Catherine Ensley's Words World and Wings

Sunrise on Kauai

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:51:00 +0000

We were so excited to be here, hubbie and I were awake at 5:30 am the first morning, waiting for the sun to come up. It comes up at 7:20 am. We waited around for a little while, but it was still quite dark when we walked to the beach to watch the sun rise.

Our condo is only about 300 yards from the ocean, and so we can hear the surf at all times, and the trade winds blow right through the condo, cooling it. We have an ocean view, but there's nothing like being on the beach itself.

Our condo is so much nicer than the one in Maui two years ago that we were quite surprised and delighted to see what we had rented. We each have a bathroom. The living room is huge. There is a separate dining area and, of course, kitchen and bedroom. This one (at the Kaha Lani Resort) is only $20/night more expensive than the one in Maui. The one thing it lacks, though, is a washer and dryer.

I might try to post more pictures, however our Verizon internet modem is quite slow. We're staying in Kapaa, on the east side of the island, which gives us good access to everything. On the first day, we headed north and saw most of what you can see in that direction. (Sorry to be so abbreviated--breakfast is awaiting me.)

Yesterday, we went to Wimea Canyon and saw most of the sights in the south. Unfortunately, it rained heavily all day--a deluge--and so we weren't able to see as much as we'd hoped. We got out of the car long enough to see Spouting Horn.

This morning, we're back at trying to see it all again. Our 5-hour coastline tour of Na Pali, including snorkeling, is tomorrow. Our Waco ride that will fly us around the entire island is Sunday.

We've been leaving early and returning late, but tonight, we need to get back early so we can be at Port Allen by 8:00 am tomorrow morning ... roads such as they are here, and though it's probably only 30 miles away, it could take us 90- minutes to get there.

Aloha!

So Much to be Thankful For

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:53:00 +0000

The weather warmed considerably on Friday evening, resulting in massive melting through the night. On Saturday, I was busy getting ready for our trip when hubbie said to me, "I think you'd better come down to the basement."

An inch of water crossed the entire floor in my scrapbooking room. It had also spread, and was continuing to spread, into other parts of the basement.

We had re-roofed the house last summer, but there wasn't time to do the finishing touches. I.e. putting up rain gutters. All the snow had melted off the roof. An enormous pile lay along the north side of the house. It was all melting. Seeping into the basement through a flooded window well.

I hadn't even gotten dressed yet that morning, and so as my hubbie said, "You looked like a crazy woman outside in your fuzzy pink bathrobe, madly scooping water out of the window well with a bucket."

He got the new bucket tractor and dug a ditch along the north side of the house so that the water would collect there and seep into the ground, instead of making a beeline for the basement.

In all, I spent five hours in the basement. At first, I was bucketing and sopping up water. When that was done, I steam cleaned the entire 1200 sq feet of vinyl flooring.

Finished, I could hardly walk back up the stairs, I was so tired.

It wasn't the first time our basement's flooded. It was the fourth, but the first time when vinyl flooring had replaced carpeting.

The good news is that it happened before we left on our trip. Had we been gone, I cannot imagine the damage that would've been done. As a minimum, water would've soaked into the sheet rock and ruined it.

Nothing in my scrapbooking room was damaged, as virtually everything was in plastic storage units.

At the end of the day, we went to our grandson's second birthday party. This is the little guy who was born seven weeks premature, one week prior to our going to Hawaii last time. We'd worried about him and his mother. We'd taken care of the other two children while Mommy and baby were in the hospital. We also worried we might need to cancel our vacation. Everything turned out fine.

I snapped the picture just as we were leaving to go to Grandbaby's birthday party.

Now, today, we are on our way to Seattle and, once again, to board a plane for Hawaii.

Slammed!

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:39:00 +0000

We'd heard 2012 was supposed to have a bad winter. There was absolutely no signs of it. Until now.

Hubbie and I have been watching a couple of our grandkids since Monday while their parents vacationed in Las Vegas. There was no school on Monday, due to the holiday.

Then it snowed. And snowed. And snowed.

Even in Seattle. Roadways are terrible. Seattle (300 miles away) seldom gets snow, and so people don't have snow tires. Even if they did, they don't know how to drive in it. There are hardly any snowplows. The metropolitan area pretty much shuts down. Sea-Tac International Airport has been open intermittently. Same for Spokane International (near where we live).

My son and his wife have been stuck in Seattle, waiting for a flight to Spokane since last evening. They'll probably get home sometime today. The airport opened up again at 10:00 AM. They are on standby.

As you can imagine, they and everyone else at the airport are grumpy about cancelled and delayed flights and being on standby.

We're grumpy around here too. I couldn't get to work at all on Wednesday. It took my husband four hours to plow out our driveway Thursday morning. I got to work around 1:00 PM, but then that evening when I went home, I couldn't get the car back up the driveway. Now the car's stuck at the bottom, useless. Hubbie discovered it has absolutely no hooks beneath it for towing.

Because he has two four-wheel-drive pickups, he figured I could drive either one of them to work. The problem is, I'm not used to driving them, even when the roads are good. The 5-speed manual transmission. Having to figure out how and where to park the big ol' monster on the narrow, snow-filled side streets in the town where I work. (Grumpy. Grumpy. Grumpy). His expectation is that I should be fearless, let nothing stop me. After all, we're farm folk. We're hearty pioneers.

My thoughts about myself are that I'm a helpless, city born-and-bred woman. He shouldn't expect me to be fearless. I needed his help.(See where our expectations for ourselves and each each other don't match up? See why we got into an argument as he drove me to work this morning?)

So he drove me to work this morning, and will have to come get me this evening. It's two unnecessary hours on the road for him. (Grumpy. Grumpy. Grumpy.)

I wanted him to see that we need a 4WD car. He doesn't believe in them, because you sacrifice too much gas mileage year-round. I wanted him to see that I need studded snow tires. He doesn't believe in them because they ruin the roads. (This was subtext, thoughts on my part that didn't make it to the surface of our argument. The argument got shut down because the grandkids were in the back seat and "we shouldn't argue in front of the grandkids.")

The only truly happy people about all this are the kids, who attended school only one day this week. The pictures are of my oldest granddaughter, outside our house, playing with one of the farm dogs.

