writing ability I have. And spirit guides are of God, aren’t they?

All I can say is that I’m blessed by God to be able to write stories, to create, to be inspired, and to do something that I love.

How many books have you written?

I keep being asked that question, and I never know how to answer it. I don’t keep track of them. So, I thought I’d put together a list of my books. Some, like Reunited and Best Intentions are my “backlist,” and I’ve republished them under the titles of Kentucky Flame and Kentucky Groom.

The books, novellas and short stories listed here are books currently available (or soon to be available) on Amazon.com and most other ebook retailers.

Resplendence Publishing

Kentucky Bride

Bluegrass Reunion Series

ebook only

Kentucky Cowboy

Bluegrass Reunion Series

Kentucky Flame

Bluegrass Reunion Series

Kentucky Groom

Bluegrass Reunion Series

ebook only

Kentucky Hearts

paperback anthology of 3

ebooks: Kentucky Groom,

Kentucky Bride & Kentucky Heat

Kentucky Heat

Bluegrass Reunion Series

ebook only

Kentucky Rain

Bluegrass Reunion Series

ebook only

Kentucky Woman

Bluegrass Reunion Series

My Lord Raven

Medieval Romance

Turquoise Morning Press

A Groovy Christmas

two Ladies of Legend novellas

ebook only

Finding Home

a Ladies of Legend anthology

Santa’s Kiss

a Ladies of Legend novella

ebook only

The Reunion Game

a Ladies of Legend novella

ebook only

Secrets

formerly titled A Father at Last

Tangled Memories

Paranormal Gothic Romance

The Winner

contemporary short story

All Bets Are On! anthology

Self-published (fall release)

Derby Party

formerly A Man of Her Own

revised & re-edited

Writing as Darby York for Turquoise Morning Press

The Betrothed

a Medieval Short Story

The Bridegroom

a Medieval Short Story

The Duke

a Medieval Short Story

In the Passionate Exhibition Anthology

The Troubadour

a Medieval Short Story

 

Notes from group therapy: happiness and depression

Back in the day, I went to group therapy every week for eighteen months. It changed the way I looked at life, and I’ve credited it for “saving my life” in many respects. Being the perfectionist only child that I am, I took notes about the things I was learning, and later I typed them up.

I thought I’d share the notes with you in hopes that you too may discover something new.

Happiness

I am the cause of my own personal happiness.

If I am unhappy, it’s because I am screwing up somewhere.

All you’ve got is what is going on right now: the present. Live in the present.

Realize the world is a vale of tears.

If you believe external things will make you happy, then you must be in control of them.

Depression

Depression means you are not in control.

Everyone is depressed. You must fight depression.

Depression is a feeling of helplessness.

Anger turned inside is depression.

You get depressed at the advent of a major change in your life. You are anticipating loss and sadness.

If you can be in charge of depression, you can feel better about it because you are in control. So when you get depressed, make yourself more depressed. That way you are in control of it.

 

Write what you know

Christmas 1968 & 1969

Writers have been advised for years that they should stick with what they know when they sit down to write a book. I checked the Internet and learned this advice is a quote from Mark Twain.

 “Write what you know.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ― Source Goodreads

 I recently was lectured by a psychic who complained about writers who weren’t psychics writing paranormal novels about psychics. I replied – “I’ve never lived in the Middle Ages. Do you mean I can’t write a Medieval romance?”

I’ve never ridden a bull (or attempted to), but I’ve written about a bull rider. I recently completed a manuscript that has a tornado in it. I’ve never been in the direct path of tornado, but was living in Louisville when the big one hit the city in April 1974.

Granted, I’m more comfortable writing about settings I know—the Bluegrass area of Kentucky, for example. I know more about American Saddlebred horses, so I’m more likely to write stories about that breed, not Thoroughbreds. I lived through the sixties, so I can write about that time with some sort of authenticity. Nonetheless, I had to research those years again for my Ladies of Legend novellas.

