One of my Dad’s favorite past times was (and still is) scaring me to death and I liked to return the favor. Unfortunately, there was always an innocent bystander. My mother. It seemed to never fail that my mother would walk into one of our well thought out schemes. It’s amazing that the woman isn’t on a wide range of tranquilizers after the years of torture we put her through. While my dad would jump out from behind doors to scare me and I would shake up some carbonated beverage for him, it was always my beloved mother who ended up the recipient of our trickery.


There was one particular incident that was strictly a bonding moment for my dad and I. Oh yes, it involved my mom in the biggest way. One in which just the very mentioning of it to this day, causes her lips to pull together and her eyes become nothing but small slits of anger. It was an innocent enough prank; especially, since it was an impulse move on my part.

First it will help if I give you a little back story on this issue. My mother has a fear of lightning. A sever fear. She grew up in Southern Florida and to her credit there are some pretty intense and freaky lightning storms there from time to time. My entire life I’ve heard the warning from her not to take a shower when it’s lightning and don’t talk on the phone when it’s lightning because a light pole could get struck down the street and the lightning would travel through the line into the phone and strike you while you talk on it. Mom had a ton of warnings but these two were always included and she was adamant that if we performed either of these acts the curtains would be closed on our existence. I often wonder if that would happen by an act of God or by her for disobeying. I never tested it. Until one fateful night…

This was in the time when cordless phones had first become all the rage. We had one and loved it. Especially mom because she could move about the house working and talking on the phone without hanging one of us with 50 foot of phone cord. On the night in question, we were sitting around the den watching TV and cutting up. It was storming outside. The lightning lit the windows and the thunder shook the glass. Mom started on her soapbox about the evils of appliances versus lightning. Dad and I rolled our eyes as she muttered on. I remember the debate a little like this:

“You can’t talk on the phone when its lightning…it’ll hit a pole…travel through the line…strike you right then and there” firmly stated mom. My response: “What about the cordless phone? How can it travel to it when there’s no line?” Dad chimed in with “Yeah, I guess it would chase you around the house until it could strike you down deader than a doornail”. He snickered. I giggled. Mom glared. We teased her for a few minutes. Then, as if on cue, the phone rang. Me, being the teenager I was at the time, was the closest to the phone. Mom promptly advised me not to touch the phone. “DO NOT TOUCH THAT PHONE!” Dad and I looked at each other and at that moment an unspoken pact was made in our eyes. I reached for the phone and as I picked it up, bringing it to my ear, I shook my entire body making a “zit…zit…zit” sound. Two things happened spontaneously. My mother swore like a drunken sailor and my Dad burst in to laughter so hard he had tears rolling out of his eyes. Afterwards, my mom stormed up stairs swearing with every step she took (something about getting our come uppins) and she didn’t return down until the next day.

A side note. A few years later, a friend’s husband was talking on the phone when lightning struck a transformer. The current traveled through the lines ending at the phone he was on. The current knocked him across the room. I don’t answer the phone when it’s storming now. Sometimes, mother does know better.

I have so much I need to place my attention on at the moment. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to attend to educational issues or work issues. I don’t even want to think about the mess awaiting me when I get home. The cooking. The cleaning. The bills to pay. I just don’t want to think about any of that. I know I’ve brought it all upon myself but honestly, I just want to get to the writing; to the fun stuff in my head. To the worlds that want to get out. But atlas, I have to be a grown up. I have to tend to the work on my desk. The ringing phone. The emails that must be answered. Ugh. I don’t want to. I want to type out words that will take me to another place. A place that does not involve being responsible or tired or filled with duty. I have always enjoyed writing the words that float around in my head. But I must do the necessary things first and pine for my first love. I long for the day when I can sit over a blank page and let the internal world that surrounds me fill the emptiness...without interruption.

As usual, I'm behind everyone else reading this book. There might be someone out there who hasn't read this so I'll give my take on it... just in case. I am a lover of my different genres and I am quite found of Christian Fiction when it is not really preachy or when it doesn't involve an Amish love story. (I really don't get why many Christian writers feel the need to toss in a token Amish girl but that is a different topic all together). The Shack started out with quite a bit of potential. A story of a man and his family after the abduction and murder of his youngest child. Great start. He then receives a note from "Papa" (his wife's nick name for God) telling him to meet him at the Shack where his murdered child's bloodied clothes were found . Long story short, he struggles with the decision and goes to find out who is at the Shack: the murderer or God whom is extremely angry at.

