We Moved!

I haven’t looked back over my posts to see how much I’ve talked about this here, but if you know me at all, you know that we have been trying to get out of Texas ever since we moved here. Well, God has other plans for us, and it looks like we’re staying put for awhile.

One of the first things my husband said to me after the shutdown began in 2020, was that he feared for the private colleges around the United States. College tuition has been rising remarkably over the years, and that is what most education news stories and articles are about these days. But part of the problem in secondary education is the ever lowering enrollment. This is happening for a number of reasons. One is the high cost. One is the fact that the current and upcoming generations of college aged students is much smaller than any past generation. 

With a much lower, and expected future lowering, of enrollment, many small colleges are finding it impossible to make ends meet. They rely more and more on endowment, which is always a huge factor in private colleges financial wellness. I know of no private college who relies solely on tuition for operating costs. 

Because of this financial stress, some colleges are shutting down. Almost all are relying much more heavily on adjunct professors than in the past. These two issues combined mean that the number of jobs for a PhD physicist in private academia are shrinking rapidly. 

My husband could leave academia… but this is absolutely a place where he thrives. He has a gift for teaching, a love for teaching, and a love for student well being that cannot be fulfilled in any industry outside academia. And we absolutely love the small, Christian college life. The caliber of student is excellent, we can be open about our beliefs and help students as they navigate through a post-Christian world, and we enjoy the devotion to God that the entire institution has!

This is not true of all private colleges, but LeTourneau fits all of these qualities well. We’ve always said that we love LeTourneau. We just wish we could pick it up and move it above the Mason-Dixon line. 

The reasons we have wanted to leave Texas are not because we hate Texans! I want to make sure you understand that. The things we struggle with in Texas are: weather (we ARE northerners), bugs (there are so many things that can bite/sting you here it is ridiculous), and allergies (they are literally debilitating to my husband for most of the year). Granted, it is also frustrating to have moved to a place where politics is so slanted and cultural Christianity lives to loudly that it is hard to find deep understanding of theology (less so on a college campus), but that is not what makes it hard to live in Texas. 

Despite our desire to leave, my husband has gotten very few interviews from the myriad of applications he has put out over the years. Every job he applies for will have 100+ applicants. He looks pretty good on paper, and he interviews well. But with the reliance on adjuncts and the need to keep costs low, many places are going toward just-out-of-college PhDs or MSs who can be paid less. 

Because of these factors and my husband’s foresight as to what will likely happen post-pandemic in academia, he said that we should probably start looking for a more permanent home right here in East Texas. I began looking that day…

And found our dream home!! 

Calm down. We didn’t get it. It was slightly out of our price range, needed a new roof and windows, and would not have fitted our lifestyle quite as well as the one we actually purchased. But, MAN! Was it gorgeous!

This is the house we did buy:

And it has be practically perfect for us! 

Molly told me that she did not want to move unless we got a pool. Check. 

Edward wanted woods. Check.

I wanted a patio, garage, and library. Check. Check. Check. 

We also wanted to be able to have goats and chickens. Double Check. 

Edward and Milli wanted a long driveway for playing in. Check. 

And on and on. This house has spaces for entertaining, a room we rent out to help with costs, a game room, space for sewing, a pantry, and so much more. It has an outbuilding for goats (although, we need to improve the fencing out there before we use it), plenty of space for gardening and an orchard, room for outdoor play, and woods for adventuring and a club house! It is also within biking distance of LeTourneau’s airport location, so Edward can continue to be a bike commuter most days by cycling the first mile and taking the shuttle between campuses. 

It took us nearly a year to find this place. We looked at tons of homes and even put money down on one. But this place was meant for us! We plan to stay here until Edward retires. Granted, the whole point of this article is really that God has plans that may not be ours- but they are GOOD!

Our Busy Life

 I recently wrote about our pre-COVID life and our post-COVID return to life. Now I’ll talk about the craziness that is our current routine. 

During COVID, our life slowed down a lot. Our work life didn’t change that much, as the girls and I were still doing school at home. We would try to get to park day on Thursdays, and we hung out with the Metzgers, who were our pod. Edward was home more, but he still taught and prepped, and graded. He spent lots of time upstairs, so we didn’t see him much more. He did get some more house work done, and he got yard work done. 

In fall of 2020, Edward went back to campus, but we didn’t return to other activities until after vaccinations in spring of 2021. That spring was pretty crazy as we moved (see previous post) and I had books at both the CHEC and TACHE book sales that May. Collecting books and pricing them when your house is full of boxes and you’re still schooling your children is a hard thing to do! I had prepped several boxes before the move, but they all ended up in our living room on the day of the move. Still, I’d call both sales a success. The money went toward teacher back-pay for Legacy.

After that chaotic spring, we had our summer trips. But this post is mostly about our life getting to its new normal. In the fall of 2021, we began to add back into our lives the things we’d lost during the pandemic, and we picked up a few more activities along the way. My kids were a little older, and there were more options for extra curricular fun. 

The first thing we did was reinstate live music lessons for the girls. Molly had been doing them sporadically over the year. Her violin teacher is wonderful and a good friend of mine. Her life was also in flux, so we returned to the studio only to have it shut down in October. Milli has begun taking piano there, as well. Miss Lily was Molly’s teacher for one month shy of 5 years and it was hard to leave her. But she needed a season of rest from teaching other children (she homeschools her brood), so she recommended the Roberts Violin Studio in Kilgore. We began Molly there in November of 2021 and Milli with piano in January of 2022. 

This is actually an older picture from 2019, but I couldn't find a newer one of the two of them.

As much as we love and miss Miss Lily, having a different teaching style has been good for Molly’s development as a player. She spent 2 months with Miss Samantha and then changed to Mrs. Roberts in January. Both women taught very differently than Miss Lily and Molly has stretched to change (which is not her forte). Both my girls played for a much larger audience for their recital in the spring. My husband even accompanied Molly on piano!

This was the rehearsal- Molly dressed up on the day.

Aside from instruments, my daughters also joined the Greater Longview Area Children’s Chorus in September of 2021. This choir was a new group set up by several music teachers in the area (they also formed the Longview Chamber Singers, which we saw perform earlier that year). This choir is specifically geared toward music training- there is a lot of theory and voice training involved, not just fun singing together. I watched the children improve over the course of the year. 

My kids are right in the center.

When the choir started up again this fall, they worked out a few more kinks, and I am even more impressed! I’ve been volunteering more and have gotten to sit in on both the choirs (there are two levels for those with different music experience). I’m proud to have my children in this choir and love seeing them grown in another musical area!

I’m also back in the Civic Chorus! The chorus got back together spring of 2021, but I waited until I was fully vaccinated to join back up. Plus, I was moving that spring. Fall of 2021, we sat 6 feet apart and could wear masks if we chose. We lost almost all of the Civic members, so our director, Jim Taylor, combined us with the LeTourneau Singers. We’d sung concerts with them before, so it was not a hard change. Our meeting time changed from Monday nights to options of either Tuesday or Thursday or both nights. I chose both and have loved it! My relationship with students has branched out to many I would not have met otherwise. I’m in the Civic Chorus again this year and still loving it! 

This was chapel- I'm the second on the right in the front row

Molly also joined the junior orchestra this year! The first day was pretty hard for her. She was nervous, had so sight read at speed, which she has never really done well, and was with all bigger kids than herself. She went home crying hard over the whole thing. But the next week was better. And this past week, she even said that she felt like she had some of the best technique of all the members. She is stretching and growing in confidence and that is exactly what we wanted to see! (Although, you can't see it because I have yet to get any pictures of her in orchestra- wait until her concert in December, then I'll have some for sure).

Milli will be performing in her first play next month! She has been begging me to let her do Artsview Children’s Theatre for a couple of years, but it hasn’t fit in our schedule. I got her in for the December show, which begins practice  right after her choir concert and Thanksgiving. 

Other activities that we’ve started back up: Crochet Club (I’ll do a separate post on this), MEK (board game and anime club at LeTu that died in 2019 but has been revived), Alpha Omega (fraternity that my husband sponsors), having students over for Sunday dinner, and AWANA (this is new for us last year, but Ed did it as a kid, so I counted it as returning). 

Yup- our lives went from zero to 100 pretty darn fast. Welcome back to the land of living! 

Life After COVID

 Everything slowed down in 2020, and yet nothing really stopped.

In the last post I mentioned a few things that ended before COVID really hit, but everything go much slower on my birthday, March 13, 2020. My husband and I had made plans to go out to dinner and I had tons of birthday coupons yet to use. Our usual birthday outing was to Texas de Brazil, which was in Tyler. But, as it was a buffet, we didn’t trust it and then the next day it was closed along with many other places.

We were near the end of spring break and everything was suddenly up in the air. The university messaged all faculty and students to tell them to take another week of break while the administration made plans. I heard of this while standing in the living room of a friend. She got a text from a parent of a student who had just gotten the email. We raced home to see what that meant for my husband. He was on standby.

Different schools handled the shutdown in different ways. LeTourneau University decided to have students remain at home or go home for the rest of the semester. There were a few international students that were stuck on campus until they could get cleared to leave the country, but otherwise all were dismissed. That didn’t mean the school year was over. My dear husband had to figure out how to both teach and lead physics labs remotely! There are some subjects that are just as easy to teach, or nearly so, over the internet than others. Lab sciences are impossible.

Somehow we got through the year- just another 6 weeks. We watched as hospitals were overrun, people were dying, and pundits argued over one more thing. For some, life ramped up- essential workers and medical staff. For many, life slowed. It was nice in some ways to have my husband home. His work took less time after an initial learning curve to get the camera to work well and schedule class times. We were at home a lot but tried to get out in nature, as well.

That summer, we still took our trip to Michigan. It was a 10 day trip- 5 days at my in-laws and 5 in a hotel. Several members of my family were still working with the public and my in-laws felt unsafe with us going back and forth between each family. The 5 days with my in-laws were nice and peaceful- we read books and the kids played outside. I did have my usual breakfast with Christie and time with Keoina (oldest friends).

Kids enjoying Frosty Boy ice cream

The second week at the hotel was interesting. There were no ice buckets, limited room cleaning, no dining services, and no pool open. We essentially used it just for sleeping and spent the read of the time with my parents. The trip covered the 4th of July, but all city celebrations had been canceled. We did some small fireworks at my mom’s house. When we returned to the hotel around dusk, the parking lot was packed with locals! Our hotel was on one of the highest hills in Grand Rapids and they had all come to watch the illegal fireworks being shot up by dozens of people in town.

We gained two new members of the family in 2020! My husband’s brother married and his sister married! We experienced the sister’s wedding virtually, and Milli, Ed, and I sang a song in the virtual choir. The wedding was in May in Kentucky and it was very well done! Besides the choir song (prerecorded and pasted together like the Brady Bunch) there was a virtual reception and toast. The local Kentucky family were present and the wedding was lovely.

Tim is sitting next to Milli on the left and Lindsay is under Teddy on the right.

Ed’s brother and his wife married in an outdoor ceremony in the fall, so we only saw pictures. It was in Maryland in the mountains. We would have loved to have been there, but we also did not want to have life completely put on hold. Our new in-laws are loved and we all got together in summer of 2021 to celebrate.

Our fall trip home was completely canceled, as was our Christmas trip. That meant that after almost 9 years in Texas, we spent our first Christmas here.

Our kids were excited to get a tree. We got it from Ellis Pottery and each tree is named there. Ours was Ratchet. We set up Edward’s train set for the second time ever. I was sad to miss family celebrations, especially since all of my family live in the same town and got together. We called, but it wasn’t the same. Still, we 4 were together and did have a nice day. We opened presents on the Eve and sang carols on the day. We spent most of Christmas Day with our friends, The Metzgers, who were our pod during all things COVID. Our family members combined made 10, which was the upper limit allowed to gather at one point. We also did church together and some friends and family joined virtually. I led music and Edward preached.

