Hi everyone,
I'm sure that by now you all know about Avon's new digital line. This is exciting news for the industry which is rapidly changing day by day. Between self publishing and keeping the major royalties all to yourself, and the choices we have now in E-Publishing houses, authors are facing new decisions and have more say in their career arc. Of course, we probably would all love to be published with the big New York houses, but that is becoming more and more difficult for aspiring new writers.
I may try my hand at self publishing and promoting on Amazon, Smashword, etc. but I'm not all that savvy, and know it will take a lot of time and effort, with an undetermined outcome. Some writers have made it big by going this route, but they are the exception not the rule. Avon has an interesting submission page, and I must admit it's a little challenging. I've spent the past two days trying to figure out my best scene, my best line, etc., but I'm definitely giving it a shot.
I'm opening this up for discussion. What do you think about the traditional publishers going digital, and do you see the benefits of having their margeting team, versus self publishing?

I was at the Epicon conference last week and attended a fantastic presentation by Angela Knights on how to write a good sex scene. Here is more or less what Angela said—I hope I got it right, Angela.

Love scenes illustrate the development of romance and show the way people feel about each other. A love scene reveals characters, enhances the conflict, and develops the romance.

Love scene and the characters:
How does it reveal the hero? The hero must be experienced. Don’t ever write about a virgin hero! Mention his romantic and sexual history before the first sex scene.
Show how his attitude toward the heroine change in the course of your story
Show how the heroine helps him develop his strengths and overcome his weaknesses.

The love scene should reveal how he makes love to the heroine, how he finds her different from past lovers, and how his way change toward her by the end of the story.

Before a love scene, we should also know the heroine’s romantic history: how does she feel about sex? In historical romances, a love scene is a big conflict for the heroine who is usually not experienced. Give the heroine good reasons to trust the hero enough to sleep with him. Picking up a hero in a bar and making love with him is dangerous and borderline erotica.

Is she sexually confident?
How does making love to him change her?
Does she gain confidence in them as a couple?
Let the heroine take the lead in some scenes.

Love scenes make them both grow. A love scene is always a turning point. You develop the plot with a love scene. You also develop the conflict with a sex scene. To intensify the conflict through a love scene you can make him dominant if she doesn’t like an alpha hero. And then make her reaction to him strong and dramatic. Let one character turn the tables on the other—heroine dominates the hero.

Logistic of a love scene:
A hero can’t go directly to kissing before a few steps of touching that establish trust.
You have to create the environment of trust for her to accept his kiss.
Love scenes should complicate the situation: A love scene is a critical turning point. What problems does it cause? How does it change the way the characters view each other now?
To know if your love scenes make sense read them back to back by themselves and see if the romance grows and develops through these love scenes.

Love scene pacing:
Where does the love scene fall in the romance? What kind of emotion do you want to communicate? The love scene can intensify the mood: We are at our most vulnerable when making love. This is a perfect time for drama. Taking off clothes is a big act of trust.
Or it can lighten the mood: for example it will keep a romantic suspense or a thriller from getting too dark.
Watch your timing: Characters who are supposed to be hunting the bad guys can’t waste their time making love. Don’t follow a gruesome murder with a love scene.

Love scene construction:
Don’t rush. Good lovers take their time. You need at least five pages for a satisfying love scene, for emotional impact. Don’t cheat the reader
Set the scene with a sensual environment: sharp vivid emotions with five senses. A long pre-scene is acceptable but stay clear of purple prose.

Who makes the first move? Stay within characters.
More interesting when there is more than one objective to the love scene.

Sexual roles of hero and heroine: The heroine sets the sexual pace. She decides when characters make love because she’s the one who has the most to lose.

Concentrate on sensual details. Focus on sensations that characters feel. Use lots of sensual details, smell, touch, taste. Reader doesn’t want to guess.
It’s always better to be in her point of view. Don’t shift POV in the middle of a sex scene.

Use a lot of emotion to give love scenes their power.
Use dialog during a love scene.

Pillow talk: remember blood doesn’t go to a man’s brain when it rushes elsewhere. So keep dialog lines short and sexy. Moans are not considered dialog!!! Use sense of humor and keep tenderness to the last chapter otherwise your story is over.
Keep sex language appropriate to time and characters.
Keep heat levels corresponding to your readers’ comfort. Trade paperback and ebooks allow sexier content than mass market in terms of language and erotic details.
Look at other books in the same genre to decide what you can get away with.

Happy Ever After: Readers want to know what it’s like to find HEA with a sexy hero. Capture that experience with passion and imagination.

Remember that your first paragraph sells your book and your last paragraph sells your next book.
{more details in A Guide To Write Erotic Romance by Angela Knights}

My new book Rx in Russian follows Angela Knights’s advice. It has a great sensual tension and a memorable love scene.

Release date April 11, 2011!!

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat.

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN winner of 2009 Best Romance Novel at Preditors & Editors and winner of 2009 Best Contemporary Romance at Readers Favorite.
Rx FOR TRUST, winner of 2010 Best Contemporary Romance at Readers Favorite and 2011 EPICON.
http://www.monarisk.com/

It is Monday and I’m still reeling from the pictures and information I’ve received regarding the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan--the voices urging people to help, the worried lines marring brows, the vacant states of people still in shock at the devastation.

As a writer, I always try to write emotion that is true and touching. Looking at the recent faces of tragedy shown on television and captured in pictures in the newspapers, I’m not sure my words would be enough. One picture, in particular, caught my attention. A grandmother was hugging her granddaughter, weeping in relief and gratefulness. I have two granddaughters of my own and felt those emotions with her. There were many other faces caught in a touching moment.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan and those people from around the world who live and work there. As many of you writers know, Alesia Holliday is in Japan and is, thankfully, all right. Pam, is your daughter affected by this? So many people, such fright, so many tears.

Disasters like this remind me that we are, indeed, a community of nations --one world—and the faces of tragedy belong to us all.

Have you ever been caught in a disaster?

The weather is finally getting warm and the rain has gone for a few days. Makes me want to go outside and work in the yard
It is beginning to feel like Spring here in Georgia.

The weather is finally getting warm and the rain has gone for a few days. Makes me want to go outside and work in the yard.Makes me want to go outside and work in the yard.

Now don't get me wrong, I love a beautiful yard, it's just that yard work isn't my cup of tea.

My grandmother loved working in the yard. She would putter around her yard for hours on end. I, on the other hand, have to force myself to go out side to work in the yard.

Strutting around the yard putting on a bright display just isn't my thing. I'm much rather lounge around with a good book than climb a tree. Or take a nap to get my beauty sleep. Still, when spring rolls around I think of pretty flowers and time in the yard.

I am sorry to be late posting this. But, I just got back from the Hospice hospital.
Hospice is a support group for those who are dying. They have a Hospice hospital here in West Palm Beach and it's almost like a motel room. You can stay over, come in at any time, or even bring your ill relatives dog to visit.
My husband and I have been dealing with his very sick brother. He is not that old, but has really abused his body to the point where his liver is at end stage. Four days ago, they handed us the names of funeral homes, told us to straiten his affairs and say goodbye.
Then I told his 96 year old aunt he was dying. She said don't worry, I am gonna pray for him. Now I was raised Catholic and I believe in God, there has to be something that made our universe. Well at least in my mind, it had to start somewhere. But I never believed prayer helped other then to comfort the prayer. She told her gazillion kids who had masses said and added their prayers.
Every day we visited him and he was barely aware, if at all, of what was going on. He was bleeding internally and over the course of a few days they had given him close to 30 pints of blood. They said he would bleed out because the liver produces clotting factor and he had none. Chris cried, I have never seen him do that.before. Even if his brother did drugs he still loves him. I could tell you things he's done that would curl your hair.
Well yesterday he was sitting up and eating a burger and fries. Huh?? I thought he'd be dead. They said no one comes back from a place that far gone. He cannot move his legs and they don't know why. But he asked for chocolate and is calling us every ten minutes. They told us he was stable and wouldn't get any better, when he became conscious. They were gonna feed him through a tube. But sent him a tray and I fed him. Yesterday he was eating by himself.
Now my point is this. There has to be some power in prayer, because for him to come back from deaths door and eat is a miracle. And miracles must have something to do with a higher power in my mind. So I am rethinking the prayer thing. Heck I might even go to church soon. I could use some help. I think I'm gonna call his aunt and tell her to pray for me too!Something happened that gave him more time. He is still very ill and they feel he might die, but now they are not sure it will be right away and we will have to put him in a rehab place eventually. Who knows he might go home someday and I can give him back his beautiful German Shepherd dog. Two dogs that big is really hard on me. You just never know. Where is God? In your heart always if you believe...
Miracles do happen don't they?!?!

