Tag: postaday

  • Greetings From the Road

    We are on the road to Philadelphia. Working on the Bryce Canyon Shawl on the road. Happy Sunday!

  • The Noonhour

    Welcome to The Noonhour, a new Podcast featuring essays, children\’s stories, and other items I find interesting.  It\’s an experiment that I\’m enjoying, so sit back, relax, and listen to

    The Noonhour


  • Technology. I.Love.It.

    This is a story about a writer who wanted to have some fun.  She wanted to use her spiffy new-to-her iMac to create a Podcast to the world and play with the M-Audio keyboard (piano keyboard, folks, not typing keyboard) that she\’d bought mumble-something years ago and actually make some music, like, man.

    Therein lies the story, see, because technology, well, technology is an ugly bitch that never got picked at the high school dance and now wants to take it out on anyone walking by whether or not they were at the dance dancing or wallflowers too.  So our writer, who will remain silent on the whole dancer/wallflower thing, decided to do the simple task of taking a microphone and speaking some words into it and doing a podcast.  Simple, right?  Even a monkey can do it.

    Apparently, our writer is not a monkey.

    Four DAYS later, the software update started is done and installed and all the new whizbang instrument sounds are available, she has recorded her first (cheesy and corny but fun) podcast – but then couldn\’t figure out how to post it to Blogger because apparently Blogger doesn\’t yet host podcasts – dude, Blogger, get with it, will ya? – and posted it to YouTube and…

    Therein lies the story, see, because you can\’t upload an audio-only file to YouTube.

    Sigh.

    So, Google search revealed the secret – that one must first make a movie on iMovie.

    You with me on this?  Our poor writer, who JUST WANTED TO HAVE SOME FUN, decided to record herself in GarageBand, which then uploaded to iTunes, which then uploaded to YouTube but wouldn\’t work, now is in iMovie to add the audio to a still image, and then upload that back onto YouTube…

    For a four second clip.

    Huh?  IT\’S SUPPOSED TO BE 10 MINUTES LONG!

    Turns out, iMovie defaults four seconds of audio when you have an image.  You have to change the duration of the image from four seconds to the duration of your audio.  Still with me?  Come on, drink some coffee, you can do it…  I know it\’s confusing, but it\’s almost done.

    So.  GarageBand-to-iTunes-to-YouTube-to-iMovie-to-YouTube and FINALLY success.

    I just looked and…

    My image is too wide for the space alotted for YouTube and cuts off the words in the bottom right of the frame.

    I officially give up and call it…

    MY FIRST DRAFT.

    The others being… well… firster.

    G\’night.

  • Chuck the Sheep

    When I went to Wisconsin\’s Sheep and Wool Festival a couple years ago, there was a highly peculiar sheep.

  • Walking In This World

    One of the most obvious ways to ground is to work IN the ground, by gardening.  What I\’ve discovered about gardening is that weeding is like laundry – it never ends.  As you keep working in your garden, the weeds keep growing.


    The best part about gardening is the results of the growth.  I love seeing tomatoes turn red, and peppers finish growing.  We have chard that is getting huge and beautiful.  It\’s almost a shame to eat, since they\’re so pretty.  My lilies are opening and my curry plants have lots of yellow seeds that scent the air.


    Weeds remind me that daily maintenance yields positive results and that there is serenity in the everyday. 


    Do you garden?  What do you like to grow?

  • Tue Cent Twosday

    Publishing and writing are two different parts of the puzzle.  They\’re not the same thing and shouldn\’t be approached as the same thing.


    Writing is a creative art.  It\’s image-intensive, using the imagination to create stories and poetry.  Even non-fiction is as much art as science, as connections are made between facts and figures.  There are many tools to help us keep the channel clear as we create.


    Publishing is a business.  It\’s about producing product that customers want to buy.  It\’s changed a lot in the last fifteen years, from the consolidation of traditional publishing houses to the explosion of ereaders and ebooks.  Genre definitions have blurred and fractionated because the internet allows authors to give readers many different tags for a particular book that would be impossible to duplicate in a brick-and-mortar store.  


    It\’s important to remember that these two \”jobs,\” if you will, aren\’t the same and that they require different skills.  Luckily, there are many places to learn the skills that will help you succeed at both, but the firs step is to recognize the differences between them.

  • New Blog Today, and a New Job!

    LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers has launched.  From the \”About Us\” page: \”Welcome to our little corner of the ‘net. This is going to be a blog that appreciates LGBT fantasy in all its forms and incarnations- books, movies, games, art, whatever! Dark, light, urban, epic, romantic, sword and sorcery, classic… We love it all.\”

    Together with Alex Beecroft, Jennifer Thorne, Kay Barisford, Melanie Tushmore, and Violetta Vane, I\’ll be talking about one of my favorite subjects – the fantasy genre in all its wonderful variety, and specifically looking at the GLBT subset within it. We will offer flash fiction, essays, and excerpts from our own works. I hope you enjoy!

    My first entry is up today, \”Worldbuilding – M/M Style.\” I talk about some of the unique challenges presented to authors of M/M romance as they venture into creating worlds of their own.  Stop on by!

    Today is also my day at the Writer\’s Retreat Blog, where I talk about new beginnings.

    In addition, I start a new job today.  I\’m very excited.  Wish me luck!

  • New Job Today!

    I\’m at the Writer\’s Retreat today, sharing some thoughts on working and writing.  Come on by!

    Writer\’s Retreat Blog

    Write on!

  • Sunday Box Talk

    I like to start my week on Sunday, since that\’s what makes the most sense to me for how my schedule works.  Sunday is a day of rest for our family, but we don\’t necessarily mean rest as in nothing to do.  Typically large laundry day (sheets and such), we don\’t tend to get out of our pajamas most of, or all of, the day.  It\’s a day for large projects like knitting or photo editing (my husband\’s a professional photographer), web development, and family feast meal.  Sometimes we\’ll do a movie.

    It\’s also the day I start my Artist\’s Way week, when I read the essays for the week and get started on the tasks.  It\’s a more contemplative time since I don\’t schedule anything for this day and my friends know that.  I provides a nice break between the week that was and the week that is coming.

    What kinds of routines do you establish for yourself for the week?  When we\’re in school, this is done for us; but when we graduate, there are no more quarters and semesters, finals, and back-to-school.  Even if we have kids of our own for whom we do these tasks, they don\’t really apply to us and it\’s very easy for one day to bleed into the next.

    Richard Nelson Bolles, in his book The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them talks about Learning, Working, and Leisure or Play.  The way most of us organize our lives is we play as children, we learn in school and university, and then we spend the rest of our lives working.  But one way to accomplish balance is to re-think what\’s possible in our daily round.  This week, think about these three concepts and how you develop them in your own life.  Even if you haven\’t yet set aside time for all three, just thinking about how you might begin to do so can open doors for you in terms of your personal planning.

    Do you have a routine during your week?  I\’d love to know; tell me in the comments.

  • MJ Frederick is at Knoontime Knitting Today!

    Stop by for another in my series of Author Interviews, today with author and seamstress MJ Frederick.  MJ talks about her passion for sewing, which is almost as deep as her passion for writing.  She shares pictures of a skirt she made that she even wore on the plane recently.  Stop by and leave a comment today!

    Saturday Showcase – MJ Frederick Talks About Her Passion – the Other One!

  • The Liebster Award

    My online friend from Beeline Clothings blog nominated me for the Liebster Award today!  She lives in Ghana and hopes one day to travel to China.  She writes about fashion and all sorts of things and I was really pleased to be chosen by her for the award.

    As part of the award, you nominate others and answer questions – both in general and from your nominator.  It\’s a fun way to get better acquainted with other bloggers and I thought I\’d share that here.

