On Saturday my daughter Hayley saw the Alice in Wonderland movie. On Sunday, she and her best friend Heather began filming, and then she spent the rest of the day editing. This is the result – enjoy!

For the first time in a long while, this past weekend I found myself without a deadline to complete for Monday; I also wasn’t fresh from a deadline completed on the previous Friday (an event which usually requires a day of do-nothing downtime).

Which is why this past weekend turned into a weekend of reading for me. I had a glorious time!

The Warrior Heir, by Cinda Williams Chima

I started with The Warrior Heir, by Cinda Williams Chima. I would love to give credit to the blogger who originally added this book to my TBR list, but unfortunately I must have stumbled on this book before I started using Diigo to bookmark TBRs.

I know that I discovered this title as a result of another blog, because when I picked it up from the library (I had put in a request for it) I didn’t even recognize the title! It wasn’t until I read the jacket copy that I vaguely remembered reading something about it online.

So, whoever you are – thank you very much! I started my reading spree this weekend with The Warrior Heir, and I enjoyed the book immensely. I ended up putting in requests at the library for the two sequels (both of which were checked out) and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will come in (1) in the proper order for reading and (2) during a period where I am not flooded with deadlines.

Set initially in the small town of Trinity, Ohio, the novel tells the story of Jack, a bright high school kid who one day forgets to take the medicine he’s taken every day of his life, and discovers he’s not who he’s always thought himself to be. Soon he’s immersed in an astonishing world of magical beings, with a tie-in to the War of the Roses.

I really enjoyed the world-building in The Warrior Heir; urban fantasy remains a favorite of mine, but I’ve read enough in the genre to know that building a realistic world that fits snugly within our own modern world can be challenging. Chima pulls it off with aplomb, and offers up a great cast of characters and a gripping storyline as well.

Devil’s Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda

Fresh from finishing The Warrior Heir, I plunged into Devil’s Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda.  In this darker novel, the order of the Knights Templar still exists, headquartered in Middle Temple in contemporary London, and its latest member is 16-year-old Billi SanGreal, the only female in the order – and Billi’s not at all certain she wants to live the harsh, violent life of a Templar.

This was another exciting read, although I did enjoy The Warrior Heir more. At times I found Billi to be just a little too full of angst for my taste – her desire for a normal teenage life is certainly understandable but she sometimes got too whiny and obstinate about it. After all, a small dose of angst goes a long way when there are terrible creatures to be fought and you and your fellow Knights are the only thing standing between humanity and the evil that seeks to plague them.  For the most part, though, I enjoyed her character, the storyline and the alternate world of the Knights Templar, filled as it is with mysticism, conflict and evil creatures.

Not to mention, Devil’s Kiss has one of the most compelling first lines I’ve read in a while:

Killing him should be easy; he’s only six.

What an irresistible opening line!

The Forever King, by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy

After finishing Devil’s Kiss, I found myself still hungry for urban fantasy, so I decided to go for a reread next.

The Forever King, by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy is an old favorite of mine. The book begins in New York City, where we meet Hal Woczniak, an alcoholic ex-FBI agent, Arthur Blessing, a ten-year-old orphan who lives with his Aunt Emily and a mysterious older gentleman by the name of Mr. Taliesin. Meanwhile, in a psychiatric hospital in England, a serial killer with no name who had entombed his victims in sculptures puts into motion a plan of escape.

The action moves quickly from the very start, and the storyline goes back and forth from contemporary to historical times. It is, as the title implies, a retelling of the Arthurian legend, with both a historical and a contemporary twist. At its core is the age-old fight for the Grail, a cup made of an unknown substance with miraculous healing powers.

Unfortunately, the book is no longer in print, but if you enjoy novels that involve Arthurian legend and a contemporary setting, this is a book to grab if you ever see a used copy floating around.

Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

And finally, at long last, I started Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. This book has been in my TBR pile for a long time now, and it seemed like a natural book to reach for this weekend, since I was immersing myself in urban fantasy.

I’m in the middle of the book right now; it’s a good read, although I do find my interest flagging a little. I suspect, though, that things are just about to get exciting again, as Mo, Meggie’s father, has a certain plan up his sleeve and while I do have a good inkling what it involves, it will be interesting to see how it all works out.

This weekend of reading has also proved to be very educational too in terms of my writing – but I’ll save those thoughts for another post!

I’m feeling rather random-ly today, so of course, it means another post of random stuff! Here are the random things that have been delighting me:

Dream analysis. My older son has been getting university acceptances and a few scholarship offers, as well as several phone calls from the universities he’s applied to, so we’ve had lots of celebratory-feeling days around here.

Last night, I dreamed he cooked up a whole batch of bacon – it was crisp and perfectly done. I’ve never really been big on dream analysis, but this one just jumps out at me. Yes! He is going to be successful, bringing home the bacon!

A Clean Desk. I did it. I finally got around to cleaning up my desk. I took a picture, since it’s a rare event and I like to record things like this for future reference (and to remind a certain husband that I can occasionally be tidy).

And this should give you an idea how I did it – I call it the “everything-in-the-box” method (note: patent pending).

Writing. I started my first readthrough of my WIP, NANTUCKET, last night and I’m very happy to say that this readthrough is going so much better than the readthrough I did of my NaNoWriMo novel last month. No, it’s not perfect, but there’s stuff I can work on, and the story (so far) is shaping up quite well. (Please feel free to cheer …)

Reading. I finished The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern and have one burning question (don’t worry, not a spoiler):

Did Rosaleen know about the book, or not? If you’ve read the book and have more of a clue about this than I do, please let me know!

Lust Speaking of Husbands. As most of you know, my husband is a martial arts teacher. Now that we have a little dojo in our home, he holds the occasional private class here.

What this means is that I’m now getting to see him in his black belt uniform again (I hadn’t seen him in his dogi for quite a while, because I rarely make it out to dojo functions these days).

I’d forgotten I have a tendency to swoon when I see him in his karate dogi. Oddly enough, it’s not the same for me when he’s wearing his aikido uniform or his jodo uniform.

I guess it’s a good thing to be swooning over one’s own husband.

Blog Stuff. I’m hoping to be able to start working on a new look for Ms. Bookish next week, so if you see funny things happening around here, you’ll know why. The dilemma right now is picking a new template. There are just so many – it’s tough to choose just one. I guess it would be too confusing to use several at once!

Exercise. I’ve decided exercise is no longer going to be a dreaded word for me. It helps that I found a picture of me taken not so long ago where I looked decidedly more svelte than I do now. The reminder that it wasn’t that long ago was a good one.

So, treadmill, you and I are going to begin our love affair, starting today tomorrow Friday. I promise!

That’s my random stuff for today. Every now and then, I love a day of random. What random stuff have you been delighting in recently?

Haphazard?

“Dependent upon or characterized by mere chance.”

Well, what do you know? That’s a pretty accurate depiction of how I Twitter!

I never bother to “catch-up” on tweets I’ve missed. I mean, I’d be on Twitter 24/7 if I did that – especially since I pretty much have only one rule when it comes to Twitter. That rule is: follow interesting people. It’s a pretty good rule, if I do say so myself. But it means I end up following an awful lot of people. Because there are a lot of interesting people out there.

So Twitter is very much an of-the-moment thing for me. If the tweet is there when I check in, I get to see it. If not, well, I don’t angst about it, but I don’t see it either.

So this week’s links are all here by mere chance. Definitely haphazard.

Got to love it!

Writing, Reading & Creativity

• Is a writer’s success due to skill, or the idea? Natalie Whipple addresses this in Idea + Skill + Luck. (via @elizabethscraig)
• An interview with author Lisa See on creativity and passion in writing. I haven’t read See’s novels yet, but they are on my list. I really enjoyed this interview! (via @PenelopePrzekop)
• Do you write flash fiction? Writer’s Advice is holding its Fifth Annual Flash Prose Contest. (via Write for a Reader, @writereader)
• I discovered the very interesting Routines for Writers, tagline “helping writers write more”. This month is Author Crush Month and there are some fantastic interviews with writers like Lois Lowry and Julie Garwood. (via @inkyelbows)
• How do you write about a real location if you haven’t been there? The Creative Penn has a bunch of great tips – and I discovered Google Street View (when you zoom in to street level, drag the little person icon to the street you want to see)! (via @Kristen_Howe)
• Check out these plotting boards! You all know I’m a pantser (ie, I write by the seat of my pants, with nary a clue as to where I’m headed but trusting that I’ll get there), but there’s always a part of me that wants to be organized. I dream about stuff like this (not that I could ever implement it, but I like to dream). (via  @RachelleGardner)
• According to Common Sense Media, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret is NOT okay for tweens. Meg Cabot weighs in with her thoughts on this. (via @kristin_walker)
• This is a beautiful piece on the indie bookstore Politics and Prose, written by author Susan Jane Gilman. (via @BethFishReads)
• These journaling tips have prompted me to dig out one of my lovely Moleskine notebooks and give journaling another try: How To Increase Your Happiness with Journal Writing. (via @journalwriter7)
• David Parker’s amazing eulogy for his father, Robert B. Parker. Parker was one of my favorite writers, and this eulogy is just beautiful. (via @JoeFinder)

Other Interesting Stuff

• Model Coco Rocha speaks out about the ultra young and ultra thin trend in the modeling industry: “I’m a 21 year old model, 6 inches taller and 10 sizes smaller than the average American woman. Yet in another parallel universe I’m considered “fat”…” (via @ETCanada)
• Daily Routines: How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days is such an interesting site! The site is currently not posting any updates (they have a book coming out in 2011) but the archives are filled with some great stuff. (via @anndouglas)
• Tips to improve your memory! I just knew Soduko would come in handy – and now I have a reason to splurge on blueberries, too. (via @BigBookofYou)

Learning Links and Games

• Interested in archeology? Archaeology Daily News is on Twitter: @ArchaeologyDN! (via @LoreleiKing, who is, by the way, the voice of Stephanie Plum, and Lulu, and Grandma Mazur in the audio version of Janet Evanovitch’s novels)
• We’re homeschooling our youngest, and these free earth science worksheets and printables look just amazing! (via @education_com)
• Here’s a fun logic game for kids: Chocolate Fix. While you can purchase the physical game, Thinkfun also offers an online version you can play for free here. And Everything Mom has a giveaway for the game (ends March 5, US and Canada). (via @cbadov)

Just Plain Fun

• I’d been hearing a lot about “Norwegian curling pants” but hadn’t actually seen what everyone was talking about. And then I read Dress Like An Olympian: Norwegian Curling Pants And Other Distractions and I finally got it …  (and if you want a pair for yourself, there’s a link in the article to a store that actually sells them – let me know if you do, okay?) (via @alicepope)
• A Twitter-inspired sitcom? I’m kidding, right? No, apparently not. William Shatner will be in a pilot that’s based on the Twitter account @shitmydadsays. (via @CanadaCool)

I love to write, but I’ve never been good at keeping a journal.

On the other hand, I’ve had some success with what I call “specialty” journals.

For example, I kept a gratitude journal the year after my divorce (and it was very, very helpful).

I’ve also worked on a few art journals, and one year I kept a “mandala journal” which resulted in a wonderful little book filled with gel pen mandalas that I still like to look over every now and then. I found the time I spent creating these little mandalas each day to be incredibly meditative.

Some of my favorite mandalas from that little book:

I’ve had my greatest success, journaling-wise, with “Morning Pages”, from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I did them for about eight years, and toward the end, they, like the mandalas, had become quite a meditative tool. I still have several notebooks crammed on my shelves, even though I occasionally pull a few out to shred them (the whole idea of Morning Pages is that you NEVER reread them, so I’ve had no problems disposing of them).

