Cindy A. Matthews: Confessions of a Blonde Writer

It's Official--The Middle Class is No More

2012-01-25T13:56:00.003-06:00

It’s official--the middle class is no more.

When the icon-of-middle-class-America starts lowering its prices and changing the lay-outs of their stores, you know that an era is passing.

JC Penney announced that as of February 1, 2012, it will permanently slash all of its prices by at least 40% with what their CEO Ron Johnson said is “a sweeping overhaul of its stores and strategy.” Soon middle-class America will discover that Target and Wal-Mart aren’t the only cheap department stores on the block.

I don’t know whether to be thrilled or sad. I’m thrilled to know I no longer have to wait until the “after Christmas sales” (which, of course, began before Christmas these past few years) to find bargains. But deep down I’m feeling confused and more than a bit sad. It’s sad because, if you add Sears’ recent announcement that it will close many of its retailers, you’ll realize there’s no longer a range of department stores in between the lowbrow of Wally World and its ilk and the upper-crust snobbism of the Lords and Taylor/Saks 5^th Avenue type of stores.

JC Penney won’t be able to maintain its high quality of clothing and merchandise, I fear, because with dwindling price tags, how will the executives continue to bring home those big paychecks they’re used to from the profits? They’ll have to start stocking the cheap, made-in-China crap that fills Wally World’s shelves. Possibly JC Penney will be able to keep their quality products available at these discount prices, but the only way is probably by slashing their employees’ rate of pay by 40% and hiring only part-time and seasonal workers (while downsizing the number of full-time Penney’s employees still on the books). Either way, this news doesn’t look like a happy ending for a lot of folks.

Underpaid/underemployed/unemployed Americans will be forced to shop at stores with low quality goods, and the “fat cats” (who live off the interest of their large offshore bank accounts) will continue to shop at their high end designer fashion boutiques. Nothing new there, really, but for a while at least some Americans thought they had the right to be called “the Middle Class”.

Face it folks, most of us reading this blog are in the bottom 99% with no hopes of ever becoming part of the top 1%. Do the math, look at your checkbook, and tell me where you’ll be shopping (if you can afford to) next week.

(For another example of how 99% of Americans have been taken advantage of, read: Emblematic of 1 Percenters, Cooper Tire Punk’d Workers)

How are you coping with the ever-widening gap between "haves" and "have-nots"? Any tips on where to find a decent paying job? Please share your comments and concerns below... Perhaps if the 99% sticks together we can make the world a better place.

(Please join the discussion on Facebook at the Mad-As-Hell Party page, too.)

The Secret Life of a Dead-Beat Dad

2012-01-10T21:29:00.000-06:00

To the outside world he appears to be an ordinary guy. Work. Job. Family. Car. In fact, he's probably doing better financially than most Americans these days.

But appearances can be deceiving.

You'd think any father would be pleased and proud to support his children, enabling them to develop into successful and happy human beings, and through his positive support and actions, providing them with a good role-model.

This goes beyond the call of duty for some men.

Dead-Beat Dad loves to brag about his kids, their successes at college, their studies at prestigious universities abroad... All without contributing one thin dime to their welfare.

What would a real father do if his college-aged children found themselves in desperate need? Wouldn't a loving father move heaven and earth to help his child? Wouldn't he take whatever actions were necessary to ensure his child's safety and well-being?

Dead-Beat Dad would not.

Here is one case study given for your perusal. Feel free to post your comments at the end of the blog.

Circumstance #1: Dead-Beat Dad's child is studying at a foreign university and faces eviction from lodgings.

Dead-Beat Dad's email response to child's desperate cry for help: "Nothing I can do. I'm sure it'll work out."

How would a real father respond?

Circumstance #2: A state university expects a father who claims an honor student on his federal/state taxes to contribute towards said child's college tuition.

Dead-Beat Dad's response: Dead-Beat Dad refuses to pay what the university considers to be a fair "parental contribution" based on his tax return, since the child is listed as his dependent. Honor student child makes a futile attempt to take out more student loans to cover the deficit left by him, but is told by the university that child cannot take out more student loans since child's "parent who claims child on taxes makes enough money to pay the expected parental contribution as authorized by the state." Child is forced to take out more loans from other sources that don't have nearly the same generous terms. Dead-Beat Dad adds insult to injury by refusing to help honor student pay for room and board as well.

What would a real father do in this situation?

Circumstance #3: Dead-Beat Dad forces honor student to sign a contract which sets a minuscule weekly "food budget" that can be docked by committing various "offenses" (i.e. $10 is docked for touching Dead-Beat Dad's or his friend's food in refrigerator). Child is forced to eat on as little as $5 a week because of real or imagined "offenses". Child would have starved during summer break if not for the charity of friends.

Would a father who says he loves his children subject them to such horror and degradation?

Dead-Beat Dad's Mantra?

Could you allow your child to be thrown out on the street? Dead-Beat Dad can.

Could you allow your child to stop a promising college career on your account when you have the financial means to help? Dead-Beat Dad sure can!

Could you deny your children money for food while you flaunt your own private stash in front of their noses? Dead-Beat does--and he doesn't see his actions as abusive.

Could you sleep at night knowing you were hurting your children? Shouldn't children of any age expect only love and support from their fathers? What is your take on Dead-Beat Dad?

Whatever Happened to Romantic Comedy?

2012-01-03T18:11:00.004-06:00

We've made it to 2012 and the Mayan calendar is still running... Perhaps we'll lick this end of the world thing before we run out of time. ;-)

I had a sudden revelation the other day on why I've not written a contemporary romantic-comedy in a while... I think the genre has gone completely and utterly belly up. What made me come to this horrible and sad conclusion? Hollyweird, of course!

Handsome hubby and I were watching a DVD checked out of the library (our only source of entertainment since we no longer have cable or money to go to theatres in person) the other evening. We figured a title, that was a recent release, looked like it had entertainment potential. Boy, were we ever wrong! Although two capable, big name Hollywood actors played the leads and the title and synopsis on the case gave every indication it would be an enjoyable two hours, hubby found himself reading his book about a half hour into the film, and I only finished it out of a sense of "train wreck fascination" to see if it would get better before the end. Unfortunately, it did not.

A romantic-comedy (PG rated) where the heroine and hero

at least respect each other in the morning!

http://www.mojocastle.com/LovingWho.html

I'm debating giving out the name of this movie (because who wants to give publicity to something that's basically dire?), but I will give you some spoilers so in case you come across it, and this rings a bell, you are forewarned.

Handsome big name male movie lead (formerly hooked up with Demi Moore) falls into bed (i.e., sex) with the beautiful big name female lead (who was much better in Black Swan). Emotionless, cold-hearted, wild sex ensues. Now, I've written some pretty hot tales about acquaintances meeting and having great sex from the get-go, but these two gorgeous folks didn't get my juices going... I've watched hotter sex education films while I was taking a psychology class in college. Anyway, that wasn't the worse part of the movie in our opinions. It was the fact that cold, emotionless sex was suppose to be funny.

Why would anyone who used another human being for their own personal pleasure without a thought to the other be considered funny? Hubby and I chalked it up to us being old-fashioned romantics of a "certain age". That is, we're not under thirty years of age, and we don't sit and text our text buddies all day long about doing naughty things in order to rouse a quick snigger of laughter from the faceless internet crowd who is playing on their iPhones instead of working or attending class. But just the very thought that using another person for physical gratification and kicks is hilarious fills us with disgust and more than a bit of sadness.

I suddenly have an urge to find The Wedding Singer and watch it over and over again. At least the young folks in that movie treated each other with respect and courtesy... Two traits that are very much a turn-on for many of us "old folks".

This year, I'm working on a Young Adult novel series idea that's more science fiction/paranormal in nature and not so comedic. I just don't get the comedy of treating others like objects in contemporary fiction. Maybe one day the old-fashioned screwball romantic-comedy with bickering couples who fall in love (such as in Romancing the Stone) will return to our screens. I'll try to keep my hopes up, but the Mayan calendar is ticking away...

What's your favorite "romantic-comedy"? It can be a movie, play, book or whatever and from any era. List them in the comments below and see if we can't make a library of decent entertainment to fall back upon in in 2012!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2011-12-20T16:03:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This past year has been hectic (to say the least) for me, so in case I've forgotten to send you a card or wish you an appropriate season's greeting in person (or online), this is my last ditch effort to make amends!

The photo below I took a few years ago at my husband's cousin's home in rural Norfolk, England. It's epitomizes a country Christmas to me...

For all my friends who celebrate Christmas, the following I borrowed from Mom's church's newsletter:

Why Jesus is Better Than Santa Claus

Santa lives at the North Pole--JESUS is everwhere!
Santa rides in a sleigh--JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water.
Santa comes to your home once a year --JESUS is an ever present help.
Santa fills your stockings with goodies --JESUS supplies all your needs.
Santa comes down your chimney uninvited--JESUS stands at your door, knocks and then enters your heart.
You have to wait in line to see Santa--JESUS is as close as the mention of his name.
Santa lets you sit on his lap--JESUS lets you rest in his arms.
Santa doesn't know your name. All he can say is "Hi, little boy or girl, what's your name?" JESUS knew our name before we did. (Not only does he know our name, he knows our address, too. He knows our history and future and he even knows how many hairs are on our heads.)
Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly --JESUS has a heart full of love.
All Santa can offer is "Ho, ho, ho!" JESUS offers health, help and hope.
Santa says "You'd better not cry." JESUS says, "Cast all your cares on me for I care for you."
Santa's little helpers make toys--JESUS makes new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes and builds us mansions in heaven.
Santa may make you chuckle, but JESUS gives you joy that is your strength.
While Santa puts gifts under your tree, JESUS became our gift and died on the tree.

It's obvious there is really no comparison. We need to remember WHO Christmas is all about. We need to put Christ back into Christmas. Jesus is still the reason for the season.

Yes, Jesus is better, even better than Santa Claus.

Merry CHRISTmas!!!

Our "Frosty" sends you warm wishes for a very happy new year, too! :-)

A Christmas Read Just for You

2011-12-16T20:31:00.000-06:00

And now, a momentary respite from the seriousness of recent blog posts.

Ho, ho, ho! Check out my latest release, The Stocking, now on sale at Devine Destinies Books for a mere 99 cents!

http://www.devinedestinies.com/the-stocking-2/

Make your season bright with a holiday short story with heart!

Adele’s lonely Christmas Eve is made much brighter by the arrival of a mysterious silver-whiskered stranger…

And for those little ones on your shopping list, don't forget my children's Christmas picture book "The Best Christmas Gift". It's available in print and in e-formats from Guardian Angel Publishing.

http://www.guardianangelpublishing.com/best-xmas-gift.htm

In a day and age where "Merry Christmas" has been banned in favor of the generic "Happy Holiday", young Jake makes an important discovery.

Here's to a wonderful holiday season for you and yours!

Fighting Cancer: Occupy Healthcare

2011-12-12T23:54:00.001-06:00

Mom’s started back on her chemo treatments this past week. She’s with a new doctor now. The only explanation she’s received about why Medicare denied her treatments over a month ago was a typo… A simple typo, made by the doctor’s office on the paperwork that was sent in to Medicare. For over a month she waited patiently, losing strength and weight. Finally, she took the advice of a cancer advocate and found a new doctor who said he’d treat her. Suddenly, her former doctor’s office called and admitted to the mistake and told her she could come back tomorrow and resume her chemo, but by then Mom had already made up her mind to switch doctors.

And still no one has apologized or explained why she couldn’t have continued her chemotherapy as planned while the various parties discussed the discrepancy in the paperwork. A human being’s health and well-being were completely forgotten in all this mess—a mess that she didn’t cause, doesn’t understand, and was never in any, way, shape or form responsible for.

So… who is responsible? She had made such strides in her first two months of chemotherapy and was actually starting to feel somewhat better and her appetite had improved. She hadn’t felt the need for any painkillers until this past week, when the pains that had first alerted her to the cancer returned. Who is responsible for Mom’s declining health? Who is responsible for this debacle?

I guess the answer to who is responsible depends on what side of the “99% versus 1%” argument you favor.

If you’re in the 1%: “Of course it’s the 77 year old lady’s fault. She would have never allowed herself to become sick in the first place if she had her own vegan chef and bimonthly trips to the health spa. Barring that, she should have more than enough money in the bank to purchase the best of health insurances and the best of health care… No depending on government programs necessary, unless you already have the politicians in your pocket. And if anyone causes you any guff—well, that’s what expensive lawyers are for. That’ll get you results. Good manners? Patience? Pfft! Those are for those who can’t afford to have their own way!”

If you’re in the 99%: “I followed all the rules, paid Social Security taxes all my life. I asked my doctor why I was experiencing these horrible pains in my abdomen, and he said he could only do certain tests because that’s all Medicare/my insurance would pay for and those tests didn’t give him any results he could interpret, and I can’t afford to pay out of pocket for more testing…” OR “I followed all the rules, paid Social Security taxes, but I’m not old enough to receive Medicare, and I’m unemployed and have no health insurance, and I can’t get any doctor to see me and diagnose these horrible pains…”

I think that pretty much sums up healthcare in the good ol’ US of A, don’t you?

The single-payer system where everyone can walk into a doctor’s office and receive the treatment they need—not what they can afford to pay without filing bankruptcy—makes more sense than ever. “But who will pay for it?” the 1% asks, pulling out their checkbooks and writing checks to political action committees. “We’re all paying for it,” reply the 99% who pay more and more in insurance premiums and taxes and receive less and less actual healthcare.

Face it—we ALL have been paying for it. And who has profited from this set-up? Our ever-advertising pharmaceutical industry and private health insurance companies. They continue to make record profits while everyday Americans continue going broke and making decisions like, “Heat or eat this winter?”

If there hasn’t been an “Occupy Healthcare” group sitting in front of a hospital or clinic somewhere, there should be.

What's your take on this issue? Are you making "heat or eat this winter?" decisions? Are you tired of not being able to afford to see a doctor, dentist and/or eye doctor? Are you happy you have a good insurance policy for you and your loved ones and don't care how your fellow citizens suffer? Don't be afraid to speak up in the comment section below.

Fighting Cancer: Battling Bureaucratic Bull-Hockey

2011-11-28T19:41:00.001-06:00

I'd meant to give an update earlier on Mom's battle with Medicare in regard to her remaining chemo treatments, but there's been no change in her status. It's been over three weeks, and there's been no word from Medicare. Mom calls her doctor's office and the Cancer Patient Services everyday to see what all she do to help expedite the process, but other than filling out more paperwork to appeal the decision Medicare made to stop her chemo, there seems to be nothing else for her to do but wait. Wait and grow weaker.

We've since learned that Medicare is suppose to make a decision within two weeks (14 days) of being notified that the doctor and patient are appealing their decision. The doctor's office manager assures us that the appeal was made the day they learned of Medicare's halting Mom's treatment. It's been 24 days since her last treatment as of today, so it appears Medicare bureaucrats can't read a calendar.

Mom received some papers from the government which stated that if her health or life were in jeopardy then Medicare would make a decision within 72 hours (3 days). Okay, her health is in jeopardy--she even admitted to me over Thanksgiving that she felt "weak like I did before I started the chemo." It breaks my heart. Her appetite had been improving and everyone had remarked that she looked a lot better. Now this... Obviously Medicare bureaucrats interpret having cancer as a "minor illness" and not something that needs to be treated agressively and without delay.

Today my chiropractor (who I turn to for help since she doesn't discriminate against people like me without health insurance) tells me that she had to stop taking Medicare payments. She said she'll treat patients for free rather than risk a $10,000 possible fine from Medicare for filing "fraudulent claims" if she forgets to cross a T or dot an I on their forms. I guess Medicare doesn't like to pay for chiropractic adjustments anymore, either, and will use any excuse to put a chiropractor out of business.

Wonderful. I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry has had some hand in this decision. You wouldn't want folks to feel better without the benefit of pain pills and other unnecessary chemicals in their bodies, would you? Well, only if you're making billions of dollars each month off of hooking patients onto prescription drugs, that is...

Every day it seems more and more obvious to me that the current health care situation is a joke. Private insurance companies routinely refuse to pay for treatments and medicines, Medicare seems ready to pull the plug after a short period of treatment, and doctors and chiropractors are forced to deal with crippling paperwork that prevent them from healing their patients.

When is this going to end, people? Is health care a right that all should enjoy or just a perk for the priviledged few? Don't be too fast in answering--how do you know that tomorrow you're still going to be in the "priviledged class"? An upside down mortgage or a company downsizing might knock you to the bottom of the heap like it's done to many of your fellow citizens. No one should think they're safe in this day and age when it comes to affordable and decent health care.

I caught a title of a book in passing online the other day, How Medicare Killed My Father. I don't want it to have a sequel, but short of a miracle and some human compassion from the Medicare bureaucrats who make these life and death decisions to stop/start medical treatments, what else can we do?

Bureaucrats: The first against the wall when the revolution comes... if it ever comes.

Fighting Cancer: Money Matters More Than Medicine

2011-11-08T12:49:00.003-06:00

I wasn’t sure when I’d write again about Mom’s cancer battle, but today’s fiasco has inspired me. And I’m definitely not inspired in a good way. To put it bluntly, it was made more than obvious to us that in the eyes of Medicare money matters more than medicine.

Mom’s been undergoing chemotherapy since August, and according to the doctor and oncology nurses she’s been doing quite well on the drugs they’ve been infusing her with. While no one can honestly say that she’s out of the woods yet, she’s been making good progress and her doctor had scheduled her for more chemo sessions and another body scan in a couple of weeks. You can imagine our surprise then when we walked into the office for her weekly chemo session and the young office manager was forced to inform us, “Sorry, we can’t treat you today. Medicare says you can’t have any more chemotherapy.”

Of course they’ll fax in documents and medical notes and what-not to the paper-pushers at Medicare, but who’s to say that Medicare won’t take their sweet ol’ time deciding if additional chemo sessions are worth it? What’s six months to a career bureaucrat? It’s a water cooler break! But what’s six months to a cancer patient not getting treatment? I guess Medicare doesn’t shed any crocodile tears if the patient isn’t alive when they finally make their decision.

Mom is fortunate that she has supplemental private health insurance, but for some reason it won’t pay its 20% unless Medicare pays its portion first, and if Medicare isn’t paying… Then of course that means they don’t pay, either. I can’t figure that out—you pay expensive premiums for insurance that doesn’t pay when you need it? Sounds like something from a classic Monty Python sketch, “The auto insurance that only works if you don’t use it” sketch. It seems at this point if Mom wants to continue to get better and receive chemo treatments, she’ll have to pay out of pocket. Unfortunately, our last name isn’t “Gates”, so she doesn’t have an endless bank account.

I know Mom’s case isn’t unique. I’m certain that every day thousands—maybe millions—of Americans are told that they are no longer worthy of receiving life-saving medications or medical treatments. It seems to me our government has found a rather unique way to cull the “surplus population” (as Ebenezer Scrooge labeled them in Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol). The U.S. may not force you into having abortions and sterilization procedures like the Chinese do to prevent population growth, but instead it waits until you’re retirement age and then it lets you waste away from lack of healthcare. It allows you to labor as the working poor without any health benefits with the freedom of keeling over in your tracks if you happen to get sick. How kind.

I saw an “Occupy Findlay, Ohio” group camped out in front of the Hancock County Courthouse this morning. It seems even in small town America people have had enough of an uncaring government and want to make their voices heard. Maybe Mom and I should join them?

Please feel free to share your experiences with Medicare, unresponsive health insurers, and other injustices the 99% of us endure on a daily basis in the comments section below.

Please pass this blog/link along to others who feel put upon similarly. If we create enough noise, perhaps someone somewhere in a position of power will grant us justice.

In any case, even if we’re not here to see the results of the revolution, perhaps we can help start it.