In the fall of 2020, Ed’s job didn’t exactly go back to normal, but did get close. Students came back to campus and had regular COVID testing, including the day of arrival. There was contact tracing and quarantining and all around caution, but classes did resume. Anyone who was in quarantine could watch virtually and we had zero outbreaks.

I got my first vaccine shot on my birthday that year and my second on Maundy Thursday. Ed got his shot in May after classes let out. Neither of us got sick, a little achiness and some swelling, but that was all. By summer 2021, we had mostly resumed pre-COVID life with some masking at times.

Even though we came through the pandemic completely unscathed, we still pray it never happens again. And our hearts go out to all who lost so much more.

Life Before COVID

 

The last time I wrote an update about my life was in 2019 after a few year hiatus (hm, deja vu). At the time, my kids were 5 and 7 and attending a University Model School. They were in a sign language club, swim club, and science club. I volunteered at their school a ton and quite a bit at the University where my husband works. I was working out sporadically and busy all around.

That, of course, ended pretty abruptly in 2020.

But there were a few things that happened before COVID shut us down for awhile.

In 2019, I wrote that I was in a busy season and had little time for reading and writing. So, you’d think that would change with a shutdown… and it did a bit. I read 47 books that year. I’d read 67 the year before, but most of those were children’s books aloud to my kids. I also listened to many hours of podcasts and in 2021, I read 59 (Thank you, Goodreads.com for keeping track for me). That infers that I didn’t read more during 2020, but less.

One thing that happened before the pandemic shut us down was death. A dear friend of ours died at 12:45am on January 1, 2020. It was sudden and no one saw it coming. He was only in his 30s and left behind a wife and 3 children. The week after the funeral, we found out that our school had died, as well. Legacy Academy will be featured in another post, but right now I will say that it was a big blow.

So, 2020 began badly here. Yet we had no idea what was coming. I was listening to the news a lot and knew of the issues that China was having with the virus. I was vigilant but not worried. In fact, we even took a homeschool trip with friends to Chicago that January. That was a blast and we vowed to travel with that family more in future. Chicago had already had its first case of COVID and the news said that she even rode the L and subway home. But we rode it over and over, unperturbed, even though I knew how gross public transit can get.

Perhaps because it was winter and we all had gloves and scarves on a lot, or perhaps because there had only been the one case at that point and the likelihood that we had ridden the same train in the same car touching the same handles without hours of an infected person was low, we all returned in good health.

COVID could have been much worse for us. We were very lucky to avoid any illness of ourselves or loved ones. It wasn’t until Christmas of 2021 that any of my immediate family got sick and that was my mother and sister. Christmas was moved to my in-laws’ house and only my other sister and her family came. Eventually, in 2022, most of my side of the family had gotten it at one point or another. On my husband’s side, his sister who worked in a hospital got it in 2020 at some point. She came through it fine. My husband and I got it in July of 2022, and it sucked. But still mild cases. Very few people associated with us has actually died from COVID. Only one member of my choir, that I know of. No member of our church. One student at LeTourneau before returning for the fall semester. All in all, we were fairly unscathed.

I watched as the world both shut down and went into chaos mode. Tons has already been written about it. I will only say that we stayed out of the fray. Living in a small city in East Texas meant we experienced none of the riots of the summer of 2020. We had more fighting about masks than many places and less than others. Our town had really good communication from the Mayor and our Governor gave regular press conferences. Things opened up early here, but that was mostly due to our low population and spread, not because people were stubborn. I continued to wear masks in public until both my husband and I were vaccinated, and then still a few places after that, depending on the numbers, which I watched like a hawk, or the concentration of people.

