Stephanie Faris's Blog, page 36
January 8, 2016
My Writing Process by Anna Simpson
I always love when my blogging buddies have new books out, especially when it's one of my favorites! Today we're celebrating the launch of White Light by Anna Simpson. She's written an extra-special guest post about her writing process. Be sure to scroll down after the post to read all about her new book!
----------------------------------------------------------
MY WRITING PROCESS
By Anna Simpson
Well, first off thank you for letting me loose on your site. Very nice. Very nice indeed.
So you want to know how I do it. Come in. A little closer. Closer.
*looks around for eavesdroppers*
I put one word down. *clears her throat* Then I do it again.
Hey, put that water balloon down. Or better yet throw it at Stephanie. She’s the one that asked.
Enough fun. But I’m warning you some of this is a little dry.
I do a lot of planning. Try these questions on for size. What’s your genre? Got some character ideas? How many words do you want to write? After jotting down some answers, I cut the word count into four parts, using the Three Act Structure, and decide what is going to happen at the inciting incident, half-way point, the showdown.
Imagine your cast of characters. The louder, less organized and demanding the better. Have them all want to be the hero or villain. They all have agendas. Think cattle call on Broadway. So there will be fighting/upstaging until there are only two left standing. The hero will carry most of the load, so need to be as fleshed out as you can make them. The villain must be as smart and in-the-hero’s-face as possible without alienating your readers. Note: This part of the process can be a time suck.
Then write: Chapter One Scene One. Point in everyone in right direction and let your characters loose…
Okay now the rest is up to you. And remember if you give them weapons wear a helmet. Smile. :-)
Blurb:
Emma never dreamed of being a super-sleuth. In her mind, she’s more Scooby Doo than Nancy Drew and when her nosy neighbor, Mrs. Perkins, drags her to an anniversary party to solve a mystery, she rolls her eyes, buys a box of chocolates and hops in the car.
What’s a party without an attack on its host—or more accurately on the host’s grandson, sparking an allergic reaction and moving the party to the hospital waiting room. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect. Emma and Mrs. Perkins, along with Great Aunt Alice (a spirit with boundary issues who keeps stepping into Emma’s body like a new dress and playing matchmaker), dive into an investigation that almost gets Emma killed along with the man they are trying to protect. With so many reasons to kill him and so much to be gained if he died, Emma and Mrs. Perkins must unravel the tenuous ties that point to every member of his family as potential killers.
Even if it means going back to the psych ward, Emma will protect her friend and this innocent man. What good is freedom if it's haunted with guilt?
Bio:
Anna Simpson lives near the Canadian-US border with her family. Even though she's lived in several places in British Columbia, her free spirit wasn't able to settle down until she moved back to her hometown.
The woman is easy to find though, if you know the magic word -- emaginette. Do an internet search using it and you'll see what I mean. :-)
Links:
Blog| Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
----------------------------------------------------------
MY WRITING PROCESSBy Anna Simpson
Well, first off thank you for letting me loose on your site. Very nice. Very nice indeed.
So you want to know how I do it. Come in. A little closer. Closer.
*looks around for eavesdroppers*
I put one word down. *clears her throat* Then I do it again.
Hey, put that water balloon down. Or better yet throw it at Stephanie. She’s the one that asked.
Enough fun. But I’m warning you some of this is a little dry.
I do a lot of planning. Try these questions on for size. What’s your genre? Got some character ideas? How many words do you want to write? After jotting down some answers, I cut the word count into four parts, using the Three Act Structure, and decide what is going to happen at the inciting incident, half-way point, the showdown.
Imagine your cast of characters. The louder, less organized and demanding the better. Have them all want to be the hero or villain. They all have agendas. Think cattle call on Broadway. So there will be fighting/upstaging until there are only two left standing. The hero will carry most of the load, so need to be as fleshed out as you can make them. The villain must be as smart and in-the-hero’s-face as possible without alienating your readers. Note: This part of the process can be a time suck.
Then write: Chapter One Scene One. Point in everyone in right direction and let your characters loose…
Okay now the rest is up to you. And remember if you give them weapons wear a helmet. Smile. :-)
Blurb:
Emma never dreamed of being a super-sleuth. In her mind, she’s more Scooby Doo than Nancy Drew and when her nosy neighbor, Mrs. Perkins, drags her to an anniversary party to solve a mystery, she rolls her eyes, buys a box of chocolates and hops in the car.