Feel free to join our Facebook page, The Mad-As-Hell Party. Let the politicos know we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T15:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween everyone! Enjoy some photos of this "familiar" haunted house... Familiar if you live in Findlay, Ohio, that is. ;)

If you can name this Victorian home, write it in the comments below. I might even give you a prize for being the first one with the correct answer. ;)

Container Gardening Part 2

2011-10-22T17:41:00.003-05:00

I said I'd post some more photos of how our "container gardening" was going this summer, and I forgot. Truthfully, it didn't go well at all. The extreme heat our poor plants experienced on our second floor apartment balcony just did many of them in. The few that survived didn't start to thrive until later in the season. At least our pepper plant is still producing baby peppers.

I want to express my wholehearted thanks to my friend Michele A. for babysitting our carrots and beets while we've been in and out of town helping Mom. We harvested what we could of these crops, and while our attempts at organic container gardening weren't successful by any means, we can at least say we tried. Next year, we hope we can obtain some actual land to plant seeds in. Keep your fingers crossed!

The green tops of the beets and carrots look quite healthy.

This is all we harvested, but we learned a lot.

Space--carrots and beets need more space to grow larger!

November will bring a lot of challenges--The Nanowrimo Challenge (write a novel in a month) for one of them. Stay tuned for updates and how you can enjoy a free story this holiday season. Don't forget to check out my newly updated web page at http://www.cynthianna.com/ too.

All you green thumbs out there--please tell us in the comments section below what we could have done differently to grow better crops in our containers. Thanks.

Fighting Cancer: A Love Story

2011-10-10T14:18:00.002-05:00

I've been meaning to write something about Mom's cancer fight for a while now, but words have failed me. It's not that I don't have something to say--whenever did I not have something to say? It's just that the overwhelming-ness of the situation tends to shut down my thought processes.

Where to begin? At the moment we first heard the dreaded pronouncement? At the moment she realized something wasn't quite right? I doubt we'll ever know when Mom knew herself, as she keeps her cards close to her chest, but how would that information help? The overwhelming feelings still cause me to stop dead in my tracks.

The only words that come to me are "love story". You ask, "Love story? How could you associate those two words with your mother's illness?" I wonder that, too. But since they've come to me over and over whenever I tried to put pen to paper there must be some truth to them.

Taking care of an ailing loved one doesn't sound romantic--and it sure isn't--but it is often a necessity. Duty equals love and love equals duty. We feel obligated to take care of the person who once took care of us. Parent and child roles reverse.

At first I balked at the notion: She's an adult! She should take care of herself! But then the reality kicks in: She needs our help... Who am I to tell her no?

Perhaps the roles have outlived their usefulness. I can return the favor of loving her like she loved me when I was small and helpless.

She's still my mother, and I am still her child, but I can also play the role of parent when she needs me to. Duty is fulfilled and honor is maintained.

Now, if only she would eat her lunch...

That's it for now. I may write more about our experiences later. Feel free to share your own love stories of fighting cancer in the comments section. Thanks.

An excerpt from Unalone

2011-09-29T18:21:00.001-05:00

To celebrate Archon 35 this weekend, here's an extended excerpt from my latest science fiction tale, Unalone.

Unalone

by Cynthianna

Available from Devine Destinies Books

http://www.devinedestinies.com/unalone-4

An excerpt from Unalone:

The dream wouldn’t go away. Calinda kept shaking her head and rubbing her eyes, but still the vision persisted. Oh, what the hell! If I’m dead and this is my version of the hereafter I’d better just relax and get used to it. . .

Seeing her long dead mother wasn’t the most upsetting thing about her hallucination. It was the fact that her mother was taking care of her, nursing her back to health in what appeared to be the remnants of her ship. Where had Mom learned to bandage and set broken limbs? Her mother had been a radio-astronomer, not a medic, and Calinda remembered her saying once how she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Maybe in the years since her death she had taken on a new career in medicine?

Calinda blinked and rubbed her eyes again. This way lay madness! Her mother was dead, and, furthermore, if she wasn’t deceased how the hell did she get onto this deserted planetoid in the middle of God knows where? That—and a few dozen other pressing questions—needed immediate explanation.

Awkwardly lifting herself up from the makeshift bed, she collapsed with a cry of pain, tears flowing freely down her bandaged face.

“Don’t try to move, Cali,” the mother-image commanded. “Your neck isn’t broken but it’s severely bruised and there could be some other injury to your spinal cord I haven’t yet been able to determine.”

“Mom?” Calinda heard herself feebly utter. “Is it really you?”

“Of course, dear. Who else could I be?”

With that the mother-image turned back to what she had been doing, assembling a portable shelter dome and air lock. Her mother a mechanic, too? The thought intrigued her. Her father had always been more of the handy-man.

Calinda blinked. Her eyes were playing tricks on her again. Where once stood her mother, now stood the image of her father. Turning forcefully from his assembly work, he barked in his all too familiar fashion:

“Lie down, girl! I told you there could be more extensive injuries. I have to get this dome together before I can attempt any more. . . any more healing.”

“Father?” she pleaded, “What are you dong here? You and Mom were killed in an explosion at Spacestation 12. I had your remains cremated and scattered over Alta-9 as your will requested. I—”

“Be still! Or will I have to put you over my knee like I did when you were little?”

Calinda immediately obeyed. This has to be my father. No one else besides me and Mom knew how he believed in that ancient method of punishment.

Eyes closed, but acutely aware of the image’s every movement, she summoned the energy and courage to speak once again.

“You still haven’t answered by questions, Father, if I may call you that?”

“You may,” it replied without taking its attention from the task at hand. “Hmm—I’m not too certain where this little bit goes.”

So it wasn’t infallible whatever it was. “Bring it over here. I may be able to help. I once had to use one of those things when our all-terrain transport broke down on Daros-2.”

The father-image laid aside the troublesome piece and approached slowly. Calinda’s fear became engulfed by a luminous mist.

I had not seen that memory before—the trip to Daros-2. I see how the parts fit together now.

What is happening to me? Calinda cried, the thoughts echoing in her mind. I don’t see anything but the mist, but I hear a voice speaking to me? It isn’t my father or my mother….

Do not worry, Calinda. I will not harm you. The voice is mine—or what your mind interprets to be a voice since I have no vocal apparatus. I could only grasp a minute amount of knowledge for the preservation of your species on my world while you lay unconscious, but now that you are awake perhaps I will be able to discover more.

Who—or what—are you?

I am the mist, Calinda. It is beyond my current capability to explain further. Rest assured that when I have fully grasped the complexities and nuances of your communication process I will reveal all that I am to you. It would be better that you sleep now. Your body is healing and will be for some time.

She forced herself to stay alert, but the fatigue quickly overwhelmed her. How can I sleep? I’m alone on a strange planet, dying for all I know, and this strange disembodied voice is telling me to relax! I have to know more! I need more information. . .

Know this then: You are not alone. I am here. I am your friend.

Unalone available in e-formats at Devine Destinies:

http://www.devinedestinies.com/unalone-4

Space cargo pilot Calinda crash lands on a desolate world during an intra-galactic conflict. Bitter and injured, she doesn’t expect to live long enough to be rescued. Then she encounters a strange non-corporeal being who can mimic anyone she imagines—who reads her secret thoughts and loves her as she is. But can loner Calinda truly come to accept what it means to become “unalone”?

See You at Archon...

2011-09-16T12:55:00.000-05:00

I hope to see you at the Archon SF convention at the Gateway Convention Center in Collinsville, Illinois, September 30-October 2. Be sure to drop in on one of my panels and say hello. I enjoy chatting with my readers. I should be bringing some copies of my funny writers' guide, Defeating the Slushpile Monster, too. :)

Sorry not to post much lately, but we've been out of town helping my mom out while she undergoes chemotherapy... Yes, she's finally able to admit to the world that she's battling the "big C". It's been a difficult month and a half for us all, but so far she's doing as well as to be expected.

But today, I'm back on my home computer and able to shout out about my latest Celine Chatillon release from eXtasy Books, BRANDI WHYNE AND HER INCREDIBLY EROTIC ADVENTURES: Chapter 7--Brandi's Best Revenge! :)

Check it out in various e-formats at:

http://www.extasybooks.com/brandi-whyne-7-3/

or http://tinyurl.com/brandi-7

Here's the quick synopsis:

In Chapter 7, Brandi’s Best Revenge, the crew of the Pulsating Purple Parsnip encounter their time bandit contact in their own dimension—Robin's ex-girlfriend, Marian Maidenform. But all is not quite as it seems aboard Marian's ship, and seducing the hunky android Andrew becomes part of Brandi's revenge against the cold yet sexy woman who broke Robin‘s heart. But what does K.R.A.P.P. have to do with the balance of power on Old Terra? Brandi and her pals are determined to find out.

To receive your very own PDF copy of "Outrageous Extended Excerpts" from all the chapters (well, up to number 6) by simply dropping me an email with "Free Ebook" in the subject line. celinechatillon @ hotmail.com

And be sure to check out Brandi's very own blog for an excerpt and more:

http://brandi-whyne.blogspot.com

Because every fictional character deserves a blog!

Something I learned today: The Mobi format works well on the Kindle e-reader... PDF formats work well, too. Now there's no excuse not to buy directly from my publisher (for the biggest discounts) and read any of my ebooks on your Kindle device! ;)

The Buck Stops Here Because We're Mad-As-Hell

2011-08-09T12:34:00.003-05:00

The Buck Stops Here Because We’re Mad-As-Hell

by Cindy A. Matthews

Everything seems to be going downhill quickly these days in the US economy and in the political arena. Not being a politically active type of person, I can’t imagine the stress and horror die-hard Wall Street types and party members must be feeling lately. My husband and I discussed the dire situation we’re all in the other day and hit upon what we feel is the perfect solution to all our problems.

We simply need to junk the current two party system and begin again.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, “A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away,” so we're going to do just that--take it all away. To this end, we have started a third party that will sweep the next federal elections and clean out the seriously-self-centered halls of Congress. It will be a party of the little people (not that we can’t stand to lose a few pounds, but pasta is so much cheaper than meat when you’re living on unemployment). It will be a party made up on non-career politicians who only want to serve their fellow little people and then come home to the family farm, ranch, restaurant, shop, etc. You know—the way the original founders sort of envisioned our elected representatives would be like before all this political party bickering began in the election of 1800.

And we think we have just the right name for it.

“The-Mad-As-Hell-And-We’re-Not-Going-To-Take-This-Anymore” party or (TMAHAWNGTTTA party for short) is titled after that classic line from the classic film Network. Howard Beale (our party mascot—who needs an elephant or a donkey?) was a news anchor who told everyone to go to their windows and start screaming our party’s name until something happened to fix the world’s ills.

Network was quite a prescient story, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the mid 1970s and the early 21^st century have a lot in common—energy crisis, pollution crisis, unemployment, corrupt politicians (remember Watergate?), trouble in the Middle East, etc. So now is the time to learn from our mistakes we made forty years ago and clean up our economy and Congress and our environment all at the same time. As another little man once said, “The buck stops here,” and we’d better stop it in case it slides down further in comparison with other world currencies.

For Mad-as-Hell president we’re thinking of nominating Weird Al Yankovic. “Why Weird Al?” you may ask.Weird Al’s parody songs demonstrates he’s a keen observer of the culture and what’s wrong with it. Even if he can’t fix everything within four years he can at least entertain us with a polka version of the Star Spangled Banner. For vice president, my hubby suggests Sarah Palin (to gain the media’s notice) but I’m leaning more toward Cyndi Lauper. “Girls just wanna have fun” and who is having any fun in a time of economic and political crisis? Cyndi may just be able to help us on this very important point. (And I like how she spells our shared first name to boot.)

Our platform will be made out of good old-fashioned, renewable wood. We stand for clean air, clean water, clean food, clean cities, clean language on the TV and clean underwear. But most of all we stand apart from those other politicians who seem to think that pointing the finger at the guy (or gal) across the aisle from them in the House of Representatives somehow defines what “good government” should be like.

If you want to join our party and start the crusade toward sanity, please feel free to forward this blog to your friends, family and other members of the human race. Tweet it up and Facebook and Google+ it to death. We’re “Mad-As-Hell-And-We’re-Not-Going-To-Take-This-Anymore” and we’re coming soon to a local, state, and/or federal office near you. We thank you for your support.

(Editor's note: Feel free to "like" our new Facebook Page: The Mad-As-Hell Party Thank you.)

The Space Crawl

2011-07-27T17:08:00.001-05:00

The Space Crawl

It sounds like a new kind of swimming stroke or perhaps a retro-dance from the sixties. Unfortunately, it’s probably the most accurate way to describe the current state of the manned space program in the U.S.

The shuttle Atlantis’ recent landing ended the space shuttle era. Now the U.S. finds itself with only one way to get its astronauts to the International Space Station: pay the Russians for a seat aboard a Soyuz capsule. At $51 to $67 million a person, it’s one of the most expensive taxis in the universe. And what’s more, only one American can go at a time, since the other two slots are for Russian Cosmonauts.

I know a lot of folks out there wonder why someone who professes a “green bent” and is into “reduce, reuse and recycle” would mourn the end of the Space Race era. Yes, I admit I miss all the excitement of watching a Saturn V launch from Cape Canaveral and streak toward the moon. I miss the fuzzy video of astronauts walking and driving across the lunar landscape. I miss the sheer terror of the capsule splashdown at sea. But what I think I will miss the most is our loss of pride and obvious intelligence. The U.S. has let its manned space program essentially collapse under the weight of bureaucracy and politics, throwing thousands upon thousands of people who worked either directly and indirectly for NASA out of work.

How does putting thousands out of work, hamstringing our own manned space efforts, and losing all the momentum from the Space Race era help the current U.S. economy? Talk about not “reusing” and “recycling”! We’re forcing professional rocket scientists, astronauts, and all their support personnel back into the workforce to compete with the rest of us for jobs at McDonald’s and Wally-World.

All those wonderful inventions inspired by NASA like Tang and Velcro? Who cares! The Russians and Chinese will be creating—and marketing—all future tech inspired by space travel. The money and commerce this tech will generate will add a rosy glow to their economic futures. Too bad it won’t be helping anyone in the good ol’ U.S.A.

Who really needs to be innovative? Most Americans would probably say as long as they have their iPhone and reality TV shows they’re perfectly happy to let others design and implement the world of tomorrow. They'll complain that their new playthings cost more--and that the instructions will be written in Russian or Chinese--but they'll adapt.

But all is not totally lost. In How to Build Your Own Spaceship by Piers Bizony, the author details which private enterprises are working on manned space transports and what sorts of future tech we’ll be seeing in the next few decades. While he is cautiously optimistic, I can’t help but think that, since these are private individuals and corporations creating the space tech, they won’t be sharing the benefits of said tech freely with the public.

And all those lovely photos taken in space that NASA gave away for nothing? We might have to pay to see the next coolest galaxy spied from a private spacecraft. We might have to sign up to a pay-on-demand channel to see the first fuzzy images from a private moonbase or trip to Mars. Sure, if you have a big chunk of change you too can fly on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic shuttle, but how many of us will be able to afford it? We’ll be working at McDonald’s.

One online article stated that while thousands of NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers were about to be thrown out of work by the end of the shuttle program, the bureaucrats at NASA held no fear—their jobs were simply going to be moved to another department.

Paper-pushers push out the innovators of technology that has helped us all live better lives... Uh-huh. I say let’s recycle the paper-pushers and put the rocket scientists back to work. I’d rather my taxes go to support the creators of future space technology. I’d rather see the infinite stars than endless miles of red tape. Wouldn't you?

Container Gardening

2011-07-10T19:45:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to post another blog about what all we've been doing this summer to go "green", but life crises got in the way (again). All is not lost, however. We plan on attending a seminar on how to use solar power in the city this coming week, and a couple of weeks ago we attended the first annual St. Louis Sustainable Backyard Garden Tour. Organic veggies, bees, chickens and goats--all growing in peoples' backyards in an urban setting. It proves that it is possible to get in touch with nature and get away from processed food, one chicken at a time... But first, here are some photos of our own "sustainable garden" growing in containers on our very hot and very narrow balcony:

The tomato plant got off to a good start and has produced two Roma tomatoes already.

The pepper plant really took off after we planted some spaghetti squash next to it. Perhaps she was lonely?

The very first "hula hoop" pepper!

Our containers are not pretty or even store bought, but found plastic tubs, buckets and old styrofoam boxes.

Here's a happy hen we met on the sustainable tour in Webster Groves. Even though the chicken house was just mere yards away from a train track, the noise of the engines blaring past every few minutes didn't phase her and her feathered friends one bit.

These three gals were very happy eating blueberries from their master's hand... and lived in the city proper. We learned a lot about egg production and how entertaining raising poultry can be.

Having your own beehive would keep you in honey, but all those swarming bees make me a bit nervous.

Aquatic organic agriculture: crayfish being raised in a rain-fed backyard pond. Both pretty and productive.

Released today: Unalone from Devine Destinies

2011-07-01T12:01:00.006-05:00

If you enjoy science-fiction/futuristic fiction, then you might enjoy my newest DD release, UNALONE:

Space cargo pilot Calinda crash lands on a desolate world during an intra-galactic conflict. Bitter and injured, she doesn't expect to live long enough to be rescued. Then she encounters a strange non-corporeal being who can mimic anyone she imagines—who can read her secret thoughts and still loves her as she is. Can a loner truly love an alien being who lives inside her mind? Can Calinda truly come to accept what it means to become "unalone"?

Available for a very modest price at Devine Destinies books:

http://tinyurl.com/unalone1

Cindy

writing as Cynthianna

Pretty in Pink

2011-06-15T18:25:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I took part of the local Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. I wore my pink ribbon walking shoes (purchased at the Breast Cancer Store web site) but I didn't exactly walk... I sang my way through the race!

The River Blenders chorus members gather at Market and 17th.

Pink tops make us look like a flock of flamingos!

Director Diane Huber leads us in the 49th reprise of "I Will Survive." Our other top request was "We Are Family."

Even Elvis made an appearance at the race!

About 60,000 people take to the streets of downtown St. Louis. Will we have a cure for breast cancer soon?

I hope so, don't you?

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle--and Rethink

2011-05-22T18:48:00.000-05:00

The sun is setting on the age of fossil fuels...

A few folks out there have asked me questions about how green energy works and what they should be doing about it upon discovering I’m currently enrolled in an energy technician program with hopes of gaining a BPI Building Analyst certification. What that means is that I’m trying to become an “energy auditor”. With those credentials I’ll be able to inspect and write up a report on how energy efficient a home or business is. With that information, a home or business owner can take steps to lower their energy bills.

Why is finding out how energy efficient a building is all that important? If you don’t know then obviously you’re not the person in charge of paying your family’s electric, gas, trash removal, water and/or sewage bills these past few years. To further break your bubble of ignorance on issues of world significance, I regret to inform you that fossil fuels (that is, petroleum products, natural gas, coal and their variants) are a dwindling resource. On top of that, the CO2 gases they emit when burned/used could very well be the culprits of global warming.

And here you thought $4 a gallon gasoline was bad!

Sorry to bring you down for a moment, but I feel the public has a right to know. After all, we’re the ones paying the bills, and the decisions we make now will have lasting effects on our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.

Since this is going to be a short blog posting, I’m going to keep things really simple. It’s easier on both of us that way. The best things you can do right now to help save energy, keep the planet cleaner and greener are what I’d term “The Four R’s”: Reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink.

The last one is my own invention, as I’ll admit the first three R’s have been a mantra for many enlightened people for some time now. In my opinion, however, the rethinking aspects can’t be understated. It’s great to recycle our food packaging, and it’s wonderful when we come up with new ways to use old things such as furniture and disused buildings, and it’s fantastic to reduce our use of water by planting only plants that are native to our area which can thrive on rainfall alone. But without changing our mindset about what it really means to take care of our planet, these measures alone will not help us meet the goal of keeping it alive.

What do we need to “rethink”? Just about everything! Admit it—most of our three R’s have been rather token measures. We’re still buying agribusiness-sponsored fast food packaged in an over-abundance of paper goods, and we do so by driving gas-guzzling SUVs through drive-thrus with our engines idling during our lunch hour. Sure, we may recycle the paper goods (if we’re able), but if we had done the fourth R—rethink—we’d never find ourselves in this situation in the first place.

We’d grow a lot of our own veggies or buy them from local farmers who may use organic techniques eliminating the overuse of pesticides and petrochemicals. We’d make ourselves a healthy brown bag lunch (in a reusable cloth sack with reusable containers to hold our sandwich and fixings) instead of buying fast food that is processed using additives and other potentially unhealthy chemicals in a manufacturing plant located thousands of miles from where we live and trucked in using even more fossil fuels.

We’d walk from our place of work and eat our lunch in the park. No starting up of the ol’ gas-guzzler necessary. In fact, we might even bike or walk to work in the first place, blissfully ignoring the $4 a gallon gas station signs.

We’d walk or bike home in the afternoon and not turn on every light, appliance and electronic entertainment system imaginable in our homes--including the newest home energy hog, the flat screen TV. (Who knows? We might even rediscover the joy of reading!) We’d open the windows and let the breezes cool our home in the summer, and we’d put on an extra sweater and keep our thermostats under 67 degrees F in the winter. We might even buy our clothing from Goodwill or make our own sweater with our own knitting or crochet needles. When it got too worn or we’d outgrown it, we’d pass it on to others or recycle the fibers so others could make something useful out it.

If the inhabitants of the Western World emulated some of these habits of the inhabitants of the so-called Third World Nations, we’d probably be halfway there in our rethinking process. We’d understand that to continually think “More is better! I must have the latest gadget, drive the biggest car, use the most resources I can afford, etc.,” is not healthy and is certainly not true. We’d realize the lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis are killing us and our planet.

In short, the first three R’s alone will not save us or our planet unless our hearts and minds come along for the ride. Rethink how you use energy. Rethink how you use resources—from the paper that wraps us a greasy hamburger to the combustion engine vehicle that adds to the CO2 problem and further depletes the remaining fossil fuels.

Rethink how you’ll tell your children and grandchildren why you feel your planet—their planet--deserves to be in the state it’s in today.

I've been nominated for a Stylish Blogger Award

2011-05-07T17:59:00.001-05:00

I always thought I had class. ;)

Style? Well, that depends on who you ask. My daughters are always saying things like, "You're not going to wear that, are you?" So, being nominated for a Stylish Blogger Award is quite an honor, even if I had to beg my handsome hubby to do so. ;)

Check out his wonderful blog, The Hetzenberg Chronicles, and you'll see he's someone with style and class to spare.

As part of the award, I have to tell you seven things you don't know about me. Hmm...where to start? My life's pretty much an open book!

1.) I'm allergic to onions. This is sad, because I actually do like the way they taste, but they don't seem to like my digestive tract anymore. I'm ill if I even get a whiff of them lately.

2.) I am part Blackfeet and Cree. The other parts are primarily Scots-Irish and German-French. Call me "Heinz 57".

3.) I was a Girl Scout for ten years. I have a pin somewhere to prove it, too!

4.) I have never watched a complete episode of Seinfeld. After about five minutes I'd start yawning and inevitably switch the channel or watch a DVD instead.

5.) I could handle driving on the left side of the road in England, but those British drivers? They're insane speeders and road hogs! (Handsome hubby is excluded from this description of British drivers. He drives quite well.)

6.) I have lost count of how many times I've seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's probably somewhere near the triple digits.

7.) I once was a mezzo-soprano. I could easily hit an "F" above high C and sustain it at one time. (This is probably a great surprise to people who have heard me speak or sing in recent times. I'm most definitely a "bass" singer in the Sweet Adelines now. That would make me a very low alto. I enjoy singing the guys' tenor line on Christmas songs, too.)

Now my nominations for the Stylish Blogger Award... First up, AJ's Wargames Table, another great (and frequently updated with helpful hints) blog by a near and dear friend of mine. Secondly, I'll nominate Celine's Dreams, because I know for a fact that this chick has class! ;)

Support Judy Mays! Support Your Local Authors!

2011-04-28T11:38:00.002-05:00

I know there's a lot of talk online about this story, and I don't want to give those who have maligned Ms. May any more press, so here's a link to my publisher's blog that gives a few more pertinent details:

http://extasybooks.net/essenceofextasy/

I hope most readers realize why writers often use pen names in the first place. No one wants to suffer this kind of grief over his/her art. For some reason, readers will buy (hopefully not pirate) and read our erotic-romances, but if they find out we're teachers in our day jobs... All of sudden we're suspect human beings.

I'd be more afraid of my kid's English teacher writing "true crime" or murder mysteries. Do you think these types of writers go around killing folks to gain "experience" to write their stories? If you find that idea ridiculous, then why should romance authors be accused of being "dangerous perverts"? Aren't we exercising our imaginations like mystery writers do? ;)

Please support Ms. May and all your favorite and local authors. Stand up for our "write" (right) to create stories the way we see fit. Stand up for the First Amendment's freedom of speech and expression. Together we can make the world a better place.

Spring Break in the Sunshine State!

2011-04-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

We're back from our spring break. Rather than bore you with lots of details, I thought I'd post a few photos instead. :)

Don't you wish you were on a beach right now? (I know I sure miss it.) Where is your favorite spring break locale?

Stop the Presses!

2011-04-04T14:21:00.000-05:00

Stop the presses! This is out-of-this world news (of a sort). ;)

A photograph that I snapped two years ago at the Dogtown St. Patrick's Day parade will be featured in an upcoming episode of "Car Science" on SPEED TV. The episode will be airing Wednesday, April 6th on SPEED at 10pm EST. Here is a link to the page on SPEED for the TV schedule: http://www.speedtv.com/programs/car-science/

We don't get the SPEED TV channel, but if you do, please check the episode out for me and tell me when my photo shows up. Thanks! It appears that you can watch older episodes of "Car Science" on Hulu, so eventually I hope to see it.

Wow... I never would have imagined something like this would have happened to me. You post a photo on Flickr to show friends and a TV producer tracks you down and asks if they can show it on their show. No money involved, alas, but she did say she'll send me a DVD of the show. Cool!

If you wanna see the photo of the "motorized bar stool" car, here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cynthianna/3376903570/in/set-72157625249212234

Have you ever had a snapshot you've taken noticed by someone else other than family and friends before?

The All New, All Dancing, Singing, Performing Blog

2011-04-01T15:11:00.000-05:00

It's time to throw beads! Happy Mardi Gras! Opps, that was last month, wasn't it?

Happy April Fools’ Day! The blog title is no joke. I’m attempting a new format with my blog(s) and this seems as good a time as any to implement it.

I’ll admit it right here and now: I was born sometime B.C. (before computers). I’m not so keen on the daily blog thing. Sure, many people blog daily, but having worked as a columnist in the time B. B (before blogs), when words were actually printed on paper, monthly postings worked best for me. I’d come up with one good idea (or even one not so good), write it and post it on the blog. I’d write several hundred or a thousand words on a topic and hope to get some sort of feedback from readers. Most of the time I heard only crickets chirping in the distance.

Times change. People don’t have time to read long blog postings. Short blog postings are perceived as being more entertaining than one longer, in-depth rant. Short blogs also more conducive to promoting one’s other writings I’m told. Being unemployed, I need to promote and sell more books in order to survive, so it’s time for me to bite the bullet of blogdom and attract more readers to both my blogs and books.

On our way to Sesame Street, Mardi Gras style!

A lot of what I use to send out in my monthly e-newsletter for many years now, I’m going to post here whenever it happens. I enjoy sending out the e-newsletter, but I understand how much email you read everyday for work, play and other groups. From now on, the newsletter will be very brief and direct you to where the information can be found online. That way, you can pick and choose what interests you most and skip the rest if you’re rushed for time. If you’re not already one of my general e-newsletter members, sign up for it at http://groups.yahoo.com/cindyappelnewsletter If you just want to know what’s going on with my erotic-romance persona Celine Chatillon, you can join that newsletter at http://groups.yahoo.com/celinesdreams

Since I possess “multiple personalities” (I write in multiple genres), I host separate blogs for them. But time and health issues have kept me from making them all that different lately. That will change over the next few months. This blog will continue to feature the “G to PG-13” rated writings of Cynthianna and Cindy A. Matthews. The hot, adult-oriented, erotic-romance excerpts and book news will be found exclusively at Celine’s Dreams: http://celinesdreams.blogspot.com . Please become a “follower” of any and all of my blogs by clicking on the “follow this blog” button on the right hand side. Thank you.

What is it? Whatever it was--it works!

I used to share lots of fun and fascinating articles and web sites I came across on the ‘net in my e-newsletter, but in this day and age of Twitter, I tend to “tweet” them instead. If you’d like to follow my infrequent tweets, I invite you to become one of my followers. http://www.twitter.com/cynthianna3

I enjoy interacting with my readers, my friends, family members and other denizens of the electronic age at my author page at Facebook, too. You can “like” my author page at http://www.facebook.com/cynthianna.celinechatillon This past month, I sponsored a contest for new members of my Facebook page. (You can read about it there.) A free e-book prize has been awarded to Linda for joining my Facebook page and leaving a comment. I plan on doing some more giveaways and contest promos again in the future, so keep checking back here for details.

Slowly I’m becoming more in tune with the digital world around me… And I am publishing on a more regular basis again. Many of my books are now available in Kindle format (especially Celine’s titles), so if you got a Kindle for Christmas or your birthday, can I entice you to give them a try? You can find direct links to my Kindle books at my Amazon author pages:
Celine Chatillon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002CQY3BM
Cynthianna: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002CQZYGK
Book reviews and “tagging” and “liking” of my books at Amazon is appreciated.

Mardi Gras tip #6: If you're nice to the parade marshals and the cops, you get more beads!

I’m still updating my author pages at Goodreads. I should get there in the end, but if you’re tech-savvy and can walk me through it, feel free to drop me a line and share your sage advice. Thanks! So far, I think I’ve discovered Celine’s author page and updated it at http://www.goodreads.com/celinechatillon_cynthianna
If you’re a Goodreads junkie, please feel free to become my “fan” and rate/review my books.

Okay, now’s the time to actually blog a little about my upcoming releases…

Slowly catching up with the digital book revolution—I discovered my writer’s how-NOT-to from Uncial Press, The Curse of the Manuscript Eating Slushpile Monster, is now available for the Nook reader at Barnes and Noble. Just do a search for it by title at bn.com and it should pop up. It’s also available in print with a shorter title, Defeating the Slushpile Monster, from Smiling Assassin Productions.

My science fiction-romance novella, Unalone, is coming soon from Devine Destinies books. I don’t have a release date for it yet, but you’ll be the first to know if you follow this blog. A brief synopsis can be read on my web page: http://www.cynthianna.com

Both my romantic fiction persons are working together on another science fiction book series along with several other writers. We’re still in the preliminary planning stages and we don’t want to spill the beans just yet—sorry. Keep it tuned here for updates… particularly if you’re a fan of vampires, steampunk, action-adventure and romantic-suspense.

Here’s something different I’ve written lately—I’m writing sketch comedy and I’ve seen it produced onstage at a local night club. My husband, author Adrian J. Matthews, and I know Brendan Allen, an up and coming actor. We thought we’d like create some new material for him and his fellow cast members. Our sketch “2011: A Fridge Oddity” was performed this past week by The Non-Prophets Theater group during their “Non-Prophet Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine” sketch night at Lemmon’s in St. Louis. We really enjoyed seeing our work performed and thought the cast did a great job. They might even do another sketch we wrote next month.

This new blog post has gone on long enough! If you want to see what Celine Chatillon is up to bookwise, head on over to her Celine’s Dreams blog—now. And be sure to leave me a comment here telling me what all you'd like to see in upcoming blogs.

2011-03-25T11:41:00.001-05:00

myLot User Profile

2011: The Year Without Health Insurance

2011-03-02T15:32:00.007-06:00

In January, I started off 2011 with my blog post 2011: The Year Without Snark, a plea for more civility on the Internet and in all our personal communications. Thanks to all who commented or have taken the pledge seriously and are doing your best to eradicate snark in all its nasty forms.

This month, I’m tackling yet another example of uncivilized behavior apparent in the world today, particularly in the good ol’ U.S.A. You’d be correct in assuming this is a piece about the unfair current state of health care in this country. What you might not have guessed is that I, your dear blogger, am caught in the middle of the whole sordid mess.

Yes, I’m one of those Americans who *gasp!* are currently without decent health insurance.

Since there really is no “emergency back-up plan” for Americans once they’re unemployed (or the family member whose insurance plan included them becomes unemployed) other than the ridiculously expensive COBRA option, we go overnight from being freely allowed in the front door of a doctor’s office if we have a complaint to being told (sometimes politely, sometimes not) to get lost. I think the acronym COBRA says it all—we are transformed into poisonous snakes who aren’t worthy of a fairly priced (or free for those who can’t afford it) health insurance plan. And the fear of snakes is a very common phobia indeed.

So we are forced to choose between health care and food and shelter. After the last month of record setting low-temperatures and snow dumps in the Midwest, guess which items we chose to fund? Well, we didn’t quite freeze and we didn’t eat like kings, but we’re still here.

At the prodding (read: demanding) of my mother, I finally found an overpriced, super-high deductible, temporary health insurance plan we can barely afford to tie us over for at least six months. However, I hold little hope that it will actually help out much should the need arise. If the deductible is more money than you have, and you’re currently unemployed and living on your meager savings, how the heck are you suppose to meet the deductible? Will a surgeon perform emergency surgery knowing you’re only going to pay him a small fraction of the bill? I suspect hospitals routinely use these temporary health insurance cards for toilet paper for all their worth.

To be honest, I carried my defunct insurance card in my wallet around for a while, so overwhelmed was I at the prospect of being denied medical help. I figured if I was in a coma or knocked unconscious, the paramedics or police would rummage around in my purse and find the said lapse insurance card and assume that I was properly insured and would give me the emergency medical care I require. Only after I became conscious and they found out the truth would they have been forced to kick me out of my I.C.U. bed and tell me not to come back until I could afford treatment.

Yes, it is a worse case scenario, and I do have an overactive imagination I’ll admit, but somehow I get the feeling this scenario is based more on fact than on fiction.

Since no one enjoys a whiner, I direct your attention now to a blog written by a friend who expresses her concerns over the current healthcare debacle quite well:
souptonutts.blogspot.com

How can we prevent our fellow unemployed/underemployed citizens from discovering their health isn’t important as those with money and power just because they’re not carrying around a current, decent health insurance card? You do wonder if the darn cards aren’t made of platinum or gold… In some way, perhaps they are.

ADDITIONAL: I'm currently reading Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former insider who describes the whole WikiLeaks phenomenon. One of the more interesting quotes I've come across has to deal with a leak about a German pharmaceutical company.

...The public didn't take much interest in the files we published in November 2009 concerning a German pharmaceutical company. If I had to name my favorite leaks from that year, these files would definitely be among them. They read like a case study in corruption and can be easily understood by laymen.

The files concerned payments made by pharmaceutical representatives to doctors so that they would prescribe more of the company's medications. We published ninety-six pages of investigations carried out by police and prosecutors. They detailed the practices used by some pharmaceutical company representatives. If doctors prescribed their patients those products, they received a cut of the additional profits. Moreover, there were direct payments. In an internal e-mail, one of the company's regional directors had written, "If a doctor wants money, call me and we'll find a way." Another means of encouraging physicians to prescribe more of the company's products was to give them coupons for expensive seminars.

---from Inside WikiLeaks, pp. 50-51. (Daniel Domscheit-Berg with Tina Klopp, Crown Publishers, NY)

It does make one wonder who really is driving healthcare costs through the roof--the doctors, the insurance companies or the pharmaceutical industry. Of course, we'll blame (and double bill) the patients... After all, they can help it if they get sick or injured, can't they?

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-01T13:16:00.007-06:00

Happy Valentines Day! Yes, we've made it through January and on to February and the winter storm of the century. Today we're stuck inside with nothing better to do than to try and cheer everyone up. What better way than by posting a short and funny video?

Enjoy "Cupid to the Rescue"--and tell us what you think. :)

Cupid, Tom and Becky are all "Pocket Personalities", a new arts endeavor by me and my very creative husband. We thought others might enjoy owning a miniature character from literature or history that means something special. They make excellent teaching aids for educators and of course they make super gifts. Plus, we are taking personal commissions, our first big project being a complete "family portrait" for my sister's family. That's fourteen kids, grandkids, husbands and wives altogether in peg doll form.

It certainly is a different than making everyone sit for a stuffy and boring oil painting to hang on the wall, don't you think? Who wouldn't enjoy seeing their loved ones in doll form? (And they make a great way to teach little ones about their family members.)

Pocket Personalities now available at Theophilus Saxe's Emporium:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/theophilussaxe

Update: And just in time for Valentine's Day...

"Pride and Peg-judice: a vignette not by Jane Austen"

Let us know what other literary or historical characters you'd like to see in a video. We've had a lot of fun making them!

2011: The Year Without Snark

2011-01-01T17:25:00.003-06:00

I’ve just about had it with 2010, and now that it’s over with, so much the better!

The year itself didn’t aggravate me. The blistering month long heat wave in summer didn’t do it. The fact that I was injured on the job, became unemployed and don’t have health insurance doesn’t even raise my blood pressure as much as this one thing does. A small outbreak of tornados on New Years Eve about a mile down the road from our neighborhood didn’t even rile me. What truly got my goat this past year were some of my fellow human beings’ lousy, mean-spirited attitudes and how they expressed them publicly.

Consequently, my number one new year’s resolution for 2011 is to ELIMINATE ALL TRACE OF SNARKINESS FROM THE FACE OF THE PLANET.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, here are a couple of definitions. From the Urban Dictionary:

Snarky: Critical in a curmudgeonly sort of way.

From David Denby’s book Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits (Subtitled It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation), Simon & Schuster, 2009:

Snark attacks individuals, not groups, though it may appeal to a group mentality, depositing a little bit more toxin into already poisoned waters. Snark is a teasing, rug-pulling form of insult that attempts to steal someone’s mojo, erase her cool, annihilate her effectiveness, and it appeals to a knowing audience that shares the contempt of the snarker and therefore understands whatever references he makes. It’s all jeer and josh, a form of bullying that, except at its highest levels, beggars the soul of humor.

Bullying. Jeering. Teasing. Insulting. Contempt. Real positive behavior there, snarkers.

Whether you believe like Denby that the word “snark” originated with Lewis Carroll’s classic nonsense poem, “The Hunting of the Snark”, or it comes from a combination of the words “snide” and “remark”, I hope you agree with me that it’s not a positive form of communication. “Snide remark” pretty much says it all.

I’m tired of all the unnecessary snideness in the world today. It’s mean, it’s low and it doesn’t help people feel any better about their situation when snarkers are trying to score laughter points off their fellow human being’s misery by being sarcastic. I guess the idea of “killing someone with kindness” has transformed itself with “killing someone with verbal abuse.”

Case in point, what did I do to deserve a snarky email response to simply applying for a job? If I’m not qualified or the position is filled, simply say so and can the self-righteous nasty reply. It makes one wonder about the qualifications of an individual working in a human resources department who would go to all this trouble to keep me from ever applying to that firm again. (Don’t worry. If that’s the snarky attitude prevalent there, I won’t.)

Whatever happened to good manners? Are they dead and gone in our society never to be seen again? I don’t think so. I think they’re still out there, cowering in the shadows, afraid of being shot down by the multitude of snarky commentators out there. But those of us who follow Thumper’s Rule (“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say nothing at all.”) I say it’s time to stand up and speak out (politely, of course) against snark and end this plague of negative nincompoops for good.

