Listening to a different voice

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A really strange thing has happened to me since my last book, Miss Locatelli, was published. I've started listening to a different voice.

Instead of waiting for a while before I started a new story, I began writing straight away. This was because I'd had an idea buzzing around in my head for a while and I wanted to grab it before it went away. I talked about it in an earlier Books We Love blog, Sepia Photos and Other Stories, and now the time had come to see if it would work. I had a problem though, or I thought I did, because up until now all my books have been written in the third person. This time I knew I had to write in the first person because it was the only way the story was going to work. I have no idea why this is the case. It just is.

There is also the problem that the story involves quite a lot of historical time travel, which is something else I've never attempted before. 

I expected to spend hours staring at a blank screen as I wrestled with this mix of ideas and challenges. Instead the opposite has happened. Rachel's voice, as the storyteller, is loud and clear in my head, and her words just keep pouring out. The only thing that is slowing me down is my everyday life and all the things that entails. The days when I don't have time to write don't seem to matter, however. Whenever I come back to the story I barely need to refresh my memory by reading the last few pages I've written because Rachel is there waiting for me with a whole lot of new things to say.

What I don't know is whether it is just Rachel and  this particular story that is making writing in the first person so easy, or whether it is my authentic writing voice and I've only just discovered it. I don't know, either, whether the other stories I have stored in my head would translate into this type of narrative. Maybe this is a 'one off.' If it is, then it's strange, because although the basis of the story is a family history, it's not my own family history, nor does Rachel bear any resemblance to anyone I know.  She just came, fully-formed, out of nowhere.  I didn't need any triggers to see her face, like I normally do. Nor have I had to make up her back story because she tells it to me as we go along.

It's a joyous experience, to find words flowing so easily. I just hope it keeps on happening as I travel further into the book.

One other thing I don't know is whether readers will like it, especially those readers who are faithful to my books and buy a copy of every one. I've already tried the first few chapters out on one of my Beta readers though, and she liked it. I just hope the others will too.

Of course the final challenge is getting it finished. Words flowing easily are one thing, finding enough time to get them into the book is entirely another. The voice of my first person narrator is pushing me though. Every time I have a few moments to spare she propels me towards my computer screen, and for that, if nothing else, I'm grateful. 

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December by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

                                                                      West to the Bay

The word December comes from the Latin word decem which means ‘ten’. In the Roman calendar, which began with the month of March, December was the tenth month. The cold, wintery days between the end of December and the beginning of March did not have a name. Eventually, those days were called January and February and were considered the beginning of the calendar year. Therefore, December became the twelfth month but kept its name.

     The birthstone of December is turquoise with blue topaz a close second. Turquoise color can range from sky-blue to blue green to a vivid green. The flower of December is the narcissus. The Zodiac sign Sagittarius ends on December 21 and Capricorn begins on December 22.

     December is noted for the Nobel Prizes being awarded in that month. Other events that took place in December are: the first Sunday newspaper began publication in Britain on December 4, 1791; the Bill of Rights was passed in the USA on December 14, 1791; the Wright brothers made their first flight on the December 17th, 1903; and the first heart transplant took place in December 03, 1967.

     Celebrations in December include World Aids Day on the first, the International Day of the Disabled Person on the third, and International Hug day on the fourth. Human rights day is on the tenth but there is also the month long observance of Universal Human Rights. Poinsettia Day is on the twelfth.

Christmas Day is celebrated by Christians around the world on December 25 to mark the birth of Jesus Christ. Some non-Christian celebrations in December include: Hanukkah from December 7-14 on the Jewish calendar; Bodhi Day (Buddhism) on the 8th; and Datta Jayanti (Hinduism) and Yomari punhi (Nepal Era) on the 25th.        Some facts and beliefs about December:

    December 1^st always falls on the same day of the week as September 1^st and December 31st is always on the same day of the week as April 30^th, even in a Leap Year.

