Where are the lazy days of summer?

Last night, as I walked through my own bedtime routine, I realized my house is trashed. I don't mean there were a few toys on the floor and some dishes in the sink. No. My counters are completely covered with dirty dishes to the extent that making coffee this morning was a task straight out of MacGyver. There are bags containing various sports equipment blocking the front door. And laundry, well, let's not go there.

What I planned to do this summer.

Suffice to say, we are a month into summer vacation...

Hold on, I'd like to backtrack a few decades. Do you remember when summer vacation meant just that, a vacation. It was a  break from school and all the running around A time when children laid around their house whining about being bored and parents planned trips places just to keep them entertained? It meant week long movie marathons and staying up late to eat ice cream and catch fire flies.

Are you deep into memory lane? Let me pull you back.

My summer reality

My life is crazier this month than it has ever been in the school year! Daily swim team practices, three day a week baseball practices/games, gymnastics, musical rehearsal, princess camp, home improvement projects... Yesterday alone, we had a five hour swim meet with the oldest and double header baseball games with the youngest. Dinner didn't happen until 9! You get the point?

Ok, so summer vacation is a third gone. I had planned to take this three months break from school (and work) to write a book. You know, that book people have been hounding me to work on. I think I have written maybe 3,000 words in the last month. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day!

It looks like about the middle of July sports will be over and things will begin to wind down. That means I will have approximately six weeks of lazy days. Granted, we have a family vacation scheduled in the middle of that and two kids planning long weekends in opposite directions. Maybe I will have to step back a few decades as well and start writing pen and paper style!

Have a happy summer and enjoy those rare moments!

Nine hours later: I'm not going to lie. I just took a two hour nap and I don't feel the list bit guilty about that! Now, to catch a few hidden minutes to work on a book.

A June Post!

So, I realized this morning that I haven't posted in a while - almost a month to be more precise- and I was just hoping you didn't miss me too much. Almost a month ago, my kids started their ridiculously long summer vacation and I've been trying to focus on them. Summer means a push to read more and unplug. In other words, it's quite a bit of screaming and yelling. They don't understand why they can't be on some kind of device all day and I don't understand where my creative, fun-loving children went.

Yesterday, we started our new summer technology plan. All devices and remotes are to be deposited into a basket at 10am and are not to be retrieved until 7pm. Of course, everyone yelled about it for roughly thirty minutes, but what happened afterwards amazed me! One kid asked to go the park and another read a book. I haven't seen all three of them in the same room and not screaming at each other in months either!

I'm not going to climb on my soapbox about how a little technology goes a long way especially since we purposely moved to a school district that pushes the envelope. I will simply say, too much of anything is a bad thing.

My point is, I don't really have a lot of time to blog lately and my brain is a little fizzled out when it comes to interesting subjects as I spend my days at swim team practices, baseball games, gymnastics lessons and just entertaining three children. What little time I have to sit at the computer, I use to write. That doesn't mean I'm not around. While my kids are forced to unplug completely, I still have a phone stowed away everywhere we go! You can find me on twitter (@toriLallred) and instagram (@torilallred) and Facebook.

UPDATE

No electronics from 10 am to 7 pm... Have you wondered how that worked out? It didn't. It lasted about three days. I would still say it's been productive. The kids now know I have the ability and the will-power to take the electronics away so they make a little extra effort to do other things and I've learned to set aside things like cleaning the house to spend the rare free time we have with them. 

On writing

When I first picked up my pen and started scribbling about a man who'd taken a girl to bed and woke up in the morning to find her decapitated head on his nightstand, it was easy. The words flowed like water allowing the characters to jump from my imagination like true people in the world. Then all at once, it stopped. I hit a wall and just couldn't figure out how to pass through it so, I gave up. Then I wrote 30 pages about a boy chosen to protect the world from and evil scientist but when he crossed into a new dimension, I couldn't find the right words and I quit again.

I can continue through the dozen or so stories gathering dust in my documents folder, but we don't have that much time. The truth is I always believed writing to be an easy (an well paying) job. You sit down to a computer, pound out a hundred thousand words and make millions. That's all there is too it, right?

WRONG!

Writing is the hardest thing I have ever done and I'm raising a hormonal over achieving middle schooler, a strong willed pre-teen and a destructive monkey boy. They're cake compared to Katrina and Landon and all the vampires surrounding them. I've found that the trick is in the determination and open mindedness. No matter the storyline, there are going to be hiccups along the way. A writer must disregard social stigma and allow ideas to flow onto paper and those pesky writer's blocks will not be so frequent.


In the four year process of writing Taken, I realized a few things. First of all, writing is debilitating and invigorating all at the same time. You create these characters and these worlds and think you have utter control over them but, you're dead wrong. A strong creation will build their own personalities and take control of the story without you ever realizing. A good writer is simply a typing tool. Katrina is no longer my creation but a strong person herself.

Right now, you think I've fallen off the deep end. I haven't. Katrina was never supposed to be a Hunter and Landon was never supposed to fall in love with her. He was supposed to be turned and she was supposed to die at his hand!

The other, and most important, thing I've learned is that writing does not manifest itself into dollar signs. Simply sitting here and pouring my heart and soul onto paper will not make me a millionaire tomorrow. Don't write for fame and fortune. Write because you love it. Write hard and pray.

Let me return to my point. Writing is hard. You start with an idea that grows with vigor and ease. You type like the world depends on your words per minute. Then, unexpectedly, you find yourself stuck and staring at a condemning cursor blinking insults at you. Determination is the only thing that kept Taken from become an inactive member of the documents folder.

Read for FREE!

Bannerman's Castle

Hudson Valley Photography

If you read Taken, you remember a brief mention of a castle at which Joseph arranged a meeting of the Cole Legacy. This location was my first inspiration for Lady Eleanor and Kol's home in the new world. I sometimes regret that in the three years since, I have chosen a new home (a topic for another day) though the Castle still resides in my dreams. In my writing, it still remains unnamed. In the real world, it goes by the name of Bannerman's Castle and rests on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River.

I remember vividly the day I was researching possible meeting places for the Legacy. Joseph said he would summon the family to the castle and all I could think was four days was not enough time for Lady Eleanor to travel to her homeland. Growing up in New England and having often crossed the Hudson River, I knew there were huge houses and wonderful castles littering the Hudson Valley, so I started googling.The photos posted on the Hudson Valley Photography website were so breathtaking that I knew right then and there I had to use them in some way.

As you can tell, the castle is in ruins giving me free reign to design the inside as I see fit. In my imagination, Lady Eleanor, bent over her cane, hobbles up the grand front staircase with the help of her youngest son, Joseph. A bird's eye view captures her white hair in it's typical tight bun and a long dress covered with a black cloak. Beside her, Joseph's brilliant ginger hair stands out against the darkening surroundings. Once inside, they hand their jackets over to the evening's hired servant and step forward through a set of grand french doors to the head of a large staircase to be met by the gleaming blue and green eyes of the Legacies children.

Photo by Neil Caplan via bannermancastle.org

 

When I designed these scenes in Taken, the history of the castle didn't matter. I just needed a meeting place. As my writing builds, I find that I need to know the real history of the island. Without it, I can not weave it into the my own story as I have done with so many other true life events and locations.

The true history of Pollepel Island and Bannerman Castle are just as rich as that of the Cole Legacy. I will not attempt to summarize it here as I am just today grazing the subject. However, both  Hudson Valley Photography and bannermancastle.org have wonderful summaries on the subject!