I realize this is probably an insurmountable task. I know I can’t do it all myself, so I’m asking you to join me on this worthy crusade. Pass the word about the internet via Twitter, Facebook, My Space and What-Have-You-App on your iPhone or Droid and let others know that you, too, are sick and tired of nastiness in tweets, messages, emails, in witty but acid-laced book/theatre/movie/product reviews, hatred expressed in literature or drama as a whole and in the way many think a normal conversation must start with some sort of put-down. To put it simply in Nancy Reagan’s famous parlance: JUST SAY NO TO SNARK.

Look at me—I’m resorting to all capitals to get my point across, a trick I abhor as a copyeditor. It just goes to show how angry I am whenever I encounter snark!

If you agree with me, sign the form below and post it on your bulletin board at work, school, home, church or on a telephone poll on the way to the grocery store. Encourage others to do the same.

2011: THE YEAR WE SAY “NO” TO SNARK

I solemnly swear that I will do just that—not swear, or resort to unkind words or the verbal bullying of my fellow Internet inhabitants, my friends, family members, co-workers, strangers or other persons unknown—and that I will do my best to lessen the evil impact of all incidences of snark I encounter by encouraging good manners, constructive criticism and kindness to all parties involved.

SIGN:

DATE:

Please leave a comment on this blog and tell me what plans or successes you’ve had in this campaign against rudeness. Together we can make this a better world!

Thank you, Cindy A. Matthews

The Christmas Tree Without Presents

2010-12-07T17:53:00.005-06:00

The lights shine just as brightly on a Christmas tree without presents.

And there's a whole lot more room under it to position your nativity scene, Christmas village, HO train track, stuffed animals, Santa figurines or other decorations you've accumulated and managed to hang on to over the years.

Looking at my Christmas tree this year, I can see just how much I have been blessed. I have been fortunate to accumulate many ornaments just by living this long and for having friends and family members who have gifted me with such treasures. None of my ornaments are what you'd call "pricey", but to me they are "price-less". What price can you put on love and good memories?

It's a difficult holiday season for us this year without an income and without much hope of finding jobs in this bleak economy, but for now we can afford to keep the lights turned on our Christmas tree and that is enough. When I think of all those who don't even have this much--no place to call home or no tree filled with the ornaments of good memories--I try to stop my pity-party and mentally kick myself in the rear. But I won't lie to you--it's difficult.

If I could give everyone in the world a gift, I'd like to give the gift of hope. Hope that tomorrow the tree will have presents and that the lights will always be turned on, twinkling in the darkness, proclaiming that a Light bigger than ourselves is shining over us. May He shine over us all forever.

A book trailer I helped to make...

2010-11-13T11:29:00.001-06:00

Check out this cool book trailer I helped create this week. I took a lot of the photos that were used as a basis for the "sketches" and located a few of the others. The music from Incompetech.com is really stirring, too, don't you think?

Better yet, The Hetzenberg Chronicles: Volume 1, is now on sale until the end of the year. It's available at Amazon and via the publisher, Smiling Assassin Productions, too. The author always gets more royalties if you buy directly through the publisher, you know. Remember that whenever you shop at Amazon. ;-)

More videos should be on their way soon and can be found at our You Tube "Smiling Assassin Presents" Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cynthianna63?feature=mhsn

Enjoy!

Smiling Assassin Presents...

2010-11-06T20:01:00.002-05:00

The hubby and I finally did it!

Check out our new video showcasing some of our most original and functional designs for the most discriminating SF/Fantasy/Steampunk enthusiast:

Smiling Assassin Presents...

Enjoy! (And don't forget to contact us early with your holiday orders.) ;)

http://www.smilingassassin.com

"Original and Functional art for gamers and SF fans"

Writers Don't Get an Even Break

2010-10-17T15:52:00.002-05:00

I'm re-printing a blog post here written by my husband, A J Matthews. It demonstrates the uphill climb (and constant slogging) we writers take as we try to make a living (or at least sell a few copies of our books).

A Disappointing Review...

Somewhere in the middle of the night my name must have changed. This from the book review of The Hetzenberg Chronicles, vol. 1, as printed in issue 23 of Battlegames magazine.

"...Mr Mitchell clearly had enormous fun writing this book and his enthusiasm for his characters is obvious, but alas, not contagious. The lack of either any wargames background or historical verisimilitude make it hard to think of anyone to whom I could honestly recommend this book." --John Preece

Hello? Excuse me? Mr. Mitchell? Who he?

A writing friend, an award-winning book reviewer for print and online publications, and who has been quoted in Publisher's Review on more than one occasion, upon reading this review states:

It appears that the editor of this publication doesn't proof his book reviewers' articles--as seen by the reviewer calling you by a different last name. What is more troubling, is it is obvious that the "reviewer" didn't read your book at all or at least not in its entirety. He seems to be copying details from the blurb on the back cover and possibly picked up something from your blog, but he doesn't authoratively discuss the plot, the characterizations or the over-all tone of the piece. (He does seem to have an ax to grind against "historical romance" or novels in general. Where did he come up with this idea your book is a romance anyhow? I'd classify it as "historical fiction" since Imaginations are a "fictional" concept as you explained it to me.) I find this "review" very sloppy journalism, and paints all of us who write professional book reviews as incompetents. I mean, how can you trust this person's opinion (and by extension, the magazine's) on anything if they can't 1) bother to proofread articles for inaccuracies before publication, and 2) they don't insist on their "reviewers" reading the entire book before reviewing it. Very disappointing on the whole.

So what would you do in my place? As the quote above says, it's very disappointing. I had hoped to receive an honest review from someone who would see this as a novel and not a dedicated wargames publication full of rules, background data etc. How do you feel if you've read the review -- do you think this reviewer has 1) read the book 2) has an axe to grind against novels in general and romance in particular (and why did he assume the book is an historical romance? Anyone who has read the book would know it isn't). 3) I can understand publisher Henry Hyde had some personal troubles to deal with recently, but why did Battlegames magazine let this pass un-copyedited?

I am rather hurt by this, and don't know if I should pursue the matters outlined above with Battlegames or not. At the moment I'm working on the next volume of The Hetzenberg Chronicles - The Heat of Battle - but such a "review" from a respected magazine doesn't make it easy to continue. Any help or advice you fans of the Hetzenberg Chronicles can give will be appreciated.

Thanks for reading and for your support,

A J Matthews - not Mitchell!

If you feel inspired, give A J a comment at his "Hetzenberg Chronicles" blog and let him know that all is not lost. Thanks.

Why Can’t We All Just Learn to Recycle?

2010-09-06T16:53:00.003-05:00

You’re not seeing things—that’s a piano….sitting by a dumpster. It’s being thrown out. It wasn’t a particularly good piano (I couldn’t get it to make a sound), but you’d think its last owner could have found another home for it instead of simply tossing it out on the junk heap, wouldn’t you?

I discovered the piano the other night while out walking with the hubby. He honestly didn’t see it when I pointed it out to him, and he’s got better eyesight than I do. The reason he didn’t see it was probably because there are so many items being dumped in our neighborhood on a weekly basis that something the size of a piano doesn’t really make a mark on your conscious. We regularly spy sofas, overstuffed chairs, kitchen tables, end tables, mattresses, dressers, plastic cabinets, bookshelves, entertainment centers, televisions, lamps, urns, carpets, Christmas decorations, etc., being put out with the trash. A lot of these items we’ve put to good use, too.

And before you ask, yes, we do have mandatory recycling where we live. We have to sort our garbage out into bins for plastics, papers, metals and other recyclable materials. But for some unknown reason, you can’t make people pick up the phone and call Goodwill or the Salvation Army to take away these large items to sell and put the money to good use. Sad, isn’t it?

If you don’t want to garage sale your items, put them on Craig's List, or donate them to a charity shop, people like us will continue to put them to good use ourselves (if we can use and/or move the item—the piano was a bit out of our league). But wouldn’t it be nice if we could all come up with a better alternative to rid ourselves of old furniture items rather than sending them off to the landfill?

Hot Time in the City

2010-08-01T17:59:00.007-05:00

Hot time! Summer in the city--back of my neck gettin' hot and gritty!

Yeah, it's summer, it's sweltering, and my melted brain has resorted to quoting (badly I might add) lyrics from a classic top 40 hit. It can't get much worse than this, huh?

Well, all hasn't been that bad this summer. The handsome man and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on July 3rd. Yipee!! We still haven't killed each other (yet) in spite of the heat. The honeymoon keeps going on and on.

Revisiting the scene of the crime--er, our wedding in the park gazebo!

And we've done a bit of "time-traveling" again at a regional historical re-enactment. Here are some photos from the first ever "Muster at Forest Glen". It was held at a very lovely park near Danville, Illinois, and a good contingent of French and Indian War re-enactors showed up (in spite of the horrible heat and humidity) and some of the public did as well, too.

Discussing topics of high importance--like how to avoid the French field surgeon who'd bleed you to death!

Drilling before the battle.

You try smiling in the heat in all these layers. Our ancestors were first-rate masochists!

Big cannon goes KA-BOOM!

Diana demonstrates the art of spinning to eager young minds.

Adrian hits the bullseye with his tomahawk throw. Don't mess with him, Frenchpersons!

The British contingent at colors.

As soon as it cools down here, I promise to write something more coherent. In the meantime, all we can do is sit and fan ourselves silly... There's really nothing else one can do when it's 110 degrees in the shade, is there?

Defeating the Slushpile Monster - Now in print!

2010-06-27T17:43:00.004-05:00

Now in print from Smiling Assassin Productions, my funny writer's how-NOT-to Defeating the Slushpile Monster

According to a recent National Education Association's Reading at Risk study, 15 million Americans have attempted some kind of "creative writing".

Very few of these writers have had their work successfully published.

Are you one of them?

Want to know how you can improve your chances?

You can find the answers in my funny guide for serious writers. Laugh while you learn how you can improve your manuscript's chances of surviving the arduous submission process. Find out how "Only You Can Prevent Formatting Follies" and how to avoid those "Prose Pile-Ups on Publication Road".

An excerpt from Defeating the Slushpile Monster by Cindy A. Matthews:

Editors are busy people. Sometimes they are not in a very good frame of mind by the time they’ve read their way down a stack of submissions to reach yours. In order to improve your chances, you’ve got to make the editor want to read your manuscript, even if the office is dark and spooky and she’s sitting all alone in her cubicle.

How do you go about doing that?

The answer is so simple you’ll probably slap your forehead in disgust for not thinking of it first: Never submit a first draft.

The purple-crayon manuscript was a first draft manuscript. It doesn’t matter if the author claims to have re-written her story two-hundred times before she sent it in for consideration, the end result is the same.

The purple-crayon manuscript suffers from a terminal case of first-draftitis. Remember, an editor is a busy person. (Feel free to substitute the word “agent” for editor throughout this text if it applies to your situation.) An editor has neither the time nor inclination to help you shape up your story. Your novel needs to be complete, and it needs to be publishable with only minor fixes. To submit anything else to an editor is to waste his or her valuable time.

This point cannot be emphasized enough and is perhaps more true today than ever before. Only best-selling authors like Stephen King, Nora Roberts or J.K. Rowling can sell a first draft for seven figures or more. But, then again, these big-names probably could sell their hand-scribbled grocery lists for at least half that much. We no-name writers should be so lucky!

I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but I’d rather you hear the following from me rather than from someone with less tact. So get the moony-eyed notion out of your head right now as I deliver the bad news: Editors have better things to do with their time than work with you to improve your book until it meets their standards for publication.

I know it hurts to think you and your book aren’t special, but there you go. If you make the mistake of writing a letter to an editor asking her to make an exception just for you, she’ll promptly tell you that sort of thing isn’t in her job description and reject your work without even reading a page.

What are some of the symptoms of first draftitis? Can this dreaded manuscript disease be avoided?

Read on. You’ll see that most cases are far from deadly and that the patient can be resuscitated easily and live to become published another day.

Your Manuscript = Your Business Card

Have you ever been on a job interview? Have you ever attended a business convention? Have you ever owned and run your own business? If you’ve done any of these things, then you probably have encountered business cards.

A business card has a dual purpose. First of all, it tells people who you are. It says, “I’m Joe Blow, licensed plumber,” or “I’m Betty Buys-a-Lot, personal shopper.” Secondly, a business card tells a potential customer or client what to expect from you and your service. “Pipes unclogged in five minutes flat or double your money back.” “Hate shopping for your mother-in-law’s birthday? I can help!”

Pretty basic, right?

So, what is a writers business card? Why, his or her manuscript, of course. Remember, the editor is a busy person. She wants to read your manuscript and quickly make up her mind if her publishing firm can use your services. She needs to be convinced from the very first line, the very first paragraph, the very first page that you are who you claim to be—a capable writer—and that you can deliver the goods—a complete, publishable manuscript.

Your job is to make your business card as professional as possible. No sprinkled lavender cologne, no fancy fonts, print faces or paper colors. This is a professional presentation—not your teenager’s diary. Act like a professional and you will be treated as such.

Defeating the Slushpile Monster now available in print. (E-formats available from Uncial Press.)

The City of the Sun

2010-05-31T18:30:00.002-05:00

We toured Cahokia, the so-called "lost city of the sun", over Memorial Day weekend. I had briefly mentioned the Cahokians, and even gave a possible reason to their sudden disappearance in my book HANGING WITH A TIME SURFER, but I hadn't visited it in person until now.

There are many, many "mounds" of various sizes and shapes at the site, but it is Monk's Mound that is by far the most famous. Over twenty-two million cubic tons of dirt was hauled by human labor alone to create the structure. The Cahokians did not have pack animals. It took about 300 years they estimate for them to build the final mound as we see it today, from about 900 to 1200 AD.

A recreation of some of the towering stockade that surrounded the "sacred precincts" of Monk's Mound and the homes of the elite citizens. 20,000 trees were used and it was over 2 miles in circumference. It was rebuilt about four times in the history of the city. With an urban density of 4500 people per square mile, Cahokia (or whatever its true name was--now lost as well) was every bit as cosmopolitan as the St. Louis metro area in which it resides currently.

The Monk's Mound as seen from across the way. It does look like a hill--but how the heck did a hill get there? Eventually, the thick-headed French and English speakers in the 18th century figured out it was a man-made construction. Still, they built farms on top of it, potentially damaging precious archaeological remains.

It was the equivalent of walking up ten flights of steps to get to the top of Monk's Mound. Yes, that's TEN flights of steps. On a hot, humid, sunny day... good exercise!

The brave adventurers made it to the top of the Monk's Mound and have enough energy to smile!

Adrian points out the summer solstice at the "Woodhenge" calendar site. They built a sun calendar similar to Stonehenge. Actually they built about 5 or 6 of them over the centuries. Predicting the seasons were important to the Cahokians, who planted an abundance of corn and traded widely, from Wisconsin to the tip of Florida and from the Eastland woodlands to the Rockies.

Everyone loves a good mystery, and the "lost city of the sun" is a good one. The worrisome problem is that this U.N. World Heritage Site could be "lost" once more--to urban sprawl. We need to do what we can to save the memories of our ancestors before it is too late. Learn more about Cahokia and how you can help preserve our nation's prehistoric heritage at their web site: http://www.cahokiamounds.org/

Steampunk!

2010-04-25T19:32:00.007-05:00

Chip-chip! Cheerio! We're off on an African safari... Not quite! Keep reading to see where these wonderfully costumed individuals are up to.

Steampunk takes on the science fiction genre from a sort-of-Jules Verne or H.G. Wells point of view. These photos were taken recently at the first annual Steamposium convention. This shot shows Captain (Professor) Theophilus Saxe admiring a bit of steampunk ingenuity at the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. "Marvelous stuff!" cried the professor. What does it do? We haven't a clue!

Baron Von Bar demonstrated his portable refreshment device. Quite interesting. I can imagine it would be very popular at fraternity parties and spring holidays for collegiate types.

Professor Saxe stands proudly at the gates. Pith helmets and paramilitary garb seems to work well within the steampunk genre. (And it just plain looks good while standing next to an example of Victorian architecture.)

The professor enjoyed a ride in a Victorian "lift" even while it was grounded at the architectural display at the City Museum.

Advanced weaponry with a brass and copper twist were evident. This Prussian officer's weapon was quite imposing (but harmless).

Who you going to call when you have Victorian era ghosts? You know who--Ghostbusters Steampunk style!

You can never how too many brass bits on your head. Never at a steampunk tea party!

These charming gentlemen were typical of your steampunk enthusiast. Extremely bright and creative, you can see that our gent in the red waistcoat doesn't let the 9 pound mechanical arm resting on his shoulder frighten him away.

Because, after all, steampunk is a fun activity for the whole family--right down to the youngest explorer in the group. The professor and I certainly had a good time at Steamposium and can't wait until we can don our pith helmets and brass goggles once more.

Rebirths and Renewals

2010-03-20T17:47:00.006-05:00

The last week of winter turned into a beautiful spring-like fest in the Midwest. It has greatly revived my spirits.

I’ve always liked the springtime. Spring is the season of rebirths and renewals. The tiny crocus flower pokes its tender green shoots above the cold soil, promising delicate purple blossoms within the week. The daffodils and lilies soon follow heralding Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of our savior—the ultimate rebirth, the victory of love over death itself.

On a more ordinary level, March brings a novel release from yours truly, the re-release of my romantic-comedy of errors Scrambled Eggs. The story starts out on a windy early spring day where our heroine Sharlene literally runs over the hero Zack on a street corner with a baby carriage. Yeah, you got that right--a baby carriage. I think the whimsical cover art depicts the scene pretty accurately, with equal amounts of humor, attraction and embarrassment evident.

To buy Scrambled Eggs head over to Mojocastle Press. You can read a short excerpt as well there.

Speaking of new releases, I’ve got a new domain name for my non-fiction site. The "old last name" is no more, since I've been married for almost nine joyous months to fellow author Adrian J. Matthews. The new domain name is CindyAMatthews.com and I have another re-release coming soon from Smiling Assassin Productions. My funny writer’s guide, The Curse of the Manuscript-Eating Slushpile Monster, which is currently available in e-formats from Uncial Press, will soon become available in a handy trade paperback print book. Retitled Defeating the Slushpile Monster, it contains the same helpful info as the Uncial Press e-book with the added bonus of a few extra tips from my booklet Straight Answers to Tough Writing Questions. Yes, wannabe writers you’ll get all this along with a great (and funny) new cover, too.

March really is the month of rebirths and renewals. Hopefully my fiction and my non-fiction books will help jumpstart my rather sluggish writing career. March being my birthday month as well, you might say I've "renewed" myself by turning another year older. Hmm... looking at all the candles on my cake, maybe I should have skipped that particular renewal, huh?

Happy Easter, y'all!

Love is... a Banoffee Pie

2010-02-13T20:17:00.002-06:00

Love is… a Banoffee Pie

I was going to write something deeply profound and touching about how wonderful it is when you finally meet your soul mate and marry him and share a lovely, romantic weekend together… but I won’t.

Instead, I will give you all a recipe for Banoffee Pie.

What has a delicious toffee-cream-banana-topped pie in a graham cracker crust got to do with love? A lot, since my beautiful soul mate is making one for me this very instant in honor of our first Valentine’s Day together as man and wife. And if you can’t figure out how several cups of brown sugar and condensed milk shows how “sweet” he is on me, then you need to stop rinsing your mouth out daily in vinegar and watch a marathon of Groundhog Day, The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates.

Then you’ll see what I mean.

Banoffee Pie

1 - graham cracker pie crust (or make a crushed cookie pie crust of your own choosing)

5 ½ oz. unsalted butter
2/3 cup of brown sugar
14 oz. can condensed milk

2 –bananas cut up in coin-shaped slices
10 oz. whipping cream
some chopped, toasted hazelnuts (if you like)
chocolate shavings (if you like)

To make the toffee filling, place butter and sugar in a saucepan and heat until the sugar is dissolved, the pour in the condensed milk. Cook over a medium heat for 5 – 6 minutes, stirring continuously until the mixture has thickened and turned golden. Hint: scrape the bottom of the pan continuously as you stir. Don’t overcook it or your mixture will turn to thick fudge.