As I think about the snow and road conditions, I have to agree with him. I have to give up my egoic need to be right. Because I'm not right. What's wrong with me being independent, self-sufficient? Nothing. It makes more sense than me remaining a wimpy, helpless woman. We're can-do people. Beneath it all, I agree with him about 4WD cars and studded snow tires. I don't want to sacrifice 15 miles per gallon year-round, when you can usually count the snowy days in a year on two hands. I hate the deep grooves that studded snow tires wear into the highways.

So ... Once we get back from Hawaii, I pledge to start getting used to driving one of his pickups to work. The little black one.

Keep On Keeping On

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:01:00 +0000

I woke up at 4:00 am this morning feeling sad. It's not unusual for me to wake up so early. I liked that it was 4:00 am instead of 1:30 or 2:00 am (which is also not unusual).

If I wake up at 4:00 am, then I get to get up in only an hour or two. If earlier, I'd have to try to get back to sleep, or be tired at work the next day.

Waking up isn't unusual, but waking up with a sense of sadness really is. Generally I am such a morning person that I can hardly wait to spring (happily) out of bed.

But this morning? Well, it struck me. The last post I wrote, only a couple of days ago, I thought I was so close to being able to send out queries on my YA manuscript. Now I see that I'm still weeks, months, away from doing so.

I LOVE that 14 people critiqued the manuscript. I'm planning to read each and every one of their suggestions and take them to heart. The problem is the time it will take. When will there be time in my schedule to start working on my new manuscript idea? Probably March or later.

Friday-yesterday, I worked all day each day on the manuscript and was able to work through only parts of only THREE people's suggested changes.

It took me all day one day to remove unnecessary uses of the word "said" from the manuscript
I also did a global edit and removed "language"--such words as Jeez, damn, God--not that there were so many of them, but my critiquers have a point: Without them, even the most discriminating readers, who will set a book down if they run across a swear word, could enjoy reading it.
I removed word doubles--times when I inadvertently wrote the same word twice.
I addressed the issue of the hero's white gloves with the fingertips cut off: I clarified, then eliminated overkill and brought the mention of gloves down to a dozen instances, all necessary. I also "more fully rendered/realized" the scene where he finally removes the gloves.
I changed the scene where the heroine meets the bad boy/wrong boy and made him a little more likable in the beginning, so there's a more plausible reason why she ends up spending time with him instead of the hero.
I got through ALL of the comments made by only ONE critiquer, addressing questions that came up for her while reading the manuscript.

I know without looking at the others' comments that there are still many more issues to be addressed; I wrote them down during the group critique, or what my friend Sharon calls, "The Inquisition."

It appears that it will take me a full day or more (8+ hours) to address each critiquer's issues.

It feels like an effort to "get up one flight of stairs," only to turn at the landing and start going up another flight, and another, and another.

It will get done, but given the small amount of free time I normally have, and less in the next three weeks, it will be months before the revision is complete. At that point, I might want to give it to the critique group for one last pass.

Anyway. That's where I'm at. Happy to have been given excellent suggestions. Sad that it will take so long to make all the changes. Sad that it'll be months before time opens up enough to begin working on a new manuscript.

Friday Fragments

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:36:00 +0000

This past Monday, I met with my critique group. My YA romance manuscript with a paranormal element was the evening's discussion. It was so much fun. There were about 10 of us sitting in a circle, each person giving their thoughts and suggestions.

I so appreciate the time everyone took to read it and then to critique it. If you've never critiqued someone's full manuscript, it can take 20 or more hours, depending on the length of the manuscript and the amount of work necessary to give it a decent critique.

Including my daughter, a dear friend, my husband and a man who was in my former critique group, 14 people have now read my manuscript.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Sure, they each pointed out a few basically minor things that could be improved. I am very motivated to make the improvements and then ... I think I'll give it to the Young Adult reading group that meets every Wednesday in the library. The acid test.

But everything in its time. Yesterday, I spent all day in Spokane getting a root canal. Next week, hubbie and I will be babysitting two of our grandkids while our son and his wife are in Las Vegas. Then soon after that ... Aloha, Kauai! Two weeks in the sun. I'm glad the weather here is around 28 degrees. The contrasting temperature will be a wonderful change, not to mention hearing the birds singing in the morning outside our window. The sandy beaches. The warm, aqua blue water.

Meanwhile this weekend, I'm beginning to fix the YA manuscript.

Another Step Along the Journey ...

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:30:00 +0000

I've learned not to become too attached to outcomes, but to enjoy the process (everything that life brings us), and to be open to new possibilities, new paths that might bear surprising, unexpected joy.

Because I am not yet a contracted author, I still have the freedom to write whatever I want. (Woohoo!) After recently finishing my young adult romance, I spent several weeks in soul searching as to the type of project to tackle next.

I've spoken before about having belonged to Romance Writers of America. About a decade ago, I wrote a couple of romance manuscripts targeted at the now-defunct Love and Laughter line, but didn't try to market either of them.

Life circumstances swept me in a different direction. We needed the money. I took a full time job as a Children's Librarian in a public library and didn't write again for about six years. Then when I did start writing again, it was for Young Adults.

In the past four years, while working full time and being constantly on the go, I completed two young adult manuscripts. I love the inventiveness of young adult fiction. I love the issues of that stage of life. I intend to keep writing manuscripts targeted for young adults ... unless ... life steers me in yet another direction.

Recently when I attended the Emerald City Romance Writers conference, I saw to my great disappointment that romance had apparently swung so far in the direction of sensual romance that sweet romances appeared not to be on the market at all anymore.

Was I ever wrong! Further inquiry showed me that there is an enormous market for sweet romances, or what I like to call love stories (as opposed to lust stories). They're called Inspirational Romance. It's the bread and butter of Christian fiction publishers. Harlequin's Love Inspired line alone puts out around 140 romances each year.

The focus of my writing has always been on the relationships between characters, not elaborate external plots. I like to contemplate personalities, and how different types would create sparks in a given situation.

That, for me, spells FUN.

