We have a winner!

Here's the prize!

When we met on Skype this week, I cut up little pieces of paper

Jen showing off her handy slips of paper

and Michelle and I added up the count. I threw them in the hat and shuffled them around, and around….. and around. I had her read the one I pulled out.

And the winner is... auuoD? ahah!

DONNA!

Right side up this time!

It was DONNA! Donna is our winner! Much thanks Donna for following us and being a loyal fan. Personally, I didn’t think it was fair since it was my MOM and she’s going to get a book anyway. But it was completely random, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Mmmm….cookies. That sounds good.

I’d never held my own contest before. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for teaching me yet ANOTHER new thing Miss Michelle! (She’s so great.)
Don’t forget, Michelle is the creator and co-publisher of Young America’s Got Stories! She’s running the website and pulling in the entries, as well as helping choose the judges. She needs entries! If you have a child between the ages of 8 and 17, have them take a look at the site. They could be published, just like us!

Special Note from Michelle, who broke into Jennifer’s post and added all the pictures:

I saw that Jennifer had written the post and had no pictures. I did all the camera work this week, since she had the task of drawing the name. So I thought I would go ahead, sneak in and add them while she was sleeping. The contest was loads of fun. Sorry about the delay with the announcement! Hope you all are well. Keep cooking up those stories!

Thanks again for reading, everybody!Click to view slideshow.

Welcome to the south.

Three days ago, I came home from my walk and a bag full of beans were sitting on top of my car. I looked around. No note. No neighbor near by. I had no idea who or where they came from. Stuffed in a plastic Harvey’s super market bag, and caked with dried dirt, they looked like they’d arrived straight from the garden.

What kind of peas are these? Does anyone know?

They weren’t by the front door, or on the step, they sat brazenly on the roof of my car. Considering we’ve been here barely two months, I feel I’ve gotten out of the house a great deal between the writing and unpacking. We’ve met folks at the community garden, I’ve joined the local Writer’s workshop, volunteered to help on a local city council campaign, and been invited to join the library book club. I’m just learning names and no one knows where I live, but my landlord. I have made a few friends at the community garden, but the fall gardening season is only just now starting. Everyone in the plots around me are planting, no one is harvesting yet. And, no one knows where I live. I’m not friends with anyone growing beans in their plot.

I checked my email, checked my phone. Nothing. No one has said to me in passing, “Did you get my beans?” It’s been three days!

Matt asked, “Are you sure you want to eat those?” Hell, yeah, I want to eat them. I shelled those suckers and filled three freezer bags full. We’ll have beans for a month. But in the back of my mind, I wonder, did they mean to put them on another neighbor’s car? Do I have a car that looks like someone else’s?

2nd batch, there were three total!

Impossible. Someone knows my car and knows I like to garden.

Welcome to the south where neighbors are friendly and hospitality is amazingly generous. Eventually, I’ll figure out who shared their harvest with me, and return the favor when we harvest. Maybe I’ll put it on the roof of their car and let them have their own mystery to solve! Yeah, that’d be a hoot, now wouldn’t it?

A HUGE thank you, whoever you are! (Wow, I feel like I’m writing to Batman or Spider Man.)

It's what's for dinner.

P.S. We HAVE NOT forgotten about the contest drawing. We got so sidetracked with editing and discussing the Norfolk Writer’s Conference Michelle just attended, we completely forgot during our Skype session. We will accomplish it next week. It’s number one on our list of things to discuss and do! Don’t forget to let us know if you’re following us on Twitter or on any of our other blogs! That’s the rule to get in the drawing. You have to tell us!!

Jennifer.

We sat together for most of the weekend, chatting during the breaks. It was good to see her, even though she kept telling me about the bedbug outbreak. I scratched phantom bedbug bites for a week after that conference!

I learned so much that weekend about writing, publishing and agents I thought my head might explode by the end of it.

Michael Palmer speaking about adding tension to a story

This year was no different, with guest author Michael Palmer – who is a lot funnier than you would think, and a wealth of information – and Chuck Sambuchino. Chuck was also funny, and intensely focused. Agent Marisa Corvisiero was also hilarious, and interesting, not to mention charming and intelligent. All three were very easy to listen to, and my worst moments of the conference happened when two of the three were presenting in opposite rooms at the same time. Arg, I hate having to choose!

Still, all told it was an amazing experience. I met some new writers and reconnected with some old ones. Kudos to the Hampton Roads Writersfor all their hard work organizing the event, and pulling it off smoothly.

Chuck Sambuchino, Marisa Corvisiero, Judi McCoy and Michael Palmer

This year’s conference was just as full of gems as last year – but there was one thing missing.

Jennifer.

Maybe next year, hey Jenn?

Oh yes! Don’t forget to sign up to follow our blogs and our twitter to get a chance to win a copy of America’s Got Stories, Vol. I.

The rules of the show:

• If you subscribe to our blog, “Cook Me a Story” you get one entry.
• If you follow either of us on twitter, you get another entry. (That’s one entry for following @MJsRetweet, and one for following @JennMWP)
• An entry for each of our other blogs that you follow (Hint: these blogs are listed on the right hand side of this page.)

Leave a comment here, stating which of the above you have done. (If you don’t tell us, we may not catch that you’re following!). We will have the drawing on the 28th of September during our weekly webcam meeting.

Good luck!

So exciting to hold your book for the first time!

Coffee-guzzling Michelle via Skype.

I have two gardens this fall; one at the community garden and one here in the backyard. The one in the backyard I started from seed, and if you’ve ever grown anything from seed, you know how attached you can get to your babies!

My plants are still in the tender seedling stages, and almost strong enough to place in the ground. When they only have a few leaves though, the birds seem to LOVE them. They snip off the top of the plant and fly away. Talk about frustrating! That was my baby!

Michelle and I were on-line for hours last Thursday. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t want to leave my seedlings for a minute. A minute is all it takes in the beak of a bird.

SO…..I asked, ”Will you watch them for me?”

“Sure, I’ll just yell out if I see one. (We met up on my back porch and her living room.) Before I even got to the door, I heard, “Bird! Bird!”

I turned around in fear. That Michelle! She’s such a joker!

Michelle doesn’t want her picture taken. She’s overworked. She’s done a brilliant job of balancing all her tasks for the week and has given 100% to everything.  She’s swigging down coffee, yet appears tired. But no matter what, she’s light-spirited and makes me laugh. I’m still camera happy and straying off subject from edits to everyday life.

This week, after attending a military ceremony, I rushed home to get online. Michelle, wiped out from her overworked schedule, claimed she’d just rolled out of bed in time to do my edits before we “skyped in.” She caught a glimpse of Matthew in his uniform whites and listened to me whine about wearing heels during our “writing meet-up” on my back porch.

I like the Skype meet-ups. I feel like I’m right back in Norfolk on Michelle’s couch! We still laugh a lot, and go over every single edit, questioning and commenting about why we said something and what we were trying to portray.

Just think, if we lived back in the 1800′s, when I said good-bye to Michelle, it probably would have been forever. Now with Skype, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter, we’ll be linked FOREVER. (To be said in a Darth Vader voice, of course.)

Just joking Michelle. Quit freaking out. (Smiley face.)
Ohhhh….what are we missing? Did anyone catch it?

So exciting to hold your book for the first time!

Oh what a feeling! I talked to Jennifer for our meeting that week and tried to show her on the webcam. Our names are side by side in the Table of Contents. How cool is that? We really couldn’t have planned it any better.

Now. You know me and the whole contest addiction thing. I think we need to have a contest. What do you think?

How about this: We’ll do a draw.

• If you subscribe to our blog, “Cook Me a Story” you get one entry.
• If you follow either of us on twitter, you get another entry. (That’s one entry for following @MJsRetweet, and one for following @JennMWP)
• An entry for each of our other blogs that you follow (Hint: these blogs are listed on the right hand side of this page.)

Leave a comment here, stating which of the above you have done, and we will have the drawing on the 28th of September during our weekly webcam meeting.

Good Luck!Click to view slideshow.

Michelle received hers first. She was so excited, she glowed! I tried to take pictures using Skype but they weren’t very clear. Besides, it’s difficult to catch a glow with a camera.

When Michelle received her books. (image via Skype)

Two days later, the mailman knocked on my door, handing me a fat, brown box. I smiled at him.

“I just got published.”
“Well, good for you!” he said.
“These are my books!”
“Congratulations. I don’t hear that every day.”

For writers just stepping into the publishing world, we don’t either. It is a big deal each time you get published. Michelle and I have both been published online before– my sexual tourism research article and an excerpt from Michelle’s memoir. For some reason, a book feels different. (Maybe because you can actually hold it in your hand? I don’t know.) You want everyone to know about it and everyone to read it. It all seems very self-involved, doesn’t it? But I feel it’s really the opposite. You’ve created something on paper and you want to share those ideas. It’s really no different from a 4-year-old who paints a picture at school and wants it on the refrigerator for everyone to see.

I waited until my husband arrived home so we could open them together. I opened the box slowly, taking the stuffed paper from the top and peering inside. The publisher had typed up a note, one of the first lines reading, “You are now a published author!”

