Well, it's 40 below and I don't give a...

Me, Jordan, & Deann

If you don't recognize what my title is in reference to, it's lyrics from the Rodeo Song. Look up the entire lyrics for a laugh, but only if you're not offended by swearing and inappropriate content. It's hilarious.

I use the song for my title because this last weekend I went to my first rodeo. The reasoning behind my traveling five hours away in a camper to a dust bowl filled with all the animals I'm allergic to is two-fold. 1. One of my best friend's daughter does rodeo. I've been wanting to watch her for awhile and rodeo season is almost over. 2. I've been thinking about writing a book about rodeo life. My friend, her name is Deann, moved to Wyoming way back after graduating college. She lived there for 20 years and now she's back in my hood, like, literally, she lives about a minute away from me.

This was the real traffic on our way out of town

On very very long drive, she and daughter, Jordan, schooled me on rodeo phrases, events, etc. I diligently took notes in a small notebook. During the rodeo, I continued to take notes and pictures so when I write this book, I can make it as authentic as possible.

Rodeo is an eye-opening adventure. You really have no idea about the skill, the danger, and the environment as a whole until you experience it, full force. Here is a run down of events:

• Barrel Racing - This is done by females. They race their horses around three barrels in a clover pattern. 
• Bareback and Saddlebronc - Males ride bucking horses until they fall off or reach 8 seconds. One with saddles, one without.



Bull Riding

• Bull riding - Males ride bucking bull until they fall off or reach 8 seconds. With this and the Bareback and Saddlebronc, they are scored by certain actions they do while riding. That's how they get different scores.
• Tie Down Roping - Males chase a calf, rope it, I hate to use the word throw but I don't know how else to say it...they throw the calf to the ground, and have to tie three legs together, The ties have to last for 6 seconds to get scored.
• Breakaway - This is the females version of Tie Down, however the girls only have to rope the calf, then the rope between the calf and their horse "breaks away." The time stops after the rope breaks.
• Steer Wrestling - Males chase a steer on their horse, when they're next to it, they lean over and grab it and leave their horse, then they wrestle it to the ground. They have to have all four

  

  Steer Wrestling

  legs in the air for time to stop.
• Team Roping - There are two riders, can be all females, all males or one of each. They chase a calf. One of them ropes the horns, after that is accomplished, the other ropes the back legs. 
• Goat Roping or Goat Tying - This is a female event. Same as Tie down for the men, I think. I never got to see this event. 
• Pole Bending - Same as Barrel Racing except instead of racing around barrels, the contestants weave in and out of 6 poles.

I'm not the biggest animal lover, but I don't want harm to come to them either. I was assured that the animals used don't really feel the pain it appears they are enduring. Cows have a lot of fat on them, so when they're laid on the ground, it doesn't really hurt. They put protective gear on their heads during the roping events.  To make the horses and bulls buck, a strap is placed around their flank area, which is uncomfortable, but not painful (which is better than what I was led to believe, that their balls were cinched up). I was also told that when they're not doing rodeo, these animals are spoiled and have great lives. I hope this is the case.

Jordan competes in Breakaway and Team Roping.

Jordan doing Breakaway

Jordan & Team Rope Partner Jacob

It's not easy. You can probably tell that from the pictures. In fact, many of the riders don't get times at all because they fail in their tasks. Bull, Saddlebronc, and Bareback riders don't get a time if they don't last 8 seconds. Pole Benders and Barrel Racers don't get time if their horse goes off course. Those who do Breakaway and the Tie Down events don't get a time if they fail to rope, their rope comes off, or they don't finish in the allotted amount of time (latter is for team rope only).

In Jordan's events only 9 out of 26 got times for Team Roping and 11 of 35 for Breakaway.

The Rodeo World is pretty tight. These same kids compete at the same rodeos all over the state. So they all know each other. Cliques form  just like with any other environment, and the kids are in competition, so there's bound to be conflict. The parents all seemed friendly and supportive, and there were many tight knit groups. It was a positive atmosphere.