What’s a party without an attack on its host—or more accurately on the host’s grandson, sparking an allergic reaction and moving the party to the hospital waiting room. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect. Emma and Mrs. Perkins, along with Great Aunt Alice (a spirit with boundary issues who keeps stepping into Emma’s body like a new dress and playing matchmaker), dive into an investigation that almost gets Emma killed along with the man they are trying to protect. With so many reasons to kill him and so much to be gained if he died, Emma and Mrs. Perkins must unravel the tenuous ties that point to every member of his family as potential killers.
Even if it means going back to the psych ward, Emma will protect her friend and this innocent man. What good is freedom if it's haunted with guilt?
Bio:
Anna Simpson lives near the Canadian-US border with her family. Even though she's lived in several places in British Columbia, her free spirit wasn't able to settle down until she moved back to her hometown.The woman is easy to find though, if you know the magic word -- emaginette. Do an internet search using it and you'll see what I mean. :-)
Links:
Blog| Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
January 6, 2016
IWSG: Dumb Writing Advice
It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means hundreds of us will be posting about our insecurities. If you're a writer, join in!
When you start writing, you'll likely find yourself buried beneath a growing heap of writing advice. Some of it is designed to make your prose better.
Some of it is designed to motivate you during those really dark times.
And some of it is merely designed to make you put your butt in that chair and write.
But some of it is just bizarre. One of the first how-to writing books I read was written by Rita Mae Brown. Rita Mae Brown is a very talented author best known for a 1973 book called Rubyfruit Jungle. I was looking for a writing book in a bookstore in the early 90s and I stumbled on this:
It was the first how-to anything I ever read about writing. She did warn us in the title that it was a different kind of manual. Different it was.
The one thing I remember from the entire book was that this talented writer told her readers that if you want to be a writer, you have to have a cat. Not a dog, a cat. Miss Rita Mae loves her cat.
Okay, so her advice is to get a cat. But here's the part that devalued the rest of the book. She said if you weren't willing to get a cat, you didn't want to be a writer badly enough and you may as well quit now.
Reading over the Amazon reviews for the book, I realized I was just young and new. I didn't know to recognize this "how-to manual" as the whackadoodle mess of words it was. As one reviewer describes it, the author spends the first part of the book bragging about herself before launching into a list of "musts" that all writers have to have if they want to be a writer.
We must study two years of Latin.
We must get a PhD in English.
We must read a long list of books recommended by her.
The list goes on. And on. And on.
Don't want to do even one of those things? Guess what...you'll never be a writer. It's her way or no way.
So at this young age, I read the worst writing manual ever written. I learned right off the bat to listen to the advice of others and do this to whatever doesn't apply to me:
To this day, I still don't have a cat. And not only am I multi-published, but I make my living writing. So put that in your hat, Rita Mae Brown!
When you start writing, you'll likely find yourself buried beneath a growing heap of writing advice. Some of it is designed to make your prose better.
Some of it is designed to motivate you during those really dark times.
And some of it is merely designed to make you put your butt in that chair and write.
But some of it is just bizarre. One of the first how-to writing books I read was written by Rita Mae Brown. Rita Mae Brown is a very talented author best known for a 1973 book called Rubyfruit Jungle. I was looking for a writing book in a bookstore in the early 90s and I stumbled on this:
It was the first how-to anything I ever read about writing. She did warn us in the title that it was a different kind of manual. Different it was.
The one thing I remember from the entire book was that this talented writer told her readers that if you want to be a writer, you have to have a cat. Not a dog, a cat. Miss Rita Mae loves her cat.
Okay, so her advice is to get a cat. But here's the part that devalued the rest of the book. She said if you weren't willing to get a cat, you didn't want to be a writer badly enough and you may as well quit now.
Reading over the Amazon reviews for the book, I realized I was just young and new. I didn't know to recognize this "how-to manual" as the whackadoodle mess of words it was. As one reviewer describes it, the author spends the first part of the book bragging about herself before launching into a list of "musts" that all writers have to have if they want to be a writer.
We must study two years of Latin.
We must get a PhD in English.
We must read a long list of books recommended by her.
The list goes on. And on. And on.
