Z- Top ten Z words

Here are my top ten words that start with Z. 

10)  Zambra - Spanish dance
  9)  Zappy - Lively or entertaining
  8)  Zingaro - gypsy
  7)  Zealous - active/devoted/diligent
  6)  Zap - energy, vigor, or pep
  5)  Zues - Leader of Gods
  4) Zombie- living dead
  3) Zest- invigorating
  2) Zero- number
  1) Zodiac - astrological diagram of constellations (roughly)

Do you have a favorite Z word?
It was fun to participate this year. looking forward to connecting more with all my new blogging buddies. 

Y- Yearn

Yearn. Now that's an inspiring sensual word. One I haven't used often, but every time I hear it it's associated with desire, want, and need. 

I yearn to write, to edit, to be a strong woman.

What do you yearn for?

WWW- 4-28

Find out more here

8 sentences from Bloodstone- continuing from last week (HERE) 

Ebony had been cleaning in her father’s study and came across a small silver ring with a slice of jade flush with the band. When she touched the piece of jewelry a jolt sprung from the object to her fingers and made all the hair on her forearm stand at attention, like static electricity, but concentrated to one area. An itch spread over her skin, like a residual coming and going of energy. An urge to push the ring on her finger compelled her.

A wave of energy slammed into Ebony knocking her body back against the wall. She lost her breath for a few seconds. She hit her head so violently an image of huge black horns curling out of skin flashed before her eyes. She could see every little detail.

X- Xeranthemum annuum (everlasting)

An everlasting flower...Oh the inspiration that results from such a thing. 

link to photo

Xeranthemum annuum- mostly widely cultivated species of everlasting flowers having usually purple flowers; southern Europe to Iran; naturalized elsewhere.






I'm not a very good plant person- I'm told by my family I have a black thumb and my shadow should never cross the path of anything I wish to live- plant related. LOL Kids- they come up with strangest things.


 Do you grow plants? Have you tried the Immortal flower?
What's the first thing that came to your mind when you saw the picture of the everlasting flower?

W- Wink

     Marty finally settled on either an owl or a lizard. The owl ate snakes and the lizard ate spiders. Why not both? He rolled the knife handle in his hand and began carving first the owl. Owls are easy. So are lizards and it didn’t take him long to carve a good likeness of each of them. When Marty looked up and wiped the sweat from his eyes, he peeked at the neighbor girl’s window. She had not been there a few minutes before, hadn’t been there an hour ago but she was there now, moderately obstructed through the limbs of the oak tree, but not so much that Marty could not see she was holding a sign with letters and an arrow on it.

$1.99 Pre-release special- BUY HERE

     She waved when she saw Marty and pointed at the sign. He squinted and made out the word "Peaches?" The arrow pointed toward her back yard, where they had a couple of peach trees and the requisite squirrels that chittered about them. He pointed to her peach trees and realized he was pointing with the Bois D’Arc handle. Sadie nodded.

 Marty said, “Um, okay,” even though she couldn’t hear him.
She held up her fingers and signaled okay.

~Wink by Eric Trant

Author Eric Trant- 3 question interview:

Find him on Facebook Here

1) What is your favorite line from your novel Wink? 

Here is my favorite line from WINK. Marty is talking to his neighbor-girl, Sadie, across the fence bounding their properties. 

 ~~~
 He slid the knife out of his belt and showed it to her. “It’s a Jim Bowie knife, like from the Alamo. See how big it is? It’s, like, bigger than my arm. If my mom caught me with this she would beat me senseless. She would slit my throat with it.”
  ~~~ 

 This is one of those lines Dear Reader might not fully appreciate. I agonized over this line. Let me say that again, with proper emphasis. I ~agonized~ over this line. I must have written and re-written this snippet a dozen times, stuck in that writer-loop quandry of write-delete-write. The goal was to show how matter-of-fact Marty was about his mother's abuse, and how naive those around him were of the abuse. He meant what he said, and that sincerity was lost on the neighbor-girl. I hope Dear Reader keeps their mind open as they read, because my goal was to wrap a story within a story within a story, chock full of little nuggets that the casual reader will skim over, but the astute reader will pause and consider on a deeper level. 