    The Liebster Blog Award is an award offered to upcoming bloggers. The german word Liebster is a word for favorite, dearest, beloved, sweetest, cutest, nicest, kind, and pleasant.
    I think this is a lovely way to support and encourage each other as fellow bloggers.
    Well, my nominator tells me that this award comes with some rules, which are:
    Each nominated blogger must
    1. post 11 things about yourself
    2. answer the questions that the nominator has set for you and create 11 questions for the people you\’ve tagged to answer
    3. choose 5 people and link them in your post
    4. Go to their blogs and tell them in a comment
    REMEMBER, No tag backs!
    11 Things About the Noony
    1. I love coffee.  I love learning about it, tasting it, trying different varietals and, like wine, identifying where the beans are from.
    2. I am NOT a morning person.  My best and most productive time is the middle of the night, after 10:00 P.M. (20:00).  It\’s very easy for my body-clock to get thrown off if I stay up too late and, since I work a day job, I can\’t afford that.  My dream is to one day live a lifestyle that allows me to stay up at night and sleep during the mornings.
    3. I love to knit.  Knitting is applied magic.  By creating repetitive knots in yarn, I can create a fabric that will stay together.  I even started a blog dedicated to my knitting and other crafts called Knoontime Knitting, because I love to explore 2-D/3-D art.
    4. I love to write.  I feel connected to the universe when I write.
    5. I love to journal, as well as use a computer.  I get different results depending on whether I write by hand or by keyboard.
    6. I realized I love to write essays.  One of my favorite classical authors is Michel Montaigne, and I didn\’t realize that I like to do what he does, though I\’m nowhere near his level of skill.
    7. I love cats and dogs.  Some people say they\’re a dog person, or a cat person; honestly, I like them both equally.  I live with 3 cats and a dog and they\’re all very special to me.
    8. I love to travel, but I believe in traveling where one lives.  So many times, people will say to me, \”Oh, I\’ve lived in Chicago for years but have never gone up in the Sears Tower.\”  That\’s silly!  We have so many riches around us, if we just open our eyes to it.
    9. I love mustard and, mostly, hate ketchup.  (I occasionally get a taste for it, which always surprises me because I\’ve not liked it since I was a child.)  I like spicier mustards better than bland yellow mustard; German styles are my favorite though I\’m partial to Japanese ones as well.
    10. I don\’t \”get\” Twitter, but I manage many Twitter feeds.  I have my main one, @acatherinenoon, but I also started one for @knoontimeknit, and we have 2 for Evanston Writers Workshop, @evanstonwriters and @ewwconference.
    11. My phone is smarter than I am.  I just got an HTC Rezound and it baffles me.

    Answers to my nominator\’s questions

    1. Why did you start blogging?
      Good question.  I started this blog, \”Explore the Worlds of A. Catherine Noon,\” because I wanted a place to put my personal short stories and to play.  I\’ve always loved doing newsletters and such and this allowed me a potentially unlimited audience.  It also let me create a website without knowing how to program HTML.  Now, I have many blogs and I enjoy them.
    2. How has blogging affected your life?
      It\’s brought me new friends and fans, but it\’s also helped me trust that I have a voice and something to say.  I realized that I\’m an essayist in addition to being a novelist, and that essays are like letters to a good friend in which we talk about things about which we are passionate.  As long as we trust that, we can create a blog that rocks.
    3. Would you call yourself a \’blog-addict\’?
      Not really, but since I either manage or am part of over 15 blogs, then I suppose yes, I might be called one.
    4. Which two words describe your personal style perfectly?
      Elegant and artistic.
    5. What is your favorite time of the day and why?
      The middle of the night.  It\’s quiet and I can get things done.
    6. What is your inspiration in life?
      The novels I read as a child transported me to other worlds.  I have wanted to do that since I was nine years old.  I love writing and reading.
    7. How do you plan to spend the next three years?
      I plan to write many more books, both in the Chicagoland Shifters universe and the Persis Cycle.  I also plan to release, with my coauthor Rachel Wilder, Bloodlines and our Psychic Detective series.  I want to buy a house with some land and raise alpacas.
    8. What is your favorite time of the day? Why?
      Oops, I think this is the same as question 5.  I\’ll answer, instead, my favorite meal.  I love breakfast!  Eggs, bacon, potatoes, and bagels are some of my favorites, as are hobo plates, grits, biscuits and gravy, Belgian waffles, and quiche.
    9. Which blogger inspires you the most in the blogging world?
      Delilah Devlin.  She has a website jam-packed with interesting articles, fun content, books and other things that fans can enjoy.  She\’s a bestselling author and I look up to her as a role model.
    10. What is your favorite TV series?
      That\’s easy – NCIS!

    11. What is your favorite electronic gadget?
      I\’m awfully partial to my computer, actually, and my internet router since it lets me see the amazing, wide world of blogging!

    My Nominations

    1. Passionate Fiction
    2. The Puzzling Mind of Jason Runnels
    3. Writer & Cat
    4. Jean Marie Ward
    5. Two Voices

  • The Night Is a Harsh Mistress, Chapter 18

    Chapter 18 of The Night Is a Harsh Mistress is up. We get to find out about the mysterious Viktor and his father, and who, exactly, David Greene is. Enjoy!