Aside from learning rodeo skills, these kids are taught responsibility and manners as well. They were all very polite, they treated their horses well. It was up to them to feed and water them and clean the stalls when it was all over.

Our home for the weekend.

I enjoyed the rodeo. It was interesting. It was fun to be a part of that environment for the weekend. Even staying in the camper was a blast, though close quarters. Over the weekend I was able to plot out some of the storyline of my rodeo book.

I think I'm going to go back with them in two weeks, when the kids compete for state championships. I'd like to see what it's like for these kids to win or lose.

F³A: Road Trip Weekend

So I took a much needed road trip this weekend. Drove to the ocean last night. I love driving by myself. I crank the stereo (when the radio stations get fuzzy, I plug my iPod in), and sing at the top of my lungs.

Some of the favorites on my iPod right now are:

• Alt-J, Breezeblocks
• Anna Kendrick, Cups (Pitch Perfect's "When I'm Gone")
• Bright Eyes, First Day Of My Life
• Decemberists, Calamity Song
• Family of the Year, Hero
• The Fratellis, Chelsea Dagger
• Anything by Some Nights , The Head and the Heart , or Night Visions
• Joy Formidable, Whirring
•  The Lumineers, Stubborn Love
• The Mowgli's, San Francisco
• Ms Mr,Hurricane
• New Politics, Harlem
• Walk of the Earth, Red Hands
• Walk the Moon, Anna Sun
• Lorde, Royals

For now I'm by myself, but will be joined by friends later. Whenever I tell people, I'm going to the beach by myself, they always question it. As writers, I think we understand how important silence and solace is. I've not been able to write much lately. My work, my health, my kids, they've all taken precedence lately over my writing, which I hate, so this weekend I'm hoping to bust out some words.

I'm also looking to work on my future publication of Dissected. I have a website to set up, I have postcards I need to create to send to schools, libraries and bookstores. I also need to make new business cards. I've not yet bought my UPC code. I can do all that before getting my formatting back from Lori.

Are any of you on road trips this holiday weekend? If so, where are you off to?

I was also curious, many people have said Never Eighteen is one of their favorite road trip books. What are yours? To be honest, I've not read a lot of road trip books, though there are tons on my tbr list, like Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, Nothing Special by Geoff Herbach, and The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg.

Of course,The Stand by Stephen King is one of my favorite books of all time. The ultimate road trip to a battle to the death between good and evil. Then there is my friend, Gae Polisner's The Pull of Gravity , which is a lovely young adult novel about a boy trying to fulfill a promise to a sick friend.

I love writing me a good road trip book. Never Eighteen was a weekend trip around the South Sound. In the upcoming, Girl in Motion (I'll probably release it sometime next spring/summer) Chelsea "Cheesy" Reed drives from Mississippi to Texas to live with her estranged father after the death of her mother. In the WIP I'm working on now, working title, A Tattered Life, there will be a section where my main character Jaden drives from Georgia to Alabama in search of a girl he's sure is going to commit suicide after reading her journal.  I also had another in the works a few years ago titled, Finding Nirvana, in which a teenage girl travels cross country to find her dad.

Yes, love road trip stories.

If you're looking for road trip stories to read, here's a list on Goodreads, a post by the Nerdy Bookclub on their top ten YA road trip books,  and here is a list of more classic road trip books.

It's Friday, so we get the Scribbles.

iPod shuffle song: Red Hands by Walk Off the Earth

 Book of the Week: I'm back to reading Divergent . I took a break, just because I was so incredibly busy, then read a friend's book, Jenny Milchman's, Cover of Snow: A Novel , now I'm back to Divergent. Movie comes out soon. Need to finish.

Netflix of the Week: I started the last season of Breaking Bad. YES!

Quote of the Week: Oh my gosh, so many good quotes about traveling...I think I have to post a couple of my favorites.

 “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

 “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

 “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

Happy Friday, Happy Labor Day Weekend. Do the opposite, rest.

Writing Wednesday

Yep, thought I'd get back to the Writing Wednesday and share a little of my crap, I mean my brilliance with you. Today, since I've been diligently working on my rewrite of An Unbalanced Line formerly known as Cheesy, I thought I'd share a bit with you.

