Ring out the old
And ring in the new.
Welcome the change
The New Year brings.
Turn the page
Of new beginnings
And embrace the hope
Of a better future.
Make the new year
What you want it to be.
Write the story of your life,
For only you can do it.
Be who you want to be.
Do what you want to do.
The past is behind you.
The future lies ahead.
When the countdown to midnight reached zero, confetti fell and people began singing Auld Lang Syne. Except for Teresa. At the end of the countdown, she let out a surprised gasp when Nate dropped to one knee beside her and held out a ring. Her excited “yes” was almost drowned out by the happy singing around them.
This late post is part of the Tuesday Use It In A Sentence prompt, “gasp”:
https://stephaniecolpron.wordpress.com/2021/12/29/tuesdayuseitinasentence-gasp/
on Writers on the Move:The holidays are full of surprises and changes from the normal routine. Often we are with family that we rarely see or other people which take us out of the routine experiences. It’s refreshing and good in many ways. Other times it brings challenges and even strange experiences.
I’ve had a few of those strange experiences during my holidays. There is no need to give you the specifics as I attempt to be diplomatic yet reach my point. When I have these different experiences, I’m committed to learning from them and growing through the strangeness until it is resolved in the best possible way.
If you write or want to get published (or have been publishing), I want to suggest several action steps with these experiences.
I always suggest that authors build a backlog of short stories for submission to contests and various publications. But how do you know where to sell your work?
To know that, you must know the genre of the work you are trying to sell. So, what exactly are genres? Publisher and author Lee French puts it this way, “Literary genres are each a collection of tropes that create expectations about the media you consume.”
So, genres are categories the publishing industry developed to enable shoppers in bookstores to quickly find what they are looking for. They’re like a display of apples at the grocery store – many baskets of apples are situated there, but each variety is a little different from its neighbor.
The difference in taste (tart or sweet) and texture (firm or soft) are what we gravitate to when we shop for apples.
In novels, the…
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I suppose you could consider me a “foodie”. I enjoy yummy, delicious foods and am usually willing to try new dishes (as long as they’re not too spicy, since spicy doesn’t agree with me much anymore). And I do enjoy cooking and baking and trying out new recipes. When I started using a crock pot and an air fryer (both of which I really enjoy using) I went looking for recipes and came across the website and app Yummly, and I really like it. I have found so many recipes on there that I have saved, and many that I have used frequently, like a crock pot lasagna, air fryer pork chops, air fryer chicken breasts, easy Korean ground beef, chicken parmesan, ….. I don’t know if I will be able to get through and try all the recipes I have saved, though. And there are so many other recipes on the site to look through and being added every day, that I’m sure the number of saved recipes I have will keep growing. And since I don’t have a big family to cook for, I’m always looking for simple, easy recipes, and Yummly hasn’t disappointed me yet.
Because I do have a sweet tooth, I like to bake, and frequently make brownies, cakes, pies, and cookies (but not from scratch – I’m not that good!) And because I’m a chocoholic, often the cakes, cookies, and pies are chocolate. For Christmas, I made sugar cookies and snickerdoodles, which of course were yummy. I would have made more things, but I didn’t have the time.
I fixed my first glazed spiral sliced ham yesterday for Christmas. I’ve fixed hams before, but had never glazed one before. Thankfully it turned out well and the brown sugar glaze was quite yummy.
I hope everyone enjoyed a yummy Christmas dinner and yummy Christmas desserts yesterday, too.
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This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, “yum”:
Such was the carnage of The Great War that it was thought it would put an end to war for good. The war affected the lives of millions of men, including Tolkien and Milne. It gave birth to some rather unusual WWI alphabet primers. WWI also triggered medical advances such as plastic surgery and blood banks. Most appropriately for this time of the year, though, WWI saw one of the strangest Christmas Days in history.
1914 was the first year of war and everyone expected a quick resolution. As Wikipedia reports, truces between British and German units can be dated to early November 1914…
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Wishing a very merry Christmas to all
(Images found on Pinterest)
Farquad from Shrek
Coming as no surprise, I will be killing characters off in War of Nytefall: Eulogy. It is kind of surprising how that can be a selling point. Some people really don’t want to see characters survive even if their demise will curb stomp the plot into oblivion. This is why it’s very important to think about the fictional murders and try your best to have them stand out. If people are interested then you need to give them what they want and make the macabre excitement last.
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Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash
Hi, SEers John with you again. Here we are in Mid-December with only ten more days until Christmas. I don’t know about you, but I have not finished my shopping yet, so I better get cracking.
So, as you can see by the headline, I’m going to talk about one of the latest scams we all need to avoid.
It all started with an e-mail. It seemed to be an innocent inquiry regarding my interest in joining a team of folks who have a desire to make movies out of books. Before we start, I have to add that a club I belong to advised us that they had a conversation with an agent looking for books to make into a film. So, I had it in the back of my mind that this could be a result of that contact since I did…
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Marcia stepped back and eyed the freshly decorated Christmas tree. With a smile and a nod, she proclaimed, “Perfect! It’s done!”
Ian stepped up beside her and looked the tree over. “It looks great, Marcia,” he said with a nod. “You did a great job. I just hope it’ll be safe with you-know-who around.”
“Don’t worry. I made sure to keep any breakable ornaments off the bottom branches. It should be ok.”
“I hope you’re right. You know how much mischief he can get into.”
“Well, he is still young, you know.”
“But still…”
“It’ll be fine. Now come on, we have cookies to make.”
They went to the kitchen and began making Christmas cookies. They’d just finished putting the first batch in the oven when the sudden sound of breaking glass came from the living room. With a groan, they hurried from the kitchen to go check it out.
The sight that greeted them brought them to a sudden halt. Broken ornaments littered the floor around the tree. But the most shocking sight was the back half of a calico cat sticking out of the middle of the tree, wriggling as if he was trying to get further into the tree but was stuck.
“Oh my gosh!” Marcia exclaimed “Loki! What did you do!”
A plaintive mew escaped the tree, as if saying, “Don’t just stand there! Help me!”
Ian laughed. “I warned you, Marcia! He’s good at getting into mischief!”
Marcia gave him the side-eye then told him, “Just help me get him out of there, preferably without breaking any more ornaments.”
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, “tree”:
https://lindaghill.com/2021/12/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-11-2021/
(Cat meme found by Google image search)
KL CALEY
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