Reading

I have written before about my first memorable experience with reading. It was the summer between 6th and 7th grade. It was before I discovered that some boys were attractive. It was during a very emotionally tumultuous time in my life. Mother Nature and I fought very bitterly over my body. My brother and I fought just as bitterly over why, all of a sudden, normally activities like jumping on the trampoline and going swimming were out of the question [for me]. For the record, my brother just didn't understand. Mother Nature, however, is just a bitch.

A friend of my mother's needed to unload a refrigerator box full of books. I was a good student so she assumed I liked to read. Until then, I read what I had been required to read without complaint, but never for fun. This woman brought this box of books to me. That box changed my life.

I was so desperate to escape my own life that once I cracked the cover on the 1st book, it was a done deal. I started with the easy stuff [aka age appropriate]. GOOSEBUMPS books were popular then and I found a few in the heap. "CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE" books were next. I always cheated by reading every page option before making a choice, yet somehow my character still always died. After that, I moved onto NANCY DREW. That chick could do anything! I read every single one of the Nancy Drew books, something around 50 of them, in the box and found a handful of Hardy Boys books too.

By the end of the summer, I only had a few books left in that box. Most didn't look like something I'd read. The men didn't wear enough clothes. Neither did the women for that matter. Instead, I picked up one called FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC. The cover made me think it was a horror story.  I guess I was partly right. The story probably traumatized me- or at least, it was responsible for good portion of nightmares. I read the entire series.

After V. C. Andrews, I decided to give the Harlequin romances a chance. I blame them, 100%, for my terrible taste in men, my unrealistic views on beauty and love, and my penchant for erotica.

Despite all of this, to this day my most beloved book is NOT NOW SAID THE COW, a reworked version of "The Little Red Hen" folk tale. I bought the children's book at a Scholastic book fair during Junior High. For years, I remembered the story but not the title until a student jogged my memory a few weeks back. Little Golden Books published a version of THE LITTLE RED HEN that the classroom library had and my student chose to read aloud. I knew then that my story was based on this story. After speaking to a couple teachers during lunch and multiple Google searches on our parts, we finally discovered the title I had been missing for almost 20 years. The reunion almost made me cry.

For such a little thing, a book elicits powerful emotions and memories. Some fond, some not so much, but always strong and honest reflections of time and place, real and imagined and remembered.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Books by the Banks was Awesome!

I am back from Books by the Banks. Steven and I had an adventure of a time! Sadly, his wife and son did not go with us and I spent most of the time trying not to have a panic attack.

We walked around the author room twice, seeing people that Steven has met over the years in various instances. He lived in the same apartment complex as one of the ladies. He worked with one of the men. He knew various people from Facebook. It was very nice to meet them all.

The folks with the DIY home blog were serious hits and apparently the biggest name at the festival. They had a line that wrapped around the room! Their panel session was packed and people lined the back of the room. We didn't go to that session.

We went to the publishing session with Chuck Sambuchino. It was not as well attended as the DIY craft session, but it was very informative regardless. Steven and I sat at the back of the room and listened while various people moved around the room (a pair of ladies frequently left the room and returned a few minutes later- very distracting!). Steven asked a few questions and I tried to absorb as much of Chuck's information as possible. I tried to warn Chuck about an impostor here on Blogger that I thought was someone using his name/info and it turned out it was him! I was slightly embarrassed and quickly scampered away with the excuse that Steven left my purse sitting unattended. When we got back, I finally thought of a question to ask: When asked for the first X number pages by an agent or publisher, does that include the prologue or not?

We contemplated staying for the children's lit session but eventually decided against it and headed back. Steven was hurting a bit, my stomach was growling very loudly, I needed a cigarette break, and I had forgotten my phone at his house. I am not one that has to be glued to their phone 24/7 but I do not like not knowing where it is and I get very panic-y when I don't have a constant way of knowing the time. Weird, I know, but still- I have to know what time it is or I get a headache, I sweat a lot, my pulse races, and I generally feel like something bad is going to happen.

So we headed out and stopped by the Ohio Bookstore, a 5 story book store in downtown Cincinnati. They have a book bindery in the basement. It was really cool. We couldn't stay long though because the meter where we parked only gave us 3 minutes for 10 cents and I only had 50 cents on me. Ugh. The whole store was neat though. Wall to wall books! Heaven.

The entire event was a great way to spend an afternoon. Tons of kids in attendance and the kid room was busier than the authors' floor. A few mascots wandering around reminded me of my college days as Curious George. Chuck Sambuchino was an excellent speaker and gave off a Ryan Reynolds's Mr. D (School of Life) vibe. Yay conferences! Maybe next year or the year after, I will be one of the authors on the floor rather than walking around starry eyed and suddenly introverted.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Books by the Banks Festival

On Saturday, I will be attending Books by the Banks: Cincinnati USA Books Festival. Check out the official site here.

Books by the Banks is a yearly fall festival celebrating writers and readers. It is at the Duke Energy Center this year and admission is FREE! Yup, it is free to get in. There will be local and national author tables, panel sessions, and children's events from 10am-4pm. I am looking forward to attending the 11am panel session "You've Written a Book, Now What?: Tips and Tricks for Getting Published" by Chuck Sambuchino, author of Red Dog, Blue Dog: When Pooches Get Political. Also, I'm *hopefully* going to check out the 1pm panel session "Children's Lit Chat: Writing and Illustrating Children's Books" with Derek Anderson (Walking Dragons), Mac Barnett (Danger Goes Berserk), and Rafael Rosado (Giants Beware!).

