November 4th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 

Well, I survived. Boy was it cold out there yesterday! I spent part of my day doing my Tigg’r imitations – bouncing up and down to try to keep the blood flowing. It didn’t help. I made the mistake of sitting on a metal chair when I first got there, and that was the end of me. After my butt froze, I couldn’t warm up for the rest of the day. You would think I’d know better.

 

The Peddler's Village Apple Festival was almost as huge as their Scarecrow Festival. The place was packed all day, and all day people were going by with the most heavenly smelling apple dumplings. I was hooked. Come the end of the book signing, I had to have one. So after I packed up my stuff, I went on a dumpling hunt.

 

 

Here's the line I encountered. It stretched from the lower patio, up the stairs and into the main courtyard. There were at least two hundred people in line. I began to feel defeated when I noticed the sign for the bakery across the lower patio. There were only a few folks standing outside, so I went over to investigate. Sure enough, there was a line inside, but there were only about thirty people in it, and they were selling dumplings inside. There was a fifteen minute wait for the next batch of dumplings to come out, but I didn't care. I was inside, out of the wind and I was warm for the first time in six hours. It could have been half an hour wait and I would have stayed.

 

While I was there waiting, I chatted with one of the bakery's employees and she told me they were just short of 6,500 dumplings sold that day and they still had several hours left. The dumplings were selling for $6 with the custard sauce. That is $39K worth of dumplings. They sold almost 9,000 the day before, so it was feasible for them to have sold A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of apple dumplings in two days. Mind boggling! And dumplings weren't the only things they were selling; they had apple pies, strudel, fritters, kuchen, zeppole and more.  

It was a good day. I sold a bunch of books and I got to meet two new authors. Barbara Steingas wrote two books. The Healing Puzzle was about how she battled Crohn’s disease and won, and Germans Are Funny Too!, the story about her crazy German family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hannah K. Jones wrote a historical pictorial about a recently torn down landmark entitled Byberry State Hospital. Both women were really sweet and it was a pleasure chatting with them.

 

Standing out in the cold all day really took it out of me, that and the normally thirty-five minute ride home which took an hour and twenty minutes. I came home, popped two Motrin and went to bed. I was out until four-thirty this morning.

Other than my blog, I did not get any writing done yesterday, so I really have to crank out some words today, but the first thing I am going to do is pull something out for dinner. I forgot to do that yesterday before I left, so my husband and daughter had to fend for themselves last night. (They went to Applebee’s.)

I hope you have a fantastic day and happy writing!

 

Your Last Challenge:

 

 

I wasn’t expecting it when I woke up this morning, but there it was. The undeniable sign winter was on its way and there wasn’t a dang thing I could do to prevent it. Sure it is beautiful and the air is so crisp you can taste it, but it’s just so darned cold.

I’ll admit it, when I first saw the view, the child in me got all giddy, jumped up and down and yelled “SNOW!”, but then the adult side of me got annoyed, flopped down on the couch and groaned, “SNOW!”.  Sure it’s pretty now, but in a few hours it will have turned into a muddy, sluggy, yucky muck.

The snow signals the beginning of long, cold, dark days, of slippery roads and treacherous walkways, of hibernation and isolation. Yes, there are a few holidays interspersed in the long months of winter to keep you from teetering completely onto the side of depression, but they are barely enough. In the warm weather, there are picnics, barbeques and get-togethers aplenty. It is a happy and social existence. For the next few months we will be huddle in our caves for warmth, with only rare occasions which warrant us bearing the cold.

 

Can you tell I am not a fan of the cold weather?

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

I remember it as if it were yesterday…

 

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.

October 27th

Hi, it’s Christina – 

Not feeling well today, so I am not even going to attempt the writing challenges, sorry. I’m not even going to church today. My choir director is going to kill me. This means I’m going to be missing two weeks in a row. The wind and the cold yesterday took their toll on my voice and my stomach is also acting up, so it would be hard to sing with no voice and from the bathroom. I get glares in two weeks, but she’ll forgive me. 

In spite of the cold and lack of actual sales, we had a great time yesterday. Tons of people took our cards and paperwork, so we all will more than likely see a spike in our Kindle sales this week. The same thing happened last time as well.

