Life in progress

Category Archives: Guest Posts


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Aaaaaaand….. One More

My turn.

And it probably won’t be as entertaining as the others.  But, you’ll get to know me a bit anyway :-).

When Linda asked for SoCS help while she was out this month, I went back and forth in my head over whether to volunteer or not.  I wasn’t (am still not) certain I’m up to the task of contributing to a blog with such a following as this.  I mean, I’ll be honest: I was thrilled when my followers reached 100 a couple of months ago.  Ultimately, I decided to take the plunge (obviously, since you see me writing here now), and I hope that I don’t lose her any followers in the process ;-).

So.  A bit about me, just so that when you see my SoCS post in a couple of weeks, you don’t think I’m just some crazy person who hijacked Linda’s blog.

Like many others around here, I’m a writer.  I wrote (and illustrated) my first book at the age of 6.  Okay, it was really a short story by definition, but to a six year old, it was a book – bound and everything.  And by bound, I mean put in sheet protectors that were tied together with yellow yarn.  I digress.  When I saw that finished book, all tied up and pretty, I got a thrill like no other I had experienced up to that point.  I ran with that awesome feeling and never looked back (except for the illustrating part – I don’t do that anymore).  I have been writing ever since and loving it.

In middle and high school, I became addicted to writing poetry and short stories with twist endings.  My favorite authors were Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry.  I tried my hand at a novel when I was 14, and though I was quite proud of it at first, the eyes of wisdom (a year later) saw that it was utter trash, and it has never since seen the light of day.  However, I wrote my second book when I was 15 and 16, and that book was revived and revised earlier this year, and published as a juvenile fiction book.

I continued to write through college, and though publishing was always like stars in my eyes, I saw it more as a pipe dream.  I didn’t get serious about writing something publishable until 2009, when I participated in my 3rd NaNoWriMo challenge in 4 years.  Even then, I hesitated to attempt publishing for four years.  This past year, I finally decided to jump in, feet first, and self-publish.  It has been a fun and exciting – and scary! – experience, and I wouldn’t change a thing.  I now have 4 self-published books, and am well into my fifth.  My main writing genre is Young Adult Fiction.

I am also a wife of an extremely successful and wonderful man, and the mother of five amazing children who have all survived the foster care system.  Four of them are adopted, and we are hoping to adopt the fifth soon.  In addition to writing and parenting, I try to make time in my schedule to play the piano and run.  When I find myself with free time (extremely rare), I like to read.

If you stuck through this entire post to the end, thank you for reading!  Please check out my website if you’re interested in learning more about my books or reading my blog.  I always respond to comments and love to discover new blogs as well.

Thanks for reading!  See you again soon for SoCS!


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Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just Helping Out

I was stoked to help Linda out with SoCS while she is on vacation for a few weeks up until she asked me to write an introduction post. I had difficulties with my own “about me” page, much less saying hey to all you lovely folks and letting you know who I am and why I’m here (not sure I even know that… well, actually, I know why I’m a guest here at Linda’s blog, I’m just not sure I know why I’m here, as in the big HERE, you know?). I was thinking I was smart by having someone else go first, but then Pav went and threw up that post yesterday and I realized it probably wasn’t the best idea to let him go first! (Great post, by the way)

Speaking of Pav, it’s pretty funny in a weird sort of “holy shit the universe just did that” kind of way that Pav and I were selected to help out. Pav’s blog was one of the first I really got hooked on when I started reading blogs, and his writing adventures actually started me thinking it was something I wanted to do and probably could do. He is also the one who led me to SoCS, so I have a lot to thank him for. Thanks Pav!

I’ve always loved writing but it wasn’t something I thought was a “thing for me” so I never pursued it. I wrote some poems in high school and started what I thought could be a pretty great book probably ten years ago, but I didn’t jump in with both feet so it sort of fizzled and died as those pesky things are wont to do when you don’t put time and energy into them. The thing that really started my thought process about writing was when my sister went back to college and ended up sending all her papers to me for editing. I’m probably one of those really weird people who likes the edit process, although to be honest, I’ve never tried to edit a novel, so I’m not sure I really know what I’m in for. Does it count that my sister got A’s on all the papers I edited? Probably not…  Anyway, when she ended up graduating and going into a line of work she was passionate about, and not only that she was thinking about turning her senior thesis into a book and asked for my help, I said absolutely but I also did that sister jealousy thing where I told myself I could do what I love too!

