All posts by NewEngland_Muse

I'm a traditionally and self published author. I write in the genre of children and YA at the moment but working my way up to adults. I'm a sports loving, photo taking gal who loves to sing/dance to my own enjoyment. I love to laugh even at myself. I am also owned by 8 birds and 2 hamsters, and yes they know it. :)

My flock:BJ and Nye

Nye and BJ

I am owned by a flock of eight birds. This comes to four cockatiels, one finch, two parakeets and one yellow cheek Amazon.

In the videos are BJ and Nye who are roommates. Even though all my tiels are males, these two show that even men can be divas. They constantly show us their feathers and pose for us to shower accolades on them. BJ is a white face cockatiel and he was born in December of 1998. Nye, a normal grey, is the son of my first bird ever and he was born in 2001.

They are pretty mellow birds for the most part. Being around birds since 1998 has been an experience. Like other pets, these have their own unique and distinct personalities. They will love you forever, and all they ask is for you to love them back.

Kind of like how we are.

The connection: My grandfather and son

2013-07-21 18.27.27

Memories. Sometimes they pop up with no fanfare. They come to the front of your mind when it is triggered. My Pepere Gervais, french for grandfather, passed away many years ago. I have great memories of him. His ability to beat anyone in checkers. I mean anyone. It became a game of will as grandchild after grandchild tried to win to no avail. Another memory is of my pepere, mom and I crossing over the border into Canada to watch live professional wrestling. We were all fans and to this day my mom and I carry on watching.

But this past weekend a new memory popped up thanks to my son. His favorite deodorant at the moment is Old Spice, he has worn it for a while now. My grandfather wore Old Spice. As a child I would love to go visit him and go into his room and smell the scent for I loved the smell and I loved my grandfather. It was always great to spend time with him.

So yesterday as I was getting ready to leave the house my son walked by and this memory of me visiting my grandfather popped up. It made me smile. My son gave me some money to pick him up another stick if I stopped by anywheres on the way home. Telling my husband in the truck, he said I have some new deodorant in the closet he can help himself.

And while I told my son afterwards about this, I still got him a new stick. For I love the scent and thanks to him he reminded me of my grandfather. I hope he wears Old Spice for very long time. Even though they never met, they are now connected.

My newsletter

IMG_0175Recently I blogged about newsletters. How I wanted to get on board with this way of spreading my brand. The sites I visited all wanted me to share my personal home address with the world. I wasn’t feeling that. Thanks to my lovely editor, Nancy, she directed me to Mad Mimi, a free site where all that was required was town and state.

So I went about setting up my first issue. It was a little time-consuming for I wanted it just right. I’m not sure how many emails I got from myself as I tested various versions. It took some time but after a few hours I got the pictures, links and story laid out that looked pleasing to my eye. I was nervous as heck and excited to get it ready in time to announce to the world which I did promptly on my social media outlets

Here is the link to the first issue.

https://madmimi.com/mimio/b1a564/preview

The link to subscribe, if interested, is here:http://mad.ly/signups/98152/join

I was fortunate enough to get a nice small crowd of people interested in reading more of what I had to say. Hopefully I won’t disappoint. Being an author means more than just writing. It involves editing, revising, editing again and then either self publish or find a traditional publisher. But it doesn’t end there. After comes the marketing and promotion which one has to do regardless how your book is released to the world.

It’s a marathon not a sprint. I need to invest in water.