I love being her Grandma.

There is this girl I love intensely. She calls me Grandma, and lately she gave me, what is undoubtedly the most wonderful compliment I've ever received. She was standing in font of the mirror and I was a couple rooms away, when she called to me, "Grandma, you know what I like about me?"

"I like everything about you. What do you like?"

"When I see me - It reminds me of you."

I choked up, tears instantly springing to my eyes.  There is a lot of amazing beauty in my granddaughter, but there is also a lot of leftover doubt and self loathing in me from my early school days when I was the target of more bullying than I could easily recover from. 

"I remind you, of you?" I questioned

"Yes, we are both Strawberry blondes, and we have the same freckles and the same pink in our skin, and we smile a lot."

She came around the corner then, and clambered up on my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. I've never felt more blessed, or more loved as she nearly choked me with a hug and dropped a copy of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" into the chair next to us, "and we both love Daddy and Grandpa and BOOKS!" 

searching for leprechaun Tracks

St. Paddy's world of beauty

So Yeah, if the size of our smiles and what we love is her measuring stick, then being the same, is just perfect.

Me or Books?

Both Please!

 "Grandma, what do you love the most, Me or books?"

  Well the answer was easy, but the fact that she knows books are one of the major contenders for my heart is no surprise.

"I love you most of all. I love sharing books with you because the stories matter, but we could share stories every day and never open a book or turn on a screen."


"We Could?"

 Of course we could.  We do.  When you tell me about how you are going to work every job when you grow up, and be a pirate and then an astronaut and then teach and then work at Mcdonalds"s those are stories we enjoy right now, long before they come true. And when I tell you about when I was little, or about your Dad as a baby, those are still stories that help you connect to your place in our family.

"I love being in our family."

Me too Sugar girl, more than ever now.

Duffy Barkley: the Third Charm

It gives me a lot of happiness to finally be able to announce that the Third book in the Tales of Uhrlin is available. This has been one long process, and I had fun working on it, but for awhile I felt like I was telling too many stories and had lost the p;ace where they could intersect. Sometimes I plan the story I tell, but this one seemed to be running ahead of me, telling me I was much too slow in following after and jotting down my notes.  Even once the story was completed, I kept making strange things happen in the book formatting so that I was being told it would need a minimum price of $72 !!! 

 Finally I got it to $15 for the paper book and $2.99 on kindle.  So this adventure begins without Duffy. He is 13 in this third book, and his sister Izzy and his Great-Aunt Peg go missing from Peg's farm. Many of the old friends show up again of course, and Uhrlin as always, has danger and adventure enough to make a tale worth telling, and worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BH38TWO?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

The paperback may not be live until February 8th, which is a good day for me, my Father-In-Law has been a second Father to me for 33 years now and it is his 87th birthday.

This map was the source of my pricing headaches, as trying to have a color map made the printer think the entire book needed to be priced as if the pages were all in full color. 

SeaBee meets a tiny Hippocampus

Winning My 8th NaNoWriMo (But still only have 5 books)

Success!  I am delighted to say that I have finished the first draft of the Third Book of the Tales of Uhrlin.  Duffy Barkley doesn't get to be the star of the show as much in this book, but I had so much fun when it finally started coming together.

trying to remain organized

 When I tried to finish this book in November of 2012, I had written the two earlier Duffy Barkley books. They were different though. In spite of being started in a NaNoWriMo push, they really had been developing over several years of playing with my sons and their friends. This third book was the first attempt when my boys were men, and I had lost the companionship of the children who inspired it. Having seen them graduate from High School, I was proud of them, but uninspired to keep developing this fantasy world without being able to bounce ideas of them and have them say, "What if, this happens?"  Plus those first two books are complicated.  There are two worlds, a timeline that moves back and forth through time, characters and more characters and as the years passed, my brain struggled to hold on to the little details that help with continuity.  I know there are programs to help writers build complicated worlds and keep track of the various threads, but what worked, finally for me, was keeping a word document with my notes, a draft post from this blog with every story line color coded so I could see who had been neglected too long, and an open office file to write the actual book.  So I tried to write this in 2012, and in summer and again. There was always something jangling in my brain, tangling the threads and making me have questions I didn't know the answer to, but this time, it was like all that time had been brewing the ingredients, and aging them and when I sat down this month, my fingers raced to get where they already knew they were going.  I have to edit, re-write, and edit again, so I'm not sure when the final product will be available. But I already love this book.  Finally.

Author Presentation Pays Off Big

 In my last post, I told you that I had been invited to do a presentation as an author to Pine Grove School.  My biggest message that I wanted to get across to these kids was't that they should buy my books, or be impressed with me, or even that they should want to be a writer.  I told them that they should look at me, someone who has dreamed of being a writer since I was their age, and know that if I could make that happen, that they could make their own dreams come true as well.  I admitted that following those dreams might need to be supplemented by something that gives them an income, but that, the thing that makes them most fully them, like writing does for me - should never be abandoned just because it is hard work for little financial gain.

 And after I talked to three groups of students, and ate at their wonderful banquet, I left and went back to work as a substitute teacher at another school.  But unknown to me, the kids were paying me for the message I had given them, and on the last day of school, I found my mailbox stuffed with the reward.

 Here are the Oohrah at the village off Oohline from my novels

 Dear Mrs. Goode, Thank you for teaching us about authoring and writing."

"Thank you for telling us to fallow our dremes"

"I'm writing my own book called, "The Mystery on Ridge Street", I'm on chapter 5, The Mist."

 "I want to be an author too.
sisirily,"


""I imagine it was hard making  book with waht evar you named yer book.
Sinserly,"

"My favorite book was your second book that you made for us to read."

 "Thank you for coming to Spring Arts Day. We learned a lot about writing a book. We would all love to buy your book."

"I think that you taught us a lot of tuff about how to make books. I have one of your books that you made."

"Thank you for telling my class and I about your books. In fact, one of my class mates bought your book."

"It is cool how you made your books and I would really want to read your books."

"I make better illustrations because I listened to you."

 "I think you did a good job on the book you read to us. It's so cool that I can know someone that wires books. It is just amazing how long they take to make."

"I really enjoy your novels, I am going to save up my alowance so I can buy your novels. The idea of a flying tiger is so creative. When I grow up maybe I can make a movie about your book if that's ok with you."

 "Thank you for telling us about your book you made. It also impressed my friend Kaleb. You told about some of it to us. I decided to buy one. I bought number one and two. They are really good so far. I enjoyed it when you were telling us part of it.  I told my little brother about yo and he wants to write books too."

"I would love to read your books and I want to be a singer."

 "Dear Mrs. Goode,
  Thank you for coming to Spring Arts Day.  I allways whonted to be an illustrator and now I know how hard it is to be a illustrator. "

 "Dear Mrs. Goode,

I think your the best substitute teacher in the world.! I mean, we're both writers so I love hearing about your books and reading them! Oh, and I have great news for you!  remember, "Duffy Barkley is not a Dog"?  Well, I'm writing a story with the same Oz/Narnia concept.  It's called "the Adventures of Nina and Lilly 1# Portal in the Mountain side"  It's basically about talking mountain lion named Nina, and her hymn best friendLilly going on all these adventures but something always goes wrong. Happy Book Making!"

and the one last, but not least from a student who made me smile


"Dear Mrs. Goode,

I had a majestic time with you. I've never herd any stories like yours'.  You're Oregon Trail Story is like fiction in descise, (disguise) You have a really good amagination.'