The Impact of Social Media: A Slice of Life Post

 

 

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back with another Slice of Life Post after a brief hiatus. We’ve been so busy with the kids and getting our basement put together I had to take a break. I’ve also been writing. My story is coming together and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’m hoping to finish it in the next couple of weeks. (crosses fingers).

Anyway, it’s good to be back today. I’ve been thinking about social media and how it has impacted my life. One of the ways it has had a positive impact is I’ve been able to reconnect with old friends I’d lost touch with. These reconnections have been incredible. We’ve gotten together and gone down memory lane, renewing old bonds and strengthening our friendship. I think our friendships change as we grow and some friends stay with us and some don’t.

Photo via Visual Hunt

          Another way social media has had a positive impact is I’ve been able to make contacts that help me with my writing. Research has just become that much easier. Social media has opened doors for everyone. Because of social media we can chat with our favorite celebrities and build relationships with people who can help us in our career, and maybe we can help someone else in their career. We’ve never had the ability to reach out and be this close to someone famous like this before. It’s kind of mind boggling when you think about it.

Photo via VisualHunt

          There are some negatives to social media as well. There are trolls out there who enjoy creating dissension. If you happen to run into one of these people it can make your experience with that platform unpleasant.

There’s also the situation where someone can stalk you via social media. I’ve had friends who’ve experienced this. These stalkers try to create a rift between the person they’re stalking and some of their more loyal followers. It’s not as dangerous as real life stalking, but it is disconcerting.

I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the fact bullying happens on social media as well. It’s unfortunate, but true. Especially these days with all the political division among people, things can get out of hand fairly quickly.

Photo credit: Lisa monster via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

          Social media is an awesome tool for reconnecting and staying in touch, but like everything else it has a dark side too. We need to teach our children about this dark side and prepare them for it. We must teach them to choose their words wisely and teach them about the power our words have. They can be uplifting or they can be demoralizing. We get to choose.

Thanks to the Two Writing Teachers for organizing Slice of Life! To read other Slicers posts click here.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post! How do you think social media has impacted your life? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

The Price of Fame

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I want to discuss the price of fame. It seems to me, in the last couple of years there have been a number of accidental deaths due to overdoses. I blame fame for the deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, and Michael Jackson.

This photo courtesy of Justin Hoch
http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#2265887
Link to license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

The reason I blame fame is simple. When you become famous, your privacy’s gone. To me, an outsider looking in, everyone wants a piece of a celebrity. Reporters hound them. They take pictures of their families when they’re having some down time. Just going to the market becomes newsworthy and photographers follow them for the one shot that’s going to make millions. How would you feel if you were running to the market in your sweats, to get your kid some cough medicine, and a mob of photographers were chasing you?

All of this because they’re a great actors or musicians. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to meet George Clooney or Brad Pitt. I’d also love to sit down with Steven King and the members of Rush just to get to know them and pick their brains. However, I would never dream of camping outside their homes just hoping for a picture.

That’s where fame turns ugly, when reporters and photographers make money off a famous face, boundaries get blurred and violated. I understand how some celebrities get so angry; they get into physical altercations with the reporters and photographers who follow them.

Not only do celebrities have to deal with paparazzi following them, they also have to deal with the pressure from the industry. Pressure to look good all the time. Pressure to be better than their last stellar role or album.

It seems like, when you’re a celebrity there’s no time to relax. They work ungodly hours to get a scene right or adhere to a tour schedule. That’s when the need for medication rears its ugly head.

They need it to keep them awake and then they need it to help them sleep. It turns into a vicious cycle. After a while, they’re hooked and in some instances, they need to take more of it to get the same effect.

Their dependency spirals out of control and they’re taking stronger and stronger drugs. In my opinion, this behavior leads to addiction to drugs such as meth and heroin.

So, instead of attaching labels to these people and assigning blame, why don’t we solve the problems that create the addictions in the first place? Why don’t managers create a schedule that allows our celebrities to maintain their health? Why don’t we pass laws that keep the paparazzi away? I know it sounds like a simplistic solution to a complex problem, but it would be a start.

Of course, then there would be the reporters screaming about free press and the public’s right to know, but what about the celebrities’ rights? Don’t they have a right to privacy as well?

