Barbara's Meanderings

However, it is not selling like you would think. Come on people!!! This is to help the victims of the awful life-destroying earthquake and tsunami who are living in a precarious environment due to the imminent possible meltdown of one of their nuclear plants. The way back for this country is long and hard, yet some parts are already being built.

I don't think there is any reason not to buy this story. Anyone can afford this and please go to Smashwords and buy this. It takes two seconds and you have given to Japan. Lindsay is giving all the proceeds to this cause, because she wants to do her part. Please support my fellow Muse author who has such a big heart!!! Here is the link:

Once you have bought this story you should feel a sense of joy that you have done just a little to help. Also you will have helped to contribute to help her get to $10,000.00. Tell everyone you know to go there too.

Thank you to my new followers and please accept my thanks in advance for doing this. If you are a follower for awhile, you know that I don't usually ask for you guys to do anything. This time, though, it's imperative that we all concentrate on this proud, but devastated country.

Are you a lover of fantasy? If you are, then A Past and a Future is for you. Chock full of small vignettes of various fantasy worlds it's like a smorgasbord of fantasy stories.:) Penny has stopped by to talk about this book and here she is:

Welcome Penny! It's so great to have you back here to talk about your latest book.:)

Barbara: When you began writing A Past and a Future, did you have all of the stories ready?
Penny: Yes. It was more a gathering than a writing when it came to putting together A Past and A Future. The original idea came in 1999 when I published a collection of stories with Bookmice, an electronic publisher. Unfortunately, the publisher folded after a year, and very few copies of the book were sold. Not many publishers want to do collections of stories. When I found out Sam’s Dot Publishing did collections, I approached them with the idea of resurrecting, Then and Later, my original collection. Instead of having all the same stories, I dropped some, added some, and put in a couple never before published.

Barbara: What made you start to write fantasy?
Penny: I read fantasy for my own personal enjoyment. Since that’s what I read most of the time, that is the genre I’m most comfortable writing. I also enjoy science fiction, which is why some of the stories are soft sci fi. I love the whole idea of magic and magical creatures.

Barbara: In your first middle grade novel, Ghost for Rent you wrote about a family that moved to a rural area from the city. Is Ghost for Lunch about this same family?
Penny: Yes, Ghost for Lunch is about the same family. In this one, though, the MC’s best friend moves away, and a new family moves into the neighborhood. When Wendy and her brother meet the new neighbors, they get involved with the ghost in the restaurant the neighbors are planning to open.

Barbara: A Past and a Future is composed of many different stories with various main characters. How did you decide which stories to include? Or were all of these stories written especially for this book?
Penny: Many of the stories were previously published in small press magazines with limited readership. I chose the stories that I enjoyed writing. I wanted a combination of stories from the past (fantasy) and stories from the future. The theme which ties them together is a message of hope no matter who you are or where you are.

A Past and A Future
http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#pastfuture

Ghost for Rent
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b8656/?si=0
http://tinyurl.com/27puzze

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

Love Delivery, coming August, 2011
Lady-in-Waiting, coming November, 2011
https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2

Funny Dog, coming May, 2012
Ghost for Lunch, coming September, 2013
Many Colored Coats, coming October, 2014
Boo's Bad Day, coming June, 2015
http://4RVpublishingllc.com/Childrens_Books.html

Barbara: Where can readers learn more about your work?
Penny: My website is http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.yolasite.com
My blog is: http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.blogspot.com

Until the next time, thank you to all my readers and I wanted you to know I will be a guest on Teen Word Factory on February 15th blogging about the problems a high school girl might have. Also please join me on Thursday, February 24th for my February Blog Talk Radio Show, RRWL Tales from the Pages when a couple of my favorite authors from MuseItUp Publishing, Lin Holmes and Kat Holmes stop by to talk about their ever increasing amount of published books.:)

Yes, today in Minnesota and five other states the State Boards of Education decided that they were not going to allow the president of the United States to speak to their student population without not only parental consent, but also before they saw his speech! I am overwhelmed by all of this. When I was a girl it was considered a very big deal when the president spoke to us. As a parent I would never have said that my president couldn't speak to my children. That includes the presidencies of several presidents that did not share my political views at all. But this is too much!! The president has actually listened to these wackos and is allowing them to see his speech a day in advance. Why are they screening a president's speech? It's ludicrous and part of the sickness that has overtaken the Republican party.

Do these parents actually believe that President Obama is going to indoctrinate their children with his fascist or Communist (the label changes constantly) ideas? Or are they so worried that maybe their children might see him as a great man and the president of the United States? Teachers are being urged to save the speech and show it at a later time. This is amazing! When did schools control the president? Who are these parents who called to say they didn't want their children listening to the president? What have they been hearing? I think that they have been listening too much to the right wing nuts who spray their venom all over Fox News and the right wing radio talk shows of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. It is disgraceful and I think treasonous. This should not be tolerated.

