Dixie Dawn Miller Goode's Blog, page 10

October is a Season of Steadfast Change

 In october you can feel the change in the air.  Every day is different than the one before.  Every Friday night gets dark quite a bit earlier than the one before it. It can be over 100 degrees where one member of the family lives while another is telling you that the temperatures dropped 65 degrees overnight and they have snow.
 Spring flowers get confused and sneak in a few new blooms while fall flowers start to show their glory and the leaves begin to outshine them all.  Fruits are plentiful and free in their abundance but already beginning to over-ripen.  The warm blackberry scented air starts to carry the smell of decaying leaves and fermentation.

"I - L- Y combined in sign language says, I Love You" Days that are cold and foggy in the morning leave you sweaty and breathless in the afternoon heat. Kids are back in school but the sense of summer lingers and yet Christmas things are already popping up in the stores.


For months I seem to not sell any of my books.  I carry them with me and chat about them, I write about them and tweet about them and work on the next ones but very little happens.  Then that too, changes.  I have a copy with me and don't mention it, and someone asks me if he can look at it.  Then a week later he tells me, "Well, I have bad news.  I can't give your book back" but that is because he gave it to the school district with the directions to order him a set of 36 for his class and the suggestion that it should be taught by all the 5th grade teachers in the district.  Then while I'm still smiling over that, a teacher from another school mentions that she is using the same book as a read-aloud to her class.  I know it is still baby steps, but that is perfect for Double Time on The Oregon Trail because this huge continent was crossed one baby step at a time.


 So while I welcome fall with jars of home canned blackberry jam and stacks of firewood stored up in the hope of defeating the cold ahead. While I stock up on candles for the inevitable dark, and stroll on the beach in a last celebration of warmth and light - I think about change and progress.  I think that the old, "the more things change the more they stay the same," is proven true once again.

 Every October I feel the same changes happening, new but steadfastly familiar as the earth repeats a pattern ancient and sure.  Every October I turn nostalgic and compare where I am to where I was and where I hope to go.  I work with the kids at school and realize I once taught their parents.  I write my stories and take my pictures and tell the people in my life that I adore them.  I know each October finds a few new people in my life and a few old ones missing, but I carry them in my heart and take the baby steps toward the day when i get to hold them in my arms once more.

Sunflower Seasons

  This season is long and stretches from March to October where I live.  I start sprouting the seeds in early to mid March and then move them into small cups.  In April the rain is pouring and I dig up the ground, being amazed each year at how thickly covered with grass and weeds it has become over the winter here.  Some years the ground is rock hard, but this spring was so wet it was more like trying too dig in chocolate pudding.

 When I put the seedlings in the ground the first year I was here, I was stunned to find they all vanished overnight.  16 years later I am ruthless on the slugs and snails.  This year they mostly won anyway.  I planted 60 sunflowers and got 9 flowers to reach blooming.  The rain washed away most of the slug bait before I even got back in the house.



 Being addicted to Big's Dill pickle sunflower seeds, I don't eat the seeds I grow, those extend the season and entertain by attracting the clownlike acrobatics of Stellars Jays, and usually volunteer sunflowers mean I get more plants than I actually planted.







 Last year the summer was grey and foggy and the flowers grew but were thin and tall and as soon as they had blooms they couldn't stay standing.


 I never know quite what I will get, but this is one of those things I do for both the routine and the surprise.  I love the little moments of surprising joy that the flash of yellow and the shriek of Jays provide to my Fall, but I also love the green sprout from a dry seed and the seedling that has finally become big enough to resist the snails on its own.  I love the reminder of the passage of time and the reminder that the more things change, the more they stay predictably the same.






























 To anyone else who enjoys the common glory of the sunflower.  Have a blessed season because each season brings its own beauty.  Even the season of waiting in the dark to begin to grow again.

Moving On

 Time, the way it changes things and the way the important things remain unchanging in the face of the passage of time, is the underlying theme in the book, Double Time On The Oregon Trail, and in my life.  Lately we have been very focused on waiting for a date we both anticipated and dreaded.  Our son, and the daughter of our heart, were moving away to start their first year of college.  The time seemed to both drag slowly and fly by as other people their age started at schools on the semester system and they waited for a class that didn't begin until Sept. 27.
 Then they were hired to work at the dining hall and their arrival time moved up to September 18, but we still had lots of wonderful days to watch movies and eat big meals and play at the river. And then there was no more time. We were loading the van and driving and driving and driving and realizing that it is a long, long way to anywhere from Del Norte County California.


