PIECES OF APRIL

 

Pieces of April

Three Dog Night

 

 

Youtube video

(It starts out very low and gets louder)

April gave us springtime and the promise of the flowers
And the feeling that we both shared and the love that we called ours
We knew no time for sadness, that's a road we each had crossed
We were living a time meant for us, and even when it would rain
we would laugh it off.

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, it's a morning in May

We stood on the crest of summer, beneath an oak that blossomed green
Feeling as I did in April, not really knowing what it means
But it must be then that you stand beside me now to make me feel this way
Just as I did in April, but it's a morning in May.

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, but it's a morning in May

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, but it's a morning in May

 

~~~

 

*This has always been one of my favorites by Three Dog Night and I usually think of it during the month of April. Imagine that! It's quite a departure from their "rock" sound, which I also love. Hope you enjoy it!*

 

 

* I'M BACK AND HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE *

Well, I finally got my blog straightened out. The right column that was seen correctly by my readers, had totally disappeared (to me) from the right side of my blog, and was on the left side, at the bottom, after all the posts. Weird, huh? After searching online for some answers, I deleted a couple of links that were inside posts, and changed the images from Medium to Small on Melissa's guest post. Don't know which one did the trick, but something happened and, voila, it's fixed! Thank goodness. Things like that drive me....well....Bonkers!

~~~

 

My speaking event at the Cahokia Library on Monday, the 21st was a great success. The Friends of the Library invited me to talk about my writing. I also spoke about my ties to Cahokia and how I love it and still drive around and reminisce. There was a Q&A session, and book sales, and signings. All in all a wonderful evening! A few friends drove quite a distance to attend, one in particular. Thank you all very much! I hope to do many more of these types of presentations in libraries near and far!

 

~~~

 

Spring has really sprung here in the St. Louis area, and I am VERY thankful for that! Today was a perfectly glorious day. High temp around 70 - 75, and very low humidity. Aww... if only we could have about six months of that! This morning I took a couple of pictures from my office/bedroom window of the beautiful tree in bloom in the yard across from us. This one is the best, and of course Vern is enjoying the scenery, too! (You can click on the photo to see it much bigger.)

 

 

 

I have all kinds of notes here and there about things I wanted to remember to blog about....Well, they have once again gotten buried in the mountains of papers on top of my desk/kitchen table. (No, I still haven't begun painting my fabulous desk yet. That's another project on my To Do List!)

 

 ~~~

 

 

One other thing I wanted to share is about Call Outs for Submissions and/or Contests. I've come across a ton of them lately, due to various newsletters I've subscribed to. Here are just a few:

 

1) Publishing Syndicate -- Not Your Mother's Book ...On Working for a Living. They need your true stories NOW. Go to their website to learn more, right now!!

 

2) Have you ever checked out Writing-world.com? This site has a plethora of writerly information that covers just about anything you want to know. Copyrights, contests, how-to, grammar, etc. etc.....and it includes most genres.

 

3) Also Winning Writers shares contests and other resources for writers.

 

~~~

 

 

That's it for today. Wishing everyone a fabulous rest of the weekend!!

 

 

"On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden." -- Maya Angelou

* MY BLOG IS BONKERS! *

Soon after I logged-in to my blog this morning, intending to write a new post, it began looking different......

The right column disappeared, only to be found on the LEFT side, way at the bottom of the page.

The fonts in all the posts after Melissa Goodwin's interview, are HUGE, too.

I've looked at other blogs, and they all look NORMAL. I've "re-saved" my layout in both the regular setting AND the Blogger Template Designer, to no avail.

Does anyone have any ideas to help me??

These kinds of things drive ME bonkers, so if my blog is acting that way, I am, too!

 

Acccckkkkkkkkk!

 

 

(I'm excited to post news about a library book presentation I did last night, but that will have to wait until I get this wacky blog straightened out.)

* MELISSA GOODWIN - AUTHOR INTERVIEW *

I'd like to welcome author Melissa Ann Goodwin to my blog today. Melissa writes a lovely blog, is quite the traveler, and is definitely a warm and kind-hearted person. (And her husband is an amazing artist!) Melissa is one of my blog friends I've never actually met, but I know that when we do meet, we'll be instant life-long friends and talk like we've known each other since childhood.

Melissa Ann Goodwin grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she spent a happy childhood living in her imagination and writing stories in her head. It was only a matter of time before those stories spilled out onto the written page. She has been published extensively in children's and national magazines and won a Writer's Digest Annual Poetry Competition Award in 2010. Her first book, The Christmas Village, won the 2013 Blogger Book Fair Reader’s Choice Award for children’s adventure.  The Christmas Village and its sequel, Return to Canterbury, are the culmination of her lifelong dream to write the kind of books she loved to read as a child.

