Blogging from a Kindle!

Had to test out the abilities of my latest toy-I mean reading method. Finally got the WiFi to work and now I can read blogs more easily. Totally stunned by how good this e-reader is designed. Excellent jod Amazon!

 

Cold Enough

This was a cold, cold morning here.  To prove it I had to take a picture. 1.4C is cold enough for me!

 

 

Coffee, Yes Coffee

Today my wife and I went to Caravan Serai Coffee shop not far from our home. I ordered an espresso lungo and my wife had a cream puff. It was as cold day and there are few things better than conversation and coffee to keep one warm. Caravan Serai roasts their coffee blends here in Kanazawa city. I’ve even bought this coffee for my father as a gift. Coffee from Japan? Why yes, in fact I hardly drank coffee until I came to Japan!

 

Snow Comes to Ishikawa

The Front of My House and School

 

Finally, and without much fan-fair, snow has come to my town. The mountains had been getting plenty of snow to keep the ski resorts busy and my friend Jon busy shoveling snow at his house. It’s light and fluffy snow, a nice change from the usual heavy wet stuff we usually get here. It’s a winter wonder land!

The Garden

 

Signing up to Facebook and Twitter

My friend commented when I signed up to Facebook the other day-

“Welcome to 2006.”

He might be right, I was way behind on the whole social network thing. Why? Partly out of time and partly out of being connected here in Japan to what I enjoy doing-namely teaching English. As I published my two books, The Intelligent Octopus and The Cards, I found a lot of sights that recommended an author should be connected to as many people as possible.

I’m not out there to sell books really. I am out there because I started getting curious and felt it was time to hit the road towards connectivity. What I didn’t expect was just how many people I would actually know. Some of whom I haven’t seen or heard from in over a decade.

Japanese people amaze me in their personal connectiveness. They meet their High school, Jr. High, and even Elementary school classmates much more often than Americans do. This is partly because of the way Japanese people tend to go home to visit family all at the same time so reconnection is much easier. Americans move, and when you move it usually means you disconnect with those whom you knew, for better or worse.

Then the internet has come along and started to bridge that gap. Family, friends, co-workers of the past, classmates, almost everyone is out there and able to converse. This is important too, as many Baby boomers become grandparents.

I am happy to now become more connected. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up meeting many future friends this way?

 

Apple Turnover Murder: A Review Without Recipes

Joanne Fluke creates a charming world in Lake Eden. A world where her main character bakes, love is in the air, and murder sneaks up in the wings. After reading a similarly charming world constructed by Lillian Jackson-Braun I was much more satisfied with Mrs. Fluke’s portrayal of a small college town and its much more realistic personalities. Her style can be described as charming in her characters and places, but practical in her plots. She was ingenious to have recipes sprinkled through out her books. By inserting these foods into the story line themselves she gets to describe their tastes and other:s reactions to them before she gives the reader their own chance to bake up something delicious. It might be a gimmick, but it’s a really good and original gimmick! I was also impressed with her main character:s struggle in choosing which man she loved more. Was it the consistent and gentle Dentist Norman or the hard thinking, practical tough police officer Mike? Then there are other characters like her mother Delores, her sisters Michelle and Andrea, her partner at the Cookie Jar Lisa and her police officer husband Herb, even the evil ladies man Bradford Ramsey all who build the story into something the reader wants to care about and be involved in. Looking at the list of other books she has written in this series I see this book is #13, so she has had some times to develop them all. Yet the book stands very much alone without need for reading any other to get the idea of what kind of people you’re dealing with from the start. I enjoyed Apple Turnover Murder and recommend it if you’re looking for a new murder mystery to read. I give it an EXCELLENT rating.

 

Wishing Everyone a Happy New Year!

My garden in the snow.

WordPress.com had 21,553 posts wishing their friends a Happy New Year. I went out and found 60 blogs I had never read before-and I even subscribed to one(!), and wished all of you a Happy New Year in 2011! I meant it, I really did! Best Wishes!

