Month: April 2020

Pet Peeves #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

 

April 27, 2020

What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?

I’m sure the list will be ones you’ve all heard over and over before, but I’ll give this a shot.

  1. Too! Many! Exclamation! Points!  Now, I’m not against the use of exclamation points in general, but I think they need to be used sparingly. It’s like sending an email in all caps—it’s yelling. Look at me! I’m important! If you, as an author, have to use an exclamation point to show how important the sentence you wrote is, you need to rewrite the sentence. There are exceptions, of course, because they help to show what a character is feeling. But, please, please, don’t overuse the exclamation point!
  2. Apostrophes. Apostrophes can be hard. Is it it’s or its? And how about the possessive of a noun that ends in s? If you have more than one dog, and they each have a bone, is it the dogs’ bones or the dogs’s bones? Now throw in someone whose name end in ‘s’. Let’s say someone’s last names is Cookes. Is the car belonging to Mr. Cookes, Cookes’ car or Cookes’s car?
  3. Here’s a fun one. One or two spaces after a sentence? Old style sheets will tell you two, newer versions will say one. The truth is, back in the days when documents were typewritten, two spaces made for a cleaner look. Nowadays, that’s not true. Microsoft, in all its wisdom, has decided to flag two spaces as errors. (But it’s an option that can be turned off.)
  4. There, they’re, and their. It strikes me as silly that the English language has three words that sound the same but have different meanings. Especially when all the words are used frequently. Homonyms are bad enough with two words that sound alike, but three word homonyms are totally unnecessary.  It’s a wonder that auto-correct ever gets them right.
  5. How about the word I am most likely to misspell. Awkward, isn’t it? No, that’s the word. Awkward. I always want to put a c in the  first syllable. I know it doesn’t belong there, but darn, if my fingers don’t reach for that key every time I type the word awkward.

There’s my five. What did I miss? Tell me your pet peeves in the comments. 

And stay safe, y’all.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

April 27, 2020

What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

 

 

Making Fiction Out of Real Life #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

April 20, 2020

Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

As I say in my bio, I grew up among the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania. I know that people refer to them as mountains, but after spending years in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, what you find on the East Coast are just big hills to me.

But I love the landscape. Growing up, I spent many hours exploring the woods and meadows, and dreaming up stories. I knew where the huckleberries grew and when they were ripe for picking. I knew where large patches of endangered ground pine hid in the shadow of the nearby hardwood forest. I stared down a whitetail buck from across the patch of grass where an old farmhouse used to stand. I watched pheasants flash by when I flushed them from their nests in the meadows and listed to wild turkeys call their mates. I tracked a field mouse searching for seed among the dry winter grass. From my third-floor room on hot summer nights, I fell asleep to the song of the whippoorwill.

Naturally, when I started writing, I drew upon what I knew best for my settings. Both my Free Wolves series and my Harmony Duprie stories lean heavily on that area. But I fictionalize the details.

For my wolves, I work on the theory that they don’t want people to know exactly where they are. Between the two main packs in the stories, their territories cover parts of two states and may occasionally bleed over into a third. (New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) I try to not be accurate when creating their pack lands to honor their need for secrecy.

When I write my mystery stories, I deliberately don’t reveal which state Harmony lives in. It gives me the ability to play with laws and police duties, which can vary from state to state. What the sheriff’s department in a Pennsylvania county does differs from their counterparts in Ohio. And laws dealing with things like gun ownership and speed limits may not be the same. By not saying exactly where Oak Grove is, I can use whichever legal system makes the most sense for the plot.

That doesn’t mean I make everything up. I spent several hours studying road maps for one chase scene that took place north of Pittsburgh. I wanted the road numbers, intersections, and exists to reflect reality. I often search out average drive times between cities to create an accurate timeline.

It’s been a lot of fun ‘building’ Oak Grove, naming its streets and populating it with a variety of people. Some of those eccentric characters may or may not be based on people I’ve known in real life. And some may be tributes to people I’ve loved. It’s been a challenge to give the town the happiness it deserves, and still include the challenges that small towns all over America face.

Anyway, I hope the love I have for that part of the country comes through in my books. But before I take off to see what the other authors are sharing, I’m going to say it again.

Be safe, everyone.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

April 20, 2020

Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

 

99¢ Book Sale Event

  By Uncategorized

Check out the N.N. Light 99¢ Book Sale and giveaway.  One lucky person will win an e-nook bundle of all 41 books featured. The Marquesa’s Necklace, the first book in the Harmony Duprie Mysteries, is one of the featured books. HERE

Enter the giveaway here: HERE

Open Internationally

Runs April 16 – 19, 2020

Winner will be drawn on April 27, 2020

Best Blogging Tools #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

April 13, 2020

What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

I’m no expert when it comes to the subject of blogs. I’ve been running this version of my blog for a little over a year now, and I’m still figuring out how to do things. But I’ll share what little I know.