As a teacher I see this as a form of censorship and I implore these parents to stop this right now. President Obama is the rightful and elected president of our country. We had to live for eight long years under the ineffectual, yet surprisingly autocratic leadership of the Bush Administration. Maybe the attitude of the Republican party is a leftover of the cancer of that administration. We must treat this with a dose of common sense and not allow it to take over our lives. We must fight back and remind these parents that they are Americans and therefore they must listen to their president. Anything less is what I would consider treasonous and should be punished rather than kowtowed to as is happening. Would Bush have stood for this? I hated him, but he did what he wanted. President Obama I know you don't read my blog, but please stand up for yourself and tell off these people once and for all when you give your big speech.

Okay, enough politics and I'm not going to apologize for my views. I think it's time for everyone to take a harder look at their own opinions and stand behind them. That is if they are based on fact and not on a series of half truths linked together with lies.:) Also that is only for my Democratic friends who need to stand up to the barrage of craziness that is being ladled by the Republicans and the groups that support them.

Now for RD Larson:

I thought we would have her interview here now, but we had to move it one day to tomorrow. But here is a bit about her so you will be prepared. She is a very prolific writer of both short stories and novels and I am very excited to have her as my guest author. Here is a fan site where you can learn more about her.

Please go to her website to see the enormous amount of stories and books she has written. You can also download some of her stories for FREE! You won't be sorry.

One more thing before this ends. A good writing friend of mine who was one of the guest authors here, Penny Ehrenkranz, has written an excellent article for "Writing World.com" called, "Mixing it Up: Writing Across Genres"about writing in different genres. You may notice as you are reading that I contributed a bit to it. :) There are a lot of great tips for writers who want to write in several different genres.

Until tomorrow when we will have the pleasure of meeting RD Larson, thank you to all the people who have come here and expressed their pleasure at reading my meanderings.:) Please leave a comment and let me know. I will try to answer them, but if I don't, I always read all the comments. I am also on Twitter: @Barbehr.

Okay, this is definitely not a postcard, but you can download it yourself from the website and have your own Don Draper staring at you from your desktop like I do now. I'm considering it a postcard, because he's definitely saying hello with his eyes. :) This is one picture I could keep looking at every day.:) The only problem is since it's vintage there is a cigarette in his right hand. But that is a mere period detail. As I remember from my childhood and teenage years everyone smoked including myself. I wonder how anyone could breathe.

Speaking of smoking, there was such a cachet about it. Anyway, the first episode of the third season of Mad Men comes on next Sunday and I am so excited. If you haven't seen any of the first two seasons I would definitely buy the DVD and cram it all in before Sunday. This is such a great show that manages to convey the feelings and environment of the early '60s. It is like an Xray into the lives of the people I always thought had a great life.

I'll never forget when I was looking for a summer job after my freshman year in college I went to some of these ad agencies to get a job. The carpet was plush and the walls were wood paneled. The furniture was comfortable. The waiting room was better looking than any living room I'd ever seen.:) If only I could have lied better I might have gotten the job, but I could never say with a straight face that I wasn't going back to school in the fall. I spent a lot of hot days walking the Manhattan pavement in three inch heels and then I had to go home to Queens on a hot subway train filled with sweaty miserable workers. They didn't have air conditioned trains yet and let me tell you it was like being in a moving gym. Yuck. I gave up and took a job in a camp where there was fresh air and I could be out of the city.:)

Anyway, getting back to Mad Men, the guy in the picture, Don Draper, is my idea of a perfect postcard. So I present that to you.:) Sorry to the guys out there who would rather I had put the female character up there. I think you can find the curvy one, Joan, at the website too.:) Enjoy and don't forget to grab your own screen saver at the Mad Men website. Also while you're there you can make an avatar of yourself as you might look as a Mad Men character. Here is mine. Notice that I have a coffee mug instead of a cocktail glass in my hand. That is because I thought the background was going to be an office. It's hard to see what the background is when you're doing it. But I like that, because it makes me look so innocent and that's just what I was around that time. I was a pretty late bloomer.:)

I never had a dress like that and my hair wasn't blonde, but other than that not a bad look don't you think? I really like the pointy eyeglasses and the neat red handbag too.:)