It is now 2022. The worse has passed by, and while there is still COVID everywhere, its effects are minor now. Still, hoping to get a booster before heading back to Michigan this Christmas.

What I've Been Up To... Reprise

 

I find it funny that just two posts ago, I wrote about begin a writer and hoping to blog more consistently. Then almost 3 years of silence with just a post about pumpkins in there. This is what my journals always look like, too. “I’m going to start journaling regularly” they invariably say every few years. I used to journal regularly… when I was stuck in school every day with pen and paper. But since then, I tend to journal only when I’m stressed or sad. Future journal finders should take that into account when reading them. I don’t want you to think I had such a bad life, overall.

 When I got married, my husband asked me to keep a journal for us. I began writing several times a week. Then I went down to just Sundays and then I fell back into my “when I feel stressed” mode. So, definitely take that with a grain of salt because my marriage overall has been wonderful! I’m sitting at my desk looking at our journal right now.

So, here I am with an update. I’m sure you were all on tenterhooks (all 3 of you) to see what I’d say next. Sorry about the long wait. I will admit, I even though was pretty busy (as you will read), the hiatus is mostly due to slow internet. It was nearly impossibly to upload pictures at my old place, which I’m pretty sure I’d mentioned before. 

Old place? Yes! We have moved! But not, as we had hoped for so long, away from Texas. That is for another post. Our new place is just outside of town on a little under 10 acres.

 Other than that, what else has happened to us since 2019? Here’s a quick list, but some of these will be their own posts later:

- moved

- visited Michigan 7 times

- survived a pandemic

- seen all of New England in one week

- began to homeschool full time

- survived the end of Legacy Academy

- returned to choir

- kids joined choir and orchestra

- several concerts including the girls’ first symphony

- changed music studios

- resurrected crochet club and MEK

- taken on renters

- added two in-laws on the Hamilton side

- added two nieces to the family

- got my first smart phone

- took a hiatus from news

- discovered you tube and podcasts

There have been other adventures, but these are the ones that stick out to me right now. Look forward to telling you more about them!

Pandemic Pumpkins (AKA Pumpkin Experiment pt. 3)

 If you have been watching my blog (yeah, it doesn't do tricks... it doesn't even get updated often), then you will know that I have a special love for pumpkins and a scientific curiosity about them. There are hundreds of varieties of pumpkin and I have been trying different ones over the years. My first experiment was never completed as I had a baby that fall. But I have done the full experiment 3 times: in 2014, in 2018, and this fall. Look through my archives for the first two installments. Below is number 3.

This year I tried four types of pumpkins. Above you will see the Jarrahdale (in the blue family) and the Porcelain Doll. Both were purchased at Callie's Acre in Gilmer, TX. I also used two White Pie pumpkins and a Marina di Chioggia (in the warty family). 

The steps I take are: select pumpkins of varying types/families, bake them, puree them, roast the seeds, and cook with them. I start by cooking my favorite muffin recipe but throughout the year I also make pies, soups, and other baked items with them. I find that most people use pumpkins for baked goods most often, so I only talk about the muffins in the post. 

Here we go:

Marin di Chioggia

I have only ever baked with one warty pumpkin before now and you can look up my past posts to find it. The Chioggia is flat (as opposed to round), dark green, and has nobs all over it. 

This year, I decided to bake the pumpkins whole instead of gutting and cutting them before baking. I know that if this were a true science experiment, changing the method of baking would disqualify the results. But as a lay person, I am not bothered. Baking the entire pumpkin before gutting made the work easier. You can see how large the Chioggia we chose was- that is an 18 x 26 in baking tray. 

Here are the guts. The seeds were extra large and very white. The Chioggia had a rather earthy smell while baking. It was not a pleasant, "I want to eat that smell." When I cut it open, the meat also smelled a bit earthy and was a deep orange. The skin of the pumpkin turned almost black while baking. 

