Guest Post - Jennie Withers - Bullying (Part 1 in a 3 part Series)

Bullying - it can be a delicate topic to talk about. When an incident happens it leaves people questioning: Was I bullied? Was my child bullied?  Am I being too sensitive? Sometimes teens don't want to admit they have been bullied by a boss, parent, teacher, friend, or stranger. It can also be difficult to find out your child or family member is the bully. 

I was recently invited to read Hey, Back Off!  Written by Jennie Withers with her mother, Phyllis Hendrickson M. Ed. This is a topic I have discussed before on this blog. Jennie has been so kind and has contributed some material for my blog posts. So this is part one, where Jennie shares a story. In part two, I will discuss her book. In part three Jennie shares some hints for parents. You can find Jennie Withers online at her web page.

____________________________________________________________________________

Surviving Passive and Aggressive Parents

An Excerpt from, Hey, Back Off! Tips for Stopping Teen Harassment

by

Jennie Withers

My dad is a bully and my mom is a doormat. At 38, I still have trouble admitting that without feeling guilty and disloyal. The bond between parent and child is the most complex type of relationship, and I battled with it every day in my effort to become who I am rather than who I was brought up to be.

**************

My parents held the belief that the teen years were when kids would forget their religion and fall victim to the evils of public school and social temptations. I learned some lessons from watching my older siblings make their mistakes, but in spite of “keeping my nose clean”, dad constantly accused me of drinking, having sex, and other things defined as “bad” by our religion.

I became weary of all the unfounded accusations and started to stand up to my dad rather than meekly taking his abuse. Things got ugly fast: the more he tried to tighten his control, the more I fought it. By the time I was a Junior, he had taken my younger siblings out of public school and forced my mom to home school them. I fought to remain in school.

Things came to a head one day when dad and I had a particularly nasty discussion before school regarding my talking on the phone to a friend he did not approve of. Dad went off to work, where he must have chewed on our conversation all morning.

After my lunch period, the office aide came to my Chemistry class and informed the teacher I needed to go to the office to take a phone call from my father. The whole class turned to look at me in wonder.  Pulling someone out of class to take a call – even from a parent – was simply NOT done.

I went to the office and stood in silence while dad yelled at me over the phone. Although everyone tried to pretend they weren’t listening, I knew they could hear him shouting. I finally mustered the courage to interrupt his tirade.  “Dad, can we continue this conversation at home? I really need to get back to class.”

I listened to another 10 minutes of infuriated lecturing.  I was starting to get angry too, but tried to keep my voice calm.  “Dad, I really can’t talk about this now. Can we please discuss it at home tonight?”

“No. We need to get this resolved right now. If you can’t live by my rules, then you can’t live under my roof. In fact, that’s it. I want you out of my house!”

 After school, my friend helped me pack my things and I left. As I walked through the house with my last box of belongings, I tried to catch my mom’s eye as she sat working with her Cub Scout troop on a project. She never said a word nor did she look up as I walked by. 

**************

            I would love to report that everything got better once I was out from under my father’s thumb, but the truth is, that was just the beginning for me. I moved to Boise and lived with a friend who was in college, working part time jobs to help pay rent. I finished high school and went on to college, paying my own way and working several jobs. It was during this time that I really struggled with who I wanted to be. I went through friends and boyfriends like they were disposable. I could never figure out which role I was supposed to play; in some relationships I was a doormat, in others I was a tyrant.

I realized I was in imminent danger of becoming my parents or living my life blaming them for the mess I felt myself to be. I made a conscious effort to get off the rollercoaster and take charge of my life. I formed my ideal person: honest, compassionate and strong.

If I have one message for young people who find themselves in a similar situation, it is this: no matter your circumstances, YOU have the right, the capability and the responsibility to choose the type of person you will be.

*Pictures from Wikimedia Commons

Cat Thursday -The Adventure of Milo and Otis (1986)

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! This fun meme is hosted by The True Book Addict. Go over to her site to join in the fun. 

Do you remember these little guys?

Darwin's Children by Natasha Larry

It's funny how things happen. I have seen Natasha online for quite some time. You know how you seem to interact with authors and book bloggers. One day Natasha posted a link for a freebie of her book on a book blogging site. So I signed up, because the teaser was interesting and the title really appealed to me. 

Natasha kindly sent me an e-book copy and I was so thrilled with it, I wanted to share it with you. 

I was expecting a paranormal young adult novel, but this book captured me in other ways. There is, of course, the paranormal aspect because the main character (Jaycie Learner) and her unusual family have special powers that seem to be bestowed upon certain people as a form of advancement or evolution of the human race. However, you aren't always handed every piece of information. Sometimes the characters don't know themselves what's going on and other times they may even be wrong about their assumptions. There's plenty of room for personal speculation and reader's flights of fancy and theorising. 