Wasn't this quite a week? I mean So You Think You Can Dance finally had a winner and I did like Jeanine. I voted for Evan, because he's so adorable and he can't help his short legs and arms. Actually my own father had the same kind of body, but he wasn't a dancer.LOL So I'm very happy with the results and thrilled that we are going to be able to see the live show when it comes to our area. My daughter got us tickets and we were so lucky to get them early. By the time she was finished checking out, the tickets had gone up to twice the price. Who knows what they are now.:) We saw the live show last year and it was amazing, but our seats were far away. We're a little closer this year. We saw the show again tonight, because my other daughter had missed it. When we looked at Kayla dancing we all realized she wasn't dancing with the same crispness and we think that ( and this is purely our opinion so don't go spreading it around, PLEASE!!!!) she might have hurt herself. Just our opinion because she seemed to be having problems with her right leg. As I mentioned before, though, it's our opinion. But if it turns out to be true then you can say you read it here first.:)

The other thing that happened this week is John Hughes, filmmaker, died. I just went back to check on which movie came first and I saw that he did "National Lampoon's Vacation" first, which I saw in the movies and loved. He not only wrote the screenplay, but he did the soundtrack for it too! After this he wrote and directed "Sixteen Candles" and then "Mr. Mom" which he wrote but didn't direct. Then he followed this with probably the quintessential movie of the '80s, "Breakfast Club", another Lampoon movie, "Weird Science", "Pretty in Pink", which he wrote and produced but didn't direct, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" he wrote directed and produced, "Some Kind of Wonderful" he wrote and produced, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" which he wrote, produced, directed and wrote the soundtrack for. I could go on and on with the films John Hughes wrote and produced or wrote and directed or pretty much did the whole film, but he made too many films.:)

I always loved John Hughes films because he made his characters so human. They had such problems and they were usually regular people. Also he used actors who were relatively unknown at the time in many of his films. He used Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer (then a complete unknown) and the list goes on and on. Yet he also used well known actors such as Steve Martin and John Candy and comedians like Chevy Chase. Hughes always treated women with the utmost respect even if they were in uncomfortable situations. He also provided a romantic element in almost every film. Who can forget when Judd Nelson put the diamond earring into his ear. Now that's romance.:) Okay, I could probably watch all of these films over and over and not get tired of them. Oh wait, I have.:)

John Hughes has been a part of our lives and we haven't realized it. Many of the expressions that have crept into our vernacular come from John Hughes films. Even the expectations that kids have today were forged from watching John Hughes films. Who wouldn't want a boyfriend like Molly Ringwald's in "Sixteen Candles"? The kiss across the birthday cake is what everyone woman dreams of having with her significant other. Why aren't all men like John Hughes characters? Hughes celebrated the small town and the teens who seemed to disappear into the woodwork. Probably the most isolated character he ever wrote was Ally Sheedy's character in "The Breakfast Club". Yet he treated her with an elegance and understanding that allowed her true personality to come out. I haven't seen any blog posts on John Hughes yet, but I am calling him an American film genius.

This is also the week I am getting feedback on my latest chapter for my WIP from my critique group. So far I've only gotten one person's comments and I'm hoping by the end of the weekend that everyone will have commented. It took me such a long time to write this chapter so I'm really waiting for the comments. I don't usually feel that anxious about my chapters, but when you've been working on a chapter for over a month and then finally you get it written and you sub it you expect to see your critique. Our group usually gets around to posting our comments, but I wish everyone would be a little faster about it. :) We've discussed this problem and have no solution. We have a reminder for the group and it goes out in the middle of the week and at the end. Sometimes we have to wait for over two weeks to get comments and then it overlaps. But I love my group so I can wait to see all of their reactions. It's just such a let down when you were hoping for their thoughts.

Speaking of writing, how many of you have dropped by the blog post about Jennifer Banash? If you leave a comment or a question you can win a free book. I know some of you come and read and don't comment. This time you can win a great book just by commenting. What are you waiting for? It doesn't have to be long to be in the drawing. Just jot down something and your name will be in the hat when I do the drawing for Jennifer Banash's new book, Simply Irresistible. I will be reviewing it on Monday for anyone who couldn't get a copy. Thank you to the three people so far who are in the drawing because they wrote a comment. You are the lucky ones so far.

New things you should know about me are that I have an interview by RD Larson on her blog. Also, I am now discussing being a host on a Blog Talk Radio show with another author. More about this when we are ready to go on the air.:) I'm excited, because I love to talk as well as write and I'll be talking with authors of all kinds. I'm looking for people who have short stories and poetry published as well as authors who have published books. I am also going to be interviewing writers who are looking to be published. I might be letting people give their three sentence pitch on the air. This is all in the planning stage so stay tuned to see what's happening. This is all due to April Robins and Red River Writers without which I would not have been on the radio twice.