My new project is an inspirational romance. The characters, broadly speaking, represent fire and ice. Generally it's the woman who is "ice," and the man who is "fire." I am more intrigued to see how a fiery woman will melt an icy man. And also win over his prideful, overly controlling mother.

It's a Mail Order Bride story set in Spokane, Washington somewhere around 1900-1916--haven't worked out the details yet. Or it could be a contemporary E-mail Order Bride story. Either way, it should provide me with many hundred hours' worth of intriguing thoughts and outright laughter as I write it.

Are you tied to writing only one type of fiction? Or do you like to sample it all--mystery, romance, speculative, and so on?

Need a Helping Hand to Jump Start Your Next Idea? Look no Farther than The 90-day Novel by Alan Watt

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:15:00 +0000

I LOVE books on writing. Some writers couldn't be bothered with them. They need, come hell or high water, to forge ahead in their own way, in their own time. Me, I guess I'm a wimp. I love having a professional, published author in my life (so to speak), looking over my shoulder, giving me tips, encouraging me, helping me to pull my dream toward me. In this case, to begin to discover the next story I want to tell myself. The next novel I want to write.

Alan Watt helped me to do this--sketch out the possible scenes for an entire novel--in 40 hrs' time. He claims writers can plan and finish writing a rough draft of an entire novel in 90 days. He takes you through the process day-by-day.

The first 30 days are planning days, in which he expects you to spend two hours each day planning your novel, based on questions to ask your hero and your antagonist. I busted through the first 30 days last week. Good lord, I was so inspired, I managed to write up 13,000 words of notes about my characters, possible scenes, and where those scenes might appear in the novel. I have never in my whole life written so many words in a week. It helped that it was a three-day work week at the library, with a four-day weekend on one end and now, with my Fridays off, a three-day weekend on the other.

I have just printed up my notes--24 pages' worth, and am going to do some further scene-building, this time using tips learned from Holly Lisle, before launching into the rough draft. But in one week, using Watt's book, I sketched out my entire story. Seriously. Not only that, but I cannot wait to begin writing it. Do I sound dazed? I am. Dazed and delighted.

What methods do you use to jump start your imagination? How do you go about planning a new book?

New Year with Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:40:00 +0000

I have resolutions. Do you?

I have elaborate lists of things I want to achieve in eight areas of my life. These lists show the steps, in order, that it will take to complete the project, or some aspect of a larger project, with reasonable deadlines.

Of course life (God, fate) sometimes has other ideas for us, and our best-laid plans go awry, and we need to try other strategies. But at least by thinking about resolutions, and setting deadlines for achieving them, we will come closer to hitting our mark than if we had not defined any marks at all.

And the secret to accomplishing what we set out to accomplish is simple. We keep it in front of us each and every day. We plan the work, and work the plan. Without deviation. Unless what we're doing isn't working. Then we reformulate.

Here are a few of my resolutions:

I plan to be slender again, like I was three years ago. I plan to loose 30 pounds by October 1.
Regarding the manuscript I finished in November, I plan to make more revisions based on input from my 12 beta reader/critique partners (that I will get on January 9), and then to write up a strong query, and then to begin querying agents.
Regarding writing a new book: Oh, my. I am on fire! When I finished the "old book," I felt so drained, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep writing. For two weeks, I gave up the idea entirely. I didn't know if I could think up a new idea, or if I could top what I had accomplished in the old book. (The old book demonstrated a significant leap in quality, which I had not achieved in any prior manuscript. It was a great victory for me.) Now, I am happy to say that I can hardly restrain myself from setting out on a new writing path. I am working up an idea, and hope to have a draft written on or before October 1.
Writer's Platform: Here, my goals are less well-defined. I could turn blog writing into a full time job. So could you, right? There's plenty to say, however I cannot allow blogging to overtake my limited time for writing. Maybe I "should" set up a posting schedule. Maybe I "should" begin to write on the 1001 ideas I could be writing about ... But the smarter resolution for me is to restrain myself ... To protect my writing time, and to achieve my writing goals.
That being said, I am considering joining Rach's 4th crusade in February, and the A-Z challenge in April. Those two things may well be my blogging biggies for 2012.
Other Creativity, i.e. Scrapbooking: No formal goals here, either. I "should" build time into my schedule for this type of R&R, but I don't want to legislate that I'll do it two hours each week. I'll scrapbook on an "as needed" basis. "As needed" meaning when I seriously need a break from all of my other activities.
Miscellaneous: Hubbie and I are planning a trip to Kauai, Hawaii around the end of January. Two years ago, on the spur of the moment, we took a trip to Maui and Hawaii, our first time ever on the islands. Me being a planner, I freaked out about the spur-of the-moment planning. Our friends were going; they invited us, and we had two weeks to get ready for it. I discovered I really could plan a trip in only two weeks ... even if I was working full time and babysitting two grandchildren while our daughter was in the hospital with a seven-week premature baby. Even if I was a second-round judge for the CYBILS, YA division, and I needed to read books, and the judges needed to make decisions. Even if I was involved in the Kidlitosphere's Comment Challenge, which happens every January. You need plan only two things for a trip to Hawaii: buy airline tickets and make a hotel/condo reservation. Oh, and to make sure you make a reservation to take a one-hour flight around the island in a Waco, open cockpit biplane. (Hubbie's #1 priority.)

Happy New Year to you! What are some of your resolutions?

2011 in Retrospect

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:19:00 +0000

If I were writing a novel about my life in 2011, the following would be a month-by-month timeline of the external plot: i.e. me going after what I wanted, and some of the obstacles I faced in achieving my desires.

You might ask, what was my ultimate goal? It was to complete my YA manuscript and send it to a few editors. A related goal was to begin to build my writer's platform via blogging.

Goals for 2012 will build on those, plus some new ones.

In most cases, for sake of brevity, I have omitted the internal motivation, aka: the story, about the needs that drove me to do the things I did. Rest assured, the story is far more interesting than the plot.

Throughout the year, I was on a roller coaster of tumultuous emotions. Or maybe it’s just me all the time. I am a highly driven, passionate, intense person. Thus I felt an enormous amount of desire and frustration, anticipation, heartbreak and finally, a victory—a breakthrough—in 2011.