Pour the toffee mixture into the pie crust and chill one hour until firm.

Slice bananas and place on top of the toffee mixture. Whip the cream until it holds its shape and pile on top of the bananas, then decorate the top with chopped nuts and chocolate shavings as you like. Enjoy!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Winning Resolutions

2010-01-16T16:34:00.005-06:00

Two silly authors mug at the camera on New Year's Eve

Happy 2010 everyone out there in blogland! I admit to being slow getting around to making my list of things I want to accomplish this year. And I have the same ol’ excuses as last year—no time, day job, stress, too much on my plate, etc. If I can suspend reality for a moment and pretend that everything in my “real world” is going smoothly, I can focus my thought processes on the important stuff—that is, creating romantic fiction and sharing it with my readers.

So without further ado…

1. I resolve to have at least one book release this year.

2. I resolve to write at least one new story, screenplay, novel or novella this year.

3. I resolve to keep up better with my online blogs, forum, newsletters, My Space pages, Facebook and Yahoogroups. (If I can ever figure out Twitter, I will try to keep up with that one as well!)

In order to meet these goals, I promise to:

1. Become better organized, particularly with my time.
2. Give in less to anxiety and frustration.
3. Focus more on the joy of writing rather than on the stress of not being able to make ends meet.

I’ve got at least two books coming out this year—so that’s one third of my resolutions met already!

Scrambled Eggs will be a Mojocastle Press release written under my "Cynthianna" pen name. Scrambled Eggs knocks the classic “secret baby” storyline on its head. Sharlene has fallen for the father of her unborn child--and she doesn’t even know it’s him!

Sharlene always wanted a baby, but her husband only wants a child to secure his position in his wealthy uncle’s will. A mix-up at the fertility clinic reveals his hypocrisy, prompting a pregnant Sharlene to strike out on her own.

Single Sharlene “runs into” struggling part-time college student Zack and falls for him. Will Zack love a child that isn’t his? And will Zack find the courage to tell Sharlene that he’s a former sperm donor and possibly the real father of her child before she goes into labor?

My second release in 2010, Seven for Seduction (written under my Celine Chatillon pen name), will be a Liquid Silver Books release in the coming months. It’s the story of Jodi and her co-workers in an all female office. One day, her boss hires Brent, a “token male”. Now it’s a free-for-all with every gal trying to get the guy first.

Jodi decides she’s not up for such shenanigans and refuses to play the game. But somehow it’s Jodi refusing to play that turns Brent on the most…

Moral of the story? Sometimes when you don’t try so hard you do win!

Here’s to all of our “winning resolutions” this year. Let me know what a few of your resolutions are, and I’ll toss your name into the hat for a free copy of Seven for Seduction or Scrambled Eggs when they come out. You’ve got nothing to lose playing this game. ;-)

Dear Santa...

2009-12-13T18:06:00.004-06:00

Dear Santa,

It’s been many years since I’ve written you a letter. I apologize for that, but you know how it is. You grow up and you get really busy raising children and working and generally just trying to survive that you never quite find the time to check in with old friends. This year has been no exception—and, in fact, has been busier and more hectic than ever—but something just starting niggling in the back of my mind telling me that I should drop you a line. Here goes.

“What do I want for Christmas?” you ask. I have everything I want this Christmas, thank you very much. I have my handsome husband Adrian who is every girl’s dream man beside me and things couldn’t be better. My oldest daughter is coming home for Christmas from her graduate studies abroad, and she’s staying with us for the month. I am very grateful for that, but after the month of sharing the same bathroom we might be singing a different tune.

My youngest daughter will be home soon from college, too. She can’t wait to see her sister, and I can’t wait to see her. She attends school only 120 miles away, but she rarely gets a ride into town. I’m praying for reconciliation and times of honest conversation with both her and her sister.

If there’s one thing I wish you could bring me, Santa, it’s another way to make a living. I really miss writing and promoting my books, but it doesn’t pay the rent (or even the groceries or the electric bill). My day job is now ten hours a day and they’re pressuring me to work overtime as well. I physically and mentally can’t take it much longer there. Could you please help me to find a more uplifting job closer to where I live that doesn’t drain me so much? With the extra time and flow of creative juices, I could get back into writing again. It would make me ever so happy. Thanks.

Also, if you could, can you tell those folks on your “naughty” list that pirating e-books (as well as song files and movies) is just plain wrong? I never really worried about e-book pirating until recently—the big sales of Kindles and Sony e-Readers has caused the plague of e-piracy to grow. I’ve even come across some of my books being pirated at various pirate sites. I suppose I should feel flattered, but instead I feel worse than ever. I have little energy to write lately with the long hours at the day job that I’m forced to take since writing pays so very little, and people are stealing royalties from me whenever they don’t purchase my e-books from legitimate sources. And it’s not just me who is hurting—I have hundred of writing acquaintances who are also being robbed of royalties by e-pirates. I know many of these new Kindle owners don’t understand how important it is to us small fry authors and how little money we make on our books. Could you please put a bug in their ear and ask them how they’d feel if someone stole something they created so callously and without regard to the income they’re denying their families? Thanks again.

I suppose it’s time I sign off now, Santa. You’ve got a busy night coming soon, and you need to save your energy to give to those who are truly in need. I’m looking forward to the time when everyone everywhere will receive what they truly need at Christmas—of peace on earth, goodwill to men. Then the need to spend massive sums of money we don’t have, on presents we don’t really need, will simply fade away…

Affectionately yours,
Cynthianna

Cannibal Feast!!

2009-10-25T18:37:00.003-05:00

The Gruesome Twosome...

What were you expecting on the week of Halloween? A cheery little blog about a quaint little garden party complete with tea and crumpets and scones with lemon curd?

This past week we were invited to a cannibal feast… And yes, a dead corpse was there along with pate of gray matter and other yummy bits like eyeballs, fingers and worms in dirt. After all, once you dismember the corpse and roast its innards, the worms get to have their feast on the leftovers.

Soylent green, anyone?

One can’t arrive at a cannibal feast in just any ol’ regalia. Oh, no, no, no. One must arrive in the manner one has been invited, which means simply you can’t come dressed up as Dora the Explorer or Tinkerbelle (unless she’s a Goth Tinkerbelle with fangs—that would do nicely). So, my better half and I came as a gun-shot victim and a vampire victim from the 18th century. Our re-enactment clothing has really come in handy this year, as you can tell.

Brain pate on crackers...

This fall has been cold and dark and damp here in the middle of the country, and what with the lackluster economy, things have seemed a bit bleak lately. It’s good to see that many can put these none-to-happy thoughts behind them and get into the Halloween ghoulish spirit. There’s nothing better to take your mind off your troubles like a good party and dress-up occasion. I recommend it highly. Plus, you could always pretend it’s your boss or co-workers who are being barbecued and presented for your consumption…

Bon appetite! (Burp!)

***
If you enjoy vampire stories minus the cannibal feasts, check out my Liquid Silver Book titles HELP! I’M FALLING FOR THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR and my novella “Blood Betrayal” in OF FLESH AND BLOOD. Excerpts available at LSB and at my alter-ego's web site: http://www.celinechatillon.com

Voyages Around the Time Line!

2009-09-22T21:20:00.017-05:00

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog, but I really have a good excuse this month. I’ve been traveling around the timeline.... Literally! No kidding. I even have some photos to prove it.

Before I forget, I’ll be traveling into the future the weekend of October 2-4 to Archon, a science-fiction convention in Collinsville, Illinois. I always enjoy meeting readers, fans and other interesting people at Archon, so be sure to drop in on one of the panels I’ll be on and introduce yourself. I hope to have some copies of my fantasy-screwball comedy, time-traveling novel, LOVING WHO, with me to sign and sell. (Keep your fingers crossed the publisher gets them to me in time.)

Other time periods I’ve experienced this past month include the pre-Civil War period in the “northernmost Confederate-sympathizing city” of Hannibal, Missouri. My husband, Adrian, and I even met and shook hands with Mark Twain “himself”. He’s looking great for his age. What a witty man—marvelously entertaining! Other sites of interest in the Hannibal area included eating at Lulabelle’s, a former bordello (it was in operation up until the 1950s) and touring not one, but two caves. Check out Hannibal for scenic views of the Mississippi and small town life as it was not so many decades ago.

During Labor Day weekend, we visited two historic forts across the Mississippi—Fort De Chatres and Fort Kaskaskia. The first is a French fort built in the early 18th century that was eventually demolished by the British after the French and Indian War. It is partially reconstructed and stands as a testament to a long ago time when other powers ruled this part of the world. Just a few miles down the road stands the remains of Fort Kaskaskia, where Lewis and Clark recruited a dozen men to go on their Voyage of Discovery in 1804. The cemetery of the lost city of Kaskaskia lies nearby, a testament to the power of the river to completely wipe out Illinois’ first capital city in the later half of the 19th century.

From the pre-Civil War period/early colonial era, we jumped back to the late 17th/early 18th century and the Spanish Main as we traveled to the St. Louis Pirate Fest up in Wentzville, Missouri. Yo-ho-ho and a nice pickled egg, me mateys! Pirate Fest has lots of fun entertainment from guys in short pants and more earrings than a jewelry store along with great music groups, such as "3 Pints Gone" and "Queen’s Gambit". We enjoyed food like “bangers and mash” and “jugged fish” while watching the pirates duke it out with the “French” of “Port Royal”. A family-friendly event, Pirate Fest is the last three weekends in September each year. Plan to come aboard!

We hovered around the 18th century and then plunged the next weekend into the 1750s to experience the intense drama of the French and Indian War at Koh-koh-mah, a historic reenactment near Kokomo, Indiana. Primitive camping with plenty of wood smoke permeating your clothes and hair--ah! It was enjoyable weekend in spite of the fact there were no showers or flush toilets. But, hey! This is 250 years ago… You just put on more layers of clothes to cover your funk. I enjoyed wearing long skirts up until Sunday afternoon when a short rain shower broke, drenching the reenacting field and muddying the hem of my nice gown.

But there’s no crying in reenactment—there’s just mud and dust and grime and smoke and lots of fun discussing the lifestyle of the French, British and Native Americans of the era. Adrian had a great time portraying a 78th Frasier Highlander shooting his musket at those pesky French persons who tried to take over the fictional fort. In the end, the British prevailed. (Historically speaking, twenty years down the road, these very same Frasier Highlander soldiers would go on to exact a sort of Scottish vengeance against their English cousins during the American Revolution.) The saddest thing to come out of the French and Indian War, however, is that it soured relations among the English speakers and the Native Americans who had formerly been their allies. The tribes who aligned themselves to the two European superpowers essentially signed away any goodwill they once shared with the white frontier peoples. Many reenactors demonstrated Native American arts and crafts and social/family life at Koh-koh-mah. Without “living historians” how would we know about their rich culture?

Another time travel stop we made this past month (alas, I didn’t have my camera!) was the Wilson’s Creek Battlefield near Springfield, Missouri. Site of one of the bloodiest battles of the early Civil War period, today it lies in a remote, quiet pasture of rolling hills and a bubbling creek… Hard to believe about 3,000 men lost their lives there on an August morning in 1861.

It’s fun being a time-traveler. I plan on using some of the great research I’ve done this past month in a future story or novel. I’d start writing it now if only I had the time--or a time machine!

Will Write for Food!

2009-08-19T21:19:00.005-05:00

Our wedding cake was rather unusual... It was shaped like a TARDIS, the time travel capsule from the BBC series Doctor Who.

I was going to write a little something about my recent marriage to fellow author AJ Matthews, but he beat me to the punch. To quote my English-born hubby: “Ah, bugger!” No matter, I can always find another lofty topic to pontificate upon for this blog, right?

That last sentence proves that I am rusty and don’t have a clue what to write, doesn’t it? Sigh!

I confess I’m terribly out of practice. Think of me as a ballplayer who has been injured and set out on the bench all summer long… and I haven’t been called in to play until the very last play of the very last game of the very last championship series. It’s all up to me to knock one out of the ballpark and make a big “hit” to the adoration of the cheering crowds. Oh, dear… I swung and missed. My confidence has struck out faster than my vain attempts at fanning the air.

(Hmm, note to self: Do not attempt to be creative while listening to the Rolling Stones croon the classic, “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown”. Yeah, it’s a catchy tune with a great danceable beat but still… It just reinforces the fact that I’ve not been able to write anything more than an email in quite some time now, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to write something coherent.)

You’d think being recently married to the most gorgeous, most charming and loving male on Planet Earth would inspire me to write some hot love scenes—and don’t think that it doesn’t—but unfortunately the demanding “day job” gets in the way. It’s either spend what little energy and free time I retain after toiling in the salt mines all week long with the new handsome hubby or completely ignore him and my need for sleep and write. I have chosen the former and not the latter.

Given the choice of which of the two—writing or the day job—to give up the answer is rather easy—I’d lose the day job in a flash if I could support the two of us on my writing. Unfortunately, even when I was fairly free to write full-time, I still couldn’t make a living of it. Sure, I could pay a few bills and go to a few writers’ conferences, but I couldn’t consistently pay rent or keep the heat on in the winter. And always I have this need to eat… Not a lot, mind you, but at least three meals a day, or I pass out from hunger.

So when there’s a choice of write and starve (and freeze) the two of us or stay and slave in the salt mines, you can see what decision I’m forced to make.

But I am more than willing to keep looking for employment elsewhere—employment that doesn’t drain my physical energy and ruin my eyes staring at a flat screen (two actually) all day long and playing with numbers (not my forte). Any and all employers you might know of open looking for a creative type who doesn’t enjoy mindless data entry and anal retentive paper-pushing eight hours a day, any work you think might appeal to a displaced romance novelist, feel free to send my way. Thanks!

In the meantime, don’t forget to buy my books… I still have a few out there and every sale is appreciated. Thanking you in advance… and now it’s back to the grind. That salt doesn’t mine itself, you know!

Our Wedding Day

2009-07-12T07:36:00.007-05:00

Walking down the bridal path...

Yes, it's been a long time since I posted a blog or sent out a newsletter--please forgive me! I guess my best excuse for not writing lately is that I've had a lot on my mind, and now I have another good reason--and all six foot and handsome it is!

Here are some pictures from our recent wedding ceremony. You can view more online at the title link above.

We are gathered here...

Adrian is British and a writer, too. Here is his web site. He enjoys historical re-enacting, hence our rather unique wedding apparel. I'm encouraging him to write now while he's waiting on Uncle Sam to process his paperwork to work legally in this country. But in the meantime, I'm working long hours in the "real world" to pay our bills. Sigh! I do miss writing fiction, non-fiction, anything but emails and brief Twitter or Facebook messages to friends and family, but I have simply neither the time nor the energy to do more. I have to also take care of my college-age daughters (translation: money, more of it needed) and I still do freelance editorial work on the side. There aren't enough hours in the day to really start a writing project, let alone finish one.

The happy couple in 1750s era costume.

I do have some ideas for future novels and stories, and eventually I hope to have my act together so I can at least get started on them. I'll be posting things here when I can, and I'll let you all know when I have any good news about my books in my monthly newsletter.

In the meantime, enjoy the photos of our happy wedding day! (I know I do!)

Alive and Well and Living in a Cleaner Home...

2009-05-24T21:21:00.004-05:00

I got some print copies of my novel LOVING WHO. Looks nice! Available at Amazon, too.

I know it’s been a while—almost two months since I checked in. Forgive me. It’s been stressful, but I’ve made it through to the end of May and happy days are right around the corner.

My fiancé is arriving this week! And I’ve been cleaning house like mad. I’ve not had the energy to do so recently, and I pulled my back out a few weeks ago, but somehow piece by piece I’ve picked up around here. Now to tackle the vacuuming… That might just send me back to the chiropractor if I’m not careful.

I’ve not done much in the way of creative writing, but I’ve been watching a lot of DVDs from the library lately. They’re free and if they’re not quite “latest releases” that’s okay with me. I’ve not been to a movie in the theatre in eons. Well, I’ll take that back. I did see one new movie this past month, Star Trek.

What did I think about it? Hmm… Do I give a spoiler alert or assume you’ve seen it (or heard all about it) already? I hate to spoil a movie for anyone, so I’ll take a neutral position. I’m withholding my opinion on it until I see a sequel. There’s got to be a sequel… It just seems too obvious they introduced all these characters in less than two hours not to bring them back for another two hours of action. Action junkies will love this new incarnation of Star Trek. Fans of the classic series might have a few quibbles with a few plot points (I did), but overall I think its heart is in the right place.

My heart is getting back to its “right place” too. Once my fiancé is here we’ll be planning our wedding in earnest. The Fourth of July is our tentative date. Why not celebrate Independence Day with a wedding? The fireworks are built in!

It’s shaping up to be an exciting summer. Hopefully I’ll find a moment free to do some writing, too.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

2009-04-04T14:21:00.001-05:00

The sun sets over Caister Castle... and so do I.

Another month has come and gone—and I didn’t get hardly anything I wanted to get done in March, done. For some reason, I just can’t give up sleeping, eating or taking daily showers. Those sorts of things really cut into your free time, you know—especially the sleeping.

I’m not getting any creative writing projects I’ve started finished. I’d had hoped to do so during my week off, but I just didn’t have the will to write more than a few pages on my work-in-progress. I’ll admit it, too—my heart simply isn’t into writing fiction lately. E-publishers are folding right and left it seems, taking some of my books along with them. I can’t afford to go to writing conferences and schmooze with the agents and editors from the big houses, so I can’t get a foot in the door by making a personal connection. And having a foot in the door seems to be the only way to gain the big guys’ attention these days.

Everyone with a computer seems to have written a book this past year. The submissions are flooding the slushpiles. You have to do something outrageous or illegal—or both—to get an editor’s attention. Just look at former governor Rod Blagojevich. He’s done both—and now he’s got his own radio talk show. You really wonder if becoming a criminal is where it’s at for becoming a best-selling author.

Oh, well. I can sit around and mope and groan, or I can crawl back into the saddle and get going again. Since I like horses, I’ll go the saddle route.

I think I’ll put the novel writing on hiatus until I’m unemployed at the end of May. Between trying to find another job and keeping the work I have currently, I don’t have energy to write creatively. I can write a short piece here or there (like my blogs), but the stamina to keep my concentration focused for 50,000 words or more isn’t there. I have to spend my free time sending out resumes and dealing with the rejection emails/snail mails. You think an editor’s rejection of your manuscript is bad? “Sorry, but we don’t want you to work for us,” is a lot worse, especially when your bills are due.

Lots of writers tell me this phase will pass, but I’m not so sure. It just feels like that if I give up writing fiction for a short while I’ll never return to it, and that’s tantamount to cutting out my heart. The good news is that my heart is in good hands. April may bring showers, but I’m hoping to have plenty of flowers by May when my fiancé arrives in the US. Then I’ll have another excuse for not writing—but it will be a much happier one!

Trying to Get My Groove Back

2009-02-24T21:36:00.005-06:00

You ever hear of the Book-in-a-Month challenge? I successfully completed one such challenge a few years back (My Brandi Whyne series). Recently, life has gotten in the way of me taking up another one. I need to get back into the habit of writing fiction regularly. I don’t have a month free at this point, but I do have a week. One whole week. I thought in March I’d do a “Book-in-a-Week” challenge during my spring break.

Am I insane? Well, of course I am! But everyone needs a goal, a swift kick to the pants to get them moving again. This certainly will motivate me to write, because to draft a whole novel (50,000 words approx.) in one week I will have to average twenty pages or more a day. That’s about twice as many pages as I’ve ever written in my life. Talk about a lofty goal!

The book I want to write in March is tentatively titled Leaving Who. It's the sequel to my fantasy-adventure-romantic-comedy Loving Who, which is now available in print at Amazon as well as in e-formats from Mojocastle Press.

Habits are hard to break, and I’m out of the habit of writing everyday. Sure, I write emails and work on other paying writing projects, but I’m exhausted by the end of the day from my day job. I fall into my desk chair after I come home from work and turn into an email junkie most nights. It’s not a pretty sight. I seem to be related to or befriended by every email joke junkie from here to Alpha Centauri. I can’t resist junk email, either. I sit brain dead for hours forwarding funnies and Maxine cartoons and chain prayers to friends and family members—who in return send them back to me—and soon I’m drowning in them. Help!

Long ago in the early days of the Internet, I purposefully didn’t check my email until after I’d written my “pages” for the day. I was more disciplined. I made myself write the scene, or as much as I could of a scene, before I dialed up and opened the email box that day. And I only had the one email address, too, and not the multitude I have nowadays.

I can’t easily get rid of the email addresses (they do come in handy at times), and I can’t tell my friends and relatives not to send me email jokes, funnies, prayers, links, and spoofs without hurting their feelings. But there is one thing I can do: I can make a promise to myself for one week to write those pages before I crack open the email box.

It’s going to be tough. I know it. I’ll have to get up early in the morning and not open the “box”… but the email will still be there, calling to me, enticing me away from my task. But I will persevere and make that valiant attempt to finish a novel manuscript. Wish me luck!

PS Check out my latest blog about St. Louis at the Examiner.com Feel free to leave a comment there--or here for that matter! I enjoy hearing back from readers.

These Times Are A 'Changing!

2009-01-24T18:53:00.005-06:00

These times are a'changing... Find out what these thousands are up to in the blog below!

Happy Chinese New Year!

It’s the Year of the Ox they say. Okay, it’s not as flashy as the Year of the Dragon or as comical as the Year of the Monkey, but where would we be without the dependable ol’ ox? We’d all be starving—or at least our ancestors would have starved and we wouldn’t be here now, would we? The ox pulls the plow, the plow tills the field so the farmer can sow grain, and the grain grows so we can have bread. Slow and steady, the ox is a dependable animal that shouldn’t be thought less of or teased for his understated elegance. So, Happy Year of the Ox! May all of us have the strength to trudge along, pulling our plows, like the sturdy, reliable ox.

I realize my New Year’s resolutions are already off, as this blog wasn’t updated earlier in the month as I had intended. I hit the ground running in 2009 with several freelance work projects, and I haven’t had a chance to come up for air until now. But it’s been an exciting year so far, right? We have a new president and hopefully a new sense of optimism. It’s time for a change. I agree.

I know I personally and professionally need to make some changes. I’m working on them—it is difficult and I’m a great procrastinator. I need more people in my life to hold me to my goals and make me work toward my dreams. I confess that I’ve not been writing fiction lately at all. My heart hasn’t been in it. I miss my daughters a lot, and I don’t hear from them often. I work a long, draining job and make a hideous commute daily, and it’s exacting a toll on my body and soul. I seem to catch all the viruses going around. I suffer back and leg pain to an excruciating degree some days. Bitch, bitch, whine, whine, moan, moan…

I would like to say my New Year’s resolutions include getting a decent paying job that isn’t located halfway across the county, but I have to be realistic. The unemployment rate is dismal here as it elsewhere. I’m pretty much stuck with what I’ve stumbled upon until I stumble upon another position. But I can make changes.

I can say that I will write more fiction this year and get those promised sequels to my fantasy-romantic-comedy LOVING WHO and the next story in “The Paranormal Lovers of St. Louis” series out there. I don’t make much money from my fiction writing, but I do enjoy it. Occasionally, one of my readers tells me that they enjoy it, too. That makes it all worth it.

One tiny bit of “change” I did today was go to an open casting call right here in the St. Louis area. Yeah—a movie with George Clooney is going to start filming here in March. It’s based on the novel Up in the Air, and they needed an airport terminal. Guess what? Since St. Louis is no longer a hub airport, Lambert Field has a completely empty concourse for them to use as a set. They need something like 2100 extras to fill it up. I thought, “Why not?” I might not get “the call” but at least I can say I tried.

(I actually have been an extra before, once on an indie film. I went running and screaming up a dark street in a low budget zombie flick. I had fun. Everyone should have to run away from zombies now and then.)

So in case I ever make it big on the Silver Screen, you can say you knew me when I was just a lowly, underpaid, struggling writer. Autographs will still be free, too. ;)

My Angels

2008-12-02T21:50:00.006-06:00

Christmas is a time for angels—angels on my tree, angels on my cards, angels on my door wreath. But angels don’t only present themselves for the holidays. Even if we don’t acknowledge them, they exist all year round. Angels surround us and guide us and nurture us. How can I honor some of my “angels”—those wonderful individuals who have helped me navigate through the rough waters of this past year?

I hand-painted some angel ornaments to present my personal angels as “awards” for their love and assistance, but my poor excuse for art can never be enough to thank them for the help and understanding they’ve given me.

To Elaine (and Doris), my angels at Authorlink: Thanks for another year of work and wonderment reading all those fascinating manuscripts. Here's to a better year in 2009!

To Irfan and Alma, my angels of car repair: Thanks for helping me band-aid my 12 year-old car together for yet another year. Your friendly optimism and auto expertise have kept me on the road for a minimum of cash outlay. And Alma—your Bosnian coffee can’t be beat!

To Joyce and Jerry, my angels of understanding and moral support: You’ve allowed me to help you with your mission to teach English as a Second Language to the immigrant community for six years now. You rescued me from the hospital E.R. when I was without transportation, and given me rides to a job interview and to the airport. Your smiles and belief in me keep me going when I feel overwhelmed. A mere “thank you” can never cover all the wonderful feelings I have for you two!

To Diane, Brooke and John, my angels of vocal music: Thank you all for allowing me to sing with your respective Sweet Adelines’ chorus, Praise Band, and Festival Choir. Singing saves my sanity—I owe you, big time!

To Kathryn, my angel of DVD lending: Thanks for letting me borrow and watch your Babylon 5 episodes. I now know who G’Kar and Londo Mollari are now—and have enjoyed every minute of watching their story play out on the small screen. It’s always great to have a fellow sci-fi geek to chat about our favorite shows and movies with. You’re the best!

To Jenny and Mike, my angels of cell phones and socialization: Thanks for helping me keep connected with the world through your phone plan and through your social opportunities (and good eats). I’ve met some very interesting people at your parties… Call it “geek networking” but it’s always great to know you’re not alone in your interest in things of a science fiction nature. One of these days I’m going to see your names in print (Jenny) and on the silver screen (Mike—special effects guru) and say, “I knew them when!”

To Rob and Rona, my angels of computer repair and Thursday “Happy Hours”: Thanks for your technical expertise and patience when my old PC did the inevitable meltdown. And thanks for all the great get-togethers you’ve hosted at your place. Happy hour is truly a happy time on your patio!

To Zo and Mark, my angels of fun on the river: I enjoyed becoming a "lieutenant commander" on your float trip. May the good ship sail forever!

To Gwen and Ryu, my angels of artistic geekdom and great turkey and stuffing: Thanks for inviting me to your home last year for Thanksgiving dinner and for letting me jabber your ears off about things of a movie nature. Thanks for tips on looking for jobs in the area, too. I can’t wait to see your names someday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

To Linda, Sue, Sue, Barb and all my fellow writers at MoRWA and online: Thanks for the inspiration!

To Donna, my angel of tax preparation: Wow—I could have never figured it all out without you. You literally saved my bacon and saved me bacon, so I didn’t starve later. See you next April!

To Mom, my eternal angel and cheerleader: Enough said!

To Adrian, my angel of all time: Thanks for always being there for me. You’ve dried my tears and listened to my rants and ravings and still didn’t desert me. You put my feelings first and sacrificed so much to keep me on an even keel. You’re my bestest friend ever. I hope to be your bestest friend forever in an official sense one day soon, too. Love ya, my handsome man!

Do you have any “angels” you’d like to honor with a shout out this year? Leave their names and their stories in the comment section below. Everyone who leaves a comment this month will have their name thrown into the hat for an e-book prize drawing.

Merry Christmas to one and all, and especially to my dear angels.

P.S. Speaking of giving out awards, I received one myself recently—my writers’ guide THE CURSE OF THE MANUSCRIPT EATING SLUSHPILE MONSTER has been nominated for an EPPIE Award! The finalists will be announced in March. Read more about my funny, “how NOT to” book at Uncial Press: http://www.uncialpress.com/books/curseoft/curseoft.html and at my web site: http://www.cynthianna.com/slushpile.html

Vote Positive!

2008-11-02T13:06:00.005-06:00

I’ve rapidly grown tired of this presidential campaign season. My weariness of all things political includes local, state and regional campaigns as well. No matter what the major political party is nowadays, they all seem to have one thing in common: They universally resort to slinging mud at their opponents rather than show how they’d go about to positively change the outcome of our current situation. In other words, negativity is the big thing in campaign 2008.

If you don’t think I know what I’m talking about, you could be right. I’m not a pundit or a Ph.D. in poly-sci. But I’ve been conducting my own non-scientific survey since the first political flyer landed in my overcrowded mailbox a month or two back. I’ve kept them all, and I’ve carefully gone through them, dividing them into “positive” and “negative” advertisements. Guess which side enjoyed a landslide victory?

Yes, I know I’m weird. I like to write—enough said. But if even a non-politically astute person such as myself can discern from the mountain of political ads that things have taken a decidedly negative tone in 2008 (even compared to the negativity of past years), then something is amiss. It seems no one has a positive outlook on life, our country or our form of government in general. Every candidate only sees the black clouds, never the silver linings.

Other than throwing open a window and yelling, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (that famous quote from the movie Network), I think the only thing I can do is to “vote positive”. I will vote only for candidates and issues that present their platform in a positive manner. If this means I’ll have to skip voting for a few offices, then so be it.

A blank ballot is a statement in and of itself, isn’t it?

Love, Fun and Fantasy in Loving Who!

2008-09-28T20:20:00.003-05:00

How many alien assassins tracking her down does one fangirl need? That question is answered in my lastest fantasy-romantic-comedy release... Enjoy an excerpt from it this month and leave a comment to be entered into my book drawing. Thanks!

And if you're in the neighborhood, I hope to see you at Archon 32. Don't forget to introduce yourself.

LOVING WHO
by Cynthianna
ISBN: 1-60180-075-4
http://www.mojocastle.com/celine/lovingwho.html

The man...the magic...the movie? Screwball romantic-comedy meets the world of Doctor Who fandom. Cici Connor's life will never be the same when she takes John Smith, a mysterious Brit, into her bed and her life begins to change... possibly for the better. After all, how many alien assassins tracking her does one girl need?

An Excerpt from Loving Who:

That's how it all began. A week later, 'John Smith' sat next to me on my slate-blue sofa with a bowl of microwave popcorn balanced on his lap. His eyes seemed glued to the TV screen as if it was the most wonderful invention to come to St. Louis since the introduction of microwaveable toasted ravioli.

“The crazy things that bloke gets up to,” he murmured as the credits began to roll on the third episode of the latest series. “Quite unbelievable at times.”

I laughed. “That's why it's called science fiction. It sure the heck isn't science fact.”

Suddenly those big brown eyes of his bore into mine. “You enjoy studying the sciences, don't you?”

I swallowed hard. How did he know? I nodded automatically. “Yeah, sure I do. I didn't get a chance to study any science in depth in college, but I've always had a layperson's fascination with all things astronomical.”

“Yes, I noticed your Amateur Astronomer certificate on the wall when we came in. It hangs beside the bookshelf containing an astrolabe, a year's worth of Sky and Telescope, and the hardback edition of Stephen Hawking's' A Complete History of Time.”

Whoa. This John Smith was much more observant that I had credited him. Here I thought for the last three hours he'd been simply enjoying my TiVoed episodes of Doctor Who. Instead, he'd been scoping out my apartment.

“You know what an astrolabe is?” I wondered aloud. Most of my friends had mistaken it for an unsually shaped, miniature telescope.

He frowned, puzzled. “Of course I know what an astrolabe is.”

A chill raced down my spine. Perhaps bringing this handsome stranger home hadn't been such a good idea after all…

“Is your fascination with the heavens why you've become such a fanatic over a television program about a time traveler?” he asked.

I blinked, but still I found myself glued to the spot. “Partly. Mostly it's pure escapism for me. I have to have something in life that will rescue me from this dreary existence occasionally. Doctor Who is a godsend.”

“Even when it went off the air for a decade?”

“Even then. There were the books, the conventions, the awful TV movie and the fans. The fans are the best. I've met a lot of lovely Doctor Who fans over the years. They've cheered me up enormously when I was down and out between jobs and husbands. When Southwestern Bell transferred me here from Dallas I didn't know a soul, but the local fans soon became my family. I'm not alone in the universe as long as I know there are others out there who like the same thing I do.”

“Hmm.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He seemed to be seriously contemplating my heartfelt disclosure. “Then why do you frequent dodgy establishments such as the place I found you in earlier today?”

I blushed and averted my gaze. It was time to spill the beans, to let him in on the underlying motivation for bringing him back to my place. I suddenly felt ashamed of my actions. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Cici? Is there something you'd like to tell me?”

His voice sounded soft, yet demanding. He placed a hand under my chin and tilted my face until his penetrating eyes meet mine once more. My heart began to race and my breathing became ragged. His prying eyes continued to probe the depths of my soul. Every fiber of my being burned with a desire to make a clean start of our relationship.

“Okay, you caught me,” I confessed with a sigh. “We need you to star in our fan film. You're a dead ringer for the Doctor. My plan involved kidnapping and seducing you, forcing you to stay in town for a while so we could film our friend Sammy's screenplay. He's terminally ill. We want him to see his movie idea made before he passes on. That's all. I promise.

Loving Who… available at Mojocastle Press:
http://www.mojocastle.com/celine/lovingwho.html

Cynthianna
http://www.cynthianna.com
Boldly going where no one genre has gone before!

Back to School

2008-09-04T22:36:00.004-05:00

It’s been a while since I experienced my first day of school—as a student, that is. This past month I’ve gone back to school, but now I’m on the “other side of the desk”.

I’m working as teacher’s assistant with special needs children at a suburban elementary school.

I’m shadowing children through out the day in their classes. I’m their “personal assistant” you could say. I’m going back to school alongside them—but I don’t have to do the homework or take the tests. Whew! I’m glad. That’s the good side of it.

The bad side is that sometimes sitting through class can be tough on a special needs child. They need lots of positive reinforcement and encouragement. But sometimes, things overwhelm them. They act out. They yell or pinch or throw items or simply whine… They aren’t really different than other kids, but sometimes their communication skills are lacking, and it’s hard to voice their frustrations in a more effective manner.

How can I motivate them? How can I help them succeed without being tempted to do things for them? I’m new to the job so I’m still learning… right along with them.

It’s true what they say—you never stop learning. Ever. And even a special needs child can teach you a thing or two about the human yearning to be yourself no matter what the rest of the world thinks or says.

A favorite quote of mine is, “God made you the way you are in order to use you as He planned.” Thank heaven the world if full of many different people so we have no excuse to stop learning!

The Happy Hour

2008-08-01T09:43:00.006-05:00

The name brings to mind smokey bars and blue collar types getting off shift to down a pitcher of beer or materialistic yuppies mingling over tapas and martinis after a hard day’s work pushing papers. But the Happy Hour I’m referring to is far from these stereotypes. It’s in a class all its own.

This Happy Hour happens on the side patio of a friend’s home. It’s not at a dark, beer sign-bedecked, neon-lit corner pub or a posh, upscale restaurant. It’s relaxed and casual to the extreme. Better yet, bring the kids and your favorite snacks… Both allowed—and encouraged.

In fact, many of us don’t even drink, so we’re sipping water or soda pop while others toss back a beer or mixed beverage of their choice. But we’re not coming to Happy Hour for the drinks—we’re coming for the conversation and fellowship.

Happy Hour is a group of science fiction fans and other like-minded people who get together on a Thursday evening and sit around and chat endlessly on a variety of topics. Anything and everything goes.

There’s all those great SF summer movies we’ve seen (or not) worth discussing. There are fun activities coming up in the near future to get psyched up for like Archon 32, a float trip, or a possible ghost tour of old St. Charles. There are jokes to be told and great stories of past humorous situations to share. (I even learned you could use a tampon as a soft dart. You never know when that bit of info could come in handy!)

Happy Hour is all about being… well, happy. Enjoy a snack, enjoy a chat, have a beer or soda and relax. True happiness isn’t about trying to impress the work crowd or tie one on. True happiness is spending a few cheerful hours with your friends.

Tell me about a regular hang-out or activity you do with your friends just to unwind and to share a good time. Everyone who leaves a comment on any of my blogs this month gets their name tossed into a hat for free ebook drawing. So tell me what you think! And be sure to check out my latest SF/fantasy romantic-comedy offering LOVING WHO from Mojocastle Press. Links at my home page: http://www.cynthianna.com

Horse TV

2008-07-01T11:10:00.006-05:00

Everyone has their favorite thing to watch on TV when they feel like “vegging out” and unwinding from a tough day, week, month, or year. One of my favorite TV stops happens to be the late night programs on the Food Network. I seem to enjoy watching people compete to build the tallest cake shaped like a Dr. Seuss character or feed a crowd of a thousand in just seven hours with ramen noodles, ketchup packets and a couple of dull knives. But when I really, really want to unwind, I take a short walk north from my front door and watch Horse TV.

I know what you’re thinking—there’s no such thing as “Horse TV”. I beg to differ. If you stand still and look through a rectangular frame-device at horse for hours on end, you are watching Horse TV. It makes no difference if the frame-device is called a “fence” or a television screen. The end result is the same.

You enjoy crystal clear HD reception on Horse TV. Plus, you really get a three-dimension experience of smells and sounds and touch. I like to make those horsey “snickers and snorts” back and forth to the big guys and watch their reactions. (They tend to mosey on off further into the pasture and ignore me. “Stupid human trying to fool us that she can talk to us,” is what they’re thinking, I’m sure.) Some of the smells… Well, I could live without the horse manure scents, but the velvety softness of a glossy horse’s coat and petting a fuzzy muzzle more than makes up for that unpleasantness.

I’d better clarify what I really mean before my readers start calling the guys with the straight jackets. Grant’s Farm (http://www.grantsfarm.com/) lies adjacent to my neighborhood. It’s the home of the world famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses. Grant’s Trail, a converted railroad track, now a bike and pedestrian trail, is spittin’ distance from my computer. So whenever I need to take a break from the stress and the computer (one in the same recently when my hard drive melted down), I head on up the trail and watch the Clydesdales at play.

The farm is actually a deer park and tourist attraction, but it’s a very accessible one. The newborn foals there will let you pet them through the fence if you’re lucky. There are mother horses watching over their young, and big, strapping pulling horses out munching breakfast, lunch and dinner… In fact, their muzzles seem permanently glued to the ground. If they’re not pulling that beer wagon, they seem to be chomping away constantly. Hard work must create a huge hunger.

Their lives seem serene and complete for the most part to me. They are well fed and cared for—they are beautiful and majestic and don’t mind being put on display. For horses—or human beings for that matter—they seem the contentest of creatures on the face of the earth.

And that’s why I enjoy watching the horses whenever I need to unwind. I’m hoping some of that immense contentment will wash off on me.

What do you do to unwind after a particular tough time? Is it always the same thing or do you do different things? Do you watch Horse TV? Share one of your unwinding experiences or relaxation techniques here in the comments section, and I’ll put your name in the hat for my next monthly prize drawing.

Thanking you in advance… I’m off now to check out how clear the reception is today at the fence.

THE ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FREE CAR WASH

2008-06-01T13:32:00.003-05:00

Sometimes things seem too good to be true. You want to believe they’re for real, but you’re not certain you can let yourself believe them. But when you do, you are truly blessed.

