F³A: Here Comes the Sun

I live in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure you all know that by now. This is what it has looked liked the past couple weeks.My mom just heard (or read, I don't remember) that people born in spring are more susceptible to vitamin D deficiency and depression. How do you like them apples, huh? My birthday is next month, so you know what that means!

Tonight, with Thing One and Thing Two, I head to where the sun almost always shines. Scottsdale, AZ. I've had short timers disease at work all week thinking about absorbing the Vitamin D, sitting by the pool, drinking margaritas. Two friends are already there, and will be picking us up at the airport tonight.

On top of THAT, I'm going to meet two writer friends! Amy Fellner Dominy and Taylor McCleve. I met Amy through the Class of 2k11 (before I got booted to 2012). I met Taylor through the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.

That is all except for the Friday Scribbles:

Random Pandora Song (Nirvana Station): Would? by Alice in Chains. Love!!



Redbox of the Week: Moneyball. Loved this movie. Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, how can you go wrong? Plus, I love me some sports movies!!

Book of the Week: I'm reading two books at the same time, Velveteen by my buddy Danny Marks, and Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. Both very different books, both amazing in their own right.

Quote of the Week: "In the sun I feel as one." ~ Kurt Cobain

Weather Identity Crisis

We need to put an end to this horrible climate change problem we're having. The weather in the Pacific Northwest, usually just gray and rainy is having a major identity crisis. Wind, rain, hail, sleet, snow!?!?! I mean, really? Snow? WTF?

Our poor little tulips and daffodils are trying to bloom and the skies keep dumping snow down on their freezing little bulbs.

Thing One's first tennis match is today...IN THE SNOW!!!!! Um, no, not watching tennis in the snow. Yes, I'll play the bad mom card today. We're all allowed a few bad parent moments, aren't we?

Please, reuse, reduce, recycle. Your footprint is too big for my PNW weather. In a couple years, I will be living in a tundra like climate. I'm not meant for the tundra. I'm meant for the sun with sporadic months of rain intermixed!

Think of the polar bears!!

Al Gore, I'm begging you, get your earth saving ass in higher gear!
God, stop toying with us, we get it, we're bad excessive people. Lesson learned!
And all of you who don't believe in climate change, get your heads out of your arses!! It's real. I'm feeling its wrath!!!
Ellen, Oprah, read my book!!! (sorry, I digress)

For the love of all that's good and pure, give me some effin' sun!!!

Monkey Madness Monday

So how cute is this little guy to the left?  I want one!!!!

It's Monday.  I'm in AZ.  Went to an SEO (search engine optimization) conference.  These guys knew what they were talking about.  This will not only help me at my day job, but with my writing life as well.

I leave today to go back to the lovely gray, rainy Pacific Northwest, apparently having missed the two days of heat and sun while gone.

However, I can't wait to get back and test out my new internet skizzizles.

Have a wonderful Monkey Madness Monday everyone.  Enjoy life.

Monday Morning Blahg: Battle of the Bulge

Why is it so easy to gain weight?  I've been trying for weeks to lose weight, I dropped nine pounds doing the low carb thing, and one weekend of eating a few carbs here and there and I'm practically right back where I started.

This weather isn't helping me any.  I get SO tired of exercising indoors.  When it's nice, I've been walking the Narrows Bridge, but the weather here has a constant identity crisis.  Yesterday was beautiful (I spent it doing yard work), today, rain. sigh.

I know if I want to drop the weight I'm going to have to get my ass on the elliptical, because you just can't depend on the weather here.  Seriously, I have like 30 pounds to drop. 

I guess I'd better get to work.

Thought Provoking Thursday: Moving

I swear the last couple years here in the PNW have been horrible.  It's been gray from September to May and we had no summer to speak of last year.  We have two season: Rain for ten months, sun for two.  And we don't even get rainbows anymore.  What's up with that?

This year, our weather has been having an identity crisis.  Like right now, the sun is out.  It's bright, shiny, and blue skies.  But in a few short hours, it's going to be pouring down rain according to the weather man, and I think he's going to be right.

It's impossible to know what to wear when you leave the house. 

This is the first year I've seriously debated moving to someplace with more sun.  Arizona mostly likely.  I would at least, if I make a mint, like to buy a house down there.  Just a tiny one with a pool where I can go for a couple weeks during the winter to get my battery recharged.

I'm not sure I can take another Washington fall/winter/spring.

Please let this book sell. 

Ciao,

Megan

Monday Morning Blahg: Eternal Rain

How would you like to see this for 8 months straight?

Yes, I know I live in the state of Washington where it rains the majority of the time, but the last couple years the sky has been gray for eight months straight.  I don't remember it being like that.  I remember sunny warm Septembers, and hot March and Aprils.  I don't like Climate Change.  I like the idea of Global Warming instead.

We had a little sun on Saturday and instead of taking advantage of it and getting outside to work on my yard I wrote.  Which was good because I hadn't written in awhile and I wrote a lot.  But now we're back to rain.

I have decided this:  I WILL be taking a vacation every winter for at least a week to go someplace sunny.  Probably AZ.  And I will SERIOUSLY consider moving someplace sunny when my children have graduated from college, or at least become a snow bird. (of course I can only do this if actually make money being a writer and can quit the day job.  of course, it is possible I can do my day job from home, but I don't think they would like that all too much)

Did you know that our state has one of the highest rates of depression and suicide?  It's true and it's because the sky is gray.  We're probably the state with the highest rates of purchases of vitamin D.  It's also why we were the the most wired city.  Because we had to stay inside so much people took to the internet like flies to shit.

I cannot wait to see the sun again.  I am after all solar powered.

Happy Monday Peeps.  Until tomorrow.

Best,
~Megan

Monday Morning Blahg: Procrastination = Missed Opportunities

Heeeeere's Megan

We finally had some nice (okay, decent) weather over the weekend.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing.  But guess what I was doing.  I was sitting in my living room working on my first pass pages.  Because I procrastinated and waited until the last minute. Sigh.  So I didn't get to finish this shoveling task I started, I didn't get my back patio cleaned up, or my planter boxes put in place.  I didn't get to go for a walk or a bike ride because literally from dawn til dusk (with a short Starbucks break) I was working. (All work and no play makes Megan a cranky butt)

Today it's raining again.

Thought Provoking Thursday: Living in Shadows

I know you've all HAD to feel that way at one time or another.  That you're living in someone else's shadow?  I think as a writer, a sibling, and friend, a co worker, whatever our circles and relationships, we can't help these feelings sometimes.  We feel unworthy or inferior to those around us.

Point?  I guess I've been feeling a little like this.  And it's not fun.  Luckily, I have people around me that remind me that I've got some good stuff going on.  That we can't live under the shadow of someone else because their paths, though they may be similar, are unique.

And then of course there's Walt Whitman.  His quote, "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you," really struck a chord with me yesterday.  And it's true.  I think I may be a natural pessimist.  I need to look toward the sun more often.  After all, I am solar powered.

Sorry, just some random musings from my warped mind. :)

A couple more things.  Mrs. Andersen at the Y.A. Love book blog featured for her Book Trailer Thursday, the trailer I made for Carole Estby Dagg's novel, The Year We Were Famous.

Also, I want to wish good luck to all those entered in ABNA.  Just remember, if you don't make it past this phase, it's not over.  Here is a list to prove it.  It's all the novels that have been entered in ABNA that have been or are going to published since.  It grows all the time.  So don't lose faith.

And never walk in someone else's shadow.  Cast your own. :)


~Megan

Muses

A lot of friends have mentioned their muses the last couple days, so I thought I would really sit and ponder where my motivation comes from.

I've always said that my craft mostly reflects life.  Sometimes I get story ideas from my own experiences, or base characters on people I know, myself included, but I need more than that.

The weather.  I know, it's crazy, but the weather has an effect on my mood.  I've always said I write better when I'm my most angsty, but thinking on it, that's not necessarily true.  I also write well when the sun is shining, it's just different.  I don't use as much emotion, I use more energy.  So this kind of yin yang weather thing is definitely a muse for me.

Music.  I cannot listen to music when I write.  I have to have things perfectly quiet and still.  However, music does pop into my head during certain scenes, and in my novel Mending Fences, and now in my WIP Finding Nirvana, music plays a major role.  When I was writing, the second novel I ever wrote, Dena Powers: The Trouble with Boys, there was one scene in which Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars kept popping into my head, urging me along.  Most the time the music is alternative or Indie because those songs just seem to speak to me.

My emotions.  As I said before, the weather directly effects my moods, and my different emotions help me to write in a variety of different ways.  I actually prefer to write when I'm miserable.  I just think I write better when I'm brooding, but there's something to be said for happiness too.

I suppose if my muse took form, this is what she'd look like (and do not make fun of my drawing).

So tell me, how does your muse take form?

The Sun

I know I blog about the sun way too much, but I'm solar powered.  Without it, I'm fairly useless.  Yes, I have my happy pills, yes I take vitamin D, but it's not the same.  A pill cannot compete with the big ball of fire in the sky, it's rays beating down on the pavement, filtering through my window, and hitting my face.

Yes, I understand I live in the Pacific Northwest, but we are normally allotted three months of almost uninterrupted sun. 

The picture you see here, I took from my living room window this morning.  It's what I've seen, not for days, but for months.  Rain streaked windows, wet sidewalks.  I thought last year was bad, the skies were gray from October until March.  Um, it's June people.  June when summer begins.  June when the sun is supposed to start shining.  June when I can sit outside under the sun and read a book, where I can start walking outside, when I take my laptop out to the backyard and write in the heat.

Yet, it's still pouring down rain and the sky is still gray. 

Leaving you with a poem I wrote about the sun.

White hot heat

Shimmering brilliance

Humid and inviting.

Filling vacuous voids,

The sinister chasms that

cause eternal downpours

and bone chilling rime.

Perpetual motion

Not to think or cast shadows

No moss collected

merely flow like the current.

Vivid hues, downy clouds,

fluid and weightless

blissful and tranquil

I wait for the dark to subside.

Ciao,

Megan