Toward the end of the year, in November and December, I went through a period of dark-night-of the soul-searching, regarding the life I want to create for myself in the next few years, and the direction I want to take with my writing. The plot doesn’t come close to showing everything I did, but the highlights with regard to my external goals.

January:

Writing: After having spent all of my free time in the fall of 2010 doing a Feng Shui cleaning of my house, I decided to prioritize my (limited) free time on completing my manuscript.

Blogging: I switched my blog from being that of a book review blog to a writer’s blog. I started making contact with the writer’s community, following many new blogs, and getting new followers.

February:

Writing: I was busy writing my manuscript, although hubbie and I did take a trip to Sacramento, where he gave a sermon at a religious conference.

Late in 2010, I had signed up for Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel, a weekly course in revision. Keeping up with the weekly lessons was a huge challenge, but also a fun one. It felt like I had a seasoned author watching over my shoulder with each step. I learned so much from her!

Blogging: Rach had her second Platform Building Crusade while hubbie and I were in Sacramento. I was delighted to be able to visit all of the participants’ blogs via an internet speed that was literally ten times faster than what is available to me at home.

April:

Conference Time! : I was delighted to attend the SCBWI-WWa conference with good friends Laurie and Sharon.

Blogging: I participated in the A-Z blogging challenge. If Rach’s Crusade was a sprint, this was a marathon. I posted every single day (and 2-3 times on several days) during the month of April. I felt I contributed something valuable to the writing community in that I wrote short pieces describing all of the Enneagram types and subtypes.

I also found many new, interesting blogs to read, and increased my own following significantly. I’d started the year with about 75 followers, and by the end of April, the number hovered around 300.

Unfortunately, blogging every day did me in, and so for most of the rest of 2011, I slacked off. Besides that, reaching my writing goals took priority over platform-building goals.

May:

Writing: I completed the course, How to Revise Your Novel, however I still had not actually finished writing the novel. I needed to write a projected 90 pages.

Blogging: I finally finished organizing all of the 730 blogs I had RSS'd or was following in Google Reader into neat categories. A librarian through and through, I just had to make sense of it all.

June:

Home Improvement: My husband and son-in-law re-roofed hubby’s and my house. I did the cleanup afterwards. What a job. What a mess.

My Paid Job: I asked the Library Board of Trustees to allow me to reduce my hours from full-time to 32hrs/week. (I would need to wait until the budget hearings in August for their decision.)

My Paid Job: Summer Reading was in full swing, with me putting on, or overseeing, five programs/week for seven weeks. (Read: It was a crazy busy time for me.) After the first week of signups, 600 children had registered for the reading program. We ended up the program on July 31 with 967 signups, and program attendance hovering around 5000.

Highlight of my Paid Job: For the first time ever, one of my grandchildren was old enough to be my SR helper. I brought my 9-year old granddaughter, Miya, with me to the library each Thursday. She helped with the morning program, the afternoon teen craft program, and then attended the professional entertainment/evening program in the park with me. All five grandkids and their parents attended the family programs in the park.

July:

Writing: I finished the manuscript to my satisfaction. Then I put it away for a month, and when I read it again, I decided to hone in on changes that would make it more commercial and saleable—which resulted in totally tearing the book apart and putting it back together again. That’s what revision is about. Not changing a sentence here and there, but a re-visioning of the original idea to make it better. (That’s not to say I wasn’t doing it throughout the long process, however, lesson learned: With my next manuscript, I intend to get ALL the way through it before I start playing around with it. )

Immediately after finishing Holly Lisle’s HTRYN, she gave me a free, 4-week course called How to Write a Series, and she offered me a good deal on How to Think Sideways, and so I read all the free material and signed up for the new course, which is about finding good ideas and beginning a new book. It was hopeless for me to try to keep up with that, however I did read each week’s lesson and take notes. Her HTTS course is literally thousands of pages long. (She gives you the manuscripts of several of her books in varying stages to study, which greatly piles on the pages of information.) I summarized the essence to 70 pages.

August:

Family: My free time for a week in August was spent making a scrapbook. It was the only scrapbooking I’d done in 2011 up to that point. I thought my mother, who’s had Alzheimer’s since 1996, was at death’s door (not for the first time, but the fourth). Now on December 30, 2011, she is still alive.

Family: Hubbie and I removed the last of our youngest child’s things from the basement. A year prior, they’d been scattered all over the house, and then in September of 2010, I successfully “corralled” them into a single bedroom plus a very large closet. Finally, we wanted our 5^th bedroom to be a guestroom, and so off it all went to a mini storage unit.

Paid work: The board approved my request to reduce my hours. A co-worker will increase her hours by five and split the load of putting on about 130 storytimes each September-April.

Personal: I cut my hair for the first time in FOUR years.

September:

Personal: I experienced my first week of having Fridays off, however my daughter from Seattle surprised us with a one-day visit, and instead of me being able to sit in my writing room with my new computer and spend the day writing, she sat at that throne all day instead. She doesn’t come home often, and so I allowed it. (Enormous amount of unwritten backstory, here.)

Writer’s Conferences: Attended SCBWI-eastern Washington conference and met some new people, including some people from the Moscow/Pullman area.

New Critique Group: Within a week, I had emailed each person and was in the process of setting up a new Children’s Writers critique group. We met for the first time with an attendance of 10 people. Two people from my former group decided to drop out.

October and November:

Personal: I was beginning to feel a desperate need to slow down. The extent of my R&R for 2011: I spent 15 minutes playing with some acrylic stamps for the first time, which I’d bought two months prior, but had been too busy to use. Though I now had Fridays off, they were being partially swallowed up by unexpected family visits, or a hubbie who decided that since I was at home, I should help him move farm machinery!

But besides that, it was CONFERENCE SEASON. In October, I attended a four-day state library conference in Boise, a one-day Youth Services workshop in Coeur d’Alene, and a three-day RWA conference in Seattle. Since earning free time on Fridays, my hoped for, quiet little Fridays had been mostly obliterated, due to my own decisions.

Additionally, after having attended so many conferences, including the SCBWI-WWa retreat in November of 2010, I had the invitation to send a completed manuscript to FOUR editors, but with a deadline of November 30, 2011.

