Dec. 24, 2008 Book Review: Keeping Holiday
The next book I'm reviewing for Crossway is Keeping Holiday by Starr Meade. Seemed fitting to post it on Christmas Eve, owing to the subject of the adventure.
This Christmas story follows Dylan and Clare as they travel to find a wonderful place called Holiday ruled by someone known as The Founder. The road is filled with dangers and temptations to keep the two kids from reaching Holiday... And as they get closer, the obstacles become more difficult to overcome. Do they make it and finally get to find the Founder?
I'll tell you up front that they don't find the Founder. Because like everyone tells the kids, "You don't find the Founder; he finds you."
This is a wonderful story for young children, because it's interesting and teaches lessons from perseverance to courage in danger to trust in The Founder (God).
Now everyone go have a wonderful Christmas! :-) |
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Dec. 21, 2008 And the snow continues!
Or the pictures of the snow continue! These are from today. And, in case you were wondering, we've lost electricity twice today, and half of us nearly went mad without internet. Fortunately, they fixed the power lines and we can once again contact the outside world. :-P
The pictures of snow from earlier this week are in THIS post, if you want to go look at them first. Dunno why you would, but I'm being nice and giving you the option.
I tend to take lots of pictures of trees. Probably because there are only trees to take pictures of around here...
See? Another tree.
The neighbor's house/barns. And more trees.
To document the massive amount of snow...
Picture of the Bumblebee, Dad's little, yellow washing machine. Er, I mean "car". And Michael's car off to the side.
 
My brother snowboarding.
Our barn with the poor, stranded vehicles in the parking lot. David's car, Dad's truck, and Mom's car. You'll notice that C3PO is nowhere to be seen... My little 4wd Chevy doesn't get stranded anywhere.
I must take a moment to point out that I love the smell of cows. :-)
The snow was to the top of the boots I was wearing. Which, yes, are pink, but I hasten to point out that they are MOM'S, not mine!
The road goes ever on and on... |
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And thanks to Jocelyn for my 1111th comment! :-)
The first few pictures I have to show you were taken... Mondayish.
A random tree:
Our barn through the cherry tree grove:
Pic I took while lying on the driveway (any comments about my mental state will be ignored):
Mom's favorite pic:
And now Tuesday's pics:
This one's a little bigger so you can see more detail. The white roof on the hill is my house, the barn at the bottom of the hill, and then the loooooooong driveway. ;-)
The hill, because Mom and I had to park the car at the barn and walk up:
The random tree again:
That was Tuesday. It has snowed steadily since then. I just took some more pics, and when Jon gets off the other computer, I will download those and post any that I like. |
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Dec. 16, 2008 What is LM? +SoF description
As the first of my "Question and Answer" series, The Punmaster will answer the question of "What is LM?"
LM = Lyric's Makari, novel, 300 pages.
A young girl sets off on a journey to find a mythical gem and inadvertently becomes caught up in a civil war.
Howzat? :)
***
And one for SoF, because I like you all so much.
SoF/SF = Sword of Flame, novel, currently ~180 pages
The friend of a spy is captured by the enemy and the spy has to rescue him.
That was easy. You should have heard when I first tried to describe it to Miss Laura. She finally told me to just boil it down to one sentence. |
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Dec. 14, 2008 The Punmaster Returneth!
After a long and epic battle with the college, The Punmaster has returned victorious! Well, we'll know if she was victorious when she gets her grades back. She is slightly worried about Algebra II. Only slightly, though. She is fairly certain she passed, but there is that slight chance...
It has come to her attention that her blog is in need of some explanation. Her mother read the last few entries and asked her various questions like: "What's LM?", "Who is Sven?", and so on.
This is your chance! If there's something The Punmaster has mentioned that is leaving you scratching your head and thinking, "What planet did she say she was from again?", tell her now.
And Svenja, I have not forgotten that tag! I just have to work up the nerve to tell Aren that he got tagged again... |
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Nov. 25, 2008 Life, or lack thereof
You may have noticed that my blog has fallen into disuse these past few weeks. This post is to inform you that, yes, I will blog again after school is over. Which means after Dec. 8th, I might have time to post something!
In the meantime, please wish me luck... I'm going to need it. :-/ |
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Nov. 14, 2008 Day 5 of Sven
Yesterday, the Punmaster attacked her Word document and added 3001 words to SF. Yes, that one extra word was important. It was... "bleeding", actually. Miss Laura and Miss Katie, stop squinting at me. It's not what you think... this time, at least. *eyes wander up to ceiling*
Word count for Sven: 6652. Divide that by 5, and that's ~1330 per day. Yes, I know I'm behind by 170 words/day. Yes, I have excuses. No, I'm not going to give them. So there! Ha.
Page count total (because word counts are so vague): 138!
And now my awesome word meter. Lookit! I'm almost halfway there! *dances with joy* Root beer all around!
Sword of Flame:
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Nov. 13, 2008 Book Review: Hymns for a Kid's Heart
One of the most precious gifts you can give a child is music, specifically hymns. Bobbie Wolgemuth and Joni Eareckson Tada believe that so strongly that they put together a book of their favorite songs, along with the stories behind them. Bobbie tells the stories and Joni gives a personal story about it. They have also chosen a Bible verse to go with each song and wrote a prayer.
You'll find old favorites (A Mighty Fortress is Our God, This is My Father's World, Amazing Grace, How Firm a Foundation, etc.) and maybe even a few you didn't know. This idea does not apply to Miss Laura or Miss Katie, who (I am convinced) know every hymn ever written.
You can learn the songs you aren't familiar with, too! The book has music included so (if you're unlike me and actually know how to play an instrument) you can play it yourself. Or if you're like me and can't tell one note from another on the piano (although you're fairly sure you can find middle C if your life depended on it), just pop the CD in and listen to Bobbie and Joni sing it! :-)
I thought it was a wonderful book. And it was written to be read aloud to kids; how can you go wrong with that? If you're interested in this book, just click on the picture above for the book on the Good News / Crossway website.
I have a stack book reviews to post here at some point in the near future! You want to know a few of the titles? Okay... The Door Within series (3 books by Wayne Thomas Batson), each Andi Carter book (4! books by Susan K. Marlow), and a few others. Stay tuned for more! |
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Nov. 11, 2008 Day 1 of Sven is over
I came up with 1700 words, and the ideal is 1500. The 70 Days of Sweat (Sven IV) runs for the next 76 days (we get a week off for Christmas).
My goal is to finish Sword of Flame (SF) and put at least 10,000 more into Return of the Phantom (RtP).
I find myself proving that I was brought up in part by Grandpa. SF has a significant underlying theme of leadership. I have no idea why it's so natural for my characters to discuss a few elements of leadership. *shrug* I'm not sure if LM has any underlying themes. If any of you can think of one, let me know.
Finally, I got a word meter for SF. Here 'tis:
Sword of Flame
Now a question. I plan on writing updates fairly often. Do you who get email updates want me to send the updates on Sven posts?
Oh, in other news, I am hopefully going swing dancing tonight with Michael, David, Jonathan (the not-our-Jonathan), and a whole bunch of other people. Joey told me it's not too hard and that I'd probably be okay at it. *crosses fingers* We'll see... There's a reason my middle name is Cora and not Grace. ;-) |
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Nov. 6, 2008 Comment rules, effective immediately
The Punmaster is sad to have to announce this, but she guesses it was inevitable. From this point on, any comment with inappropriate language/content (as decided by the Punmaster) will be deleted, regardless of the relevancy of the rest of the comment. Otherwise, her mom will make her quit blogging, and you wouldn't want that, would you? Basically the items put on the contraband list are:
Any version of a swear word,
Any British swear word that is 'okay' in America,
And anything else that the Punmaster decides is in poor taste.
So! Feel free to comment but please think about what you are writing.
~Your friendly, neighborhood Punmaster |
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Nov. 6, 2008 Under the cover of an election...
The news has been strangely silent about the Middle East these past few days. They're pre-occupied with the election of our new President. We, on the other hand, are watching DEBKAfile closely. If you haven't bookmarked that site yet, do it.
How many people know that the Palestinians were bombing Israel two hours after the election was called for Sen. Obama?
Apparently, Al Qaeda is going to test the mettle of President Obama by starting a third front of the war in North Africa.
I'm going to refrain from further comment, because I don't think you want to READ my further comments. Suffice to say that I'm not thrilled with all of this news and the election. |
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Nov. 3, 2008 Yes, I am still alive.
Since my blog has been posted on *ahem* sparingly of late, I thought I'd bring you all up to date. Just so you know I haven't died or something. I'm blaming being behind in Algebra. Just a little, though. :-) And pre-election stress.
As a follow-up from my last post, Dr. Jocelyn's prescription of water, bananas, and Dr. Pepper is helping a lot. :-) I've been fine since then (albeit for a few days I wasn't even strong enough to open one of the doors at school). The little bro has strep throat now, so we'll see how long I'm fine.
