A "Keeping-my-cool" Celebration

Here’s to VikLit’s Celebrate the Small Things weekly blog hop.

This week I’m thankful for:

• Although a friend who’s separated from her husband has been living with me for the last month in my one bedroom apartment, and she talks A LOT about herself, it’s been mostly good this week. God’s working in me, again, to not be depressed about my reduced privacy time. (I don't think she will, but I pray she doesn't read this post!)
• My CP has been giving me lots of encouraging words (plus plenty of suggestions for rewrite time) about my WIP, Anticipating Dawn. I still hope to complete the first draft before the year’s end. (I love the serial killer - well not him, but - he's completely sick!)
• I’ve done yet another interview, this time focusing on Salted With Fire, on Conversations Live .

Wishing all a wonderful, revealing, weekend!

Journal Past Blast: Youthful Memories

I’m cheating in this week’s Journal Past Blast. :p  You see, this entry isn’t from one of my journals, but from a letter I’d written my mom when I studied abroad in Padova, Italy, for the 1988-89 school year. I wrote this letter after taking a vacation before classes started up again.

It was so cool seeing this letter in particular, and it had the same emotional affect as reading over my journals. My year in Italy was like one of my last youthful years. Okay, that’s a lie, but it was a year of significant changes for me... I’ll just shut up. 

Here’s an excerpt from my letter to my mom. And it has a date! just a few days before my birthday. (which is the middle of the year and the middle of the month. Can you guess it?)

6-11-88
Ciao Mamma,
....Well, the next day, early, I went to Siena, which is about 45 minutes away. Siena is pretty also, but really small. I saw it in an afternoon. Then I returned to Pisa because I hadn’t yet seen the tower. When I returned, while opening my door, some guys, who were staying in a room across from mine asked me to eat dinner with them, at the mensa, which is the cafeteria of the university – they are students, quite nice and very weird, like all Italian guys.

There were three of them. So I ate dinner with them. Then they walked me to the tower. At night the tower is totally beautiful. It’s like dark around, but the tower is totally lit up, and the way it leans is so weird – it looks unreal. It’s beautiful. But I didn’t have my camera with me. So the next morning, one of the guys took me to see it again and I took pictures. The other two had class to go to. I climbed up to the top and Giovanni, the guy, took pictures of me up there....

That's enough, this was a long letter. What gets me is that I went to eat lunch with three Italian boys! Me! By myself!!! Shy LaRonda! (I go by my middle name) And I actually dated Giovanni for quite a while, when we were able to visit each other, even though he often spoke in a dialect and sometimes I, and many northern Italians, couldn’t understand him.

Well, thanks for coming by and reading my memories.

Celebrating not being too late!

Here's what I'm celebrating this week for VikLit’s Celebrate the Small Things blog hop:

I’m glad most of all that I wasn’t too late for that blogger’s book promotion - the one that I had accidentally deleted the email. S.K. Anthony’s blog tour for her book Kinectic occurs next month, and I had received a reminder email from her blog tour host. I’ll be doing an author interview. :)

S.K. Anthony had also posted on her "Next Big Thing," after being tagged by me. :) To read about it, click here.

This week has been a good work week. Among other things, I had a luncheon tour at DreamWorks Animation in Redwood City, which is the same city I work in.

In between some morning and evening fog, the days have been beautiful.

Another of my radio interviews aired on WFCO 90.9 FM Thursday: Meet the Minister

~ Here’s to a peaceful and productive weekend everybody!

Journal Past Blast: Reliving lonely times

The last month and a half have been so busy promoting other writers, and myself, that I hadn’t been able to post these Tuesday Journal Past Blast. Well, now it's back! 

Being vulnerable is a necessary trait of a writer, right? Well, I’ve come across quite a few raw-emotion journal writings, but am only brave enough to post this one, likely written between 1990 and 1993, after college but before law school: 

When I touched your chest, I gave you my history, hoping your heartbeats could make sense of the pain. I kissed your lips and shared with you my destiny’s end. Will you spend it with me and take away my fear and shame?

Will you give me a reason to stay in your arms? Since there is no truth in my eyes that suits you.

Maybe down the line, I’ll be able to post some of those previously kept secret journal entries. Truly, all of it's been secret, but you know what I mean. Until next week….