Holidays Apart

I know it’s only September, well almost October. The holidays both Jewish and regular are all around me. The only issue is that my husband is once again in a distant land serving our country. Would I change this?
NO! I love David, I love everything, well almost everything about him. His putting service to our country ahead of himself is part of what I love about him. I know some of you just don’t believe me, but there’s something very special about the men and women who wear the uniform. No, I won’t bore you with everything that makes them so special, but let’s just say they are usually some of the best people you will ever meet.

So what’s a person alone on all of the upcoming holidays to do?Continue reading→

I’m a moth to a flame

I thought I was walking away from writing. I was heartbroken. Our cat Phillip had knocked a hard drive with all of my writing on it off my desk. I know you are supposed to have backups. So how did this happen?
I had discovered that the external I had used for years was dying, it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So I grabbed my new external and moved everything to it. I didn’t have a second drive handy and figured I’ll go out on Monday, as there was no chance of me going anywhere near a store on Black Friday, and get a new drive and back up the entire drive.

Well, enter Phillip on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. He was playing on my desk, something he wasn’t really supposed to be doing. He pawed the drive off onto the floor. My desk is in the garage, so the drive crashed onto a bare concrete floor. I knew it had been damaged when I heard rattling inside the case.Continue reading→

An Apology, sort of….

I want to apologize to my Facebook and twitter followers for flooding them with information about the tornado. Why I did it needs to be explained. I lived in the Moore OK area, and worked there for 10 years. I have a large number of followers from that part of the country.

I felt helpless and wanted to do what I could from my current home in NC. So after a frenzied night of trying to write while keeping up I came up with something I could do and not keep flooding my writer friends.

I started a Facebook page with the help of another okie friend. The page is dedicated to getting people and their photos and other mementos that were scattered reunited.

Thanks for bearing with me and my frequent non writing posts last night.

Flash Fiction Tornado

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Writing in the face of tragedy

This country has suffered not one but two tragic events in the past week. There was the horrific bombing in Boston. Three innocent lives were lost in this act of terrorism, but great kindness was shown with strangers helping strangers. The city will heal. Then just when we started to catch our breath a small town in TX called West suffered from what appears to be a tragic accident. A fertilizer plant had a fire that turned into an explosion. There was another scene of death and destruction rolling on the tv.

In the face of all of this how do you move on?

I am writing a thriller that includes a number of bombs. I went back through my manuscript to ensure that I had not accidentally written a how to manual.

My next step was to free write, these words are not yet part of anything, in fact they may never see the light of day, but it felt good to let out the emotions. As I started writing I didn’t edit or correct anything I just let my emotions and feelings flow freely. Then I got a good meal, took a shower and got back to my novel.

I am encouraging everyone who has suffered from a tragedy to write, write until you feel the emotions leave or settle to a more normal level. You need not share your words, but allowing the release of these powerful emotions is a good thing.

Powerful emotions are like flowing water they need a place to go, writing gives them a safe outlet.