But I’ve never been able to keep a regular “daily” journal consistently, something that I could pick up and read over older entries, see what I was up to on a certain day in a certain year.

A while back, I wrote about how I was inspired to give journaling a try. In fact, I titled that post much the same as this one!

I never did do anything about my inspiration last time around, though. Those beautiful Moleskine notebooks arrived but I never did anything with them.

Recently, though, I’ve come across a few articles online that have made me think about how wonderful it would be to keep a journal. And during our decluttering these past few weeks, I also decided to pull out the book Creative Journal Writing, by Stephanie Dowrick, from my TBR pile.

Those Moleskine notebooks from last year are still blank, and now I’ve decided I’d like to start using them.

And it occurred to me that maybe the problem I have with journaling is that I am just too eclectic – it’s hard for me to consistently write the same kind of thing every day.

So what if I let myself write whatever I wanted to every day? (Ahem. Much like I’ve been doing here, and thank you all for continuing to read, by the way.)

I’ve been thinking that I could write in it:

• gratitude lists
• story ideas
• conversation snippets overheard or dreamed up
• my dreams
• quotes from things I’m reading or see online
• any of those one-line thoughts that come to me in droves every day

Or anything else that might occur to me. Maybe sometimes I’d even write about what I did that day.

And some days, I might whip out my gel pens and draw something, create a mandala or maybe do a ZenTangle.

I’ve been thinking that this just might work. I might work in my journal consistently if I let the content be as varied as whatever might appeal to me that day.

Do you journal? If you do, do you have any tips for me? And if you don’t, do you ever think about keeping a journal?

Photo credit

If you’ve been following along here at Ms. Bookish the past month or so, you know that we’ve been spending a lot of time decluttering. Not that we’ve been all that successful, because while our downstairs is beautiful and serene and almost clutter-free, all we really did is shove everything into boxes and move it all upstairs.

Into our bedroom, no less.

But there were some things that got moved into the office. All of my to-be-read piles, for example.

And all my magazines. All of them.

Believe me, even I was astounded at how many unread magazines I’ve accumulated over the years:

These are the two stacks that are resting, temporarily I hope, in front of one of my two TBR bookshelves (yes, I also discovered I needed TWO bookcases just for my TBRs).

Here’s my dilemma:

I just can’t bring myself to toss any of these magazines into the recycling bin until I’ve flipped through them.

I always think of magazines as potentially hiding that golden nugget of information, something that makes you go, “ahhh, that made my day” or “wow, I didn’t know that!” or “omg, my life is now changed”.

It can take me hours to get through a magazine. I like to read all the articles, look at all the sources, let myself absorb all the beautiful photography.

In these piles I have fashion magazines, travel magazines, science magazines, art magazines, writing magazines, home decor magazines – no cooking magazines, though, because my husband takes command of these the moment they appear in our mailbox.

Luckily, he doesn’t have the same problem with magazines as I do. He reads every single one of his cooking magazines from cover to cover within days of getting them in the mail. And usually I end up eating something tasty that greatly resembles the cover dish sometime later that same week.

For me, you see, a magazine holds out the promise of a few enjoyable hours lounging in my reading chair, tea or coffee by my side. Lots of sunlight. Soft music playing in the background.

It’s just that I don’t feel like reading a magazine as often as I find myself entranced by the idea of reading a magazine, if you know what I mean.

Do you have the same problem with magazines? Or are you really good with them, never bringing them into your life at all? Or somewhere in between these two extremes?

I always have four to five books “on the go” at any given moment, some of which I admit I don’t actually finish.

But I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish The Book of Tomorrow, by Cecelia Ahern (the author of P.S. I Love You). I found the beginning slow to start, with a lot of telling rather than showing, but I’m now in the middle of the novel and Ahern has me all caught up in the world of her narrator, Tamara Goodwin.

