Friday Fun ~ Bye Television Until Fall; Hello Garden

With television watching, all of my favorites are going into slumber until Fall. Of the new shows only one has piqued my interest...Dracula with Jonathan Rhys Meyers holds promise. Scandal, Arrow, The Following, and the Walking Dead will be back to titillate and tease through new seasons. but until then what to do...

Well, there's my adaptive gardening to take up the slack and preserving. My corn now stands three foot tall and the weather is rainy but above 70 degrees so this weekend the green beans and black-eyed peas get planted underneath them. My zucchini and yellow squash went into the seed starters last week.

I had a thought about the wasted space under my raised beds. I despise wasted space when it could be productive. It's just one of my many quirks. My brain started working on what could grow underneath that required limited sunlight. Plus the weeds have taken root and I pulled up some dandelions, the greens are quite tasty when they are young, but bitter as they age. I didn't want them taking root haphazardly throughout my yard either.

I bought a few more bags of organic soil, and planted pumpkins and cantaloupes under them. The vines will grow outwards as they need sunlight. It's good ground cover to prevent weeds as they grow. If the vines grow over a place I need to stand to tend my raised beds I can train them another way with my shadow cane. Both end products can be dehydrated or frozen. The cantaloupes and pumpkins will be easy to harvest when small. Just a snip with my pruners and drop it into my harvest basket.

My harvest basket used to be one of those pans that you got at a hospital admission for bathing. At one time I had about ten of them lying around my house. I got three with my stroke admissions alone. But they take two hands to carry when full. They'll be re-purposed for the processing aspects after harvesting. By the way the kidney shaped pan makes an excellent seed starter and the drink pitcher can double as a seed sprouter. Nothing goes to waste in our house.

This year I'm actually using a basket with a handle for ease
of carrying. I'd honestly thought about swiping one of those hand carry shopping basket from my local grocer, but that would be stealing. I looked online to purchase one or two but the places that sold them had them in lots of tens or hundreds. Way to many for my purposes and expensive. So I settled on the grapevine basket to the left that I found at the farmer's market. It wasn't cheap, has a very sturdy handle, and should carry up to ten pounds of produce. Any more than that would throw me off balance anyhow.

I only planted forty corn stalks so that's what my harvest will be. This is a trial thing with raised bed three-sisters. I've actually gotten two to four ears of corn on one stalk before, but not really excepting that this year. We'll keep about half a dozen ears for fresh eating and remainder will go into the chicken feeder after it's dried. I don't feed the chicken much corn, but let then free-range for most of their diet.

"Now wait a minute, Jo. This is fun Friday and you are talking about work. Not fair!" I hear y'all out there. This is my fun. I get out of the house, soak up some Vitamin D thanks to the sun. Watch my grandchildren and teach them the finer points of surviving, and producing what they eat. Later we'll grab some eggs out of the hen house and make some infamous Neiman Marcus $250 cookies. What's even better is that we'll eat them warm with cold glasses of milk. **Drool drool!** Is that better?

Have a great weekend.

Tuesday Tumbling Term ~ Kernel

Today's term is kernel.
ker·nel
noun
1. the softer, usually edible part contained in the shell of a nut or the stone of a fruit.
2. the body of a seed within its husk or integuments.
3. a whole seed grain, as of wheat or corn.
4. South Atlantic States. the pit or seed of a peach, cherry, plum, etc.
5. the central or most important part of anything; essence; gist; core: His leadership is the kernel of the organization.

Most writers know what a kernel is as it pertains to writing. The definition is #5. The central or most part of writing- the base idea or premise. It's that light bulb lighting up in your head for a story. And it seems to be a stumbling block for quite a few authors. It really hasn't been a problem for me. To readers, it is the most asked question to an author...where do you get the idea for a story.

For me it is everywhere. It's something I see on television. Some bum on the street. Something I read on the internet. Sometimes it's a song or news report on the radio. It provokes questions in my mind. The almighty...WHAT IF?

A case in point. On television I saw an ad for a new show on AMC for The Walking Dead. I was really a wimp. I'd seen more blood and gore in real life than another person would see in a lifetime so I usually stayed away from shows like that, unless it's a medical show like E.R. (my all time favorite). In a way I justified that television watching to Michael Crichton because I was a huge fans of his books.

I was never really into zombie flicks because they were always "B" movies with stupid actors and plots. They were more horror and gore than art to me. I mean really most them had a buxom beauty, scantily clad, opening a door where the killer might be or running away from the killer, looking back, tripping and falling before being killed. I couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to watch them without yelling, "Oh, you stupid idiot!" If it was me, I'd be running so fast the killer would eat my dust. Looking back? I'd assume he was still back there and keep running. "B" movies were no-brainers.