The story continues on with Mac, the lead here, meeting up with an african American woman, a lumber jack, and an oriental woman...all representations of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Yes, you heard that right. Without giving away too much, the weekend is spent with these three making Mac face many of his fears, false idealisms, and his misplaced anger and judgement. These are still great structures for a good story but that's all I was left feeling...a good short story. This was a short story that drug on a bit to long for what little it delivered. It had a good message  but I felt it may have been watered down a little too much. Then again I am Southern Baptist and the only thing we seem to water down is the Kool Aid during Bible School.

It is a good stop-and-look-at-your-life, feel good kind of book if you don't want to look to deeply into your spiritual self. You can feel William Young's heart go into these stories that have been woven together to heal this man and his broken family. I won't say it was a total waste of time. I just didn't grow from it but sometimes that's just as well.

There's quite a bit of material out there for aspiring writers. It can be confusing to wade through it all and sometimes, more often than not, its repetitive mumbo jumbo we've heard before. I found a website that has a little of everything in it regarding all things writing. While this blog is mostly for my own amusing muse moments I thought I'd share

100 free and useful web apps for writers

100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars

How to Improve your English Writing Through Free Lectures

75 Books Every Writer Should Read

There. It's not groundbreaking material nor is it anything really new but it is a great all in one place resource for finding ideas, research help and much more. I'm mostly saving this for me...a place for me to remember where it is but if you stumble upon it and get use out of it...well, great. And if you stumble across it and think, "Well I know a better place to look!" please let me know.

The Following is a list of books I am planning to read. These are books I have in my possessing not just books I want to read. That list is far to long for this blog.

• Everything is Illuminated by Johnathan Safran Foer
• The Help: A Novel by Kathryn Stockett
• The Memory Book By Henry Loraine
• Cape Refuge By Terri Blackstock
• Southern Storm By Terri Blackstock
• River’s Edge By Terri Blackstock
• Breaker’s Reef By Terri Blackstock
• Land of a Hundred Wonders by Lesley Kagen
• First Drop of Crimson By Jeaniene Frost
• Notes from a spinning planet Ireland By Melody Carlson
• Roads By Larry McMurtry
• Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
• The Spark By Chris Downie
• The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher by Rob Stennett
• Bride Most Begrudging By Deeanne Gist
• Primitive by Mark Nykanen
• Booth’s Sister By Jane Singer
• You Can’t Stop Me by Matthew Clemens
• My Name is Russell Fink by Michael Snyder
• Daring Chloe (Getaway Girls Novel) By Laura Jensen Walker
• More Blood , More Sweat by Tom Reynolds
• Talk of the Town by Lisa Wingate
• Edgar Allan Poe’s Complete Poetical Works by Edgar Allen Poe 1809-1849
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Crossroads Café by Deborah Smith
• Dark Pursuits by Brandilyn Collins
• Exposure: A Novel by Brandilyn Collins
• Mossy Creek by various authors
• The Keeper by Sara Langan
• Murder Takes the Cake by Gayle Trent
• The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
• My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent
• Serial by Jack Kilborn
• MetaGames by Sam Landstorm
• Full Moon Rising by Keri Arthur
• Vanish by Tom Pawlik
• Wit’ch Fire by James Clemens
• Already Dead: A Novel by Charlie Huston
• Unbreakable by Sydney Somers

I've never read any of Dan Brown's books. Yes, I've seen the movies. Reluctantly at first. After all, they were full of so much controversy I shied away. I don't like debate or disagreement. That's another story though.

I decided to tackle this one. The movies were good but sometimes, if you blinked, hard to keep up with. I wanted to see if I could follow along and I'm happy to say I did. Not only could I keep up, as with any reading, I found I could even get a step ahead but not enough to ruin the storyline.

Dan Brown is a wonderful story teller. It is, of course, the third book revolving around Professor Robert Langdon and his many historical symbolic adventures. The Lost Symbol is packed with historical myths and fact leading to fiction (vice versa as well). This book is loaded with information about the Freemasons and other secret societies, historical facts, and even a few mystical ones. Brown lays out a very intense storyline and even the twists and turns you see coming do not turn out the way you would have thought. The start could be a bit slow to some but it was good transition for me to go from one book to another - especially in a different genre. The characters are well developed and flawed. This is my favorite kind of character...especially in a hero. There were some nail biting moments and even one (without giving to much away) that caused me to put it down and walk away. Thankfully I returned and the twist was very much worth the agony.