The meat made a very thick puree and was not watery at all. I pureed the pumpkin while it was still very warm, but did not measure and bag it until it had fully cooled. By that time, the puree had almost hardened and scooped up in chunks. My husband said it reminded him of some of the grosser baby poo we had to deal with a few years ago. The muffin batter was also very thick, but it was a nice consistency for batter- not runny, easy to scoop, a little sticky, and it had a rich pumpkin flavor.

I did not get pictures of the muffins and we donated most of them to the fraternity of which my husband is the sponsor. College boys need muffins a lot more than I do! The Chioggia muffins actually came out a little dark from over baking, but even with that we liked them quite a bit. 

We baked the seeds, as well. They turned out very tasty. Unlike the muffins, we could have baked them a little longer; but they were popping like popcorn, so I took them out.

White Pie 

We bought the White Pie and Chioggia at Ellis Pottery in Longview. That is where I got all the pumpkins in 2014 and I was hoping for another Cheese pumpkin, as that was my favorite. They seemed to be out (although, when I looked at pictures taken by a friend later on, there was ONE in the pumpkin patch where the children were playing). I settled for the Chioggia and the White Pie. I almost bought a Turban pumpkin, as well, but I wanted an even number of types and couldn't find a fourth I wanted. Thus the second trip to Callie's Acre later on. 

The White Pie pumpkin is a lot larger than the orange Pie pumpkins you find in the store. It was smaller than any other pumpkin I have tried, though, so I got two. Even after baking, the guts were much harder to remove than the Chioggia. The inside is almost as white as the outside and had a sweet smell and flavor. It was very mild, rather watery, and made a thin puree. The skin peeled away very easily and was thin as paper. 

The seeds were much smaller, but also rather pale. The puree made a much thinner batter and the muffins had a very mild flavor. If you like the spicy part of Pumpkin Spice but not the pumpkin part, then this is the pumpkin for you. The muffins came out sweeter tasting even though they had the same amount of sugar as the rest. I found it to be meh. And now I have about 12 cups of puree to use somehow. 

The Porcelain Doll

If you look at the cover photo, you'll notice the change in color after baking. The Porcelain Doll has a rather pink color before baking but turns very orange. There is a semi-sweet smell while cooking that is quite pleasant. 

You can see that there are quite a lot of seeds. The seeds are small and dark. The center removed nicely but there were a few spots of white in the meat near the center that I also had to remove. They were hard and would not have pureed very well. 

Tiny seeds. They were alright roasted, kind of crunchy. The meat of this pumpkin was very dark in color. The skin was extra thick and difficult to cut before baking. I'm glad I didn't try to cut up the entire pumpkin and baked it whole instead. But I still had to cut venting holes for the steam and that was a difficult job. 

The Porcelain Doll made a very thick puree with almost no water. My submergible blender had a harder time with this one than any of the others. I probably could have baked this pumpkin a bit longer than I did to make it easier to puree, but I was baking it on the same tray as the Jarrahdale, so I took them out at the same time.  

This puree made very good muffins! Both my daughters declared them the favorites of the four this year. My husband liked the muffins of the Chioggia best, although he wasn't a fan of helping with the puree. I liked the Jarrahdale muffins best, I think. 

Jarrahdale

I feel like I have worked with this one before, but as I look back I see that it was the Speckled Hound. These are very different. The Jarrahdale is more round and is lighter before baking. I loved how it turned darker and had waves of brown on it! It looked like one of those porcelain pumpkins you can buy at Hobby Lobby. 

You can see the pool of water on top of the pumpkin. It did sweat a little, but the puree was not super runny like the White Pie.

Cut open you can see that there seems to be a lot of guts, but there is quite a bit of meat on there. Considering it was the second smallest pumpkin we purchased, we still got over 8 cups of puree out of it. The meat smelled earthy but in a pleasant way, not the same as the Chioggia. 

The seeds were also tiny and dark, but with less of a dark line around the outside. They were fine and easy to remove. I collected most of them. 

Even though you could see the pool of water on top of the baked pumpkin, you don't see any in the bowl. The meat scraped away fine from the skin and made a great puree. 

