Quotes that Inspire Me!

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you! Today I’d like to share a few of my favorite inspirational quotes with you. They help me get through the tough times and I thought if you were having a tough time today they might help you out as well.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled for surgery so I’ve been spending a lot of time with the family because I don’t know how long my recovery time will be. I’m hoping it’s not long, but we’ll see. 🙂

Also if you could send a few prayers/positive vibes/healing vibes my way, I’d really appreciate it! Every little bit helps! Thanks so much!

Okay without further ado, here are the quotes that bring me inspiration or relieve my anxiety, hopefully they will do the same for you! 🙂

 

This one is my all time fave!

This one helps me keep things in perspective!

This one is excellent for those moments when you just don’t feel good enough. 🙂

This one is good when you’re feeling anxious. It reminds me to always move toward my goals. 🙂

And this one always makes me smile!

Thanks for stopping by today and checking out some of the quotes that give me inspiration or just make me feel better. I hope they do the same for you! 🙂

Could Minecraft Change the World?

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you! I’m back today and I’m talking about my boys and their obsession with Minecraft.

When they first became obsessed with this game, I was concerned. They could play for hours if I let them. Of course, I didn’t most of the time anyway. 🙂 Even though I’ve limited the amount of time they could play, I began to notice something, and that was how proficient they were on the computer.

It amazed me that they were able to do some basic tasks like copy and pasting, uploading files, and deleting them. I realized they were learning basic computer skills while playing this game. In my opinion, dealing with computers is the future for our kids. If they’re comfortable with them they’ll have a skill that’s in demand when they’re out searching for a job.

Also, the Minecraft game itself is similar to my husband’s home building software that he uses when he gets an idea for our next house. He wants to build and he’s always drawing up computer generated plans to compare to see which layout we like the best. It’s fun and we’re able to dream. 🙂

When my kids are playing Minecraft, they’re building all kinds of structures. Similar to my husband’s house building software and it’s such an awesome thing to see them working together, sharing their ideas with each other, and problem solving together.

They can even get on the server and play with other kids from all over the world. Isn’t that amazing? Wouldn’t it be funny if Minecraft and other interactive games solved the cultural barriers that we now have? Imagine it…video games solve problems that the United Nations couldn’t solve. I know it’s a big leap, but maybe an accurate one.

Just imagine my son becoming friends with someone in Iran as a result of Minecraft. They continue their friendship and when  my son becomes President of the United States 😉 and his friend becomes President of Iran; they solve world problems because they learned to work together solving problems on a video game. They already trust each other. It could change the political process completely. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

I know, I’m making a huge leap, but I can do that. I’m an author! 🙂

Thanks for reading my post today! I’d love to read your thoughts, so please share them and leave a comment!

Please Welcome JQ Rose as She Gives Teens some Awesome Advice

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you! I’m taking my kids to the zoo today, so I thought I’d reblog a guest post that I hosted last year. The author is JQ Rose and she has some awesome advice for Teens! Without further ado, take it away JQ!

Hello Readers.

Lisa, thank you so much for hosting me on your blog today.

Are you familiar with the song, “Little Boxes” written in 1963 by Melvina Reynolds?

~If you want to use the youtube video here’s the link~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Lyrics from http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/m/malvina_reynolds/little_boxes.html

Listeners to the catchy tune and lyrics have several ideas for its meaning. One of them is the protest against all the cheap housing of suburbia which sprang up in the 60’s. People called the sub-divisions a cookie-cutter method of building homes with ticky tacky or shoddy materials.

The message I receive from the lyrics…

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Is the Amazon/Hachette Situation a Symptom of Things to Come?

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I’m talking about some changes that are happening in the Publishing Industry.

As many of you already know, Hachette and Amazon are having difficulty coming to agreeable terms regarding their contract. From what I understand, Amazon is trying to keep the cost of e-books down and Hachette wants to keep them up.

Amazon has taken steps to take off the pre-order buttons on Hachette’s books until the situation is resolved. This has upset some of the authors. Because of this Amazon has orchestrated a bold move. They contacted some of the authors and the Authors Guild and offered to pay 100% of the royalties to the authors until the contract issues are resolved.

