Friday Rambles-Writers, Actors and TV

Television is still as popular as when I wrote the column below, about six years ago. I really can't say that the quality has improved, personally it seems the opposite is true. Be that as it may, my viewing habits are still about the same, though what I watch is received via air channels, not cable or satellite. I do miss the music channels, but the two or three I listened to are not worth the annual small fortune I'd have to pay to receive them. Mostly I watch old television series hits during the still less than twenty hours a week I turn on the set. Only on Wednesdays do I indulge in a current craze-binge watching. I loved JAG when it was a prime time series for several years and still do. So I have enjoyed JAG reruns on MeTV's 'The Dayshift' this summer. Sigh. The network will probably end the series before I'm ready to let them go again.
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 I seem to write about television regularly for one who, on average, watches it probably twenty hours a week, compared to the thirty-five to forty national average. Fifteen to twenty minutes of my daily tv fare is watching local news and weather. I almost always switch it off or to a music channel rather than watch the sports reports. My household was chosen recently to keep a Nielsen journal for a week. It would probably be a safe bet to say we were one of the far outliers toward the zero end of television watching.
    I attempt to keep in mind when and on which channels my favorite shows are scheduled and turn the set on at those times. I seem to have lost track of the summer replacement Rookie Blue. I watched the first couple of episodes but don't remember what day. If any reader watches it, please let me know.
    I'm also pretty set in my ways about the authors I read. One of those favorites is David Baldacci, who just happens to be a Virginian who hails from Charlottesville, I believe. Several of his books formed a series with ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, who both resigned when the persons they were assigned to protect were killed. After five books I could find no more and wondered if Baldacci was finished with the pair.
    Then I saw a commercial during my limited hours of television. King and Maxwell were coming to the home screen in a new series called King and Maxwell. I caught the first episode, almost by accident. I was and am delighted, if I can only remember when the show comes on! Part of my delight is because of the actor cast as Sean King. I've been a fan of Jon Tenney since he was Kyra Sedgwick's FBI boyfriend and later her husband on the long-running The Closer series. When Sedgwick left, by choice or not I don't know, that show morphed into one called Major Crimes. I do not watch it even though many of the same characters did stay. To me, Sedgwick was the show. Maybe because I've lived in Alabama and her character moved to California from Alabama.

More Than One Dream - Part 3

I continued to be active in the writing group and have been instrumental in the production of three anthologies of members’ work. I joined another writer’s guild and now serve on its board of directors. The guild has partnered with a regional community college and we will host our fourth Writers Symposium this year. Along with several other board members I’ve served on the planning committee for the Symposium all four years.

As might be expected involvement with these activities takes time away from writing itself. I have managed a few more publication credits and did actually finish a novel, though not the first one I began. Fulfillment of my writing dreams gave me a feeling of validation as a person, something I could stand on. I am very sure God knew I would need that a few years down the road.

Less than a month after celebrating our fiftieth anniversary my husband suffered a massive stroke. He never regained use of the left side of his body and his condition steadily deteriorated over the next three years. The toll on my own health and mental state was heavy as I watched the strong young man I married become a shadow of himself until his final release.

I had managed to keep up some writing activities even while caring for my husband. But after his death it took about eight months before I could get my head back into writing seriously. An essay was accepted for a literary journal. I worked on another novel.

The first Christmas after my husband passed away I decided (a nudge from God? I think so.) to work on several short essays and pitch them to a local newspaper for a weekly column. A few days after I sent a dozen to the editor he emailed me to ask for a headshot to run with my column.

When the column first appeared in print I, trying for nonchalance, posted the news to my Facebook page. The paper has a website and my column is (edit: was) published on it as well, but I didn’t think to post the link. I signed off and took a shower. When I later signed back in to Facebook I was bowled over by the comments and congratulations from family and friends. A cousin had looked for the website and not found it. My sister-in-law found it and put it up for them. I am so grateful for the family God gave me and their unfailing support. Never once have any of them even hinted that I have some nerve calling myself a writer. That, too, I consider part of God’s gift in fulfilling my writing dreams.
(edit/update) The Writers Symposium I mention was quite successful and was an annual event for nine years, tho after the 4th or 5th, I resigned from the Planning Committee because it was going well and I tired of the long drive. This current year the Lost State Writers Guild, my local group, sponsored a one-day writing workshop (another long-held dream of mine) and many attendees requested that another be held next year.) 

Friday Rambles-Rememberies

This post speaks for itself pretty much. It might be titled 'Path of a Writer.' I'm certainly not a famous writer, but I am a writer. Not a young, or even younger, writer and sometimes I think about giving it up but the feeling passes. My writing gives me a focus, a beacon, to follow along my mystery lane rambles. Before I began to try seriously to write I was a voracious reader, I'd read any printed matter my gaze fell across. And I still enjoy reading just about more than writing. The world is full of books just waiting to be read. But something keeps pushing me to write 'one more thing,' then maybe I'll quit. Or maybe not.

