G is for Gettysburg

I love history. When I had the chance to go to Gettysburg, I did it. And it was amazing. Our dream family vacation when I was a kid was to drive up to DC and hit as many Civil War battlefields as we could, ending our trek with a stop at Gettysburg.

We never got to do it as a family. My parents were with me for this in January of 2010.

This is the field Pickett charged across. Standing there with my dad looking at all we could think was "what the hell was he thinking charging across this field in broad daylight into a fortified position?" No wonder it was a slaughter.








If I'm remembering right this is the view from the top of Little Round Top. There was fierce fighting down here.

We spent all day driving through the park, seeing as much as we could and getting out to look at everything and imagine the battle unfolding.

Read More

F is for Fountains

By A.Savin (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Not just any fountain. The fountains at Peterhof, in St. Petersburg, Russia. They are INCREDIBLE. Why, you ask? Because they don't use pumps. Every single fountain on the grounds is supplied water by gravity and elevation drops. Some of them designed by Peter the Great himself. He wanted this place to be yet another masterpiece, and each tsar after him added to the grandeur.

Russia in general, and St. Petersburg in particular, is one place I want to see before I die. Preferably while I'm still young enough to do all the walking required to see the beauty of the city and its architecture.

Read More

E is for the Enterprise-E

This is my idea of the perfect starship, the Enterprise-E. She kicked off the Sovereign class in Star Trek: First Contact.

She is sleek and beautiful. Need I say more?

Read More

D is for Drew--Nancy Drew

Yes, I'm cheating a little, but I was drawing a blank! I'm not a dog person...

I am a Nancy Drew person, however, and a charter member of the Nancy Drew Sleuths. I'm a collector of Nancy Drew, though I sadly haven't been able to add to my collection for several years now and it's all packed up.

This picture is a tiny tiny example of how many ND's I own. The shelf at the bottom of the picture is more ND's.

This is my Nancy Drew purse, that I carry with pride several months out of the year. It's ten years old and starting to show wear with the plastic covering coming loose at the seams. :( I have a matching tote bag for it.

In addition to Nancy Drew I collect Judy Bolton and The Hardy Boys.

Read More

C is for Counted Cross Stitch

 I'm a crafty person, and I love doing counted cross-stitch. This is what I do when I'm watching TV. My Mamaw Smith taught me how to do it when I was eight. I also like to do baby samplers for friends, and I'm working on one for my nephew right now.


This one is called Queen Mermaid. She hangs over my desk. The designer is Mirabilia, which is one of my favorite designers. She does the most beautiful mermaids and ladies in big dresses.

This one is St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, done in blues by Dimples Designs. It hangs over my bed. The fabric is hand-dyed, and I wanted the cathedral to look like it was floating in a sunset. There are sparkly threads woven into the fabric itself and I love the effect.

Unfortunately Terence of Dimples is no longer designing. Thankfully, I have all my favorite charts of his.

This is my monster project I'm itching to work on again, called White Nights in St. Petersburg, by Chatelaine. Martina of Chatelaine is famous in stitching circles for her mandala gardens, and this is one of them. Lots of beads, sparkly threads, silk thread, and I learn a new special embroidery stitch with every new part. She divides the charts into twelve parts, one part a month for a whole year, and that's how I bought mine. This is eight and a half parts done.

Read More

B is for Brainstorming

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono,
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm a writer. One of the things we do is called brainstorming. It's the process of throwing stuff out, asking what if and why, and figuring out what all happens in the story.

I do most of my brainstorming online, since my writing buddies all live in other states. My bestest buddy, Winter Austin, is so much fun to brainstorm with. We think alike, create alike, and plot alike.

Last fall I got to do some in-person for the first time in far too long, and had a blast. Stayed up till two a.m. helping a friend figure out a character's motivation.

Read More

A is for Acheron

I randomly decided to do an A to Z blog challenge for the month of April. My theme is things and places I love. The intent is to give readers a peek into what makes me tick and what my life is made up of outside my writing.

In March of last year my bestest writing buddy and friend beat me over the head until I read Born of Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Three weeks later when I was done with The League series she started beating at me to read Dark-Hunter. I finally did in June.

And it was love at first sight! I fell HARD for Acheron. To me he is everything I love about a good hero. Tragic past, heart of gold, doesn't let his past rule his future.

Not to mention he's 6'8", and an Atlantean god. I've always had a thing for Atlantis, and at 5'7" myself I'm not exactly short. I like looking up at men, instead of being practically eye level.

To show you how far my love of this guy goes, I discovered a couple weeks ago in the Menyon Cafe Press store there's a phone cover for my phone with Ash's symbol on it. I'm getting it...

Read More

My sister thinks I'm crazy...

My sister thinks I'm crazy, and she might be right. I'm posting snippets right now from Fear The Light, the first book in the Slipstream Network series, but I'm actually working on the second arc of the space opera. And I'm having a lot of new character experiences with my heroine, Sunny.

Sunny is, without doubt, the most formed heroine to ever walk into my head. She arrived with her own fashion sense, her hangups, her lie, her armor. Last week I found her perfume, which is a first for me. The way Sunny dresses is inspired by my sister, and her perfume is a scent my sister bought a couple weeks ago. I'm nosy. When she gets new perfumes I smell them to see if they'll give me a headache like her Dolce and Gabanna Light Blue.

I have allergies and I'm not a perfume person. While other authors can peg a scent to every character they create, I've got nothing. I don't even think about it because sniffing and testing perfumes is not something I can do for more than five minutes unless I want an allergy headache from hell. For Sunny to tell me she wears a specific scent ALL THE TIME is so beyond weird.

What does she wear? It's called Caribbean Salsa, from Ten Digit Creations. Their scent description lists it as "sweet pineapple, bright citrus, and fresh peach infused with the exotic Yuzu flower and Tahitian vanilla." It's a bright and vibrant scent. Like Sunny.

Read More