Sherry Morris's Blog, page 9

Changing Book Distribution

I'm consolidating distribution for my eBooks to have everything but Amazon, All Romance and Eternal Press be distributed to the other retailers exclusively through Smashwords. So if you are looking for my books at Barnes & Noble Nook and Kobo, they might be temporarily hard or impossible to find. I'll update the links and all the promo as soon as the virtual dust settles. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm sure you'll find something great to read in the meantime.

Norfolk & Western 611

I was privileged to watch an historic steam engine, the Norfolk & Western 611, pull into the Manassas, Virginia train station today. It is my family's favorite train. The first photo is of my son and 611 when he was a little guy. The last photo is of him today.

Plateau Smashed

Weight 133
I finally broke through another plateau! I weighed in at 133 pounds today. I had to research (because it's been over a year since I've been trying to lose weight) to find that I started at 150 pounds last spring. So that means I've lost 17 pounds. According to the BMI charts, since I'm 5' tall, my healthy weight range is 97 to 127 pounds. So I am 6 pounds away from a healthy weight again, hooray! I want to get below 120, because I know I felt wonderful at that weight after birthing my babies. My youngest is 22, so it's been quite a while. 
I'm eating mostly whole, unprocessed foods and controlling my portions. I gave up Diet Coke and artificial sweeteners. So I only drink water, unsweetened tea and skim milk. And I'm trying to run again but it's hard to get motivated. At least I'm walking. I'm limiting my treadmill steps to 5K per day. Two reasons: when I over do the treadmill, my plantar fascitis flares up and then I'm miserable; and I consider the treadmill cheating. I need to be naturally more active throughout my life.
Come on 127! I can't wait to celebrate!

Done Packing Andy's Room

My son moved out in January and he's been going back and fourth in a twelve hour round trip hauling as much as he can to his new apartment. His birthday is next month, so I decided to pack up the rest for him. Now he can just relax and be spoiled when he's home again. I predict it will take him three trips to be completely moved.

This is what I started with yesterday:
This is my Ta Da tonight. That's Franklin, he helped:
 

Packing Andy's Room

My son took a job in Pennsylvania in January. He has been slowly moving his things to his apartment for the last four months. His birthday is in June, so as a gift I'm packing the rest of his things so that when he visits on his brief days off, he doesn't have to. My progress today:




I still need to tackle the walls and his closet.

Mother's Day Musings

This is the first Mother's Day my son is out on his own, 300 miles away. Six hours drive time. He sent me this Mickey Mouse Edible Fruit Bouquet today! I'm dieting and I can eat this, whoo hoo! The card said Mom: You've always taken good care of us so please share this with Dad and Sobe, you know they need to eat more fruit. Happy Mother's Day Love, Andy.

I'm doing well on my new way of eating diet. No artificial sweeteners (bye-bye Diet Coke), very little sugar and salt. Unprocessed foods: lean proteins, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Unfortunately, all the fiber hasn't agreed with my husband's colitis, so he's got to go back to lower fiber, more carbohydrates. He is at the low end of the healthy weight range (he's an athlete) so he should be eating more calories anyway.

I've stopped exercising because I've been transitioning my blog and book promo from Hootsuite to Tweet Jukebox and I've been at my computer for a week now, OCD at it. I love Tweet Jukebox, I hope Twitter never blocks them.  I'm actually going to be able to spend the majority of my promo time interacting with my followers instead of typing up and scheduling promo ad nauseum like I had to for Hootsuite. And Tweet Jukebox allows photos to open in the tweets, whoo hoo!

The wife of one of my husband's friends invited me to shop with her yesterday and we had a lot of fun. I'd been so lonely since my last pal moved away. An old friend in another state emailed me this morning. The new social committee in my neighborhood held a Bunko night and that was fun. They are starting a book club this month. So things are looking up for me in the real world :)

My momma is doing the big sleep with Daddy and Sister at Arlington National Cemetery. I miss them so much. I always think of Momma when I do laundry and hear her guiding voice in my heart. I love you Momma. You were the best. Happy Mother's Day!

Week One Weigh In

Week 1 of my diet is complete. Eating high quality whole foods: proteins, vegetables, fruits, grains. No salt, sugar or artificial sweeteners. 1 lost 7 pounds! I'm so glad I didn't cheat. This is a record for me. I never lost this much in the first week of any diet, including Atkins.
I'm so tempted to continue the first phase of this diet but unlike Atkins, Joy Bauer doesn't seem to offer this option. She wants you to move through the phases, so I will. I should expect my weight loss to slow down to a healthy one to two pounds per weeks now, and that's fine with me as long as the scale is inching downward and not yo-yoing back up. Bonus: I get to eat more this week, hooray!
I am so glad I gave up Diet Coke before I began. I don't miss it one bit. I'm drinking unsweetened tea, water and skim milk exclusively. I'm filling up on non-startchy vegetables, which is fine, but I'm looking forward to more variety as I get to introduce some old favorites slowly back into my meals. I'm pushing the reset button on how I automatically ate. I bought a kitchen scale and am using it, meausuring cups and spoons at every feeding. Biggest surprise: the healthy protein servings (meat, poultry & fish) are larger than I thought! I was eating the right amount of high fiber cereal, no surprise there. Fruit servings were shocking. Half a banana is equivalent to a whole orange or apple. 
Anyhow, onward and downward.
How are you doing?

Structure

So, I've failed miserably trying to freelance my fitness and eating. Stubborn, I just knew I knew how to run, strength train and eat to lose weight. Ha! I've gone from 134 to 141 this year. Okay, I was actually 145 one horrible morning. But today, I'm 141. That might not seem too high to you, but I'm only 5' tall and I was 97 pounds on my wedding day, 32 years ago. No I don't want to be 97 pounds again. But I'm aiming for 114-119. I was 114 before my pregnancies and got back down to about 118 and looked and felt fantastic.

Anyhow, I bought Joy Bauer's Your Inner Skinny:  Four Steps to Thin Forever and I'm following her eating plan. It's just unprocessed, nutrient packed food, nothing new, I've been eating naturally lately, but she doesn't include candy, chips, ice cream, cookies, pie and cupcakes. Which I did.  Hence the weight gain.

I'm also giving a handy dandy resistance band a try. Marie Osmond's Body Gym. I'm following the DVD. I've got 30 days to return it if I don't see results. I really would rather continue with the Brazil Butt Lift and Yoga, but until the surgical wound on my lower back heals, I can't do them full on.

Failure is not an option.

That's Life

While watching a documentary on Frank Sinatra, a snippet of him performing the classic song, That's Life, resonated with me. In particular, the part about some people enjoying stomping on other people's dreams. If you are a writer, you know darned well what I mean. We have to develop thick skins. Because of all the rejection. So many venues for others to tell us our babies are ugly. Family members, friends, critique groups, agents, editors, peers and if we're lucky, readers.

I began writing at the turn of the century, back in the day of the birth of eBooks. We authors took such ridicule back then, eBooks weren't real. If we didn't have books in brick and mortar stores, we weren't authors. Well, it took a long, long time, but you know eBooks are real and so are their authors.

Anyhow, I've always written the books I want to read. The stories I need to tell. I've had a unique life, good and bad and I bring from it my singular perspective. My heroines aren't 'kick ass' from page one. They are real women, with issues and emotions who grow when life kicks them. I won't write linear tales with expected arcs. I get off on tangents and sub plots and streams of consciousness that really do all matter to the whole and always come together at the end. Of course, critique partners and agents and editors don't embrace this. Nor do some readers and reviewers. But there are people out there who get me. So I write for you, crazy, complicated, dark and silly souls like mine.

Anyhow, after publishing a dozen novels and short stories, I left two first drafts on hold and pursued a career as an EMT in a satellite hospital emergency room. That lasted about 18 months. It was Christmastime. I was always driving in the dark to or from work on icy roads. To a high stress job with all Type A coworkers. Understaffed. My mother died. I'd just closed my father's estate and deposited it into her account two weeks prior. My family was home and I missed them. I married well enough, so I didn't need to work. So I stopped. I needed them. I also stopped volunteering with a rescue squad.

I tried writing again, but my old critique group wouldn't allow me to rejoin. Reason:  I never took their advice. Yes, I did. But only about 10% of it. Because they didn't understand what I was doing with my stories. And they certainly didn't like them. This hurt. I also stopped attending the state chapter of the Romance Writers of America and Sisters in Crime (a women's mystery writing organization).

Well, my kids finished college. My son moved hundreds of miles away. My daughter works nights and sleeps during the day. My husband travels for work. Our old dog with special needs passed. So it's me and a rambunctious new dog. I'm bored. I'm very lonely. I want a job.

