Tag Archives: Elseblog

CD BABY via 123RF

Posted Elsewhere: Sunday Brunch: CD, Baby?

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CD BABY via 123RF

 

Read an excerpt:

I suspect that just as I was part of the first generation to own CDs I am part of the last generation to have held a membership in the Columbia Records & Tapes clubs, which, of course, I didn’t join until it became a CD club, and which, to my ultimate shame, I still have a few CDs from sitting in the rack upstairs still in their original shrink-wrapping… this despite the fact it’s been at last a decade, and possibly two, since I was a member.

Honestly though, most of my music has been digital since at least 2010, and even the CDs I own are typically ripped to my computer and added to iTunes for access from anywhere. My iPhone has become my primary listening device, especially since my desktop computer was chosen for it’s quietness. It makes it fantastic to record on, but I never bothered to put external speakers on it.

 

To read the entire piece, follow the link below:

Sunday Brunch: CD, Baby? at Modern Creative Life

43804508 - back view of a couple taking a walk holding hands on the beach

Posted Elsewhere: Snapshots from the Shore (flash-fiction)

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43804508 - back view of a couple taking a walk holding hands on the beach

 

Read an excerpt:

“Just put your feet in,” she coaxes the man who has come to drive her to the flatlands in the middle of the country. The flyover states, they call them. Except now they’ll be the land-in states. She wonders if the wind on the prairie can ever come close to the soothing sound of her beloved waves.

“No.”

“Come on,” she urges. “Seriously, it’s not that cold. At least take your shoes off. You will not actually melt into goo if your bare feet touch the sand.

But he refuses. And she wonders if maybe she’s making a mistake in choosing someone who doesn’t love the beach the way she does. Still, she splashes in the choppy surf, dodging sharp white-crested waves and body surfing the gentler blue ones until she’s tired and sated.

Swimming in the sea, she thinks, is the only thing that even comes close to being as good as sex with the man she loves.

Visit this link to read the whole story:

Modern Creative Life: Snapshots from the Shore by Melissa A. Bartell

The Coming of the Cardinals

Elseblog: Sunday Brunch: The Coming of the Cardinals

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The Coming of the Cardinals

 

On the first Sunday of each month, I write a column called “Sunday Brunch” over at the e-zine Modern Creative Life. This excerpt is from the piece I published in November. You can read the whole piece here. You can also listen to me read it at BathtubMermaid.com.

Excerpt:

We have a whole family of those bright red birds, and they return every year. The females are feathered grey and rust and red, and arrive with the first signs of being egg-heavy. The males are brilliant crimson and scarlet, and when they cock their heads and stare at me from their bright eyes, I’m convinced they’re appraising me in the same way I’m assessing them.

At the beginning of the season, I watch them building nests, but as the fall deepens into what passes for winter in this part of Texas, they aren’t quite so visible. Instead of witnessing constant activity, a morning visit feels like a kind of gift from Mother Nature herself.

It’s not only live cardinals that come into my life each year, however. As I slowly turn the decorations in my house from fall and harvest, Halloween and Thanksgiving, to winter, Christmas, and even Valentine’s Day, these ruby-plumed birds have a presence inside my house.

Copyright: captblack76 / 123RF Stock Photo

Sunday Brunch: The Ghosts We Choose

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Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_captblack76'>captblack76 / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

 

I’m cheating a little with this post, because I’m really just providing an excerpt to this month’s Sunday Brunch column over at Modern Creative Life.

Here’s the excerpt:

A bottle of Clinique make-up, left in the medicine cabinet in my guest bathroom, smells like clay, but it also smells like Halloween, 1976, when my mother costumed me as Pocahontas and used her normal color to darken my fairer skin. (Cultural appropriation wasn’t a hot topic, back then, but even if it had been, my costume was an homage, not a mockery.)

Forty years later, that scent is so closely associated with my mother that when I see her and she no longer carries that aroma (because she’s long since changed her make-up routine), I have to stop and remind myself that she’s the same woman who bore me, raised me, and whose opinion is still, always, vitally important.

