Stephanie Verni's Blog, page 27
April 16, 2019
A Garden, a Book, and a Library
[image error]
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. – Cicero
*
No matter how big or how small a library is, I love the feeling of walking inside and sensing the books call to me. I’m also amazed at the 19% of Americans who say they have NEVER visited a library. Libraries are storehouses of information; books are new friends calling us to read the stories written by inspired people; and libraries are a place to go to unplug and embrace a few moments of peace as you decide exactly what book is right for you at that moment…that time in your life.
This library is in Oxford, Maryland, the setting of my third novel, Inn Significant. My husband may not know it yet, but we’re going to live here someday.
[image error]Visiting Oxford, Maryland…and staying at The Sandaway, the inspiration for Inn Significant.
[image error]
*
[image error]
Stephanie Verni is the author of Beneath the Mimosa Tree, Baseball Girl, Inn Significant, The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, and an academic textbook Event Planning: Communicating Theory & Practice, published by Kendall-Hunt, that she co-authored with colleagues Leeanne Bell McManus & Chip Rouse.
April 14, 2019
Finally…The Name of My Upcoming Novel Came to Me (with help from my mother)
[image error]
A postcard for you, my dear readers.
April 10, 2019
7 Takeaways from Blogging on the 8th Anniversary of Steph’s Scribe
I was sitting in my office approving students for registration when I saw an alert from WordPress, my blogging platform.
It said, “Happy Anniversary.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me what today was because I’ve been so busy and in so much pain recently due to my herniated disc, but I can’t talk about that for one more minute. I’m tired of talking about that.
[image error] I always share when I’ve posted a new blog post on social media–this one’s on Instagram.
So instead, today, I’ll share with you my biggest takeaways from blogging. Perhaps you know someone who is a blogger or someone who would love to start a blog. I’ve actually loved (almost) every minute of it, and can’t imagine not having it in my life. Despite that I haven’t been as active lately as I typically am on here, I love being able to write through this medium.
Therefore, here are my biggest takeaways from blogging these last eight years.
1-We never really run out of things to talk about. We may think we’ve run out of ideas, but trust me, we don’t. We have to figure out angles, content, and work in photographs that speak to what we are writing about, so it makes us think. And the truth is, there’s always something interesting happening if you just dig a little.
2-It has become a part of me. Honestly, I can’t imagine not blogging. Even as I’ve thought about changing the name of my blog sometimes, I can’t imagine not writing here one to three times a week. It’s just become a part of my existence, whether I make money doing it or not. I do it for myself. Because I love it.
3-It’s helped me teach students in classes about WordPress and blogging platforms. I use WordPress in my magazine and travel college classrooms, as the students have to post their stories to our sites in class. Additionally, along with my colleague Chip, we have hosted seminars on how to build your online portfolio, and we use WordPress to do that. So that’s been great to be able to teach the students about how to use this wonderful platform.
[image error]Sitting at my home office computer…the place where I am most creative and write the majority of my blog posts.
4-People like to connect, and feel connected. Sometimes you write a post you think is brilliant and no one comments; other times, you write a post you think is “meh,” and you get a lot of comments. People like to connect and respond, and even when people don’t comment, you can see how many hits you’ve gotten on a post to determine whether it was successful or not. But ultimately, just like reading books, people like to feel connected to things, people, the material you post, or just you in general. I think that’s so great.
5-It helps me stay in practice with my writing. I always wanted to be a writer, and in college, especially during graduate school, I knew I had to follow on the path of writing. Now, I write novels, textbooks, and a blog along with being a professor at a university. The blog is fun to write. You always need something enjoyable to look forward to writing…and a blog allows you to have some fun if you really want to be a writer.
6-It’s like leaving a digital diary behind. When I look back on some of my posts over the years, especially the ones I’ve written about family and friends, I see it as a sort of diary or journal. I can pinpoint how I was feeling at the time; I can recall how my kids looked and acted and talked. And while I don’t keep a handwritten journal (sometimes I wish I did), I do use my blog as a way to mark milestones and write about them.
7-Much like marriage, it requires a commitment. Writing has forced me, no matter how lazy I am at the moment, to write something somewhat meaningful at least once a week. It’s taught me commitment. Just as I make a commitment to writing a novel, it’s a commitment to write something on Steph’s Scribe. It’s old reliable, sitting here waiting for me to come and type and tell stories and communicate. I will always love that it’s here for me, like a steady friend who wants me to come and communicate, if only I give it the time of day.
[image error] My writing space in my home office. I love working in here when it’s cold, and often bring my laptop to the back porch on warmer days to write.
March 31, 2019
Late to the Game of Thrones Party, #writerssupportingwriters & Elizabeth Sagan
[image error]Yes, I know. This show has been around for a while.
And I have to admit to having tried the show two or three years ago and not being in the mood for it after watching the first episode. Sometimes you just have to be in the right frame of mind or in the mood for something fantasy/medieval-based in order to become hooked.
So, at the urging of a former student I trust and friends whose taste in television we regard well, my husband and I decided to give it another go. I’m so thankful we did.
This series has been perfect for us now, and it has also served as a wonderful distraction from some health problems I’ve had lately with my back. Watching the show was something I looked forward to at night for the last couple of weeks as I suffered in pain (much like many of the characters on the show…lol). In other words, Game of Thrones and I ended up being well-suited for one another.
Binge-watching the show since late January, we’ve now completed all seven seasons and are ready to watch the final season with all the other crazy Game of Thrones fans. Much as we did with the series 24 with Kiefer Sutherland, we binge-watched all of 24 when our kids were younger, sometimes watching as many as three or four episodes a night (also, remember, there were 24 episodes to each of those seasons, and we were house-bound with little ones, whereas Game of Thrones produced 10 episodes a season until you hit Season 7, which only had 7 episodes.) I know it’s a lot of television, which is why we watched this show during the dreariest months of the year in Maryland—January, February, and March—when there’s little else to do when it’s cold and gloomy. And so, my friends, here’s what I want to say about Game of Thrones if you are late to the party just as we were:
This series is amazing. Nothing like I expected. Different than anything else I’ve seen. Violent beyond compare, but I got used to it. Characters that you get sucked into and wonder about after each episode. Plot twists and deaths of main characters thrown in as surprises. And a general intrigue of storyline with each and every episode. Plus, it gave us a lot to talk about and ponder. We’ve had some lively discussions, my husband and I, after watching each episode and season. And we look forward to Season 8.
[image error]I think it’s best to know as little as possible if you are thinking of tackling Game of Thrones much after the fact as we did. Try not to read anything online. Don’t Google your favorite character or their heritage. Wait until the very end until you do all that. Because truthfully, it is more fun not to know anything.
Be like Jon Snow if you want to get something out of it as a newcomer. As a couple of characters say to Snow, a main character in the series, “You know nothing Jon Snow.”
It’s best if you do the same.
Go into it knowing nothing.
And so we eagerly await the Season 8 premier two Sundays from now.
Because after hearing “Winter is Coming” for the last seven seasons, Winter Is Here.
*
#writerssupportingwriters
It’s been fun being on Instagram over the last few months. I’ve connected with so many other writers and authors through different follow loops. #writerssupportingwriters and #awritechristmas were two follow loops that have connected me with some terrific people. As a writer and author, I love seeing what other writers are up to, how they position their books on social media, and how they market to their intended audience. I’m always learning something by connecting to people. If you are a writer who wants to connect on Instagram, feel free to follow the hashtag #writerssupportingwriters and feel free to connect with me at Stephanie.Verni .
I follow back.
*
My Favorite Book Instagrammer: Elizabeth Sagan
If you don’t follow artist Elizabeth Sagan on Instagram, you are missing out! She makes art by using her large book collection and herself, as shown below. She is so clever, and I told her that her feed brightens my day. You will love seeing what she comes up with next. Check her out at Elizabeth_Sagan. To see a video about her work, click here to go to YouTube.
[image error]Photo credit: elizabeth_sagan on Instagram | Click above to follow her
That’s all for now. Have a wonderful week, readers!
*
[image error]
Stephanie Verni is the author of Beneath the Mimosa Tree, Baseball Girl, Inn Significant, The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, and an academic textbook Event Planning: Communicating Theory & Practice, published by Kendall-Hunt, that she co-authored with colleagues Leeanne Bell McManus & Chip Rouse.
March 24, 2019
My ER Visit, Back Pain, and The People You Can Count On
[image error]
Well, dear readers, it’s been a while.
I’m offering my apologies and an explanation.
Had I not been flat on my back and/or writhing in pain for the last 11 days (although each day did get a little better), I may have been able to concentrate and write a blog post.
Being immobile for a period of time gives a person a lot of time to contemplate things—lots of things, even if they were fuzzy at times due to the drugs.