    December 21 is the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and has the shortest number of daylight hours of the year. It is the first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere and has the longest daylight hours there.

    The ancient Mayans were very advanced in their culture and in their understanding of the universe. Because the Mayan calendar ended on the 21^st of December 2012, many people world-wide thought it predicted the world as we knew it would end on that day.

    If snow falls on Christmas day, Easter will be warm and sunny.

    Some believe that December 28 is the unluckiest day of the year, while spiders and their webs are considered lucky on Christmas.

    More dentists have birthdays in December than in any other month according to a survey done in 2011. The results of another survey showed that couples argue the most during the last month of the year.

    More money is drawn from ATMs during December than in any other month.

    St. Nicholas, was originally the patron saint of children, thieves, and pawnbrokers. He is now known as Santa Claus.

    A Norse tradition of cutting and burning a tree on December 21 to bring in the Winter Solstice was supposed to last for twelve days. This is now known as the 12 days of Christmas.

    Germany had the first artificial Christmas trees. Some were wooden and shaped like a pyramid while others, developed in the 1880s, were made of goose feathers that were dyed green. Candy canes are supposed to represent the Shepherds cane, the star at the top of the tree is for the first Christmas night and candles, which were used before there was power for lights, represented the light of the world.

www.joandonaldsonyarmey.com

Yoga’s revival in India tied in to its growth in the West

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on the occasion of International Day of Yoga celebrations, New Delhi, India

By Mohan Ashtakala

When the United Nations, under the guidance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declared June 21 to be the International day of yoga, it marked a remarkable turnaround for the ancient spiritual practice in its home country. Modi’s request at the United Nations received overwhelming support from 177 countries.

But strangely, in its home country of India, yoga was not valued even till a few decades ago. “In the 1930s, under the British, yoga was not respected”, B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the giants of modern yoga narrated. “I feel that only after yoga took roots in the west, Indians also opened up it,” he added.

One of the overarching goals of British colonialism was to replace traditional Indian knowledge with an English one. The two main reasons for this: one, to generate leaders and administrators who would be more capable administrators of the Empire and secondly, to create a more subservient nation which would not value its own culture and adopt the British one, and thus prolong colonial rule. An English education would become a prerequisite for entry into the powerful and lucrative government services, as well as the lingua-franca of mobility in the Empire.

One of the more important decisions taken by the colonial administration was to replace Sanskrit education with an English one. In this, they were extraordinarily successful. Sanskrit education, once remarkably widespread throughout India, served as the conduit for Indian traditions such as Yoga, Ayurveda and Hindu philosophical systems, but is, currently, practically dead. Furthermore, the governments that followed Indian independence, which inherited the colonialist administration system, viewed with suspicion most forms of Indian traditional systems of knowledge.

Swami Prabhupada

While Iyengar or Pattabhi Jois and others may get intellectual support for their work in popularizing yoga in the West, the main proponents of yoga must be the “gurus” of the sixties and the seventies, such as Yogananda, Swami Vishnu Devananda, Yogi Bhajan, and Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who introduced Bhakti yoga to the west. These teachers moved to America, set up ashrams and schools and worked at the ground level with their American students and followers. Their work, along with others such as Neem Karoli Baba, Swami Radha, Amritananda Mayi and others, have been, and continue to be, much more important in yoga’s spread.

But even more important are the thousands of individual Western teachers, mostly women, who invested their own money to open up of yoga studios and train teachers around the world. Organizations such as the Yoga Alliance, among others, have been the backbone by which this effort succeeded.

Swami Ramdev

And the ripple effects of this explosion can now be felt in India. The work of Swami Ramdev, from the mid nineteen-nineties, has been seminal. In Haridwar, India, he has established the world’s largest center for Yoga and Ayurveda, called Patanjali Yogpeeth. It includes a Yoga University, an Ayurvedic hospital, a yoga hall of 25,000 square meters, a thousand apartments for guests, conference halls, cafeterias, and several apartment blocks for permanent residents.