2) What or who inspired your Character Marty? 

My brother and I inspired Marty. While we were not in any way abused like Marty, he does possess the boyish wonder, and the quiet, fearless resolve that is characteristic of children who grow up in the country. The attic where Marty finds his solitude existed, and the way he got into it was the way my brother and I got into our attic -- up the carport, across the roof, grab the shutter, and then monkey-swing through the open window, with an air-conditioning unit beneath to break our fall if it ever happened. There were snakes and spiders in that attic, and a lonely chair smack in the middle. The light burned out before we were born. Only the center strip was floored in, and the house spoke to you while you were inside its secret room. That attic breathed and crawled and we couldn't stay out of it. I cannot take credit for much creativity regarding either Marty's personality, or the attic, and maybe that explains some of the vivid imagery.

 3) What is your favorite word and why?

 I'll twist this question and say what my ~least~ favorite word is: wriggle. I hate that word. It should be struck from every language past present and future. I don't know why I dislike it, but that "r" gets me. things wiggle, they don't wriggle. Gads, it makes my fingers ache to type that word.

 I guess if I did have to say a favorite word, I would have to go with "just." I nuke it from all my writings, but it sneaks in against my will, over and over, just when I least expect it. See? So I guess I must have, on a sub-conscious level, a deep and personal love affair with that word. 

Working with you on WINK has been a ~wonderful~ experience, and I thank you for all that, and this interview, too. 

You were a wonderful editor, and I credit you with bringing WINK to life, and with helping settle on the title, which I believe is brilliant. Your input helped me be a better writer, and I will carry that forward on future works. Dear Reader should also thank you for your patience, your attention to detail, and for reading and editing my story several times, slowly and deliberately, because you made wise and judicious remarks on what should be changed for the sake of clarity and flow. I am blessed to have found you on the blogosphere, happy to have taken your advice to submit to WiDo Publishing, and hope to work with you and WiDo on future projects.

V- Vintage

I had chosen a different topic originally until I learned a new word: Fascinator. My home town just came up with a page called Casper Fasinators. It's women, they get dressed up with their fascinators and head out on the town either to symphony, movies, out for drinks, whatever. The point is to have a reason to do something fun and dress up. I'm totally getting involved.

What is a fascinator? It's a vintage hair accessory that women used to wear all the time which are now evidently making a come back.

Vintage- the word alone creates all sorts of ideas add Fascinators and bam I'm curious and my mind is spinning. LOL

google search

U- Urban Dictionary

Want a fun site to procrastinate- oops I mean find inspiration in? Urban dictionary has you covered. From slang meanings to down right funny meanings. Some of them make sense some of them don't. But don't rely too heavily on its use as an actual dictionary for facts. It's for fun and really can give your mind something else to do while you await that next big story idea.

Check it out HERE

T- Top Hat- DIY

I have a truth to give- I am a craft person. A get right down in glue, glitter, cutting, and messy with kids kind of craft person. I happen to enjoy new DIY projects and Since I spoke about steampunk yesterday, today I figured I'd to that inspiration with a short how to make your own Top hat video. Enjoy.

(Double click to go to you tube and watch it)

S- Steampunk

I don't know why but last May I felt a serious compulsion to try a genre I had never written in and it happened to be steampunk.I found it fascinating- the Victorian mixed with gears and gadgets- what's not to love. 

I had one of those stories published: Perfect Aside (click to read flash fiction)

I'm still inspired by it almost a year later. I wrote a dozen short stories all in steam punk. I read three or four steam punk books and found them intriguing. I also learned I'm not a fan of blimps. LOL

Here is a link with more information: steampunk
All pictures retrieved off pinterest: Steampunk Board

Has a new genre inspired you?