I wasn’t sure I could finish my revision by then. In fact, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to do it ... But I used my free time to the greatest effect possible for me (and I was already an excellent time manager). I hated to have to do it, but in order to finish on deadline, I made the decision to take off four days of annual leave from work --- Those days are like gold to me.

But I did it, and was able to finish the revision and send off the manuscripts one week before Thanksgiving.

With my time freed up just before Thanksgiving, I spent eight hours cleaning the main floor of our three-story house, and I felt good. I was experiencing completions, endings.

It felt like GOD’s GRACE was seriously working in my life. It began a long month of realizations about God’s possible will for my life for the next few years, and how I should create and sculpt my life, and the direction I should take with my writing. For now, the new possibilities feel comfortable to me, like I’m “coming home." I am now happy to follow it where it leads.

How was your 2011? What were the highlights?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:28:00 +0000

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'm signing off on the blog until around the New Year. Have a wonderful holiday season, and I'll see you in 2012!

Fidalgo Island, San Jaun Islands, Sunset Mid-December

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

DH and I spent the weekend on Fidalgo Island, of the San Jaun Islands, in Northwestern Washington State. We decided to take a stroll along Green Beach at around sunset --- 3:00-3:30 PM. It was chilly, 44-degrees, and getting quite dark, but I was able to capture a break in the clouds and a spectacular view of the setting sun.

DH Loved the Book

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:56:00 +0000

I said I’d report back when my hubbie finished my manuscript. Boy, that was taking a chance. What if he hated it, and I would need to confess to my handful of faithful readers that the story was a dud? (Or that he thought it was.)

Turns out, he loved it. He said that when he started reading it, he was pretty sure he would never be able to get into it, as he doesn’t read fiction and, to boot, it’s a teen romance. But it very quickly hooked him. Not only that, he laughed and cried in all the right places.

He said he thought it was a great book, and that it would make a great movie. Afterwards, he took me into his arms and teared up all over again as he started talking about specific scenes that made him cry. He added that, for my sake, he sure hoped it will sell.

So there it is. This marks a milestone in our 37-year marriage. I have always read and given him suggestions on sermons he’s written, for when he’s been asked to serve at religious conventions, but until now, he’d never read anything of mine.

As a result, it’s brought us closer together. That he took the time to read it validates me. We spent the weekend on Fidalgo Island in the San Jauns. When we took a walk along Green Beach, he vocalized more nostalgia, and a surprising openness to new possibilities, than I would’ve ever expected from him. In contrast my brain, which is normally troubled with all sorts of stressors, was blissfully empty and calm.

Someone's Been Reading My Manuscript ...

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:51:00 +0000

My DH is reading my manuscript. You might think, so what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that while he is an avid reader of nonfiction, especially anything pertaining to aeronotics, geology, weather or the Bible, he has not read a novel in 25 years.

The last novel he read was Moby Dick, and the parts he most loved were the parts that fiction lovers generally hate. You remember them--the scientific descriptions about whales, whaling, harpoons or what-have-you. Frankly, I don't remember them, however he has the type of memory that could probably, quite easily, dredge up some of the facts that Melville wrote about whaling. DH seems to have a photographic memory for facts and dates. He is able to easily retrieve from memory countless facts about about science, presidential politics, history and the Bible. More than anything, he is a Bible scholar.

Because of his fiction-reading history, or non-reading history as it may be, I don't fault him for not being interested in reading anything I've written over the years. To him, fiction is not the truth. Practical, realistic man that he is, he doesn't have time for such nonsense. A gifted pilot, farmer and mechanic, he self-describes himself as a "gear head."

I am fascinated that his brain is wired for mechanics and engineering, and yet metaphors and wit roll off his tongue with greater facility than they do mine. Me, the writer!

So after a little arm-twisting, and a little guilt-inducement, I finally got him to agree to read my manuscript. He uploaded it to his IPad, and has been reading it for a few minutes each night after watching O'Reilly. He's currently on chapter 7 (of 24) and his verdict ...

He says it's really grown on him. He feels protective of the heroine. He finds the inappropriate boyfriend not too bad. (I told him the guy's going to get a lot worse, but that he isn't, ultimately, awful). He finds the hero "a fascinating character."

I wonder if he thinks I based the hero and the antagonist on him? Did I? No. My characters are all drawn from abstract concepts whose attitudes and behavior fall within specific enneagram types and subtypes.

I'll let you know DH's final verdict.

What about you? Does your spouse read everything you write?

Watching the Sun Set, early December 3:00-3:30 pm

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:13:00 +0000

Late afternoon in early December, 3:00 pm to 3:30 pm.

Palouse area of SE Washington, USA

Landmark: Steptoe Butte

Watching the Sun Set

The Rhythm of Life: Spirituality Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:49:00 +0000

The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly: Living Every Day with Passion & Purpose

I confess, I am virtually always reading a book on spirituality or self-help. I'm not a regular church-goer, and so these books help to nourish the soul. Matthew Kelly was, if I am correct, a Catholic priest, or studying to be one. He apparently crosses the globe with his message.

It's true that the overall message in the books I read is often remarkably similar, however each author has their own unique way of expressing it. I discovered that Matthew Kelly's Rhythm of Life, and all of his books on spirituality, were self-published. I also discovered that his publisher has sold over 800,000 of his books. It's apparent that Kelly's message resonates with people.

He's big on finding balance. He believes people should have a dream and go after it wholeheartedly, but also not to neglect other very important aspects of life, such as relationships. No big surprise there, eh? He writes at length about what life's important aspects are, besides relationships.

Because the book is so meaty, I couldn't begin to do justice to reviewing it in a short blog post. But here are a couple of quotes that particularly resonated with me at this exact moment in my life:

If you listen to a great public speaker, you will discover that the way that person pauses is as powerful as the words he or she speaks. It is true also in life. The rests are as important as the activity. The silence is as important as the noise. The rest makes the activity more powerful and efficient. The silence makes the noise more meaningful. Walt Whitman once wrote, “I loaf and invite my soul.” Loafing opens the heart and mind to allow peace and tranquillity to flow in. We all need a time to relax and listen to the voice within, the voice that reveals the truth that makes us free. Leisure increases the richness of life. The wise make time to loaf. In this modern age obsessed with noise and movement, we seem incapable of relaxing. Take it easy. ....

Our lives have a habit of gathering a momentum of their own, plunging forward, with or without our consent. Learn to slow down and access life. Take your foot off the accelerator and look about and within. Slow down. Breathe deeply. Reflect deeply. Pray deeply. Live deeply. Otherwise you will spend your life feeling like a bulldozer chasing butterflies or a sparrow in a hurricane.

The last sentence contains two particularly apt metaphors about our modern, soulless lifestyles. His book delineates the solutions.

What are some of your favorite books on spirituality?

What I plan to do in December (besides celebrating the holidays)

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:08:00 +0000

Now that I've done an initial submission of my manuscript to four editors and an agent, I am making plans for some serious R&R in December.

My critique group won't be critiquing the manuscript until January, and so I'm happy for a short writing break. I'm thinking about what project to do next, but I'm also just plain having fun in my newly reorganized scrapbooking room.

A year ago, I separated what'd been a combined writing and scrapbooking room, moving all scrapbooking materials to a vacant bedroom in the basement. Except for making ONE scrapbook during 2011, I haven't used the room, and that was making me seriously sad! I'd left it in a state of relative unpack, though I hadn't unpacked it enough to remember where I'd put everything. I now know.

This table had been empty, but I bought a new laptop recently, and so I was able to move the old laptop, printer and scanner to this table. Below the table are some of my rubber stamps. A clipboard on the wall features my adult children and their spouses and a couple of grandkids.

I don't want to clutter the walls with too much, as I feel it's necessary to keep a room such as this as free of distractions as possible.

To the right is my major layout area with a clean table top and about a dozen boxes of ribbons to the right. The information on the cork board all pertains to color, which is one of my life's passions. I mean that seriously. I am huge into Feng Shui and energy and all the implications of color energy.

To the left are my 36 drawers filled with cardstock and patterned papers in 24 hues plus black, white, blue-grays, green-grays, purple-grays and yellow-to-red beiges-to-browns.

All hues, all values and all intensities of everything. Yummy!

There are also a dozen crates filled with papers and memorabilia of that many subject themes. Because I am so into color, I have separate boxes for spring; high summer; Indian Summer; high autumn, and winter.

Another view of my color drawers. Under my work table, there are also two boxes of drawers on casters. The drawers contain a variety of embellishments in ... you guessed it ... 15 different colors.

Here's another view of my work table with chair.

Here's a view of the cutting, painting, inking, glittering, sewing and etc work area.

I can't wait to get started. What do you plan to do in December, besides all of the wonderful holiday fun?

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sending it Out

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:57:00 +0000

I had to snap this picture. It's a counter top in my kitchen, lunch bag, purse at the ready to head off to work. (Tea kettle and toaster oven accidentally getting into the mix. ;) ) On top of that white mess is reading material for my lunch hour. I like to sit in my car at the local mall and eat my sack lunch and sip McDonald's coffee. Oh, the reading material is Eric Maisel's Fearless Creating. I read this one several years ago. It was good enough that I want to take a second look at it, however I won't be reading it cover-to-cover.

The point of the picture is, however, the white mess that Maisel's book is sitting on top of. It's actually my manuscript, 720-printed (total) pages of material in three submissions. I'll be sending them to editors I made contact with at various conferences. I'm also doing two electronic submissions. It's a start. When responses come back, I'll take the next step.

Two of the submissions had a November 30 deadline. The internal editor in me wanted to foil me. Wanted me to miss the deadline. Wanted me to think it still wasn't good enough to send out. I overcame the slave-driving internal editor! It was time to let go of the project, for now.

Interestingly, as I was formatting cover letters last night, I saw that it's been four years almost to the day since I sent out the manuscript I wrote before this one. The main character of this novel had been a secondary character in the other.

All of you who are sending out manuscripts, I wish you the best of luck!

Why do you write? Would anything cause you to stop writing?

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:00:00 +0000

What if the digital revolution had caused a big box bookstore with over 1300 stores to shut down entirely?

What if you heard that, since the first book was digitalized in 1970’s, three million books have been digitalized? What if you learned that within one year—next year—that number will grow to six million, as staggeringly more people than ever before are writing books? That three million of them are getting on the self-publishing band wagon, and deluging and diluting the market?

What if, with the popularity of National Novel Writer’s Month in November, 200,000 people participated in 2010, many of whom will polish and try to market their work?

What if the reading market is not expanding, but shrinking, due to many, many other forms of entertainment available to them?

What if you heard from a rising star, and I mean rising star, that her print run for the fourth book in her series had been so drastically reduced (thus the payout), she wasn’t sure it was worth it to keep writing?

What if you heard from everyone that all print runs have been slashed?

What if, at a conference of 300 attendees, you sat with many who for years had enjoyed a writing career, but were now no longer being offered contracts?

What if those same writers, with years of experience (and you, in conceivable competition with them (?), had none) were continuing to saturate the market with manuscripts?

What if you learned the truth from one of your friends, that she earns only $300.00 on each book she writes? That’s not a typo. And that her books take months to write. (The average person can earn that in a couple of days in full-time employment.)

What if you learned from a respectable teacher (Holly Lisle) who wrote 32 books, with millions of copies and a huge audience, that she’s giving up on traditional publishing because she can’t make money at it anymore?

But she does hope to make money self-publishing, and she has a huge backlist of titles (that will go into the 3,000,000 pool of books) that will be self-published next year? Like so many other authors are doing with their backlist titles?

What if you read a blog post from a respected, knowledgeable author (Jody Hedlund), and another from her respected, knowledgeable agent (Rachelle Gardner), that in the not-too-distant future, most writers won’t make much money at all on their books? (Of course, maybe most writers never did.) Would you still write “just for fun?” You should read these posts:

Are there More Writers than Readers?

What if there were No Money in Writing?

What if you went to a pre-conference and the instructor, (Bob Mayer, at his Warrior Writers workshop) said 90% of published writers will never publish a second book?

