Why I’m so doggone excited to see The Hunger Games
A lot of people are excited to see the Hunger Games. A. Lot. In fact, the odds are definitely in favor of this movie being the runaway blockbuster of 2012.
But for me, this movie is so much more.
Back in 2009, my “insider” at Barnes and Noble recommended one book. “You HAVE to read this.” I was starting a book club with two other friends from high school and we certainly needed an excuse to get together and gab each month (thus, book club.) So Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games was what started it all.
Years later, dozens of books, my book club is going strong. The group has been divided by graduate school, mission trips and life in general, but we’ve held on. We all read Catching Fire with equal fervor and we gathered at the Mockingjay book release party at Powell’s.
The Hunger Games series has ultimately been an anchor for us. It’s so much more than just a book.
There are articles, blogs and theories all over the place as to what made this book such a blockbuster and what we should really make out of all this hype. These are all great articles. Great voices. Great insights.
But for me, I know the Hunger Games is so much more than a book. To see the book from 2008 on the full screen is a culmination of years of anticipation and memories with the hope of only more years to come.
My book club and other Hunger Games addicts will all be there opening night and opening day. I’ve done my patriotic duty and spread the book around, circulated the audiobooks and blogged to my little heart’s content. (I may or may not have even downloaded Rue’s whistle as my ring tone…)
So here I am, counting down the minutes until the midnight release of the movie. (Nerd alert.) What about you? Will you be going to see HG on the Big Screen?
PS – Of course, after March 23rd, I can say with quite certainty that we’ll all be anxiously anticipating Catching Fire - scheduled for 2013 according to IMDb. 
What a tiny, itty-bitty world it is
(Please note, I didn’t title this: “It’s a small world…” because I’d have that song stuck in my head all day. Well, too late…)
As I’ve waded through the edits on my latest novel, I’ve spent hours researching the rich history of Polish Arabians (even discovering my own horses’ ancestry). You know the story behind this novel – Witez II and his incredible journey during WWII and under Nazi occupation.
Throughout this process, there have been a series of silly coincidences. From discovering my horse is of Polish descent to finding a woman from Poland within a historical fiction writing loop I’m a part of. (She was able to double check my use of Polish—a very handy resource!)
Then, came the biggest of all.
A woman at church (and our church is not that big) mentioned she’d grown up with horses her whole life and that her mother has been a long-time breeder of horses. She was dedicated in preserving the lineage and knew everything about the bloodlines and history…
I asked what kind of horses.
“Polish Arabians.”
I could hardly contain myself. There aren’t a lot of people out there with pure Polish lines. There certainly aren’t too many in the Pacific Northwest, much less a few miles from my residence.
A sample entry from the Polish Stud Book.
I spent a wonderful afternoon with the woman on her beautiful farm, surrounded by broodmares and stallions that took my breath away (even with their fuzzy winter coats.)
We spoke history, bloodlines, stallions and mares. Imports, breeders, famous Generals, other historians. She gave me a copy of her digital archive of Polish Stud Books (a record of the mares and stallions from Poland for years.)
In.cred.i.ble. My mind is still buzzing.
It’s a small world, after all.
Read MoreThe love of horses…
“An inborn love of the horse is instinctive, quite
unreasoning, and one cannot recall any beginning of
what seems to have always been there, together with a
craving for perfection in the object of interest.”
~Lady Ann Blunt~
Legend of the Bedouin
It was said the Creator
had taken a handful of South Wind
and given each newborn Arabian
the power of flight without wings.
“And now, the end is near…”
“And now, the end is near, and so I face, the final curtain…”
- Sinatra “My Way”
I’m referring to my latest manuscript, of course.
(not a cover - just me messing around in my graphic programs)
This project that I started for November’s Novel Writing Month has been a roller coaster of sorts – It is a book I began back in high school and have rewritten four times and re-edited another twenty times in between.
Having been so invested in this story and with a long and complicated history, there were times the two of us just didn’t get along. There were moments I contemplated re-writing the whole thing all over again.
But we worked out our differences. We came to compromises without sacrificing the heart of the story.
I’m thrilled and looking forward to typing “the end” – as much as I really don’t want the process to end.
Tell me about a book you read and/or wrote that you didn’t want to end.
Image credit: iStock Photo
Read MorePulling words and thoughts out of the air
Ever have those days where you just aren’t sure where your words and thoughts are even coming from?
I’ve been struggling a bit with coming up with blog topics for this week, yet I’ve been sending others handfuls of ideas for them to write in other areas. Why is my well of creativity overflowing in some areas and not others?
So, I decided the one thing to do when you don’t know what to blog about…is blogging about not knowing what to blog about.
Make sense?
Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to pull an idea out of nothing and putting that idea on paper. As a freelancer, I had no problem going after a story I was assigned. When it came to coming up with my own story idea, I faltered.
But then, ideas are everywhere. Headlines in the news. A conversation you overhear. An intriguing image. A scene you dreamt last night. A spin-off from another blog you read…
Endless possibilities. So why can’t you grasp onto just one and run with it?
I wouldn’t call it writer’s block or even a creativity block. Perhaps it is just that there is too much. Too much dammed up and waiting to overflow. That could leave you paralyzed with indecision above anything else.
So how do you overcome this?
- Just start writing. Open a notebook, a word document, a blank blog post. Write whatever comes into that little brain of yours.
- Absorb more inspiration. If you expose yourself to even more blogs, articles, topics that fill you will even more ideas, you’re bound to overflow and end up with something on the page. (Hypothetically.)
- Give in and move onto something else. But come back to it later and work through it. Sometimes you just can’t force it.
My other freebie – have a friend you can rant to and let that spill over and inspire you to get back to that typing. Skype is invaluable for said rants.
Onward, my friends. Hang in there.
Read MoreConnect with me
