Busy Me

Hey everyone! I've got a prayer request and a praise for you...

Remember Robert Liparulo, the writer of Comes A Horsemen? We've been chatting a bit over e-mails and he has given me the name and address of a Young Adult editor at Nelson Publishing to send my book proposal to. For my non-writing friends, a proposal is a package which includes a synopsis of the book, a history of the author, sample chapters, and the marketing potential.


I'm very excited because Nelson Publishing is almost impossible to get into. They are a huge Christian publishing firm and only take proposals through recommendations.

I'll be busy for the next few days...writing a chapter by chapter synopsis and putting the proposal together; so please forgive me if I seem a bit distant from the blogosphere.

Please pray for me to get it perfect. If this is where and when God wants it, it'll happen. If not, it will be an awesome learning experience. All in His time.

Have a happy new year everyone!

Oh, a few friends and I are starting a small group Bible study blog on January 1st. We'll be going through the New Testament this year and you are very welcome to join in and comment. Seek and Ye Shall Find is the name. My posts will be on Thursday. I'll tell more about it later and put in a permanent link soon.

My *cough* Christmas Dinner

Okay, so I’ve been out of town for a few days and I get back with 18 messages waiting for me. Boy, do I feel loved! We went to a friend’s house in Oxford, North Carolina (near Raleigh) the day after Christmas. Now, because we were going to be gone for a few days, we decided to postpone the annual Christmas dinner-baking extravaganza for tonight, the 30th. Instead, we pulled a Tim Allen and took the kids to Denny’s.

Yes.

Denny’s.

Did we learn nothing from The Santa Clause? I ask you! We ordered and waited…and waited…and (you get the picture.) Anyway, when the food came...(I must apologize to my vegetarian and vegan friends here. I am a carnivore and you may not like the following information)...When the food came, my plate had a steak, bread, and a baked potato. I asked if they would bring the rest of my meal: a salad and an order of fried shrimp. My husband was also missing his pancakes and the cheese in his omelette.

Time passed.

I decided to try my steak that was supposed to be medium-rare. I think it mooed at me. As soon as I cut into it, blood ran all over my plate, soaking the bread and potato. I told the waitress that I needed it cooked more. She took the entire plate.

Time passed.

I got my salad!

Time passed.

My steak was brought back cooked a tad more but they hadn't changed the plate and my lovely bread looked like a bloody sponge. My potato was about the same.

Still no shrimp.

I eat the steak even though it is still bleeding a bit and I pick at the parts of the potato that are not red.

Finally my shrimp arrives. I take a huge bite and...GAG! They aren't cooked in the inside! The slimy dough is not crisp through. By now, everyone else is finished. Even Dave has gotten his pancakes (but not his cheese) so I tell the waitress to take the raw shrimp off the tab. A whopping $3.50 is removed.

Important safety tip: Skip Denny's and eat toast or cold cereal.

Well, needless to say, tonight's dinner should be so much better.

BTW, my husband now has a blog because of my tag on him. So far, it is hilarious. Please go say hi!!! It is Stupid Human Tricks.

Oh! HAPPY NEW YEAR MY BLOGGING BUDDIES!!!

A Weird Tag

Yes. Again. I have been tagged...this time by the delightfully funny Dennie. She says that I have to list five weird random things about myself. Only five eh?

1. I actually like getting tagged...I created this blog just for the reason of being tagged. I think most of these meme things are a great way to get to know other bloggers. My friend, Bonnie Calhoun, who got me blogging in the first place, hates them and thinks they are like chain letters. She always posts the same post answer to all tags. It is a pretty funny post though. So, she is forgiven.

2. When I was in the Army, everyone called me Mimi instead of SPC Pearson or SGT Pearson. I think it is because I was very much the atypical soldier. Like Private Benjamin of sorts. I would be forgiven anything because I was 'Mimi'...even not showing up for PT (Physical Training). "Oh, was that this morning Sergeant?" "Yes, Mimi. It is every morning." Even the Company Commander called me Mimi. No one else was referred to by their name or nickname.