The Book of Tomorrow has an unusual twist to it, involving as it does a magical book. A truly magical book, a book of tomorrow. And there’s a good dollop of mystery, too. Not a mystery in the sense of a crime, but a mystery nevertheless.

Tamara Goodwin has always got everything she’s ever wanted. Born into a family of wealth, she grew up in a mansion with its own private beach, a wardrobe full of designer clothes, a large four poster bed complete with a luxurious bathroom en-suite. She’s always lived in the here and now, never giving a second thought to tomorrow.

But then suddenly her dad is gone and life for Tamara and her mother changes forever. Left with a mountain of debt, they have no choice but to sell everything they own and move to the country to live with Tamara’s Uncle and Aunt. Nestled next to Kilsaney Castle, their gatehouse is a world away from Tamara’s childhood. With her mother shut away with grief, and her aunt busy tending to her, Tamara is lonely and bored and longs to return to Dublin.

When a travelling library passes through Kilsaney Demesne, Tamara is intrigued. She needs a distraction. Her eyes rest on a mysterious large leather bound tome locked with a gold clasp and padlock. With some help, Tamara finally manages to open the book. What she discovers within the pages takes her breath away and shakes her world to its core.

So yes, I’m definitely enjoying The Book of Tomorrow.

And welcome, too, to a “new feature” at Ms. Bookish: In The Middle Of …!

Home Dojo/Meditation Room

With all the room flipping we’ve been doing, I’ve been thinking about how rooms have their own individual “feel” to them.

Has this ever happened to you? You walk into a gorgeously decorated room, something beautiful enough to grace the covers of a home decorating magazine – and standing there, surrounded by all that beauty, you feel cold, empty. Something’s missing.

Or maybe you’ve walked into a small, untidy room that most certainly wouldn’t be found in a home decor magazine (unless it’s the “before” picture), and immediately you were grabbed by a sense of coziness or a feeling that warms your heart.

It’s a feeling you can’t explain, but it’s one you undeniably experience.

For example, I’ve always felt a sense of peace in the rooms that hold my favorite reading spots. Even though they are a far cry, physically, from an actual library, I get the same feeling sitting in these rooms as I do at my local library.

Recently I’ve had quite a few people talk to me about one thing they’ve always loved about my husband’s dojo (martial arts training room). They walk in, and they’re embraced by a sense of serenity and calm.

So I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes a room feel a certain way. This feeling of serenity and calm isn’t something every dojo has. One of my husband’s friends, a blackbelt who has studied his art for many years, told me that of all the dojos he’s visited, our dojo is the only one that’s felt this way to him.

And if it’s not the elements that rooms have in common – the furniture, the floor coverings, the wall coverings, the windows – then what is it? I mean, all dojos have more or less the same trappings, but they don’t all offer this sense of serenity and calm.

I have a theory about this.

In his classes, my husband doesn’t teach just the physical aspects of the martial arts. For him, the martial arts is all about working with energy, and this is something that forms a core part of his teaching.

I think this is what has always transformed the places where he’s taught into oases of serenity. People often think of the martial arts as being about fighting, but there’s more to it than that and it is this “more” that has always captured my husband’s interest.

So I have no doubts that people will continue to feel the same way about the dojo at its new locations.

And since one of the new dojo locations is at our home, in our new dojo/meditation room, I’m very excited by this. Because now my home will also be a place of serenity and calm!

Do you have rooms in your house that reflect a certain type of energy? Rooms where you feel particularly peaceful and calm?

We are extremely pleased with our recent round of room flipping: we’ve created a beautiful dining room from wasted space!

I wish I’d thought to take pictures of the “before”. This truly was a “nothing” space (it’s the space at the bottom of the stairs, right outside the kitchen), and so we weren’t particularly inclined to take pictures of it.

But I did scrounge up this picture from the tapas party we held in December. You can’t see all of the space, but that’s what we had at the bottom of the stairs up until a very short while ago (and yes, the woman in the dress looking the other way is me!):

And this is what this space looks like now (please excuse the set of coasters on the table):

And from another angle (that’s my husband’s cookbook collection, by the way). The honey brown door leads into the furnace room.

