Barbara's Meanderings

I am so happy that NaNo is over, because I am getting to sleep a little earlier and now I only have one novel in my head.:) During NaNo I tried not to think about what I was writing. After all, it doesn't matter as long as you get the words down on the page. So now I can concentrate on my WIP again and I'm excited to finish it. I can feel the finish line coming soon, but I still have no real idea of how I am going to end it.:)

I am putting the Winner banner up here so I can celebrate. I also have the certificate and they have a very nice page for you when they declare you a winner. I didn't think I would finish, but then I got to 48,000 words and realized I had to finish tonight!!! I'm so happy, because all I have been thinking about this month is NaNo. Now I can concentrate on my real writing. LOL

Actually, I'm not really unhappy with this novel. It is YA after all and maybe I'll give it to my critique group to see. Of course, it isn't in any form yet. I have to go over it and cut some words. I won't touch it though for the whole month.

I really didn't write for that long, but I tried to write every day. Each year it gets easier and easier to get to 50,000. I'm not sure the story is done, but it did come to a very nice ending. I still feel it needs more and will look at it and decide.

Thank you to any new readers and of course thank you to the people who usually follow my meanderings. Please don't forget to try to listen to my November show of Red River Writers Tales from the Pages. It turned out very well after all.:)

Yesterday we went to see "Pirate Radio" in a theater we usually don't frequent. But the times matched and we were close so we went there. The seats in this theater are different, because they are slanted back so when you sit you are automatically forced into an angle. It's almost like your chair had been tipped back and of course you can go back further too. But the strange part about this is that they were very comfortable during the movie once I got used to it. Normal modern movie theater seats have the back loose so you can lean backward, but in these the seat tips back. So I spent awhile acclimating myself to these.:)

"Pirate Radio" is a movie that is best appreciated by people who have either lived through the 1960's or have a good knowledge of the music and history of this period. Based on a true story about the brave people who had radio stations that played rock music, banned in Great Britain in that time, this movie explores the every day life of those people. They couldn't broadcast on land, so they did it from ships out beyond the three mile limit so they wouldn't be touched. For someone who lived in America during that time period and actually listened to what they called alternative radio, it's hard to understand not being able to listen freely. However, in the movie they mentioned that over 25 million people listened to the pirate radio stations every day. These stations had to be listened to in locked rooms or in the middle of the night in the privacy of your own home. People listened in groups and danced and sang along. It was a real fan experience with people choosing their favorite DJ's.

The movie goes into what it was like for the hard working broadcasters on a ship out at sea. The tone is light and the story brings a layer to the movie that transcends the music. Though the music is so great! It starts in 1966 when the British government decided it wanted to get rid of pirate radio stations. Kenneth Branagh is a member of the government who needs to exterminate the station. I researched it a little bit and there were more than one of these stations broadcasting out there. But his performance is so incredible, because I didn't even realize who he was until after a few scenes. With his hair slicked back and in a suit of the period, he certainly looks the part. I think he even gained a little weight for the role too. There is not a drop of sexiness in this character at all.:) Also in the movie and I'm not counting, but she's been in several movies this year, Emma Thompson. She has a small part, but she makes the most of it.:) January Jones has a cameo role too, and she plays it well.

But even though the movie is one of the best I have seen this year, what holds it together is the soundtrack made up of every classic rock song you ever heard. The movie starts with The Kinks and you hear Beatles songs a great deal, because at that time I think they had four or five songs that went to number one. Music fills the movie almost like another character and it is constantly on in the background. We have all heard these songs so much that they are a part of our life and especially with The Kinks, who we saw a great deal in concert later in the decade, I could picture them doing their thing on stage.

I think it's better not to give the story, but I will say if you love rock music and "WKRP in Cincinnati", you will love this movie. There is a lot about the workings of a radio station and you get behind the scenes and inside the lives of all of the people who inhabit the ship that houses "Radio Rock". Though as Ben Fong - Torres quotes another writer saying in his review: "It wasn't about rock and roll. It just used rock and roll." it made me leave the theater with a smile and for me that is a great movie. Don't we all need something to make us smile these days?:)

Can't get into the change in the times yet. The sun started to set before 5:00PM today and I'm not ready to crawl into my house for winter yet. Nights seem to be endless and they will only get worse as we get toward the beginning of winter. If I get up late I only have a few hours of daylight, so I'm going to have to go to bed earlier just so I can see more daylight!:) Of course as the nights get longer the earlier the sun rises. So if I stay up late enough I can see daylight too.LOL

Have to get back to writing, because those words won't write themselves.:) Until the next time hope all of you had a great weekend and are staying healthy and warm or cool if you live in a warmer climate.:) The temperature changes are also strange too. One day it is in the 40's and today it was 65 degrees. Ah global climate change!!

Thank you to my faithful readers and to the new people who are following me. I hope you had a chance to listen to my October radio show on Red River Writers Live Tales from the Pages. My November show, which will be on Tuesday, November 24th will feature Kim Richards Gilchrist who is the co-founder of Damnation Books and Julie Maloney, who has founded a group called Women Reading Aloud. Julie will discuss how she came to found her group and what the group hopes to achieve. On my October show Karen Hunter and I discussed the idea of "authenticity". Julie Maloney founded her group on this idea. It should be a fun show.:)

My December show is going to be all about a wonderful group called Milspeak. It is made up of service people from the armed forces. A woman named Sally Drumm formed this group of people who wanted to write and now there is a book out called Milspeak: Warriors, Veterans, Family and Friends Writing the Military Experience with all of their writing. Unlike previous shows I am devoting the entire show to these writers. It should be a great show and I am looking forward to meeting all of these new writers. I hope you will join me. Just click on the icon on the sidebar or go to Red River Writers Live Tales from the Pages for November.

I have learned to read the comments for everyone's blog, because I have learned so much from comments and I have actually met a lot of great people from them. I love new visitors and especially people like Margaret from whom I can learn so much. In some ways she reminds me of my friend Marilyn Campiz, writer of Lotus Sutra Chronicles, who is also a world traveler and has a blog. There is the same calm feeling with beautiful pictures. I highlighted her blog here in this meandering post: "Thoughts on a Sunny Day". Go ahead and check out her blog, because her pictures are not only beautiful, but they tell a story of life in Korea we never see.

Now for something completely different.:) How many of you have been watching the series about Monty Python? It brings back those crazy shows, when I had never seen anything like this group. It also explains a lot of the reasons for their relationships and the precursors to their show. If you have never seen Monty Python go to a much earlier post of mine: "The Good Banker and My Favorite Store", in which I use the same expression as the first sentence of this paragraph. All Monty Python fans know this sentence very well. To transition between hilarious skits they used this sentence. John Cleese, who was able to say this with a straight face all the time in his clipped elite British accent, is probably one of the funniest comedians I have ever seen. Just an aside to let you know that John Cleese recently celebrated his 70th birthday on October 27th.

This new mini-series "Almost the Truth" shows why the show was so amazing. With four out of the five principal guys from the original show there, it was fun hearing them speak about their experiences doing the show. I haven't been able to see the whole series but hope to see it in its entirety when it comes out on DVD from Netflix. These are the most original and side-splitting funniest comedians I have ever seen. If you haven't seen any of the bits they did you have to treat yourself to watching them on YouTube. The one I just linked you to is so hysterical I dare you not to laugh during this skit. It's a combination of the material, their timing, and all of their talents combined. Go ahead and watch all of them including the interviews with the older Eric Idle. You will see how hysterical and irreverent they are. Watch all of the best ones on the Monty Python page.

This week has been full of crazy things. One of the craziest is what happened to me on Monday. As most of you know, I have been looking for a job and a way to make money for over a year. So when this job offer came in an email for a liason for a company overseas I checked it out. Certainly I wasn't about to give my name to spammers. The company, Davies-Turner turned out to be a legitimate company and I filled out the information with my name and address and sent it by email to what I thought was the company's HR department. This was in August, and I completely forgot about it. However, Monday morning a FEDEX envelope overnighted was delivered to me. Inside was a check for $3, 750.00 that showed another company's name in the letterhead. Immediately following this delivery I received an email from this so-called Davies-Turner representative telling me to expect a check and to keep 10% for myself while sending 90% by Western Union to another address. Of course, I didn't do anything. With a lawyer for a husband you learn never to do anything without checking. I called the company on the check and they were a real company. But they told me they had problems last year with bogus checks and that this was not issued by them.

Darn, I thought, I could have really used the money.:) But now I realized that I had been scammed. I went online and found the exact email that had been sent to me as an example of a scam. Funny, this wasn't on Snopes.com, the website I usually use to check if something is real or not. But it was found on Google and then my daughter, who is a research expert, found more about the scam and what I should do about it. So by the afternoon I was talking with the US Attorney Generals office and explaining what had happened to me. I had a copy of the check and the FEDEX envelope that I had sent to the company on the check. The US Attorney General was only interested in whether I had cashed the check or given them my Social Security number. Neither of which I had done. I am naive, but I'm not crazy.

This has really caused me to be very wary of giving any information anymore. The scammers used a real company, Davies-Turner, which has a legitimate business. Then they scammed another business by forging a check with their name. They sent it from another person who did not have a real phone number. (I called the number on the FEDEX envelope immediately). If you clicked on the link for Davies-Turner you can see how someone might think this job was real. If you get a job offer from any company don't just go to their website. What I should have done was search the internet for their name and check the listings underneath the first one. Here is what is there for Davies-Turner. The person who is supposedly sending the email is the real name of the man who is really at this company. It's very tricky so you have to be very careful. I post this as a cautionary tale to anyone who answers this kind of email. Be very, very wary, because you might wind up in my situation. I am sending a copy to the FBI and will also post on as many sites as possible to warn other people from getting involved.

If I had cashed this check as the scammer requested I would have had to pay not only the amount of the check but a fine as well. The Attorney General's office told me it would have been over $5,000.00. Yikes! So, crisis averted, but that did start my week off with a bang!!

The rest of the week I have been occupied with thinking about the next chapter for my WIP, When My Life Changed. Tonight I had a discussion with my daughters about how I should end the book and they gave me some good ideas. Whenever I am really stuck I go to them, because though they are grown they still are closer to the minds of teens than I am.:) Bouncing ideas off of them helped and I think I have a way to end this, finally. Of course, I won't know until I start writing the chapter. Then I probably have two or three more until the end. But we'll see. Writing isn't an exact science. LOL

Speaking of writing, this might be my last post in October and November is going to be very sparse. So if you are missing me I am not posting because I will be doing NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month and occurs every year from November 1st to November 30th. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month! I did it last year and won. I posted my winning badge from 2008 here to gloat about it.:) Also the winning certificate everyone who wins receives. I plan to add ones from 2009! Wish me luck!

Until the next time, which might be way into November, have a Happy Halloween and if you're doing NaNo good luck to you! Please add me as a friend there. My username is: lionmother. It's grueling but worth it. Welcome to all the new readers and thank you again to the readers who have continued to follow my meanderings.