I started up my mom’s car—an angel blue convertible BMW.  I backed out of the driveway and sat there in front of my house. My house that I’d never step foot in again, Suki standing out front weeping and waving. I waved back then headed down the street, through the neighborhood. I pass the cemetery and the Northpark Mall, toward I-55. After that it’s nothing but trees and pavement, trees and pavement, until I reach I-220. I’d swear there was about a church a mile as I continued south. I guess it wasn’t called the Bible Belt for nothing. We weren’t particularly religious people, but we did have a faith to us that may not be explainable in words and others may not understand. My mom was a deeply faithful person, but when it came to the aspects of religion that came from man himself, like the churches and the unwritten rules and such, well, I guess she was a bit of a rebel, which is why we didn’t belong to any denomination to speak of.

 I-220 meets I-20 at the Metrocenter. I enter the highway that would take me all the way to Southpaw and my new life. I pass more trees, shopping centers, a few hotels.  Before I hit the bridge that will take me over the Mississippi and into a different state altogether, I leave the highway for a short break, to grab a snack, to stretch my legs. I stop at the Kangaroo Express, buy a bottle of water and bag of Nacho Cheese Flavor Doritos, about the only kind of chips I can stand. I hop back into the Beemer and decide to take a short stroll through Riverside Park.

I park the car, grab my chips and head toward the river. Forgetting my jacket in the car, goose bumps break out as the cool spring breeze brushes across the surface of my skin. I wrap my arms around myself to keep warm. I follow the trail to the water. I tear open my bag and crunch into a chip as the water rushes past. The river’s not so different from time. When you look at it from a distance it almost seems to stand still, but the closer you are, the faster and more violent it rolls by, an unstoppable force. You couldn’t slow it if you tried.

Time seemed to stand still when mom first got sick, but then when the cancer raged full force, and she suddenly got worse, it was like fast forward. Suddenly she was dead. It still didn’t feel real—yet there I was driving my mom’s car across three states, chomping on Doritos, standing in front of the Mississippi River. In Mississippi. My home. Correction: former home. I breathed in the river and cotton, magnolias and the blues, and all things Mississippi, not knowing if I’d ever be back again.

When the Doritos were nothing but crumbs at the bottom of the bag and my fingertips were stained nacho-cheese-orange, I made my way back to the car, which at that moment I decided needed a name, climbed in, got back on I-20, and crossed the Mississippi River Bridge.

F³A: Peace and Quiet

For those of you who don't know, F³A stand for Friday Free For All. Fridays I talk about whatever I want. Today I'm going to talk about peace and quiet.

The last few months have been so busy. With author events, and doctor and dentist appointments, soccer practices, music lessons and gigs. The last free weekend I had was Memorial Day weekend.  So I'm getting the hell out of T-Town.

When I need some peace, I like to go to the ocean. My parents have a place there, so I can really go whenever I want, but since I've been so busy, I've not gone for a long time. I don't even really go to the beach any more. I know it's there when I need to see it. I like to hang out with friends, go to the casino (it's the only time I go to the casino and I only drop up to $40), but mostly I like to write.

I've been so stuck on this rewrite, I'm hoping being away from everything and getting outdoors with inspire me to get focuses and get this thing done. I have to finish so I can work on the other projects I'm really excited about. I have ideas for one dystopian series, a fantasy series, and other contemporary realistic YA's. I also have another finish manuscript that needs some revision.

What do you do, or where do you go when you just need some peace and quiet to get projects done?

Okay, Friday Scribbles:

Next Pandora Song: Tongue Tied by Group Love

Netflix of the Week: I've barely watched any television lately, but last night I had some laundry to catch up on, so I watched Friday Night Lights, the show.  I started watching it awhile ago and really liked it, but just haven't had the time to watch. So I'm on season one.

Book of the Week: Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont. Combination of contemporary and classic literature, so far I really like it.

Quote of the Week: "Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it." ~Amir from the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini