Barbara's Meanderings

I hope a lot of you will tune in at 2PM Central time to hear the show, Red River Writers Live Tales from the Pages. The show is going to explore short story writing with published authors of short stories and I thought it would be fun to see the other side of publishing, from the editor and publisher's side. So my first two guests are: Penny Ehrenkranz and Virginia S. Grenier. I have interviewed Penny on this blog already, but although Virginia is a friend, and I love Stories for Children, the magazine she founded online for children, I don't know enough about her. I will be looking forward to learning more about Penny and it will be fun to peek inside the thoughts of an editor and publisher, Virginia.

There is a widget here you can use to listen live to the program or you can go to the webpage and call into the show. Lori Calabrese, also a multi - published author, will be my co-host.

Also, right after the show is over, I am going to go see the live tour of So You Think You Can Dance. It's in New Jersey, so because of traffic we have to leave at least three hours earlier. The show will end somewhere between 3:15PM Central and 3:30PM Central so it's cutting it very close. George Washington Bridge traffic could make you wait for an hour if it's thick and tomorrow is still going to be a day when there is gridlock in Manhattan. We have to go through Manhattan and over the bridge to get to New Jersey. But as you can see, I have two huge things to do tomorrow.

I hope to hear from some of you tomorrow and if you tune in you will be able to hear how I sound.:) Don't be worried if you can't make it at the live time. The show will be on podcast at whatever time you can tune in to hear it. I am doing that right now with an earlier show of one of the hosts, Barbara Hodges. She's got a great show too.:)

Still unable to get to my review of Evil Angel. Hope to finish it before the weekend. That is if my life allows it.:) Until the next time thank you to any new readers and my warmest thanks to those of you who continue to follow my meanderings.

Here is what they do. When you first come into the store they ask you to stand on a mat and then you see your feet and the areas of pressure on each foot. They give you a print-out with the diagram of your foot. The red areas are the pressure points and also it gives a suggestion for the insert you need to use. The girl who waited on us was very knowledgeable and very helpful. She was so patient and continued to look for shoes that would be good for my older daughter. You need to use a different insert for dress shoes than sports/casual shoes. My older daughter put the inserts into her sneakers and she said she felt so much better and it even made her look a little taller.:) My younger daughter also got the inserts that made her old shoes feel better and she got a great pair of Uggs. I didn't get anything, but I was drooling for a pair of black suede clogs with a flower on the side of the front of each shoe. You can see it in gray, but I loved it in black. I will be going back to see those shoes.:)

My advice is that if you have any kind of foot problem skip the podiatrist and go to The Walking Company to get inserts and beautiful shoes. The bonus for my older daughter was that she bought a shoe that had a free tote bag as a gift. This will be great for her new move to the new office. She starts tomorrow, but her new shoes won't be here until Tuesday.):

Also for some reason I haven't been receiving alerts that people have written comments here. I think that will be remedied by what I did today. So I am not ignoring you. I didn't know that you commented at all! I have been busy with the Jewish holidays and didn't get a chance to check the blog for a couple of days. It was Rosh Hashonah and I wish all my Jewish friends L'shona Tova!! Happy New Year!!! Happy 5770!!! We didn't do much, but I cooked for an entire day. You know the usual, chicken soup from scratch, brisket, mashed potatoes. We skipped the chopped liver and gefilte fish this year, but we did get a fresh baked challah and an amazing dessert from a favorite local bakery, The Kneaded Bread. I love their layer cakes and we shared such small pieces we were able to make four pieces of cake last for three days. :) We all ate so much challah and the slices were so large. You are supposed to dip it in honey so you will have a sweet year. My year according to the amount of challah and honey I ate should be stupendous!

Now for the last thing on my list to talk about and that is the drawing for the free e-book and the free print book will be held tomorrow. In honor of the New Year I am going to extend the deadline one more day, since I know some of you still haven't commented. Evil Angel is the prize and I think you are going to love it! With all the things I have been doing I haven't done the review yet, but when you hear what it is about and how crisp and dynamic the writing is you will be unhappy you didn't comment. Just write a few words and you will be entered into the drawing. What do you have to lose?

