Castle in the Clouds

This will likely be a Christmas many in our area will remember for many years to come.  While we were one of the fortunate ones Christmas morning, a lot of people in the surrounding areas were without power before, during, and after the holiday festivities.  Not that we didn't lose power.  We did.  Ours went out and stayed out for a couple of days, but we had heat, water, and limited electricity thanks to the generator.  We could even watch television and play offline video games, if we felt so inclined.  Food was either served cold, picked up from the gas station's Subway station, or cooked on the Coleman stove.  The reason for these less than ideal living conditions was a beautiful, but destructive ice storm that rained down on us just days before the Jolly Old Elf and his flying reindeer were expected to arrive.  These pictures don't do the scenery any kind of justice.  The light shining on and through the ice was simply stunning.  While we lost

Today's First Writing Confession:  I worry that my new novel is taking too long to get to the good stuff.  I feel as if I'm still laying the groundwork, which might not be bad thing, but likely is.  The potential for conflict is there, but I've yet to heighten the tension or raise the stakes, and those two things need to happen.  Soon.    I keep reminding myself that this is the first roughest of drafts.  It's okay if I'm taking too long because I can edit out the unnecessary bits later or rewrite what's there.  I'm tempted to give what I've written to my sister.  She's biased because she loves me, but she doesn't pull punches when she thinks I've managed to derail a project.  She'll tell me if she's bored or just getting impatient. Today's Second Writing Confession:  I haven't worked on the story in a good week and a half.  Finger pointing and scolding encouraged. 

Edited to say:  I didn't realize this actually attempted to post yesterday.  I thought the system malfunctioned, and I decided it wasn't worth the effort to battle it out.  Seems the system fooled me! Anyhow, even though I love scrapbooking and have at least a dozen bulky 12x12 photo albums completed, I don't display them because they can be a bit unwieldy.  That's why I've opted to create these little 8x8 photo books from Shutterfly.  Unlike my handmade scrapbooks, these display nicely on my shelf.  For this reason, I've decided to start doing a Year in Review style book each January.  The trick, though, is to work on it throughout the year and have it ready to print when Shutterfly sends me a half-off coupon. Click here to view this photo book larger Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

It's time to set new reading goals! Over on Goodreads, I've already challenged myself to read 100 books in 2014.  It sounds like a lot, but I think it's doable.  Being done with school has really freed up my evenings and weekends.  I no longer have to set aside time to read theory, research topics, or write out assignments of various length and difficulty. Another benefit of finally being done with school is that I am able to select my reading material based on whatever sounds good or catches my eye.  Unless I get a teaching job, there will be no syllabus demanding my attention.  So, looking at 2014, I'd like to start out with revisiting last year's reading goals and focus on completing the books I had hoped to read in 2013.  There were both  Kindle Books I'd Like to Read  and  Books on the TBR shelf .  I did an okay job with the Kindle books.  Of those listed, these are the only ones I did not attempt:      However, they are downloaded to the