There were hugs and tears and a last day exploring around the San Francisco, Tiburon, Great Highway area and then more hugs and tears and SMILES.  There is so much joy in seeing babies turn into wonderful people, and seeing impossible dreams become reality.


 I have not written much in the last month, but now there will be time, and I have been lucky enough that some people are starting to discover my books.  I had a teacher of a 5th grade class order a class set of the Oregon Trail book.  I was thrilled by that of course, then I came home to find that "Lisa Day on the Web" had posted an excellent review of the book too.


http://lisaday.weebly.com/4/post/2012/09/double-time-on-the-oregon-trail.html

 It is funny, sending your kids to college, and publishing your book are two things with a lot in common.  You put so much time and love and effort into both writing a book and raising a baby, and then you offer it up to the world and open your hands and wait to see what happens. You hope that you have built it a strong enough bridge that it can move on into the rest of the world and find welcome and love and success.

September begins as the Giveaways end.

 Well, I love summer, the way most people on a school year cycle love summer.  The fact that the paychecks stop coming and their can be expensive, time demanding requirements to do things like update credentials and take classes does not stop me from enjoying the chance to spend more time with my own children.  The fact that my children are no longer children does cut back on the time that they need me around, but I still love every minute they choose to spend with me anyway.
 So I signed up to write in CampNanoWriMo again, and I did, but didn't  reach the goal I had set for myself of 50,000 words.  It's Ok though, I loved the process and have a good beginning on the next Duffy Barkley Novel.
 I spent a lot of time with my husband and we walked in the redwoods and on the beaches and by the river.  I went camping once, had a few picnics, spent time traveling with the youngest son and my daughter-in-love.


 I tried to do some book promotion by hosting a 5 day free kindle giveaway on each of my three books.  I also just closed the Goodreads hosted giveaway of 5 paperbacks of the newly published, Double Time On The Oregon Trail and have five winners from the 612 who signed up.

                                   The Winners are:
T. Nicholas                                     of
OK


P.Riccobono
  of
MD


L.WEAVER   of

OH


C.  Mongillo of
CT

M. Ulrych of     MIand the paperbacks are in the mail


 I got to "dogsit" my favorite boxer mutt - my blind and sweet "Grandpuppy" and I had a wonderful summer.


 Isn't this a cool shot?  Now if I could just bury that wounded cherry tree in the ocean for long enough to form amber, I could add to my jewelry collection.


 I'm doing a challenge on the 365 Project, where a lot of September's pictures of the day have to have the same something, same subject, setting or shape.  I chose this funky little set of nesting dolls and have been having fun with that.




I've also been canning and baking because this time of year my yard is bursting with apples, blackberries and plums.  Today I even had a deer coming to beat the bear who usually claims a bunch of my apples come mid September.

Now, because it is a new school year, I get to renew my new resolutions and promise myself that the things I loved, I get to keep

 and the things I wanted to improve, I get to try to do better this year.

May you also get to move forward in Joy that this beautiful life offers so much more than Facebook and endless Political campaigning.

Double Time is a Free Ebook on Kindle this Week

My third book is a departure from the fantasy world of Uhrlin and the young boy named Duffy Barkley. This is the start of what I hope to see evolve as a series of historical fiction for middle grade student. Double Time on the Oregon Trail is being featured in a Goodreads Paperback giveaway from August 27th to September 4th.  Those are my brother's and my Dad's birthdays, but they could be significant to you in that you could enter to win one of five free copies of this book in which two 15 year old girls, traveling across North America, 152 year apart, sometimes read each other's journals thanks to the lap desk they both own.

to sign up to win one of the 5 copies in paperback you should be able to find the link at this address


http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/29525-double-time-on-the-oregon-trail
Then if you want a for sure copy in kindle format, there will be five days when you can upload it for free as a kindle ebook from August 31 to September 4 at
http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-ebook/dp/B008G3JZB8 and of course, if you have kindle prime you can always get the ebook for free, otherwise it is normally $3.99