I try not to read other's reviews before I do my own, but I did note someone saying that they disliked some of the choices the characters made in this book. To me, this was the best part. The characters are real, they are flawed and they won't always make the right choices, but they must learn to deal with the consequences and accept them. 

Anyway, I loved this book. It gave more than I expected and I enjoy being surprised like that. But don't take my word for it. Read a synopsis and  an excerpt at Penumbra Publishing or follow Natasha Larry's blog and decide if this is for you. 

Guest Post: How To Look Stylish With Personalised T-Shirts

When t-shirts first became a major feature of the culture, they were actually seen as a part of undress by the older generation. But over time, the t-shirt has become a more than accepted and almost essential element to casual wear. T-shirts generally carry the reputation of being a casual item, and it can be difficult to look stylish and put together when wearing them. Here are some simple pointers to make your special personalised t shirts a more fashionable piece of your wardrobe. 

Pay Attention to Grooming 

One of the main reasons t-shirts may seem a bit sloppy is because people sometimes wear them when they aren’t too fussed about how people think they look. The road to looking stylish in your personalised t-shirts is by taking a little time to look your best. Be clean. Nothing subtracts from the appearance of class like not having showered recently. Always make sure your hair is how you want it. Messy hair can detract from your efforts of good grooming. Girls, be careful what make-up you choose. Most people would agree that the natural look looks far better than the full works. Before you go, take a look in the mirror to see that everything is in place. You have taken a giant step from the slob who wears a t-shirt because it is there to the individual who knows how to wear personalised t-shirts with style. 

Coordinate Colours 

Jeans are the usual choice when deciding what to wear with t-shirts, and nearly every colour looks good with jeans. This makes it a lot easier for you to look put together when wearing personalised t-shirts, because you don’t have to worry about clashing colours. If you want to wear khaki cargo pants instead, try to choose shirts that have earth tones, like greens, or dark colours like blue. Bright reds and yellows don’t go as well with the light tones of khaki. Since the main colours in your outfit are taken care of, you can spend more time thinking about your  accessories. Shoes are pretty basic, but think about the pair you choose before you put it on. Worn down sneakers don’t have an appearance of stylishness. Girls, why not wear a colourful pair of heels that compliments your t-shirt? Think about every part of your outfit, about whether the colours coordinate and about whether it has a stylish appearance. 

Be Confident 

The most noticeable marks of a stylish person is their confidence. They are comfortable in their own skin and content with their appearance. They are confident that the choices they made from their closet this morning are good, and don’t give it another thought. If you want to look stylish in your personalised t-shirts, once you are dressed, don’t worry about it. If you think you look fine, your opinion will show through, and other people will agree with you! Taking care to make sure you look your best and knowing it will make you look stylish whether you are wearing a business suit or your favourite personalised t-shirts! 

by Michael Turner

(for VistaPrint)

Note from Kate:

Thanks for those tips, Michael.

Here is my personalised T-shirt I ordered last year.

The Sylvan Horn by Robert Redinger #Giveaway

I was kindly offered a review copy of

The Sylvan Horn by Robert Redinger.

Efkin is a Braey elf who has just taken his position on the council of Lords. He is charged with the task of seeking the Sylvan Horn that sang the world into existence. Now he will tackle frightening beings, dragons and all manner of evil to obtain the horn and break the runes that threaten to destroy the world. He dreams of the forest, he sees the pale being no-one else seems to see, and he is the one who was given the pendant from the High Priestess. On his adventure Efkin discovers his true nature and the reason it must be he who saves the world.
Efkin meets many beings along the way, but who can Efkin trust? The men who have shown they use dark magic and cruelty? The pale being who seems to know his fate? The dwarves? The Knights? The Wizard King? And how can the Trolls have used the sorcery when they are so unintelligent?
Redinger takes us on an exciting adventure, which immerses you into the Braey world and takes you along for the ride. His fast paced storytelling keeps you on the edge of your seat, cheering for Efkin and his friends and fearing for his safety.
The Sylvan Horn is beautifully written. The story transports us to a parellel universe, a place of elves, of fantastical creatures and evil sorcery, of bravery and quests.
If you enjoy fantasy, adventure games, roleplaying, or Tolkienesque adventures - then this is the book for you, if you can manage to tear it away from the teens or your partner.
I also want to mention the beautiful artwork on the cover is by Carol Philips.
The book is available from Barnes & Noble and Amazon in both hardcopy & e-book. 

Now to the GIVEAWAY!

Robert Redinger has kindly offered a signed paper copy of The Sylvan Horn to one of my lucky readers.

