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,...
Pinterest: Oh, the potential.
I’ve known about Pinterest for some time – watched others use it. I’ve had it on my to-do list for some time (I’m a social media coordinator, so it is my job to investigate such things.) Pinterest is an online pinboard. That cork board you have behind your desk with a variety of pictures and notes stuck all over it? Now you can put it online and add things, share things and repost things that catch your eye. (Yes, I hear the inner groan of some of you – another social network thingy?) But, oh. The potential. For writers: – My dear friend and blogger extraordinnaire, Caitlin Muir, suggested to...
Book Review: All Our Worldly Goods
Description: Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and the family patriarch, the tyrannical industrialist Julien Hardelot, provoking a family feud which cascades down the generations. This is Balzac or The Forsyte Saga on a smaller, more intimate scale, the bourgeoisie observed close-up, with Némirovsky’s characteristically sly humour and clear-eyed compassion. Full of drama and heartbreak, and telling observations of the devastating effects of two wars on a small town and an industrial family, Némirovsky is at the height of her powers. Taut, evocative and beautifully paced, the novel points out with heartbreaking detail and clarity how close those two wars were, how history repeated...
Our most precious resource
In my rodeo queen days, I competed for the title of Miss Teen Rodeo Washington. This was the most intense pageant I’d entered and I have to confess I certainly couldn’t resist comparing it to the movie “Miss Congeniality.” There were many similarities. But all the girls tended to joke about it and yet we all took it very seriously. For us, the chance to represent rodeo and ride our horses as our talent was worth it. However, I’d constantly joked about talking about “world peace” when it came to the on-stage, impromptu questions. In Miss Congeniality, that’s what all the contestants answer when “Stan Fields” asks them “What is...
My new home away from home
Not literally. But for my latest manuscript, I’ve spent hours pouring over every picture and bit of information I can find about Janow Podlaski Stud in eastern Poland. Isn’t it beautiful? I’m pretty sure I’ve dreamed about it every night for a month. In 1817, Tsar Alexander commissioned Janow Stud to supply the cavalry and stock for the nation. Years later, it would become the most famous producer of purebred Arabian and half-Arabians in the country. But the history of Janow is full of turmoil and invasion. In World War I, the horses were evacuated to Russia and never seen again. In 1939, the invading Russians took with them some of...