Monday Mashup of Awesomeness

Monday Mashup of Awesomeness

by | Mashup of Awesomeness

In the spirit of Holiday, and Freedoms, and all around extreme coolness, I’m passing on some blogs – or books – that I’ve found to be amazing, wonderful, interesting, or just very, very cool.

First up is Ais Portraits and her terrific post about food styling. This young woman is a terrific photographer, and I’ve just today found her. Trust me when I say I’ll be following her development!

Ais’s mom is Lorna Tedder, and her blog is The Spiritual Eclectic. An all around great place to hang. Lorna is good peeps and seeing her change and grow has been an amazing journey this past few years – plus I learn a lot!

I have to give a shout out to my very dear friend, Lynne Marshall. Her single title, ONE FOR THE ROAD, is out now from Wild Rose Press and it’s definitely a book full of heart. Lynne is a writer who knows how to dig into your emotions and keep you hooked, right from the beginning. You can find her book here.

For knowledge and fun, give Catie Rhodes a try. She’s a writer who blogs about – well, a lot. Today, she’s blogging about high treason, and how everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence could have been drawn and quartered (and I don’t mean have a portrait made and given a place to sleep), plus a lot worse. She gives good history – it’s another place where I always learn something.

For writers looking for mentors, check out Kristen Lamb’s blog. She’s the #1 social media guru for writers, in my opinion. Plus, she’s downright funny and fun to hang with. She teaches online classes, too – so if you can grab one of those, do!

Another terrific writing mentor is Bob Mayer. I’ve taken his Warrior Writer class twice now, both times in person, and done all the exercises in his book at least twice. He’s dedicated, funny, and prolific. He’s got his finger on the indie press pulse, and I’ve learned a lot from him. Because of an idea he gave me in one of his workshops, I sold my first book. So I’m also forever indebted to him!

And last but not least, for this week anyway, is a wine blog by Joe Roberts called 1 Wine Dude. He’s a “certified” wine specialist, but he’s straight forward, funny, and not at all pretentious. I’m actually gonna find him on Twitter and follow, as he does reviews there. He tastes tons of wines of all price ranges and is witty about his reviews but not obscure.

So there you have it, some of my favorite online places to hang. Coming soon is a blog on pink wines – why, oh why couldn’t they have just kept calling them Rose? (Pretend there’s an accent on the “e” for me, okay?!)

In the meantime, have a safe and happy Fourth of July. Love from my house to yours!

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Have you read DEMON SOUL yet? You can find it at Crescent Moon Pressor Amazon.com. Happy Reading!

Summer Solstice, 2011

by | Life, Observations

The solstices have always been magical for me, even before I knew what they were. “The longest day of the year.” “The longest night of the year.” Both were magical times in my young mind, spurred on with many, many viewings of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Plus actually dancing in the full length ballet, years ago, with California Ballet Company down in San Diego, way before acting in two different productions of it. But that’s another story.)

Not only are the days themselves somewhat magical, but I also believe its a good time to enact change. Whether in your self, your routine, your environment, it’s the perfect time to shake things up, make things better. Some people use the calendar New Year to do so; others use back-to-school time to make changes. I’ve used those dates, too, but this year the Solstice seems right.

The biggest change for me? I’m going to really, truly believe in myself and go for what I want, which means there’s a story here for you. I’m on Twitter – not a lot, but often enough – and whenever Angela James (Carina Press) finds something awesome, I tend to check it out. Today, she found Tara and Tara’s Story. This so moved me that I sent the link to my closest writing group, the Los Angeles Romance Authors.

But Tara’s story basically built on stuff I’d been processing internally, via a video shared with LARA by Lynne Marshall, a lovely writer and neighbor of mine. And while this video took time to watch, it is definitely stirring and I sent it to my husband and sons, the most important people in my life.

It’s a TED video (I don’t know anything about them, but you might?) and the woman who speaks is funny, passionate, and wonderful.

So, here’s to change, scary as it may be. Here’s to being the most authentic you that you can be. And here’s to living a wonderful, helpful, serving life.

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone!