All Time Greatest Hits

It's time for the Top Ten Music Blogfest. What!? You haven't heard? That's okay. But now that your here you should check out mine and then check out everyone else's over at Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog.

My list far exceeds my age, especially since I was only born in 1978, but I'm the youngest and I have four older sisters with three being ten or more years older than me.

Besides exceeding my age, it doesn't quite match what I listen to on a daily basis either, but then this is an all-time greatest list. By the list you wouldn't know I currently listen to artists like Lady GaGa, Katy Perry, Pink!, Bruno Mars, Flo Rida, and on and on. However, those artists keep me young, they don't remind me of my first boyfriend, my wedding day, rollerskating rinks in the '80's, or the part of my early twenties when I experimented with drugs (shhhh!). That's why they don't make my list. Check this out though, you might recognize and relate to some of these:

1. Somebody - Depeche Mode
   (This hits my list in 1992)My list starts here for a reason. Although the majority of my listening pleasure came from my parent's record/8-track player or any of my sister's stereos, I didn't really start loving music until I met my first boyfriend. Yep, this is the song I lost my. . .you get it. Good starting place, I think.
2. Purple Rain - Prince
   (For me, 1993)First real introduction to writing poetry. I went from writing in a journal to writing my feelings in code, otherwise known as poetry. With first loves come Purple Rain, at least in my experience.
3. Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Simon & Garfunkel(1994)My mom still has this record. In 1994 Dad came home from being away for business and announced he wanted a divorce. This song played a lot. I think I'm the one who played it over and over. In 2003, my husband took me to see them in concert. Definitely one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Probably the only audience member crying during this song. Oops!
4. Ironic - Alanis Morissette (1995)Thank you Alanis for inspiring me to open my mind and gain a spine. I was seventeen this year. It was a refreshing year. I had spent a good three years with the first love and now I was branching out as a whole new kind of person. I was always kind of an introvert who incidentally had a family who moved a lot (2 elementaries, 2 junior highs, 3 high schools). I was tired of being the new kid in school and vowed not to be that introverted, shy girl this year. It worked out for the best.
5. I Am the Walrus - The Beatles(1995)My introverted self found me a great new bunch of friends, well, kinda. Hmmm. They weren't the best type of friends, but we managed to have a pretty good time with each other for the short summer we spent together. I learned about The Beatles in a whole new kind of way. I Am the Walrus was actually a song playing on the radio on the way back from a busted party where the cops came and broke us up due to a neighbor's complaint that marijuana smoke was seeping into the hallway from the condo we rented in Park City, Utah. This isn't where my drug experiences begin. It is however, the year I vow to NEVER try and see Pearl Jam in concert again (no show, effing freak. I hate that guy! Love his music--hate him. Bitter party of one here.) Beatles won't show up again on this list only because the list is too short. I take great comfort in The Beatles and especially John Lennon, however.
6. Casey Jones - Grateful Dead (1995)My sister, Anna, had been playing The Grateful Dead in her car for years trying to get me to catch on. She toured around and saw them in concert and brought stickers back for my sticker collection way before I started listening. Finally, the year I get into Casey Jones, Truckin', Sugar Magnolia, among others happens to be the year he dies and I have tickets to see them play. That sucked. I stuck to his music for years after. I even found a guy who followed The Dead around and tapped into their system to make recordings. I listened to those tapes for awhile in 1997. Good times had by all. (Still not my drug era.) I listened while I wrote poetry and screenplays.
7. Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin (1998)My mom used to call me a throwback even as a small child. She pegged me for child of the sixties or even as far back as a beatnik. When I latched onto Janis Joplin and didn't let go my mom just kept saying, "I've always said you're a throwback." Maybe I was reincarnated, who knows. It's great to listen to this song but even better to watch her sing it. I have a huge framed drawing of Janis singing on my bedroom wall. I don't know why but she inspires me more than any other female singer. (Still not my drug era.)
8. Into Dust - Mazzy Star(1999)I was fresh out of an abusive relationship and living a crazy lifestyle in West Hollywood, California. I was ready for a do-over. Unfortunately, I had never heard of Mazzy Star until I was high on acid. My writing took an interestingly dark and introspective turn but for the better. I was climbing out of a hole and onto a fresh new page. I was stepping away from years of raw poetry to short stories. I don't have an addictive personality and I was broke so I got bored with the drug scene pretty quick and focused entirely on sharpening my story telling skills. Mazzy Star gives me the incredible urge to play guitar. This is the year I get a guitar and meet my husband. The beginning and ending of a weirdly short drug stint into the rest of my blissful life.
9. Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Brother IZ(2001)My then soon-to-be husband and I heard this song and just knew it was our song. My husband's mother and her family are from Hawaii and we were planning to get married in Hawaii so it just seemed perfect. Every time we hear this song we pause and reflect on how we once pictured our lives would be together and are happy to discover we are right on track. This was the song we danced to at our wedding. By this time in my life I really believed there were lights at the end of tunnels, pots of gold at the end of rainbows, better times ahead. . .I wasn't wrong. I'm not disappointed so far.
10. Mad World - Tears for Fears (2002)Lots of things happened this year. I got married, plus I had my first child. My first child had kidney problems and faced surgery at 5 months old. My world had gone mad. I was falling apart and for some odd reason really latched onto this song. Sure, Donnie Darko was something else, but this song just understood exactly what was going on in my life at the time.