The neat thing this time was two different people who stopped at my table told me they already had Taking Chances on their Kindle, and one of the people had read it already – and she wasn’t just saying that, she actually made relevant comments about the book, and when I asked, she agreed to post a review on Amazon for me. She also said after finishing Taking Chances, which she downloaded while I was doing one of the free promotions, she went and purchased A Second Chance because she wanted to see how the series all started. She also started bugging me about the release date for Simply By Chance.

That alone would have made yesterday worth freezing my butt off for five hours, but as I said, she was only one customer who I chatted with. She had two friends with her who took my business card and told me they would be downloading my books as well.

Keith, Linda and I worked so well as a team. Whenever someone stopped by any of us, we all talked about each other’s work, not just our own. It’s an easy thing to do when we are all fans of each other’s writing. And, even though our writing genres are different, we each have elements of the other’s in our own pieces. Other than hard core non-fiction readers, we had something to offer everyone who passed.

As I said before, I’m really not feeling well, so I am going to head back to be for a few hours. I hope you have a Super Sunday (this concludes the alliterations) and Happy Writing!

October 26th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 

Good morning! The blog is going to be short and sweet today, because I have to leave by nine to get to Canterbury Tales Forever by ten. I don’t have anything packed yet. Ok not completely true, the books are already boxed, but they have been since the last signing. But other than the books, I need to get everything else ready, shower, do my hair and make-up, find clothes that I won’t be freezing this morning and then sweating my ears off this afternoon, pack a lunch, and load the car. Yikes! I have a lot to do and only a little over an hour to do it.

If you go on my website, under the events tab, there is a map feature, if you need directions to Canterbury Tales Forever. I hope some of you will come out today. It is a gorgeous day and if you have never been to Peddler’s Village, it would be a treat. If this weekend doesn’t work out for you, next weekend is the Apple Festival, I will be there on Sunday. Both Keith and Linda will be joining me again as well. If you were interested in the book Monty (the Christmas dog children’s book I told you about a few weeks ago), Sam will be at Canterbury Tales Forever next Saturday.

Yikes again! I really have to run. Hope you stop by to say “Hi”, hope you have a Stupendous Saturday, and happy writing!

 

Your Last Challenge was:

 

Tell a story, pick any subject you want, but no word you use can be more than five letters long. 

Gina is a sweet lady with long dark hair and eyes. Her hubby, Tom, also has dark hair, but he has green eyes. They wed four years ago and now they are with child. They can’t wait to see who he or she will look like.

The time comes. After many hours and much pain, he is here; tiny, red, bald and pruny with grey eyes. He does not look like mom or dad, but he is the love of their life. Guess they will just have to wait some more to see who he will look like.

Holy who-ha, that was hard! I don’t know how many times I had a word that was more than five letters, so I needed to find a replacement. Some I couldn’t think of anything that would work and I had to scrap the entire sentence. Ten minutes to write eight sentences. Today’s challenge will be easier…

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 Your best friend is retiring and you are asked to give a speech at the retirement party.

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.

September 23rd Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 

Who would have thought sitting outside, for six hours, talking to people would take so much out of you? Both Saturday and Sunday when I came home from the books signing I crashed. I was out cold for two hours and then I still went to bed at my normal time. I’m still tired now.

 

So yesterday’s book signing went considerably better than Saturday’s. I signed around ten books and several more folks took my card so they can get the books on Kindle. I did check my month to date report on KDP and a book was purchased in the past two days, so I guess someone was telling me the truth.

 

Only one of the other two authors scheduled for yesterday’s books signing showed up. She was a lovely woman named Sally Gerth, and her book was a memoir. In a few short years, Sally lost her entire family, including her husband and only child. Her book, Sit it Out or Dance, is the story of that painful time in her life and her decision not to “Sit it Out” but to “Dance”. For the FB folks, you can find the book on Amazon by typing Sit it Out or Dance in the search, and it is the first book that pops up. For the Blog followers, here’s the link.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Sit-Out-Dance-ebook/dp/B00DSXJ1Z6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379934686&sr=1-1&keywords=sit+it+out+or+dance

 

 

I was chatting with one gentleman yesterday who happened to live in my town and he asked me about a writing group. I told him I was hoping to get one started. I REALLY need to talk to the library director. September’s almost over and I still haven’t had a chance to call him.