As we’re coming down the stairs (that picture’s now up on the wall):

And because I just couldn’t resist one last picture:

The really nice thing is that we didn’t have to buy anything – we already had all the right things tucked away in other rooms of the house!

It’s always so nice when something turns out exactly the way I imagined it would. I think the transformation of this space took my husband by surprise, though – in a way, he was kind of humoring me, moving things as I dictated. He wasn’t at all certain it would work, but I just knew it would.

And the results are exactly as I pictured in my mind!

Welcome to my not-so-regular feature, From the Haphazard Twitter Files of Ms. Bookish (and yes, the title is a tribute to a one of my favorite books, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg).

I recently discovered that the Tweetdeck iPhone app now lets me email tweets to myself without leaving the app – a real time-saver, and ever since I started using it, I’ve accumulated a lot of great links – kind of a method of bookmarking when I’m not on my computer, plus great for writing up this feature (so it might be a more regular one from now on!).

Because, as it turns out, my favorite time for going on Twitter is in the morning, when I’m relaxing with a cup of coffee and not quite ready to get up and start doing things.

I don’t know about you, but I find such great links through Twitter – things that I might never have caught sight of otherwise. I know some people think Twitter is all about tweeting personal, irrelevant stuff (“Just had a bowl of soup for lunch. Yum.”) but it’s not just about personal updates (although yes, I do enjoy a smattering of those, too – it humanizes the whole experience for me). It’s such a great place to find interesting links (of course, much depends on the people you’re following – but on the positive side, you’re fully in charge of that!).

Bookish Links

• Author Kate Scowen is looking for teens to interview for her upcoming book for and about teenagers. (Via @AnnickPress)
• This contest makes you work for it, and I’m not sure of the end date, but you can win these gorgeous Art + Design titles. (Via @ChronicleBooks)
• Watching the English, by Kate Fox and Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, by Jean-Benoit Nadeau: two books I added to my wish list as a result of a Twitter conversation with Jackie of Farm Lane Books.
• Here’s something fun for younger kids – answer the question “can you think of an animal that would enjoy a story, and why might reading to them be difficult?” and be entered for a chance to win a signed, original sketch by illustrator Andrea Wayne von Königslöw. (Via @AnnickPress)

Writing Links

• Darcy Pattison’s tips on plot, plot layers and subplots. And the tips are helpful even if you write by the seat of your pants like I do! (Via @inkyelbows)
• I discovered the Procrastinating Writers blog and Twitter account via @WriteSuccess. Procrastinating Writers offers up some good posts on how to get your butt in the seat of that chair (which is really my one and only problem when it comes to writing) – for example, this post lead me to Nancy Rawlinson’s post about using start-up lists as a tool to get you started writing.
• Free novel-planning and novel-writing worksheets: Book in a Month worksheets! *Note: PDF file (Via ProcrastWriter)
• YALitChat Ning group – I’ve signed up but haven’t had a chance yet to browse through the site. At first glance, though, it looks like a great resource! (Via @galleysmith)

Other Fun and Interesting Stuff

• Seth Godin and Steven Pressfield on what’s really holding you back. (Via @MaureenCole)
• For iPhone lovers, here are the winners of the 2009 Best App Ever awards – find the “best” app in 56 categories. (Via @iPhoneLife)
• In case you’re hungry, this recipe for Parmesan-Herb popovers looks delicious. I’ve emailed this one to my husband and hope to be tasting this soon! (Via @AndrewsMcMeel)
• For those of you with kids learning about biology (or if you love biology yourself), you can download Immune Attack, an educational video game that introduces basic concepts of molecular and cellular biology to middle school, high school and entry-level college students, created by the Federation of American Scientists. Mashable writes about this game and Second Life in How Social Gaming is Improving Education. (Via @mashable)

Are you on Twitter? What do you like best about it? And here’s the link to my Twitter page!