Don't want to do even one of those things? Guess what...you'll never be a writer. It's her way or no way.
So at this young age, I read the worst writing manual ever written. I learned right off the bat to listen to the advice of others and do this to whatever doesn't apply to me:
To this day, I still don't have a cat. And not only am I multi-published, but I make my living writing. So put that in your hat, Rita Mae Brown!
January 4, 2016
Online Shopping for the Holidays: My Review
The holidays are over...and so is my experiment into doing as much of my Christmas shopping online as possible.
Overall, it went very well. But keep in mind that I started on Black Friday and the bulk of my shopping was done by December 9. That gave plenty of time for slow-pokey packages to finally make their way to me.
But for future reference, I tracked the performance of different businesses and decided to share what I learned with you. You probably will find that you agree with a lot of these. First, the biggest winner...
This one will be a real surprise (*said sarcastically*)...
All the way up until the week of Christmas, you could order items and they'd show up to your house in two days. I was ordering mostly non-Christmasy things by the end, but I was amazed at how well Amazon did at getting things here on time...as long as you chose things that promised two-day delivery, that is. That brings me to my next winner:
Yes, the postal service. I take back everything I previously said about USPS because this year I learned the difference between big-city USPS and small-town USPS. In a small town, the post office ROCKS! Our mail carrier packed his little car to the brim every day and brought our packages to the front door. Then his boss would come and deliver what his car couldn't hold later that day. Chevy Chase got small-town mail delivery all wrong!
That, sadly, brings me to the losers. This year's biggest loser?
Okay, so I get that you don't have your act together to get packages to people when you say you will. But FedEx, your online tracker was broken with every package I tried to look up. Coincidence? Then I saw on the news that FedEx had trouble delivering this holiday season and I knew...something wasn't right. The post office is kicking FedEx's butt at delivery?
Time for a second loser. This one goes to the company who took for-freakin'-ever just to put my items in the mail after ordering them. It's Christmas. Let's get to steppin', people.
Kohl's mostly won the whole "holiday sales" game, but they end up on my bad list for letting me know on December 7th that an item I ordered on November 27th (Black Friday) was "no longer available." After ten days, I was thinking, "What? You haven't shipped that already? Really?" And then I wondered if the item was out of stock on November 27th or they just gave the item to someone else in the ten days they were sitting on my order. All else was great, including their incredible deals, but for shipping speed, this company gets a big fat, "Bad job."
The biggest loser of all, though? Gift wrapping! Because no matter how much time and aggravation you save by shopping online, you still find yourself standing there, holding a roll of gift wrap while staring at this:
Who were your business winners and losers this Christmas season?
Overall, it went very well. But keep in mind that I started on Black Friday and the bulk of my shopping was done by December 9. That gave plenty of time for slow-pokey packages to finally make their way to me.
But for future reference, I tracked the performance of different businesses and decided to share what I learned with you. You probably will find that you agree with a lot of these. First, the biggest winner...
This one will be a real surprise (*said sarcastically*)...
All the way up until the week of Christmas, you could order items and they'd show up to your house in two days. I was ordering mostly non-Christmasy things by the end, but I was amazed at how well Amazon did at getting things here on time...as long as you chose things that promised two-day delivery, that is. That brings me to my next winner:
Yes, the postal service. I take back everything I previously said about USPS because this year I learned the difference between big-city USPS and small-town USPS. In a small town, the post office ROCKS! Our mail carrier packed his little car to the brim every day and brought our packages to the front door. Then his boss would come and deliver what his car couldn't hold later that day. Chevy Chase got small-town mail delivery all wrong!
That, sadly, brings me to the losers. This year's biggest loser?
Okay, so I get that you don't have your act together to get packages to people when you say you will. But FedEx, your online tracker was broken with every package I tried to look up. Coincidence? Then I saw on the news that FedEx had trouble delivering this holiday season and I knew...something wasn't right. The post office is kicking FedEx's butt at delivery?
Time for a second loser. This one goes to the company who took for-freakin'-ever just to put my items in the mail after ordering them. It's Christmas. Let's get to steppin', people.
Kohl's mostly won the whole "holiday sales" game, but they end up on my bad list for letting me know on December 7th that an item I ordered on November 27th (Black Friday) was "no longer available." After ten days, I was thinking, "What? You haven't shipped that already? Really?" And then I wondered if the item was out of stock on November 27th or they just gave the item to someone else in the ten days they were sitting on my order. All else was great, including their incredible deals, but for shipping speed, this company gets a big fat, "Bad job."
