Let me know what you think of my bookmark design.

Okay, so this is the design I came up with for my bookmarks.  Let me know what you think.  The left is the front, right, the back.

F³A: Gardening

Okay, first off, I used to hate gardening and yard work.  There were icky bugs, it was tiring, weeds never went away.  Now that I have my own place I'm kind of liking it.  It's good exercise, it makes my house look better, and it's very therapeutic.  

I've been doing it as much as I possibly can, mostly because here in the PNW, you never know what the weather will be like.  Nice days, you better get out and get as much done as you can, because you never know what tomorrow will bring-more likely than not, rain.

Right now my lawn is mowed.  Yesterday I finally learned to use my weed wacker (don't hate on me now).  I have a flower bed full of ocean decor, another one with gnomes.  I have an herb garden out front, which I'm continuing to work on, and veggies in the back, just a few, I don't want it to be overwhelming.  

I also bought a bird bath and feeder and right now I'm watching blue jays hang out in my back yard.  Pretty awesome.

Once I finish my herb garden, and get a few more flowers out back that's it.  I'm done.  Which will probably be the end of our Washington summer anyway.  Perfect timing.

There's only one thing I find as therapeutic as gardening, and that's writing.  I just wish it were better exercise.

Friday Nibbles:

Random iPod shuffle song: Jay Brannan, The Freshmen

Movie of the Week: Red Riding Hood.  Watched it.  Liked it.  Bite me.

Book of the Week: In honor of her birthday today, I'm going with my friend Gae Polisner's book, The Pull of Gravity.  Happy birthday my beautiful friend.(you should all go out and buy it now.  In honor of her birthday and all)

Quote of the Week: "You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt."  ~Author Unknown

Third Degree Thursday: Desert Island Books

What are your desert island books?  I think mine would be:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach (This is seriously my favorite new book)
Never Eighteen (What? I'd want my book there!)

At least for now.  But I suppose if I were on a desert island I couldn't really change my mind now, could I.

Wending Wednesday: The Journey to Publication Part 2

When we left off, my mother-in-law had just passed away.  I was grieving with nothing but time on my hands.  I decided to write again, something I hadn't done since college.

Thing One and Thing Two were getting close to reading age, so I wanted to write something for them.  Something they could relate to and would love.  I started writing Dena Powers: Superhero?  I created characters named after my girls, who had their personalities and physical traits.  They were super excited.

It kind of started out as a hobby; I'd sit down and write between getting the kids to and from school, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping.  When everyone was at home, I'd put it aside.  But soon I was at 50 pages and I said to myself wow, this is turning into a real book.

So, I kept writing.  That 50 pages turned into 100, then 150, and about 50,000 words later, it was a novel, and I thought a pretty good one.

One day I left it at my dad's house accidentally.  He took a look and said, "This is pretty good stuff.  We should try to get you published."

So I edited.

A couple weeks later my dad emailed me: Have you seen this? 

It was an article about a new contest that was being put on by Amazon.com and Penguin.  It was called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  ABNA for short.

We all, (me, my dad, my husband) decided that I should enter my little superhero novel, so I did.

Stay tuned next week for part three.

To read part one, click here.

Below is a video I made awhile back about why I started the journey.

Tuesday Tips: The Colon

We're back with the assistance of Punctuation Made Simple.  Today's lesson is about the colon. 

Apparently, the colon is one of the easiest punctuations marks you can use.  It only does one thing in prose:  it introduces. It can introduce just about anything: a word, a phrase, a sentence, a quotation, or a list.

I've already given you a couple examples above; here are some more.

Megan has only one thing on her mind: publication.
Megan has only one thing on her mind: her book,  Never Eighteen. (Like how I squeeze a mention of my book in there?  If you click on it, you can pre-order it, hint, hint)
Megan has only one thing on her mind: she wants her book to be successful.
Megan has three things on her mind: publication, marketing, and sales.

The colon in these four sentences introduce various kinds of things: a word, a phrase, a sentence, and a list.  A colon gives special emphasis to whatever you’re introducing because readers must first come to a stop, and so they pay more attention to it.

If you aren’t sure whether you need a colon in a particular sentence, here is a handy test: read the sentence, and when you reach the colon, substitute the word namely; if the sentence reads through smoothly, then there’s a good chance that you do need a colon. For example, you can read any of the example sentences above with the word namely in the place of the colon:

Megan has only one thing on her mind, namely publication.

Megan has only one thing on her mind, namely her book,  Never Eighteen.
Megan has only one thing on her mind, namely she wants her book to be successful.
Megan has three things on her mind, namely publication, marketing, and sales.

This test may not work 100 percent of the time, but it is a fairly reliable indicator of whether you need a colon.

One word of caution: do not place the colon after the verb in a sentence, even when you are introducing something, because the verb itself introduces and the colon would be redundant. For example, you would not write:

My three favorite books are: To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Handmaid's Tale, and Lord of the Flies.

The colon is not necessary in the sentence above because the verb does the work of introducing the three books. You can check this sentence by using the test we just mentioned. It would seem awkward to read this sentence, “My three favorite books are namely, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Handmaid's Tale, and Lord of the Flies .” The fact that the sentence is awkward when you read it with namely is an indication that the colon is unnecessary. Remember, the colon shows emphasis and, therefore, you want the reader to stop at the colon before preceding on to whatever it is you are introducing.