My troubles began when an intense pain took over my lower back mid-week, a week and a half ago. Over two days, it intensified. On Thursday, I never made it down the stairs of my house. On Friday morning, I somehow made it to the couch downstairs when everything went all wrong after using the restroom. I’m not exactly sure how I would have made it back to the couch had it not been with help from both my mom and dad who were with me when it happened. At that point, I knew no one at the house could help me and it was time to make the emergency call. I had eight paramedics in my living room hovering over me. “Are we having a party in my living room?” I asked them when the slew of them showed up after we made the call to 911. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get off the couch. Couldn’t even sit up. There I was, looking about as unglamorous and awful as possible, in an old nighty wrapped in a brown fuzzy blanket, my hair disheveled, lacking any sort of grooming, and yet these people didn’t care at all about how I looked. They just wanted to get me some relief.
Somehow, they got me on a steel gurney and into the ambulance.
In agony, they transported me to the ER, where I remained from morning until late at night when they thought I could go home. As someone who is queasy about blood, the doctor asked me if I’d like to start with oral medications or go the intravenous route. I told her to shove that IV in my arm and get started pumping me with whatever was needed. Steroids. Morphine. I’m not sure what else, but whatever it was, I was glad for it. The wonderful doctor and nurses at Anne Arundel Medical Center took great care of me with love and a sense of humor. The doctor thought I had a bulging disc of some sort pressing on my nerves. I received excellent care, and at about 10 p.m., they sent me home because I could then sit up and get in a wheelchair without too much pain.
Since then, I’ve been to the doctor and had back X-rays and MRI scans, all to find out that I have a herniated disc. The healing of this disc takes time. And there’s a sciatic pain that still remains that begins in my lower back and goes down my right leg. I believe in time, that will heal, too.
In circumstances such as these, you recognize who you can count on in emergencies: your family—my husband (patience & caring award for the week), mom and dad (caring award for the week), kids, my in-laws, family, and friends who reached out to see what they could do to help out. My doctor, our friend Joe, who made sure to check up on me and see me in his office and is on my case. The paramedics who tried to make me as comfortable as possible. Sweet Dr. Ambrose in the emergency room, who took all the time in the world for me and never rushed my husband or me with questions at any point. You remember those people who were willing to help or check up on you and try to make you feel better.
And so, it’s Sunday morning. I’m feeling better. Making strides. Writing a blog post.
And each day, I presume, will get a little better.
I’ll probably live in constant fear of pulling my back again. There will always be anxiety that lingers from that episode.
[image error]On Wednesday, when I began to start to walk around and took a selfie to prove I was beginning to be mobile.
The biggest lesson I learned from this experience—one that cancelled my spring break trip with my husband which were were both very much looking forward to and made me feel a little depressed, if I’m being truthful—is that back pain is no freaking joke. I’ve never experienced anything remotely like that kind of harrowing agony. I cried in the midst of it all and almost passed out in the shower when the pain shot through me like a rocket.
To those of you who have suffered with anything that remotely resembles this scenario, I’ve got your back, quite figuratively and literally. I know what it’s like now, and I will never, ever make light of someone with that kind of pain or not share empathy with you ever, ever again.
And to those of you suffering from much harsher health issues, you have my empathy as well. I look to you as inspiration from this day forward.
March 12, 2019
Fictography For Old Time’s Sake and as a Teaching Tool: Back Home
[image error]
/FICTOGRAPHY/ def. — The intersection of photography (submitted by readers) and fiction (written by me!).
A few years ago, I executed a writing challenge whereby readers submitted travel photos they took, and I would write the story that I imagined went along with that photograph.
Today, as I write this, my students are engaged in an activity that asks them to write using their five senses—and to see where those senses can take them. They smelled something, tasted something, and touched something, and then they used photos and clips of music to spark a story.
When it came to “sight,” I posted three photographs that they could use as the basis for a story. They are required to write what they “see” and describe it, while they also build a story. The one I chose of the three is above, and so I decided to write along with them. Here’s what I came up with…
*
Izzy stood at the top of the stairs and looked at the stillness of the water. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been home. She could see her parents’ house in the distance, the way the building curved along the water’s edge with the cliff hovering behind it. Everything looked so colorful: the burnt orange roofs, the blueness of the water, the green landscape surrounding the village. She felt her heart skip a beat as she stood there, wondering how they would respond when they opened the door and saw her standing there with only one suitcase and a purse in her hand. Everything else was back in London. With him. For now, she was standing in her favorite spot, at the top of the steps, a lamppost serving as a pillar of support, a symbol of the strength she had needed to find her way home. Izzy’s return would certainly be a validation to both her mom and dad: they had been right.
But in her heart of hearts, she knew they would take no pleasure in it. They weren’t those sort of people.
But here she was, back home in the village she had desperately wanted to get away from five years ago, ready to tell her story, because she had the capacity to admit when she made a mistake. She was ready to admit she had been wrong.