Saturday I helped out at the Jefferson Hills Church Free Car Wash. Yeah, it was free—totally free. And people found it hard to believe.

The questions flew, “Why are you doing a free car wash? Do you really want donations? Do you have another, ulterior motive?”

The answers I gave were, “We’re doing this as a gift to the community. No, we really don’t want donations. We have no ulterior motive other than letting you know that as Jesus washed feet, we’re washing cars, and we want you to know about our church.”

A lot of people acted impressed that any group would do anything for anyone for no money nowadays. The idea of “community” is a foreign concept for many. They live in their cars—they drive to work, to school, to any outside activities they might participate in and then they drive home and close and lock their doors.

They never get to know their neighbors. They never really get to know the community where they live. They bought their homes because of the zip code. Literally. Someone told them to buy property in such-and-such suburb because in three years’ time they could sell their house at a profit. And they do just that usually, moving on to the next desirable zip code where, most likely, they’ll never meet their new neighbors, either.

People in suburbia these days are used to paying through the nose for everything—gasoline for the SUV, dance lessons for the kids, fake nails applied weekly, drive-through dinners, etc.

So the absolutely, totally free car wash concept just didn’t make sense to these folks. Their organic onboard computer (i.e., brain) said, “Does not compute!”

But it does make more sense to me now why Jesus came about 2000 years ago, before cars and air conditioning and cable TV and the Internet. People had to walk or take a donkey cart to get anywhere 2000 years ago. They knew their neighbors a bit more since they seldom wandered far from home. And they depended on their neighbors’ help and generosity to get by more often than not.

People weren’t as isolated from their communities. They talked to each other in person rather than to a stranger over a cell phone. And in community they shared their common experiences and related how Jesus had impacted their lives for the better.

This recent car washing experience gives me a bit more insight into writing contemporary characters. The suburbanite of today has a disconnect with the community he or she resides in. It’s rare nowadays for neighbors to share their common experiences or to even tell each other about how Jesus has impacted their lives for the better. Suburbanites hold a cautiously cynical view of the world and can’t believe that others would do anything for them free with no strings attached.

But they certainly like getting their Humvees and SUVs washed.

My Exciting Ride in an Ambulance

2008-05-09T22:18:00.004-05:00

Here's the latest exciting thing to happen to me this week... I got to take a ride in the ambulance to the hospital emergency room!

About 8:30 AM or so, I was sitting at my computer sipping tea (just waking up really) and suddenly it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I was short of breath and figured that wasn't an entirely good sign... So I did the sensible thing (not wanting to be found rotting on my floor two weeks later) and called 9-1-1. And sure enough these nice looking young guys and a gal paramedic came over and took my blood pressure and connected me to the EKG thingy with the sticky bits/leads (which hurt like heck to pull off, let me tell you!). I guess they weren't too pleased with what they saw, because they stuck me in this chair to get me down the two flghts of stairs of my apartment building and then I got put onto a stretcher (in the rain!) and slipped into the back of the ambulance.

Now, is that ever a weird ride... You're on your back and your traveling backwards and they are sticking things into you the whole time. Ugh! I have a big bruise on my arm from the IV. Anyway, I got shunted off to the ER and got even more sticky bits attached to me. And I waited and waited about three and half hours and they take blood out of your other arm (ow!) and they take samples of other bits of you and they connect you up the "beeping machines". But I guess they figured I was okay, and so they let me go around 1 PM and told me to go see this doctor by Monday at the latest. So I made an appointment for Monday morning, being the good girl that I am. ;)

Now, here is the even more exciting part--I am wearing nothing but my nightgown and slippers! (Fortunately I'd grabbed my little bathrobe too going out the door.) I couldn't argue with the paramedics and get some clothes on first, as I was tied up to their EKG machine with leads and cables. So at 1 PM, the nurse says "You can go home." Well, I didn't drive myself there and I'm essentially undressed, so public transport (in the rain) would be a bit dicey, and they don't have any volunteers who can give you a ride home they said. But I did reach my dear friends Joyce and Jerry at home by phone, and they came over and picked me up, bless their hearts. They are truly lifesavers.

Better yet, I had a job interview about 25 miles north of here at 3 PM. I told Joyce I just wanted to get home and get in the shower and quickly get ready to go up and talk to this lady about the job at a women's drug rehab center. She and Jerry volunteered to drive me up there and back so I didn't have to stress out on the driving. (And I think I did okay on the interview, too.) They are double angel lifesavers in my book now!

So, that was my exciting day with the ambulance trip and being undressed and waiting for a ride in the ER waiting area, and then doing a job interview. Don't let anyone tell you that I'm not a trooper and I don't want to work.

And I’m fine really, just a bit tired now. I will be a good girl and go to the doctors Monday and let you know what they say.

Prayers and good healing thoughts and wishes welcomed!

UPDATE: I got my latest blood work back this week, and they say it looks "fine". I'm not vampire or a shapeshifter of any kind. The test results didn't say I wasn't an alien abductee or I didn't have a weird sense of humor, however. My blood pressure still remains high, unfortunately, and it makes me feel fatigued and winded.

I had an echocardiogram and it went swimmingly. In fact, I think the human heartbeat sounds surprisingly a lot like the roar of the ocean in places. Would that make me akin to a beached whale, I wonder? Anyway, they slop cold gel all over your chest and then press the sonogram wand into your sternum and then into your left side of your rib cage very hard, over and over again, to record the activity in there. And that hurts!! My poor left side still felt bruised the next day.

But there is a heart in there, I can tell. (Yep, no sign saying, "This space for rent." Fooled you!) It's sort of black and white grainy with the occasional red and blue energy pulses on the screen. I have no idea what's up with it, and the nice lady who jammed that wand hard into my side didn't tell me anything. If there's anything incredibly exciting happening with it, I'll let you know. Otherwise, assume that it's an okay heart for an alien abductee with a weird sense of humor.

I Love My H R Block Tax Preparer

2008-04-09T12:51:00.005-05:00

Yes, I’m a broken record lately. I’ve listed the names of two big corporations two times in a row in my blog titles. (See last month’s tirade against Charter Communications Interenet Service.) I can’t help it this month—I have to say this: I love my H & R Block tax preparer!

No, no, it’s not a romantic attachment at all. It’s a professional arrangement, but she’s my friend as well and she understands what a tough financial bind I find myself in lately. She went the extra mile to help me get all the business deductions I could legally take this year and helped me get my personal tax forms in order. The end result? I don’t owe the government anything! Yippee!

This is a big deal for me, since I had been forced into submitting my tax forms as “married filing separate” because of my ongoing divorce difficulties. Without dependents and a head of household deduction, you can pay a lot (that is, GINORMOUS) amounts of taxes. And when you’re forced to itemized your deductions (since the other spouse had done so already without bothering to ask if this would be convenient for you) rather than take the standard deduction, you really do find yourself scrambling to come up with enough deductions to help lower your tax burden.

But with my tax preparer Donna’s help, we did it. Just in time, too. There’s a deadline of April 15 in the US to file these sorts of things, right?

My “bacon has been saved” as some would put it, and don’t I know it. I’m breathing a little easier at nights knowing that the taxman won’t be coming after me in a black hood, chain mail vest, combat boots, a vicious sneer plastered on his ghastly visage, carrying an ax to chop off my head… Yes, it is a silly nightmare, but most Americans possess an instinctive fear of the Internal Revenue Service. It’s in our genes somewhere next to the uncontrollable urge to yell, “Play ball!” after hearing the national anthem.

(Sorry about that IRS. I’m sure you are all very nice folks, like Will Ferrell is in Stranger than Fiction. Good move on your part to cast likeable guy like Will in that role, too.)

Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt desperate like I did this past month? Like nothing or no one could help you? Did you find out that someone could actually help you out of this hopeless situation? How did you find yourself after the experience—older, wiser, less stressed, committed to an insane asylum?

Leave me a comment below describing your experience, and I’ll choose a name from the comment-makers for a freebie e-book prize. So, talk to me—what have you got to lose? (You might just have something to gain. It won’t be extra taxes, either.)

THE TOP TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT CHARTER HIGH-SPEED INTERNET SERVICE

2008-03-18T11:25:00.008-05:00

The Top Ten Things I hate about Charter High-Speed Internet Service:

10.) Having to keep a diary of all the times I’ve had to call Charter Customer Service and be put on hold in the last two and half weeks. For example:

February 29—first call made for service outage.
March 2—two technicians replace cable line from building to the box on the street edge and leave it lying exposed on the grass. Next day we get 8 inches of snow.
March 5—another technician comes to fix outage and says its my modem which is a problem—I replace it with new one.
March 13—two technicians come back to “bury” the exposed cable in the grass—internet goes off for good and they disappear without a word to either me or my neighbor whose digital cable TV has vanished as well. I call and speak to “Irene” at customer service that evening and stay on phone for approximately 45 minutes. She promises things will be taken care of within 24 hours. (It’s not.)
March 16 –tech call that afternoon, the internet goes off and stays off within two minutes after technician leaves after adjusting my modem/the cable box on building.
March 17 – on in the morning, Internet goes off at approx. 1:30 pm and comes back on three separate times by unplugging/re-plugging in the modem until goes off for good at 2:45 pm. Another call to customer service where “Victoria” promises me technicans will call me within the hour (this said at 3:15 pm). No calls received within the hour—or the day. Or even the next morning... Why am I not surprised?

9.) Having to push “0” over and over at every automated switchboard prompt until I get a real live human being. (Keypad on phone now worn thin.)

8.) Having to repeat my sob story over and over again to these helpless Charter customer service reps who do not live in my city, state—or possibly country.

7.) Having to pay for Charter High-Speed Internet Service in the first place because AT&T hasn’t set up the lines so we can get DSL Internet service in this neck of the woods.

6.) Having to pay my cell phone company for the minutes that I went over my plan this month because I was put on hold so many times calling Charter High-Speed Internet Customer Service.

5.) Being promised a rebate on an $89.99 modem I got in August when I signed on with Charter High-Speed Internet —the modem that at least one technician told me was “broken” and I needed to rent one from Charter at an additional fee per month. The modem rebate (promised within 6 to 8 weeks) has yet to arrive. All emails sent to the email address for questions about rebate not answered, either. Charter Customer Service reps say they “know nothing about the rebate program” yet Charter’s icon is plastered on the web site and they provide the modem. If they contracted this incentive program from an outside source, they are responsible for it ultimately—right? Why else would you advertise it and put your company logo on it?

4.) Not being able to send doc files to my telecommuting positions as expected—missing out on potential income and creating ill-will with potential customers because I’m not able to respond to their email requests in a timely manner.

3.) Missing out on promotional activities online because I cannot get online and stay online. Not being able to update my web sites in a timely fashion. All lead to lost sales and advertising opportunities for my books.

2.) Having to buy gasoline at over $3.09 a gallon to drive to other places to use public Internet—and then finding they have a “nanny blocker” on some of these public WiFI access points so I can’t even access my own publisher’s web site!

And the number one reason why I hate Charter Communications High-Speed Internet Service…

1.) Those damn flashing green lights on the modem when it’s kicked me offline for the upteenth time in the last five minutes!

If you have a similar tale of woe (related to Internet service problems or not) please feel free to share it in the comment section. After I've calmed down somewhat, I might do a drawing for a little prize of one of my backlist books or something. Thanks for your understanding. I think I will take a Valium and go lie down now before I'm tempted to buy a shot gun...

UPDATE: I thought that the "pen was mightier than the monopolistic cable company" but I was wrong. Here's the continuing saga of wonky Internet connectivity:

March 19—Internet service works fine the day before, then goes off and on again all afternoon on the 19th but eventually stays on until my bedtime.
March 20—Internet service goes off within approx. 10 minutes of turning on computer.
Online 8:25 AM
Offline 8:36 AM
On again 9:37 AM
Off again 9:45 AM
On again 10:00 AM
Off again 10:15 AM
On again 10:26 AM
Off again 10:30 AM
Online again 11:04 AM
Off again 11:09 AM
On again 11:20 AM

I will continue to keep this blog updated until I have this problem addressed to my satisfaction, I find out where the president of Charter lives so I can throw a rock through his bedroom window, or I have hypertensive episode and wind up in the hospital intensive care. Your prayers and comments (below) are welcomed.

Updated Update:

I thought all my problems had been solved after the latest tech call on March 22, but alas no. I've suffered "mini-outages" several days now. Nothing major, but obviously the problem hasn't been fixed permanently. I do now get more "personal attention" when I contact Charter... Perhaps all those red flags on my file saying, "Mad, whiny woman who threatens lawsuits--handle with care!" is helping?

When will this all end? Sigh!

April's Fools Update:

Things have been going fairly well this past week, although I did get a e-bill for TWICE the normal rate from Charter. (I promptly ignored it. They can send me a paper bill and then we'll discuss what I owe them.) And then I start noticing the "mini-outages" again and today--it wasn't a funny April Fool's joke to be kicked offline for fifteen minutes in mid-day.

You can be sure I'll let them know my sense of humor has been stretched a bit thin...

But your comments are still welcomed and appreciated.

Successful Failures

2008-03-01T11:07:00.006-06:00

The following article really caught my attention:

http://www.forewordmagazine.com/blogs/insider/PermaLink,guid,72a47852-5a5c-41d6-a025-c23c93bd96a3.aspx

Staggering Statistics in Book Publishing can Read Like a Stephen King Horror Novel. Is There Any Hope for Authors and Publishers?

Warning: May Cause Nightmares

Book industry numbers are cold-sweat terrifying for publishers and authors alike. According to Nielsen Bookscan, 3,000 books are published per day in the United States alone… Publishers report an average of 2,100 submissions per year, totaling 132 million submissions. Just under one percent are accepted for publication.

In the face of these staggering odds, is there any hope for authors and publishers?

The Majority of Books Sell Fewer than 99 Copies

Of the 1.2 million titles tracked by Bookscan in 2006, only 2.1% sold more than 5,000 books, 16.6% sold fewer than 1,000, and a terrifying 79.6% sold fewer than 99 copies…

I agree with the author here—these statistics are terrifying for writers. But this piece didn’t leave me feeling pessimistic as much as optimistic. I have been lucky to join that elite club of the “one percent” by having a book accepted for publication, and I have sold more books than 80% of my fellow authors apparently.

I might have misread those numbers, but at least I don’t feel so bad now that I’ve not made the New York Times bestseller list yet. Hey, just selling 100 copies of one of your titles means you’re a success. Not rich, not famous, but you are definitely a success in the publishing field. Those stats don’t lie—you are in the top of your class.

So how come is it so hard to convince everyone outside the writing and publishing field that you’re a success?

My guess is that it’s because the rest of the world operates on the idea of the “bottom line”. You make a million dollars—you’re a success. You pen a million words and sell more than 100 copies—you’re a crackpot eccentric who doesn’t have anything better to do with your time. There seems to be no winning for losing. The “real world” will continue to insist that writing is not a “real job” unless you write for something like a newspaper or magazine. Then you might aspire to the lofty title of “hack”. Wow.

“No respect, no respect…” I can hear Rodney Dangerfield now. Writers get no respect.

The recent screenwriters strike gives evidence of this fact. Fans complained when some of their favorite TV shows ended abruptly this past fall. Viewers tended to blamed the writers over the producers and agencies that cheated the writers of royalties for the disruption in the television schedule.

If only the writers would write for free—heck, they don’t need to eat or pay electric bills, right? Give us our entertainment… then go out and get a real job like ditch digging, writer-person.

Until writers can use their words to convince the rest of the world that “success” means more than dollar signs and seeing your name plastered across the tabloids in the supermarket check out line, we’ll have to learn to embrace our “failure” successfully.

Do you have a “success story”—a time where you felt you had succeeded even if others felt you had failed? How did you handle it? Share your tale of encouragement below, and I’ll toss your name in the hat for a drawing of one of my back titles. Thanks for sharing!

February Impressions

2008-01-30T17:54:00.000-06:00

What does a writer write about when she’s not feeling particularly inspired to write about anything at all?

Well… uh, nothing. She doesn’t write much of anything. And then she gets the idea that it’s time to change the name of her monthly column from Every Day Is Mother’s Day to Confessions of a Blonde Writer. After that, she draws yet another blank and she reaches for her calendar to see what is going on in the next month.

For a cold, short month, February is certainly loaded with holidays—Groundhog’s Day, President’s Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, Chinese New Years (Happy Year of the Rat!) Leap Years Day, Black History Month… Why should such a short month have more special days than say August? August really doesn’t have any internationally known holidays, does it? Why is pipsqueak little arctic-like February hogging them all? Cough one up!

There seem to be no reasons for these sorts of things—like there are no reasons why poor February winds up with only 28 days most years and 29 this year just for the heck of it. Yeah, yeah, I know. There’s a perfectly legitimate excuse for why we add an extra day to February every four years—something about the earth’s rotation around the sun and the year not being quite 365 days. Sure, but why do we have to have 365 days in a year anyway? Why not 182 and ½? There’s no law saying the year has to be certain length is there?

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one.
Except for Leap Year—that’s the time
When February’s days turn twenty-nine.

These things race through a blonde writer’s head when she’s under a deadline, and she can’t think of anything in particular to write for her monthly column. Sure, she could revert back to the funny bits about Valentine prezzies that didn’t quite say “romance” and the dangers of gorging on chocolate, but those topics have all been done to death. There’s got to be something original to say about February, right?

What about not concentrating on the shortness of the month or the multitude of the holidays or the silly heart-shaped boxes of candy and dozens of roses? Let’s just look at the month itself: In the northern hemisphere, it’s mid-winter, usually the coldest time of the year. Kids really don’t get a vacation from school for any of these holidays, but they occasionally get snow days off. And if you’re lucky enough to be born on Leap Day… Well, you only celebrate a birthday every four years.

Now that I’m middle-aged that actually sounds pretty good to me. Every four years you have a legitimate excuse to party hard—you might even received four times the average number of gifts, too?

March brings spring, and in its own peculiar way February brings hope. Hope that it’s only a short time left in the harshness of winter before the warmth and promise of spring arrives. Perhaps that’s its biggest contribution to the calendar after all. Short and sweet as those heart-shaped Valentine message candies, February is about hope, hope that all these holidays will sweep us happily and healthily into the rest of the year. (Editor’s note: Chocolate has been declared a health food, by the way. It’s one of the major food groups now… It ranks up there right under ice cream above fruits and veggies. Honest.)

And, now that the Blonde Writer has made it through the first column of her newly renamed blog site, she feels somewhat more inspired. She might get through those book edits in her inbox after all… in a few weeks’ time. The muse, once lulled asleep by stress and constant life change in the last year, takes a bit of rousing to get back on track. But hopefully come the shortest month next year, she’ll have found her writing rhythm once more, and, as they say in the fairy tales, “She lives happily ever after."

When I Grow Up...

2008-01-01T22:11:00.000-06:00

Editor's Note: This blast from the past somehow seems appropriate as we start a new year, and I start a new life as a single person.

"When I grow up, I want to be a lawyer, a veterinarian, a singer and a mommy," my seven year old proudly announced one morning at breakfast.

"A lawyer?" I said, puzzled at such an out-of-the-blue notion at seven-thirty in the morning. I am one of those few parents who actually discourages their children from becoming a part of that jaded profession. "That's a new one, Baby. But won't it clash with your future "Spice Girl" image? And what about vet school? It takes a few years to be an animal doctor. I'm not sure you'd want to go to law school on top of that."

"Yeah, but lawyers make lots of money. I'll need lots of money to be all the things I want to be when I grow up," she replied with a big smile.

Good point. Who says a seven year old's logic isn't as persuasive as an adult's? But a lawyer for pity sakes? How did she ever come up with that idea? The nightly news? Nah, it couldn't be . . . She only watches PBS, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel--is it their fault?

