Former columnist for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel covering metaphysics, she got to interview the likes of Brian Weiss, The Amazing Kreskin and Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell. Mimi’s love of words became obvious to her parent’s at age four during high mass as she stood on the pew seat to rally the congregation- “Hey! Let’s everybody sit down!” She’s been a tour guide out west and has *too many* years of tourism marketing consulting, designing promo collateral, commercial scripts for TV/Radio, freelance writing, resume and bio coaching and large event planning. A poet, artist, world traveler, mom of two phenomenal kids; in the wee hours she has three finished fiction manuscripts, a published book of erotica, and two blogs and is a self-confessed Pinterest addict. Owner of a fabulous destination wedding and event venue in northern Michigan and a board member of the Northport Chamber of Commerce and Leelanau UnCaged Music & Art Street Festival planning committee. Currently writing a non-fiction book of unusual blessings that her friend/agent is kicking her rear to finish. Member of RWA, MMRWA, CCWA and former CCWA Board. www.wordninjagirl.com
Today it’s Mother’s Day in America. That’s a nice thought but it leaves out millions of women who mother in their own way every day they live.
More than a day for mothers of children, this is a day for celebrating the sacred feminine that lives within all women.
Some hold a child
Some care for family, friends, strangers and any who need their touch.
Some embrace the furred, feathered and finned.
Some grow the foods we eat with loving hands.
Some nurture the flowers and plants that bring us beauty.
Some hold instruments to their bodies and call out the music and the art that feeds our souls.
We women are all nurturers in our own way.
We care for and feed everything that grows
and with our care
they all grow – better.
From one to another, here’s to all the Nurturers in all their beauty.
Mark Twain famously once said “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter – it is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”
As writers it’s important to know that we’re more than storytellers, we are wordsmiths! Every word we type has potential to do more than convey character and plot. Our words can also deepen the mood and emotional resonance in our novels.
Ilsa J. Bick is a master of this technique. In her apocalyptic zombie novel, Ashes, Bick intensifies each page with the danger of her world through the use of aggressive words. In the following examples Bick uses the violent words of: slash, spear, and pierced, to describe otherwise peaceful images.
“She registered the slash of morning sun in an already too-bright and very cold room…” (301).
“She heard the creak of Tom’s footsteps overhead, and a
I’ve been working hard on my novel, Arc and rewriting it from a different point of view. Have you ever done that? Hammered out tens of thousands of words and then had the forehead slapping realization that the wrong person is telling this particular story? Yeah. It sucks. But better stuff comes after the weeds are pulled.
Anyway, I’ve decided to follow in the new tradition of putting larger portions of a novel out there for people to read, so here you go. The first three chapters of Arc. Enjoy.
You know the question about what famous person, living or dead you would want to be stranded with on the Space Station for a month? Joss Whedon. That’s my pick.
This guy is a veritable horn of plenty that delivers a continuous stream of scripts and characters and storylines that capture my imagination every time.
It wouldn’t be like being stuck with someone who can barely create their own life. Being stuck out there with Joss would be more like him, me and the hundreds of stories that he’d have just squatting in his head.
Add mine to the mix and an endless supply of tasty food items and we’d be good.
I-90 runs through Illinois and just off the Mt. Prospect road exit was a place that meant something to a lot of us that grew up in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. It wasn’t a beautiful place, just a typical 1950’s utilitarian brick and glass, I-could-easily- be-transformed-into-a-minimum-security-prison…or-a-school, design. It was the Des Plaines Oasis, a road side rest stop/restaurant/and well known gathering place for local teens in the wee hours of the night.
Even though you may have never driven I-90 through Des Plaines, you’ve probably seen it. It was the building lit by fire from the flame thrower Carrie Fisher used to torch the Blues Brothers while they made a call in a phone booth. By the time this film was made in the 1970’s, the restaurant had already changed hands from the old Fred Harvey franchise.
Here’s the scene.
They tore it down this past weekend to make way for road widening. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it got me wondering where teens will go now at 3 in the morning to eat waffles and drink gallons of coffee after sneaking out of the house.
Back then, it was the only thing around for anyone under 21 when your munchies sent you into the night in search of a plate of fries and a hot fudge sundae. Everyone I knew wandered through that place at some point on a weekend. Looking at the door in the photo, got me thinking of all the people’s hands that touched that door handle over the past 50 plus years. Friends, lovers, classmates, neighbors and uncountable others; the famous and the civilian suburbanites; they all grabbed that handle and made their way to a leatherette booth where a plastic coated menu awaited their hungry eyes. So many of them are now gone from this world, mixed with the dust of the demolition.
In some less patchouli smelling, eight track dimension of my memory, the words that Izak Dineson wrote in her book (later a movie), Out of Africa rose up again…
“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me…?”
All things must pass. Thank you and goodbye, Des Plaines Oasis. You were the scene of many hilarious conversations with friends dear to my heart. And thanks Fred Harvey Restaurant (way back when) for your pencil-stuck-in-their-hairdo servers that let us just hang out when the rest of the world was closed for the night.
Somewhere in the air over where you once stood, there is a shadow of me with waffle syrup stuck on it somewhere. It’s quivering with laughter and humming a song from Tumbleweed Connection.
Question: Am I missing out on some sort of secret, super delicious farm salt? Mountain salt, perhaps? Or maybe it’s prairie salt that I should be wanting…
I went to open a box of Triscuits and noticed that the label proudly announced, “Made with sea salt.” Wow. Really?
Technically, all salt is sea salt. Mined salt is nothing but seriously old sea salt that was trapped when the oceans receded from current land masses some 300,000,000 years ago. So… sorry gourmet sea salt peddlers, you’re going to need to come up with a better catch phrase.
That, or maybe I can start bottling and selling Earth Air and Wet Water. Yes, I think I will. Let me get to the patent office before someone steals my idea…………….
And this is what I do to avoid working on the damn speech I’m supposed to be giving this weekend.
Word Ninja Girl 