The Internet is a great resource. I found the following statement from Nathan Englander. I think he pretty much sums up what is really meant by the directive for writers.

“Write what you know” isn’t about events, says Englander. It’s about emotions. Have you known love? jealousy? longing? loss? “

I’m good with that explanation. To make our stories realistic, we must create characters by using human emotions we all experience.

 

 

 

 

Notes from group therapy: relationships

Back in the day, I went to group therapy every week for eighteen months. It changed the way I looked at life, and I’ve credited it for “saving my life” in many respects. Being the perfectionist only child that I am, I took notes about the things I was learning, and later I typed them up.

I thought I’d share the notes with you in hopes that you too may discover something new.

Relationships

Relationships are very fragile.

A Good relationship is a miracle. It takes the work of two committed adults.

If you are free not to be in a relationship, you are free to be in it.

For a relationship to work, that relationship must be more important than anything else that comes into it.

Negotiation is important for a relationship to work. There is no right way to do something. You must find the compromise that both partners can live with. No right compromise exists. Ask yourself, “how important is that to my partner?” Don’t ask if the compromise is right or wrong.

Everyone in a relationship needs time apart.

As a child, we don’t have role models of spouses. All we know is how to parent because our parents have “parented” us. Therefore, we relate to our spouse like a parent.

You can’t stay in the business world unless you work together as peers. The same goes for a relationship.

Commitment in marriage should be to your own personal growth.

Celebrate the differences in your partner. No one is like you.

Do dreams come true?

It happened last Saturday, May 4, 2013, when Stuart Janney III and Phipps Stable’s favored Orb charged to the lead in the stretch of a sloppy Churchill Downs strip to win the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands.

“It means everything to me,” trainer Shug McGaughey said. “It’s a race I’ve always wanted to win, a race I’ve always wanted to compete in if I thought I had the right horse, and finally today we had the right horse.”

The two owners (cousins) and their families have been racing thoroughbreds for decades without winning the most sought-after race in the world, the Kentucky Derby. In fact, in 1969 because of a coin toss, the father of Orb co-owner Ogden Mills Phipps lost the rights to a foal out of the mare Somethingroyal. The mare had been bred to the Phipps’ stallion Bold Ruler. Penny Chenery, on behalf of her father, won the coin toss, and the resulting foal, a chestnut colt, became Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown Winner.

My dreams have come true many times in my life. One that stands out is the first time I became a horse owner. My bay gelding was not a champion thoroughbred, but an American Saddlebred, the grandson of legendary champion Wing Commander. Trained as a five-gaited pony, my daughter rode Mr. Too Little in pleasure pony classes.

Selling my first book to Kensington Publishing was a dream come true. Continuing to write and publish books is also a dream fulfilled. What about you? Do you dream? If so, what about? Do you set a goal and go after your dreams? Do you make them come true?

“If you can dream it, you can do it” Walt Disney

 

Notes from group therapy: parenting and feelings

Back in the day, I went to group therapy every week for over a year. It changed the way I looked at life, and I’ve credited it for “saving my life” in many respects. Being the perfectionist only child that I am, I took notes about the things I was learning, and later I typed them up.

I thought I’d share the notes with you in hopes that you too may discover something new.

Parenting

Parents are to help their children fit into the real world.
Most parents are terrorized by their own children.
Children should fit into their parents’ lives.
The goal of parenting is separation.

Feelings

Feelings are okay—neither good or bad, just feelings.
I have the right to my own feelings.

 

When your life touches history

How many times has your life touched history? Of course, it isn’t history then. It’s the present. But looking back, have you ever been in a place where history was being made?

Thinking back on my life, I realize most of the time I’ve viewed history on the television or heard it on the radio. I was in junior high school when President Kennedy was assassinated. I went home and watched accounts of it on our black and white TV. When Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, we were listening to the radio on the way home from my grandparents’ house.

