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Here's what I'm thankful for today:

1. YOU
I love reading your posts and listening to what inspires and challenges you. I love it when you make me laugh.

2. YA INDIE CARNIVAL BLOGGERS
Starting July 15th me and some of my new friends, talented indie writers and reviewers and readers, are beginning a conversation about the YA indie world. Every Friday we will all post on a new topic about YA indie writing, reviewing and reading. Here's a list of folks who I hope you'll get to know much, much better:

Dani Snell- book reviewer open to indies

Courtney Cole- an indie author of paranormal fiction. Her titles include: EVERY LAST KISS [Book 1 of the Bloodstone Saga], FATED [Book 2 of the Bloodstone Saga], PRINCESS, and the title GUARDIAN.

Wren Emerson- an indie author of the paranormal fiction story I WISH.

Nicole Williams- an indie author of paranormal fiction. Her titles include: ETERNAL EDEN, and the upcoming FALLEN EDEN.

Fisher Amelie- an indie YA author of the paranormal fantasy series THE UNDERSTOREY

Michelle Leighton- an indie YA author of paranormal fiction. Her titles include: WICCAN, BLOOD LIKE POISON [BOOK 1 & 2], THE REAPING, CATERPILLAR

Amy Maurer Jones- an indie YA author of the fantasy series called THE SOUL QUEST TRILOGY

T. R. Graves- an indie YA author of paranormal fiction. Her series titles include: WARRIORS OF THE CROSS, GUARDIANS OF THE CROSS, ENEMIES OF THE CROSS

Rachel Coles- an indie YA author of paranormal fiction as well as a book reviewer open to indies. Her titles include DIARY OF A DUCT TAPE ZOMBIE, WHISTLES, BEERGARDEN, PLAGUES, BEES OF ST. JOHN, and MUSHROOMS

Patti Larsen- an indie author of YA and MG fiction. Her titles include: THE GHOST BOY OF MacKENZIE HOUSE, and THE DIAMOND CITY TRILOGY.

[if you are an YA indie author and want to be a CARNI with us, let me know!]

3. This little bat that was flying around in the tangerine sky at sunset last night. The way he darted and dropped and flew about the moon took my breath away.

4. The amazing attitude and courage of our wounded warriors and the wonderful community of people who raise them up every single day with good wishes and prayers.

I've been debating how public or not I was going to be about all this and finally decided that since it's something I'll be living with for the rest of my life, I'll probably feel better if I share it now so I don't have to worry about who does and doesn't know what's going on. Rants, however, will continue to stay locked and private. :)


1. I recently got a a diagnosis of diabetes. Why am I thankful for this? Well I'm thankful I was diagnosed before things spiked way out of my control.

2. At this point in time I am on no medication and I don't have to do daily blood stick tests.

3. This has been the giant push I needed to really get myself in gear to eat better and get more exercise.

4. Hubby is journey me in the get healthy journey.

5. Week one I've already lost 4 1/2 pounds.

At last the book that has kept me so glued to my computer, and away from the rest of the world, will be for sale soon on Amazon, maybe next week. There will be a Kindle, and other ebook types, … Continue reading →

Who do you need to thank [and its long over-due]?

Image by faith goble via Flickr

Who do you have to thank today?

Related Articles

• What Are You Thankful For? (lifehack.org)
• Be Thankful. Be Inspiring. Be Ourselves. (onemann.blogspot.com)

Well, first of all I'm thankful that it seems my brother will finally be coming home from the hospital today, after being in there nearly a week. I think a day in a hospital is like dog years. A week is forever. So THANK YOU!!! Giving big thanks that the doctors got to the cause of the problem and everything seems sorted now.

I'm also thankful that my daughters are having a fabulous time with their grandma over the next few weeks.

And I'm also thankful for colorful characters. There is a very colorful character here, in our new neighborhood. He's a guy that owns the ice cream shop in town. I love him because he's not exactly who'd you expect. Once, around the dinner table, I described the ice cream shop as happy, all Beatles memorabilia EVERYWHERE and children's books like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan wrapped and hung on the walls and tie dyes and a pin ball machine and one of those mechanical horses that used to be outside of the grocery store when my girls were little. And of course lots of ice cream and sorbet and, something you might not expect...coffee. It's the coffee and his homemade waffle cones that are his passion. My family just looked at me and said the shop wasn't happy, it was weird. Talk about POV. See, what I was saying was, how strange I found it to be that a guy with such a happy store should be so cynical. I enjoy talking with him, though. You never know what he will say. It's usual pretty abrasive and opinionated.

After the BP oil spill he had a BP Sundae on the menu, four scoops of ice cream with an oil slick [chocolate syrup], on top. Said that the Mayan's were right, the world will end in 2012 because the oceans will all die because the oil would catch in the currents and kill all the small fish in the sea. Last week when I went in to buy a pound of his really amazing French Roast, I asked him how he was and he said that he's staying out of trouble. I asked how it was going. He said he's learned his lesson. That he spoke out against the war and that people stopped coming to his store. Told me there is no freedom of speech in America anymore. Went on and on about the Wikileaks folks.

Anyway, I'm thankful for colorful characters, even the ice cream shop man because he regularly takes me places that I don't expect, just like our favorite characters in our favorite stories, although my favorite tend to be weird and decidedly less cynical.

Which leads to today's question...Who's the most colorful character in your neighborhood?

Today I'm thank for my wonderful husband.

Not only does he do all the cooking around the house, which means he also does all the grocery shopping, but he drives me all over the place (not just the South Bay) looking at things on craigslist. When we buy something, no matter how big, he always manages to fit it into our four-runner. He does all the moving and lifting and carrying and lets me supervise. He never complains, even when we drive a couple of hours for something we don't buy.

Thank you, my dear.

I'm just back from a whirl-wind trip to DC for the Knuffle Bunny Musical.More on that later.Until then, here's a quick report on my recent visit to Center for Cartoon Studies and Dartmouth by the fine folks at the CCS (keep in mind I was talking to grown ups about craft, this is not really for the kiddies).I had a great time hanging out the with students, pontificating on the sins of

By Anatoly Liberman

Shortly before the end of 2009, the University of Minnesota Press brought out a bibliography of English etymology, my database, the fruit of the loom that was set in motion more than two decades ago, and a word of gratitude to a hundred or so of my collaborators and supporters is due today. The introduction to the bibliography contains the traditional section “Acknowledgments.” In the tenth century, lists of names (of kings, ancestors, horses, and dwarfs, let alone ships) were read with interest, but in the twenty-first? Will anyone study (“peruse”) my acknowledgments? Even I am beginning to forget some of my first helpers, especially those who worked only for a few months. But most stayed longer, and one, now both an assistant and a close friend, never left. I remember them as they were when we met, young and old, nurses and parking lot attendants, part-time janitors and retired librarians, able-bodied men and severely handicapped women. All of them were offered the same question: “Why do you want to participate in this project?” The usual answer was: “I have always loved words.” Occasionally they added that they hated their jobs and dreamed of doing research in a university library. Those were volunteers. My paid assistants did not get rich while reading journals and sitting at the computer, but the idea that no analogue of our bibliography existed in Indo-European studies and that the final product would benefit the world in which we live united us. I worked side by side with them. Proud of their achievement, they called the project very unique, and it took some time to teach them to drop very. Winters did not freeze our enthusiasm, summers did not suffocate us with their humidity, and nothing could cloy the infinite variety of the scholarly literature on the origin of English words.

However unique, the project had a pathetically trivial need, namely, money—very little money, but still a few thousand dollars every year, to pay undergraduate assistants (my graduate assistants were few and still remain wildly beyond my means) and to defray the costs of programming and copying. The world, which, as noted, would be the beneficiary of our work, was not in a hurry to accept the gift and be saved, but the University of Minnesota had infinite trust in me, and we lived on small grants for a long time. Then a miracle happened, and I coined the word mid-Westerner, for rescue came when there seemed to be no hope. A husband and wife team listened to my passionate presentation, agreed that there was no future for humanity without a bibliography of English etymology and gave me a handsome grant. Handsome is that handsome does. Much later another philanthropist, himself a language historian, added a similar sum to my budget, and with my parsimony verging on stinginess I’ll be in clover for quite some time. I often read that people who travel to distant countries or embark on great enterprises end up saying that at the end of the way they learned a great deal about themselves. This seems a skimpy reward for such gigantic efforts. Unlike them, I learned nothing about myself in my wanderings but a lot about word origins and those around me. I discovered that no amount of institutional ignorance and highly esteemed claptrap can overpower innate kindness, common sense, and love of genuine scholarship. This gives me hope not only for 2010 but for many years beyond that round date.