'An Impression' snippet WWW 4-21-13

Find out more here

8 sentences from my novel Bloodstone 

Continuing from last week which you can find here- all feedback welcome.

Ebony held no hope that she still lived, even in a magical world. The image felt more of the past than the future or the present. An impression.

Most of the time Ebony wasn’t even sure she really experienced magic. But there had always been this itching over her skin when it happened, like a residual coming and going of energy. She’d expressed it to her father once, long ago, and he told her she had been imagining things and sent her away. Deep inside, Ebony knew magic had existed once. Maybe not the kind of magic she read about in fairy tales with wands and potions and evil witches. But rather something that came from inside a person, lost somewhere in the depths of their souls.

R- Read Free

Today I give you freebies for kindle: Read Free....

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Q- Quote

I know- I know lots of people use quotes for inspiration. Many people are even going to use quotes for letter Q- What can I say that's different? 

Not a damn thing- because quotes have power- who cares how many times they are used as long as they inspire one single person. I'll read quotes all day long, I don't mind. It will give me more quotes to draw from.

Here is my favorite and I'm sure you can guess why-

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
 ~Sylvia Plath

Don't doubt yourself-

P- Post Secret

I'm always in awe by how one simple act can change a person's life. Secrets are one of those pieces to life. It's inspiring to hear secrets and sometimes heart wrenching to find out. That's why they make such good conflict for characters. Today's inspiration is Post secrets. The video is short and worth watching.
 

Brave enough to share a secret?
Does a character from one of your pieces have a secret?

O- Obscure Sorrows Dictionary

I find this to be amazing inspiration when playing with a new character and even my poetry- 

"
gnossienne

n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand." by JKcreative

More found here: http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

What would you use it for?
Do You have a favorite site for character creation or poetry?

N- Notebook

Blank pages...yup I said it. It's unthinkable to a writer like me. I have issues with blank pages, the kind of issues that scream at me to flip open the notebook and create a scene worthy of the page it's on. Worthy of the trees it sprang from.

Notebooks- while it doesn't have an all time great etymology that inspires images in my head. The pages all by themselves do. All I really need to do is walk down any isle in any store that has notebooks in it and before long I have at least 3 new ones in my basket and can't wait to get home and write in them.

Do you write in journals?
Do you go out and buy notebooks like some people buy food?
What does a blank page inspire for you?

M- Men

Men inspire me-I know who'd a thought? But oh yes- a certain look can encourage a montage of all sorts of images and thoughts from Love to wicked.I have 3 leading men I draw from....

Vin Diesel- This man has some serious male qualities. It's not in the muscles for me- it's in the look on his face...When I want a strong part for one of my guys I think about a look Vin might give, or something I've watched in one of his movies- Yummy but in a vengeance for my love kind of way. 

Gerard Butler- His eyes are to die for. But my use for him is that lovable man, the one that grows on you as the story progresses. A gentle mix of sexy and realness to him. Yummy in a biting dialogue kind of way- he can match my leading lady word for word...

Finally- Hugh Jackman- This is the kind of man I pose all my sexy thoughts to. He's a mix of both Vin Deisel's strength and vengeance to Gerard's sexual realism. His eyes aren't the only part of him that whisper naughty secrets. Yummy in that I have seriously wicked thoughts kind of way.

'It wasn't the first time...' WWW- 4-14-13

Find out more here

8 sentences from my novel- Bloodstone 

So I rewrote chapter one of my novel last week. Here is the beginning- what do you think?

    It wasn’t the first time something magical had happened to Ebony. Usually it was a result of her studying runes or thinking about her mother. This time, however, was different. This time she’d found something.

     Typically, the magic hovered on the outskirts of reality, an image of another time and place. Dreams of her mother in silk dresses dancing at balls with her father and a few other men. Her obsidian hair, just as long and feathered as Ebony’s, flowing about her as she turned with notes from a violin. But her mother had long since passed away.