Annette Lyon's Blog, page 27

Giveaway Winners & The Winning Story

Announcing the winners of my 4-year Blog-Anniversary Extravaganza!
Thanks to everyone who participated; it was a lot of fun. It'll be fun exciting to see what the next four years hold.
First, one bit of fun news:With the release of my cookbook, Chocolate Never Faileth, in October, a companion DVD will also be for sale. Picture me doing a 1-hour chocolate cooking show! How cool is that going to be?
I'm in the process of talking with the director, deciding on which recipes to demo, and all that...

WNW: Where'd It Come From? Back-formation

One of my favorite quirks of English is how versatile it is in creating new words, and often without us even realizing it.
A common way of creating new words is essentially tweaking a current word in a process called back-formation.
With back-formation, the new word usually looks like it is the original one and that the other word or words came from it.
That idea make sense grammatically, because we tend to just slide into creating back-formations. The new word is typically shorter, because...

Distance for Davis

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If you're in northern Utah in just over a week (Friday, Aug 6 and Saturday, Aug 7), be sure to check out all the events surrounding the fund raiser for Davis Cox, a young man about the age of my own son who is suffering from a severe case of aplastic anemia . . . a very dangerous illness.

There will be lots of fun, from a 5K (okay, to ME running isn't so fun) to motorcycle stunts, hot air balloon rides, entertainment, and more.

Below is information from the press release about it.

Visit...

Cunningham Flat Daddy

We're getting close to having enough to pay for The Lyon's Tale's FOURTH Flat Daddy for a military family going through a deployment. Woohooo!
(Not familiar with the Flat Daddy program? Visit THIS PAGE of my website or go to the Flat Daddy site.)

I'm THRILLED with the response from my readers who have donated. (You know who you are; thank you, thank you, thank you!!!) Every little bit helps.
The fourth Flat Daddy will go to the Cunningham Family. A little about them:
Mom and Dad Cunningham met...

How Do I Draft & Revise?

I've had several people ask variations on this question, so I figured it was time to answer it.
Every writer is different, and I don't pretend to hold all magical writerly wisdom in my hands. But because every writer is different, I think we can all learn from one another, see what works for one person, and try it out for ourselves.
My drafting and revision method (such as it is) has evolved over the years quite a bit. Here's roughly how it stands today:
I rarely draft chronologically, at least...

4-Year Extravaganza!!!

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Yippee! Today marks FOUR YEARS since my very first post here at The Lyon' s Tale, wherein I celebrated my writerly weirdness.
IT'S PARTY TIME!!!
(PRIZES BELOW!)
But first . . .
A lot much has happened in four years. A smattering: Four of my seven novels were published.I got two teenagers. (And an ulcer. Connected? You decide.)I got my own gorgeous office with built-in bookcases made by my husband.I won Utah's Best of State medal for fiction.The Whitney Awards were created. My suggestion for...

50 Years Since "Mockingbird"

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee's classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
I was first introduced to the book my sophomore year of high school. I really enjoyed it, I'm sure in large part to a great English teacher (Hi, Miss Drummond!) who helped us students "get" that the story is so much more than what the first page proclaims it to be.
As teenagers (and kids who hadn't experienced racism firsthand, for the most part) we saw Scout's world through Scout's...

WNW: Words, Words, Words

I came across two different pieces of fun online this week. (The first I stumbled on via Maya Reynold's blog, and the other one, Melanie J sent my way, knowing I'd love it.)
I couldn't pick between the two, and since they both deal with vocabulary and words in general, I'm using both today.
THE FIRSTI learned a new word this week: Mountweazel.
A Mountweazel is a word or entry in a book (like a dictionary or encyclopedia) that is deliberately fake, allowing the creators to track copyright...

It's Baaaack!

Happy, happy day, one that's been about two years in the making (something I didn't realize until I checked some old e-mails), but it's finally here!
Lost Without You, which has been out of print for several years, is back, baby! Digitally, that is. E-readers can now download it from Amazon and read it on the Kindle or any device that supports Kindle software (they have apps for PC, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, and more).
If there's a need for it, I'll pull some strings with my technology...

WNW: I Cling to JIBE!

So saith Melanie J in a recent e-mail (and many others who have asked me about this one, as well as friends who try to correct one another).
Here's the issue: which is correct, JIBE or JIVE?
As in:
It doesn't JIBE with that.
It doesn't JIVE with that.
Hmm?
I've heard rather heated, adamant arguments both directions. When the question was posed to me some time ago, I wasn't sure. They both sounded right, and I could argue either.
So I turned to my handy-dandy research sources.
One of my faves, span