A Fantastic Friday Foto Challenge

 

 

I stumbled across this picture last weekend during our road trip to Minnesota.  My husband instantly fell in love with the dark barn as the climax of his last novel takes place in such a place as this.  It is inspiring today's fun and maybe even more Friday writing challenges to come!

Here are the details:

1.  Write a paragraph with describing the barn or an event taking place in the barn.  Remember this is 1 paragraph.

2.  There is a 200 word limit to your paragraph.  If you go over you are out!

3.  All entries should be posted in the comment section of this blog.  Do not email them to me.

4.  All entries most be received by noon on Monday.

5.  We will post our finalists on Wednesday for everyone to vote and announce the winners on Friday.

6.  The contestants need to be followers of this blog.  So if someone wants to enter they just need to follow.

7.  Spreading the word everywhere about the contest is okay, but please don't use social sights to promote people voting.

8.  The winner will receive a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card!

Have fun!  Spread the word!  See you next week!

-Veronica

Kaiden or Look-a-like?

You may remember me posting that Kaiden has dived into the modeling world, but we are keeping him local with an agent out of Omaha.  This weekend we had the strangest thing happen to us.  Cloudy had a hockey tournament in Minnesota.  After one of the games Kaiden and I were playing around in the arcade area of the rink.  He ran over to one of the vending machines and started begging for a fuzzy mustache out of the machine.  First, what you need to know is that any rink rat probably has a number of bouncy balls and fuzzy mustaches in their personal collection of toys, so why we continue to pay for these things I will never know.  Second, as I was putting the money in the machine I had to do a double take at the picture on the front of it.  The little boy staring back at me with a goofy pirate costume and mustache on was a spitting image of Kaiden himself.  I was so flabbergasted by it that we never ended up purchasing a mustache. 

I went and got Thomas and showed him the machine.  He agreed that the kid on it looked an awful lot like our silly seven year old.  We snapped a few pictures of the machine itself and then had Kaiden pose with it as well.  After sending the pictures to a multitude of family members everyone believed that this had to be Kaiden.

There was still a couple things wrong with this situation.  One, Kaiden had never done a "pirate" photo shoot. However, the company he normally models for is well known for using photoshop.  They have even put teeth on a friend of ours who hadn't had front teeth for as long as we'd known her.  Second, the supplier for the mustaches was out of Maryland.  Remember I said we kept Kaiden local in Omaha.  Yesterday I called the customer service line for the machine and they said they are the actual manufacturers of the mustache.

Rather the young man on the machine is actually Kaiden or not we may never know.  It is a funny coincidence that we even saw the picture in the first place.  I'm opening it up to my followers to weigh in their opinions on the subject.  I'm posting some pictures of Kaiden and the machine for everyone to take a look!

Ice Castles

For those of you who didn’t know-and I don’t know how you didn’t-my family is a huge hockey family.  My grandpa played, my sister, my brother, my cousins and so on it goes.  Needless to say one of the proudest moments in my life has been watching my two children learn how to skate.  Cloudya(11) learned from some of the finest members of the Topeka Scarecrows.  However, after she started her skating lessons at age three she wanted nothing more to do it with it.  She chose to pursue other opportunities which included dance and theater.  Basically she’s been a stage brat ever since.  She even works with an agent out of Chicago on a regular basis. 

Once we arrived in Omaha, it was Kaiden’s(7) turn, however his trip to the ice was postponed due to surgery.  Needless to say he hit the ice by the age of four instead of three.  He hasn’t left since.

So shortly after Kaiden started skating and playing guess who decides she wants to take some skating lessons…Cloudya!  So she takes the lessons and then they announce tryouts for the Omaha Lady Jr. Lancers.  We take her to tryouts and she manages to skate through it.  Knowing this wasn’t an audition that she could just bluff through she waited rather impatiently to hear something.  Finally, she found out she had made the team.

Later on in the year Cloudya announced that she wanted to drop some of her dance classes.  Although this was more because of issues she was having in class part of me wondered whether it was all because of hockey.  Last year if you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up she would have said an actress and fashion designer.  This year when I asked her she said a Broadway star who also plays hockey! 

It’s been a fun season for the Lady Jr Lancers and I have enjoyed watching Cloudya develop her skill.  I can’t help but giggle when my ballerina gets aggressive with a boy hockey player or gets sent to the penalty box.  Most of all we spend the time being proud of the fact that she is carrying on a long line of players. 