The batter I made from this puree tasted the best! It was just the right pumpkin to sweetness. You can see it is a dark puree and it came out nice and smooth. This also made my favorite of this year's pumpkin choices. In future, I'll pull out the "winners" from each year and pit them against each other, but I still have several types to try before we get to the final round. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Even if no one reads it, I like to have a record of my pumpkin adventures. I'd blog more often if we had good internet speeds at our house. As it was, I had to go to the University for which my husband works in order to upload the pics. In future, perhaps I'll be able to update more often. If so, I may begin an apple experiment! As a Michigan girl, apples are passion. We don't get many varieties in the stores down here in Texas. I try to get to MI each fall to pick at our favorite orchard and I make apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie, and apple bread with them. It's an idea for later. In the meantime, happy pumpkin month!

What I've Been Up To Pt. 2 AKA: Things I Need to Finish

I am a writer.

Technically, all those who blog are writers. But I'm not sure my sporadic blog posts would qualify my bold statement. I AM a writer.

I'm still on the fence about what to do about it. I participate in NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) and have "won" almost every time (there was one year that I did not, but I won't make my excuses here). I have several unfinished books because of these ventures and it bothers me, not that I have so many stories to tell, but that I have not been diligent enough to finish any but one.

Writing is a discipline. It takes time and effort to write well. And there are seasons when writing comes more easily than others. Two of my earlier posts were about seasons of life. I wrote a bit about what is in this season of my life, how busy I am and why I have blogged so little in the last 2 years. But...

I feel transition coming.

I'm not sure what that transition is. It could be a move or a job change or just a new season of parenting. It could mean a new focus or new goals. But whatever the change is, I want to be prepared. It may be that I will have time to focus on writing again. So, I'm working on making a writing schedule and on keeping up with this blog, for starters.

You can help me with this!

To follow is a list of books that I have been working on over the past decade or so. I need some focus, so I'm asking you to tell me which appeals to you most. What would you read?

1. A Good Read

I know, this is a bold title. This was my first NANO book and the only one I have "finished." I wrote it in November 2010 and edited it in February 2011 to enter into a contest. I did not win. I didn't even make it past the pitch stage and no one actually got to read the book. I did hand it out to a few friends and a professional author. She gave me no feedback at all (probably didn't want me to feel bad) and my best friend said that she could hear my voice some of the time and some of the time forgot that I was the writer because she was so into the story! That was a compliment for sure!

But this book is still really a rough draft. Although I self-published it and could probably get some copies if I wanted to, it is still not "good." It isn't what I want it to be. It needs a good edit.

The premise of the story is that a young teacher plans to skip school the day after the newest book by her favorite author is released. She stands in line at midnight, when she gets a call from her mother asking her to dog-sit. No problem! She can dog-sit and read at the same time. But life has a funny way of throwing off your plans. For this one, who wants her reading life to be full of adventure but her real life to be quiet and normal, she is about to find that you can't always get what you want- nor should you.

2. The duAler Mysteries

I began writing this book the summer I got married. It began as an interesting thought exercise about the mystery of marriage itself and quickly turned into a corny sci-fi. If I have enough material (and after 10 years, I probably do), I will make it into a series.

This book is set in Muskegon, MI. Dr. duAler is a physics teacher at the community college there. His wife, Beatrice, works from home. They have a nice little property that is based on a real property my husband and I scoped out when we were interviewing at a college in that area. But there is a very odd connection between them. Within a few weeks of marriage, they discovered this connection but after 2 decades of marriage, they still don't know what it means. I'm not sure how much I want to give away, but it turns out this connection is something that others want and are willing to do maniacal things to get. Kidnap, rescue, "chases, escapes, true love!"

I have worked on this story sporadically over the course of my marriage but it isn't fully fleshed out yet, nor is it anywhere near fully written. This is kind of an effort of love, though, as I feel very connected to the semi-autobiographical characters.