I also want to remind all of my readers that my first Blog Talk Radio show is on this Thursday, September 24th at 2PM Central Time. The show is called Red River Writers Live Tales from the Pages. My first two guests will be prolific short story/article writer Penny Ehrenkranz who also has two novels published, and Virginia S. Grenier, who is the editor and publisher of Stories for Children and has a novel for children published. Penny was a guest author on this blog and I am looking forward to interviewing Virginia. I have been a fan of hers for a long time! You can find the Blog Talk Radio widget on the side of this blog and if you click that you will find your way to the Red River Writers page. I will also be reading from one of my own short stories.

Until the next time, welcome to any new readers and thank you to all my frequent readers who continue to warm me with their comments.:)

It is: Penny Ehrenkranz!!!!

I want to thank Penny for commenting on almost every interview post and your free book will be sent to you as soon as I let Jennifer know about it. Enjoy!!!

The second thing I want to talk about is a comment my husband made to me and told me to put it on my blog. It's actually a political prediction and concerns the health care reform bill. Seriously, I wasn't even writing my blog post, but something came on the news about the health care reform situation and my daughter and he had a discussion about what would be the ultimate end. So then my husband said that he knew exactly how it was going to turn out and I should write about it here. Let me tell you that this is a definite first for him. He does read my blog, which surprised me, but I'm also thrilled that he does. But this is the first time he has ever given me anything to put on it.

I should give you a little background on my husband, because you might not understand why this is significant for me. He was a history major in college, though he wound up becoming an attorney instead.:) He should have been a history professor, because he spends his day finding information and then teaching it to us.:) His greatest happiness is when he can tell us something new that he just learned. If you ask him a question he has the answer most of the time and he is able to tell you the history of almost every major American and European event. He has always been my go-to guy for trivia too. He knows the most trivial facts about musicians and sports figures. But his major attention has always been politics and government. He can cut between the bullsh-t and get to the truth, and he reads magazines like Mother Jones and The Progressive for fun. He can do the Times crossword puzzle in an hour or so and does all of the puzzles on the page. (Hal, if you're reading this, I hope that you are at least blushing a little:))

So this is his prediction. He bases it on the time when the Knicks needed a boost to win the championship and Willis Reed, who had a serious leg injury, dragged himself onto the floor so he could be there as their center and scored the first four points. It boosted the spirits of the Knicks and they won the championship from his inspiration.

He thinks that the health care reform bill is going to come to a vote and it will need one more vote to pass. Then at the last minute Ted Kennedy like Willis Reed will take himself out of his sick bed, force himself to come to the Senate just to vote and the bill will pass.

Can you imagine that scene? If he walks by himself there will be the handshakes and the back pats of his colleagues. The attention will bring out all of the media for this event and they will crowd the Congressional corridor as he arrives. But if he has to be wheeled in that will cause even more sympathy and of course the media will jump on that too. Either way he wins and the bill passes. This can happen without a single Republican vote!

So, we'll see. If it happens remember where you read about it first. I don't think any of the other blogs have this at all. Remember, my husband could be a pundit on TV. In fact, he probably knows as much as any of them. We keep telling him to start his own show, because it would be so awesome. So store this away and when it happens think Hal predicted this. I read about it on Barbara's Meanderings. Cool!! Let's see if he's right.*(See Note)

Talking about history, last weekend we went to see "Julie and Julia", which was such a good film! I had seen the original Julia Child cooking shows, The French Chef, when we lived in Buffalo in the early '70s. Her exuberance made me want to cook and I wound up getting Mastering the Art of French Cooking for a gift. So I started cooking for my friends and gave these elaborate dinner parties. It took me hours to get a dinner prepared and I had my share of disasters. Most of the time, though, my dinner guests loved the food and I was encouraged to continue.