India has now embraced yoga. Examples abound: the Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, has made yoga compulsory for its employees; it is now being taught in all government schools; thousands daily attend yoga camps, and even the Indian army practices yoga. And under the leadership of the current Prime Minister, India’s trend of reclaiming her cultural and historical heritage is now gathering momentum.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper - A Novel." www.yogazapper.com 

Sources:

https://mariawirthblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/a-yogi-revives-yoga-in-india/

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/yoga-a-compulsory-subject-in-govt-run-schools-teacher-training-courses-smriti-irani/

http://www.motleyhealth.com/blog/indian-army-replace-military-drills

Our "Wounded Warriors" by Karla Stover

     The official Wounded Warriors Project registered for organization on February 23, 2005. The project I participate in isn't quite that old.

     Not many people know that National Garden Clubs are actively involved in community services. When I joined Root and Bloom Garden Club in January 2008, the members were looking for a community project and I suggested doing something for the residents at the Washington Soldier's Home and Colony, locally known as the Orting Soldier's Home because of its location on the edge of Orting in the Puyallup Valley. Using club money, a donation from the Mary Ball Chapter of DAR, and a grant from the Tacoma Garden Club, we planted over 400 daffodil bulbs. This led to a residents' garden club. Throughout spring and summer, we help those interested plant vegetable gardens in planter boxes raised to accommodate wheelchairs, and provide the plants and seeds they request. When the produce is ready for harvest, we have a feed. And at Christmas we buy the club members gifts. My husband and I delivered them yesterday.

     I learned, yesterday, that the last surviving WWI resident died recently but that there are still quite a few men and a few women (who have a Red Hat Club in the home) from WWII. I would love to record their war experiences and create a book but it's been my experience that soldiers don't like to talk about the war.

     However, getting back to their Christmas Wish Lists--so poignant. The government has cut back on many of their services (one reason they love the daffodils in bloom) and they want such basic things as shampoo, laundry detergent, and stick deodorant. Almost every list included Irish Spring soap and many also wanted V8 juice and sugar free chocolate. There were requests for handkerchiefs, Kleenex, and small boxes of apple juice. Usually we buy the items using some of our treasury money but this year the ladies took names, bought all the items requested and put them in Christmas bags.

     We can't all make monthly monetary donations as their ad requests but most of us can do little things to show our Wounded Warriors that we haven't forgotten them and that we care.

 

 

 

IS SOMEONE WATCHING OVER YOU?

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We’ve all had those feelings, the sensation of someone watching over us, protecting us, maybe even guiding us. We’ve all stopped a little early at a traffic light to magically miss a crazy driver speeding though a red light. We’ve all gotten those mystical reminders to make a phone call, check the cookies in the oven, or pay just a little more attention to what another person is saying. Take an umbrella. Have that mole looked at. Buy that stock. In most cases, these thoughts were not in our heads one minute, then blazing bright as a neon light the next. Just how are we thinking of these things?

Our brains are amazing machines, constantly multitasking and seeing or recognizing things long before our consciousness is aware. This is such a cool concept, but the brain can not, and may never, be fully explained. That makes it kind of a magical organ, functioning right there in our own head. It runs the heart, the senses, the creative, and our personal perception of reality. If that’s not magic, I can’t imagine what is.

Even with the brain’s astounding ability do so many things; I’m always curious about those particular questions above. Why did we take a different route to work, avoiding a tragic ten car pile up? What made us think to call an old friend just when that person needed to hear a friendly voice? Perhaps the brain can see into the future and lead us to these decisions, or perhaps it’s something else altogether. Perhaps it’s a guardian angel.