This exquisitely beautiful book came to my attention last summer in Black Mountain, North Carolina while my mother, daughter, and I were browsing a quaint used bookstore–a fitting book for a charming store.  Dated 1906, the journal spans the changing seasons with wonderful illustrations painted by the Edwardian Lady herself, Edith Holden.  The highly talented Edith weaves in quotes and poems fitting to the season or plant uppermost in her mind on any given day, as well as her thoughts and observations on the wildlife surrounding her home in the village of Olton, Warwickshire, England.

Apparently Edith kept her journal hidden away and it wasn’t discovered for seventy years.  The diary was then published posthumously in 1977, the copyright date of the book I chanced upon.  I’m not sure the extremely private Edith would approve, but her lovely journal has been a blessing to many.

The Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady is a delight for gardener/ nature lovers, and anyone who appreciates beauty.  Her writing and illustrations are wonderful.

Of course, Amazon has some used copies available.  And the journal was the basis for atelevision series released in 1984.

Of the month of March she says, in part, she has many more pages on March:

“Gathered some of the young crimson catkins of the black poplar. The last few days have been very cold and dry with a keen north wind, and any quantity of March dust in evidence.  This morning I saw Frog spawn which had been brought in from a pond….

Cycled to Bushwood on a still, grey day with beautifully dry roads. March is going out like a lamb….the woods will be carpeted with primroses in a week or twos’ time, but I found quantities of primroses and sweet violets both blue and white on the banks of the fields and the roadsides.  

I found the first dog violet I have seen in blossom this year at the top of Dick’s Lane; the cowslips are only in bud yet, but everywhere the celandine made the ditches bright, and the strawberry leaved cinquefoil spangled the banks…I saw two robins’ and two blackbirds’ nests…and a number of sweet birds as I spun along between the hedges.   A tiny greenish grey bird flashed across the road, I thought for a minute it was a warbler, but as it emerged into sight again I saw it was a golden-crested wren.

…March has been a very cold month, but dry on the whole.  There were two or three bright genial days in the first week that were like a foretaste of summer.”

Of the many lovely quotes she includes is this one by Shakespeare:

“Daffodils that come before the swallow dares, And take the winds of March with beauty.” 

Good Tuesday to you! You will NOT believe who I found wandering around today. Mary Buckham passed our door several times, so I grabbed her and dragged her inside. Please welcome her and ask tons of questions. She loves them.

Mary Buckham is an award-winning fiction writer, co-author with Dianna Love of BREAK INTO FICTION: ™: 11 Steps to Building a Story That Sells from Adams Media, co-founder of www.WriterUniv.com and a highly sought after instructor both on-line and at live workshops around the country. To find out more about Mary, her Manuscript, Synopsis and Query help, her Lecture Packets, Workshops and Writing projects visit www.MaryBuckham.com. Mary will also be teaching her last SYNOPSIS online workshop for 2011 next week through www.Writersclassesonline.com – she hopes she’ll see some of you there!

Seven Deadly Sins of Synopsis Writing

By Mary Buckham

St. Gregory the Great articulated the original Seven Deadly Sins - – pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth –transgressions that caused the death not of the body but of the soul. Committing the Seven Deadly Synopsis Sins won’t exactly doom your soul, but they might smash your chances at getting your manuscript a decent read in the hands of overworked, and harried editors and agents.

I have had the pleasure of working with thousands of writers of all genres. I work with them one-on-one to review, analyze and tweak their synopses to make them the strongest selling tools possible. As a result I’ve been able to see, from an editor/agent’s perspective, what comes across their desks daily and why some synopses work and others don’t.