It’s my understanding that Hachette hasn’t responded to this. I’m very interested to see how this is resolved. Especially since Simon and Schuster’s contract is coming up for renewal soon. As each New York publisher’s contract comes up for renewal, we’re going to see Amazon flex their muscle a little bit more.

My take on all of this is the New York Publishers are going to have to change the way they do business. I’m interested to see what will happen to the industry when they finally realize this.

My gut feeling on all of this is; this is the best time to be an author, especially an Indie author. 🙂

Why do I feel this way? If New York has to change their business model, it’s possible that they’re going to have to change their process on many different levels in order to compete with the small presses and self-published authors out there.

In my opinion, the small presses are already way ahead of the big publishers because they know how to operate at a lower cost. The big cost for New York publishers is marketing. Make no mistake, they know how to market their products, but it’s expensive. Smaller presses leave a lot of the marketing up to the authors and even though it’s a pain, it does allow us to develop our fan base. There’s nothing more important than that personal touch from an author.

Self-published authors are also way ahead of the game because they’ve learned what marketing techniques work best for them and they know the true cost of editing and formatting their books.

Therefore, this is probably the best time to be an Indie, especially with Amazon watching our back for us, there’s nothing we can’t do. 🙂 If the New York publishers have to cut back on marketing and leave it up to their authors, well us Indie authors have been doing it for years. 🙂 So, we’re ahead of the game.

Keep in mind,  it does take time to build up your readership. Even though social media has opened up doors for all of us, it will always take time.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post today! I’d love to read your comments about the Hachette/Amazon situation so please share your thoughts! 🙂

 

My thoughts on “Everything I never Told You!”

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another book review. I know, two in a row. What gives? Well, I was on vacation last week and was able to get some reading time in as well as work on the fourth book in “The Starlight Chronicles.” I’m excited about this new series. 🙂

 

Anyway, I took a break from my usual young adult reads and focused on an adult title. I first saw this on a Goodreads ad and the ad stated this book was a lot like “The Lovely Bones.” That caught my interest and it was an incredible story. The book is titled, “Everything I never told you” by Celeste Ng. The cover and blurb are below.

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family—Hannah—who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

 

I must say, I absolutely loved this book. It’s the story of a family dealing with their teen daughter’s death. It’s incredibly sad. It illustrates how parents can become so wrapped up in their children’s dreams that they lose focus on the child. FYI…spoiler alert. 🙂

The moment it all starts to unravel is when Marilyn the mother becomes dissatisfied with her life as a stay at home mom. She planned on going to medical school before she met her husband. She became pregnant and they got married. She put her dreams on hold to take care of the family. When she has two small children she decides to leave her family and pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. She just leaves. She tries to leave a note, but can’t bring herself to do it and tears it up.

No one knows where she went. Then she finds out she’s pregnant with their third child and she has to come home. The family welcomes her back and she pins all of the dreams she has had to give up on her young daughter Lydia.

The story revolves around this and each member of the family’s reaction to it. Nathan feels ignored. Lydia feels this overwhelming pressure to please her mother or her mother will leave again. Finally, unable to stand the pressure any longer, she offers herself to a boy who’s gay. He rejects her and stinging from that rejection she drowns herself.

This is a moving tale. It’s also a great illustration of what parents do to their kids even with the best of intentions.

I recommend putting this one on your TBR pile. It’s an awesome read! Thanks for stopping by my blog today. Do you have any book recommendations? Leave a comment! I’d love to check them out! 🙂

 

My Thoughts on “Allegiant”

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another book review. I’ve been on vacation and I finally finished the third book in the Divergent Series. I say finally because it has taken me forever to finish it! The cover and blurb are below.

 

What if your whole world was a lie? What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything? What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

 

The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth’s #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.

 

That’s right. I finished “Allegiant” and I didn’t have the same reaction as many of Veronica Roth’s fans did when I finished it. Many had a very negative reaction when Tris died at the end. I didn’t. Probably because I wasn’t as emotionally attached to the characters as I was in “The Fault in Our Stars.”

I attribute this to the fact that I seem to prefer Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, as opposed to the Dystopian Genre. This third book of the series didn’t hold my interest as much as the first two, maybe because it was told from both Tris’ and Tobias’ point of view. The story oscillated between the two characters and for me I wasn’t able to get as attached to them because of this.

