Tag Archive | family

Fall Colors and Jacques Le Jester Bear

Pear Fall Leaves

I was getting ready to have dinner when I saw the pear tree in fall colors. I had to stop what I was doing and run out with the camera. We don’t get much in the line of fall colors here, so I was excited. 🙂 And I’m working on a jester bear for a possible order. An earlier one I made won first place for Best Dressed Bear.

Jacques Le Jester

Shadow and light on fall colors on the pear tree.

Pears still clinging to the tree, frozen, defrosted, still clinging.

Texas Sunset for Fall

And I’ve finished proofing the print copy of Call of the Cougar, so off to work on Phantom Fae!

Have a lovely Tuesday!

Terry

“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
www.terryspear.com
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Wilde & Woolly Bears

http://www.celticbears.com

Editor Requested Synopsis–Forensics, Cops, Adding to Stories…

Nov24

I watch a lot of forensic shows, Cops shows, Snapped, etc, because I get ideas for stories. Often not right then. But like in SEAL Wolf Hunting, one of the men in the story is suspected of committing a crime, and SEAL Paul tells him his story is full of holes–that criminals do stupid things, so that doesn’t automatically indicate he didn’t commit the crime. But he uses a true couple of scenarios to illustrate his point. Both were Cops stories that I had watched some years back and always stuck in my mind and had laughed about. They were so dumb, but some criminals just are. This picture made me think of two of the Forensics shows. The clock sitting here means I took the picture at the time shown on the clock, right? But the clock hasn’t run for years. LOL 🙂

Anyway, so during the holidays, I usually get requests for edits. It just seems the editors are getting caught up on their reading as submissions slow down. Word to the wise, you might have heard that everyone takes a break over the holidays and no one reads submissions. Not true. I’ve had full manuscript requests during the holidays. And as you can see from the situation with me, I often have requests for stuff by the editorial staff over the holidays. So right now, I’m rewriting the synopsis for the book that I had written before the book was written. What is the problem with this? I have NO idea what I’m going to actually say in the book. So I had lots of things happen that I had no clue about. My characters are total rogues.

And as I’ve been rewriting this, I’m like, wow, I really was clueless. Yes, some of the details were there, but most were not as important as what really happened because I didn’t know what would happen.

When I was a kid in school, we were always required to write an outline and then write our paper. It never worked for me. The teachers had some notion that planning out your paper was the best thing to do before you wrote it. Now, for plotters, yes, it works. But I’m a seat of the pants, pantser, writer, and it just doesn’t work for me. As I’d begin to do research for my paper, I’d realize that I’d need to go in a whole new direction. I’ve done that with my books too. And so what happens? The outline/synopsis is not anything like what I thought I was going to write.

If I could write the outline with the paper and turn it in, I was good to go. I would write my paper, and then write the outline. 🙂 But some teachers were out to get my kind, so they’d make us turn in an outline BEFORE we wrote our paper. No getting around that. 🙂

Everyone is unique in the way we think, the way we accomplish something. If you take a group of people to accomplish a mission, and asked each how they would do it, based on backgrounds, personalities, moral compasses, etc, each will have different ideas. We could see this in business models when I was in Grad school, or when I was in leadership reaction or other courses in Army ROTC where a leader was required to ask of his squad if anyone had different ideas of how to accomplish some mission. Some ideas will be better than others. But it’s really interesting to see this. Even my dad, when he was a prisoner-of-war in Germany, submitted his ideas to a committee on how to escape the POW camp. He was 16, so no one paid much attention to him, but he actually did escape twice on his own during death marches.

News Flash: Heard an elephant on the roof and thought it was a cat, ran to the windows, no cat. Then saw a squirrel! Tried to take a picture but it wouldn’t come out. My birds are all but gone because of the hawk. Maybe also because of the annoying cat, that isn’t mine, prowling around, but the squirrel is brand new. I’ve seen one of the bunnies too. Never had a squirrel out here before. But my live oak trees have gotten old enough that they’re starting to produce nuts, and my red oak tree is….

Okay, back to synopses….so I’m stuck rewriting one and need to turn it in today.

The moral of the story is do the job your way and it will get done–probably better than if you had to do it in some weird way that doesn’t work for you.

Are you ready for the holidays?

Still proofing Call of the Cougar print version. Then it’s back to Phantom Fae. 🙂

Have a super great Monday!! The good thing about Mondays, is they only happen once a week.

Terry

Wilde & Woolly Bears

http://www.celticbears.com

Future Librarian and Writer

Jul29

According to her mother, Elysia is already a huge fan of mine. She has always wanted to be a librarian, but wants to write also. When she learned I’ve done both, her mother said I’ve been Elysia’s hero ever since.

Isn’t that the greatest thing ever? To not be able to leap buildings with a single bound, or stop a ship from plowing into a port city single-handed, but to be able to share stories with girls and boys who someday could very well be sharing their own stories and “moving” readers with their adventurous tales for younger generations to read–to me that is the most wondrous thing of all.

A quote from her mom and Elysia: “She is halfway through [The Dark Fae] and said, “OMG Mom this is getting really good!! I can’t put it down!”

And that is the best compliment an author can ever receive.

What could be better than reading The Dark Fae, drinking hot chocolate at Groundhouse Coffee on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, while mom’s reading a much different book and drinking coffee?

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, Elysia, for loving my stories. And to her mom, who loves my adult stories, too!!! 🙂

One of my favorite YA authors is Amelia Atwater Rhodes. She wrote as a young girl and how I wished when I was penning stories at her age, I had been published, too. That’s what I love about creating stories. We can do it at any age, and share them with our friends and family and someday even the world.

What was the first book you read that you couldn’t get enough of? And had to read more of what the author wrote?

Thanks for dropping by and sharing your comments with me.

The World of Fae, Book 1, YA

One lucky winner will receive an ebook copy of The Dark Fae, international giveaway.

Thanks again to Elysia and her mom who shared this with me. And good luck, Elysia! All your dreams will come true with perseverance and determination!

Have a super great Monday! And if you have a moment, pass along your joy of reading to others!

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality.”

www.terryspear.com

Families that Read Together, Stay Together

Jul28

Under the Cover Blog Reviewer tagged me in the CUTEST ever photo of her daughter and her on a camping trip… reading in a tent. She gave me permission to share this on my blog.

Now first, I want to say that jaguar shifters and werewolves are into camping, big time. They love the jungles/forests. So it just seems appropriate that she would be reading JAGUAR FEVER on the camping trip.

When I was growing up, my parents weren’t much to read. My mother loved books, but she never read them when I was home. My dad didn’t either. But I devoured books. We’d go to garage sales and I’d pick out all the books my mother could afford. I went to the school library all the time and read.

When I went camping with my best girlfriend, Diane Stokes, her parents were big readers. Her older sister was a librarian. We all read at a lake visit one time, Diane and my sister and I also spent a lot of time in the snapping turtle-infested Central Florida lake. And we loved it! That was part of the adventure. Staying on the rafts and hoping that there weren’t any water moccasins or alligators also in the lake. And that the turtles didn’t bite us. Since my mother tangled with a snapping turtle in another lake, we knew they could actually remove a toe with their beak-like mouths–according to a ranger who treated my mother’s bite. So we splashed a lot to keep them away, hoping they didn’t think we were flopping fish and ready to eat!

Both my son and daughter love to read as much as I do. And so do both of their spouses.

So when I go on vacation? I take a book or three with me. I have friends who sit on the beach reading. Not me. I’m walking or swimming. But at night… it’s time to cozy up with a book and drift off to another world.

What about you? Did you read as a family? Or are you the odd one out?