Knowing these things, would you keep writing? What if you already work full time, and there isn’t much time left over to write? What if you’re raising kids? Or taking care of aging parents? What if, for whatever reason, there isn’t much money coming into your household, and you should be paying attention to that?

Would you keep writing? On what level?

If you’re an unpublished writer, and you’re in it for the money, meaning you need the money, you are insane. There are always exceptions—some people hit the jackpot and actually earn money on their books—but unless you’re lucky by nature, this is not the arena to gamble away your time and effort.

If you’re still reading this and are not discouraged, you’re obviously writing because of other needs. What is it, deep down inside, that keeps you writing?

I did some soul-searching recently and was on the verge of giving up writing forever. That week when I spent my free time sorting patterned paper, I also spent ruminating about writing. Deciding which color drawer the paper fit into, and thinking about where writing fit into my future.

I was waiting to hear back from an editor, to see if she wanted to read the manuscript I had pitched to her. If she wasn’t interested, I was planning to give up. But then she said she would love to read the full. I started working on the manuscript again, and realized I couldn’t give up on it. It’s the best piece of writing I have ever done.

I also had a dream about writing. If I stopped now, it would be as if I had spent my lifetime training for a race. And then, I was finally ready. The gun went off and I raced not quite to the finish line before becoming discouraged and stopping.

It’s too soon to let things I’ve heard about the market stop me. I need to take the next step. Whether or not editors are ultimately interested in the manuscript, I need to send it out. For my own sake. It’s where I’ve always stopped before. Or close to this place on the continuum. After sending my last manuscript to about a dozen agents, and getting some interest, but not enough, I stopped sending it out.

The word now is to keep sending it out until it’s gone to 60 agents. It’s what I plan to do. Besides sending it to editors who’ve already said they would read it.

What about you? Where are you in all of this? Why do you write? Would anything ever stop you?

Revising (Again)

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:04:00 +0000

So here we are; the year is about to end. My hope last January was to finish writing, revising and editing my YA manuscript. I had projected being done sometime in May. I missed that deadline, but did finish it to my satisfaction in July. Then I didn’t look at it for a month. When I looked at it again, I asked myself the following questions, “What can I do to make it more commercially appealing to teenage girls? What’s ordinary about the story, which I could boost to out-of-the-ordinary?”

With that in mind, I started a revision. Meanwhile, I finished not only Holly Lisle’s “How to Revise Your Novel,” but even her “How to Think Sideways” courses. As a bonus, she threw in her “How to Write a Series” course for free. I was never planning to write a series, but I read what she had to say about them. Should I ever change my mind, I now know what’s involved. Very interesting, indeed.

Holly’s courses were worth every penny to me. If the day ever comes that I am contracted, many of the things I learned from her, I have never read in any book. That says something, because I’ve read nearly every book on the craft of writing for the past 20 years. Much of what Holly covered wasn’t about craft; it was about career, and not only career, but career longevity.

She also gave me insight about the current state of the publishing industry. Food-for-thought as to what route might be best for me. The Legacy Publisher; Digital First; Self-Publishing, etc, debate. My personal conclusion is that I am still most interested in traditional publishing, whereas Holly Lisle has decided to abandon it entirely. She, however, is in a totally different place from me. Considering her audience and her substantial backlist, her choice for herself makes perfect sense to me.

Anyway, I am now on the verge of completing my manuscript again. What I did felt very much like the lead-in to the Showtime series, “Episodes,” where you see a script being thrown into the air and then shot by a gun, the shattered pieces falling to the ground. But now, my book is almost put back together and, hopefully, much stronger than it was before. I feel that in the course of writing it, I learned so much about writing, and myself, that I hadn't known before.

During the past year, I attended FOUR writer’s conferences/retreats, and so I have the green light to send the full manuscript to four editors and one agent. The deadline is looming for three of the five. The other two, I have until the end of the year. My hope is to complete the revision in the next two weeks and then send it to everyone.

The intensely difficult work I’ve been doing on my manuscript has prevented me from paying much attention to my blog. I do hope that once I begin sending the manuscript out, time will open up for me again. Not only for more blogging, but for other creative pursuits such as scrapbooking. Except for putting together one obligatory scrapbook, and a Hawaii scrapbook, I haven’t scrapbooked since 2009.

The week after returning from the RWA convention, I took a week off from my writing, which turned out to be excellent brain R&R.

During that week, I sorted my patterned scrapbooking papers. I'd been collecting them for several years, but hadn't done anything with them, except to stack them on a shelf. I separated them into 24 colors, putting them into 24 separate color drawers. Plus, there are drawers for black and white, one for shades of gray, and drawers for beiges to browns. These range from (yellow/beige/brown) across the color wheel to (blue-red/beige/brown)—another 8 drawers’ worth of neutral colored patterned papers.

Being that I have well over 1000 different patterns, it took me something like 30 hours to decide which color drawer each pattern fit into. But it truly was a spirit-rejuvenating break from writing, and I am now so ready to begin scrapbooking again, as well as to begin thinking seriously about my next book.

House of Dead Maids: Young Adult Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:36:00 +0000

This book reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Newbery winning The Graveyard Book, which is probably the only other work of horror fiction I've (yet) read. Therefore I'm not much of a judge as to how "good" this book was--(Do horror fans use the word "good" to describe the books they like? Or do they use other terminology? Might they say, "It was seriously creepy" instead?

At any rate, the cover blurb intrigued me, and with Clare B. Dunkle as the author, I suspect it was probably a good addition to the horror genre. The BISAC description reads,

Eleven-year-old Tabby Aykroyd, who would later serve as housekeeper for thirty years to the Bronte sisters, is taken from an orphanage to a ghost-filled house, where she and a wild young boy are needed for a pagan ritual.

Tabby Aykroyd is hired out as a nanny to a young master who, it is not revealed until the final page, is actually Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights. That bit of knowledge was the thing that kept me reading (or listening). I hoped to get a solid impression of who Heathcliff was as a six-year-old boy, and how his personality was formed.

Regrettably, that didn't happen; it wasn't a character study. It wasn't why Dunkle wrote the book. In that Heathcliff and Tabby Aykroyd could be used as a unique selling tool, that seemed more the springboard for writing the story.