 

New Year at a Temple in Japan

Nata-Dera is a temple nestled around a rock outcrop in the foot hills before Mt. Hakusan here in Ishikawa Prefecture Japan. It was free to enter today so the place was packed with people visiting the temple to wish in the New Year by seeking some good fortune. My in-laws took my wife and I there and the view was nice, if cold. It was raining and slushy, but interesting to see with all the people walking around and the snow on the oddly shaped rocks. The caves eroded in the rock face now hold Buddhist statues of different figures, many with aprons to ward off the cold. I don’t think any purification was necessary at the temple, I had just come from church where we had communion!

View from the upper deck of the observation deck.

Main statue in Nata-Dera Temple, Komatsu Japan

 

The Baked Potato Generation?

So I had a thought sneak up and hit me over the head while I was taking a bath. You know how when you bake a potato, much like I was baking in the hot water in my Japanese bath, and it remains hot long after it was cooked? Follow me a little further with this one…..

The baby boom generation seems to be in a funk. This is according to CNN, who is full of baby boomers and who, by Bill O’Reilly’s comments, should have every reason to be in a funk. (“He wishes he had my ratings!”)

Well my generation, what is it? I am in my mid-thirties now, as of a few days ago I turned 35. This has less to do with bath water and more to do with comparisons that I am getting to. Well the baby boomers are like the Chilly Pepper Generation to me. They lived it up, eating as much spice as was thrown their way and suffered a lot of the consequences.

So I think my generation is the more like the Baked Potato Generation. We are cool to the touch, seemingly dumb-ed down by a flood of technology, images, games, educations, ideas, advancements, fall backs and yes religious intentions. So we might seem dull or reserved in some ways when the Chilly Peppers are trying to figure out who we are. Potatoes are not spicy, but we are hiding something. You know when that potato feels cool to the touch? But if you break it open or bite into it with haste you end up getting burned by what remains hot inside? That’s my generation. We are raging hot inside ourselves and not exactly with anger. It’s a sort of core energy that we all have, but seldom have opportunity to let show. So be patient with us baby boomers, and while you’re at it why don’t you tell us what you’ve learned. I say this because potatoes are good, but they need salt and pepper and other toppings to help us gain flavor. So help us there, but watch out, you might get burned.

 

Choices: Making the best of your time while choosing your next writing project

 

I Recently finished getting two novels to market, both taught me a lot about writing, voice and editing. It was a joy to work out my writing muscles and though I don’t want to harp on it too long here I feel great about getting something finished. That said my mind turns to the future and asks the inevitable question-What’s next? Like many creative people I had a basket of ideas, some quite developed, others merely titles, in hand each asking to be developed and take flight as my next work of fiction. Two seemed the most tempting so I first sat down and thought about writing both in the coming year. Two projects gives you the ability to oscillate between projects and keep a fresh perspective on them by having different characters to work with and stories to chase after. Don’t think I was really going to finish both of these works simultaneously mind you. I expected one would come out ahead in the race for one reason or another and would be finished first. Even if I finish one that is one finished and I would be delighted. Here’s something I learned and will pass on to you all.

First-

Go to charactercreator.blogspot.com and copy and past the multitude of questions for developing a character into a document you can edit. Then take the main character(s) and answer as many of them as possible. Not getting enough of the questions answered? Try another idea/character and do the same thing. What I found was a story line I thought was my priority had a really strong character that stood out.

Second-

Make a very brief outline of your story, or stories. Do several and the one that is the quickest or most detailed is the one you should most likely work on. Stories that you imagined would be your quickest often end up having big plot holes, while other ones might be complete and entirely agreeable.

This is what happened to me. One of my two story ideas turned out to be speaking to me unannounced, and with a lot of vigor. So I will work that one out and put the other one aside. My subconscious will be working on that later for me and when it is ready, when the pieces are there to be put together then it will rush out and I will be happy it finally showed itself. There is nothing mystic about all this, just getting the ideas to work for you!

Keep Writing!