http://www.awriterweavesatale.com/

The Woven Tale Press Issue #2...

2013-04-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

...is now on the e-newsstand! Bloggers, read, subscribe, submit your favorite posts:

Click on cover to go to issue:

The Woven Tale Press....

2013-04-10T08:20:00.002-07:00

.... an eclectic culling of the blogging web. Too many well-conceived posts are relegated to their archives too soon. So enjoy here the ephemeral meant to be indelible.

CLICK ON COVER TO GO THE FIRST ISSUE:

Hyperventilating and no snow plow in sight

2013-02-12T07:54:00.002-08:00

I'm DONE with snow days. Nemo has killed their thrill. Cabin fever. Where's the PLOW?

Follow me here and read all about it:

Tale Tues: A Paper Bag Please. Hyperventilating

It's my Birthday and I Can Cryyyy If I Want to...

2013-02-07T08:53:00.000-08:00

Guess what, I turned FIVE this week!

I DITCHED THE BIG ZERO THAT WAS NIPPING AT THE 5'S HEELS! BECAUSE I'M NOT READY FOR THE RADICAL!

Come visit and follow me too. I love company even though my coffee is often too weak or burnt.

I'm Going Blind

2013-02-01T14:24:00.003-08:00

....Really. When you turn 50, that's what happens. Read about this nightmare here:

Going Blind

2012-12-06T16:53:00.001-08:00

Ever had a rescue manicure?

On a really bad day?

Read my

manicure mission.

(and follow me there)

2012-11-21T04:41:00.001-08:00

"You don't look your age." Of course, that's a compliment. Though not a compliment anyone would make to someone in their twenties.

So I'm not in my twenties! So what!

Ok, I do care. I'm middle-aged. As this lady waiting on line in front of me at Petco liked to remind me, as I was considering more doggy chewy toys...

How old do you look?

Tale Tues: The Remark

2012-11-13T18:13:00.001-08:00

Resurrect your favorite old posts and link up!
Too many of our best posts wind up too quickly in our archives so lets dust them off:

Old-Post Resurrection Blog Hop

Resurrection Blog Hop!

2012-09-06T07:09:00.001-07:00

Sandra's weekly Resurrection Blog Hop is open – dust off those favorite posts gathering dusts in your archives and Repost as new ones! Click link below!

Resurrection Blog Hop

Tale Tues: Rabid Mommy's Time Out

2012-09-04T09:38:00.004-07:00

You moms will all relate to this one (click on link below):

Ever bought a bottle of Mommy's Time Out? If not, drink up!

Blog Hop: to Resurrect Old Favorite Posts!

2012-08-26T06:17:00.000-07:00

Tired of having your favorite posts relegated to dusty archives? Link up here, grab the code and grow your audience!

Old Post Resurrection Hop

and follow me on my new site!

Tale Tues: The PAIL

2012-08-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Where the heck have I been? Summer has swallowed me whole. With a sick child and a pail:

Awriterweavesatale.com

you following me here yet at my new home?

I Want to See the Dolphins!

2012-08-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

...Now!

Read about how poutish and peevish a mature adult mother can be on her Disney vacation at:

A Writer Weaves a Tale

Disney Dismay: Its realities

2012-07-28T15:01:00.002-07:00

Read all about our Dinsey travails (can you possibly imagine Disney World not being magical?} at my new site

awriterweavesatale.com

Fiction Writing Workshop

2012-07-19T12:21:00.005-07:00

Come join Sandra's Writing Workshop Community!

A new fiction writing link is up!

Tale Tuesday: The Little Things that are Huge

2012-07-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

Read it here and as well as follow me on my new site:

awriterweavesatale.com

The Tale That Almost Didn't Get Told

2012-07-11T11:39:00.001-07:00

Read all about it at my new site

awriterweavesatale.com

Tale Tues is Up on Weds....

2012-07-04T08:48:00.001-07:00

... because life interferes. Crises happen and I'm smack dab in the middle of one. Hard to remember it's July 4th because no fireworks for us. Rather, maybe I've had enough of life's fireworks for one week.

Anyway, Tale Tues is all about the new normalcy of the sandwich mom

try to follow me over at my new home.

New writing workshop is up!

2012-06-30T06:29:00.001-07:00

Latest workshop is up with new prompt. But remember ,you can link up what you like,cas long as it's fiction!

A writer weaves a tale

( please follow me at my new site once you get there....)

Tale Tues: Sultry Siri

2012-06-25T14:27:00.001-07:00

Read all about her over at my new Wordpress site,

a writerweavesatale.com. And follow me there!

Sandra's Writing Workshop Hop!

2012-06-15T11:40:00.003-07:00

My Workshop prompt is up so follow this link to my
new Wordpress site!

Migrating!

2012-06-14T16:47:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm migrating to Wordpress. I'm not good with change, like the same old blankets on my bed, but change also keeps me young:)

Though I'm already feeling a little nostalgic for this old place, especially my GFC friends, so you guys have to find me over at my new "house." Find a way to follow me there and stop in for cyber coffee.

You know how I like it, strong, but with lots of milk.

I do love you all! I'm never too far away, and do check back here to dust a bit....

A Writer Weaves a Tale

Featured!

2012-06-13T19:26:00.001-07:00

I'm a featured This week on Studio30plus.

Great interactive site for writers!

P.S. I'm migrating over to wordpress so start following me, please, over there!

http://www.awriterweavesatale.com/

Tale Tuesday: I Wait Too Long

2012-06-11T15:46:00.001-07:00

"I was thinking about you the other day."

I was touched, even if it was just my hairstylist. She'd been "thinking" I was overdue for a touch up.

Angelina combed her hands through my nest. I watched her in the mirror and was reminded of our gerbils, the way they groom each other, though be it with their nubby little teeth.

She pressed down my hair so I could see the two inches of gray bordering my part. "You really shouldn't wait this long."

I do. I wait too long. Until the gray is this, a bar down the middle of my scalp. Trying to maintain a deceptively youthful appearance costs bucks, and I don't care for sitting too long in front of a too-brightly lit mirror.

I do like that I'm often the youngest lady at the salon – a mere 49-year-old child! At least in comparison to the snow-white grandmothers shuffling in on walkers, wearing out-dated daisy-print blouses, polyester blue pants, and maybe an old rhinestone dragonfly brooch. These ladies are the salon's most frequent patrons, escorted weekly by devoted daughters (distracted by the texting of their own most likely newly minted adult daughters) to have their thinning hair washed and set in pink rollers.

Being such regulars, one anecdote can be continued from week to week, and these anecdotes usually are precipitated by hair washing; something about craning your head back into a sink inspires the confessional. As about the negligent grandson who left his attaché case on the train given him after he graduated law school by Grandma; he forgot it "so he "claimed," because "the wife" was calling about the broken laundry machine and he was so distracted, he left it on his seat; but Grandma gave into his other "claim" that he really did love the attaché case; so Grandma made her daughter drive her to the mall to find the exact same case but for fifty bucks less than at Christmas and isn't it wonderful that "with just a few dollars you can make a problem go away."

When the washing and rolling is done, so is the chatting, and these ladies are comfortably settled under dryers, to flip through home-decorating magazines, to doze off, or, in one case, to pass away:

"I did, I thought she'd just nodded off," Angelina was telling me on one visit. "But when I went to check her hair, she was dead."

Last time I'd sat under one of those dome dryers was when I could still squeak by with mere highlights to disguise the gray. But I remember that, enjoying the heat and hum, and thinking this is what it was like to be inside a fishbowl.

Rubber-gloved, smearing poo-colored goo into my hair, Angelina had gone on to tell me how they'd called an ambulance and the deceased lady was "wheeled out." Then evidently, she'd moved on to her next customer.