It’s probably just me. 🙂

Anyway, this is an intriguing series. I can see where something like this could happen in the future. Where scientists think they can eliminate certain characteristics by changing human’s DNA. I can see all kinds of controversy starting because of this. It makes me wonder what kind of world we’ll be leaving to our kids.

This was a very interesting and well-written series. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I admire the author’s creativity.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and reading my post. If you have any other book recommendations, please leave a comment. I’m always looking for something new to read. 🙂

Bitten by the Cancer Bug

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’ve been on vacation for the last week in northern Michigan, enjoying the fresh air and clear waters of Torch Lake. I’ve been doing a lot of walking and reading although, not at the same time. 🙂

Before I left on vacation, I had a major decision to make and I was kind of freaking out about it. You see, about a month ago I found out that I had breast cancer. I knew there was something up when I found a numb spot, so I called the doctor and tried to schedule a mammogram. Of course, I had to have a physical first. You know those HMO’s they know more about your body than you do. 😉

So, I went through the physical and was able to schedule a mammogram. Then I had to have a second mammogram because the radiologist could see something on the first one, but it was so small that we needed a deeper and more painful mammogram to determine what it was.

The next step was the biopsy. This was the least painful part of the whole process. This is where they take out a piece of tissue to see if it’s malignant or benign. Well as you probably can guess, it was malignant. Boo!

Before I could take a breath, I’m talking with the surgeon and he’s very positive.
“We’ve caught this at a very early stage. We’ll have to do a lumpectomy and some radiation.”
I was okay with this. I mean it’s not even an overnight stay in the hospital and it wasn’t going to mess up my summer schedule in the least.

However, if I was going to go through this, I only wanted to do it once. So, I pushed for an MRI. I wanted to make sure we got all the cancer the first time. In addition, something about the way my HMO acted about the MRI made me suspicious. They insisted it was the surgeon’s decision on whether or not we do an MRI.

When I discussed this with my surgeon, I asked him about it and he said, “We don’t usually do MRIs on people your age.”

Of course, I was livid. “People my age?”

He immediately changed his tune and needless to say, I got my MRI. Thank God I did, because there were five other spots that were abnormal. He claims that they’re not cancer, but they could be precancerous. Since they could be precancerous, I want them taken out.

So now, we’re going from a simple lumpectomy to a double mastectomy. Why? Because I don’t want to take any chances. I don’t want a reoccurrence of this to affect my life ever again. I also want to avoid chemotherapy.

If none of the other abnormal spots have become invasive, I won’t have to have chemo. (Crosses fingers).

What’s the moral of this story? If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer, get an MRI. It’s the only way to know for certain how many spots you have. In fact, I don’t’ know why they don’t do an MRI first. It has all the answers. Mammograms are a waste of time in my opinion. Only one spot showed up when I had it done and it was so small the radiologist could barely see it.

I could have been diagnosed a month earlier if I’d gone for the MRI first and I’ve heard that the radiation from the Mammogram can cause cancer. Hello? Am I the only one who sees a problem here and a solution? Do you have any thoughts on this? If you do please share them with me. I’d love to hear from you. 🙂

I’d also like to add that you really have to be your own advocate when you’re dealing with something this big. Ask questions, and keep asking until you understand what the doctors are talking about. It’s your body. You have a right to know.

Teen Depression: What it looks like and What You Can Do

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you. Because we’re on vacation and I’m dealing with some health issues, I’m reblogging this post from a year ago. I hope you don’t mind and I hope it helps you with your teen! Happy Reading!

Hello Everyone! I hope all is well with you!

I’m back on track today discussing issues that affect young adults. Today I wanted to touch on a topic that affects many people, but it’s especially tricky to spot in teenagers. That issue is depression.

According to Familyfirstaid.org, suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death among young adults between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. I don’t know about you, but I found this statistic staggering!

The most common cause of suicide is depression. That being said, I’m deducing that since suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death among teenagers that many teens are depressed, but only 1 in 5 teenagers receive help for this ailment. So, my theory is that if we start treating the depression in our young people the suicide rate will drop.

According to Helpguide.org, occasional bad moods and acting out is normal…

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