There was one time when I thought my dinner would be ruined when our Newfoundland puppy, Lady Balzac, who was very large, got up on her hind legs and almost reached my main dish which had taken me three hours to cook. I reached it just in time to push it away from her, but my guests had seen the dog's tongue about to lick it. Yuck! Still they ate it, because she had never actually gotten her tongue near it. I might have had to cut it off!!! No seriously, I loved that dog and unfortunately she is not with us anymore. She was so sweet you couldn't be mad at her too long.:) I'll try to put some pictures of her here soon. You might remember my post about my second puppy, Flash on the blog post: The Last Poem A Day for Day 30 - April is Over.

Anyway, back to the cooking. When I had my children I stopped making elaborate dinners and my Julia Child cook book was just another one on my shelf for years. Then she wrote The Way to Cook and at a Book Fair on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan I found her in a booth and though I didn't have the book for her to sign she signed a piece of paper for me. I kept it safe and when I got home I pasted it onto the page of my book. I was so excited to have finally met her and she was so gracious to me. My little brush with culinary greatness!!!

The movie brought back all my excitement about cooking and made me want to try out some new recipes from the books. Since we saw the movie I have cooked at least five dishes from her books. I was so excited when I baked her french bread and it came out perfectly. All the pictures matched.:)

Then my older daughter, who can't resist a book she wants, got the paperback of My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme and she read it in a few days. I picked it up and immediately I was back in that dingy apartment in Buffalo listening to Julia Child instruct me on the proper way to bone a chicken, etc. Her voice is there from the first page. It is a delightful book about her adventures and her foray into cooking. I haven't finished it yet, but I look forward to reading it like I usually do for a novel. :) I can't wait to read more about her life. I mean we walk with her through the markets and shops of Paris in 1949. She describes her experiences as she delves into cooking. But what I like about this is her relationships and her honesty. She wrote this with her nephew and he gives her the leeway to be herself in this book.

Anyway, it's a great book, so if you see it you should pick it up and read it. If you are interested in history this is also a good way to see what was happening in America at that time as well as see what the French were like then too.:)

It even has made my older daughter, who never, ever cooks, think about learning to cook!!! I hope she does want to learn, because I'd love to teach her with Julia's book of course. :)

Time to stop, but please come back for this week's guest author interview, RD Larson, who has written some very interesting books including Evil Angel, her latest.

*Note: Last Thursday when I posted that prediction by my husband I had no idea that Senator Kennedy would pass away. I am deeply saddened by his passing and hope that the Democrats will be able to come together and pass the health care reform bill finally!!!

What do you do when a polar bear is coming straight for your tethered dog? This is not a problem we here in the lower 48 states have to think about, but my friend sent me these pictures and I thought that I'd post them. The polar bear in these pictures looks like the tamest and most well-behaved ever. I think what I like best about them is the gentle expression on its face and the compassion the bear shows to the dog. See for yourself. Scroll down and see the polar bear in its natural setting.

I've always hated that baby polar bears have been clubbed to death and imagine the horror a mother polar bear feels when this is done to her baby. The behavior you see here is the opposite of how you think a polar bear would react in the wild. But here is a good reason to protect these gentle creatures.

looks on in horror and worries the dog is now food for the bear.
The bear comes close to the dog and look at the expression on

its face.
Then it throws its paws around the dog and hugs it. Look

how sweet its face is.
Afterward the two stand quietly together in a friendly almost

human moment. They seem to be communicating wordlessly.
The polar bear holds the dog in the crook of its arm as if to

warm it or protect it from the elements. It looks more like

a furry blanket here than a giant polar bear.
Finally the bear feels secure and lays down at the feet of

the dog. The bear's expression is calm and peaceful. Its mouth

has been closed the whole time.

by Penny Lockwood (Ehrenkranz)

What happens when a city girl has to move to the country? How will she survive leaving her familiar apartment for an old farmhouse on the outskirts of a tiny town? To add to her troubles the house seems to be haunted. Is it possible that the ghosts are trying to tell the new inhabitants something?

In Ghost for Rent by Penny Ehrenkranz, Wendy and her older brother Mike are forced to move to a farmhouse her mother has rented when her mother asks her Dad for a divorce. Soon she finds herself in the country. When her new friend, Jennifer, tells Wendy how she thinks her new house is haunted, Wendy doesn’t want to believe it. But soon, events change her beliefs and start her and her friend Jennifer on a quest to discover the mystery behind all the strange ghostly sightings at her new place.