My almost twelve year old has never given me this kind of worry before. From age four on she has said she wanted to grow up to be pretty much the same thing: "A dinosaur person". At first, I thought she meant she wanted to dress up like a dinosaur--as this was around the time Barney premiered on TV--but she made it clear from early on that wasn't the case.

"I want to dig up dinosaur bones and look at them, Mom," she informed me at age five, using perfect pronunciation and complete sentences as was her wont. "I can work in a big museum."

"Oh, I see," I replied, trying desperately to remember what you called a person who dug up dinosaur bones for study. "You want to be a scientist. That's great. When I was a little, girls weren't encouraged to pursue an interest in the sciences. I'm proud of you."

"Paleontologist" was the word for dinosaur person we soon discovered. Amanda isn't much of a speller, but there's one word she can spell: paleontology. Her bookshelves are lined with books on the science of digging up bones and putting them back together--simple picture books from Pre-K on up to fully illustrated reference manuals filled with lots of funny Latin terms. Recently, she has expressed an interest in astronomy as well. Her math and science grades reflect her enthusiasm on those topics.

"My daughter the scientist." Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

But my daughter the lawyer? I don't know. Aimee is a compassionate child--very sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. While her sister talks about spending most of her young adult life in school receiving advanced degrees without the distraction of a boyfriend or spouse, Aimee has always advocated the philosophy of being a "homebody". She even has names picked out for my grandbabies already. (And yes, she has said she would be married first before having children--whew! That's a relief.)

Aimee genuinely loves animals and enjoys taking care of them, too. While I would love to say, "Let me introduce you to my daughter the DVM," I guess I would be supportive of her career path no matter which one she winds up taking. There's no rush about choosing college programs yet, however. She's only seven years old.

What did you want to be when you were seven--a firefighter, a race car driver, a police officer, a doctor, a nurse? How many people can honestly say they became the professional star athlete they wanted to become in grade school? And if we all became the fire fighters or doctors we hoped to be, there wouldn't be enough fire stations to house us all and all disease would have been wiped off the face of the planet by now. Seven year olds are entitled to change their minds.

A deja vu experience happened to me this past week. It got me thinking along these lines of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I was being interviewed over the phone for an article on being a cyber columnist by an AP wire service reporter from Dallas, and I was asked what I considered myself to be--a "stay at home mom" or a "writer". This is a stumper of a question to me. However, as anyone who's ever met me will attest, I would rather die before letting on that I am at a lost for words. So, I babbled on as usual and told her that I considered myself a mom who stays at home who happens to be a freelance writer as well.

It was an odd feeling admitting to a total stranger why I considered myself to be anything other than the mother of two girls and just me essentially. When I was seven, I'm sure the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a mother like my mother. Sure, even back then there were some inklings that I might become a writer. When I was about five years old, my mother took dictation from me on a self-illustrated story about talking vegetables and salt and pepper shakers which came to life every night and partied on the dining room table after the family went to sleep. In seventh grade, much to my surprise, I won a statewide poetry contest. And, miracle of all miracles, I took an advance placement test in the twelfth grade and was given eight hours of English credit, essentially exempting myself from taking any further composition courses in college. ("You can write a complete sentence, stick it in a paragraph and string several paragraphs together in a coherent fashion," I was told bluntly. It seems this was a rare ability for graduating seniors of my generation.)

Still, I had only vague notions of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I didn't want to go into any field dealing with mathematics or blood and guts. (The irony is, of course, returning to college in recent years, I was obligated to take both Statistics and Anatomy and Physiology to obtain my psychology degree. Never say never.) When forced to pick a college major at age eighteen, I chose a field void of numbers or specimens--film studies. Two years later, I happily received my "Mrs." degree and dropped out of school. A lot of people were disappointed, but I always felt creative people needed to "live" life--not just sit in classrooms discussing how Fellini's films demonstrated Italian society's need to re-establish a unique identity in the post-war world. (Which they did.)

While it appears that my daughters possess firm goals of what they want to be when they grow up, I openly admit that I haven't. I'll let you know what I decide to be in a few years. I may be all "grown up" by then, but--knowing me--I wouldn't count on it.

Copyright © 1998 by Cindy Appel, all rights reserved.

A TIGHT SQUEEZE GETTING INTO THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT

2007-12-02T14:15:00.001-06:00

Wasn't it Labor Day just last week? Maybe not, but it sure feels that way. I could have sworn it was Christmas back in July when the department stores started displaying their holiday decorations in the ninety degree heat, but I guess not. Lo and behold! The season of blinking lights, mall Santas and toy commercials ad nauseum has jumped me from behind with all the grace and skill of a NFL tackle squashing a quarterback desperately clutching the game ball. The holidays may be here, but for some reason my brain and heart are still someplace over there.

The only thing to do is to make myself get into the spirit of the upcoming festivities. One simple (and usually effective) method is to start singing holiday songs. Once those old familiar tunes get ingrained into your head you'll be humming them in your sleep, and--ta da! Instant Yuletide bliss. I began singing Christmas melodies early because I'm an official member of a Sweet Adelines chorus--and we practice for weeks in order to carol at a number of venues. You'd think singing "Go Tell It On the Mountain" in late September would help a gal get into the Christmas mood, wouldn't you? Somehow it doesn't.

In fact, since I've been working so hard to memorize each song's lyrics letter perfect and its tunes note perfect, I'm "burnt out" on singing altogether. Don't get me wrong--I still love to sing, it's just that I'm concentrating so hard on doing it right that I forget what I'm really singing about. This is a danger for all performers, and it's particularly tricky for singers. You choreograph the movements, the gestures, the facial expression, the tone of voice, but somehow you fail to choreograph your heart into the musical piece at the same time. And what with all those other doings your poor brain is trying to keep up with, is there really a place to squeeze your heart in as well?

These days I find myself lacking the stamina for even a pathetic a "ho, ho, ho!" since I'm constantly chanting a frantic, "oh, oh, oh!" whenever the next big crisis comes my way. Of course, I freely choose to fret and worry over things, thereby denying myself the energy to get into the holiday spirit properly. Something has got to be done about this pathetic state of affairs--and done now before it's too late.

Okay, from here on out I declare it officially "Christmas in my heart." No more need to fret and fear about what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day--today it's Christmas, and it's a holiday and that's that. No work on holidays, no worrying on holidays, just good cheer and goodwill to all men and all other genders and age groups as well. How will I keep this promise? How do lawyers get us to do anything? By writing a contract, of course! I'll post mine below so you can print it and sign one for yourself in case you're in need of some "Holiday Spirit," too. Just don't sue me in case you fail to live up to your terms of the agreement.

Think about it: If you can squeeze your signature onto a dotted line and your backside into those dress pants you bought last year, then you certainly can squeeze yourself into the joy of the season, can't you?

Happy Holidays, y'all!

THE OFFICIAL HOLIDAY SPIRIT CONTRACT

(Offer void in Vegas, Hollyweird, Nuh Yawk, Utah, Hawaii, New Brunswick, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, Antarctica, East Hoboken, west of the Pecos and north of the Missouri, and for people who live in glass houses.)

I, (fill your name here) , being of wacky mind and gorgeous body, do hereby declare myself to be in THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT on this day, (put today's date here) , 2007. This feeling of Yuletide festivity and frolicking will last from now until January 1, 2008 or until I wake up from my New Year's Eve hangover, whichever comes last providing I wake up eventually.

Sign in front of witnesses (of a dubious mental state as well) and attested to by an easily bribed Notary Public.

X (your name goes here as well)
(Notary's seal)

(Right thumb print)

(Smooshed Mistletoe Berry Stain)

(Bright Red Lipstick Print)

(Notary Public's champagne glass ring)

(Motel Room Number and Notary Public's phone number)

Come Ye Thankful People Come...

2007-11-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

This is an open invitation. Y'all are invited to my cyber-establishment for Thanksgiving cyber-dinner. We're going to have cyber-turkey (both cyber-white and cyber-dark meat) and cyber-mashed potatoes (fresh--not out of a cyber-packet) and, of course, the traditional cyber-pumpkin pie. Yum, yum! The best thing about a cyber-banquet is the that cyber-calories do not go to your hips, midriff or thighs--in fact, they go nowhere at all. So feel free to pig out at my cyber-party. You can never feel guilty--even when taking that last slice of cyber-pie since your cyber-hostess can easily click on "edit" and hit "copy" at any time...

Well, by now I'm sure you've guess I'm being plain silly here. What else is new? You haven't taken my dinner offer seriously I suspect, but I am serious--Why not throw a cyber-Thanksgiving celebration?

All right let's start with who's bringing what... How about you in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex bring the potatoes and the rolls, you guys up in the northern section of the country can bring the stuffing--make it cornbread for me if you can, but if you can't, we'll ask our neighbors from Dixie to do the honors. I figured my Southern guests could bring the sweet potato pie and that my Western guests could bring some rattlesnake meat for a little variety. Cranberries? Oh, sure--some of my Massachusetts readers can provides those--right, guys? Pumpkin pie... who's going to bring that? How about we give that particular honor to the Midwesterners. The St. Louisans can bring toasted raviolis and Ted Drewes' frozen custard so others can sample some of the regional cuisine.

The best thing about a cyber-celebration is that there's simply no need for advance preparation. Can you tell that my home isn't completely spotless online? Of course not! Can you tell I'm passing out cheap paper plates and not the good china? Not really! Can I tell that you just spilled your iced tea and cranberry sauce onto the light beige carpeting? No way! Entertainment? Heck, the Internet is entertainment enough already, so who needs charades and sing-alongs? You don't even have to worry about us pulling out our family photo albums and boring you for hours with our girls' baby pictures. It's a totally stress-free party. I don't even have to worry about kicking you out before midnight--I'll simply "switch off" and let you wander the worldwide web by yourselves...

Stop and think here a minute about how fortunate we are even to be considering throwing a party, cyber or otherwise. Think about how many individuals are eating a warmed-over turkey dinner courtesy of their local Salvation Army or other non-profit organization. We worry about getting our holiday shopping done--others worry about having a roof over their heads come winter. We worry over whether or not to buy a bigger, faster hard drive for our computer--others worry whether or not they should eat or pay on their mounting medical bills. We citizens of cyberspace have a great deal to be thankful for.

Let's be honest: As Americans, the idea of giving thanks to our Heavenly Father for the blessings He has bestowed upon us this past year is usually the last thing on our "to-do list." Whenever we hear the phrase "Happy Thanksgiving" we drool thinking about the succulent turkey and spicy dressing we're about to consume. We crave the sheer joy of being able to sleep in on a weekday. We make big plans to head out to the mall to walk off those extra pounds we gained in our gluttony and start our Christmas shopping in earnest. Prayer and thankfulness are the furthermost things from our minds the last weekend in November.

The modern manifestation of the holiday really wasn't what George Washington had in mind when he declared the first official Thanksgiving Day celebration in 1789. Neither was it for the Pilgrims. William Bradford and the survivors of the Plymouth Colony were just plain grateful to be standing after a harsh first year which killed half of them off. I doubt there were any slugs snoozing late at that original Thanksgiving celebration. Our ancestors may have not known what a "Butterball" was in the 17th or 18th century, but one thing they did know: They knew whom to thank for the blessings of liberty, home and family.

Don't let the glitter and gloss of the Brave New CyberWorld and the new millennium blind you to whom your prayers should be directed to on this national day of giving thanks. God isn't "virtual reality"--He's the real thing. And you don't need a modem to "chat" with Him, either.

Pirates!!!

2007-10-01T15:55:00.000-05:00

This past month featured both "Talk like a Pirate Day" and the second annual St. Louis area "Pirate Fest". Here are a few of the more colorful scallawags I encountered...

You can see more pirate pics at my web site http://www.cynthianna.com/momsday_index.html

Happy Halloween!!

Mom and the Swiss Cheese Resume

2007-09-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: This essay was written seven years ago, but it seems very timely, considering I'm in the midst of a job hunt once again.

The end of August has arrived! The kids are all tuck away comfy-cozy in their nice little school rooms, and Mom at last has the run of the house between the hours of nine and three. It's enough to make a grown writer cry, particularly after a long summer of noise, noise, heat, humidity, bored and cranky children, heat, humidity and more noise. (Did I forget to mention the noise? I thought so.)

Writers are prone to depression brought on by noise and constant interruptions, like children screaming, "She's touching me--again!" and "Why can't I eat cereal for both breakfast and lunch three days in a row?" and the classic, "Oops! Is this thing I broke something important?" Although Mom doesn't really like to admit this, the opening of school while bittersweet for the under eighteen set, brings her much welcomed mental relief.

Fall also gives Mom time to pause and reflect on the other aspects of her life such as her business persona, and how much she really would love to have an agent to sell her novels for her. It also brings about opportunities for Mom to foray out into the "Real World" (as opposed to the TV show, which isn't) sans children and put out her resume in order to dredge up some more "paying gigs" for herself.

In the past this type of activity gave Mom waking nightmares, as the long, cold and impersonal pages of your typical job application are very intimidating--

Give graduation date? Yes, I finished high school but do I have to say when? Elementary schools attended? Sheesh! I can barely remember college as it is...

Briefly explain gaps in my work history? That's simple-- "Two kids." Enough said.

Birthdate and medical history? Be real! I can sue you for that privileged information. Next thing you'll want to know is my actual weight and height without high heels...

But lately, Mom has utilized her creative writing abilities and taken on the problems of the "Swiss cheese resume" with much verve and enthusiasm. Mom the writer can fill in the daunting holes without even batting an eyelash. After all, this is one area that writers excelled in--elaboration:

For example:

This period of time away from the regular workforce is easily explained. You see, it was during this time I was working hard on composing the "Great American Novel." I was exploiting this gap between regularly paying jobs to observe the culture and rituals of the "Great American Family" up close, in order to capture it faithfully in words for the "Great American Public." Although this opus has yet to see the light of print, all relevant research is thoroughly cataloged in several photo albums and scrapbooks and has proven itself most advantageous in writing short articles and essays about said "Great American Family."

List your employers for the last five years: The editors of numerous periodical publications and a couple of book publishers. Did you quit any job? No, not until I got them to pay what was owed me. May we contact your former employers? Sure. I'm still on good speaking terms with most of them--except the ones who never paid up.

What do you feel are your best work-related skills? Written, verbal and non-verbal communication, an eye for detail, and the ability to type 100 wpm when the kids are happily occupied with their Barbies in the basement playroom.

So you see, the "Swiss cheese resume" no longer holds any fear for Mom the Writer. And, it tastes excellent melted under the broiler on wheat bread with a dab of brown mustard, too.

Copyright © 2000 and 2007 by Cindy Appel, all rights reserved.

Moving out, moving up, moving on

2007-08-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure what to write about for this blog so I guess I will simply tell you why I haven’t been doing much creative writing lately.

I’ve moved—myself and all my junk (and there’s plenty of it) about two miles southeast of my previous location. No, this really wasn’t my idea, but my lawyer seem to think it’s best I move out of the house since my soon-to-be-ex-spouse seems so attached to it that he’s pretty much trashed the place. By moving out and moving on with my life, it gives him one less thing to be nasty about come the final decree. But moving like this—with only a few weeks notice and all by myself essentially up until the day of the move—definitely was nothing I had foreseen several months ago.

The day that I moved the “big items”, i.e., the furniture, was sort of festive. I had several good friends come with their pick up trucks to come and pick up the big pieces and take them over to my new apartment… which happens to be on the second floor.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, it was a sweltering, hot sweaty day in late July. (Luckily, I moved before the real heat wave began—the high probably was only near 90 that day instead of the 106 degrees Fahrenheit they forecasted for today.) So, the added stress and heat of “moving up” certainly added to the stress I was already feeling. But, bless their hearts, they got everything up the twisty-turny staircase and into my new flat. I had been holding my breath that the dining table with the big pedestal base would make it up those steps and through the narrow front door, and, believe it or not, it did. It looks great in the kitchen area, too.

The only real furniture mishap was my computer desk—the cabinet that housed my printer and junk sort of went “whoosh” and toppled over into pieces like a house of cards falling over upon its removal from my previous abode. It hadn’t been put together very well obviously the first time, so it couldn’t take the front step without collapsing. Sigh! It sits in pieces around the living area of my new place. I’m looking for a handyman—or handywoman—to help me glue it back together. I think the screws are all stripped and some of the lovely particleboard panels have cracked, so it needs major surgery.

Other wonderful post-moving hassles have included the exploding washer drain hose from hell and learning to cope with living two and half stories up with a very narrow balcony to put my outdoor plants on… I finally got wise and decided to put my “rubber tree” (I have no idea what to call this plant my dad gave me about twelve years ago) down in the side patio area of the apartment building. The only problem it now has is that the wind tends to topple it over and I don’t see it’s fallen unless I peek out from behind my blinds (drawn to prevent the killer sun from further baking my apartment). Such is life in apartment city, as I call my new neighborhood.

I’ve had to deal with a lot of other issues, too, like looking for full-time work with health benefits (no luck there yet) and dealing with my daughters who don’t seem to want to talk to me anymore. So, this isn’t an excuse for not writing—it’s more of an explanation why my heart isn’t into as much at this point in history.

The high point of all this moving hell is my friends and family members who have been very supportive of me. I love them all.

Well, let’s end this blog on a high note and ask a discussion question you can comment upon and share your life wisdom with me. The discussion question: Tell me about a time when you were faced with a “move” in life that may have happened unexpectedly… How did you cope with your rapidly changing existence? What support groups or persons helped you out the most and why?

Thanking you in advance...

Summer Causes

2007-07-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

So far this summer, I've been involved in a number of "worthy causes", fundraisers, or charitable events. Here's a bit about a few of them.

This event wasn't exactly a charitable event, but it was fun. The 8th Regiment of Missouri Volunteers (Civil War reenactors) help to open Grant's Farm for the season and the new Ulysses S. Grant Museum at Whitehaven National Monument across the street.

I walked the full route of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Awareness Walk on June 16th in downtown St. Louis. This year the walk didn't go past the Arch, much to my chagrin. In past years I help to entertain walkers by singing with my chorus, The River Blenders. Since our director couldn't make it this time, I took up my writing pal Debbie Hull's offer to walk with her Jazzercise group from St. Peters. I realize now that I desperately need to get in shape like these gals!

(A fun fact: There was approximately 75,000 in attendance at this year's walk. And I'm the one wearing the white t-shirt and big straw hat.)

Another annual summer cause I like to help out with is "Taking Jesus to the Streets" a street-festival/Vacation Bible School that is put on by Bethlehem Lutheran Church, St. Louis. Each week, the BLC singers, helpers and volunteers go to a different neighborhood on the northside and share the Gospel through song and skits, arts and crafts, snacks and prizes. It's a lot of fun. And you meet some great kids.

A new project I helped out this year was a "Don't Go to Church (Be the Church)" project to help put insulation in the ceiling of the Peace ESL Center on S. Grand Avenue in the city. It's an older brick building in the heart of the immigrant community of St. Louis. They have a "computer lab" of old, donated PCs to help teach newcomers computer and English skills so they can find work in their new country. I'm glad that I got to help out at this great community center.

Probably the most enlightening experience of my summer so far has been going out one evening with the "Extreme Faith Ministry" group from Faith Lutheran Church in Oakville. Every other Wednesday, this very organized group of believers goes into the city and feed the homeless and other street people. And is it ever appreciated!

At the first stop on the corner of Locust and 14th Streets, we fed about 150 people. The organizers then bought some more food to go from there into the abandoned warehouses along the river--right next to the Arch. Yes, within a yard or so of the National Monument sleeps several dozen people in an old warehouse without windows, lights or running water. And many of the homeless are working--they just can't afford the high rents to live in the city. The visits and friendships are as welcomed as the food is, too, I learned... And sometimes after these homeless people get back on their feet financially, they come and help out with Extreme Faith Ministry as well.

That's my summer so far... It's always good to get out there and see what's happening in other parts of your community. I suggest you give a try yourself and see what happens.