Angels have been part of the human experience since humans became human. Some ancient aboriginal cultures called them spirits. Some called them teachers or guides. Almost all the old religions have stories of angels, winged creatures of kindness, or judgment, or even wrath. A few claim that dead relatives are their personal angels. How many times has something occurred that made you smile and open your wallet because, “Dad’s telling me to buy a lottery ticket.” Look around. People you know may even seek guidance from angels through angel card readers and mediums.

The 21^st century is loaded with technology but still filled with people seeking a guardian angel to assist in everyday dealings, or help them through terrible events. I bet there’s even an app for our cell phones all primed to interaction with your personal guardian angel. It’s a sad imagining, with the likes of the Archangel Makha’el wearing Coke-bottle thick glasses, torn jeans, and an I Heart Guidance tee shirt, leaning in at a computer screen to develop the perfect app.

Personally, I think there is an angel in everyone’s life, sitting at our shoulder and watching over us. Have you met yours? How has your angel helped you lately?

Christmas Card by Cheryl Wright

Check Out Cheryl's Book - Currently on Sale

I love it when I can make something totally unique, and this card falls into that category.

I began this by masking off an area of the card so only a circle of script was stamped. Then, using gold ink and Stampin Up Gorgeous Grunge - which is basically dots and blobs - I randomly stamped over the front of the card front.

To make the star, I used some recycled cardboard, and ripped off the outer layer so the ripped area shows, then cut the shape using a die. Using the same gold ink, I rubbed the cardboard across the ink pad to get some shimmer going.

This was added to the car, a bow added, and a smaller gold star. A greeting was stamped and added.

Last, but not least, I scattered some smaller gold stars around.

Here's a close up of the focal area:

I hope you've enjoyed this card. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!

Links:

My website:  www.cheryl-wright.com 
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cherylwrightauthor 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/writercheryl
BWL website: http://bookswelove.net/authors/wright-cheryl/

Killarney Sheffield - Why Authors Have An Office

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          After five years of being a published author with a full house of five kids I finally broke down and insisted I needed an office. My family looked at me as if I had grown another head! Firm in my resolve I pointed to the insanely hot in the summer, and ridiculously cold in the winter, sunroom and claimed it as my own. It made perfect sense to me. Here was a room crammed with Christmas decorations, forgotten Easter baskets, the treadmill I fully intended to use… someday, and miscellaneous odds and ends that needed a place to call home. Both the unused desks in the corner, my maps, reference books, writing awards, plot binder, pens, pencils, promotional items and signed copies of my books would fit in there, if I crammed them carefully, I insisted. No one was quite convinced, so I got tough and because I’m an author I wrote out the reasons why I should get the sunroom as an office:

1)      My writing disaster of reference materials would be easily accessed and easily hid.

2)      No one could complain my collection of plot notes written on various colored sticky notes stuck to every available surface such as walls, desks, windows and chairs.

3)      With the doors shut the kids would not be subjected to my Regency, Victorian and Georgian dictionary of rude and vulgar slang and cuss words my characters on occasion use, that tends to exit from my mouth to the page.

4)      No one would be faced with just how crazy I am when I have hour long, out loud conversations with my characters complete with arguments and the above mentioned cuss words.

5)      The kids would not be tempted to call 9ll when they realize I have been staring at the wall in a catatonic like state for two hours mumbling, “not writer’s block again…”

6)      And last, but not least, no one would be subjected to gleeful cackling when the villain in my stories meet their just reward at the hands, or should I say teeth of an overprotective pony, or a rampaging tiger. We all know payback is very sweet!

So in the end I fought a hard battle and won my very first ever office all my own, where I sweat all

summer and wear layers of clothing like a bag lady all winter. Some days I curse my decision when I feel like I missed something interesting in the real world beyond the doors that is my chaotic home, or when I run out of tissue to stem the flow of snot-cycles attempting to form on the end of my nose, or when even my eyeballs seem to be sweating from the heat. Other days I am extremely pleased I can shut the door and block life out and sink into the 1800’s when things were simpler, or perhaps a little more wild than life on a Canadian prairie cattle ranch.