~~~

 

Back cover blurb for Return to Canterbury:

Things have settled down for thirteen-year-old Jamie Reynolds since last Christmas. That's when he time-traveled to 1932 and wound up in the town of Canterbury, Vermont. There he met Kelly and Christopher Pennysworth, who quickly became his best friends. Back in his own time again, he misses them every day. But as the July 4th, 2008 holiday approaches, the biggest black cloud still hovering over Jamie's life is the mystery of what happened to his dad, who has been missing for almost a year.

Little does Jamie know that he will soon reunite with Kelly and Christopher for an adventure even bigger than their last. Together they'll uncover a secret plot that threatens to destroy Canterbury. But will they be able to stop it before it's too late? And will Jamie finally solve the mystery of his father's disappearance? Return to Canterbury with us and find out!

~~~

 

When I told Melissa I'd be happy to be one of her blog tour hosts,

this is part of what she wrote to me:

 

"I thought it would be more fun to do an interview...... like a chat between friends in which you ask me any silly thing you've ever wondered about me or even some of those funny questions people ask like, "if you had to choose between being an eraser or a piece of chalk, which would you be and why?" Or what's your favorite ....???"

 

So, ask and you shall receive! Below are the questions I came up with and Melissa's fascinating answers!

1)  If there was going to be a movie made about your life, who would you like to play you at your current age? 

Melissa: Can we meld Helen Mirren and Jennifer Lawrence? They both have a free-spiritedness at very different life stages, and I relate to each of them at those stages.  And they seem very comfortable with who they are, which I feel I have, finally, also become. If we can’t do that, then let’s go with Mary Steenbergen. She’s closer to my age, we have similar facial features and she seems very nice.

 

2)  Do you ever submit stories to Calls for Submissions or enter contests? Why? Why Not? Which ones?

Melissa: I don’t really do this so much now. When I first started writing I did more of it. The challenges could be fun and give you practice trying different things. And I even had some success – one of my poems was a top prize winner in Writer’s Digest’s annual competition. But I found that it’s easy for me to get distracted with such things. They can become subtle forms of procrastination or avoidance – a way to give myself credit for writing without actually working on what I should have been. Now I really just work on my projects. I’m not for or against contests or challenges – it’s just that I’ve done them and now don’t feel drawn to do them anymore.

 

 

3) I’m intrigued and kind of envious of your life “on the road” in your RV in 2012(?) 2013(?). You’ve already mentioned some of the ups and downs about it on your blog, but can you share some things with us?

Melissa: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,” might sum it up!  In many ways it was glorious – we traveled to great places (San Antonio, New Orleans, Charleston, Maine, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Nashville, Memphis).  We visited with friends and family along the way. We had miraculously glorious weather throughout.

I loved the RV; I loved being in the campgrounds. I loved being on vacation all the time. I loved experiencing new places and revisiting familiar ones. I loved being able to spend so much time with my husband, learning together, having fun, discovering new places, solving the unique problems of RV life together.

On the flip side, there were scary times and the experience tested me emotionally.  We encountered extremely high winds in the mid-west that were truly terrifying. We also had some problems with the motorhome and I think that because it was our home, problems with it scared me more than they otherwise would have. I struggled with the idea of not having a homebase, and I wasn’t able to establish a writing routine. So, after just under a year, we came off the road and settled down again.

It was probably the most significant year of learning and growth in my life.  I’ve always been a homebody, so I’m proud that I was able to do it and will cherish the memories of our experiences always. My husband and I plan to write a how-to Ebook for new RVers – it will be informational and educational, but also funny and full of road stories.

 