I jumped into my blog in May honestly believing I wasn’t all that creative and wondering what the hell I was even thinking. Since that scary moment when my finger hovered over the publish button wondering if I should or shouldn’t, I’ve managed to surpass even my own expectations and found a pretty great blogging community on top of it all. If you want to check it out, I’m over here at This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time. It’s a crazy mix of flash fiction, poetry, ramblings about running/exercising, and being a Mom to three pretty great kids.

Introductions aside, I decided to jump right in, so I’ll be first out of the gate this week with your SoCS prompt. I’m looking forward to interacting with all of you and hope I am an acceptable substitute for Linda while she’s away.

Thanks for the trust, Linda! May you not live to regret it.


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Party Crasher Pav

Greetings from Pavorisms.

Starting in a few days, your regularly scheduled operator will be unavailable for a couple of weeks, and she wanted to leave some of her regular features in capable hands to make sure you felt warm and snuggly knowing that your regular Stream of Consciousness Saturday posts would go uninterrupted.

But we all make mistakes in life, and she picked me as one of the stand-ins. You’ll be getting a prompt from me in a couple of weeks, and if things really go sideways, you may end up seeing some of my regular content here as well. If that happens, I recommend you just keep your head down. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be baby bodily fluids involved. I, uh… I brought a tarp. I left it somewhere around here. Just huddle up and make a friend, okay?

Am I qualified to stand in at a writing blog with a readership far beyond my normal, tiny circle? Here’s the skinny: When I was in high school I wrote prolifically. Awful short stories, horrible poetry, a really ill-advised novel, and a play that was maybe not so terrible. Then I stopped. I don’t know why. I think I knew my writing was about as appealing as a pile of badger droppings and decided I’d do the world a favor and stop dropping those little nuggets.

Then, in college, I picked it up again. This time, I stuck to plays, and I wrote a pretty good one and a handful of not-so-bad ones. A couple of them saw production at high schools and community theaters, and though I never made a dime off any of them, they convinced me that maybe I wasn’t entirely devoid of talent. But then I stopped again. Probably that badger droppings feel again, possibly the disillusionment with my chosen field of study, likely a total lack of confidence.

A few years have passed, now, and something inspired me to pick up the pen again. Starting in March of this year, I began the transcontinental trek of adapting my pretty good play into a full length novel, and peppered that with an (almost) weekly short story and a heck of a lot of reflection about writing and parenting and running, all of which I do with dogged regularity. Something clicked, and now I can’t stop. As a result, I’ve got a manuscript of about 96,000 words (yeah, I get a little obsessed with word-count) that I’m waist-deep in editing, and, oh, probably about 150,000 words of drivel not unlike what you’re currently reading over at my blog, Pavorisms. (If you’re curious about what I tongue-in-cheekly refer to as my capital “W” Writing, you can find my collection of short stories there as well.) In short, it’s been a productive year. (Whether or not any of what I’ve “produced” qualifies as readable, entertaining, or fit to print on toilet paper remains to be seen. I mean, badgers “produce” poop, as we’ve already established.)

So, uh, am I qualified to be here standing in for Linda? Meh, maybe not, but as Jules said in Pulp Fiction, “I’m tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd.” I don’t know what herding sheep has to do with the current situation, but it’s Samuel L. Jackson speaking there, and we all know you don’t fargo with that motherfargoer.

At any rate, I’ll be providing you with a prompt at next week’s end and maybe a few tidbits besides. In the meantime, if you felt like heading my way and giving me a read, that’d be super, too.

And, of course, my thanks to Linda for handing me the keys to the car while you’re out. I promise that I will kick it into reverse when I’m done with it and run all the miles back off before you get home. Don’t worry about the dents in the chrome, those will buff right out. Also, I don’t know anything about the scratches on the side panels, the crack in the windshield, or the bits of gore in the grille.

In fact, let’s just pretend I was never here.