I was at work during the 9/11 attacks, heard the account on the radio and rushed to the break room to see it on TV. When the Challenger exploded, I heard about it in the pediatrician’s office where I had taken my sick son. I remember coming home the afternoon of the Columbine shootings and finding the now grown up son lying on the sofa watching the events on television. Just recently my six-year-old granddaughter told me she’d seen “this show on TV.” She was referring to the bombings at the Boston Marathon.

I guess the closest I’ve been to history was when I was seventeen. My high school band from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was in Washington, DC, to march in the Cherry Blossom Festival parade. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Our trip was cut short and the parade cancelled. We left the city in a hurry because of riots breaking out around us.

In this day with instant communication via television, Twitter and the Internet, it is easier to feel part of history even though you are a bystander hundreds of miles away.

 

Cowboy Up!

When I wrote Kentucky Cowboy, I researched the Professional Bull Riders and became a fan. Last weekend my husband and I attended the Bass Pro Chute Out, in Louisville, KY, at the KFC Yum! Center.

Instead of a basketball court or the stage where Fleetwood Mac performed a few nights earlier, the floor was covered with dirt, chutes, pyrotechnics, determined cowboys and even more determined bulls. A bovine aroma permeated the arena and hard rock and country music blared loud.

It was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Seriously. We saw Bushwacker, the 2011 World Champion Bull, buck one of the top riders in the world off his back. He scored 48.25 points out of 50. Asteroid, another contender for champion bull, bucked off a top rider.

Bulls won most of the time, but cowboys scored a few 8 second rides. There were only nine qualified rides in each of the two long rounds ― a total of 18-for-70 ― and one in the final round.

Tennessee native Cody Nance earned his first Built Ford Tough Series win of 2013. Nance rode Rock & Roll for 86.5 points and was the lone rider to cover all three bulls at the KFC Yum! Center.

 Excerpt From Kentucky Cowboy

This was the championship round. After seven rounds in a period of two weeks, he and a Brazilian cowboy were stalemated. Either one could win the finals with a high score. But to win it all, the world title and the million bucks, all Judd had to do was stick on the back of the last bull for eight seconds. His score didn’t matter.

He had drawn Bad to the Bone.

Sweat coated his upper lip. It would be the longest eight seconds in his life. He had put himself in a fix by getting bucked off twice in the first seven rounds. He had lost focus. Forgot to concentrate. Now everything was riding on his final effort. His effort, his injuries this past year, and the accumulation of so many points over the whole season would mean nothing if he didn’t ride this ornery bull one more time.

“You’re up, Romeo.”

Judd jerked a quick nod. He didn’t say a word, just jammed the mouthpiece into his mouth and climbed into the chute. The cowbell tied to the end of the bull rope clanged almost like a warning signal.

As he had done every regular-season event and championship for ten years, Judd pulled the slack out of the rope around the bull’s midsection. Next he wrapped the rope underneath his gloved right hand and across his palm. Closing his fingers, he made a fist. With his free hand he pounded his fist—once, twice.

Blinking, he shut out the past. The future. Only the present counted. Eight seconds. His heart slammed into his throat.

Judd nodded to the gateman. The gate swung open and Bad to the Bone blasted out of the chute in three powerful jumps. The bull turned back to the right, spinning, his power building, the motion throwing Judd off balance.

Judd pitched to the right, jerked out of position, slipping. No! I’m gonna ride this sucker. The muscles in his right arm burned from the strain. His jaws cramped.

Where’s that damn buzzer?

He tipped farther to the right, not really riding any longer, just hanging on. Inches from the dirt, Judd smelled defeat. He squeezed the bull rope, holding on with raw determination and fiery gut.

The buzzer sounded.

Judd released his grip and fell hard. He scrambled to his feet, the roar of approval in his ears. Thanks to the bullfighter, the bull veered away to the right. Judd sailed his cowboy hat into the air. It hadn’t been pretty, but he had stuck it. He’d won! His head buzzed as the sweet reality hit home.