Now you've been through the deepest parts of my journey in music, hope you enjoyed. I can't wait to go around and read everyone else's. I would have put together some links but I'm typing this out in a hotel room in Utah and it's Sunday night. My husband and kids are begging me to close up shop and go to bed. We have a flight out of here Monday afternoon after I spent a good week caring for my mom during her first week of chemo. It's back to life in warm Southern California. Happy writing writers!

Significant Other Blogfest

I have to really, REALLY, thank my husband for putting this together even though he's been home alone with our three kids for a week while I've been in Utah caring my mother. Thanks Babe, Love ya!

The following post is written by my husband for the Significant Other Blogfest. Check out mine and then go check out everyone else's.

When my wife asked me to put together a “blog posting” I thought she was losing her mind. Didn’t she know that I was a financial advisor, whose written skills were next to non-existent? Didn’t she remember that I scored a 330 on the verbal portion of the SAT, twice! (For the younger people out there, it used to be scored on a 1600 point scale) . Anyways, here we go!

You writers are amazing to me. You able to come up with elaborate stories starting with a blank sheet of paper, a pen and your thoughts. I remember watching my wife write her first book wondering where did she come up with this stuff? I on the other hand, enjoy doing complex mathematic calculations in my head while I work out. To each their own.

Outside of work and workout I do enjoy cooking! The question was asked, “What food or drink is guaranteed to return your loved one to a good mood, even after a bad day writing?” For those of you that don’t cook often, the answer is simple. Just include the 3 main food groups, Butter, Salt, Sugar. To be specific, the dish I would cook is a Risotto with asparagus tips, topped with butter shavings and fresh parmesan. The side dishes would include a mozzarella caprese. Some homemade garlic bread with fresh chopped garlic and real butter spread prior to baking is a must. For you wine drinkers a nice bottle of Cain 5 (great blend). Lastly, some Gelato for dessert. Heck if this didn’t put her in a good mood, I would be in such a great mood I could just entertain! OK…I’m getting hungry. No seriously.

My wife is introspective and is at home with herself writing with only her thoughts and her computer. It’s really remarkable to hear the key strokes mimicking the sound of a machine gun. When she asked me, What one thing would you change about your significant others writing habits? I had to reflect on the question. She is dedicated, self-motivated, disciplined and she is able to create stories/situations/dialog that grab and hold my attention. So, where do we go from here? I can honestly say that I would not change her writing habits, I would change her self-marketing habits. The query process is a tough one. I watched my wife get her hopes up with a partial request and then have them crushed with the form letter rejection. There is no easy way to get rejected 99% of the time. The one word of advice is to put it into perspective and realize that the rejections are part of the process. She had 2 partial request out of 12 queries sent. In my head that is a pretty good percentage, to be exact 16.66667%. And…the most importantly is that constantly put yourself out there. If there are no outstanding query’s there is no potential for a partial or full manuscript request.

The last question, “How hard is it to sit by and watch someone you care for struggle to attain a dream...knowing there's very little you can do to help?” To be very pragmatic about it, it’s not difficult to watch as long as they continue down the path. During my Ironman triathlon, our neighbor put a sign together for me. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts!”. The only time I will be concerned is if my wonderful wife loses the passion to write. The happiness, success and failure are all worth it as long as you continue to do what you love. Good luck everyone and keep writing.

My Query Blogfest Entry

“Taryn, who should I go to the dance with, Justin or Brady?” “Taryn, which car should I ask my mom for a Prius or a Jetta?” “Taryn. . .”

Ever since Taryn Powell turned sixteen he can’t seem to get away from these types of questions. Just how the dungeon master of the Dungeons & Dragons after school club became so popular is dumbfounding.

