Time flies when you're having fun!

There is that old adage that goes 'Time flies when you're having fun.'  Time does seem to be going faster and faster, but maybe it's because I seem to be getting busier and busier that I just stop noticing time.  Time only drags when we have nothing to do and spend our time staring at the clock willing the seconds to tick by.  Some days I wish I had the time to stare at the clock.  I'm not always sure that I'm having fun, but I am definitely filling up my time.

One person that seems to be spending his time wisely and having fun is YA author J.A. Beard. 

J.A. Beard is a restless soul who is luckily married to an equally restless soul. His two children are too young yet to discuss whether or not they are restless souls. When he hasn’t been writing, studying history, or making excuses for not writing, he’s tried his hand at several careers including intelligence analysis, programming, and research science. Though he likes to declare himself the Pie Master, he’s yet to prove his worth in the brutal baking show-downs of Celebration, Florida.  J.A. Beard has taken The Wizard of Oz and had a lot of fun with it, turning it into contemporary YA fantasy. 

In this loose re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz, Kansas teen Gail Dorjee has tried to escape from the pain of her parents' death by retreating into a hard shell of anger and sarcasm.
When her aunt and uncle ship her off to an elite Seattle boarding school, Osland Academy, she spends her first day making enemies, including the school's most powerful clique, the Winged, and their leader, the ruthless Diana.
Social war and the school's uptight teachers are only mild annoyances. Mysterious phone outages, bizarre behavioral blocks, and strange incidents suggest Osland is focused on something much more sinister than education.
Now Gail has to survive at Osland with a pretty pathetic assortment of potential allies: her airhead roommate, a cowardly victim of the Winged, and Diana's cold but handsome boyfriend, Nick.

We are very privileged to have J.A. Beard contribute to my blog.  He's written a great post titled 'Speaking With Them Not At Them.'

                The question of how “young adult fiction” is defined is often asked during discussions of YA works. Many people who don’t read a lot of YA work tend to assume that any story with a non-adult protagonist is young adult (or, if the protagonist is young enough, middle grade fiction). It’s a seductively easy way to try and label such work, but it’s also somewhat misguided.

                Obviously character age is important, but it’s not the whole picture. Is it more about subject matter? Despite the eternal “What’s acceptable for YA?” debate, a review of critically acclaimed and commercially successful YA fiction tends to suggest that, when treated well, no particular subject is off-limits. Perhaps none should be. YA readers are on the cusp of full adulthood and trying to keep important and difficult themes and subjects out of their fiction is a denial of their expanding maturity and responsibility.

                So if it’s not purely age nor is it subject matter, then what defines young adult fiction? For me, it’s perspective and voice. People at different stages of their life have different perspectives, difference biases, and different ways of thinking. The relative popularity of first person in YA in reflects an attempt to more strongly present the perspective and voice of the non-adult characters. Even for books written in third person, that difference in how it is written is so important in helping the book connect with YA readers. There are so many ways to do this: word choice, emphasis, and general style.

Now some might ask if it’s even all that important to have stories told with the perspective and voice of young adult characters. Plenty of stories include non-adult characters but don’t bother to orient the main style of the narrative around them. Teen readers are more than capable of reading books not explicitly targeting them.

                Sure, teen readers are, but in an age where books are competing for time against so many distractions, do we really want to reduce the chance of any reader connecting with a book?

              Also, the whole idea is a bit unfair. Although people read a wide variety of books and genres (as well they should to expand their horizons) there’s also a certain appeal in connecting with stories you find relatable.  It’s a validation of a reader as a person and an acknowledgement that their perspective has validity.

              I’ll even take this a step farther. I’ve often heard people complain about not understanding teens. If that’s the case, then it would seem some non-teens need to dive into popular (and therefore resonating with readers) YA fiction written from the perspective of teens. Maybe it’ll help expand their “adult” perspective.  J.A. Beard

J.A. Beard blogs at riftwatcher.blogspot.com and is on Twitter as @jabeard_rf.

