Blogging challenge #3

# 3: Pass on some useful advice or information you learned and always remembered. 

Sometimes you're annoyed and you snap at people even though they're not the ones who annoyed you, and they have no idea what the heck just happened. They just know you snapped at them for no reason - which means in their eyes you're irrational, volatile, and maybe not worth hanging around. This is an excellent way to lose friends (or not make new ones).

Blogging challenge #2

#2 - If you could take three months off from your current life and do anything in the world, what would you do? 

I read an article recently about a businessman who is going to spend - I think it was a month? - some time on a tiny island in the pacific I believe. He has survival gear, that is to say the means to make water drinkable, and fishing/cooking tools. He also has high tech equipment, computer and satellite connection, so he can still run his company from the middle of nowhere.

I'm not an outdoors person by any means, but if I found enough courage, I'd love to go to some remote place and just be alone, cut off from the world for a while. I wouldn't take the computer like he did - although I would have some kind of distress signal in case I got hurt or something.

Three months without checking my email, or tumblr, or facebook, or the ratings of my books online. Three months of not jumping up every time the phone rings. Three months of not wondering if what's on tv tonight is worth watching, or if I want to pay to see that movie in the theater now or just wait for it to come out on DVD. Just three months of quiet, of worrying about nothing except for basic things like food and shelter...

I think it'd help me get back a sense of what's important and what isn't.

Blogging challenge

I am such a terrible blogger... I've left this blog languish for months. On one hand, I keep thinking, 'I need to update this! I need to let the people who care (if anybody actually does care...) know that I am working on more books! Demons World is in the final edits, and I have started working on another fantasy story.'

But then... All right. I said it. What else?

So I thought I'd take on this blogging challenge with a set list of questions and just run through each one. I probably won't post every day but once in a while is better than not at all... I hope!

Let's see what the question is for day 1...

Day 1: Describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are.

I come from France, and while I've been living in the United States for a dozen years now, being French certainly is a big part of who I am. I'm not 'just' French, though. My husband teases me and calls me 'farm girl' to his 'city boy'. I don't consider myself a farm girl, but that is where my roots are.

My grandparents were farmers, and going to the farm every Sunday when I was a child is one of my fondest memories. There was always something to do to help the grown-ups, and working with my grandmother always made me feel special.

I think it gave me an appreciation for hard work - and good work. My grandparents certainly didn't get rich raising cows and poultry or growing grains, but they raised three children who all have their heads on their shoulders and can take care of themselves and their families.

'What you reap is what you sow' is such a trite phrase, but there's no denying it's true. I only hope they would have been proud of what I've become.