The biggest loser of all, though? Gift wrapping! Because no matter how much time and aggravation you save by shopping online, you still find yourself standing there, holding a roll of gift wrap while staring at this:
Who were your business winners and losers this Christmas season?
December 30, 2015
How to Set More Attainable New Year’s Resolutions
We've reached the end of another great year. In just two years, 2015 will be in the history books and we'll move onto the next great year...
Every year, many of us take time to reflect and decide what we want for the next year. Often this is done through setting goals. Since January 1st feels like a clean slate, we can start on achieving all of our life's goals, whether it's this:
This:
Or this:
But as I learned in a workshop I once attended, the key to success at New Year's resolutions is to make them controllable, attainable goals. Instead of lose weight, for instance, you might say, "Eat 1,200 calories a day" or "Work out for 30 minutes a day, five days a week."
For us writers, "get published" can be broken down as, "Send out one query each month" or "Write two pages a day."
You could always buy one of those fancy Passion Planner thingies and make your goals all colorful:
Or check out this similar planner that has people going crazy.
I think you have to be a bit artistic to do this sort of thing, though. I don't want to spend more time on my planner than I actually spend doing the things on it. All of the great tools in the world won't help if you don't work hard at making your goals happen.
What is your New Year's resolution?
Every year, many of us take time to reflect and decide what we want for the next year. Often this is done through setting goals. Since January 1st feels like a clean slate, we can start on achieving all of our life's goals, whether it's this:
This:
Or this:
But as I learned in a workshop I once attended, the key to success at New Year's resolutions is to make them controllable, attainable goals. Instead of lose weight, for instance, you might say, "Eat 1,200 calories a day" or "Work out for 30 minutes a day, five days a week."
For us writers, "get published" can be broken down as, "Send out one query each month" or "Write two pages a day."
You could always buy one of those fancy Passion Planner thingies and make your goals all colorful:
Or check out this similar planner that has people going crazy.
I think you have to be a bit artistic to do this sort of thing, though. I don't want to spend more time on my planner than I actually spend doing the things on it. All of the great tools in the world won't help if you don't work hard at making your goals happen.
What is your New Year's resolution?
December 28, 2015
Best Books of December
It's time once again for my best books of the month...and this is my final version of the year. It's been a year of amazing books. I can't wait to see what I get to read in 2016!
My first book this month is from my own publisher, Aladdin M!x. Golden Girl is Mari Mancusi's first book with Aladdin M!x, but it is not her first book overall. In fact, she's an award-winning young adult novelist and an Emmy award-winning TV producer. After reading this book, I can also say she's a phenomenal middle-grade author!
Golden Girl has something I love in a book: unpredictability. The directions she took this book in were so unexpected, yet it all came together in a perfect way. This is what great fiction is about! Lexi is the most promising young snowboarder in her snowboarding school...until an accident sidelines her. But it wasn't an accident at all...it was sabotage. The book chronicles her return to the slopes after the accident, including how she finds her way and figures out who her true friends are. Children (and adults) can learn a lot from Lexi's kind heart and inner strength.
My next book is from a very talented author named Alison Cherry whose middle grade, The Classy Crooks Club, comes out from my publisher in late March. More about that one next year! But this month, I learned about Alison's phenomenal talent by reading one of her young adult novels, For Real.
I've never been able to get into The Amazing Race as a TV show...but if it were as interesting as it is in Alison's book, I'd be hooked! In For Real, two sisters go on a race around the world for live TV, only to find out at the last minute that it's a dating show version of the reality show. There's a little romance but the most important storyline is the relationship between the sisters. Alison really dug deep on this one and the result is a fun, adventurous story with a winning character arc.
I also read two anthologies--the first was a compilation that included our blogging friend Leandra J. Wallace.
Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls and Gadgets celebrates women and technology. Many of the stories are futuristic but they all revolve around smart, tough, kick-butt heroines who are brilliant with tech. Leandra's story, The Mad Scientist's Daughter, is about a young inventor who works hard to hide the fact that her father is a much-hated inventor. My other favorites included Blink, a story about a young girl and a time machine; Lyra, a futuristic take on Cinderella about an artificial-intelligence system that goes awry, and Panic, an all-too-realistic story about being trapped in a crowded room where shooting is taking place.