Use the Rafflecopter below to enter and Good Luck - hope you win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

WIP - lampshade

This is my work in progress. I crocheted the lampshade cover from string. The base was found at a second hand shop. Now I just need to put them together (and get it safety checked , of course). 

Cat Thursday - Schrödinger's cat

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! This fun meme is hosted by The True Book Addict. Go over to her site to join in the fun.

Deep down I'm really a nerd. 

Guest Post - James Pollard on Self-Publishing

Thanks Kat for the invitation to ‘guest blog’ and for the web sites you have recommended. Great stuff, great blog and thanks for your encouragement with regards to my eBooks and the whole ‘indie’ publishing thing.   

Not that long ago I heard somewhere that everyone had at least one book in them. This is all well and good but if you are going to get that book out of you, what should you write about? Well, standard advice was to write about what you know. Having spent a bit of time in Japan, it was a place I knew quite well so that issue pretty much decided itself.  I didn't want to try anything like a travel guide or a sociolinguistic analysis of contemporary language and culture, as I like to have a bit of fun with what I write. So I used my experience to create some fiction loosely based on people and places I knew and came up with two novellas with a third in the pipeline ready to finish the trilogy. 

Although, I am tempted to tell you the whole story about finding friends to edit my work, my journey with coming to grips with the conventions, mental challenges and other disappointing indie-publishing moments, I have promised Kat that this piece will be limited to advice for newbies on publishing an eBook.  I’ll leave the rest to another blog spot on another day. 

I suppose the first question to ask is why publish as an eBook? Well, firstly, it sounds really cool.  It is very contemporary and suits the times. It is also a lot cheaper than publishing the traditional way and is instantaneous, meaning that as soon as it is uploaded, it is live and available to people all over the world. You don’t pay them to publish your book and you can set your own price.  

Having made the decision to publish, the question then becomes, whom do you publish with? Well the main players in my opinion are Kindle (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin ) and Smashwords  (http://www.smashwords.com/ ) and you can publish on both at the same time. Smashwords has affiliate arrangements with Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Sony etc. so you are guaranteed distribution. Kindle has a gigantic distribution network of its own. The beauty of Smashwords is that you get your fifteen minutes of fame after you upload as the works appear in the order that they are loaded. They just scroll down as the next book is uploaded.  The book then sits there as Smashwords puts it in places on the web that make it more discoverable. It is a good idea to really think about what genre your book sits in and the tags you are going to use as this can help readers find you – the key to eBook publishing these days being discoverability. 

Kindle is different as the eBook is loaded directly to a category or genre. I don’t entirely understand the process but you find yourself added somewhere in the middle ranking and quickly rise or fall in rank as your eBook is downloaded or ignored. Again tags and wise choices with regards to genre can aid in your potential discoverability. Kindle is much larger than Smashwords so you could soon discover that you are being downloaded by a factor of 100 in comparison to Smashwords. Of course this may not be the case, it depends on your eBook.  

Kindle has a range of forums that allow you to reach a range of readers and other authors and Smashwords relies on a Facebook page.  A new Kindle feature is the KDP select fund. KDP requires that you publish exclusively with Kindle in exchange for inclusion in a premium user lender library. Every time you are borrowed, your percentage share in a fixed fund goes up. In February, Kindle allocated $500 000 to this fund. The December 2011 fund yielded $1.70 that you may have earned in addition to any other sales on Kindle. One downside however is that you forfeit any sales from any other publishers by joining the fund.  

If you are going to take the plunge and publish it goes without saying that you must first write a book. Obviously, the better the writing the more popular it will be so you really need to spend the time on this before you even consider publishing.  I can’t stress enough the need to have your work checked, then double-checked then professionally edited. It will save you a lot of hassles, particularly with Kindle. Smashwords readers are much kinder but you should be uploading only your best work, something I wish I had done when I started out. I found my copy editor at the Society of Editors (WA) Inc.  http://editorswa.com/ 

Notwithstanding your best efforts, Kindle reviewers can be harsh on the newbie so toughen up Princess; you may be reviewed harshly… or not, depending on your eBook. There are a lot of publishers on kindle so get ready for a range of tricks that may or may not include strange 5 star ratings for eBooks that don’t necessarily deserve it and 1 star disappointments with savaging reviews that cannot really be justified.  

Publishing is easy if you use a standard word document and you follow the style guide that Smashwords provides at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52   You don’t have to worry about special file formats as Smashwords and Kindle do all the converting for you. All you need to do is to follow the prompts. You have to prepare a cover and organise some artwork for your creation. This gets uploaded as a jpeg or a PDF. I would advise spending some time on this and there are links on the Kindle web page and plenty of offers on the Smashwords Facebook page if you want to pay for this. The final thing is to make sure you have organised a précis that appears with your book’s cover image. You have to type it in when you upload and there is nothing worse than having to compose this during the technical stage so best have in prepared. Make it a good one, as this is what readers will base their decision on whether to download or to keep browsing. The next step is promotion but I’ll leave that for another day. 