3.

In the Army I was a Multimedia Illustrator. An artist. I already had an art degree (BA from San Jose State University)...I was really artsy fartsy...Not only was I weird enough to join the Army, I joined it for experience in the art field. To the left is a little article about my weird self done while I was in Hungary during Operation Joint Guard. The next picture is a sample of a charcoal illustration I did for a friend who got promoted. Hope you can tell what it is. I gave him the original and this is a scan of a photocopy!

4. I was raised in a family of all girls with the exception of my dad and our pet dog. My family now is all boys with the exception of me and our pet dog.

5. I prefer Young Adult novels to any other type of book. I love Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl. And if the novel has a dragon in it, I will read it all night long. I also love those kinds of novels so much that I wrote my own. And even though I love to write, I am a horrid speller. (I always spell weird wrong...usually I spell it wierd. I'm still not sure which one is right.)

A lot of my blogging friends have already done this tag...if you've done it already, let me know!

Poor souls:

Trinity13
My son, Keegan
My husband, Dave...so he will start a blog.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Christmases to Remember

All Christmases have memories attached. Whether it is the one when you were sixteen and all you got were bicycle parts even though you wanted a CAR (true story) or the time you dive across the desert squashed in the back of a Buick with two of your sisters and a tired father and turtle happy mother up front (unfortunately, another true story).

There are some you will remember because of sheer joy. Like the first Christmas you spend as husband and wife. Perhaps it is the one with your baby’s first Christmas.

Then there is the Christmas spent with nine foster children, some of whom have never had much kindness let alone presents given to them. We (Dave, Keegan, Evan, and I) spent about four Christmases like this.

Of course there are Christmases that you just have to laugh for the sheer joy of having two of the silliest boys on Earth with you.

Yet, the one Christmas that will always sit in the forefront of my memory is the Christmas I spent without my family. The one where I was called up, along with a lot of other mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons, to be a Peacekeeper in the Bosnia crisis: Operation Joint Guard.

Dave and I had been married seven years and our son, Keegan, had only just turned two. I would be gone for nine months. Part of those nine months was during Christmas. It could have been awful.

But it wasn’t.

Lonely? Yes. Yet through my pain, I was able to express love. I found a rich joy that Christmas.

Our Battalion was blessed with opportunities to serve others. We were stationed in Taszár, Hungary a few hours from the Croatian border and since it was 1997 and the war was pretty much over, there was much poverty and way too many orphans. Being a Transportation Battalion who coordinated operations, we had access to many things that other soldiers did not. Our Chaplain set up visits to orphanages and we visited many kids. We also had many donations/presents that people from all over gave for the orphans. One day we spent the entire workday wrapping those presents, getting them into and labeling the boxes for boys/girls and age groups. We delivered some of them in person. From mattresses to bikes. One little girl I especially remember received a Barbie doll and cried. She had never had a doll before. I think that was the best Christmas moment I’ve ever had. Maybe because it was the closest I came to the true meaning of Christmas. Giving and loving others just as God loved us so much that he sent His Son.

Happy Birthday Jesus. I pray I can always have Your giving spirit all year round.

So, tell me. What is the best Christmas/Chanukah experience you have ever had?

Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle

Anyone thinking about what to get an 8-12 year old for Christmas? Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle is a fun new book by R. K. Mortenson. In the tradition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Mortenson brings his character, Landon, on a zany adventure during a secret night visit to the Button Up Library in Minnesota. It is a fast paced, wacky ride including talking Chess pieces and little elflike creatures called 'Odds'. After Landon's grandfather is rushed to the hospital for an injury, Landon questions why it happened.

"There's no reason," he blurted through his sobs, "for anything!"