Taryn might be dumbfounded but he isn’t dumb. His popularity soared when he found out he was adopted after his real dad died and left him a book he doesn’t plan on reading, a trust fund with an undetermined amount of money in it, and a Mazerati.

He might understand his popularity but he hasn’t quite figured out that he’s only half-mortal and heir to the throne of destiny. Now, if he had opened up that book he set aside he would know a lot of things about himself and probably wouldn’t have offered random advice to the kids at his school. But he’s popular now and determined to finally get somewhere with a girl, and not just any girl--any big-boobed girl.

Before he can claim the title, God of Destiny, he must first get his mind out of the gutter and prove that he’s not the one ruining the lives of every kid in his high school.

My YA fantasy novel, THE GAME MAKER’S APPRENTICE, is complete at 54,000 words.

Sincerely,
Patricia A. Timms
patriciamcgehee@gmail.com
 
This concludes my entry into Jodi Henry's Query Blogfest. Please feel free to leave constructive feedback even if you're not participating in the blogfest.

Have You Heard?



Jodi Henry Query Blogfest Dec. 12th

 Jodi Henry is hosting a query blogfest from December 12th thru the 18th. If you haven't signed up you should. And I'm not just saying that because I don't want to be alone in this, because I'm not, there are at least twenty others ahead of me on this venture. And I'm also not just telling you because I get extra points for doing so--I genuinely think everyone should finish up their edits, realize that perfection is subjective, and help me clog up the system with a bunch of queries this coming year.

I say, if you're thinking of querying in the new year, then you better be working on that query right now. And what better way to grow a thick skin (necessary for querying) then to put your query up in all of it's glory for everyone to comment on? Right? Right.

I'm not sure which query to put up though. I have a query I managed to get two partial requests on but I've since decided to change the whole book from 3rd person to 1st. And then I have my NaNo book which I finished on the 19th of November and have already done a once-through on the edits, but I would really like to beef it up to 65k from 54k. Do you think 54k is on the low side for YA? My first book was 74k. Hmmm. Time for twenty (really just five) questions:

WHAT SHOULD I DO? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? ARE YOU NEW TO QUERYING? HOW ARE YOUR NERVES? ARE YOU NERVOUS TO QUERY AND/OR PUT YOUR QUERY UP FOR THE GENERAL BLOGGING PUBLIC TO COMMENT ON?

Are You "Well-Read?"( I'm not sure if I am). . .

The challenge is: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

This post stems from Rach Writes and many others but I came upon the challenge at Rach Writes.
Instructions:

• Copy this list.

• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

• Tag other book nerds.

If you dare like Rachael Harrie, then underline those books you plan to read in 2011.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (Didn’t finish all 7 but finished up to book 4)
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The King James Bible Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell [I've been meaning to read this one for ages]
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare [Was a theatre arts major]
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson [I did read his A Short History of Nearly Everything]
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl [But I’ve read James and the Giant Peach]
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo [In this list, if it’s a classic play then I’ve likely read parts based on my theatre background]

Rachael Harrie at Rach Writes believes there to be one missing on the list and added The Iliad by Homer.

If I were to add the 100th I think I might add Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

I’m afraid in this list of 100, I am not as well read as I should be: 20 Read Entirely and 10 partial reads.

Then again, this is a subjective list. There are great books not on the list like, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway or Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. There are books like Bridget Jones which pales in comparison to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde on a list suggesting whether or not we’re well read. I like it though. It’s great to see what kinds of classics aspiring writers have read. I think I just might make another posting about what exactly is on my bookshelf after Thanksgiving. By the way, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

WHAT ABOUT YOU? HAVE YOU READ ANY OF THESE ON THIS LIST? COPY, PASTE, BOLD, ITALICIZE, FILL IN THE BLANK, AND MAKE SOME OF YOUR OWN SUGGESTIONS.

Am I Awake or Am I Dreaming?

“Am I awake or am I dreaming?” The first time I had to ask myself this question was in 1983. I was almost six years old. There was nothing out of the ordinary except that I was awakened from my sleep to the sound of someone yelling for help. I laid there in my bed wondering, am I awake or am I dreaming? The call for help didn’t go away, it got closer. I got out of bed and pulled the curtains to the side and that’s when I saw her; a girl in a long white dress with long black hair running down the sidewalk while looking behind her calling for help. She was being chased, but by what, I’ll never know. Before she faded away, she looked up at my window, into what felt like my eyes, and asked me for help. I’ve never seen her again. Later research led me to believe I saw a White Lady ghost which has been known to be a Harbinger, bearer of an omen.