I looked at the shiny book and thought, ‘I’m in that.’ I still feel a little numb about it all–like it isn’t real. Maybe because it was a contest and it happened so fast. Maybe because what I chose to write about was one of my most humiliating moments in life. The contest taught me to take a chance and made it much easier to continue writing the memoir.

I am pleasantly surprised at how professional they look, and the fact the publisher took the time to bookmark each book exactly where my article started. He did that for each one of us published in the book.

I have no idea what to do with them. He told us to sell them, give them away or keep them all if we wanted. Michelle said we should do a give-away contest with some of them. That sounded like fun! For now, they sit on the bottom row of my bookshelf until I figure it out. No one even knows I won the contest but the readers of this blog, and my mother.

When I pass the shelf, I steal a glance.
One day, I’m going to have my very own book. But for now, this will do just fine.

P.S. Michelle has been MIA for a while as she’s taken an editing gig and is presently being evacuated for Hurricane Irene, but she’ll return soon.

I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. I have so much to do, so many things to go through, find a place for, get rid of, unpack, write, get back in touch with, respond to, make phone calls about. My hair’s still falling out. I just want to sleep……and eat chocolate.

Writing usually gives me a break from unpacking or the unpacking gives me a break from writing. Not so this time. I’m finding I’m dreading chapters more and more, procrastinating, putting it off. Michelle says I’ve been writing the easy and fun chapters, which is a little bit like hiding. Now it’s time to work. That’s why I started in the middle of the story instead of the beginning. Now I’m coming to the end of the story and have no choice but to go back and write the beginning. Ugh. Double ugh.

But that’s what a memoir is, right? It’s not fiction. It’s not always a fun story you get to make up as you go along, letting your favorite characters win the lottery and killing off the ones you don’t like. Writing the real life story isn’t like that. Often times the ones who get killed off shouldn’t have and no one you’ve ever heard of wins the lottery.

I’m still sticking to 2 chapters a week. It’s a deadline and a goal all in one that seems to be working. I’ll push through.

And I’m down from knocking out a room to knocking out a box. One box at a time. “It isn’t a marathon,” Michelle said to me yesterday. “What’s the hurry? Just do one box at a time.”

Sometimes, she’s so smart I think she should run for President.

(I made low-fat, whole-wheat blueberry muffins while I was waiting for Michelle to get on-line. I took the recipe off SparkRecipes submitted by NotMyOwn. As usual, I tweaked it a little. I used the full cup of whole wheat, but only 1/2 cup of wheat germ and added 1/2 cup of bran, only 1/2 the sugar the recipe called for and doubled the blueberries. They were moist and delicious.)

Blueberries. You can never really have too many...

Today I’m making a spinach, crab lasagna with white sauce for a future post on my G.I. crock pot blog. Yeah, I guess I am doing something productive, huh?
At least we found the spoons and we aren’t eating pizza–again. And I’m on my last chapter (of the second part of the book).
Life’s looking up. (Thanks for the positive boost Miss Michelle. I needed that.)

Keeping me "up".

And we did wear our hats this Skype session! We didn’t forget!

Last meeting at Ammos

Remember the day Jennifer and I went down to the boardwalk and stopped at the cute little Greek restaurant called Ammos? We read the future in Jennifer’s coffee grounds and saw a man falling on rocks. Here’s the post.

What we didn’t tell you (largely because it was very sad) was that shortly after we went there, two people fell from their balconies in that very building. One fell through the awning and landed inches away from where Jennifer and I sat. The other landed on the patio stones. Neither survived.

We decided on our last meeting in Virginia Beach, to revisit Ammos. This time we would both order Greek coffee, and this time we would both read our fortunes. We hoped for some better news.

Michelle's giant salad

I ordered the Greek salad – one of my favorites. Jenn ordered a sampler.

Jennifer's giant sampler platter

We both thought we ordered small meals.

The waitress didn’t know how to make the Greek coffee, so she had the cook do it for her. Jennifer loved hers.

Jennifer loves Greek coffee.

Me… well, I really enjoy the coffee I make at home. I sprinkle cinnamon on top of the grounds, and it is delicious. I might have liked the Greek coffee more if it had cinnamon in it. I didn’t mind it, but probably won’t order it again.

Cinnamon in the grounds. The only way to brew.

Once the coffees were gone, we turned over the cups on the saucers, spun them three times (clockwise) and righted them. And then we read…

In her cup, Jennifer saw the Eiffel Tower. And the Abominable Snowman, (or Jabba the Hut – depending on the angle.) Also a sailboat and a volcano. We decided to translate that to a cruise to Hawaii.

I saw a Native American Tribal Chief in his traditional headdress, carrying a staff and striking it against a rock. Also,  I saw a large fish, eating a smaller fish.

Oh yes… there was one more thing.

Here are a few more photos of our last face to face:Click to view slideshow.