I'd never write horror, I told myself. As a writer, I'm above such nonsense. My momma always told me that there was no such thing as never. As soon as you say it, you will and such is the case with me.

But I'm getting away from my point of the kernel. What's this all leading to? My kernel for Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption.

I was watching the Fox News one night and heard something that jerked into full alertness. The CDC (Center of Disease Control) had issued a Zombie Preparedness Alert. Nah, this couldn't be real, I thought and went to the CDC website and sure enough there it was. Of course it was the same as hurricane preparedness. They just wanted to get everyone's attention.

Later that evening, my husband was talking to me about converted missile silos and FEMA camps over dinner. He is an amateur conspiracy buff. Whatever floats his boat, I thought, only half listening, or so I thought.

Later before bed, the What-ifs started rolling around in my head while I was watching the movie 2012. Nah, I thought, it's horror. I don't write horror just horrific scenes in my novels to make the reader's heart beat quicken. But the idea would not leave me alone. The What-ifs fueled my dreams into a raging bonfire that night.

By morning, I had an outline and raced to my computer to jot it down. Not that I intended on writing about zombies but maybe I could include some of the details in a future suspense novel. Not all kernels are enough to sustain a full length novel. I've hundreds of these that won't and can't be full novels. I don't write horror!

By afternoon I started typing the character study, research was complete, and a more detailed outline of the kernel, What-if the zombie apocalypse was real? How would the CDC handle it? What would it take not to be infected?

By early evening, I started typing the story off the outline. It flowed smoother than any story that I had ever written. You gotta love when that happens as a writer.Within two weeks, I had over a 50K-word novel. But you don't write horror my brain feebly  protested. Apparently I did have it in me to write horror. Without the zombies, it could have been a medical suspense novel, I placated my brain.

But would there be a market? This is one of the first time I've written a whole book not researching the market first. I went into GoodReads and did a search for zombie books. This was a market I never thought I would search for. Boy, was there a market! Then I researched zombie websites. It was amazing. There were thousands of them I could promote my book on or get book reviews on. On top of this Max Brook's novel, World War Z, was being made into a film. Not a "B" movie either but starring Brad Pitt and a star studded cast. I could ride the wave. There was a market.

I edited the book and sent it off to two of my beta readers. Neither of them were horror fans, but they loved it.

Although only published in October 2012, Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption has out sold all of my fiction and nonfiction.

So do all your kernels have to become stories no matter what?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.

Friday Fun~Television

I have to admit I've been watching more of the idiot box of late. There have been several shows that have peaked my interest. I get tired of the remakes of classic 50's or 60's television shows and reality t.v like stupid housewives of (name a town). There are no housewives like that! The last halfway interesting series I was devoted to was "Lost." My DH even asked me, "What's a Honey Boo Boo?" I told him "Toddlers in Tiaras" about one kid. Most series today give a whole new connotation to idiot box.

Over the last year and a half or so,  I've become an avid followers of a couple of series.

I've been a fan since I wrote my first zombie book. Granted it's based on the graphic comics but it is different. I'm not a comic book fan and never have been except for the "Archies" way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The Walking Dead series is human interest. The best and worst of humanity. Yes, there is gore, blood, and zombies, but it's the survivalist storyline that catches my interest. Which is kind of the way I write zombie fiction.

I actually went to NetFlix and watched the series from the first season. It was well worth my time. Am I the only one that finds mid-seaon cliff hangers and breaks irritating?

This was another show I started watching this year. The twists, turns, and spins of this show keeps me riveted. Being a political science minor in college, and having lived and worked in D.C. doesn't hurt. I had to watch the first episodes on Netflix to catch up on the story line. I had thought it started this year until I saw the season 2 beside the new episodes. It was one of those ten episode mini season shows last year.

And I thought writers had it bad with a three-month make-it-or-break-it in bookstores. Television has jumped on the mini profit/ratings bandwagon. This show is a perfect example.

Last Resort was another show I got sucked into. It's about a crew on a nuclear submarine whose crew gets stranded by political powers that be.

I was rooting for this one to continue, but ABC canceled it. The characters and synergy of the show kept me coming back week after week. It just goes to show you there is no accounting for taste against "Dancing with the Stars" and "Honey Boo Boo" soaking up air time.

The last series I've been following is "Arrow." The whole concept of a modern day "Gillian's Island" survivor meets "Batman" has me glued to CW. The use of flashbacks to correlate between back story on the island to present day action keeps me interested.

The fact that the main character is fulfilling his father's dying wish, and his mother is involved keeps the tension high.

So what have you been watching lately?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.