His current release, a young adult urban fantasy, THE EMERALD CITY, details the transition of a Kansas teen to a sinister Seattle boarding school. It’s available for sale at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Emerald-City-ebook/dp/B00761LCTY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330061232&sr=8-1

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-emerald-city-ja-beard/1108613536?ean=2940014100717&itm=1&usri=the+emerald+city+beard

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Emerald-City/book-QKfF05Zk3kuwJvUYHp0tWg/page1.html

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/130023

Psychadelic Pink Fake Fur

This is a true story.

Last Friday when I came home from school, I gasped with shock the minute I stepped over the threshold into my sitting room.  At the far end was my bookshelf.  The lovely blue and gold Thai silk runner had been replaced with a psychadelic pink fake fur piece of fabric.  A piece of fabric that was kept in a box upstairs with other pieces of fake fur - a leftover from my teddy bear making days.  My housekeeper had obviously decided to give the Thai silk runner a wash, and had turned her nose up at the other really nice tasteful runners I have, and opted for the psychadelic pink fake fur.  Now, while I appreciate the bright and colourful, the psychadelic pink fur was well...nauseating.  I almost felt like I needed to wear sunglasses in the house.  To make matters worse, she arranged my wooden map of Africa at a tilt on its side and she fetched the toy purple poodle from my daughter's bedroom and placed it as an ornament on the psychadelic fur.  It was all a little much, but she obviously thought it was attractive.  I collapsed in the chair and stared mesmerised at the bookshelf.  Could I be bothered to change it?

The next morning I found myself sitting in the chair again, contemplating my pink fur runner.  Siobhan came tripping down the stairs, her eyes full of sleep.  "You still looking at that pink thing?  If you don't like it, why don't you change it?"  And she flopped down on the couch next to her jeans she'd climbed out of the night before, the pile of dvds scattered everywhere, and her smelly dirty socks.
"You know," I muttered sadly, "I pray to God nobody comes to visit us.  I have a psychadelic pink fake fur runner, a shocking pink knee rug Grace has covered the coffee table with; and my lovely bedspread from India has been put on the dining room table as a table cloth!  Then to make matters worse, look at your crap lying all over the floor."  I shook my head, giving up.  There was no point in arguing with her.  The day before she'd told me it was my fault she was untidy because I employed a housekeeper.  Teenagers.
"Get real Mom, who comes to visit?" she sneered nastily.  "If you don't like it, stop whining and change it.  Do something about it."  She sashayed out the sitting room and went back upstairs to get ready to go out.

Of course, I had just returned home after dropping her off at a party when I had an unexpected guest.  Luckily, earlier when Siobhan was in the shower I'd taken her dirty plates to the kitchen and picked up the dvds and thrown away her dirty tissues.  But, I'd left the dirty smelly socks where she'd left them under the couch, and hadn't yet gotten around to changing the psychadelic fur.  My lack of motivation to get up the energy to change my decor resulted in me having to apologise profusely for the state of my sitting room.  It was embarrassing.

Today, one week later, I get home from school and the psychadelic pink fake fur fabric is still on my bookshelf as a runner.  A week has gone by and I still haven't changed it.  What signals am I sending out?  My housekeeper obviously assumes I'm happy with her interior decorating skill; my daughter thinks that I don't mind living in a bomb shelter.  This got me thinking.  When we are unhappy with a situation, what messages do we give other people when we make no effort to change it because we can't be bothered. 

Inside, I am very bothered, it's driving me mad, but change takes energy, it takes effort.  Many times in life, we just complain and whinge about situations we don't like.  We have the power to change it, but we can't be bothered.  It's too much effort.  So, we learn to live with it or around it.  We accept things we shouldn't accept.  We lower our standards.  And as we get more and more used to a bad situation, the less likely we'll make the effort to change it.  Mahatma Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."  Nobody but you can change the situation which is bothering you.  You have to get up, find the energy and make that change.  Throw away the psychadelic pink fur runner.  Hide it where the housekeeper can never find it again.  Make that change, don't turn a blind eye and just put up with it.  Do something about it.