He opens the Bible to Joel 2:28 and reads:

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

A passageway opens up in his room and Landon follows it like all curious cats do. Curiouser and curiouser! Okay, it doesn't say that, but it sounds like what Alice would say in such a situation, no? Anyway, my son, Keegan,10 years old, loved the book. It is fun, silly and helps to answer the riddle:

Could it be chance, mere circumstance
That man eats cow eats grass eats soil
and then man dies, and when he lies
To soil he does return?

To order, click here!

Finished Comes A Horseman!

Remember that on November 17th I posted about the novel Comes A Horseman by Robert Liparulo? Well, I've finished reading it and totally loved it. The similes he uses are original and brilliant. He brought action and emotion together very well. I loved the main characters and despised the bad guys. What bad guys he had too!!! YIKES! I shall never look at the historical Vikings again without cringing. The book does not have as much art as I thought it would but it makes up for it with great FBI gadgetry and believability. It even has a Shih Tzu which is my personal favorite dog. (Of course I'm biased because I have a 1/2 Shih Tzu 1/2 Jack Russell puppy.) Anyway, I recommend this to all Thriller lovers. It is not to be missed.

Remember the Time We...

Seen at Running2ks

Please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL MEMORY OF YOU AND ME. It can be anything you want–good or bad–BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you’re finished, post this paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON’T ACTUALLY remember about you.

Christmas Turtles

This post will be added to The Wonder Years section of my autobiography

Our first Christmas without my sister Margie was spent in Arizona. My maternal grandmother lived there with her youngest son, my Uncle Kevin. Many vacations were spent in Phoenix, Arizona and we always traveled by car. This visit we were one less but it was still a cramped, long, bickering voyage. If you ever traveled from San Jose, California to Phoenix, Arizona you will understand this well. If you haven't, I will endeavor to illustrate it for you...

Imagine, if you will, a brown Buick. Mother and Father are in the seats up front. Three girls ages 13, 15, and 17 in the back and you are the 13 year old. Stuck. In the middle. This is before walkmans. This is also before you've discovered how great books are. Your parents have an eight track playing old country tunes that you've been programed to actually like.

There is a long stretch of desert as far as the eye can see (sorry, it's cliche but true.) In the middle of the desert is a road that looks and feels as if it was paved over a rolling ocean. Your family has dubbed these waves dippity-do's. As this is an annual trip, you are expecting the waves and as soon as the first one approaches, the entire family starts to sing:

Dippity do da, dippity ay!
My, oh my, what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine headed my way.
Dippity do da. Dippity ay!

Yes. It is corney, but it is what you do. Suddenly Mom yells, "TURTLE!"

All the girls groan. Dad blows out a long breath of air.

"John! Stop the car! I saw a turtle!"

"Syl...You said that, what 10 miles back. You thought you saw a turtle..."

"This time it really is a turtle. Stop the car!"

Your mother has always had some strange obsession with finding a turtle on the road. You have not the slightest idea why. Dad knows that Mom will never, ever, stop talking, moaning, nagging if he does not pull over and check for the turtle.

We pull over. Immediately you are hot. Yes, it is Christmas time but you are HOT! And your two sisters have decided to sprawl all over 'their' sides of the car leaving the tiny mid-section for you to sweat in. Since Dad had taken his time hashing it out in his mind whether it was worth the nagging to not pull over or not, he has a much longer walk than he anticipated.

Bicker, bicker: "You're on my side!"..."You stink!"..."Don't you EVER brush your teeth?"..."I hate you!"...

Mom has had enough. Now it is time to pull the age old threat: "If you girls don't shut-up, I will spank you with a cactus!"

This used to work. In fact, we all have had nightmares of picking cactus needles out of our butts. But now we are teenagers. And now we have a common enemy. Our bickering is solved! Now we can rag on Mom!

"As if!"..."I'd like to see you try!"..."Do you actually think we'd fall for that one?"..."Where are your gloves, huh?"