After putting on a pot of stew to simmer, I will be spending my day tackling the insurance papers. I still have HOURS of work ahead of me to match up each line item with an item on the receipt. When they called me on Saturday, I told them I was still working on it, and they asked if I could try to get it back to them by the end of the week. I said I would try. I work on it until my eyes cross and then I give up for the day.

 

Blog readers, if you have a chance, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Christina.Paul.Author, so you can see all the photos and their captions from the scarecrow festival. (FB folks - the blog has several photos scattered throughout this post.) I hope you have a wonderful day and happy writing!

 

Your Last Challenge was:

       

 

The bench, our bench, looks so lonely doesn’t it? But, I just can’t bring myself to sit on it like we used to. It just wouldn’t be the same without you.

It was this very bench where I first saw you, where I stopped to help you when your skate broke. This was where we stopped after are third date, where we shared our first kiss; and on that cold December day when I asked you if you would spend the rest of our lives together.

 

From this bench we watched our children and then our grandchildren play in the park directly across from us. We sat and fed the birds like old folks were supposed to do. I miss you sweetheart. Life has been so empty without you. The only comfort I have is knowing you are in a much better place, not suffering anymore, and one day soon I will see you again; then together we’ll find a new bench where we can make many more wonderful memories.

 

It didn’t take ten minutes, but the story was done. Unfortunately, now I’m a little sad. When I saw the photo, I thought for sure I’d write about a chill in the air and leaves crunching beneath my feet, but then this story came out. I was seeing the bench through an old man’s eyes, reliving his fond memories and feeling his sorrow. I doubt I’ll ever be able to figure out how my brain works or where these images come from.

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

It’s moving day…

 

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.

September 20th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina – 
 

Happy Friday Y’all! I’m getting an early start today because I need to leave soon to take my van into the shop. The second sliding door failed and they need to replace it. I knew it would. After what happened the last time, I begged them to fix both doors at the same time, but they wouldn’t. I even wrote a letter to the CEO of Toyota, but they wouldn’t listen, and sure enough, the door crapped out while I had a van load of kids in it. Thankfully, with a really hard thump from my oversized rump, I was able to get the door closed to get back safely from the shore.

 

Let me tell you, if I couldn’t have gotten it closed, I would have been on the phone with the dealer demanding they come down to Sandy Hook and pick us up. And knowing the dealer, they would have. They are such nice folks at Crystal, and I know they would have fixed the door the last time I was there, but corporate wouldn’t allow them to do it. Big corporations can be so shortsighted sometimes. What if that door failed while I was driving and something happened to one of those kids, especially after I warned them, in writing, that was what I was afraid would happen?

 

I’m not going to get riled up. The kids were fine and the door is being fixed. That’s all that really matters.

 

Technology is confusing me again, but in a good way this time. Every day I open my email and see I have several more followers on Twitter. I’m averaging five new follows every day. This is wonderful, and I am not complaining in the least, but I would love to know what has caused this spike in interest so I can keep doing whatever it is I’m doing. I have asked the question before when I jumped from thirty followers to a hundred followers in two weeks, but no one answered me. However, my Facebook author’s page has been hovering around three-fifty “likes” for months now and I can’t seem to manage to get to the five-hundred level. The tweets are directly linked to my Facebook feed. I have made less than ten direct tweets. Very few of my Twitter followers are also followers on Facebook and visa-versa. Can you see why I’m confused? How can I be doing the EXACT same thing in two different places and be getting dramatically different results?

 

Speaking of Twitter, I came across a site through a Twitter connection, and although I cannot participate as a sponsored author because I do not have enough reviews yet, I thought it was interesting and you might want to check it out and participate as a reader. The concept is really cool. You tell them exactly what kind of books you enjoy, ie: Romance, Thriller, Mystery and they notify you when a good book (3.5 star review rating or better) comes out. BUT WAIT, it gets better. You only like Historical and Paranormal Romances with a little sex, but nothing too graphic; the Thrillers you like have to be FBI ones and the Mysteries need to be the old fashioned London ones, neither of which can have excessive violence, then that is what they are going to tell you about. They tailor your requests into that level of specificity. See, I said it was really a cool idea. Check out the site if you get a chance.

 http://www.thefussylibrarian.com/

 

After I pick up my car, I need to pick up a few last things for my book signing this weekend – like candy for the jar. Remember, both Saturday and Sunday I will be at Canterbury Tales Forever in Peddler’s Village. If you’re in the area, please stop by to say “hi”. I’d love to see/meet you!