And here’s the link to the complete piece. Sunday Brunch: The Ghosts We Choose

Elseblog: The Summer Smile Ten Dollars Can Buy

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bucket of flowers My friend Debra is hosting a project called Summer Love Notes this year. It’s free, and if you sign up you get an essay or piece of art sent to your email box every morning.

Debra loves to share her ideas with her friends, and I’m really flattered that she invited me to be part of the amazing group of writers and artists she’s assembled. I’ve been reading and enjoying all sorts of great stuff.

Today’s SLN post is courtesy of yours truly, and you can read it HERE.

Here’s an excerpt:

More than once, I have spent my last ten dollars fulfilling that need – buying a bouquet of irises, indulging in five bunches of daffodils, filling the house with carnations – because those small joys that bring summer into the house are the things that keep me going, even when I feel tired, frumpy, and boring.

And here’s the photo-credit for the image we used:

Photo Credit (for the bucket of flowers): Copyright: fotogestoeber / 123RF Stock Photo

Please do consider signing up for future posts – it’s really nice to have something lovely in one’s inbox every morning.

Sunday Brunch: School Figures

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natural_skates

It’s my turn for Sunday Brunch again over at All Things Girl.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve been thinking, lately, about how I used to be a daily blogger, and now my blog is nearly an afterthought. I still write every day, but it’s typically writing for a specific purpose, not just chatty musing. I don’t keep a journal, partly because I don’t understand the point in writing things no one will ever read, and partly because without an audience to keep me accountable, I find other things that pull my focus.

But daily blogging, in many ways, was my version of skating school figures. They’re not particularly pretty to the uninformed, but they teach discipline, help you hone technique, give you stamina…and sometimes you do something when practicing a basic figure that informs or inspires a larger piece – leads you to your long program.

You can read the rest of this post HERE.

Image Copyright: vkovalcik / 123RF Stock Photo

Sunday Brunch: The Art of Procrastination

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ritual bath

My Sunday Brunch post is up at All Things Girl. Here’s an excerpt:

Here is an example of how not-writing works in my brain:

‘I should be working on Sunday Brunch. But I don’t know what to write about. There are all those notes on the post-Odile piece about getting news from fishing reports. Fishing reports. Oh, there’s a new episode of the Seascapes podcast tonight. Tonight. Dinner. Fish. Salmon. There’s salmon in the freezer. Is it wild-caught? Of course it is, why would I buy anything else? What should I make with it? I think we have beets and yams. There was that recipe I saw in that magazine. Beets and yams in hash. Hash. Hash-browns. We have leftover hash-brown casserole. Maybe I should eat something. If I eat I’ll be able to focus better. Focus. Film. Movie. Stephen King’s IT is in my Amazon queue. Tim Curry was so creepy in that movie. Tim Curry. Clue. Wadsworth. One plus two plus two plus one. No, it’s one plus one plus two plus one. One. Singular Sensation. Musical. Rocky Horror. Time Warp. Time. Ack! I should be working on Sunday Brunch.’

So, yeah, that’s my brain on…not-words, I guess.

Read the rest of the piece HERE

Image Copyright:poznyakov / 123RF Stock Photo

DDoP: This Isn’t Treasure Island

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Tonight’s Dog Days of Podcasting post is a 100-word distilled moment written in August, 2009:

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems were constant friends in childhood, poems my grandmother and I would memorize and recite. I knew all about having a little shadow, and going up in a swing.

One poem that I never appreciated until this weekend, which has been spent largely in bed, was “The Land of Counterpane,” in which a sick child turned the hills and valleys of his comfortable bed into all manner of landscapes for his imagination.

I don’t imagine my quilt squares as separate countries, but I do still let imagination run wild.
Even days spent propped on pillows have magic.

You can listen to it HERE.

Sunday Scribblings: Sorry

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“Sorry – no Scribble” was what participants looking for a prompt were greeted with this week when we went to the Sunday Scribblings website, and people quickly decided to accept the challenge to write something anyway.

The word “sorry” inspired me to figure out a scene from my book. I’m linking you to the raw, unedited version, which may or may not be recognizable when it’s incorporated into the book.

I stress the raw, unedited part because, well, it is.

Read The Beginning there, and feel free to comment here or there.