Julia Rachel Barrett's Blog, page 25

FREE BOOK.

J.W. Manus tells me this book is wonderful and I need to actually promote it.

Yikes!

One Foot In Heaven, Journey of a Hospice Nurse, is FREE!

Check it out here.

An excerpt from the Introduction:

To me it seems obvious that the body is a shell, a wonderful machine built to house the soul. There’s a Star Trek episode entitled Spock’s Brain, in which aliens remove Mr. Spock’s brain and use it to power their environmental systems. Thanks to Dr. McCoy, Spock’s body lives on as a soulless automaton unti...

Coming out of the closet.

I’ll let you in on a little secret– I write nonfiction too.

Many of you are aware I’m a hospice nurse. Well, I’ve had a non-fiction book out since 2009 detailing my unusual experiences. I’ve never discussed the book here because I like my privacy.

My husband likes his privacy too.

But I’m really proud of this book. I actually think it’s my finest work. So here I am, hat in hand, outing myself.

You know, it takes courage to face cancer. Outing myself does not take courage, it takes, well, compared...

Uh-Oh. You know what this means, don’t ya?

Samuel L. Jackson’s gonna get eaten by a giant shark…

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57604994/shark-blood-antibodies-may-hold-potential-treatment-for-breast-cancer/

Never gets old…

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Lightning in a bottle. Via the Urban Dictionar...

My Fig Tree or My Wasp Nursery? Either way I’m eating ‘em.

I knew figs were not fruit. However I didn’t really know what they were. Didn’t even think about it.

My son says– “Mom, figs are flowers. They contain little wasps.”

And I’m like– “Huh???”

So I looked it up. How Stuff Works Figs and Wasps

Penny Watson probably knew this because she’s got like a masters degree… in science… Botany to be exact. To be even more specific I think it’s like turf which is why I felt perfectly comfortable asking her why my dog’s pee kills all my turf and what, if anything...

Wow. I’m still trying to come to terms with being shot at.

And ending the above sentence with a preposition.

There I was, minding my own business, heading home after hiking with the dog and running an errand to pick up a styrofoam shipping container so I could send a big bunch of freshly harvested eggplant and chilies to my daughter when all of a sudden a number of events occurred almost simultaneously:

The auditory pathways of my brain registered a pop, I was showered with glass and Jake, sitting on the passenger seat behind me, let out a high-pitched...

It’s the story…

It’s not always the prose.

When I wrote Come Back To Me, I told a story. The prose is rough and it might seem to some readers as if the editing is slapshod. The story shifts from past to present to past to present. I deliberately mixed up my tenses because real life doesn’t always flow in a straight line. And I did it without a second thought.

I wrote the Story. Yes, capital ‘S’ for Story. For once I ignored grammatical constructs. Screw ‘em. I needed to spit out Cara’s tale.

Had I obsessed abou...

An economy of movement.

Have you ever watched a great dancer? I mean a really great dancer? Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Rita Moreno, Danny Kaye, Donald O’Connor? Have you really watched?

There’s a difference between a great dancer and someone who had been taught to dance. It’s economy of movement. A great dancer makes no extraneous motions when he dances.

Watch the greats. I can always tell who is a dancer and who has been taught to dance for a movie role. Chicago is a good example. Renee Ze...

He’s a bad bad bad boy.

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“Oscar.”

Before Oscar left for his ’50′s party at work, I said… “Remember, you’re taken!”

I’m a sucker for bad boys.

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Too damn cool for school- America’s Cup!

Never thought I’d care. It’s not like I’m a big Larry Ellison fan (Oracle), nor do I much appreciate an American boat that lacks Americans. The token American, the tactician, was canned after Oracle lost a race to the Kiwi’s.

Nevertheless! Jake and I had been watching the practice races from an amazing vantage point up on the Marin Headlands. It’s on the way to and from the beach and the benches were empty so… It was pretty interesting, especially because that particular setting above the Gold...

Because Hugh Howey says so. An Admission.

It’s something we don’t really talk about because we all like to be nicey-nice but his words resonated with me, probably because I am guilty of being nicey nice.

Hugh Howey’s Top 10 List of Counterintuitive Tips for Self-Publishers.

His tips are right on… nothing counterintuitive about them from my perspective. Mr. Howey makes perfect sense. The only one I can disregard is Number 6 because I ain’t got no agent.

However Number 10 hit a nerve:

10. Authors are not in competition with one another. We...