Besides thinking about how we go about changing unpleasant things, which I can blame entirely on my housekeeper and the psychadelic pink fake fur, I've also been thinking a bit about why we say sorry and how many times we really mean it.  So I wrote a hub about it which you can check out here http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-do-we-say-sorry.

Long weekend here this weekend, and my goal is to write, write, write.  I want to try and finish my up trip part of The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari.  Have a great weekend and remember, make those changes in your life which are making you unhappy.  Everyone deserves to be happy.
love
Cindy

Just get up and brush yourself off

Why is it that sometimes everything just seems to get you down? I came back from India all excited, I'd survived another plane trip, proof that I'd conquered my fear of flying, and then sank into a depression. Every little thing that I'd normally ignore, irritated and frustrated the hell out of me. There were many times this past week, when I was ready to load up my car with our stuff and just start driving to the Malawi border, heading back down to Cape Town.

In retrospect, it could be as a result of a very long term. I'm just feeling a little burnt-out, brain-dead. Friday was a holiday at school so we had a nice long weekend. I thought I'd head into school anyway, and do my planning for my new unit of inquiry. The internet was so slow at school, it was taking 40-50 minutes to load a page. The server kept crashing and I could find no sign of the past planners I was supposed to use as a base for my new one. My co-ordinator who had promised faithfully to come in and help me plan the unit, was a no-show. It was time to pack up the car and drive into the sunset. I was so mad with frustration at not being able to get anything done, that I went straight home and made it my mission to finish The Case of Billy B.

So, if I look back and reflect on what could be a nightmarish week workwise, I can feel proud and satisfied that I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing 50 000 words in 30 days. Yesterday, I finally finished my first draft of The Case of Billy B and now the editing starts. The serious editing and revising. I should have started that already, but as it's such a big job, I've been procrastinating. Siobhan had a sleepover last night and the blasted girls were banging things, breaking glasses and giggling until 5am when in frustration I got up and washed the dishes and had a cup of coffee. No sleep for me last night, so no wonder I'm not in an editing mood. "Sorry," Siobhan sang as I stomped down the stairs at 5am. "Too late for sorry," I snapped back, wondering how I can punish her for keeping me awake all night.

It was a good day to finish my first draft though, as the 28th November is my late grandmother, Winifred Ada Vine's birthday. My grandmother meant the world too me, and although she's been gone sixteen years, I still miss her so much.

Instead of editing this morning, I collected all the ripe tomatoes from my garden and started making a tomato chutney. Which reminds me, I'd better go and give it a stir. I promise when I'm finished that, I'll get stuck into my work even though it is Sunday. I just feel so shattered, so tired. Those damn girls!

So I guess what I'm wanting to say, is when you feel down, just get up and brush yourself off. And remember, as it says in the Bible, "This too shall pass."

Have a great week ahead!

love

Cindy

My sausage machine has packed up!

And, am I devastated, no, just a little annoyed. Actually, more than annoyed. Made in China should come with hazard warnings for the mental anguish it causes. My one month old dvd player packed up last week. This is now the third dvd player in as many years. In a way, I'm relieved my sausage machine has broken down because I am a little sick of spending weekends making sausages. But I am still annoyed. Ah, conflicting emotions.

Well, my one week's holiday has come and gone. I didn't achieve a quarter of what I wanted to achieve, But, have packed 6 boxes, read 2 books and written about 4 articles, oh, and climbed down Purple Mountain, and made 10kg of sausages, the last 5kg with the old hand machine that takes forever and kills my back.

Happy Easter. My first Easter holiday in 4 years. First time school holidays coincided with Easter. But of course, no Easter eggs here. Just very expensive imported German ones at the Metro. I made my own hot cross buns which were delicious and toasted some in the oven this morning.

Ah, Happy Days, Siobhan is stomping around because the ayi has emptied out her school bag and she can't find anything. Shouting at me won't get her anywhere as I have no clue where her school stuff is. And, if I tell her that she shouldn't have left it lying around and also shouldn't have waited until 10.32pm to get ready for school the next day, it'll go down like a lead balloon.

Here's the rss feed from my hubpages account. Read some of my articles if you have a spare minute! http://hubpages.com/author/cindyvine/latest/?rss