I included some neat pics from a recent photo shoot.  Yes even hockey gear she still looks cool!

Rest Stop

In the last year I was inspired to write a novel based on a friend's story.  Their own unique story is one that pierces my heart every time I think about it.  It's got a pretty typically base once I thought about it...boy meets girl while they are not ready for relationships...they fall in love...boy does stupid thing and girl vows to never talk to him again...years later they. 

I picked it up at the years later they part.  The problem is that with my friends there never was truly a "years later they" part.  In fact there is often a lot of regret on both parties that there isn't.  I made the mistake of telling my friend I was writing this story.  I normally share with this particular person about my current and future projects.  She also is one that proofs for me quite a bit.

So my characters were mapped out and the basic outlines were all done and I began writing in a fury.  The characters took the story over and I ran with it.  Then I hit this particular part of the story that hit so close to home that I couldn't push past.  I was stuck and have been stuck for months. 

I came to the realization that I have to let it go not the story because it deserves to be told, but my own hang up.  Here are two people in my life that I care about a lot and I want to tell their story or what should be their story to the world, but I want to do it in a way that honors them.  Truth be told I'm honoring them just be letting in inspire me.  This story though is not actually theirs due to the fact that I'm picking up where they should have a long time ago.  No word I write is ever going to change how they have ended up now.

Does this happen to anyone else?  Do you want to protect your inspiring people so much that it affects your story? 

Resolution Accomplished

For the first time ever I managed to keep one of my resolutions for the entire year of 2011! That's right I am among the elite as most people were unable to accomplish such a feat. I'm one of those kind of readers that get comfortable with an author. Once I become comfy I read every book of theirs I can find. When I've finished that I begin rereading until I can't do it anymore.

One night last December I sat down my copy of LuAnne Rice's Summer Light-a book I have read a number of times-and made a decision that 2011 would be the year for me to try something new. In the process I decided I would only read books by authors I had never read before or books from completely different genres.

It seemed like a simple enough task at the time, but wow did I not know what I had gotten myself into! I stood in Barnes and Noble trying to pick one and only one to begin my mission. A line from the movie Ever After sounded inside my head, "I could no sooner choose a favorite star in heaven." Finally I selected one and to tell on myself a little I only selected it because my favorite writer wrote such good reviews about the book. 

Once my little challenge was started I couldn't stop and was making every other day trips to the book store.  What did this resolution do for me?  It allowed me and my writing style to be influenced by some pretty amazing things.  I expect that in 2012 my process will only continue to grow leaps and bounds.  What it meant for this blog is that I will be pimping several of these books to you; at least one a month. 

What resolutions have set in 2012 you may ask?  Well I'm going to continue last year's resolution and maybe even spend some time querying some of my own work.  We'll see if I actually hold up my end of the bargain on that last part.

Happy New Year!

Veronica

Editting Life

Those of you who have been following this blog know that I have often struggled with time to write due to crazy work schedule at Wal-mart. Over the last eleven years that time struggle killed my family life. Last year, I found myself having to miss a number of activities due to the inflexible schedule. By the end of hockey season I had taken enough of the sad faces from my kids and knew it was time to make a change.

Of course this time wasn't the first time I had thought about quitting, but I knew this time I was dead serious. Over the following month I enrolled in school and begin to plot out a business venture that would allow me to manage school and the kid's schedule.

In May, we opened our own daycare-which is something I had wanted to do years. By August, I was able to turn in my notice at Wal-mart. After eleven long years I closed that door forever. Regardless of my dislike of the amount of hours away from my family, I still worked with some amazing people and they have helped build the person I am now. Hopefully if my books every get published you will see some of them grace the pages.

Now that it is November I find myself with two new hockey sons, living in a completely new(and bigger house), and running my own business. This month particularly makes me a little homesick for the Wal-mart craziness as the dreaded Black Friday approaches. The folks I've shared this with think that I am a little crazy, but honestly when you've done it that long it becomes part of you. But then I think about the coming holidays and how for the first time I will be able to enjoy them with my family. On Christmas Eve morning last year I got a call from my mother in law while I was at the store. During the conversation, I told her that I was not going through the holiday craziness next year that I couldn't take it anymore. Wal-mart is behind me and although I can't tell the future I can tell you that there is a lot of family time and writing in my future.

Veronica

Follow our family's hockey adventures!

www.deanhockey.blogspot.com

See ya at the Rink:)