Book Giveaway still on until October 9

Mid September and I almost typed, mid August, Lol.  Life moves faster than I do a lot but I keep reminding myself to slow down and enjoy the little things. I love the moments holding my granddaughter and picking the apples and blackberries and walnuts. I love writing books but struggle to move beyond a "level three"  I wish I had bookmarked the article that told of five possible outcomes of self publishing.  I didn't read it all in detail but the description of the results of what was called a "level 3 success" described me pretty closely.  It said this author doesn't make a living and isn't a big seller, but is recognized as a writer among peers and sells a lot to their own community and has a small but wonderful group of fans.  This author is glad to have followed her dreams and made some success but is still searching for how to promote her books to the wider world.  Yes. Pretty much.

so as an incentive to get people to look at my newest books and to possibly get a few 4 or 5 star reviews on Amazon or Goodreads 

I am giving 4 copies away of each book, through Goodreads giveaway program and both links are below. 

If you want to see about al 5 of my books then I am also including the link to my Amazon author page

 https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/106796-moonrise?utm_medium=email&utm_source=giveaway_approved

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/106794-rainbows-around-us?utm_medium=email&utm_source=giveaway_approved

http://www.amazon.com/Dixie-Dawn-Miller-Goode/e/B004458ES2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1409941162&sr=1-1

I am also busy going to the local schools and I carry my books with me and the experience of reading them to the classes is really fun. I have the fun of seeing the things kids notice as I read and of interacting with the pictures and words in a playful way that isn't possible alone at my computer.

 both my cat and my artist friend here are victims of having me read the picture books out loud to them.  Yes even the cat, as it is easier to hear how the books read out lout and i worry less about how  I sound out loud with any kind of audience than with my voice echoing in an empty room.

So if you are interested in books to read to infants and preschool and kindergarten children, sign up for the giveaway, and if you are interested on fantasy or historical fiction check out my novels as well on Amazon.  Thank you

Coast to Coast across the United States

When I wrote my third book, Double Time on the Oregon Trail, it actually was the first book that I had started but the research and a strange reluctance to stop researching and write, kept me working on it slowly while finishing the other two.

you can find all 3 books on my Amazon author page

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004458ES2

I was immersed in the details of how difficult it had been to travel across this continent when you had to go on foot with only a few water passages and a few animals to help with the burdens like when Lewis and Clark did it, and how 50 years later, with big wagon trains and a series of maps and guides to follow, and a system for getting some news back and forth between the two edges of the continent, it still wasn't much easier.

Because Double Time is a book with two characters in two different times, even the modern girl in 2002 had it differently than I did this summer when my aging Mom, and my 38 year old brother with Down's Syndrome, moved across the country from me and I travelled from the Pacific redwood coast to Washington DC to visit them.

I had a lot of issues and delays, but the knowledge of the 6 months journey involved mot all that long ago, kept my problems in perspective

I thought how old fashioned these looked now that everyone has cell phones, but at the end of my trip I wished I was prepared and could find one

At first I had a very small drive (90 miles) to get to the "local" airport. And then the fog delayed the arrival of the plane I needed to catch to get to my one hour layover in San Francisco.  So before I even got in te air, I knew my connecting flight had already been missed, but the next one would take off an hour after my predicted new arrival

The first plane I rode

 Once I got to San Francisco, on the opposite side of the terminal from the gate I was leaving from, I caught a tram, and several moving walkways and tried to make the 45 minutes work.  I shouldn't have worried, that planes departure was seriously delayed as were all of San Fran, due to the closure of one runway because of the wreckage from the korean jet just days earlier. In fact we landed almost on top of that wreckage it felt like.

 So I spent a lot of time watching the children's playland area.  It was filled with hands on science things like at the exploratorium and I wished my kids were still young enough to give me an excuse to be in there swirling the steam and making the electrical lightning flash upon the wall.

 the Asiana plane crash was another reminder that the delayed flights were minor details in the grand scheme of travel and life.

 And the plane finally was loaded and ready to depart, when thunderheads between Lake Eerie and Florida meant planes were being diverted to DC and we were being delayed on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours so we were told to go back in the airport.  Then pulled up across from the wreckage and parked instead.

 Finally in the air, and due to arrive at midnight instead of 540 PM - I sent a text to my brother and my phone died.  He didn't get it, and I landed in a nearly deserted Dulles airport with no idea of where to meet him, and with no idea of his cell phone number or how to reach him.

The kindness of strangers came into play many times on this trip and people helped me find a place to charge my phone enough to get a text to my brother. He had just given up and gone home so by the time he came back for me it was 2 AM when we got to his house.

Then things got pretty good. I got ten days of family time, seeing my brothers, and my Mom and a niece and a nephew and visiting the Smithsonian and seeing an old Wyoming High School classmate there.

Lance, after 18 years at Walmart has a new job driving and feeding animals around a farm in Virginia

Mom, can't always remember our names, but can still enjoy many things with her family

 ll too soon it was time for me to leave, and th return home was even more complicated.  In DC the thunderheads returned, so there was another 2 1/2 hour wait in a plane parked on the tarmac, and I missed the flight I was connecting with in Sacramento, but this time that 9:30 flight didn't have another until 6:30 the next morning, so I ended up sleeping in the Sacramento Airport's quiet room. Again the kindness of strangers was wonderful, and I got to visit and talk to many people, but whrn I went to the quiet room to sleep, there was only one other person there, a young woman who now lives 1500 miles from me, but was in my son's first grade class.

 we watched the sunrise together

 and then there were only 3 passengers on the plane I caught that finally brought me home.

 DC had been 40 degrees hotter than the redwoods every day I was there, and frankly, the fog and coolness and relief from the sticky humidity was a wonderful welcome home.

