A. Summer Time

Schools out and the kids are home for the summer. The chaos in our lives is on a role. We live in a resort area down by the beach. The summer is in full session. No parking, college kids drinking and fighting outside our house untill the wee hours of the night. While living in a resort are has its perks, the vactioners seen to forget that we have to go to work we have children that still need to go bed and that we are NOT on vaction everyday.

We do get to enjoy the beach, where i can not wait to write this year. We get to enjoy the boardwalk and waterparks with out paying for the parking since we can walk. All that is great. We bitch and moan about all the vactioners and call them names, but the insperation that they bring is amazing. I love sitting outside and catching tid bits of their conversation and coming up with a story of who they are. Wondering if we can use any peice of them in one of our books as the villian or the victim or even just as a little side story. 

We are very lucky that where we live has a quiet time and a chaotic time to influence our writing.

M. Peanut Free Zone!

According to a local radio station that I enjoy listening too, sports stadiums are going to be making peanut free zones.  Imagine going to a game in a peanut free environment.  Should be beneficial to the people that have severe allergies.  With a son that is allergic to 8 different foods, I respect this choice by the stadiums.

But, what I really found interesting was the question that was posed.  If you could have an anything free section, in life, what would you choose?  There was suggestions for no smoking (Which we have in NJ), no profanity, no people with a lack of common sense.  There were quite a few creative answers, but I wonder, what about you?  What would you like to have corralled in a section to itself?

M. Writing Outside

Tonight we lit a fire out back and actually got some honest to goodness, writing done. The fire pit was stationed on the patio and our children were in bed. The noises around us were there, but not distracting.


I worked on one WIP, while Amy worked on the other. I have to say it was the most relaxing and enjoyable setting for getting writing done, ever.

The flames in the pit danced and frolicked from the wood that we had laid before us. The warmth of the fire was soothing and the summer air was relaxing.

So, I will ask, where is your favorite place to write? Do you prefer silence or the occasional din? And finally, does writing sooth you or stress you?

M. Life Around Us

Do you thrive from chaos or peace?


In life there are those of us that can’t stand to be bored. We go nuts when there is a lull in the insanities of life and work. We thrive off of the chaos and have to have more than one thing going at the same time, or we lose our minds.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum there are the people who need their peace. They need to do one project at a time and have to focus their energy to be productive. They are normally tidy people and have over organization issues.

As creative people, I think that most of us are on the chaos spectrum. We are used to our minds wandering around the universes that we create in our minds. But, I wonder, are there any of you that don’t function well in the presence of chaos?

Happy Father's Day!

I hope that all you fathers out there have a wonderful day and do all the things that you wanted to do today.

A. What is Normal?

Almost two years I thought my life was normal. Well my normal anyway.  Then it all changed. My husband and son were sick. Really sick, like doctors every other week for one of them. Neither of there illness were life threatening, but still devastating. My son who is only 8 has several diagonis. He has ashma ( very treatable and we have under contril.) He has JRA( jurvinal Rhuemotaid Arthitis) pretty scarry and still not sure what to expect with that. He also has what they call Ashma of the gut. It causes him to throw up and lose weight( and trust me my son can't afford to lose weight) He is aslo allergic to 8 different foods, eggs, milk, chicken, beef, pork, potatoes, tomatoes, and barley. Dinners are fun at my house. as of today he is doing good and everything is being managed and we hope it stays that way. My husband went threw a over a year of not working due to his illness,( which is still yet to be diagonosed) all of his symptoms are gone at the moment and he is back to work.

Anyway when the shit it the fan for over a year, i used to cry whenever i was alone and ask for my life to go back to normal. Now  that everthing seems to be back to normal, its really not. Its not the same normal as before. Durning the year of Hell as i called it. My husband and I gained alot and learned alot. We can follow our dreams to write and our marrige (which has been tested and tested over the last year) is so much stronger. He is different too. After everything he has been threw with his illness he has a new look on life. Our children got to spend a year with daddy home all day and their relationship is so much stronger.

So again what is normal?  I am not sure anymore. I don't want my old normal back anymore. I just want to live and see where life takes me and my family and enjoy the ride.

M. Favorite Word

My favorite word in the English language, of all time, is tintinnabulation. I think I was in sixth or seventh grade when my English teacher first taught me the word and it has stuck with me since.


For any that don’t know the meaning, it means the ringing of the bells. I think it was first used by Edgar Allen Poe in The Bells.

As for the last fact, I am not certain, but the first is true. The word has stuck with me for most of my life. I am not sure if it’s just because of how melodic it sounds, or the fact that when I say it, it evokes the meaning in the pronunciation.

Whenever it is said or if I see it on paper, my mind goes to a beautiful chorus of church bells ringing. I know that it isn’t onomatopoeia, but it does make you imagine bells ringing when you hear it.

What is your favorite word? Can you remember what word made you fall in love with the English language?

M. Stressing over nothing

I met a guy the other day, at work, that had to be one of the easiest going people I’ve met. He was sixty-five and appeared to be about fifty-five.


Like I always do, I went through the normal work routine with him and at the end of my spiel, I told him to come to me with any concerns. His reply was far from normal and very true.

He looked me dead in the eye and said, “You need to know one thing to get to my age. First, don’t sweat the small stuff. And, second if you want to get to my age without a heart attack, you need to know, here comes the important part, there is no big stuff.”

