Forwarding this on...

Traditions

Holiday traditions play such a part of our culture whether it’s something as simple as reading THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS on Christmas Eve or lighting the menorah at your grandparents’ house on the First Night of Hanukkah or remembering your ancestors with the Kinara during Kwanzaa or burning the Yule log on the night of Winter Solstice. Each culture has its own traditions and celebrations and during the months from November to January, so many are honored.

Submissions should:

   Have one of the MCs honoring a tradition or making new ones after separating from their family

   Be a minimum of 10k, maximum of 40k

   Stories will release during the months of November through January 2021

   Any subgenre is welcome and all prohibitive guidelines are observed

   Submissions should be sent to submissions@mlrpress.com

   SUBMISSION DEADLINE: August 10, 2020

   Any questions can be sent to Kris Jacen at KrisJacen@mlrpress.com

***Permission to forward***

Just One Moment

Our world can change in just one blink of an eye. It could be something amazing – the birth of a child, meeting your partner; or something not so much – the death of a partner, an accident that leaves your world different. There are so many little things that impact our lives, is it the event or how we react that is the most important?

Submissions should:

   Have an event that impacts the MC significantly; ideas – meeting your spouse; post-apocalyptic world; an accident that leaves the MC physically changed

   Be a minimum of 10k, maximum of 40k

   Any subgenre is welcome and all prohibitive guidelines are observed

   Submissions should be sent to submissions@mlrpress.com

   SUBMISSION DEADLINE: June 30, 2020

   Any questions can be sent to Kris Jacen at KrisJacen@mlrpress.com

***Permission to forward***

Almost, but getting there...

Today I received an email saying that I needed to fill in the BIF (Book information Form) and tidy up my punctuation before they send me out the contract on Wardens of the Guild 3: Heartstrings. I've filled in the form and sent it back. I'll probably struggle with the punctuation as I suck at it, but I'll give it a go. It's been a long time since I was any good at this sort of thing and will probably take me a bit to get back into the swing of things. 

Other than that, health-wise I'm doing okay. still have doctor visits ahead of me, and I'm booked into the hospital. I'm waiting for them to get back to me with an appointment time. My back seems to be doing a lot better, not hurting as much. Though my new medication gives me a headache.

I went to Costco for the first time and realised it's not for me. I'd much rather do my shopping locally. Though it is good for every once in a while.

Happy Birthday ~ Emily

Happy Birthday

Emily Kate

30

 

There's A Starman

Happy birthday Mr Bowie 

You are missed.

Crap!

Okay, so I've already fallen behind, but it's not my fault... no excuses... and I'm not really behind. I'll still be all caught up by the end of January...

I spent all of last Saturday sitting at the hospital with my daughter. She had bad cramps... she is 16 weeks pregnant (it's okay to tell everyone now, Julie). Everything is going to be okay... so no need to panic just yet. Tomorrow, I'll be back at the doctor and god knows how long I'll be sitting in the waiting room there before I get to see a doctor.

Other than that I'm doing okay... I'm 12K behind, but like I said that is nothing as I have plenty of extra days where I can nake that loss up. The hardest part is for me to try and remember where the hell I was headed with Experimentals 3: Messages from the Dead. I need to find where the hell I put my story synopsis... though I did note 4 chapters in I had already named one of the main characters by the wong fricken name. So I had to change it to what it should be. Now that just annoyed the crap out of me. Seriously how could I mix up the names Syndey Morrison and Giles McManus and for some strange reason I had added an e to Delany's  (Delaney) name that I had to take out...

Australia Is Burning...

I'm lucky, for the fires have calmed down around my area in the SE of Queensland. Now New South Wales and South Australia are the ones most at risk. We have already lost so much wildlife, people's homes, even a few people have sadly perished... and still, we have no significant rain in sight. 

I'm hoping the one thing we learn from this fucking tragedy is to be prepared... So it never happens again→ I know fires are a natural disaster, and will always occur, but they didn't have to be this bad. Aside from it would be great if idiots would please stop lighting them just for shits and giggles, or doing dumbarse crap when we're in the middle of a total fire ban that goes out of control... What I'm talking about being prepared by controlled backburning throughout the year, done by our own fire service might help with stopping a lot of this devastation.

Now I'm not an expert and I don't claim to be one, but I've listened to people, and I've read about what's going on and how they could have helped the situation... And what's happening now? We have wonderful people coming from overseas to help our firies battle the blaze. Reporters telling the news from certain points of view and trying to bring controversy to where there shouldn't be any. I don't care if there are missed messages between departments when help was being sent into coordinate and fight the blaze... all I care is that it was sent. So I say> pull up your big boy pants and be grateful for the help given.

In ending, I want to thank every single person who has worked so hard to fight to save our country from burning to the ground. Thank you to all the additional help from overseas. My heart goes out to all those who have suffered loss of some kind... and to all the animals who have perished in this whole ordeal.

The crazy things we do

Why is it when insomnia hits I don't get productive and write heaps of productive words in one of my current WIPS??? No instead my brain, at some ungodly hour in the night decides to start wondering how do I delete all the unwanted pictures from my blog media page (as I have multiples of some pictures). 

So, here I am at Oh-dot in the morning pondering what would be the best way to do this shit→ now remember I am not the most techno-savvy person in the world.  No wonder I'm sitting here now feeling half-dead, and still no closer to finding a solution. 

I spent most of the other day trying to figure out how to change the name of my Facebook Author Page... before I had to realise I had to switch back to the old format because the new format wouldn't let me do it→ only to be denied because they say the new title was misleading... I wanted it so my author page and my personal page didn't have the same title (N.J. Nielsen/Saddington) I wanted to change my Author Page to NJ's World... Now I have to wait before I can try again (I think I have to wait for a week). Next time I'll try NJ's Writing World and I might have better luck. My author page is where I like to do my promoing of not only myself but other authors as well.