All things being equal editors and agents need, require synopses to do two things. 1) show them that you have a cohesive plot worthy of their time and attention and 2) allow them to sell your story to editors [if in the hands of an agent] senior editors, the Marketing department, the Overseas acquisition editors, etc., etc.

Strong synopses showcase your characters, your plot and your ability to structure a story. If a synopsis sucks it makes it oh so easy for an agent or editor to pass on reading your manuscript.

The following Synopsis Sins – if eliminated – will not guarantee a sale, or even a full read, but the absence of them will make your synopsis, and thus you and your story, stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Sin 1) Too Many Proper Names to Track. You’ve lived with your characters for months or years in the writing of your manuscript. But to a cold reader, which is what an editor or agent is, they are simply proper names and do not give any information. Try and keep your proper names to a limit of three. Example: If I say Jim, Bill and Bob went to the grocery story – you have no image. If I say my husband, son and dog went to the store – you have a stronger image.

SIN 2) Too much detail. A synopsis is meant to show the structure—the plot of your story. Save the details for your manuscript. Anytime you are writing your synopsis and move your characters around on the page, or include fascinating bits of research or scene specific minutia, or quoted dialogue – you are showing scene detail.

SIN 3) Making passive or past tense instead of active and present. Passive phrasing and past tense phrasing in a synopsis both have a purpose when used correctly, but when over used can 1) flatline your synopsis until it sounds like that homework report and 2) make an editor/agent wonder if whatever is being described on the page is back story or current story.

SIN 4) Not Finishing the Synopsis. Your synopsis doesn’t really tell the end of your story because you want to keep the surprising twist or revelation a secret. Not a good idea.

SIN 5) Not Using Transitions to change POV or Time or Place. Because a synopsis is a snap shot of your whole book you lead an editor/agent through your story--or through different points of view -- over just a few pages. What can easily happen as you are shifting POV’s, or shift in physical location or time passage—is you jar a reader out of your story. Every time you raise a question: But I thought the protagonist and villain were there instead of here, you risk losing your reader. Do this often enough and it’s easy for them to put down your synopsis and your manuscript.

SIN 6) Not unfolding the synopsis as the story unfolds.

Sin #6 falls closely on the heels of Sin #5 - no transitions, because the lack of transitions is often covering up this all too common problem of jumping back and forth, from back story to current story, to the POV of a secondary character’s back story, to what will happen at the end of the story, then back to the beginning. It’s enough to make an editor/agent’s head spin.

SIN 7) Raising Questions in a synopsis in the wrong places. In our manuscripts we use questions to show internal thought. But in our synopses, because we are telling, NOT showing, we don’t want to include external dialogue or internal dialogue. Both are scene detail and bog down a synopsis. Step away from the showing and summarize whatever it is you are indicating by your question. Instead of asking an editor what might happen – tell an editor what’s happening.

Now what about you? Have you taken a quick look at your own synopses and found yourself guilty of any of the sins? Or if you aren’t quite sure and want to get a cold read and feel comfortable posting up to a few sentences feel free to do so. I’m here to answer questions, commiserate over what a pain synopsis writing is in general and perhaps offer some suggestions or tweaks that can take your own synopsis from the slush pile to a stand out.

Feel free to comment and out of those who do comment one name will be drawn for a copy of BREAK INTO FICTION™: 11 Steps to Building a Story That Sells or one-on-one help with a query letter – your choice.

Thank You, Mary!

Hi Everyone,
It's another day of savings, so here goes:

restaurant.com is offering a 70% savings off on restaurant certificates with coupon code "FORK" (yes, really).

Get your free Perricone product samples at:
http://blog.perriconemd.com/thank-you/

The rumor is that CVS has clearances this week on combs, brushes, and hair accessories. I love CVS, and never go a week without shopping there, so check it out.

Target is said to be offering LCD TV's on clearance at great buys. If you purchase a floor stock model, you'll receive an additional 10% savings.

Writers always need flash drives, and superbiz.com is offering an 8 GB.flash drive for $11.99 with free shipping. Use coupon code APPLE5105, but use it quickly because it expires today, March 7th.
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=ST3U8EDB&c=CJ

Another freebie is the free Target Beauty Bag, a $25.00 value, for filling out a short survey. We writers need to take care of ourselves!
http://samples.target.com/beauty-bag/

Happy shopping!

Favorite quote: "I can't afford to save any more money".

Hi Everyone,
It's that time of month again--time to save money!

I love magazines, and these are 2 excellent choices,which are almost free. Tanga.com is offering the following specials until Sunday evening:

Taste of Home magazine is $3.99 for the year using coupon code TASTE
Family Circle magazine is $3.99 for 15 issues using coupon code CIRCLE

Panda Express is offering a free entree this week. "Like" them on facebook in order to print a free Garden Treasure Shrimp entree on March 9th.

Groupon.com (surely you subscribe to groupon!!) is offering 5 movies for $2.00 at the Blockbuster Express Kiosks nationwide.

Walmart.com is offering a free sample of Oxy Clinical face wash if you fill out the following short survey:

https://secure.startsampling.com/sm/walmart/captureAddress.iphtml?item=101663&source=&url=http://www.startsampling.com/sm/oxyclinical101633

And, Jazzercise is offering free Friday classes through the month of March. Use the following coupon:
http://www.jazzercise.com/pdfs/11free_friday_printcpn.pdf

I have another savings tip to share, which was mentioned once on a money-saving TV show. Purchase hankies at your favorite discount store and use them instead of tissues. It's great for the environment, and can save loads of money over time.

Happy Shopping!

Favorite quote: "I can't afford to save any more money".

Please help me welcome J L Murphey today.

I met Jo Murphey years ago at Southeastern Writers Workshop held each summer on St Simons Island at Epworth by the Sea. An entire week hanging around writers and attending workshops was a last!

Jo and I immediately became partners in crime and laughed at almost everything while we shared our love for writing and life in general. She agreed to share her feelings and suggestions about a topic familiar to most writers.

Welcome, Jo! I am so glad you are here with us!

Creativity Flow and the Block

I've heard many a writer complain about writer's block. This is common especially with the weather here warming up and the sun shining. Anyone with sense would rather be outdoors, because of this writers have a tendency to feel a lapse in creative juices flowing. One writer friend of mine thought she'd killed her brain cells dealing with her creativity. This was my response to her, but it works for just about any writer.

Ya didn't kilt yo' noggin'. It's jist takin' itself a wee little nap is all.

Translation needed, I've spent far to many hours in my southern fiction- You didn't kill your brain. It's just napping.

At times you brain needs a little break from creative overload-itis. Eventually, the well will run dry. You need to fall back and recharge your creative juices. Since the weather is nice, and it has been glorious here too, go outside and enjoy nature. Plant a garden, tend some flower beds, clip the hedges back.

Life is about balance. While at times, I can pound away at this keyboard for hours on end, barely eating and sleeping, and do nothing but write. But then there are the other times, when my stories stay minimized on my screen or stares at me just waiting...and waiting...and waiting. I've written five words in the past 24 hours. (Five-count 'em, thumb, index finger, birdie finger, ring finger, and pinky). It is hard to create a creative flash of genius. In fact, it's impossible. Sometimes, your brain hits a lull and as a writer you have to allow yourself this lull. Think about a river, it ebbs and flows. It is not constant. There are floods with snow melts, the every day flow, and then there is a drought where the water flow is a trickle. Creativity is the same way.

For me, I grab a handful of workshop or other author's chapters, a red pen, and head for the bathroom for a full fledged bubble bath. Something about a hot soak in the bath tub. It recharges my energies or makes me fall asleep which ever is needed most. Other times, I'll turn on the DVD player and watch favorite movies, which I know will spark something creative in me. Yet still other times, the juices will not flow (they can be stubborn in a logjam). I call this my writer's block moments. I will play scrabble, boggle, and few other word-mind games. Grab a friend and reenact a murder with water pistols in hotel hallways to see which way a body will fall. I know it sounds silly, but the idea is to lighten up. Eventually, normally within two days, the dam will break and an inkling of creativity will peek through and then... the "Ah-ha" moment, or the "What if I did this...," or the "I know how to fix this!"