The best-known cliché of numerous introductions sounds approximately so: “If I had known what this work entails, I would not have begun it.” By contrast, I never doubted the magnitude of the task (to collect everything said in articles and reviews on the origin of English words, however veiled that information might be), never believed that any bibliography could b

Gracias / Thanks (English and Spanish Edition) by Pat Mora. Illustrations by John Parra. Lee & Low Books. 2009. Review copy supplied by publisher.

The Plot: A young boy gives thanks for the people and things in his life, starting with "for the sun that wakes me up so I don't sleep for years and years and grow a long, white beard, thanks."

In both English and Spanish: "Por el sol que me despierta y no permite que siga durmiendo por anos y anos, y que me crezca una larga barba blanca, gracias."

The Good: Anyone (boy, girl, adult, child) will identify with what the narrator is thankful for. And, of course, the reader can then add what they are thankful for. The book is both mirror and window, anyone seeing a ladybug; and (for some), window when the boy gives thinks for his "Abuelita."

I loved the illustrations by Parra; they, add to the multicultural aspect of the book, along with the use of Spanish and English. The folk-art story is both appealing and also works for this story; additional details flesh out the story. When the "ladybug that landed on my finger," the narrator has a book on insects, another open to a page on ladybugs, a baseball glove; stylized birds and butterflies fill up the page. The colors are rich and gorgeous; blues, yellows, reds that spring off the page.

I'm posting this on Thanksgiving, because it's a great book to use for giving thanks. But, because there is no mention of holidays here, it's not limited to Thanksgiving and can be used any time.



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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

I am thankful for a great many things today - family, friends, health, ability to be home writing - but I wanted to speak specifically to a single recent experience.

Earlier this week I went on a retreat with a few writer friends and a few writer/artists strangers who are now friends. We gathered at the beach mostly with solitary intentions and yet, it seemed, the magic of where we were and the creative energy of those gathered had other ideas.

We came with no agenda, no speakers, nothing that absolutely had to be done.

Groups of two and three started to form. Individual work turned into freeform group writing fun. Books and art were shared. Gifts were acknowledged, praised. We were validated as professional creatives. Meals stretched for several hours as we lingered over coffee and tea. We sat by the fire and talked long into the night. We laughed (and some of us cried) and took a great many pictures.

Our backgrounds, our journeys to be writers, were of course very different.
Our passion however, was very much the same.

I am so grateful for the time spent with these fabulous and talented women. You have to understand that it isn't because someone took me aside and said a particular thing to me. It isn't because of anything we saw or ate or did. I think it might be because of what they didn't do.

They didn't say "do this." They didn't say "don't do that." They just listened. And accepted.

It rocked my world from the inside out.

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you. Thank you for all the times you read my blog. May your bellies and hearts be full of everything you need.

If you want to enter the "Thanks for Following This Turkey" contest for some free marketing stuff, be sure you are a follower and that you comment on the official Contest post.

I was looking through last year's Thanksgiving Day post and decided to do something different this year.

If you decide to do this, let me know and I will create a link of Thanksgiving Day posts at the bottom.

1. How will you be spending your Thanksgiving this year?
We are going to my mom's house.

2. Will you be cooking or are you just an eater?
I am in charge of dessert and entertainment (JK on the entertainment!)

3. Do you watch the parade every year or football!!
We watch star wars or Indiana Jones - dont ask me why!

4. Whats your favorite float?
I like the santa float b/c it reminds me of xmas coming.

5. Dark meat or white meat? Dark

6. What is your favorite dish besides the turkey?
Duh Dessert! who ever says green beans is totally lying!

7. Homemade cranberry sauce or cranberry sauce from the can?
My mom's only

8. Do you decorate for Christmas on Thanksgiving day?
No we start xmas stuff on Dec 1st. I need to breathe in between holidays.

9. What are some special family traditions?
So we dont argue with inlaws about who goes where when - we do Thanksgiving together. That means, we trade off every year between my sister-in-law's mom and my mom. That way we only travel every other year.

10. Pumpkin pie or pecan?
Pecan and pumpkin please. Twice! :)

11. What is your favorite thing to do with the leftovers?
What else is there to do but eat them! Wear them?

12. How long will you spend eating your thanksgiving meal?
Probably 30 minutes (what can I say - we have 6 kids under age of 6 between the families so dinners dont last too long) ...but we try to spend hours talking after the meal.

13. Are you worried about putting on weight this Thanksgiving?
I expect to put on weight over the holidays and then make a resolution to take it off in the new year. It's the American way!

14. What do you normally eat at Thanksgiving?
Turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, rolls & pie. Lots of pie!

15. What will you be thankful for this Thanksgiving?
Oh gosh, wher