First, the basics. I left the Blogger platform when they dropped the google component that had gained me most of my followers. I debated what to use as my base platform and decided to go with WordPress. I looked at several others, but my choice was made by the sheer amount of free support out there from other WordPress users. I’m not doing anything fancy, and every time I’ve run into a problem, I’ve found a YouTube video to help me out.

Image by William Iven from Pixabay

Next up was choosing a theme. I’m using Parabola, but that certainly isn’t the first one I played with. I don’t remember how many I tried before another author suggested this one. It gives me the flexibility level that’s just right for my basic skill set.

Let’s dig deeper into widgets and plugins. I use the built-in Gallery widget in many places. It has its limitations, but my graphic artist and I have been able to work around them.

I use MailChimp for my newsletter, so the MailChimp widget was a no-brainer. Except for setting it up. I had help with that.

I also use the basic Add to Any for sharing. That’s the widget that gives you the pretty buttons to tweet my posts or share on other websites. I hope you’ll make liberal use of them.

My best non-standard widget is Code Embed. It’s the one that allows me to turn Java Code into clickable fields. That’s what I use to take the code for our blog hop and make it user friendly. (That’s why you can click on the pictures from everyone else’s blog and get taken directly to their post.) It took me a few weeks to learn to use it correctly, but there are helpful videos on YouTube on how to make it work.

I want to find a plugin that allows for basic slideshows. (I had one bookmarked to check out, but it’s no longer being supported.) Does anyone use one and is willing to share the information? Share in the comments, please!

Before I go check out what tools the other authors are using, I’m going to say it. Be safe. I want you to be able to come back next week. Thanks for taking the time to drop by!

April 13, 2020

What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Welcome to The Samurai’s Inro

  By Uncategorized

I’ve been working hard on the next Harmony story and it’s getting close! I haven’t set an official release date, but it likely will be the early part of May. No cover to share just yet, but I’ve got the tagline and description. And of course the title! It’s called The Samurai’s Inro.

Tagline:

Trouble has a long memory and is stalking Harmony Duprie.

 

Doesn’t that sound like fun? Here’s the description:

Harmony Duprie has it made. Or so she thinks.

New job.

New routine.

A quiet life in the quiet little town of Oak Grove.

Oh, and Eli.

But trouble has a long memory and it’s playing a deadly game.

Friends’ cars stolen.

Her apartment ransacked.

The duplicate of a stolen Japanese antique carved box left behind.

Trouble follows wherever she goes, including the parking lot of the police station. Not even the want-to-be bodyguard brought in by Police Chief Sorenson can end the harassment. And all her research leads to dead ends.

Can Harmony identify the face of trouble before she loses and the winner takes her life as the final prize?

Let the games begin.

 

Growing Up #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

 

April 6, 2020

What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?

Once upon a time, I posed that question to Harmony, the main character in my mystery series. Well, Jake, the anti-hero, asked.

“You know, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a cop when I grew up.” He glared at me. “Don’t laugh.”

I swallowed my chuckle with a sip of coffee. “What happened?”

He grimaced. “Life, I guess. I still think I would have been a good one.”

It was surreal, having a conversation with a renowned jewel thief about being a police officer. “Sometimes dreams just don’t work out,” I said, thinking about Janine and the library job.

“What dream hasn’t worked out for you?”

I picked up a section of the newspaper so he couldn’t see my eyes. “It’s not important. I’ve got a good life and good friends and that’s what matters.”

“Let me guess, you wanted to be an astronaut but your eyesight’s not good enough.”

“Worse. I wanted to be a cowboy. Not a cowgirl, mind you, but a cowboy.”

Jake snorted into his cup, spraying coffee everywhere. He snatched a handful of napkins from the holder and blotted the liquid from the newspaper. “Yeah, I can see where that might be a little hard to accomplish.” He eyed me. “You don’t have the right parts. But I must say, I like the parts you have.”

I crumpled up an insert from the paper and hurled it at him. I needed to find a way to keep him busy and out of my hair, and soon.

Now, I never wanted to be a cowboy. Daniel Boone, maybe. Or a hermit. There was a time I wanted to be a singer-songwriter, but only knew the basics about music. Or maybe a writer. Then I decided to be a librarian. 

Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile may remember I actually got to be one. Part-time, in a small library in a small town. But it was everything I wanted. I got to be surrounded by books, I got to do story hour for kids, I got to help pick out new books to the collection. Best of all, I got to read when there was nothing else to do!

Life happened, and I had to leave that small town and small library. Eventually, I was introduced to computers and fell in love. (I won’t talk about the many jobs in between.) Yes, I’m old. No one had a personal computer when I was a kid.. And now I’m a Windows server administrator. A job that didn’t exist when I was growing up. (And one that certainly wouldn’t have been suggested to a teenage girl.)

The best part is, I’m a writer too! Which may seem like an odd  combination. One is mathematical and the other creative. In the whole right side of the vs the left side of the brain theory, I’m using both equally, but not at the same time. And loving it.

I tell people I didn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was over 40, and it’s the truth. Better late than never!

To find out what the other folks on this hop wanted to be when they grew up, follow the links below.

Be safe, everyone!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

April 6, 2020

What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.