The author involves the reader in the mystery as she puts you in the terrifying situations that the children face as they confront the apparitions that are desperately trying to find a way to communicate their message to the new inhabitants of the house. As each strange occurrence happens the reader can feel the same goose bumps the children feel as they encounter these ghostly presences.

Told in Wendy’s point of view the reader encounters the ghosts at the same time as she does, and as the real life story of the ghosts comes to light it is evident that this is not your usual ghost story. Intertwined with the ghost story is the uncomfortable experience of separation from Wendy’s Dad and her mother’s assimilation into a small town existence. The author writes of small towns with tenderness and makes the one in the story very inviting.

How do you find the answer to a mystery that is almost a hundred years old? Will the research unearth the answer? What is it like to see a ghost and be part of that experience? To find out you will need to read the book. You will find it a very fast and enjoyable read. Though it is written with younger characters, the story, which delves into teen age issues, should appeal to older readers as well.

Penny is here courtesy of the Red River Writers Blog Tour. I am also associated with this wonderful group led by April Robins. It is a very supportive group for writers of all genres. If you follow this blog you know I was on Blog Talk Radio in June. What you don't know is that I am going to be on Blog Talk Radio again. Only this time I will be talking about my adult story. I'm not sure of the time, but I will definitely let everyone know about it.

Here is more info for Penny:

Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz

plehrenkranz@gmail.com
pennylane97053@yahoo.com
http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.blogspot.com http://twitter.com/pennyehrenkranz

Ghost for Rent
http://store.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?t=book&bi=8656&si=42

Dragon Sight
http://www.genremall.com/fictionr.htm#dragonsight

Now on to our guest author interview.

Barbara: Which do you like to write more, fiction or non-fiction?

Penny: It's probably fairly even, although I have published more
non-fiction. I love to write fiction, but I learned early on in my writing career that it's easier to sell non-fiction. Not as many people want to write it. Magazines have a greater need for it. For the most part, it pays better.

Barbara: How do your own experiences help you in your writing? Did you put any of them into Ghost for Rent?

Penny: My own experiences tend to show up in my writing, particularly the non-fiction. Most of the non-fiction I've written is based on either personal experience as a parent, my volunteer work and training,or my non-writing paid jobs. As for personal experiences showing up in Ghost for Rent, I would say the following relate to my own experiences:1. Wendy's mom is a writer. 2. Wendy likes to write poetry. 3. Wendy believes in Ghosts. 4.Wendy has an older brother. 5. Wendy lives in Oregon. Although I'm the writer, not my mom, as a child I wrote poetry, I believed in ghosts, I had an older brother and while I didn't grow up in Oregon, I do live there now.

Barbara: How long did it take until Ghost for Rent was accepted for
publication?

Penny: I only submitted to one publisher, Hard Shell Word Factory, in February, 1999. I queried with a synopsis. In June, they asked that I send the full manuscript, which I did. They requested a rewrite of some parts of the manuscript in December, 1999. I completed the rewrite and returned it in January of 2001. They accepted and sent me a contract. The book was published in May of 2002 as an eBook and a print on demand
trade paperback was available in June, 2002.

Barbara: Do you have an agent? Do you think authors need an agent?

Penny: I don't have an agent. I chose to publish with an electronic book publisher because I've heard how difficult it is to publish with traditional houses. While I've had success with magazine articles and short stories, I didn't feel like I had much chance of making it out of the slush pile. I've been happy with my choice. As a first time novelist, I felt excited to hold my book in my hands and to know that I had a novel published. It's been a learning experience. I know a lot of people feel like they need an agent. I think it's a personal choice. There are so many publishing options available these days, and many don't require an agent. I think authors need to decide what works best for them and pursue that option.

Barbara: You have your book published in three different formats
including an ebook. What do you think of the future of ebooks?