But on to something interesting. I think it's interesting, at least. A friend of mine gave me a 'slap in the face' and got me writing again. I was moping along doing relatively nothing and making whiny excuses about it. She wouldn't hear of that and gave me a piece of her mind. Now I'm back on track and ready for the 70 Days of Sweat to begin on November 10th. Woohoo! Think I can do it? Hey, don't shake your head... have a little faith... I even have a title for this one. Sword of Flame.
It is now sitting at a comfortable 113 pages/30,000 words.
And don't ya'll want to know what it's about? Keep on wondering. :-) But you can bet one or two of my trademarks will be in it:
Someone is tortured
Someone is killed
Someone throws up
Someone says a very sarcastic line
A 5 point bonus if all of them are accomplished by the same person. Which, actually, considering who my MC is...
Have any of you been writing or doing something equally fabulous? |
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Oct. 22, 2008 Of villains in stories
As my 234th post, I wanted to write something "of purpose," instead of just some random, boring comment. (You guys have seriously hung around for 234 posts? Amazing...)
I remember being a little kid watching Star Wars. Return of the Jedi, in fact. Darth Sidious (Darth Hideous, as we used to call him) intrigued me. I felt certain that if I could get into his mind, I could see the world from his point of view and decide whether he was actually evil or not. Because, obviously, he thought he was doing the right thing. I wanted to know what he saw in the Empire that was right and what about the Rebellion that was so wrong.
Lovely picture, no? Like I said: Darth Hideous.
Anyway, since then, I've always thought about "the other side" in stories. Why was the evil bad guy evil? Was the bad guy really the good guy, but we're only seeing it from the side of the "good guy" and therefore think like the good-but-really-evil person?
Has anyone else ever thought about this?
And another thing I've wondered:
Why is it that the bad guy often gets people to follow him because of lies and deception, instead of people willingly joining him because they believe what he believes? And why do the bad guys treat their allies and subordinates so badly, while the good guys are the exact opposite? Why does strife always accompany the hordes of the bad guys (see the orcs in the LOTR movies)?
This might just come down to this: We want our stories in black and white. Good vs. Evil to the death. Don't throw any gray matter in there that will cause us to use our own gray matter or we won't be happy.
I might be wrong (actually, I probably am wrong). Do any of you have ideas about this? I just thought I'd throw this out and see where it landed. If you have ever read (or written) a novel, I'd love to know what you think. ;-) |
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Oct. 20, 2008 The Punmaster is now... Oct. 19, 2008 Somethin' for Ryan
Since Ryan (Ryan S, not Ryan M. I doubt Ryan M would read my blog) has become one of my faithful readers, here's something for him:
See you at school, mah brothah! |
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Oct. 19, 2008 Play something country!
My Sunday quote is what I heard while watching Glenn Beck interview Trace Adkins. Ya'll know that famous singers/actors are usually brainless airheads (Thank you, Matt Damon), but a few of them aren't. Like Mr. Adkins, a famous country singer.
Here's a small exchange:
Beck: "You're a global warming activist, right?"
Adkins (in that slow, Southern drawl): "I sure am. Let's heat this puppy up."
And about drilling for oil in the US:
Adkins: "I'd poke holes in your back yard if they'd let me!"
Yep, I like Trace Adkins. He's also in a new movie that's coming out called An American Carol (which is like A Christmas Carol). A version of Michael Moore is the Scrooge in this one, and Trace is one of the 'angels' in it and they go around the future in a Democrat Socialist world. Bill O'Reilly is in it, too. From what I saw of the preview, it's hilarious, but it's got some off-colorness. Phooey! |
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Oct. 18, 2008 Adult vs. Kid Bloggers
Before I get to what I want to talk about, I just wanted to say that it's October (in Washington!) and you can still drive with the sun roof open and the windows all rolled down. And the radio up too loud. But that goes without saying. We're still holding on to the summer weather.
Maybe there is something to that poem...
"O suns and skies and clouds of June
And flowers of June together.
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather."
Yesterday, while I was driving home, I was thinking about how differently adult bloggers and kid bloggers interact. If you go to just about any kid blog, you'll see tons of comments on each post, most of them having nothing to do with the post subject. Adult blog posts usually have comments related directly to what the post says, unless the author has commented back to the person.
I think that kids tend to 'visit back' more than adults. Which means this: If you comment on my post, I will go to your blog and comment back to you in one of your posts.
Adults follow up with comments in their own posts and maybe never visit their guest commenter. Probably because they're too busy.