4)  If you could travel anywhere in the world (for free) where would you go, and what would be your main reason to be there?

Melissa: I think I would go to Vienna, Austria. My great-aunt was from Austria and as a child I was mesmerized by pictures of buildings and castles there that looked so magical – like fairyland. The Sound of Music might have influenced my fascination too!  So that would be first, and then I’d like to go to Italy, Greece, France, and back to the U.K.

 

5)  Please tell us anything else you’d like us to know about your books and/or your writing.

 

 

Melissa: My books, The Christmas Village and its sequel, Return to Canterbury, are targeted to readers ages eight and up, and reflect a great deal of me and my feelings about my childhood.  I was a quiet girl who loved to read. I constantly gathered in my surroundings – the beauty of my town, the people, the shifting moods that come with changing seasons and the emotional undercurrents of families and friends. All of that gestated inside me until mid-life, and when I came, finally, to write, it fell out as if it had been waiting patiently there for me to come and claim it.

My personal way is not to bring darkness into the world, so my books will always have positive themes. They are not necessarily all happy-happy – I hope I have done well with bringing in that balance of sadness that makes our joy sharper and more meaningful.  I’ve been told that my characters and settings are vivid, and that makes me happy because I hoped to write the kind of stories in which the characters feel like old friends and the setting becomes a place you never want to leave.

The stories themselves are quite action-packed, filled with suspense and surprises. But the underlying themes deal with the importance of friendship, family and forgiveness.

Both books are available in print and Ebook on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. They are also available in digital formats (Ipad, Nook, PC download) from Smashwords.

My next books will be historical fiction, not children’s books.

 

 

Thank you so much, Melissa! I've really enjoyed reading your answers to my questions. I wish you fabulous sales, and look forward to your next books!

 

 

 

"Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written in his works." -- Virginia Woolf

* INTERVIEW UPDATE *

If anyone would like to listen to all or part of the 45 minute interview, please contact me by e-mail:  beckypovich (at) G mail (dot) com.

Thanks again to everyone who has encouraged me

along this writing and publishing journey,

and to those who continue to do so.

You're the wind beneath my wings! J

Becky and pilot preparing to take off into the wild blue yonder!

 

 

 

 

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar

* A 45 MINUTE LIVE INTERVIEW WITH ME *

*Update Thursday April 10, 2014*

My telephone interview went really well yesterday. ** I've deleted the direct link to listen, only because I'm trying all kinds of things to see if I can get my blog to look "normal" again...at least to me.

Yes, a 45 minute LIVE interview tomorrow, Wednesday April 9th. Please keep reading for all the information.

The most amazing thing happened to me because of an internet search. I couldn't find the site I was looking for and in one of those serendipitous discoveries, I landed on Karen Lynn Maher's website, LegacyONEauthors.

I immediately saw that Karen's business helps authors through every stage of writing: Plan. Write. Publish. And she was and still is offering a FREE 30 Minute Phone Consultation! So, I decided to take advantage of speaking with Karen, even though I've already published my memoir. Because I obviously want to learn as much as I can about this writing/publishing world we live in.

Although I missed our scheduled phone time, (yes, I really did!) Karen was gracious enough to leave a voice-mail, saying I could call her back because I was the only one slated for that period. So, what did I do? I called her right back.

 

Amazon

As I told Karen about my journey to publication, she was so kind and encouraging. She said it sounded like I was doing everything the right way and offered a few other suggestions.

I won't go into everything Karen's business offers, because it can be found on her website. And if you're an author, don't forget about the FREE 30 Minute Phone Consultations.