To see a great review of Double Time by a book reviewer in India

http://www.booksonmyshelves.blogspot.com/2012/10/double-time-on-oregon-trial.html

 http://www.amazon.com/Double-Time-Oregon-Trail-1/dp/1478160926/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341504499&sr=1-3&keywords=double+time+on+the+oregon+trail

Lumos

A Review of A Casual Vacancy

     Of course all the reactions that are in all the other reviews of this book happened for me.  I was delighted that JK Rowling Was going to be publishing another book.  I was sad and unbelieving and hopeful and worried when I heard that it would not be part of the Harry Potter universe.  I am after all a functioning, adult woman, who just happens to also be a major Potterhead.
     I actually didn't start out loving Harry Potter.  That seems unreal to me now, but I remember thinking that the characters were stereotyped and the story itself was unoriginal and merely a rewriting of old stories.  Then I fell in love and never looked back.  So I trusted Rowling, and when I started the new book, I was willing to keep going even though I did not really like the Casual Vacancy.  I still didn't like it by 100 pages in and I was having a hard time keeping the characters straight.  The book has no clear central character and the view point changes from one section to another and back again so you never get to know enough about one group of people in the first introduction to have them firmly in your mind the next time they appear.  It was a confusing feeling like the first week in a new town when you always wonder, "have I met this person before, should I recognize some details or is this all new?"
     I spoke to other people who were reading the book and found that we shared some of the same feelings and had some interest in the same characters, but agreed that they were not exactly people you would "like" or want to know in real life.  But "Real Life" is what this book is all about.  I found myself recognizing situations and people in a way that was a bit uncomfortable and gritty.  I flinched at some of the brutal detail and the language, but after 23 years teaching children and meeting their families, especially those in Severely Handicapped classes, none of the brutality sounded unreal or exaggerated.  JK Rowling's new book is not a magical escape but rather a confrontation with the part of town a lot of people prefer to avoid.
     By the time I finished the final chapter, and turned the back cover, and glanced once more at the author blurb, the final line of the back flap stood up and slapped me awake.  "She supports a wide range of causes and is the founder of Lumos, which works to transform the lives of disadvantaged children."

    Then I saw it, and I realized this book is very similar to Harry Potter after all.
     There is even a faint reference to Harry Potter in one line on page 81, " . . . once, (she dreamed of it, still), a child who had been locked in a cupboard for five days by his psychotic stepfather."

     So this book is, like Harry Potter, about fear and prejudice against those who are different, and about children who are unwanted, or even if wanted, neglected through ignorance and desperation.  There is much about Harry and Krystal Weedon that is similar, but then with Harry there was an owl, and a magic school and a quiddich team and friends with powers and hope.  There were teachers who saw potential and nurtured it.  For Krystal there is no magic owl, and the rowing team breaks up when the book begins with the one adult who saw her potential, dropping dead. Her peer friends were also 16 year old powerless foster kids. Life without the magic,

 but still trying to show that disadvantaged children are

really there, and we all need to stop looking away.
Let there be light.  Lumos.

Thinking, and Giving Away Books in Paper and in Kindle

• 

    I think a lot, as I face the fact that this stage of my life has to change, and I really don't want it too, I had spent so long trying to get pregnant, and to adopt, and I loved being a mom to little kids, but when I adopted and found out I was pregnant too, it meant that they both were grown together, and after graduation in June, my husband and I will find ourselves rattling around in a much emptier house.

     It has been as a stay at home mom/writer/1/2 time substitute teacher that I defined myself, but suddenly the stay at home part is me alone while the husband and boys are out and about. At first that was a rare treat, but now it's a rut. I think I'm trying to test out my thoughts on getting back into full time teaching after 13 years away, or full time in a different job. The writing is fun, but not a money maker, some months I make as much as one day subbing, but not usually. You know, I'm depressed because the one choice I'd make in a heartbeat is to rewind time and relive the last 18, wonderful years, and I feel like I've fulfilled my goals but don't have new ones yet.

   Remember your blessings, and I'll remember mine. Hey, if you are interested in something to read, there is a free book giveaway on St. Patricks day that you can sign up for anytime before that, and one of the choices is mine.

  http://writersparty.com/contests/

  So Breathe, remember it is a beautiful world.  Have a Happy Sunday,
• Yesterday was my day of rest so except the normal firewood hauling, I did not work out. But then there was Jonathan's message this morning, if you took Saturday off, make sure you get in a work out today. I swear he knows my mind 

  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  

  

  

  Last night was bitterly cold, so the wood stove didn't really keep the house warm, and I woke up at 4:30 with my nose feeling frozen from being out from under the covers, fortunately my grandma's old quilt had the rest of me toasty warm.

  I have leftover roast beef and potatoes, carrots and onion, and leftover marinara sauce and more veggies and that is my favorite way to start a big kettle of minestrone soup, and this is sure soup weather.

  At work, I have my books on kindle on sale so For the next 5 days, my second book, Duffy Barkley: Seek Well will be free on the kindle at

  http://www.amazon.com/Duffy-Barkley-Tales-Uhrlin-ebook/dp/B005CQ5Z8E

  and the first book on kindle is always only 99 cents
  http://www.amazon.com/Duffy-Barkley-Tales-Uhrlin-ebook/dp/B004478F5M

  and at school we had the funnest time on friday, there had been a contest in a k-8 school to see which class could log the most minutes reading. The second grade won, so the principal gave each second grader a can of silly string, then he climbed on the stage in front of them and allowed them to spray him, they were good aims and his whole face was covered and the fumes were thick but the laughter was thicker.

  So Good to hear kids laugh.