Anyway, that should be enough as an introduction. It is a lot of fun to see your work appear on your very own e-reader and I recommend the experience. If you are interested in the two novellas I have on Smashwords they can be found at the following addresses.  

‘Memoirs of a Vending Machine’ is free at  

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35877 

‘Kujira’ is available for $0.99 at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37636 

BUT… If you use the following coupon ( TC43Z ) when you check out, you can download if for free until the end of March. I also have a blog where I discuss issues relating to my publishing journey at the following link:  

http://beerubaraoyaji.blogspot.com.au/ 

Happy publishing. 

James Pollard

Note from Kate:

See also http://bookscraftsprettythings.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/word-about-indie-authors.html

February is Facebook Month

Do you have a Facebook page and you would like more followers? Time for some Facebook lurve?
There are no rules, just pop a link to your page and peruse the other links. 
Add your blog page, business page, personal page, cat's page, dog's page, special cause page. 
I like to follow back, but you don't have to, just have fun and maybe meet some new people :)
If people like this - we'll try other social media too.
Here's my Facebook page:
Books, Crafts, Pretty Things.
So what are you waiting for? 
Bye - Facebook me!

Love

Cat Thursday

I found this cute meme via fellow book lover and fellow cat lover Socrates's Books - 

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! This fun meme is hosted by The True Book Addict. Go over to her site to join in the fun.

The Cat behind the shirt.

Click here to read the story!

Knitting Nancy or French Kitting

I came across one of the kid's Knitting Nancy, so I decided to have a play.

Spotlight on Vicki Lorraine

I want to share a little secret with my Australian readers. I have discovered a source of home decors that I am really happy to share.
The Butcher (my hubby) has been complaining about our oven gloves. I was trying to source some that he would be happy with, but would suit my taste as well.
I ordered some new oven gloves and a pot holder from Vicki Lorraine and she helped me choose a fabric that I was really pleased with, and she made the gloves to order.
We've had a little time to try them out and we've been really pleased. They are light weight and not bulky, but offer great heat protection.
Here's a picture:

Vicki Lorraine makes many other items including toaster & kettle covers, coffee cup cosies, seat belt buddies and more.

Check her out on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/VickiLorraine

(This is my honest opinion and I wasn't given any incentive - I just really liked Vicki's work)

Cheers,

Valentine Freebie

Thanks to MyMemories for this Scrapping Freebie - just in time for Valentine's Day.

This Digital Kit Includes:

2 Digital Papers

3 Page Elements

2 Quick Pages

Click Here

It can be used with any image software.

But if you are interested in the MyMemories Software

Remember to 

♥ USE MY CODE TO GET $10 off : STMMMS60349 

Example of use:

Cat Thursday - The Princess and the Pea

I found this cute meme via fellow book lover and fellow cat lover Socrates's Books - 

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! This fun meme is hosted by The True Book Addict. Go over to her site to join in the fun.

Note: For those asking about my nails last week (post update here)

Hope you enjoy today's story.

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a real princess. He traveled around the whole world in search of his real princess; but never found her. There was always something wrong with the princesses he found. None were to his taste. They simply weren't real princesses. The prince returned home very sad and weary, for he had set his heart on marrying a real princess.

One evening a storm settled over the land. Lightning flashed and thunder roared. Rain came down by the bucket. When the storm raged at its worst, someone knocked on the casle gate and the king himself went down to open it.

On the other side of the gate stood a wet and ragged princess. Water ran down her hair and mud caked her sopping clothes. It flowed in through the heels of her shoes and out through the toes. She said she was a princess and would like to get warm.

"We shall see if indeed she is a princess," thought the queen without uttering a word. She hurried off to the guest room and took all the bedclothes off the bed. Then on the bare bedstead she put a tiny pea. On top of this pea she piled twenty mattresses and twenty feather quilts. That was to be the bed upon which the princess would sleep.

The next morning a servant asked her how she had slept. She replied, "Oh, just wretchedly! I did not close my eyes even once the whole night through. God knows what was in that bed turning me black and blue!"

Now everyone knew that she was certainly a real princess, since she had felt the little pea through all the twenty mattresses and twenty feather quilts. Only a real princess would be so sensitive!
The happy prince married her. The pea was put on exhibition at the royal museum where you can go see it, if it hasn't been stolen.
That was a real story! 

Story by Hans Christian Andersen
Model: Jigglypuff