Hi, it’s Christina –
Sorry again for not posting yesterday.
As some of you know, I have not been overjoyed with the
publisher I chose for the first release of A Second Chance for some time. I
felt the $14.95 price was too high and of the $14.95 price, I was getting $0.25
a copy. Is it just me or does something not seem quite right about that?
So
yesterday I scrambled to get A Second Chance rereleased on CreateSpace, in time
for the Indie deadline. I had until this morning to verify the ISBN and
publisher to Indie for their advertising and whatever else they were doing for
their list of winners. I did not want the old publisher, who has done nothing
but nickel and dime me for every little thing, and has done virtually NOTHING
to support me (their idea of support was to send me marketing tip emails), to
receive any possible benefits being named the winner in the romance category of the 2013 Next Generation
Indie Book Awards may bring.
Now the book is available through
CreateSpace; its list price is $9.95 of which I will be making a little over $2
a copy. Thank God, during this whole learning process, I did have enough sense
to retain all rights to my book!
Enough on that! Let’s get writing!
Tuesday’s
challenge was:
If you
were a superhero, what would your special power be?
When inducted into the Superhero League you are given a binder with the
rules and regulations, your selections of attire and choices for your special
powers. The rules and regulations are pretty straight forward; in a nutshell,
you need to make the world a better place and not let power go to your head.
The attire selection was a breeze. I picked this funky little aqua number
because I knew it would set off my eyes and it managed to hide a plethora of
flaws. The superpower selection however, did cause me much angst. I toyed with
the ability to fly, and invisibility would have been kind of cool, but how can
I make the world a better place with those qualities? Superhuman strength might
have been good, but how many times are going to arise where I have to lift
something heavy off of someone? The list went on and on, and all were fascinating
in their own way, but I couldn’t see how any one of these superpowers alone
could be used for the greater good. Sure if I was to combine a few, but that
was not an option. Finally, after hours of frustration and thoughts of
wondering if it was all worth it, I spotted something I knew I could work with
- the ability to read someone’s mind and heart. Now, this may seem like a
namby-pamby power to you, but think about it for a moment.
I need just a little more time. Who made up these annoying time
constraints anyway? Oh yeah, that was me. :)
Your
Day 23 Challenge is:
You
are helping clean out your grandma’s attic and find…
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.
I've put it off long enough. Gram's been gone a few months now, and the house is on the market. With the cousins dealing with the downstairs rooms, I volunteered to tackle the attic. Masochistic, maybe, but the best way to face the memories. The attic was not just a storage place, but set up like a comfortable, soothing retreat from the world.
ReplyDeleteI can still see Gram sitting in her rocker by the big bay window, a bag of yarn on the floor by her feet. I hear the clicking of the knitting needles as she teaches me the intricate stitches.
Gram's desk. I feel my eyes filling, and the pain of her loss crashing down on me. The words on her papers blur; I impatiently wipe the tears away, realizing that I had a job to do, the last thing Gram asked me to do.
Picking up a picture of us taken when I was ten, I laugh at the memory of that summer. Tending the garden, we were by the tomato plants. The photo was snapped just as she was giving me a cherry tomato, explaining every garden had to have one plant so you have something to snack on while you are working.
Packing her papers to go thru at home, I felt a moment of regret that I was closer to my grandmother than my mother, her daughter. She was the one I went to when I had something good to share, when there was something to learn, or when the cousins, being all boys, picked too hard. Gram was always there.
The desk was almost empty now, one drawer left to go. Pulling it open, there is only one book in it, a large notebinder with hundreds of pages of handwritten notes. They are Gram's recipes, her knitting patterns, sketches for sewing patterns. All the things she showed me to do while growing up. A wealth of knowledge collected over a lifetime. Knowing I should give it to my mother, I frown and think how she'll stick it on a shelf and forget it. Mom has a brown thumb and can burn water! Closing the book, a loose page edged out. It was the first page, and all it had on it was four words. For You, My Granddaughter.
The entry above was posted on my Facebook Page (I put a copy of my blog entries there as well) and was written by Dawn K.
ReplyDeleteMy quick response to her was she could have warned me, because she made me cry.
I'm not sure if this is a true story or one of Dawn's imagination, but it hit home for me. A few years ago I lost one grandmother in December, another in January and the last one in August. I was only involved with cleaning out one of their homes, but this story brought back all the emotions I was feeling while I was doing it. If this is a true account of what happened, then I must praise Dawn even more for being so brave for posting so the world could feel her pain. My own challenge answer is a work of pure fiction, because I was not brave enough to revisit my own pain.
Kudos to you Dawn for producing an emotionally moving piece within a ten minute writing exercise! Just imagine what you would be able to do with more time.