I comment back on my commenter's blog, because I don't generally expect my guest to return to see it, especially back when I was posting every day and a reply might get lost. Which one of these do you usually do? Both? Something else? |
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Oct. 13, 2008 A tag, courtesy of Andi Carter
I wasn't tagged, actually. Andi tagged Aren. (If you don't know who Aren is, click the link. Otherwise, you might be confused.) The tag is as follows:
Post 6 random facts about yourself and then tag some number of people. I don't remember. Probably won't tag anyone, anyway. :-P
I asked Aren to give me six random facts about himself, and he looked at me like I was from, uh... Earth. Then he remarked that just about all the facts about him are classified. So I whined. And he ignored me. Begging and pleading didn't work. Threatening... Well, what could I really threaten him with? Then he agreed to do it if I had a pun war with him on a subject of his choice. Wish me luck... :-/
So, the tag:
1. I hate it when Jen makes me do tags. She's glaring at me, but it's a fact. This is the second or third one she's made me do.
2. Yes, I know my hat is ugly. Will someone make Jen go away? You'd think if she was making me do this, she wouldn't sit there and make jokes about my hat.
I'm not kidding. Jen, go away. *shoves annoying authoress away*
3. I bit the head off of a venomous snake once. My little sister almost had a heart attack. It didn't taste all that great...
4. When I was 14, I dyed my older sister's hair blue and tied it full of knots in the middle of the night. That almost ended very, very badly.
5. I'm only 5' 8 1/4" tall.
6. I sing tenor. But not very often. And it's not very good. Jen is nodding emphatically. Okay, time for "mass ownage" in the pun war, little pipsqueak. Yeah, I can speak American!
I'm not tagging anyone. I don't know any bloggers here. I do know Andi and Susan, but they've already been tagged today. So, uh, bye... |
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Oct. 11, 2008 Pictures from last Saturday
(This post is mostly copied from my other blog that no one reads, anyway. I just did it over there first so I wouldn't have to bother with Imageshack.)
Unfortunately, Mom ran away with the camera to read one of the books I got after about 10 minutes. So I only have two pictures from the book signing. They are...
Wayne Thomas Batson, signing my book! Which I started reading on Sunday as soon as I got up and took it to the college with me every day this week. Just about everyone at the college who knows me has now heard of Wayne Thomas Batson. Heh, I tend to give lots of free commercial time.
I believe he signed Ryan's to "Sir Ryan the Swordmaster." Had I known Ryan would bring his sword and assassin blade, I would have dressed up, too. Ya'll could probably guess that I seriously considered it.
He is also the one who did that fantastic dramatic reading that made me buy the rest of his series. Like Mr. Graham said after I asked him if he was going to read, too... "How could you follow that?" I don't know if anyone could. None of it got on the Motiv8 video, though. Phooey!
Oh, look back at that picture. See Jonathan Rogers there at the edge? This is a random observation, but his costume was terrific! I'd never considered gray furs in a costume, but that was awesome. His books looked really interesting (Okay, all the books there did...). If I was rich, I would have bought all of them. As it was, I came home with only 7 new books.
Speaking of Mr. Graham, Mom got a picture of him signing Zach's book:
I don't have to give him commercial time... He's pretty popular 'round here. We chatted for a bit about Christian fiction and then the end of Beyond the Summerland. *grin* It was, indeed, a very good ending. A maddeningly good ending.
And now a link to the video they made of the day. I'm in it at least 3 times (in the last third of the video, about The Salt Shaker).
You can see the sword fight on the video, too. That was fun. The camera guy had to dive for cover at one point (watch the video until the very, very end and you'll see it).
A bonus picture, because I'm feeling generous. :-)
Susan Marlow and I going over my novel after she'd bled on the first 70 pages:
Notice the red pen she's holding? Yeah...
That's about it for now. Thanks for visiting! Say, I hope it's not too late to throw this in as a Show n' Tell. I'm going to run over to Mary's and enter it quick! |
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Oct. 9, 2008 Woo! Craziness!
Miss Katie remarked that I haven't blogged very much recently. You might be glad about that.
It is an odd week. A very odd week. Yesterday, I was sitting in the college (yes, college) cafeteria with Joey, Joe, Ryan, and Donald. Joe was distracting Ryan while Joey was trying to pull Ryan's hair with a pair of pliers and Donald was throwing Ryan's unwanted pickles around using the tines of a plastic fork that had been pretty much demolished. Then Joey almost jumped out of his chair when he got zapped by my cell phone when he picked it up, and Donald stole Joey's phone while he was looking at mine, so Joey was trying to pick Donald's pockets to get it back... I laughed for an hour straight. Yep, that's my gang.
On a more serious side (*cough* Me? Serious?), I think I sang my highest note ever on Monday in Choir. And I can't tell you what it is, because... well... I don't know. It's the note that's above the little line thingies and there's kind of a line through it... Yeah, nevermind. I'll have to ask someone who actually knows about music. :-P |
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