January 7th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Lord it’s COLD out! -19° wind chill! I don’t ever remember it being this cold in New Jersey. The coldest temperature ever recorded in New Jersey was -34 in 1904, needless to say, a bit before my time; so I guess we have a ways to go before we hit a record, but dang – it sure is cold!!

I’m not sure if it was because of the cold or because of frozen road conditions, but the kids have a delayed opening today. I know I’m going to have a battle on my hands later this morning insisting Dani wear a coat to school. She says she can’t because she cannot make it back to her locker at the end of the day and still catch her bus on time; but today I am going to put my foot down. I have her tell her bus driver this morning that she’ll be a minute late getting to the bus this afternoon. I’m sure the driver will understand.

I took on another editing assignment. So far the story is interesting and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes, and other than one recurring correction, it is going rather smoothly. The one thing that will be a challenge is, once I formatted the manuscript correctly, it brought it to over six hundred pages, so finishing it in the six weeks I quoted is going to be tough. Formatting and editing the first chapter took me four hours already. At that rate it would be more like eight to ten weeks of me working every day. Let’s hope things go a little quicker today.

Until I find a job, my plan is to split the allotted hours between editing and my own writing. I still have to finish Simply by Chance and Faerie Tale Queen, as well as do one more thorough edit on Corporate Blues before I send it off to my editor. It has been a few months since I looked at Corporate Blues, so I should be able to treat it as if it is a piece which was submitted for me to edit as opposed to being a piece I have written. Hopefully, my editor will be getting a fairly clean copy and will have an easy time with it.

Okay, off to the salt mines. I wish you all a warm day & happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

It was nice while it lasted…

I can’t complain. I was afforded an opportunity very few people will get to experience; a time to remove myself from the “real world” and focus on something I love to do. During these past two years I have published two books, brought three more to various stages of completion, suffered bumps and bruises of the publishing world, learned a lot about my characters’ worlds and my own, met some amazing people, started a blog, and grew as a writer. I have made public appearances, had several book signings, sat on an author’s panel at a school, and even won a fairly prestigious award for my writing.

All of this was made possible because someone I loved believed in me, and left me the resources to be able to pursue my dream. It was an amazing gift, a gift for which I am truly grateful.  It gave me the confidence to know I can eventually make a living doing something I love, even though it is going to take a little longer than I had hoped. So in the meantime, I need to reenter the real world and figure out how to meld my two worlds into one. It was nice while it lasted…

Your Next Challenge is:

There’s nothing better on a cold day than…

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

December 9th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 

I’m going to keep this relatively short today, because I went a little overboard with the writing challenge. It was a true story which I wasn’t able to tell in ten minutes. I hope you’ll forgive me.

So, the snow started around one yesterday afternoon and ended around seven. Fortunately those six hours of snow only managed to leave just shy of two inches on the ground, so everything looked pretty but the roads were passable. Well, that’s not the case this morning. I woke up to freezing rain. EVERYTHING is covered in a layer of ice.

Thankfully it is nothing like the ice storm we had two years ago, but it was still enough to have the schools delay their opening. Unfortunately the phone call announcing the delay came fifteen minutes after I woke my daughter, but she’s a teenager, so she had absolutely no problem going back to bed and to sleep for an extra two hours.

Okay, as I said, I’m going to keep this part short. I hope you have a warm and safe day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

 Never in a million years did I expect to see her/him …

When a friend asked if I would wait with her, at a tiny airport in town, because her cousin, whose name I no longer remember, was flying in from Buffalo, I said sure. I picked Nicole up at her house and we headed over. Even though I had lived in town for several years, I had never been to Kupper Airport.

It’s basically one landing strip, a couple of hangers and one administrative, for lack of something better to call it, building. Outside the “administrative” building was a small – roughly twelve by twelve – fenced section with a long wooden bench, which served as the airports waiting/boarding area. Thankfully it was a beautiful, warm evening, so Nicole and I plopped ourselves down on the bench to wait. From where we sat, we could see several small planes, all interesting, but none could compete with the private jet sitting on the runway twenty feet in front of us. It was beautiful.

After about fifteen minutes, a person exited the administrative building, asked if we were waiting for the flight from Buffalo. When we told him ‘yes’, he said it was going to be at least an hour before they arrived. Apparently, they left considerable later than they had planned. Then he told us the office was closing up for the night, and was nice enough to ask if we needed to use the bathroom before he locked up. We told him we were good, and he bade us a good night and left.

Nicole and I were happily chatting away when I noticed a car headed toward us from the far corner of the airport, which I thought was very strange because I was pretty sure the only road in was the one we had taken, and it ended at the parking lot a few feet away from where we were sitting.

Out of time, but since this is a true story, if I stopped here, you’d probably shoot me.

Slowly a dilapidated green station wagon came into view, and eventually pulled up right in front of us. Two burley men, in suits and dark glasses, got out of the car and looked around. I’m not sure who grabbed who’s hand, but I felt Nicole squeeze my hand, hard. Obviously she was just as unsettled by the new arrivals as I. We glanced at each other, but didn’t say a word.

When, I guess, they determined the area was safe, and two teenage girls were not a threat, one of the men opened the back door to the station wagon and a woman gracefully emerged. Now it was my turn to squeeze Nicole’s hand, hard. “Do you know who that is?” I whispered. Nicole was completely clueless.

I watched in utter amazement as the occupant of the car (a stunningly beautiful Filipino woman dressed in a green silk confection with perfectly matched emeralds in her ears and on her finger) and one of what I now knew was a bodyguard walked over to the door of the admin building and tried the door. Not wanting to shout, I stood and walked over to the fence near the door. The second body guard was at my side in a flash, but I ignored him. I told the woman, the office had closed about ten minutes before. Then I heard her whisper to her body guard that she “wouldn’t make it all the way to Rhode Island”.

I said to the woman there was a restaurant just at the end of the road and she could use the bathroom there.

She said, “I couldn’t possibly go into a public restaurant.”

I smiled at her and informed her that the restaurant had only opened a few weeks before, they weren’t crowded, it was fairly dark in there, and the ladies’ room was the first door on the right as soon as you walk in. No one would even see her. The woman took my hand, gave it a gentle squeeze, and thanked me for my kindness. I said it was my pleasure and returned to me seat next to Nicole.

Unbeknownst to us, there was another occupant in the station wagon, and apparently she elected not to go on the potty run with her travel companion. The bodyguard assisted her out of the vehicle and went to escort her to the jet Nicole and I had been admiring, but she stopped him and pointed in my direction. When the two started heading my way, I rose and met them at the fence which separated the waiting area from the landing strip.

This new woman took my hand (yeah, I know, this is the fourth hand reference, but this is how things went down) and said, “Thank you for being so nice to my friend, for not judging her.”

I replied it wasn’t my place to judge, and if someone was nice to me, I was nice to them. She thanked me again, then gave a final wave before her bodyguard assisted her onto her jet. After he had her on-board, he came and stood next to me – uncomfortably close, but that’s a whole other story.

Eventually, the others returned from the potty run; crisis averted and no media frenzy ensued, so the mission was successful. The Filipino woman gave us a final wave and a smile as she boarded the jet, and then moments later they were airborne and I could finally explain to Nicole what had just transpired.

So, have you figured out who the women were? Don’t worry, I won’t leave you guessing.

Never in a million years, when I had agreed to wait with a friend at our little Podunk airport, would I have imagined I would get a chance to meet the infamous Doris Duke and her friend Imelda Marcos.

Your Next Challenge is:

 

Pandemonium breaks out at the North Pole…

 

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.