* IDEAS, INFORMATION, & GOOFY THINGS I'VE DONE *

Happy Saturday, everyone! Today's post is just a collection of ideas, information, and/or goofy things I've done or thought about. And so, in no particular order....

Have you ever been unable to think of how to spell the simplest of words? One in particular has stayed in my memory for many, many years. What was the word? It was was. Yes, indeed. It was approximately 40 years ago and I was handwriting a letter (ah, back in the day) and I could NOT think how to spell the word: was. I even tried writing it different ways on a scratch pad: wuz and wus. LOL

And, so about a month ago, I decided to put some flour in my beautiful Longaberger pottery jar and store it on my baker's shelf. Once again, for the life of me, I could NOT think of how to spell flour. One thing I knew for sure, it wasn't flower. After practicing a time or two, again on a scratch pad, I decided on: flouer. Looks kind of fancy, huh?!



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If you mail padded envelopes or boxes, or anything other than the usual letter or post card, and you are given a receipt, here's a possible lesson to learn from me.

I've mailed many copies of my memoir in padded envelopes and they always ship Media Mail, which is the least expensive way to mail books. (Hurray for the post office!) The price is almost always the same, as long as the recipient is in the US, so there's never been a huge price difference. This is an important piece of information for the story I'm sharing!

I always look over my receipt after I get back inside my car, just to make sure all the info is correct. There's all kinds of information on the LONG receipt, which includes city names and zip codes. One time, I saw the city name: Rockville, MD with zip code 20849. I thought Huh? I didn't have an envelope to ship there! It was a mystery for a few seconds until I realized the postal clerk must've keyed in the wrong zip code. I'd written one for Greenfield, IA 50849. So, I walked right back into the post office and talked with the same clerk, showing her my receipt and explaining it all. She thanked me for bringing it to her attention and took care of it. Whew.

Had I not looked it over, and just went by the cost of shipping, I have a feeling that envelope would've been lost forever in The Never Never Land of Lost Mail.

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* Don't forget about Margo's fantastic giveaways! The Rafflecopter ends soon.*

 

 

 

 

"Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination." -- Mark Twain

 

* GUEST * MARGO DILL * AUTHOR * FRIEND * BOOKS * PRIZES *

* It's Major League Baseball's All-Star Week *

I'm happy to have Margo Dill as my guest blogger today. Margo and I met when I attended my first writers conference in 2007. She was the Missouri Writers Guild conference chair that year and in charge of a huge production. She was so kind and helpful to a very green, unpolished, untrained, in-awe-of-the-entire-experience, writer -- yours truly! We became fast friends, partly because we're authors, but also because we have the same sense of humor, and in my book..... that's everything! Margo also helped edit my memoir and she didn't just fix grammatical errors; she suggested different things that I mostly agreed with! If you saw us standing next to each other, we're quite a unique sight. Anyone who remembers an old cartoon strip named Mutt & Jeff will know what I mean. J 
(I'd be the short one!)


Margo is here today to share some thoughts on books, and writing, and fictional characters, and she also brought along some fabulous PRIZES! So, without further ado, Margo, take it away.....

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The other night, I couldn’t sleep. There was a storm; my daughter crawled into our bed; then our power went out, which made me worry. So I grabbed a flashlight and a book I had been mildly interested in, Beautiful Oblivion by bestselling author Jamie McGuire, thinking it would put me right to sleep.

WRONG!

Turns out, McGuire drew me in with her hero and heroine, both twenty-something flawed, delightful people trying to figure out love and life, and I couldn’t put the book down. I stayed up past 5:00 am, trying to finish it. I couldn’t figure out why I had been so drawn in.

My mom (I know it’s my mom, but just bear with me) said the same thing about my second novel, Caught Between Two Curses, which is a young adult novel with love, magic, and baseball. She read the whole thing in one day, and the only reason this makes me a bit happy is because it took her weeks to finish my first middle-grade novel, Finding My Place (if she ever really did finish it!). So what was it about my YA novel that made her stay up all night? Why did I stay up reading about people 20 years younger than me?

 

My mom’s theory is these books take us back to our youth, something about the characters makes us connect with them and reminds us about ourselves. I think she’s on to something here. Most readers have connected with Julie, my 17-year-old main character trying to figure out love and what sex has to do with that while also breaking a curse that’s been on her family for decades. But a couple haven’t, and those reviews have read something like: “Margo Dill is a good writer, but I didn’t like Julie and wished she wouldn’t be so stupid.” OUCH! But these readers didn’t connect with her, so that’s okay.

I checked reviews on Beautiful Oblivion—most were 4 and 5 stars, but she got a few bad ones and most people just didn’t get the characters.

So is that what draws us in? Characters that remind us of ourselves in some way? I think this is probably true for 95 percent of readers—think about books that are a series—most of the time a book is part of a series because a good writer has created a remarkable character, and readers want to know MORE about this character. I can name a hundred (I won’t, Becky would kill me), but think about it: Harry Potter, Alex Cross, Mma Ramotswe, Katniss Everdeen, and so on.
 

So here’s to the characters we love—whether we write them or we read them. And hopefully if you have a chance to check out Caught Between Two Curses this week during the All-Star Sale and Contest (details below), you’ll connect with Julie, just like my mom did.



Margo Dill

 

Thank you, Margo! And now bloggers, please continue to read all about Margo's very generous sale prices and FREEBIES!

 

DETAILS: Margo’s book, Caught Between Two Curses, is on sale this week thanks to baseball’s All-Star Game!

You can find out all the details about the sale here (http://margodill.com/blog/2014/07/10/all-star-week/),

but basically, the e-book for KINDLE is on sale for $1.99 (July 16-17) and $2.99 (July 18-19).

An autographed copy of the print book is available for $5.00 off the cover price--$6.95. 

Thanks to All-Star week, she is also having a contest with a prize of one $25 gift card to one of 5 restaurants (Olive Garden, Starbucks, Panera Bread, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s) (U.S. mailing addresses only please)

And a 3000-word free edit (anywhere in the world, English-language only).

Enter to win those prizes on the Rafflecopter form below—no purchase necessary!

Check out more about Margo and her books at: http://margodill.com/blog/

  a Rafflecopter giveaway