3. May Flowers

This is a story that I began writing after my last break up (I started dating my future husband later that year, so no more break ups for me! Or is it "breaks up"?). That was 2003 and the story came to me fully formed. May is an only child but has a huge extended family. There are traditions and norms but each household is unique and hard to navigate if you are not an insider. After an accident in which May loses both her parents, she moves in with each of her extended family for awhile. Do you remember the first time when you realized that not everyone believes the same thing? That not everyone has the same dinnertime or does chores the same way? That even if you are related to them, people can be entirely different? May discovers this and more. 

This story is special to me because it speaks of insecurities that all young girls have, even those like me who can hide them well. It was also formed in a time of mourning and self-doubt. I have worked on this for 2 NANOs and am still only partially finished. And a student told me last year that she has read a book similar to this one before. Still, I think May has some universal truths that I hope to address in a unique way- in my own voice.

4. Yarn Over

I live in the south now and I have noticed that there are a lot more people who do yarn crafts down here than most other places I have lived. I mean people of all ages. But this story came to me when I gave my daughter a baby blanket made by my grandmother. 

In Yarn Over, there are many different characters but they all have one thing in common- they are all over 50. I won't call them old, as I find 50 to be younger and younger the closer I get to it, but they are definitely on the other side of the "hill." It is not a coming of age story, but it is a story of never being too old to learn new things and to change your life for the better. ______ is in her 70s, set in her ways, quiet, shy, avoids strangers, and loves to crochet. She discovers that friendships can be found in odd places and can be forged with people with whom she had no idea she has so much in common.

I have to put on my best Louisiana old lady hat while writing this, but one of the main characters is modeled after my best friend. 

5. Women Rising

I was talking to a young man at school today about NANO and a story I started about 2/3 of the way through November last year. After reading a three sentence description, he said he thought a good title would be "Women Rising." My working title was Levitating Rocks, just because I couldn't think of anything better, but his title was extremely appropriate.

Kira lives in a harsh world where men can take what they want and women are only useful for bearing sons and giving pleasure. This world is not bound to one planet or even one star system. But not matter how far it has spread, she can bring a stop to it. From the first woman she remembers, who is not her mother, she has gained a strength that will drive her on, through years of living a secret life to seeking a past she cannot find in her mind. Kira is strong, inside and out, and she finds that when she combines forces with other women, she can do almost anything. 

This story was inspired by a dream. There are bits of ideas of Firefly, Thor Dark World, and friends from Michigan in it. My husband read the first two chapters and commented that it was dark. Interesting, as I was not feeling "dark" at the time. This year I am, so perhaps I should pick it back up.

6. Secret Sauce

I'm actually cheating a bit here, because this story is a new one that I have not actually started. But when I did my first NANO, I planned to work on May Flowers or the duAuler's series, as those were stories I had already begun. I ended up doing A Good Read because it was a story that came to me almost fully formed one night. This one is kind of like that (although, I took notes about it in my book ideas list in 2010, so maybe it counts).

Think "National Treasure" meets "Fan Boys" meets "Oceans 11." 

This story is just a funny gag after another and came to me while I was desperately searching for a lost recipe of dressing from a now closed down restaurant chain. Four college friends decide to become master thieves in order to unearth the secret recipes of popular foods. One is an idealist who thinks that nothing should be secret. One is a foodie who wants to make the recipes. One is a nutritionist student who argues that he cannot do his job well without knowing what is in our food. And one is along for the ride because why the hell not.

These boys take a road trip, break into vaults, discover interesting characters, and bond. It's something light and fun like my first NANO novel and would work well as a screenplay.

So, I need feedback! Comment below or on the Facebook post. Which would you read? Which sounds unique to you? Which is something close to your heart? If none of these sounds great, I'd love that feedback, too. 

And then take another step. Everyone has stories to tell! NANOWRIMO is a great time to think about your stories. You can write anything- fiction, non-fiction, autobiography, anything! If you do decide to do NANO this year, look me up! I'll be your writing buddy. And go ahead an steal this pic for your own status.