 

Tomorrow and Sunday may be a little hectic, so I probably won’t be able to get any challenges out there for you; which means, you very well may have until Monday to think about today’s challenge. I will try to get photos and updates of the event posted. I’ll just have to get up earlier. It’s ok, you’re worth it! I hope you have a wonderful day and happy writing!

 

Your Last Challenge was:

Write a story containing the following three words: Queen, Computer & Assignment

 

I joined a writing group which meets every other week and the person who is running it is a middle school English teacher, and I guess you can’t take the teacher out of the classroom. He actually gives us homework assignments! Thankfully, for the first time ever, I don’t mind doing homework.

 

Over the weeks the assignments have been quite creative. One week we needed to rewrite or summarize a story (book, movie, heck someone even did a song) without using the character’s names or mentioning the name of the story. It was fun reading what the others in the group wrote and trying to guess what story they were retelling.

 

Anyway, this week’s assignment was to choose a historical figure, and tell a story completely different and unexpected than how the history books have portrayed this figure. As an example we were given General George Patton, renowned military genius, known for his quick thinking in difficult situation, actually needed to consult with is astrologer before making a single move.

 

For the assignment, I chose the Queen of England, the epitome of grace and good manners. I had many ideas swirling in my head, like she was the reigning beer pong champion in disguise and paid off the producers of “Girls Gone Wild” not to air a certain video, but when I got to my computer, opened up the page and had my fingers hovering over the keys, I drew a complete blank. The previous brilliant and hysterical ideas I had tickled the far reaches of my brain and would not come to the forefront. For an hour I sat there and stared at a white screen.

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

 

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.

July 21st Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

You didn’t have your fingers crossed hard enough! On Friday, I figured I would write my blog and my Camp NaNo stuff after I came back from lunch with my mom. We planned on doing lunch in Lahaska, PA at the Cock & Bull in Peddlers Village. In addition to having lunch, a late birthday celebration, I was also stopping in at Canterbury Tales to finalize the dates for my book signing. I’m all for killing two or more birds with one stone.

So I pick up my mom. We drive the forty-five or so minutes to Peddlers Village. I finalize my signing dates, September 21^st & 22^nd, which is during their scarecrow festival. I go out to move my car from the thirty minute parking spot to a real spot which luckily just opened up and my phone rings. It is a publisher in New York and I’m on my phone with him for at least fifteen minutes. Mind you, my poor mom is waiting to have lunch this entire time. I finally finish with the publisher and we go into the Cock & Bull. We sit down, order lunch and my phone beeps. It’s a message from my daughter begging me to pick her up. She’s sick and miserable and wants to come home NOW, not the next day when everyone else was coming home.

My mom and I pack up the remainder of our lunch and I drive her back to NJ, switch cars, then set off on a 330 mile trek to Uniontown, PA. The original plan was my daughter was going to ride with another group who was leaving Friday night and I would meet them along the road so I did not have to drive the full six hours, then turn around and drive back.

Great, right? Well I should have known it would not turn out that way. The first indication it was not going to be a good trip was when I was on Route 78 and a car up ahead of me burst into flames. (The driver got out safely and several good Samaritans with fire extinguishers in their cars got out of their cars to help.) I was one of the few cars that got through before traffic snarled and stopped because of the fire. That was the high point of the trip.