*
[image error]
Stephanie Verni is the author of Beneath the Mimosa Tree, Baseball Girl, Inn Significant, The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, and an academic textbook Event Planning: Communicating Theory & Practice, published by Kendall-Hunt, that she co-authored with colleagues Leeanne Bell McManus & Chip Rouse.
February 28, 2019
Childhood Magic: The Hill with the Rock
I grew up in a ranch style home in Bowie, Maryland. The yard was large, and contained a big hill in the back. In the winter, our family and neighbors would go sledding in our yard, until before long, the entire neighborhood was partaking in the fun. The toboggan was filled with adults and children as we would take the run down the hill and spill out into the street. Over and over we would ride the hill in the snow. Red plastic sleds packed with kids would spin down the slope, shoot between our house and the neighbors, and end up in the front yard.
In the summers, the hill was green, as my father kept a very well-manicured lawn. For hours upon hours on those long summer days, we would spend time outside playing games like SPUD, kickball, tee-ball, and run races. That hill was sort of magical to me as it brought so many of us together, all in the name of fun. When I think of my childhood, I picture being outdoors, playing outside until the late hours when my mother would call me inside to bathe after catching fireflies in glass jars and then setting them free after they put on their light show.
If you were standing at the sliding glass door in our kitchen looking out onto the yard, in the top left hand corner of the hill was a white rock that was embedded into the earth. When my father would cut the lawn low, the rock was clearly visible. It sparkled in places, and I remember my friends and I wondering if it was worth any money. One day, we grabbed shovels and tried like hell to pry that rock out of the ground, but it was too large. It couldn’t be moved. It was uniquely shaped, rather flat, but with some curve to it as well as some indents where you could see it glisten with hues of pinks and purples.
I called it the magic rock on the hill.
A few weeks ago, I took a ride to my former home as I waited for my daughter at a dance practice that was near my old stomping grounds. I took the turn onto the main drag and rode the familiar street that I had grown up on. I remembered every turn, every street, and before long, I was riding the streets up to the elementary school where I spent my formative years. I rode past my old friends’ homes and I reflected on the many memories of my friends and the innocence of my childhood.
I thought about the rock and its magic.
It made me wonder if the people who lived in the home now take care of the backyard the way my father did; if voices filled with laughter echoed on snowy days as they rode the slope to the street; and if the grass and earth remembered the feet of children of yore, as they ran and shouted with joy.
I’m quite fortunate to have experienced a wonderful childhood; those memories and experiences have shaped me into who I am today. When we moved in my teenage years to Annapolis, it was bittersweet for me. It took me some time to fit in and make friends because I had so many friends in Bowie that I was sad to leave behind. I recently opened up my yearbook from junior high and could remember everyone clearly, as if I just left yesterday.
That’s childhood magic, rock or not.
February 19, 2019
Conversations with My Daughter: Breakfast with Michael Bublé
In honor of Michael Bublé‘s concert tonight in Washington, D.C., and to toast that my daughter and I will be attending this concert together now that she is a teenager who loves going to concerts, I thought I’d repost one of my favorite blogs from 2012. My daughter was 10 at the time and has always known how much I love Michael Bublé. I guess I talked about him in a way that made him seem like he was one of my “friends.” The innocence of children is so sweet and funny.
And so is Michael Bublé.
February 17, 2019
Update on My (currently unnamed) WIP
[image error]On Friday night, I reached over 71,000 words on my #WIP (work in progress). I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love the direction change I made with this story back in December. Now, the novel has glue and a backbone and characters I wish were my friends. I still have a way to go, but it makes me so happy to sit down and write when I’m writing about places I love and I can live vicariously through my characters. I took this lovely photo back in September in Oxford when, in the name of research, I spent time in both #oxfordmd and #stmichaelsmd. I can’t wait to see where this ending takes me and what will unfold with this story of mine. As someone who is completely enamored with storytelling, I take great pride in telling you the best contemporary fiction story I can tell. And, I could talk about the subject of writing all day.
Have a glorious Sunday, my friends!
February 13, 2019
A Valentine’s Poem
What the heck. How about a little Valentine’s poem written by yours truly?
Happy Valentine’s Day, you all.
I hope it’s a great one.
*
*
The Part That Came After | by Stephanie Verni
Lovely, lovely…
Thoughts of you gallup through my mind
On a rollercoaster of ifs and whats
And then there was then
The part that came after
The heart and its mend.
*
Memories, Memories…
Linger beyond the time we spent
Laughing and fighting and laughing some more
Until our sides split
The part that came after
A silliness fit.
*
Faraway, Faraway…
Places we went are in my mind
Visions of you in the sun and the rain
A lightning strike
The part that came after
You held me so tight.
*
©Stephanie Verni, 2019