Penny: Actually, only two formats. One is the eBook, the other is a print on demand trade paperback. When eBook readers become more affordable, I think eBooks will become more popular. Personally, I like to hold a book when I read it. This is one reason I liked working with Hard Shell Word Factory since they did offer the print on demand paperback version. Then again, it's also nice to know that a tree isn't destroyed to create an eBook.

Barbara: What do you think of digital readers such as Kindle and
Kindle 2?

Penny: I haven't had any experience using digital readers, so I can't respond to this question.

Barbara: How are you marketing your book? Do you have any events such as book signings or radio spots planned?

Penny: I did a book signing at my local book store. I live in a small rural community, so it's harder to do anything big without traveling. Right now, I'm not in a position to do that. I also had some write-ups in our local newspapers. I am doing this blog tour now, and I'm curious to see if that will increase sales at all. When the book was first published, I really didn't have a clue how to market it. The publisher was supposed to do some marketing, but I don't think they did much.

Barbara: How much value do you think appearing on Blog Tours has been to your book sales?

Penny: Hopefully, it will help, but I won't know until I get my next royalty statement. This is an experiment for me as I'm not sure if there is a better way to do a blog tour. For example, are there specific types of blogs I should have approached? Should I have answered interview questions differently? Am I reaching the right people? I tried to find bloggers who were also children's authors to review the book. I thought they would be more likely to have an audience interested in learningmore about my children's novel.

Barbara: Do you have any works in progress that you can let us know about?

Penny: I just sent off a collection of my adult short stories (science fiction and fantasy) to a publisher. Several years ago several of these stories had been published as a collection by an eBook publisher.Unfortunately, that publisher went out of business. There aren't many publishers who want collections. I found one who might be interested. Ideleted some stories from the first collection and added some new ones.If the collection finds a home, it will be titled A Past and A Future.In addition to that, I am working (it's been a slow process with lots of interruptions) on the sequel to Ghost for Rent. The working title isGhost for Dinner.

Barbara: Is there anything else that you would like to say to our
readers?

Penny: Being a writer is one of the best professions I know. It's a lot of hard work and it can be frustrating at times, but it's so exciting to see your name in print. The one thing I learned later than I should have is that it's okay to be rejected. Being rejected means that you are writing and submitting. What one editor doesn't like, another might. If an editor offers suggestions to improve your manuscript, take a good look at what you've written and see if those suggestions might be a good idea. Don't be afraid to get your work out there. Even the best and most widely read authors get rejections.

Thanks for having me here today, Barbara. I've enjoyed our visit.

I've really enjoyed having you here too. After hearing how you got the idea for this book I really want to finish reading it. I hope to have the review up here next week! For anyone who wants to read it you can go to Amazon now and find it there. Check the badge on the side of the blog.

Thank you Penny for your excellent answers and please everyone who reads this leave a comment or question for Penny.

Until the next time, have a great weekend. Hope it stays sunny here and where you are.

Remember I'm on Twitter now and you can follow me: barbehr.

Synopsis

GHOST FOR RENT

This middle grade, paranormal, ghost story is aimed at youth in grades four to six. It is approximately 13,280 words, 10 chapters, and 65 pages long. The story begins when eleven year old Wendy Wiles learns her parents are planning to get divorced. Forced to leave her beloved city home for a cheaper country place, Wendy, her mother, and her twelve year old brother move to rural Warren, Oregon.

On move-in day, Wendy meets a neighbor girl who tells her their quaint country home is haunted. Events proceed quickly as Wendy, her new friend, Jennifer, and Wendy’s brother, Mike, see ghostly figures dancing in the woods. Despite Mom’s claims that “there’s no such thing as ghosts,” paranormal events continue to occur in the Wiles’ home. Meanwhile her brother Mike, arch-tease, continues to torment Wendy, claiming he’s causing the unusual happenings.

Wendy searches through library records to get to the bottom of the mystery. Finally with Jennifer’s help, Wendy begins to unravel the truth. At last even Mike can no longer disbelieve and decides to aid Wendy in her search. By the end of the story, the three young sleuths have uncovered an accidental death, a suicide and a murder.

Her middle grade novel Ghost for Rent, in trade paper back is available at http://www.hardshell.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=0759910057 and as an eBook at