The holidays are here, so I had to read this one, which features our very own Medeia Sharif. It was co-edited by another blogging friend of mine, Kelly Hashway, so double reason to read it!
Fright Before Christmas: 13 Tales of Holiday Horrors has 13 great horror stories with a Christmas theme. While I was reading these stories, I couldn't help but think that many of them represented a child's worst nightmares. My favorites were Medeia's story about a video game that evokes a very evil Santa, Ally Matthews' story about two brothers who venture into the cold forest to test out a legend, and Patrick Hueller's story about a little boy who gets coal in his stocking...and learns he's lucky--really bad boys don't get to see Christmas morning. Every one of these stories was a true page turner. I found that I couldn't wait to read the next story.
What's the best book you read in 2015?
My first book this month is from my own publisher, Aladdin M!x. Golden Girl is Mari Mancusi's first book with Aladdin M!x, but it is not her first book overall. In fact, she's an award-winning young adult novelist and an Emmy award-winning TV producer. After reading this book, I can also say she's a phenomenal middle-grade author!
Golden Girl has something I love in a book: unpredictability. The directions she took this book in were so unexpected, yet it all came together in a perfect way. This is what great fiction is about! Lexi is the most promising young snowboarder in her snowboarding school...until an accident sidelines her. But it wasn't an accident at all...it was sabotage. The book chronicles her return to the slopes after the accident, including how she finds her way and figures out who her true friends are. Children (and adults) can learn a lot from Lexi's kind heart and inner strength.
My next book is from a very talented author named Alison Cherry whose middle grade, The Classy Crooks Club, comes out from my publisher in late March. More about that one next year! But this month, I learned about Alison's phenomenal talent by reading one of her young adult novels, For Real.
I've never been able to get into The Amazing Race as a TV show...but if it were as interesting as it is in Alison's book, I'd be hooked! In For Real, two sisters go on a race around the world for live TV, only to find out at the last minute that it's a dating show version of the reality show. There's a little romance but the most important storyline is the relationship between the sisters. Alison really dug deep on this one and the result is a fun, adventurous story with a winning character arc.
I also read two anthologies--the first was a compilation that included our blogging friend Leandra J. Wallace.
Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls and Gadgets celebrates women and technology. Many of the stories are futuristic but they all revolve around smart, tough, kick-butt heroines who are brilliant with tech. Leandra's story, The Mad Scientist's Daughter, is about a young inventor who works hard to hide the fact that her father is a much-hated inventor. My other favorites included Blink, a story about a young girl and a time machine; Lyra, a futuristic take on Cinderella about an artificial-intelligence system that goes awry, and Panic, an all-too-realistic story about being trapped in a crowded room where shooting is taking place.
The holidays are here, so I had to read this one, which features our very own Medeia Sharif. It was co-edited by another blogging friend of mine, Kelly Hashway, so double reason to read it!
Fright Before Christmas: 13 Tales of Holiday Horrors has 13 great horror stories with a Christmas theme. While I was reading these stories, I couldn't help but think that many of them represented a child's worst nightmares. My favorites were Medeia's story about a video game that evokes a very evil Santa, Ally Matthews' story about two brothers who venture into the cold forest to test out a legend, and Patrick Hueller's story about a little boy who gets coal in his stocking...and learns he's lucky--really bad boys don't get to see Christmas morning. Every one of these stories was a true page turner. I found that I couldn't wait to read the next story.
What's the best book you read in 2015?
December 23, 2015
Merry Christmas!
It's that time of year again. The time of year when the blogosphere turns into one of these...
Ghost Town
So I'm just going to leave you with this fun video. If you have a young person in your life this Christmas, you'll relate to this song all too well!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Ghost TownSo I'm just going to leave you with this fun video. If you have a young person in your life this Christmas, you'll relate to this song all too well!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
December 22, 2015
Introducing Wickedly They Come by Cathrina Constantine
Today one of our blogging buddies is celebrating the rerelease of a book...and I'm excited about this one because I've actually read it! The author is a woman whose face you may not recognize, since her author picture isn't her profile picture on Blogger:
But you'll know the name. Cathrina Constantine is a talented blogger, novelist, and an all-around great person. Today she's celebrating the re-release of her 2013 book Wickedly They Come:
Below is a blurb to tell you a little about the book. If you like what you see, be sure to head over to Amazon and download your copy!
Blurb:
A gripping, dark fantasy!
A Destined Prophecy: “The White Warrior will be one with Lucifer and God will weep.”
Haunting visions and supernatural talents are the norm for the sixteen-year-old warrior, Jordan and her mother Seeley. Together with their formidable angels they find themselves in peril when a wicked sorcerer is determined to fulfill the prophecy to his lord, Lucifer.
After an ominous vision of spirits inhabiting teenagers in a local school, Jordan enrolls in the social culture of teendom at Elma High to combat soulless demons. She encounters Mark, a mysterious new classmate, who is hell bent on keeping her unscathed from the forces of evil.
The battle between Heaven and Hell is escalating—and Earth is their battleground.
Bio:
Cathrina resides in Western New York with her husband, five children, two happy-go-lucky Labrador Retrievers and two cats. After a long hiatus while raising her family, Constantine finally picked up pen and paper and began to hone her craft of writing, then eventually confiscated her son’s computer.
Cathrina is represented by The Belcastro Literary Agency, and is extremely happy to be working with Sharon Belcastro and Ella Marie Mohan Shupe.
When not with her family, baking, crafting, reading, or stationed at the computer writing, you will find her walking in the backwoods with her dogs, daydreaming.
Links:
Amazon Author Page| Facebook | Blog | Twitter
But you'll know the name. Cathrina Constantine is a talented blogger, novelist, and an all-around great person. Today she's celebrating the re-release of her 2013 book Wickedly They Come:
Below is a blurb to tell you a little about the book. If you like what you see, be sure to head over to Amazon and download your copy!
Blurb:
A gripping, dark fantasy!
A Destined Prophecy: “The White Warrior will be one with Lucifer and God will weep.”
Haunting visions and supernatural talents are the norm for the sixteen-year-old warrior, Jordan and her mother Seeley. Together with their formidable angels they find themselves in peril when a wicked sorcerer is determined to fulfill the prophecy to his lord, Lucifer.
After an ominous vision of spirits inhabiting teenagers in a local school, Jordan enrolls in the social culture of teendom at Elma High to combat soulless demons. She encounters Mark, a mysterious new classmate, who is hell bent on keeping her unscathed from the forces of evil.
The battle between Heaven and Hell is escalating—and Earth is their battleground.
Bio:
Cathrina resides in Western New York with her husband, five children, two happy-go-lucky Labrador Retrievers and two cats. After a long hiatus while raising her family, Constantine finally picked up pen and paper and began to hone her craft of writing, then eventually confiscated her son’s computer. Cathrina is represented by The Belcastro Literary Agency, and is extremely happy to be working with Sharon Belcastro and Ella Marie Mohan Shupe.
When not with her family, baking, crafting, reading, or stationed at the computer writing, you will find her walking in the backwoods with her dogs, daydreaming.
Links:
Amazon Author Page| Facebook | Blog | Twitter
December 21, 2015
A Griswold Kind of Christmas
First, I want to congratulate Jeffrey Scott. He won the advanced reader's copy of The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow I gave away when I interviewed the authors, Jess and Stephanie. If you didn't win but still want a copy, the giveaway is in its final days, so find it on my interview post here.
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to Christmas, I wanted to share my fun new Christmas village. From far away, you can't tell what it is...
But as you get closer, that house looks a little too familiar.
There's a standard scene that could be part of any village scene...
But then you see it. After this, you know exactly what movie inspired this Christmas village.
Still not sure? Here's a hint.
Have you ever done a Christmas village?
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to Christmas, I wanted to share my fun new Christmas village. From far away, you can't tell what it is...
But as you get closer, that house looks a little too familiar.
There's a standard scene that could be part of any village scene...
But then you see it. After this, you know exactly what movie inspired this Christmas village.
Still not sure? Here's a hint.
Have you ever done a Christmas village?
December 18, 2015
Should Men Work at Victoria’s Secret?
My stepdaughter loves Victoria's Secret--mostly the Pink line that is designed for teens and college-age girls:
Earlier this year, as I stood outside the fitting room, waiting for her, I saw something that took me aback. A man was creeping around the underwear display. My first thought was, "How creepy." Then I noticed the name tag. He was an employee.
I know it's wrong to feel this way. Women have fought hard to be included in all-male institutions like military schools and country clubs. Victoria's Secret was founded by this man...
Roy Raymond's goal was to create a store where men could feel comfortable shopping for lingerie for their girlfriends and wives. Men are supposed to be able to shop in Victoria's Secret without being viewed as this:
Yet if you walk into a Victoria's Secret, chances are you'll see mostly women.
The men are waiting patiently outside the store.
One former male employee confirmed he just joined the staff to learn more about women. He found that people questioned his choice of profession (selling women's lingerie). He also said he believes men shouldn't feel bad shopping in or working at Victoria's Secret.
Yet there's something ultimately creepy about a straight man who works at Victoria's Secret. I think perhaps because of this?
What do you think when you see a man working in Victoria's Secret?
Earlier this year, as I stood outside the fitting room, waiting for her, I saw something that took me aback. A man was creeping around the underwear display. My first thought was, "How creepy." Then I noticed the name tag. He was an employee.
I know it's wrong to feel this way. Women have fought hard to be included in all-male institutions like military schools and country clubs. Victoria's Secret was founded by this man...
Roy Raymond's goal was to create a store where men could feel comfortable shopping for lingerie for their girlfriends and wives. Men are supposed to be able to shop in Victoria's Secret without being viewed as this:
Yet if you walk into a Victoria's Secret, chances are you'll see mostly women.
The men are waiting patiently outside the store.
One former male employee confirmed he just joined the staff to learn more about women. He found that people questioned his choice of profession (selling women's lingerie). He also said he believes men shouldn't feel bad shopping in or working at Victoria's Secret.
Yet there's something ultimately creepy about a straight man who works at Victoria's Secret. I think perhaps because of this?
What do you think when you see a man working in Victoria's Secret?
December 16, 2015
Can You Do All Your Holiday Shopping Online?
This year I decided to do a little experiment. It's called, "Let's see how much of my Christmas shopping I can do online." Mostly because of this:
And this:
So I started early...as you MUST do if you shop online. Otherwise, around December 20th you start doing this all day:
I did a big chunk of it on Black Friday. For the next two weeks, I ordered and ordered and ordered until my handy-dandy little Christmas shopping app told me everything was purchased:
There are some things you can't order online without paying way too much. Things like this:
And this:
And this:
So you have to head out to the store at some point. You'll also need to go to the store to buy these, especially if you want to get them all in one place:
If you order online, you have to be prepared for daily visits from various mail services...multiple packages will be dropped on your door every single day.
After a while, the postal people will get fed up and start throwing your packages at the porch. At least that's what I think was happening to us...we have a Ring doorbell with a motion sensor. I was getting notifications that packages were delivered but no motion sensor had gone off. When I checked the porch, packages were strewn about. Somehow they'd managed to get the packages onto the porch without setting the motion sensor off.
But all in all, it beats dealing with long lines and crowds. As someone who does all her grocery shopping online and picks it up at the store, it would be crazy if I Christmas shopped the old-fashioned way, right?
Do you do any of your Christmas shopping online?
And this:
So I started early...as you MUST do if you shop online. Otherwise, around December 20th you start doing this all day:
I did a big chunk of it on Black Friday. For the next two weeks, I ordered and ordered and ordered until my handy-dandy little Christmas shopping app told me everything was purchased:
There are some things you can't order online without paying way too much. Things like this:
And this:
And this:
So you have to head out to the store at some point. You'll also need to go to the store to buy these, especially if you want to get them all in one place:
If you order online, you have to be prepared for daily visits from various mail services...multiple packages will be dropped on your door every single day.
After a while, the postal people will get fed up and start throwing your packages at the porch. At least that's what I think was happening to us...we have a Ring doorbell with a motion sensor. I was getting notifications that packages were delivered but no motion sensor had gone off. When I checked the porch, packages were strewn about. Somehow they'd managed to get the packages onto the porch without setting the motion sensor off.
But all in all, it beats dealing with long lines and crowds. As someone who does all her grocery shopping online and picks it up at the store, it would be crazy if I Christmas shopped the old-fashioned way, right?
Do you do any of your Christmas shopping online?