Rememberies

A clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk. I've crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments in my life.

Visible through the glass is an address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. More than twenty-five years after her death the ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.

Next to the label is my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I remember my fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tube in a matchstick arm, feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.

Among the jumble of mementoes is a round piece of molded plastic which covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I worked as a telephone operator. The job that gave me not only independence, but the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.

A parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed college degree. An Allen wrench I used to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled key ring fob with a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel.

A name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina.

I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself through essays and columns for personal gratification and, occasionally, money. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.

sylvia@sylvianickels.com

 

Not Really Gone!

Can't believe I haven't posted since last December. I guess I hibernated during that long cold winter. And now we seem to have jumped right into a long hot summer.
We did have a little bit of spring. Thankfully, the two outdoor booksignings I've done for the new book, were during those not so hot days in May.
Trail Days in Damscus, Virginia was a fun event I'd never done before. The energy level was over the top, of the tent! Talked to a bunch of hikers who hike the Appalachian Trail. Some were through-hikers, who hike all of the over 2,000 miles of the AT. Others call themselves 'section hikers' who hike the trail in sections, as time and money allow. All I spoke with were extremely nice.
The other booksigning I did, also in May and also the first time I'd participated, was Plumb Alley Day in Abingdon, Virginia. This is a unique event. A four block section of Plumb Alley is blocked off for a one day unusual kind of 'yard sale' for whatever you have to sell. It's sponsored and administered by the Abingdon Kiwanis Club to benefit children.
Another exciting first for me was my interview on WJHL TV's  Daytime Tricities broadcast last week. Ann was an easy-to-talk-to interviewer and I thoroughly enjoyed my brief appearance.
I have a couple more events scheduled and others in the works. Stay tuned.

Incentive

Just checked my stats. Was shocked to see that in the last month this blog has been viewed by several folks. I appreciate that. Especially since I post so irregularly. No matter how often I vow to do better, time slips away and it's months some times before I write a new post.

Maybe I was also inspired by participating in the Kingsport Mini Maker Faire this past weekend. If someone hasn't heard of a Maker Faire, it is an event to showcase interest in whatever creative activity or hobby one spends time in doing. Hardly surprising that quite a number of participants were engaged in technology inspired pursuits, a couple in the robotics field.

Our spot at the Faire was arranged by Billy Crawford of Bubba's Book Swap. The purpose of the writers who manned the Appalachian Authors Guild and Lost State Writers Guild booth was to reach out to aspiring writers. We passed out information on how to get started, encouraged them to put pen to paper - or fingers to keyboard would probably be more accurate. Even though both Guilds have been around the region for a number of years and participated in lots of regional events and festivals, many have never heard of us. We hope to change that in time.

Books, books, books

...but not mine - yet! I have just at my elbow a three tier bookshelf filled with books on writing. But somehow I had missed buying three books I think every writer should own. Maybe if I'd bought them sooner I'd be seeing my books in bookstores by now. Or not. Who knows. I'll post about the other two books in later posts.
The first one I'm talking about I actually have meant to buy for several years. I wanted to order it from the company which published it, Gryphon Books, and kept putting it off. Don't make my mistake. Goal, Motivation, Conflict, the Building Blocks of Good Fiction by Debra Dixon is a gem. My daughter is now reading it and taking copious notes, as she is wont to do. Ms. Dixon shows writers how to distill the three items in the title for protagonist, antagonist and any other characters for which they are needed. She uses classic and well-known books to demonstrate the principle.
Goal, Motivation, Conflict can be ordered from Amazon and other sellers on Amazon, not cheaply, but I ordered from the publisher in Memphis, TN., link below:
Gryphon Books
No compensation was received for this recommendation! I'm just so happy that I finally ordered it.

Just Me

I write in several genres. Mystery being my favorite. But my first venture in getting my writing into book form was Eight Miles of Muddy Road, a memoir of growing up as a sharecropper's daughter in (very) rural central Georgia. Available from moi and Amazon, in print and ebook format.
Prior to that first venture in producing a book, I 'd had a couple of mystery/crime stories published in small circulation print magazines, several published online and more since. I've also had stories published in print anthologies and an ebook anthology by a traditional publisher. That publishing contract for a novel length mystery still eludes me though. But we persevere.
Two of my mystery characters, both female, star in their own series. Well, the first book of their series anyway. And one is under consideration by a publisher. Others are WIPs.
Meantime I gathered several of my mystery short stories and self-pubbed a book, Best Served Cold, Revenge a la Carte. Also available from me, the author, and Amazon. More about it later.
I welcome comments and/or if you'd like to send me an email, here's the address: Sylvia