The more you stress over the lack of creativity, the more you shoot yourself in the foot. Creativity can not survive in a vacuum. Which whether you realize it or not...sitting behind your desk staring at the computer screen creates a vacuum. Creativity can not flow against stress. If you are experiencing writer's block, you are stressing about it. Creativity needs to be nurtured and pampered like a newborn baby. It is not something you can force yourself to be. Be kind to yourself and your creative flow...take a break. It will come.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jlmurphey

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/40926 E-book
http://www.wordclay.com/BookStore/BookStoreBookDetails.aspx?bookid=64722 POD

http://jomurphey.blogspot.com/ My Blog

Email contacts

jomurphey@comcast.net

Adding to Mona's post yesterday, I was a reenactor for Drake's Raid in St. Augustine at the Castillo de San Marcos. In 1585, English pirates fired their muskets at townspeople at the Santa Domingo.

Sir Francis Drake is famous for circumnavigating the globe and defeating the Spanish Armada—not for ransacking a town of 300 inhabitants called St. Augustine. However, the reenactment of that historic day, June 6, 1586, has taken place for 135 years. The Historic Florida Militia presents its reenactment at the Fountain of Youth every year beginning in the morning and continuing until nearly sundown. The Fountain of Youth hosts a military encampment with demonstrations of cooking, military maneuvers, some crafting, and other activities typical of 16th century life in a newly established Spanish colony. The sacking and burning of the town is reenacted in the evening, generally beginning at 8 p.m. on Aviles Street. A procession of soldiers marches from there to St. George Street and continues to the City Gate, where a skirmish will break out. The skirmish is a tactical demonstration of the Spanish rear-guard action with simulated combat. The activities are a symbolic commemoration of one of St. Augustine’s fiery moments in history.

I've included some pictures of my horse Alegre, me, my friend Helen and her horse Excalibur (I'm in the red hat) at the reenactment.

My favorite period for reenactments is the English Civil War but the reenactments are difficult to find. I no longer ride or participate in reenactments but both are sorely missed.

Have you ever been to St. Augustine?

That quaint city is only a few hours driving from my home in Ft. Lauderdale. To think I’ve been roaming the world and admiring foreign landmarks without realizing that I have a historical place within close proximity.

St. Augustine boasts several American first or oldest sites. It was the capital of Spain’s La Florida and a thriving coastal town before the first English settlement was established at Jamestown, VA.

Built in 1672-1695, the first fortress in America, Castillo de San Marcos, helped protect Spain’s treasure fleets from the English and pirates. Designed by Cuban Engineers, it is the oldest fort in the United States and was designated as America’s first national monument.
Government House, built in 1598 served as the residence of the governors of Spanish Florida. In 2001, spanish King Juan Carlos gave a speech from its balcony.

The Oldest House was built in 1702. It was the home of St. Augustine mayor.

In September 8, 1565, Don Pedro Menedez de Avilles came ashore and founded the first permanent settlement in what is now the United States. On that date, Father Francisco Lopez offered the first Mass here--a site that became the home of the first Catholic parish in the nation. Our Lady de la Leche is the oldest Christian site in the United States.

Plaza de la Constitucion is the town square.

The Oldest School.

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat.

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN winner of 2009 Best Romance Novel at Preditors & Editors and winner of 2009 Best Contemporary Romance at Readers Favorite.
Rx FOR TRUST, winner of 2010 Best Contemporary Romance at Readers Favorite and 2011 EPICON.
http://www.monarisk.com/

At long last, March has arrived.  After spending much of January and most all of February sick with one thing or another, I tottered forth into the sunshine and managed to accomplish a few much-needed errands.  Now I’m whacked and feeling it’s time for a nap.  That’s what seemingly endless virus’s will do to a body.  Considering I’m not the only sufferer in the  Shenandoah Valley or the country, I think most everyone except the die-hard skiing fanatics would agree that what we all need is SPRING!  A tonic to mind, body, and spirit.