Why would an author who has been working on one project for 13 years, be willing to give away that work? Partly because after keeping anything to yourself for 13 years, it is time to share; partly in the hope that if anyone reads it for free, they will talk about it, tweet about it, buy a copy for a young friend or family member, or post a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I know that the $3.99 kindle price is what people pay willingly for a cup of coffee but it is not easy to choose which of the many kindle books to put your money on,

 and those reviews help tip the balance in one books favor over the many others it is competing against.
Does it work?  I'm still not sure.  I've sold a few hundred paperback copies and a handful of the kindle versions of the Duffy Barkley books, and in their free days, people uploaded several hundred copies in Germany, Great Britain and the USA, I got about 9 positive reviews, mostly on Amazon and Goodreads, and I got a few nice write ups on book review blogs, but the very best reaction I have gotten was the day I went to substitute teach at Pine Grove Elementary School and the 5th grade girls ran up to me.  They quickly demanded, not that I tell them who I was subbing for, or what we were doing, but when I was publishing my next book.
Some of my friends who are authors feel that the giveaways are cheapening the market so much that no one will want to pay for the work of an author, and some feel that people who get a lot of free kindle books probably get more the next day and rarely ever read them.  They could be right.  









I love writing, I love having someone tell me that they enjoyed the story I had to tell. I rarely make enough in any given month from my books to buy more than a cup of coffee and another book for me, but i will never stop writing until I can't do anything, because who I am at heart, is a storyteller, a recorder and sharer of the beauty and wonder there is in being human on this beautiful blue planet.

Goodreads Paperback Giveaway and Amazon Free Kindle ebook

The past and present meet on the Oregon Trail when two girls travel the same trail with the same lap desk 152 years apart. Kenyon is traveling in 2002 from Pittsburgh to Salem, OR. Her mother is pregnant and staying behind to close escrow on the house and then flying west to join the family. Kenyon; her 5 year old sister, Melissa and her father are in a Dodge Caravan, with a trailer hitch. Her Grandfather has given her a plain, black polished ebony wooden lap desk lined with a scented wood that still smells faintly of cedar. The box is filled with thick, creamy paper, envelopes, a calling card, a hand mirror, pens and pencils and a small Swiss army knife, postage and an electronic address book. Her Grandfather is not moving with them but plans have been made for him to fly out in December for a visit. Kenyon strongly resents being expected to entertain Melissa at the motels in the evenings. Her father has decided to take the long way and show his girls some of the wonders of this country and Melissa is excited but Kenyon is determined to not have any fun. Traveling in 1850, Della, age 15, has already traveled from Northern Illinois to St. Louis, then a week by steamboat on the Missouri river. She stopped in Independence, MO to prepare for the journey and meet with the wagon train. She left behind her 60 year old grandmother who feels too old to attempt the trip, but who gave her a gift of a wooden lap desk. The desk is filled with paper, a small mirror, wooden handled pens with steel nibs, a metal letter opener, hair pins and a small sewing kit. Her younger brother, Orville, her father, and her pregnant mother are traveling with her. She has been asked to teach the younger children around the campfire in the evenings. What happens when they open the desk to see the other girls journal?





My book is being featured in a Goodreads Paperback giveaway from August 27th to September 4th.  Those are my brother's and my Dad's birthdays, but they could be significant to you in that you could enter to win one of five free copies of "Double Time On The Oregon Trail"

to sign up as soon as it hits August 27th you should be able to find the link at this address


http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/29525-double-time-on-the-oregon-trail
Then if you want a for sure copy in kindle format, there will be five days when you can upload it for free as a kindle ebook from August 31 to September 4 at
http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-ebook/dp/B008G3JZB8
and of course, if you have kindle prime you can always get the ebook for free, otherwise it is normally $3.99

Double Time begins for me

I have not been subtle about the fact that I have just published my first book in a new series about conversations across time via a magic lap desk which allows people in similar situations to see each others journals and small treasures even though centuries may exist between them.  The Double Time, series begins with two 15 year old girls traveling the Oregon Trail 152 years apart.
 This one takes place in many of the areas I have traveled with my own children, so revisiting those memories was fun for me.  I hope it will be fun for the middle school readers who I have in mind as the "target audience."  The girls in the book are 15, but I know our students study the Oregon Trail in 4th and 5th grades so I kept the writing simple and the print large.

 http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-ebook/dp/B008G3JZB8/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341109826&sr=1-5
https://www.createspace.com/3923513
To find the book on kindle use the link above
or for 
paperback on amazonhttp://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-1/dp/1478160926/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341504499&sr=1-3&keywords=double+time+on+the+oregon+trail
and to see a review
http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-ebook/product-reviews/B008G3JZB8/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1















Now I am working on my third Duffy Barkley book, It is CampNanoWriMo August after all, and I did promise a few fans I'd do at least 50,000 words this month.  TeeHee, I actually have a few fans now, asking.  So I do that but also I am thinking about where to send the Double Time Desk next - Jazz era New Orleans, Ancient Egypt, Revolutionary America or ???
Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog.  You are appreciated.

Camping with Duffy Barkley

 I have mentioned many times how much I love the nanowrimo challenge of writing at least 50,000 words in a novel in the month of November.  It is a busy month and the challenge of reaching the word count means I don't get to edit, but rather to be as wild and uncontrolled and say anything and everything that flows through my mind.  Later comes the drudgery of editing, but each of my three novels began as a wild and uncontrolled first draft.  I write in a state near sleep, the brain freed to dream and create by the exhaustion and this allows me to see why Stephen King was on to something when he said that his pre-writing routine needs to be nearly the same as his pre-bed routine.  In fact, at times I sit at the typewriter and can not think of one word but then crawl into bed and my brain begins scrolling through scenes so quickly I never retain all of them long enough to get it written down, before, dreamlike, they evaporate.  So June and August have sessions of Nanowrimo, known as CampNaNoWriMo, when you do the same challenge, but with less forum interaction and less holiday and school activities to demand my time, you would think I'd be more successful. Not really.  Last summer I only wrote 8,000 words, but this summer I am determined to get there again.
 On June 30, I published my Double Time On the Oregon Trail and that is the finished book of one I started a long, long time ago.  1999.  In the End of this August it will be in a Goodreads book giveaway so that five people can win a paperback version between August 27 and Sept. 4, and free for five days on kindle from August 31 to Sept. 4 as well.

So I have been neglecting my friend Duffy Barkley, the young boy who is my favorite protagonist whose adventures in Uhrlin took me through bullying, school shootings, and Guatemala.  This CampNaNoWriMo, I am locking myself to the computer, even though the Olympics may be going in the background, and re-entering Duffy's adventures.  Wish me luck in keeping him alive so I can share the next journey to Uhrlin with you.

Success or Failure?

I LOVE my life.  I HATE my life.  Those are both equally true statements that take turns bobbing up and down in the surface of my thoughts.  Like the log above, am I dead and on my way to being turned into ashes, or beginning to grow again and simply looking for fertile soil and a bit of rain.  And by the way, rain is plentiful here.

 I am 1/2 as old as both of my mother's grandmothers lived to be.  I'd say that qualifies as middle add in my family.  In two months, the youngest of my children moves out and 400 miles away to go to college, and my home becomes much quieter.  It is already much quieter than in most previous summers.

I have been so successful, I tell myself on the good days.  I have been married for nearly 30 years to a man I still love and respect and who is my best friend.I have adopted one beautiful baby and given birth to another, and watched both grow up into fine, wonderful young men.I have gone to college and taught special ed. for ten years, and substitute taught for 13 years while raising  my family.  The students I have worked with, I have helped more than hurt, and taught them with love and respect.I have travelled to Guatemala and Europe and gone to school in Beijing, China.  I have taken my family to Disneyland, Yellowstone and the Mississippi river.I have a house on two acres of green wonderland where the boys played in the trees and dig in the mud and rode bikes through the kitchen and laughed a lot.  In 16 years I have never been late on a house payment or a utility.I have a Mom and two brothers and numerous cousins and I have managed to stay in at least annual contact with them, and still love them very much.  I have some of the best fiends in the world.I have written and published 3 books and seen my students love them and beg for more.  
I have been a success.
Or Not?





 What looks beautiful and solid and valuable on one day, becomes full of thorns and poison on another.  The only difference is my attitude.
 I raise two kids and they worry me all the time and they are going away and I will miss them horribly and be worthless without them.  I failed to give them the financial freedom I should have them set up with, and they were babied so much because I loved taking care of them that I failed to make them learn to cook, and do car maintenance, and balance a budget.
    I taught for 23 years and I still have too much credit card debt and no savings and making it until that next September 30 payday looks impossible, even without considering college costs.  i have students who loved me, and co-workers who loved me, but I also had that one administrator who told me and everyone else in multiple memos that I was a failure.  Those memos will never go away.  Grrr.
    My Mom may have health issues turning scary and I an't even afford to go visit her this summer even though I have not been there in 2 years.
     My house would never appraise for what I still owe on it but it is too big for us, and winters in it are miserably cold, and it hasn't been painted or re-roofed in the 16 years we've been here and it had termites when we bought it so some window sills are more potting soil than wood.
     WHO NEEDS MORE BOOKS?  There are more books in the world than anyone can ever read anyway.




And there you have it.  The voices in my head that talk to me from one day to the next.


 A writer always has voices in her head, usually the voices of the characters we make up.  I know that really, I am surviving and doing better than I deserve and having way more than I earned and loving my life.  BUT I can't help wanting more, I'd love to be able to buy toilet paper without wondering if that means we might have to run short on laundry soap this week.



I am not exactly religious, and think I'd love to believe in god way more than I actually do believe in him/her.  Yet I do have a strange faith that I am being taken care of.  I know that every time I need something, I get it, but every time I find a surplus it vanishes.  Can you believe in the manna for a day provisions, without believing in a God who provides it?







It is a beautiful world, when you open your eyes looking for beauty.  It is scary and dark when you go looking for that.  I don't know, in the end, how other people will judge me


but there have been moments when I have held a loved one close and known that if the rest of my life were horrible, it would all be worth it anyway,
Moments I held my baby brother (who has Down's Syndrome) or played with my other brother, who loved my stories.  Moments I held each of my sons and made them laugh.  Moments with my husband.


I don't know the final judgement on my success, and I hope that I live long and have many more successful moments.  But if this is all I get.  It was enough for me.

About Time - Double Time On The Oregon Trail

I am pleased to say, that after working on this little book for around 14 years, it has finally been published on Kindle for $3.99 or for $11 in paperback.  The kindle version is available now at


http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-ebook/dp/B008G3JZB8/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341109826&sr=1-5

 and the paperback should be available within the week.  I will edit this to add in the link once it is up.





The past and present meet on the Oregon Trail when two girls travel the same trail with the same lap desk 152 years apart. 
Kenyon is traveling in 2002 from Pittsburgh to Salem, OR. Her mother is pregnant and staying behind to close escrow on the house and then flying west to join the family. Kenyon; her 5 year old sister, Melissa and her father are in a Dodge Caravan, with a trailer hitch. Her Grandfather has given her a plain, black polished ebony wooden lap desk lined with a scented wood that still smells faintly of cedar. The box is filled with thick, creamy paper, envelopes, a calling card, a hand mirror, pens and pencils and a small Swiss army knife, postage and an electronic address book. Her Grandfather is not moving with them but plans have been made for him to fly out in December for a visit. Kenyon strongly resents being expected to entertain Melissa at the motels in the evenings. Her father has decided to take the long way and show his girls some of the wonders of this country and Melissa is excited but Kenyon is determined to not have any fun.
Traveling in 1850, Della, age 15, has already traveled from Northern Illinois to St. Louis, then a week by steamboat on the Missouri river. She stopped in Independence, MO to prepare for the journey and meet with the wagon train. She left behind her 60 year old grandmother who feels too old to attempt the trip, but who gave her a gift of a wooden lap desk. The desk is filled with paper, a small mirror, wooden handled pens with steel nibs, a metal letter opener, hair pins and a small sewing kit. Her younger brother, Orville, her father, and her pregnant mother are traveling with her. She has been asked to teach the younger children around the campfire in the evenings.
What happens when they open the desk to see the other girls journal?