I would have to say that these are words to live by.

A. Who Does More Work?

I think this is an age old question in a marriage. In the old days the husband would leave for work in the morning, and the wife would stay home, clean, take care of the children, do the laundry cook the meals and run the errands of the day. Then the husband would come home exhausted and be waited on. So who did more work there? I would say the Wife.

Today is a little different. In most households both people work. In my household we both work and the other things get divided. We both take care of our children's needs, we both do laundry, (my husband does more of it.) I do most of the cooking, but not all. We divide the chores maybe not in half all the time but pretty close.

As we write together, I question this a lot. Who does more work? I feel my husband does. he is the typer, he is much better with words I feel. I am the story teller.don't get me wrong my husband is also a story teller. I think we fill in the blanks for each other when we are coming up with a plan. Of course my husband claims he does not do more work. i still feel like sometimes he does. I guess that is my own insecuritys.  He tells me he couldn't do it on his own, which i know because he has tried and so have I. We need each other for Writing and everything else. So in the Long wrong does it matter who does more work? Or does it?

M. Kiss

An attempt at some creative poetry, please have some mercy. This isn't what I usually try, but the mood struck and I ran with it.

Love’s Seal

Two hearts increasing pace,
Come to match tempo and time.
Lips magnetized,
Drawn as anticipation climbs.
Bodies meet and their lips find,
Their love, forever,
Sealed with a kiss.

Getting Back

My husband is more of the blogger then i am. We live together, raise our kids together and write together. I have spent the last two days at the North Wildwood Beach Conference. We are very likely to have such a thing only a few blocks away from home. It was amazing, and unfortunately with Mike back to work he was not able to attend.

I wish he could have been there, but there is always next year. I learned a lot about how to get your name and book out there, and surprise, surprise social media is one of the best ways. Mike is very good with computers and social media. I am not. Love facebook, don't understand twitter at all, and as for blogging that i am going to give a try. I was just reading some of my husbands older posts and WOW. Do I have an amazing man or what? He's right we have been threw a lot in last year and threw it all our relationship has only strengthened.

I am grateful everyday for him.  I look at other marriages around us, we are at that age that divorces are starting with our peers. I don't get it, when people see mike and i and we are very affectionate ( not in a you have to look away  kind) we do kiss before one of us leaves. I love you comes out of our mouths at least 10 times a day. Anyway back to the point, some of our friends and family call it the honeymoon period. We have been married almost 10 years i don't think we are in that anymore i think that is our life and relationship and it might not be for everyone, but it is for us. I can't imagine any other way for us to be.

M. Love at First Sight

Does love at first sight really exist?
When I was a young boy, only eight, I met Amy. Our circumstances weren't exactly normal, but in the time that we knew each other as kids, we became best friends. I was a foster child of her father and step mother and she was a weekend kid. Even though she was a girl and I was a boy, we were able to build a close friendship.

After living with her family for two years, the bond was iron clad. But, after those two years, I moved in with my own family. There was a distance placed between us and like most people do, for the most part, we lost touch.
Then, when I was older, I had a chance to get reacquainted with Amy. At first it was strange for both of us. We had expectations, but didn't know what the other would be like and if we would even find the friendship we once had. We got over that fast. We had one of those heart felt evenings until three or four in the morning of just talking that caught each of us up over the past few years.
There were a few months of a rebuilding relationship between us, but we were the only ones who didn't notice it building in a different way. Everyone else could see it, but it took us some time to open our eyes to the love we felt for each other and had felt all along. Luckily, we did.
Now that years have gone by and we have been through some great times and rough ones, I know one thing. Our hearts beat as one and have for more than two thirds of our lives. As a life long believer and someone who experienced it, I believe in love at first sight. You just have to open your eyes to it.

M. Press

Today we had an article run in the Press of Atlantic City.  It is a local paper, but the largest one to take a look at us as of yet.

We feel that every bit of press and exposure is a good thing.  How do you feel?  Do you want to have articles run and printed about your book, your life, and your story?  Or, would you rather be anonymous?

M. Obstacles

Do the obstacles that we face in life form our character or does our character define how we face those obstacles?

The past year has been a far cry from anything but challenging.  As some of you know, I battled a year long illness that thankfully has suppressed.  I don't feel that every part of the experience was horrible, even though there were days that I wondered why it was happening to me.  But, if I hadn't faced the monster of boredom, I wouldn't have begun to write again.

While I was out, I was able to spend an amazing amount of time with my children.  And, I know that I wouldn't have otherwise.  My wife and I were able to also spend every day together and create a passion for story telling that we had always wanted to pursue.  But, when it came down to it, there were days that I wasn't sure if I would ever get better.

Now that I am better, I can say that I have changed as a person.  My outlook at home, work, and with life is completely different then it was before.  Before last year, there were days that I would let stress get to me and I would panic over the simplest of life's issues.  Now though, I look at those issues and trivial blips in life's journey as just that, blips.

We still try to write as much as humanly possible and unfortunately blogging has gotten away from us.  But, when it comes down to it, I know, it will all work out.  I feel stronger as a person then I ever have and can say that I now cherish life in a way that I haven't ever understood.

To answer my own question, I will say both.  I now believe that your character does define how you perceive and face obstacles, but the obstacles are the blocks that build the foundation for your character.