Summer Halfway Over

Wow, it's hard to believe but summer is halfway over! School is set to start on August 14th and then we'll be in the swing of all things school.

I had intended to be more present on this blog over the summer, but I'm taking a bit of a break, too.

Other than being chauffeur mom and driving the kidlet to swim practices--the killer one starts at 5:45 across town--I've been reading voraciously!

I just started Jim Butcher's Dresden Files book #9, White Night. I have/had most of these books in paper format, but made the mistake of lending the first five out to someone I trusted.

Yeah, I never got the books back.

So, like when I collected records, and recollecting everything when the industry went to CD's, and now recollecting again on IPod or in the cloud, I'm repurchasing the entire Dresden series on my Kindle. Luckily I happened to catch the first seven books on  a $0.99 cent sale in June.

Who is Harry Dresden?

He's a wizard. Chicago's only wizard in the yellow pages. Each urban fantasy book is stand alone, since Mr. Butcher does a wonderful job of weaving in the pertinent backstory when needed, but reading them in order provides an overall arc of the characters.

Reading also has made this writer realize some of the errors of her ways.

Not in a bad way, but in a "holy cow, i'm an idiot" type of way.

In fact, one of my epiphanies happened when I was reading the comics.

What? Don't you read comic strips? You should. They are probably the shortest flash fiction you'll ever read. In their one, two, or three cels they paint a picture for the reader. These stories have a beginning, middle and end told in a very concise way.

This was when I finally realized that my picture book, GO AWAY, PIPER! is actually multiple stories in one book. Oops!

I didn't continue the theme of the original story all the way through to the end. In my typical fashion, I took a right turn about 2/3 of the way through the story.

Plus it's wordy, way, way, way too wordy.

It isn't too surprising considering I was just typing my picture books on the computer. Oh, I could visualize the pages, BUT I was writing what I saw instead of letting the images do their job.

So, I bought a small journal. I counted out my 32 picture book pages and now I will see how well my story fits in that parameter. Plus, I'm going to draw/jot notes down about each page scene.

Oh, yeah, I can't draw. So we're talking stick figures and general scribbles.

I hope you are having a wonderful summer!

Later, Peeps!