While older readers might be interested in learning about Heathcliff, young readers would probably be more interested in exactly where the focus was placed: on the creepiness of the house, the pagan rituals, and especially those dead maids.

Creepiest about the story for me was that it was full of the wet, cold, heavy and surprisingly fleshy ghosts of the house’s former, murdered maids. Not only that, but the ghosts climbed into bed with Tabby each night. Why they do wasn’t clear. They are described as looking exactly as they do on the cover, which is clearly more than an apparition.

In the story's black moment, Tabby and Heathcliff are slated to be sacrificed as part of a pagan ritual. Fortunately, Tabby escapes, however Heathcliff, who owns the estate, stays on.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, to young fans of horror. The book does right by its target audience.

Wither by Lauren deStefano: Young Adult Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:56:00 +0000

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

In the first book of DeStefano’s Chemical Garden trilogy, sixteen-year-old Rhine lives in a world where it was thought that genetic engineering would abolish death. For the first genetically engineered generation, it was true. But then offspring began to live for shorter and shorter timespans. Now, women are dying when they’re 20 and men, 25. The world has become a barbaric place.

Girls now live in brothels or polygamous marriages for breeding purposes. Kidnapped to be one of wealthy Linden Ashby’s brides, Rhine evades consummation of the marriage throughout the book, although her two sister-wives do not.

Though she lives in Florida, and surrounded by wealth and comfort, Rhine is essentially enslaved. More, she’s afraid Linden’s father is performing hideous science experiments on young women who have died and, indeed, might be hastening the deaths in order to find a cure for the virus that's killing everyone at such a young age.

All through the book, Rhine wants is to return to her twin brother in Manhattan. When she and servant Gabriel fall in love with each other, they devise a dangerous plan to escape their imprisonment.

This book was so beautifully written that I am in awe of Ms. deStefano's talent. I am also intensely curious as to how she plans to develop books two and three. Book 2, Fever, will be released on February 21, 2012. I cannot wait ...

On the Road Again

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:30:00 +0000

I am enroute to the Emerald City Romance Writer's Conference in Bellevue, Washington. About ten years ago, I was very involved with RWA. I rose in the ranks of my local (Spokane, WA) chapter to become the first contest coordinator, and then chapter president. RWA taught me so much about writing, and I made some good friends. It's a wonderful organization that's grown by about 2500 members in the past 10 years. I recently renewed my membership, and hope to enter the Golden Heart contest this year.

While driving across the state, I'll be listening to several books. I always take a bunch with me, because often when I start listening, I find that while I might like the story, I don't particularly like the narrator's voice. Then I end up reading the book instead. Here's what I'm taking with me. When I get back, I'll report on how much I liked the ones I listened to:

Wither, book 1 of the Chemical Garden Trilogy, YA dystopian romance by Lauren deStefano.

Beastly by Alex Flinn. (Has anyone seen the movie?)

Daughter of Winter by Pat Lowery Collins

The House of Dead Maids by Claire B. Dunkle ... the story of Heathcliff as a six-year-old

The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt ... a friend said that this is an incredible book, probably not really a children's story.

Have you read any of these? Which one did you like best, and why?

Kids into Readers: Free Strategies

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:19:00 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending an all-day Youth Services workshop in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho yesterday. One of the guest speakers was Gary Johnston, a retired 4th grade teacher from Colorado who offered many great tips on getting kids, particularly boys of the ages 5-11, to read.

Did you realize that the average eight-year-old spends only FOUR minutes reading each day? And that he spends FOUR hours watching TV each day?

Of all eight-year-olds, only 1/3 (usually girls) are fluent readers. Two-thirds (usually boys) do not like to read, and do not read. Of the 2/3 of eight-year-olds who do not read, 2/3 of them have TVs in their bedrooms! Suggestion: get rid of the bedroom TVs.

Gary went on to say that the number of minutes kids spend each day on reading is the best predictor of how well they can read. School teaches them to read, but the kids do not spend enough time reading in school to become proficient readers.

As parents, we need to make reading at home something kids do each day, and to make it fun. It's not homework, it's fun, Gary stressed. He doesn't even care if it's the kid who is reading. If the parent (for boys: hero, mentor DADDY) is reading to him, and the child is following along, that's all that's needed.

Gary had plenty of tips that I cannot wait to pass on to my own son, for his first grade boy who doesn't like to read. If you know someone who is a struggling reader, I highly recommend Gary Johnston's tips.

Fun Tools to Dress up Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Catherine Ensley) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:39:00 +0000

The week before last, I spent most of the week in Boise, Idaho, at the annual state library convention. It appears that the future is NOW. When I first became a librarian a dozen years ago, E-books and E-reader technology was being talked about at conferences, but neither were available in the mainstream. Now they are, in libraries and in the hands of private individuals.

But E-readers and E-books aren't the only differences in technology. The internet, which used to be a distant frontier, is now a huge part of our lives, with such Web 2.0 Social Media applications as blogs, twitter, facebook, Flickr, wikis, mashups and folksonomies.

The recent library conference was all about the NOW, as well as the future, with a wonderful pre-conference presentation by Joan Frye Williams, futurist and Information Technology Consultant.

Also fantastic was one of the luncheon Keynoters, Anthony Doerr, Idaho author of The Memory Wall. He gave an outstanding talk on the importance of libraries.

There were plenty of programs for Youth Services librarians, from speakers who book-talked current YA bestsellers and YA Award nominated books, to speakers who taught storytelling--with or without puppets.

One of the more intriguing talks was on how to use technology tools to promote your library. Many of these, I realized, could also be used to dress up one's blog. So here they are, and I hope you have fun playing with them. They're all free.

Blabberize. With Blabberize, you can create a short movie clip.

Animoto. With Animoto, you can create a really nice Book Trailer for your book.

Voki. With Voki, you can create customized avatars, add your voice to them, and post them to your blog or website.

With Go!Animate, you can create a cute skit.

With Wordle, you can create tag clouds. It's interesting to put a huge chunk of your manuscript into it, and see which words come out biggest (most often used).

Tagxedo is a tag cloud app, like Wordle, but you can create the cloud in different shapes.

You can also Spell with Flickr.

If you know of other fun apps, let's share!