The whole event looks to be a fantastic time for everyone. If you are local, you should stop by. I mean, free admission is awesome. All you have to pay for is parking and that is $1-12 depending on where you park. That isn't a terrible price by any means! I'll be there with my editor and his family, browsing books, speaking to other writers and readers, listening to discussions, and generally enjoying the atmosphere for a few hours.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

What I'm Reading

Over the weekend, I found myself swallowed up in the architectural history of Cincinnati and neighboring Covington. I took a walk in historic Covington a little while after the last Red's game and got an amazing tour of some of the older buildings along the river while Mercy Me played in the stadium across the bridge. When I got home, I continued the research. I thought I would share some of the articles I have been reading.

Architecture of Cincinnati
Gothic Revival Architecture
Gothic Architecture

I have found so much good information just between the 2 Wikipedia links and the Cincinnati page. Very interesting reads if you are of that kind of mind-set. I find the information fascinating now, though 8 years ago when I took art history in college it was so very boring. At least I have found myself nodding in understanding or at least recognition of different terms and bits of information!

Here are a few more pages to browse!
Architecture diagrams
Gothic Revival diagram


Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Update On MS

Fixing the italics in Immo2 took less time than I thought. A few hours over the past couple days. However, my first read-through session netted 22 pages over 5 hours. Granted, I was plenty distracted. The kids, the cats, parents, phone, etc. But I really hoped that I could get more done in that time. At this rate, I won't be finished until about the 20th or so. Oy. I hope the weekend works out a little better.

I'll update my progress in a few days. :)

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Friday Five: 5 Questions with Elizabeth

... about teaching reading!

Elizabeth is a dear friend of mine, though we haven't seen each other in a long time. I got the chance to chat with her over the weekend about teaching reading to elementary students. Just so you know, Elizabeth hates all things computer related. So much so that she doesn't even own a home computer or a cell phone. I know... how crazy is that in this day and age? I try to convince her to join the technological era every time we speak, but so far she has been resistant to my common sense arguments. This was a phone conversation, where I tried to scribble notes and she tried to speak slow and keep things short, which she failed of course. Answers may not be 100% verbatim, but I read this to her and she agrees that I got it pretty much right. haha

Happenings

It has been an incredibly busy month for me, and it isn't even over yet! I just finished a month long visit with my little sisters, E & L. They are 7 and 8, full of insane amounts of energy (seriously, they get up with the sun!), and are incredibly smart for their ages. Okay, so maybe I am a bit biased on that last part, but I swear they are incredible kids. Their visit taught me several things: 1) not all Disney channel shows are KF, no matter what the Disney folks may think (strongly worded letters may soon reach those folks); 2) I have become attached to the characters from Wizards of Waveryly Place, iCarly, Shake It Up Chicago, and Good Luck Charlie (please, someone blow up my television); 3) when putting sunscreen on little girls, don't forget sunscreen for yourself (sunburn #3 is finally healing). We had a really good visit that included trips to the pool, the library, Wal-Mart (their idea, not mine), and the Dollar Store. We found paper dolls and coloring books. We read like maniacs (more my idea of course). I learned how to operate a Nintendo DSi. They wanted ramen noodles and tuna sandwiches for every single meal. Oh, and oatmeal (blech!).

During their visit, I started and completed several projects. First, I launched my blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. So far so good on these. I'm enjoying this blog thing a lot! We managed to almost finish the remodeling project in the living room. New paint, new flooring (good bye fur embedded carpet, hello tile), new trim. All that is left is some touch up painting and replacing a few light fixtures and the project will officially be closed. It only took three months. The touch up painting will be done over the next week and my dearest Daddy will be replacing the light fixtures when he has the time. No one in this house is qualified to work with electrical wiring so we wait patiently for him. My third project was difficult for me to start and it is definitely a work in progress. I am addicted to the internet and my method of absorption is internet games. Notdoppler.com is a favorite. As is Facebook games. I have blocked all Facebook games after some serious whining. I took NotDoppler off my bookmarks. I have stubbornly refused to quit playing "mind" games like Sudoku, Kakuro, Rummikub, Mahjong, and Hearts. They are intellectually stimulating, right?

With all the extra free time on my hands sans internet games, I have been able to read a lot more. That makes me so happy, you don't even know. I used to read a good 30-40 books a year at least when I was in high school. In college, that dropped down to about 20 a year, mostly over school holidays, between semesters, and between classes. I was busy! Then came World of Warcrack and Facebook. My reading dropped considerably, maybe 5 books a year if the internet was out a lot. That is depressing. I've never been a television person. I loved Buffy when it was on. I love Glee now that it is on. That is about it. Internet gaming has been my time consuming, entertaining, book replacement. I kicked the WoW habit after several years, but really just replaced it with MORE Facebook games. Since I blocked all the games, I have read 7 books! Even with the girls here, I managed a lot of reading. I was still active online (minus a few days when I was sunburned so badly). I maintained contact with friends and family. I made sure the girls didn't turn feral and run away with the cats.

Yay for old loves coming back full force! How much do you read? What keeps you from reading? What helps you focus on reading?

Moral of the story: Turn off the television and close the games. Open a book and turn on your imagination!