Traffic did clog up a few times, but I managed to get on Route 81 South in fairly decent time. Then two miles north of Hershey, PA, Mother Nature decided to show her might. The first thing was bolts of lightning coming down on both sides of my car. I have never seen lightning stay visible for so long. I probably could have taken a picture with my phone it my hands weren’t white-knuckled on the steering wheel. In twenty minutes, the temperature had dropped from ninety-eight degrees to seventy-one degrees. I looked to my left and actually watched a funnel cloud start to form. Scary as that was, the cloud was on my left, which meant it was east of me, so I knew for the moment I was not in danger of getting hit by a tornado. However, the torrential rain mixed with small amounts of hail was giving me fits. The emergency alert system interrupts the radio station. The announcer starts rattling off counties affected by the storm, but since I really have no idea where I am other than in the Carlyle area, the warning is pretty useless to me. Obviously I am in one of the aforementioned counties.

I drove along at ten miles an hour, lights on, hazards flashing for several miles when the break in the storm came. Traffic picked up and we were moving again. I try to call my husband to tell him what I had just experienced (on the Bluetooth – I wasn’t taking my hands off the wheel anytime soon), but the phone kept saying I was out of my calling area. Huh? This goes on for about half an hour, and I start to panic. How am I supposed to meet up with this driver coming North with my daughter if I have no phone service?

I pull off the highway and into a convenience story. They were out of power, but their land line was working and they let me call my husband. I was amazed he actually picked up the phone considering I was calling from a number he did not recognize. Anyway, I tell him what’s going on and make him call our minister to make sure my daughter has not left yet, and if she hasn’t not to. I was going to drive straight through to her. While I was waiting for my husband to call back, the convenience store guy tells me that the cell towers are down. No, not hit by lightning down, physically down on the ground. When I went around the side of his building to use the bathroom, I saw several buildings in the area with substantial roof damage.

After a few minutes, my husband calls back. My daughter was still at the convent and she would stay there and wait for me. It is now a few minutes after six and the sky in black. I headed back to the highway. The lightning started again, the wind picked up, and you knew at any second the skies would open up again. Traffic is going at a good clip. I think everyone was trying to get as far down the road as they could before the storm raged again. Along the way, I could see trees down and when I drove over bridges, towns below had hefty damage. At one point, there were trees down on my right and on my left, directly across from the downed trees, there was a path ripped through a cornfield. Obviously a small tornado had occurred.

The wind is now getting so strong, I am fighting the wheel to stay in the lane. I’m driving between fifteen and twenty miles per hour at this point. In front of me a tree branch breaks off and comes flying at my car. I can’t stop in time, but luckily all it hits is my bumper – headlights and windshield remain unharmed. The skies open up and visibility is now down to about ten feet. We crawl along at about five miles per hour. At one point we were stopped completely, and the wind was so strong, our cars (and the semi next to me) were being pushed into the next lane.

 

You may ask why I did not pull over through all of this. The right side of the road was lined with trees, trees which were being blown over by the wind. What about stopping under an over pass you ask. Those were few and far between, and they were occupied by motorcycles and their drivers. They needed the protection far more than I did, that’s for sure. So I forged on.

The storm finally broke when I got to Routes 70 & 68 in Maryland. My phone started working again and I called my husband. He checked the radar and the line of severe thunderstorms stretched almost a hundred miles, and I drove their entire length, but I was through it now. Thank God, I could not imagine driving the mountains of Route 68 during a storm!

At a few minutes to ten, I pull into the convent and pick up my girls. There was no way, after the harrowing ride there, I was going to attempt to drive home that night. I found a hotel – thank you Marriott for even building hotels out in the middle of nowhere – and we spent the night in a clean, comfortable, air conditioned room. The AC helped my daughter to feel a little better and to get a good night’s sleep.

We arrived home yesterday just after four, but I had no energy to write. I know this blog was extremely long, but consider it three days’ worth.

 

Your Last Challenge was:

 

Ah, the proverbial fork in the road. Do I go right or left? What do I choose? Most attribute forks in the road to major life altering events, but aren’t we faced with forks on a daily basis? You have your shrimp fork decisions – what shall we have for dinner? Your salad fork decisions – should I buy this or save the money? Your dinner fork decisions – should I take the promotion or settle with the lower salary and keep my sanity? And you have your serving fork decisions – should I move across the country? Although varying in degrees, each decision or fork alters your path in life.

 

Sorry, that’s it. I ran out of steam. Hopefully I’ll have better luck on Corporate Blues today. Until tomorrow…

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

If I had three wishes… 

 

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.