But I don't want a job like I last had. They paid the EMTs less than the housekeeping staff. I didn't like inserting Foley catheters or cleansing dead bodies. But you see it bugged me that every job I've had since I've become a mother has been lower paying than the health insurance claims analyst job I had before kids. 25 years ago.

Then I also have a shameful dread that I won't be able to pass a background check for any new job because I don't have any local friends. All of my friends and fun neighbors have moved away. I'd hoped to make new ones at the gym, but after three years, I only had a few women to make occasional small talk with. No outside the gym relationships. I know I'm weird. But I'd really love to have friends. Even one person to call or do lunch with.

I still have a few dear writing friends, two in Pennsylvania, one in North Carolina who encourage me to write. I have started a new story. Working title: My Sister the Leprechaun. It's an autobiography. Slipstream creative non-fiction. Paranormal. Women's Fiction. You get the idea. My beautiful sister, Beth, passed two Thanksgivings ago. From lung cancer. From second-hand smoke. She hid it from me. I didn't know until her husband contacted me a week before the end.

I've had a really hard time dealing with this unexpected void. She was supposed to take care of me. There were so many things I wanted to do with her. Well, I figured I'd write a story where I could do all the things I didn't get to. But I started dreaming about her. And she wasn't acting nice. She wasn't acting like she was in life. The sweetest person I've ever known. So it occurred to me. She might be a leprechaun. And she's not happy about it. She is in purgatory in Ireland. Because of our dad. But I'm not sure what the old boy is up to yet. But there you have it. My story start.

If I can suck it up and shut down all the nay-saying voices of my past writing encounters, I will write her story. And I'll dust off the two old first drafts I have, a romance and a medical thriller. I'll rewrite them into something entertaining. And if I'm not enjoying writing again, then in September, after my annual trip to Disney World with my daughter, I'll try to find a job. Something I really enjoy. Or a new volunteer cause I can find passion for.

Because after all, That's Life.

DEVIL IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA

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 Devil in the Deep Blue SeaBy Sherry Silver

Story Summary:Sail off with Jeanie in this women's fiction story with a paranormal twist. She is a shy child of the 70's, aching for attention. Surviving a near-drowning incident while babysitting with a friend, Jeanie tells no one. She buries the incident deep within her. Fifteen years later, Jeanie is married with a little girl of her own. She makes sure to dote on her own daughter, giving her all the love and recognition that her inner child still craves. Flying on a lavish vacation with her elderly mother, there is mechanical trouble. Jeanie must finally come face to face with the Devil in the Deep Blue Sea. This is the first short story Sherry Silver wrote.


Excerpt:“Come on, Jeanie! The water is so warm! Jump in!”
The teenager rolled over and put her hands under her chin. She laughed at Delaine goofing around in the water, watching her handstands and bubble blowing. “I don't know how to swim. You have fun and I'll watch you.” Jeanie opened her Tiger Beat magazine and flipped past the Leif Garrett dream date contest, Noxzema ad, and Bay City Rollers news. She creased the magazine open at the Andy Gibb photo spread and dramatically sighed. His peach vest and pants looked softer than the sunset.
“Come on, Jeanie! You're missing out on all the fun!”
Jeanie removed her shoes and socks. She gingerly stuck her toes in and delightedly kicked her legs in the heavily chlorinated water. She knew they really shouldn’t be swimming with out any adults present. Not that Jeanie was going to swim, but still, she felt like they were taking a stupid chance.
Delaine swam over. “Jump in!”
“No, I'll watch you. I can't swim.”
Delaine grabbed her hand. "Yeah, right, Jeanie.” She yanked her into the water.
Disoriented, Jeanie found herself standing on the bottom of the pool. Desperately climbing, she somehow managed to propel herself up to the surface and grabbed onto De-laine's head. Delaine immediately pushed her off. 
Down, down, down Jeanie sank. Her thoughts muddled. She knew better than to go near water with no lifeguard. Maybe Mr. Charles would come home early. Maybe Andy Gibb would jump in and save her. He was a champion swimmer in Australia. She had read that about him last month. Flailing to the surface the second time, she grabbed wild-ly for Delaine. When she found her, Jeanie shoved Delaine underwater again, as she tried to climb onto her back. Delaine threw her off. Down, down, down Jeanie sank.

  
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