Six months later I had to ask myself, “Am I alive or am I dead?” We rented an old house when my family moved to Ely, Nevada, an old mining town, for a short time for my dad’s job. One morning, not long after we arrived, my dad woke up for work to the furnace blowing black soot through every vent in the house. Since we moved there in the dead of winter, the furnace had been going on and off all night. Panicked, my dad ran around the house waking all of us up to get us out of there. We were all covered in black soot. We weren’t sure how long we had been lying there breathing it in but the curtains and walls were blackened when we woke up. We spent a week throwing up after that, lucky to be alive.

It didn’t take long for me to ask myself if I was awake or if I was dreaming again. This time I wasn’t the only one seeing ghosts, both my sister and I constantly heard, felt, or saw something unexplainable going on there in that rental in Nevada. One night I woke up and thought I heard my sister playing music on her clock radio. I didn’t want my parents to get up and yell at us so I went next door to her room and said, “Turn it off! You’re going to wake mom and dad up!” She wasn’t awake though and never heard me. I stood there listening to the radio changing stations by its self. I ran back to my room and hid, asking myself, “I am awake or am I dreaming,” over and over.

We moved back to our home in Utah after only six months in Nevada. Whatever was going on didn’t stay there, but then, it didn’t start there either. It was 1987 and I was ten when I found myself asking, “Am I alive or am I dead,” once again. We lived in a split entry level home where the front door opened to a set of stairs that went both upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs from the front door was the doorway leading to the kitchen where the kitchen sink was located. That’s where I was standing doing the dishes with my Walkman turned up practically all the way to Motley Crue. On this particular day I was annoyed that my mom kept bothering me while she was going around the house cleaning, forcing me to turn my music down, and ask, “What?” repeatedly. I decided to just crank the volume and ignore her the next time she said anything since I only had a few pieces of silverware left to wash. Just like I thought, my mom started calling my name, “Patty. . .Patty. . .PATTY!!!!” I dropped the silverware, left the water running, turned around, and yelled, “WHAT!?” at the top of my lungs at the same exact moment lightning struck our front door. I went blind momentarily and our television was blown out. The damage to our house wasn’t nearly as bad as the house behind us whose carpet caught fire when that bolt of lightning went through the swamp cooler onto their roof. Little did I know, my mom had been on her way upstairs with a basket of laundry when she heard me yell, “WHAT!?” She asked me why I did that and I said, “Because you were yelling at me.” She said, “No I wasn’t.” I’m lucky to be alive. If I had spent another second washing that silverware under the running water, I would’ve been electrocuted. My mom and sister both talk about that moment to this day, wondering who alerted me.

My ghost stories continue throughout my life but I didn’t start seeing full bodied apparitions until 2001. In 2002, my daughter was born with kidney problems that required two surgeries. It was 2004 and my daughter was scheduled for her second surgery, a stressful time in our house. I dreamt one night that my neighbor from across the street came over and said, “Someone died in the bedroom upstairs.” It woke me from my sleep. When my eyes opened there was a little girl standing at the foot of my bed. She seemed real. She had short brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a dress that might have been a school uniform but not from this era. When she didn’t go away I shut my eyes and rolled over seeking comfort from my sleeping husband. One week later, my neighbor came over to check on my daughter’s health and while she was there she said, “Did you know someone died in the room upstairs?” I tried not to panic. I asked for the details. She said the previous owner’s mother died up there. I ran into the previous owner at the store one day and asked her about it. She became defensive, saying her mom died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and not in the house.

So, I ask you, have I been awake or have I been dreaming? Am I alive or am I dead?

Have a ghost story of your own?  Join our Boo-Fest using our linky tool below this post above our comments:

Seen Any Ghosts Lately?

Seen any ghosts lately or know anyone who has?

Quinn at seeing, dreaming . . .writing, and I have been relating over our own personal ghost sightings and wondered how many of you have seen or heard that which lies beyond the grave.

That means it’s time for a Boo-Fest. We want to read about your personal ghost experiences or the experiences of someone you know personally.

To join, sign up with our Linky Tool (below), grab our nifty button over there on my sidebar, SPREAD THE WORD, and start writing.

Make your haunted posting on October 28th so everyone can read about your experiences with the afterlife.

As always, it’s never too late to join a blogfest. Sign up here or at Quinn's blog between now and October 28th to join in the fun!