To that end, I point out the snow crocus and snowdrops blooming here and there in sheltered spots of my yard and garden.    Welcome green shoots of crocus, daffodils, tulips…are pushing up through the earth most everywhere, and today the weather is supposed to be sunny and 60 degrees.   The pussy willow is bursting forth with catkins, and fussy barnyard geese are laying eggs.   I conclude it’s early spring and much prefer that term to ‘late winter.’  Far more mood brightening.

In keeping with the season, I’m sorting through boxes stuffed with envelopes of seeds leftover from the past year or two and ordering more (we count our wealth in seeds) as well as potatoes, strawberries, culinary herbs and all things garden.   Which as far as I’m concerned equals all things good as any true gardener will agree.  I also save seed, am a big fan of  heirloom seeds, and have been known to share  so I’m not simply hording my treasure trove.

An excellent place to be for those in want of  plants is out in the garden with me on a fine spring day while I divide perennials and thin overly generous larkspur, love in a mist, and poppy seedlings…I’ll soon tire, allowing them to take over certain spots of the garden, but in the beginning I’m imbued with the determination that this year all will be in order.  I soon concede to a more wildflower look and justify many of the weeds as ‘kind of pretty.’  We definitely have a wildlife habitat here, another justification for the unkempt tangle that encroaches as the season unfolds.  But now, all is fresh, new, and filled with promise.

In my search of every more seeds on the internet I came across an interesting site with images of vintage seed packets for sale:http://www.seedart.com/flowers.html

I have a food dilemma.


Since childhood, I have not been able to eat certain food combinations. Sometimes just their smell is enough to gag me. This is not the normal “I’ll have a taco without cheese, please,” kind of situation. It is a little more complicated than not liking a certain food. You see, to me, eating creamy (hate crunchy) peanut butter on crackers is tasty, but the idea of eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sours my stomach. Ketchup on French fries, ditto; ketchup on any other food does not happen in my world. Pickles in potato salad are delicious, but otherwise I can not tolerate their vinegary scent for more than a split second.

My list of no-no combinations is endless.

I don’t normally think about my unusual eating habits. Avoiding them comes naturally to me. And because my family is aware of my ‘oddities,’ conversations about my issues ceased long ago. Now when everyone slathers butter on toast, they skip me as they pass the container around the table.



Triston and Ivan loves to hang out with their uncle JB.

 It was not until I had breakfast a few Saturdays ago with my two grandsons (Triston and Ivan) that I was challenged to consider my food choice from a different angle. My daughter is being deployed with the military, and the two boys are staying with me for a year.

Even when you think kids are not listening, they are always tuned in to adult conversations. Earlier that morning they must have heard me talking to my friend, because Ivan, the four year-old, looked up at me and asked, “Can you eat this grandma? It is yummy.” He held his fork in my direction. A supersize serving of pancake covered in peanut butter and maple syrup was inches from me face.

Unable to speak, I shook my head.

“You promised you’d take a bite if we mixed the pancake batter.” Triston joined the conversation.

Ivan waved the food in my face. My reaction was so strong, I wanted to throw up.

Breathe.

How was I going to get through this and still set a good example for them? After all I’d insisted the boys eat at least half the portion of lima beans I’d serve at dinner the night before. Once again, I inhaled a deep breath.

I’ll get through this, no matter how hard.

I closed my mouth over the food and chewed with resolved calm. Of course, it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever eaten. But I did not let my grandsons know my true feelings. In their eyes I was a wonderful grandma who kept her promise. Even more important they believed they were helping me.

Over the past two weeks they have prodded me into trying the strangest combinations. Some I love, others still make me gag. I’m not sure why I have held onto my quirky childhood habits for so long, but I have learned something from all this food drama.

I never accept the status quo. I get it now. To experience life fully you have to embrace new things. Two days ago, I tried sushi for the first time. While I probably will not order it again, I am glad I had the experience.

As I end this article, I catch a whiff of tiramisu. My son loves it, but since I hate coffee I’ve never given the dessert a try. Maybe I’ll take him up on his offer and accept a bite.

Now it’s your time to share…

Until later,

Pamela Varnado