RIP RA Montgomery

I was sad to learn today of the passing of RA Montgomery, of Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) fame. He was the original publisher of the series - then titled The Adventures of You - and went on to write tons of CYOA books. The bio that is posted on his obituary at the CYOA website shows that he was an extremely cool guy. Not only did he publish and write loads of books, he also worked extensively with the Peace Corps and believed strongly in the value of games as teaching tools.

Montgomery also believed in the power of his books to encourage readers and improve literacy, and I think that he was right. So many people have told me, when I tell them about Armageddon being a Pick Your Plot book, that they read TONS of the CYOA books as kids. There is a heavy nostalgia there, and for good reason - the CYOA books drew thousands of young readers into reading. That is part of the reason that we are participating in Read Tuesday this year - to throw our names into the hat as people who support literacy, and also to get our name out there to folks who are looking for great books to help teach young people to love reading the same way that Dan & I do.

RIP RA Montgomery. Thank you for the work and love you put into everything you did, for inspiring thousands of people to love reading, and for developing a genre of fiction that I love writing.

Stuffz happening, y'all!

Some updates! 

• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is going well! I'm a little behind but passed 15,000 words yesterday so am still feeling good about finishing my 50k by the end of November. The typical second week tiredness is starting to set in, as exemplified by this accidentally punny typo from yesterday, "The lifting mechanism ground to a hault." Yup. Winning.
• We are super excited to be participating in Read Tuesday events on December 9th! This is a one day 'Black Friday' type of event, just for books! The goal of the event is to support literacy as well as independent authors by encouraging folks to purchase books, at a temporarily discounted price. Books make great gifts and I'm looking forward to participating with Armageddon :)
• And, tomorrow we're doing the big 2015 April A-Z Team reveal over at the blog! Come check it out to find out who my partners in crime will be for this year's Challenge!

Other than that, life is mostly about staying warm. It's a balmy 2 degrees here today, so I've been trying to stay indoors as much as possible and drinking buckets of tea.

How are y'all doing?

IWSG - November

This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, a bloghop dedicated to writers supporting one another through this crazy thing called 'being a writer'. 

Ohhh National Novel Writing Month.. What a frenzy of excitement, activity, insecurity and support! I'm going rogue, so working on two different projects, both of which were already started. One is heavily outlined and I've been so excited to get finished and moving forward to the editing stage, the other I've just dabbled at through the last two years or so. I have no real idea where that story is going. So my projects are a combination of planning and pantsing, which so far has worked alright. If I'm feeling focused I'll work on the former, and if I just need to be creative I'll work on the latter. 

But I'm starting behind due to being gone at a wedding last weekend and there is a LOT going on this month. So the freaking out side of me is somewhat in 'omg I'll never make it through NaNo!' mode. I guess the best thing to do is just keep typing, eh? And probably make sure that if I'm doing blog posts I'm not writing anything too long hah

Any other IWSG folks also doing NaNo? How's it going?

Good morning, mountains!

This is my favorite time of year to drive to work. Just after sunrise the mountains glow pink or red and the snow on the divide becomes almost fluorescent in its excitement to greet the sun. In a time when the world slows and nature goes dormant, it is as though the mountains are promising that there is still life within them.

Good morning, mountains. I am happy to see you, too.

IWSG - October

It is another IWSG day, and I have only posted once since last month. So here it is: I have an extremely hard time posting on my blog about anything when I have a lot of 'real life' stuff happening. I know people say that having regular posts, dependability, fresh content, is important to build audience as a writer.. 'Blogging is important!' they say. 'Make sure to interact with your readers, and your blogging buddies!' they say. Even if it is just to say hi to remind them you exist. Otherwise we are sure to lose our audiences and never sell a book and omg fall into that hole with all the other failed authors, never to see the light of glorious ritzy authorial success.

But I, like many of my friends with writing tendencies, am an introvert. And when I have stuff happening (life drama, too much work, travel..) I dont want to post on my blog. Not that I dont love my blogging buddies, but this site is outward facing. It is intended for other people. And when I have so much going on, I go into self - preservation mode and can't bring myself to share what little energy I have with other people,  even if I really like them (truly - just ask my husband and local friends).

There are days that I am terrified this means I will never be successful and known as an author, and there are days that I just want to say forget it and quit the whole thing. I guess until I can make writing my whole life,  it has to be just a part of life like anything else, and that means it gets prioritized out sometimes. It is nice to have things like IWSG to force me out of my shell once in a while, if only to show that I am still alive and kickin' over here.

So there you go. Alive, yes. Functioning, mostly. Writing? Not so much. See you all soon, hopefully! (next IWSG? ha)

Remembering Tina Downey

I've already said a lot about the loss of Tina, so am not going to post many more words today.








These sunflowers grow all over the place in Colorado. They've been in full bloom for the last several weeks. Tina loved to hike and camp in the mountains, so I made sure to get those too.

Did you post sunflowers today? You can add yourself to the Linky List here: