I feel like I should be documenting this since I guess it’s kind of historic—even though I personally am not experiencing the level anxiety one might expect at the end of the world.
The thing is, the climate change apocalypse scientists have been warning us about for the past decade or so (or longer) is upon us, but I feel fine. Well, my asthmatic lungs don’t feel fine what with the thick smoke that has been hanging in the air all week from the wildfires in Canada—Canada! So far away from my home in central Illinois in the United States, but the fires are just that bad.
So few of us escape childhood without experiencing at least a little bit of trauma. Even when we have the best parents, things can happen to us. Children are at the whim of the adults around them, and not everyone has a child’s best interests in mind when making decisions that will affect them. Trauma experienced in childhood can rule the decisions you make as an adult. Often, the coping skills we needed as a child backfire on us when we try to apply them in the adult world. Many of us find ourselves repeating the same mistakes throughout our adult lives without ever knowing just how much our decision-making process is impacted by what happened to us in childhood.
Childhood trauma can have a profound and lasting impact on decision-making processes in adulthood. Traumatic experiences during childhood can disrupt the development of various cognitive, emotional, and social capacities, which can influence decision-making in the following ways:
I feel the need to preface this review with a discussion on genre. The assignment of a genre to a book is little more than a marketing strategy whose purpose is to place the book in the section of the bookstore where it will sell the most copies. There are those who live and die by their chosen book genres. Some book snobs wouldn’t deign to read young adult novels, thinking those books are for kids and kids alone. But the truth is, a book can be many different things to many different people. A fantasy novel can also be a literary novel, and a YA novel can also be for adults. This is one of those rare novels that – in my opinion – is for everyone.
I first discovered The Girl Who Drank the Moon on one of the many literary blogs I troll for book recommendations. I added it to my Goodreads Want-To-Read list without realizing it is a children’s book. I then placed an online hold on the book, still unaware that my local library houses this particular text in the juvenile books section.
Once upon a time, a young high school graduate signed up for two courses at her local community college extension center. She was eager to be the first person in her family to go to college, while also not wanting to commit too fully to something she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to do. She also wasn’t quite sure it was something she was even capable of finishing.
Typewriter image made using Sandbox app in Android.
So, the young woman took a computer class, which she enjoyed, where she learned all about a new phenomenon called the internet, and chat rooms, and all manner of exciting new things. And she also took an English class, which she thought she would enjoy because she loved to write, but instead she ended up in an unwinnable argument with an ignorant instructor and soon dropped out of college altogether. Continue reading “The importance of style in college writing”→
Hey, all! I’m running a Kindle book giveaway over on Amazon right now, and I’m hoping you’ll check it out! I’m giving away 10 free copies of With Envy Stung: Valley of the Bees #1. There’s lots to go around, so be sure to share this opportunity with all of your reading friends!
The book summary for Bergfield’s novel, Canine, piqued my interest right away. The premise was really unique, and that’s hard to find! Werewolves are everywhere in fiction these days, but this story comes with a twist (a few of them, actually!) In most of these stories, the average werewolf character is a human who happens to turn into a dog sometimes, usually around the full moon. But the protagonist of this story chooses to live life as a dog. And not just any dog, but as a pet dog! Continue reading “Book Review | Canine: A #werewolf story with a twist”→
This post marks my 500th blog post on Write on the World! It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for almost seven years now. Thank you for sticking with me!
The past few weeks, I’ve been working on my second “real” novel, and it hit me this morning that I’ve finally figured out how to organize my work in the first draft stage so I can keep track of what I’m doing. Because organization can be a key element of being an efficient writer, I thought I’d share my system in case some other writer might find it useful. I think the easiest way to explain my system is to paint a picture of it for you, so I took a screenshot of the first page of my actual document:
Avoid the Days Inn like the plague. Literally. There is a good chance you’ll catch the plague (or at least bring cockroaches home with you when you leave) if you stay here:
The Days Inn logo used from 2007 to the present (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Days Inn Blytheville
102 South Porter Drive Blytheville, AR 72315
(800) 329-1073
It’s official! I just set up my novel, With Envy Stung: Valley of the Bees #1 for pre-order on Smashwords! I completed the first draft of the third and final book of this trilogy, and I finally feel confident that Book One will be ready for publication by its September 1st release date!
With Envy Stung: Valley of the Bees #1 is now available for download on iTunes and Kobo. It will soon be available on your Nook as well! See the links within this blog post for more info.
This is such a huge milestone for me. I have been working on this trilogy for about three years now. With Envy Stung has been critiqued and revised until I can’t imagine what else I might possibly do to make it shine any brighter. That is, until I sit down to read through it again and find a few more lines that I could write *just a little bit better.*
Update: I now have direct links where you can pre-order your copy of With Envy Stung: Valley of the Bees #1 from the retailer of your choice:
As with any work in progress, I will probably always be able to find something else that I could tweak a bit more. But, as with any other work in progress, the time always comes when it’s time for the author to let it go as it is. I feel confident that With Envy Stung has reached that stage in the writing process. The time has finally come to complete my final line edits and format the book for publishing! Continue reading “Now available for pre-order: With Envy Stung | Valley of the Bees #1”→