Mom now regrets pulling over for her long sought turtle. We all watch for Dad. FINALLY we see his itsy bitsy figure coming from the dippity-do's. He is carrying something! It is dark and looks a little heavy. Mom gets so excited that she forgives us all and promises that at the next gas station we will all get an ice-cream bar.

Dad's figure gets bigger. Yes. He is definately carrying something.

He arrives and presents Mom with her prize. "Here you go, Syl. Here is your turtle."

A black rubber piece of tire is placed in her lap and we resume our trip.

*A special note*

In the last two years since Mom and Dad have moved to North Carolina, Mom has fulfilled her life's ambition. She has found not one, but THREE real turtles on the road.

They live in a glass aquarium in her kitchen.

I've been hit! He got me...yes...I've been tagged

First of all, today my son Keegan has finally completed his first post. It is a report on our field trip to Linville Caverns. To the left is one of the many pictures that he has in his report. So do not delay, go read his fun report! (My dad, mom, Keegan, Evan, and me. I took the picture that's why I'm not there.)


Secondly, I'm enjoying Comes a Horseman still. Not done yet. While I was in the middle of a VERY scary scene last night, the lights went out. I had about ten horrible seconds of holding my breath and the lights thankfully came back on. I don't know about you, I sure don't want my last waking thought to be about an axe murderer.

Lastly, none other than the author/blogger and Christian Fiction Blog Alliance inventor T.L. Hines has tagged me. So, now I'm it, huh? Okay. I can do this.

SEVENS

Seven Things to Do Before I Die

1. Publish my book
2. Move away from North Carolina
3. Train my kids to put their laundry in the laundry hamper
4. Ski in Colorado
5. Visit the Bahamas
6. Take my kids to Disneyworld
7. Own a car that doesn't require a chain to hold the hood down

Seven Things I Cannot Do

1. A backflip. I used to be able to do it but no more. Alas, I've gotten too old and too um...rotund.
2. Make a soufflé or spell it...I had to go look that up.
3. Spell. As proven by number 2.
4. Breathe underwater. But my character in F.A.I.R.I.E.S. can. So, HA!
5. Find a publisher. But I am hopeful that one day this will change.
6. Stop my kids from growing. I wish I could 'bottle' time. Howbeit, I cannot.
7. Create world peace. Let's face it, that won't happen until the Anti-Christ starts to rule so...I guess that means I'm glad that I can't do it.

Seven Things that Attract Me to My Husband

1. His skills. Okay, I meant his humor. This wonderful man, Dave, is playing golf on the Monterey Peninsula. Note the floral shorts, "No Bozo's" T-shirt, and the great demonstration of balance.















2. His thoughtfulness.






3. His ability to feel at home wherever he is.











4. His intelligence. Not only does he look smart in a uniform, he was in military intelligence. A linguist in the U.S. Army. He knows German, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish (from High School), and Greek (from College).








5. Just look at him. Need I say more? He looks adorable even with a flat-top. And now that we are getting older and things like hair decide to leave, he is STILL adorable! Oh, and get a load of those thighs. Yummy.







6. His great artistic sensibility. What taste!







7. His GREAT taste in women. Oh, and cars.

Seven Things I Say Most Often

1. "I love you."
2. "You're grounded!"
3. "What do you want for dinner?"
4. "Fine. I'll make macaronni and cheese. Again."
5. "Where's my hairbrush?"
6. "Take out the dog."
7. "Go to sleep boys!"

Seven Books (or Book Series) I Love

1. Harry Potter
2. All Jane Austin
3. Dragon Riders of Pern
4. Artemis Fowl
5. In the Hall of the Dragon King
6. Honor Harrington
7. Crystal Singer

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again

1. Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
2. Notting Hill
3. Galaxy Quest
4. Ella Enchanted
5. Star Wars
6. LOTR
7. Anne of Green Gables

Seven Poor Souls that I wish to tag are:

1. Bonnie Wren
2. Jennifer
3. Pia
4. Fred
5. Jen's Horde
6. Running2ks
7. Alydyn