Guest Blog - The Christmas Village by Melissa Goodwin

Finding Your Inner 10-Year-Old
Melissa Ann Goodwin

I have a black and white picture of my fifth grade class hanging in my office. We’re sitting straight-backed and bright-eyed at our desks. We look smart and well-behaved, except for Robert, who has a smirk on his face and his very own row - for good reasons - close to Miss Cronin’s desk. We are 10 years old, full of possibilities and promise.

This photograph reminds me of something very important. It reminds me of who I really am. When I was 10, I knew exactly what I liked and didn’t like; what I dreamed of, what I loved, what excited me, what scared me.

I loved to read. I loved school. I liked those little troll dolls with the crazy orange hair. I liked my best friend Priscilla, cats, gathering chestnuts, Rex Trailer, hot dogs, going to the beach and playing dodge ball. I hated liver, eggplant, scary movies, and mean people. I loved walking home from school and writing stories in my head. By the age of 10, I already knew that I wanted to write the kind of books that I loved to read.

As I got older, I veered away from what I knew when I was 10. What other people said and thought began to carry more weight. There were norms about the path that life should take. I’m not alone – this happens to almost everyone. We get new ideas and we try new things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But later, many of us find we’ve wandered rather far from what we think of as our “true selves.” We feel empty, burned out and lost. We say that we “need to find ourselves again.” That expression implies that we once knew who we were, but have forgotten! When we feel this way, what we really need to do is rediscover our inner 10-year-olds.

But how do we do that? Well, here are a few ideas that may help:
• Close your eyes and picture yourself at age 10. Who was your best friend? Your mortal enemy? What did you do after school? What games did you play? What did you want with all your heart to get for Christmas that year? What subjects did you love – and hate?
• Write it all down.
• Spend five minutes every day remembering the details of your 10th year. When you remember something new, write that down too.
• Find a picture of yourself at that age and put it on the fridge. Every day, ask the person in the picture what he’d want to do today if he was in charge of your life. Consider doing it!
• Re-read a book or watch a movie that you loved as a kid, and remind yourself why you loved it.

If you think there is something you should be doing with your life, but you’re not sure what it is, remembering what you loved at age 10 can help you find your way. No matter what kind of work you do, it can only be enhanced by asking your inner 10-year-old to help. She knows your true essence and can help you tap into the deep well of expression that is uniquely you. Invite your 10-year-old self back in, and see if you don’t find a renewed sense of wonder and playfulness in everything you do.


Here is the trailer for her book


Author Bio

Melissa Ann Goodwin is a native New Englander, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, artist J. Richard Secor. She has written extensively for Fun for Kidz, Boys’ Quest and Hopscotch for Girls. She was a regular feature article contributor to the Caregiver's Home Companion for more than five years. Her work has appeared in Guideposts’ Angels on Earth, Caregivers’ Home Companion, Caring Today, The Lutheran Digest, The Peak Magazine, The Andover Townsman, and the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette. Her poetry took 10th prize in The Writer’s Digest 2010 annual competition. The Christmas Village is her first novel.

Author's Websites:

Melissa Ann Goodwin


The Christmas Village


FaceBook:


Twitter: @GoodwinMelissa

Note:

here is the link to Amazon


Link to Smashwords

Author Guest Blog -Photos and Poems and Quotes, Oh My!: How Other Creative Works Can Add to Your Writing by Madeline Sharples (WOW Book Tour)

Photos and Poems and Quotes, Oh My!: How Other Creative Works Can Add to Your Writing

One of the first reviewers of my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, said, “….The poetry and photographs add an extra dimension that is missing from most memoirs like this since as a reader you get much closer to the reality of what is being described on the page….” (Mark Shelmerdine, CEO, Jeffers Press). Another reviewer said my book is “poetically visceral.” Those statements helped validate any misgivings I had in adding other creative works into my manuscript.

I really hadn’t thought of putting photos in my book until my publisher, Janice Phelps-Williams of Lucky Press LLC suggested it. And of course I was delighted. At first she suggested photos interspersed within the chapters, but my book didn’t lend itself to that. So I picked out photos in groups: of my son Paul – the main subject of the book, of him and his brother, family photos, views of my office, garden, and one of the memorials to Paul – a bench dedicated to him on the greenbelt outside our home. At the time I had no idea what an impact these photos would have on the message of the book. However, I am currently reading Keith Richard’s memoir, Life. It has two photo sections. And I keep going back to these photos as I get to know more about the characters in his book.

Inserting my poems was another story. I never even considered leaving them out. They were instrumental in my book’s organization. I had journal entries and other writings to draw from and a poetry manuscript, and I arranged my book’s chapters according the order of the poems in my poetry manuscript. However, I still worried about what others would think. So many agents state that they don’t look at poetry. A memoir workshop instructor wasn’t keen on the idea. However, one of the people who had read my poems several years ago now says he can relate to them better because of their context in the story. The bottom line is: I was fortunate to find a publisher who not only liked the poems I initially had in the book, but asked for more.

Because I collect quotes – I usually note them down when I read and continually post them on my Facebook author page – I decided to insert three quotes in my book– two from books and one from a song. And that turned out to be the biggest problem in finally getting my book to print. Since I felt they were integral to my story I was adamant, but it took months to get the necessary permissions (see my Red Room blog posts dated September 15, September 29, and November 13, 2010 - http://www.redroom.com/member-blog/madeline40/). The main lesson is: if you want to include other authors’ words in your book, start getting permission early.
All in all I felt it was well worth the extra time it took to include other works in my memoir. My writing is very personal and I feel the photos, poems, and quotes helped deepen the personal message of my words.




Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar
Disorder and Surviving His Suicide
by Madeline Sharples
Hardcover Release: May 2011
Lucky Press LLC

Leaving the Hall Light On is about living after loss. It's about finding peace and balance and various ways the author, Madeline Sharples, brought herself together after feeling so helpless and out of control during her son Paul's seven-year struggle with bipolar disorder and after his suicide in September 1999.
Sharples explains: "I write about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help ease my grief. Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his
original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain."



The author's book shares several aspects of her son's illness and how she and her
husband, and their other son, Ben, survived Paul's suicide, as it:
1) describes the frustration, anger, and guilt of trying to care for an adult child with mental illness
2) gives mothers and fathers who have experienced a child's death ways to get out of the deep dark hole they are in,
3) tells people the realities of mental illness,
4) describes the steps Sharples took in living with this loss; the first and foremost that she chose to live and go on with life and take care of herself as a woman, wife, mother,writer, and
5) shows readers that grief is love in action. To let ourselves grieve is to feel the depth of our love for as long as it takes. For those of us whose children have died, that may take the rest of our lives, but we will discover the gifts of our loss in the process.



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Bio: Madeline Sharples



Although Madeline Sharples fell in love with poetry and creative writing
in grade school and studied journalism in college, her professional life
focused on technical writing. It was not until later in life that she finally
pursued her dream of being a professional writer.
Madeline co-authored Blue-Collar Women: Trailblazing Women Take
on Men-Only Jobs (New Horizon Press, 1994) and co-edited The Great
American Poetry Show, Volumes 1 (Muse Media, 2004) and 2 (August
2010). Her poems have been published in two photography books The
Emerging Goddess, and Intimacy (Paul Blieden, photographer), and a
number of magazines. Visit her website


Please leave a comment on this post in appreciation of the author.

WOW Blog Tour: Megan's Way by Melissa Foster Interview

Describe your book in five words or less.

Emotional exploration of secrets, friendship, & love. (Does “&” count as a word? Lol)

How did the ideas for your books come to you?

The ideas for my books come to me in different ways. Megan’s Way, for example, grew from an event that happened with my mother years ago, while the idea for my second book, Chasing Amanda (released this month in paperback), came to me while jogging down a very creepy road and letting my mind wander to the scarier side of our world. My mind is always taking bits and pieces of thoughts and things that I see, and weaving them into fictional stories. Some of those thoughts stick, while others are merely to distract me at the moment.

What is the hardest part of writing for you? What's the easiest?

I find the most difficult aspect of writing to be editing. When I read my own work, I tend to see the story in my head rather than the words on the paper, so it’s easy for me to miss errors.

The easiest part of writing—and the part that I find the most exciting—is the meeting and creating of the characters, and figuring out the storyline. It never fails to amaze me how much joy writing brings to my life. I look forward to finding out what happens next with my stories, probably just as much as my readers do.

What's next for you? Are you currently working on or have plans for future projects?

I have few exciting projects on the horizon. Megan’s Way is currently being adapted for film. Casting began in May, and we hope to begin filming later in the summer. I’m also almost finished with my third manuscript, Come Back to Me (working title), an international love story/tragedy. I’ve also begun writing a young adult novel, Shades of Gray, which has thrown me (mentally) back into being a teenager, and is surprisingly fun to write.

Why did you choose to write for specific genre?

You might have noticed that I don’t choose to write for specific genres. Megan’s Way is literary fiction, while Chasing Amanda is mystery with a women’s fictions slant. Come Back to Me is probably going to fall into either general commercial fiction or women’s fiction, and Shades of Gray is young adult/women’s fiction crossover. I write what comes to me. I tend not to follow the typical path of writers who find their nitch and stick with it. I find my stories and stick with them.

What's it like hearing that readers are eagerly awaiting your book's release date?

I’m surprised every time I hear that. It’s such a thrill to know people are enjoying my writing. I’ve said it before, and I truly feel this way; handing a book to the public is like standing on a street corner naked. You never know if readers will throw tomatoes at you or whistle. I much prefer the whistles.

What is one question that you've always wanted to be asked in an interview? How would you answer that question?

That’s a really difficult question. I’m usually asked about The Women’s Nest, the social and support community for women that I founded, and my writing, of course. Let’s go with something fun! I’ve never been asked what my favorite meal is. I’ve got a wicked sweet tooth, so skip the conventional dinner and bring on the tiramisu or a thick, fudgy brownie with mint chocolate chip ice cream from Baskin and Robbins with whipped cream from a can (yes, I prefer that to the real whipped cream) and chocolate jimmies. Hold the nuts and cherry, please.

I would like to say thank you again. Those were very thought-provoking questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed answering them. Thank you for hosting me on your site.
I’d like to let your readers know that I have a Kindle giveaway promotion going on all summer, and it’s very easy to enter. For details, please see my website


One of the most fun things about being an author is chatting with readers and meeting with book clubs. I’d be happy to answer questions, and welcome friendly emails. Thinkhappygirl (at) yahoo (dot) com.

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Author Bio



Melissa Foster is the author of two novels, Megan’s Way and Chasing Amanda. She is the founder of the Women’s Nest, a social and support community for women, and is currently collaborating with Director Wendy Crouse, Dream Real Pictures, in the film production of Megan’s Way. Melissa has written a column featured in Women Business Owners Magazine, and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa is currently working on her next novel, and lives in Maryland with her family. Melissa's interests include her family, reading, writing, painting, friends, helping women see the positive side of life, and visiting Cape Cod.

Member: Maryland Writers' Association





Please leave a comment on this post in appreciation of the author.