I looked at her in her gilded gold-leaf mirror. Fake ivy trailered dustily down the frame. "You....didn't close or anything?"

She actually chuckled, more of a phlegmy cough from 30 odd years of smoking. "Hon, what was I supposed to do, reschedule everyone for the next day when I was already booked?"

She set the timer and walked away.

I had only myself to look at in the gilded mirror, my head a matted gooey mess.

After what seemed hours of my trying to focus on my Kindle without overhearing more sink confessionals, the timer finally went off.

Then it was my turn to crane my head back into the sink for my own little therapeutic session.

Deb, the hair washer, started hosing the goo out of my hair, asking, "So how ya been?"

Well, I thought about this. I could spew the saga about my mother driving into the wall of a carpet store, then taking a mandatory road test only to fail and lose her license. Or I could tell her about how my eight year old worried he looked like a girl. That my basement flooded because a sock got stuck in the drainage hose. That recently I discovered my first wrinkle that is no frown or laugh line, which, from the hair washer's vantage point, she could probably see for herself, as well as probable nose hairs.

I couldn't pick or choose one thing so I just closed my eyes and said, "Oh, great. I've been great."

And I will persevere with the blond until I succumb to a turkey neck. Honestly, a small (minute) fraction of my 49-year-old youthfulness looks forward to that surrendering to the snow-white. And if I cannot spend my last moments breathing in salty air at the edge of the sea, I would opt for that, dying in my sleep under a hair dryer.

P.S. I'm migrating over to wordpress so start following me, please, over there!

http://www.awriterweavesatale.com/

Workshop Guest Post: Julie Jordan Scott from Julie Unplugged

2012-06-08T19:34:00.001-07:00

This week, my Writing Workshop Hop prompt was to write in the "close" first person point of view. All the points of view are worthy reads – You'll find some rich writing linked up here!

Not all are the "close" first person, which doesn't matter a hoot. The key is to keep your voice consistent, whatever point of view you choose. Julie does happen to nail the "close" part; she succeeds in establishing a colloquial – the spoken – voice. The reader can hear this narrator speaking, her actual tone. At the same time, Julie doesn't neglect those descriptive details that make this moment visual and immediate for the reader:

I don’t know how I get myself into these crazy schemes with Lisa and her life coach friend, Candy. The last thing I want to do is invest an afternoon hearing little miss chirpy talk about how to create a wonderful life when I should be working on my novel .

Yes, the hair on my arms is standing up at the thought of listening to Candy’s drivel and the need to smile into the hopeful eyes of Lisa, who is chronically concerned with my lack of motivation.

It’s easy for Lisa to say. She has been in love with Frank since she was twenty years old. I introduced them, for God’s sake. She doesn’t know what it feels like to wake up in an unhappy marriage for the last ten years because you just don’t know how to escape it.

No one writes novels about this: they’re too busy writing stuff about sexcapades of an early twenties woman discovering her kinky side with her jet-setter “how did he get so rich by his mid twenties anyway?” boyfriend.

Worst yet, Candy probably imagines herself as one of those women.

I see Candy standing at the big picture window, waving at me from half a level above me. Her orange and pink jacket scream, “I am the center of attention or I am nothing!” Her enormous pendant atop her petal pink blouse wreak confusion: power woman meet woman ready to conceive, or something like that.

Now that I’ve been spotted, there is no way I can go home. I smile and return the wave as I see Lisa join the scene at the window.

She looks exactly the same as the day I introduced her to Frank. You can’t see a single wrinkle nor any excess baggage from her three babies.

On the other hand I carry at least an extra forty pounds from my years with Mitch. Perhaps it is a pound for every month since the two of us have had a significant conversation.

I was still considering making an excuse when I heard the door open and Lisa’s voice call out to me. “Laura! I am so glad you are here!”

There is no escaping now. Damn.

Nice work, Julie! Stay tuned for my next prompt, I'm hoping by Sunday! Wish I could get my %$@# button to work!