Okay, so here's what's happening tomorrow. If anyone wants to listen to the live interview, figure out what time that is in your time zone! Here's the info:

* Expert Authors Unplugged - Sharing the Journey
  (A Conversation with Becky Povich)
* Wednesday, April 9th, 1:00 - 1:45 PM (Pacific)
* Dial-in Number: 209-647-1600
* Code: 619959

This will allow anyone to listen to the entire interview if desired. It will also be recorded and available for all at a later date.

I apologize for such short notice, but this was all just put together! I'm excited about it and I hope many of you can listen in. But if you forget, don't feel bad. You're reading the blog of the Queen of Forgetfulness! 

I'VE BEEN TAGGED....... BY THREE FRIENDS!

Thanks to three of my blog buddies, (two of which I know in person) I have been tagged in the Writerly Blog Chain that's been hopping around the blogosphere. Thank you so much to Pat Wahler of Critter Alley, Debora Rorvig of Whatsoever Things Are Lovely, and Sheree Nielsen of Sheree's Warm Fuzzies.

Please take a minute to stop by these three lovely ladies' blogs, because they've already answered the questions that I must now answer. They are wonderful writers: sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful and serious-minded, and always the "real deal." I'm grateful for their friendship.  

Okay, I've been asked to answer four questions about my writing process, then tag two other writers to do the same, which I'll do at the end of this post. I'll make this as short and sweet as possible.

1) What am I working on?
     I'd love to say that I'm furiously writing the sequel to my memoir, but that's not true. I almost typed the words "because I haven't had time," but that wouldn't be true, either. What I need to say is, "I can't seem to manage my time properly!" As I've mentioned before, marketing has taken up a huge chunk of time. I've been unorganized and running in all directions. But, yesterday I seem to have gotten over a hurdle and I am focused on my direction. Marketing AND Writing.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
     I'm not sure how to answer this. I write memoir and personal essays. Readers have told me that reading my memoir, From Pigtails to Chin Hairs: A Memoir & More, makes them feel like we're friends, enjoying a cup of coffee together and discussing life. I can't think of a nicer compliment than that.

3) Why do I write what I do?
     Because it's the only way I know how to write!

4) How does your writing process work?
     I jot down memories and thoughts in notebooks, or whatever is handy, so I won't forget them within the next few minutes. It might only be a couple of words, or an entire sentence, but it will be the basis for one of the chapters in my sequel. And as I admitted in my first answer, I haven't been writing nearly as often as I should. I don't have any particular day or time or schedule. I'm a "when the mood really hits me" kind of writer. It's worked pretty well so far! J

The last step in this process is to invite two other authors to participate in the blog chain. First, I'd like to invite McGuffy Ann Morris. She's an awesome writer, a poet, an avid reader, an animal lover, and a fabulous blog friend! What's not to like?!

Secondly, I'd like to invite Bish Denham. She's another awesome writer...of children's books! Bish and I have a "karma-like, ESP-kind of" bloggy friendship!

Thanks again to my three fabulous gal pals for inviting me.

 

"A good friend is a connection to life...a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world." -- Lois Wyse

* WHAT APRIL 1ST MEANS TO ME *

Every year on this day, April 1st, I remember a few, extremely momentous phone calls I made on that day in 1987.

Twenty seven (27) years ago today, I called long distance family & friends and said, "This is not an April Fool's Joke. I AM PREGNANT!"

Where has the time gone? I miss that baby, that little boy, that young man.....but I'm also so proud of the man he is today!

Below is from the chapter in my memoir, "The Joyous Journey":

"On March 30, 1987 the doctor uttered in his charming British accent those now infamous words, “My dear, you’re pregnant!” What??? How can this be?? How did this happen?? All those ridiculous, rhetorical questions kept repeating themselves in my head."

~~~

The same chapter was published in Chicken Soup for the New Mom's Soul, in 2007. My first major publication!




"I didn't know how babies were made until I was pregnant with my fourth child." -- Loretta Lynn