Thanks for reading my post today. If you would like to share your ideas regarding this post, leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

Teens and Body Image Issues

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you! I’m working on a Coming of Age Novel, I’m excited about this one, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. The story delves into the complexity of relationships whether it’s a friendship, mother/daughter relationship, or mentor/trainee relationship.

As I was writing this story, I started thinking about teens and all the issues they face during the teen years. As parents, we have to remember teens are experiencing many of their feelings for the first time and they haven’t learned how to deal with them yet. Some of these feelings can be very powerful and overwhelming.

An area that seems to cause so much trouble, especially for young girls, is the area of body image. During the teen years, a girl’s body goes through many changes. These changes can trigger feelings of insecurity.

The unfortunate thing about these feelings is that teens don’t know how to cope with them, and many get into the habit of comparing their body with the bodies of their peers. In my opinion, this leads them down the destructive path of comparison and competition.

This is unhealthy because it can lead to eating disorders and other unhealthy behaviors. I remember my own experiences as a teen. I ran cross-country in high school and so I was relatively skinny. Quite a few of my peers would tell me I was too skinny. I was sensitive so I took these comments to heart and started to have negative feelings about my thinness. Until one day, I was at lunch with my friends and the conversation turned to dieting and diet pills. I noticed the girls who were telling me I was too skinny were taking diet pills to squash their appetite. I didn’t voice this to anyone, but I remember thinking, if I’m too skinny why are you taking diet pills? As you can see it’s not just the overweight girls who struggle, the thin ones do too.

Many people blame the media for causing this body image issue because they promote airbrushed bodies and faces. However, studies show it’s not these images that cause the issues; it’s the comparison and competition among peers that cause it. See this article for further info:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/body-image-issues-for-you_n_2590719.html

As teen relationships move to the internet arena, studies have found that young girls who use social media sites are more prone to negative body image, anorexia, and bulimia.

Many young girls will post images of themselves and according to this article from Huffington Post; forty-one percent of women from the ages of 18-24 retouch their photos before posting them to social media sites. To read the article, click on this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/body-image-issues-for-you_n_2590719.html

In my opinion, we as parents need to help our girls develop an appreciation for their bodies before they start changing. We need to compliment them on how strong and capable they are. We need to direct their focus on how important it is to be healthy and not on how they look.

For example, when I focused on how good I felt after a run, I didn’t worry about whether I was too skinny or not. I just felt good. I was healthy and I ate what sounded good at the time. If that was a double cheeseburger and fries, so be it. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post today. If you have any memories or tips you’d like to share about promoting a healthy body image please do! I’d love to read them.

For related articles please click the links below:

https://lisaorchard.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/is-your-teen-bulimic-find-out-the-warning-signs-and-treatment/

https://lisaorchard.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/anorexia-nervosa/

https://lisaorchard.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/hello-everyone/

https://lisaorchard.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/please-welcome-back-laura-yochelson-anorexia-nervosa-survivor/

What’s up with “Twerking” anyway?

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. We’re back from vacation and the kids are back to school. I’m diligently working on my Coming of Age Young Adult Novel. I must say I’m enjoying this one and I’m very excited about it. I enjoyed writing the Super Spies books, but it was time for some new characters. It has been refreshing to say the least.

Anyway, I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about Miley Cyrus and her behavior during the MTV awards. Everyone is outraged about it, especially about her “twerking.” Of course, I had no clue what “twerking” was, so I had to do a little research. 🙂 After I found out what it was, I decided it was one of those things I didn’t really need to know. It’s a dance and a very suggestive one at that. It’s my understanding that this is the dance Miley performed on stage in front of millions of people. I didn’t see it, so I can only repeat what I’ve heard.

Miley is getting a lot of grief over this performance. My take? It’s a marketing ploy, one that worked for Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga. They made it big with this type of outrageous behavior and Miley is just following their example. She wants to make it big too.

The problem with that is, that Miley isn’t the only one that follows their examples. Tweens and teens do too. Now that Hannah Montana, er…Miley Cyrus is doing it, young girls are sure to follow, and that my friends, is where problems start.

Teens seem to be crying for attention and affirmation from their peers. What better way than to act like Miley Cyrus? Heck she’s paid to act that way.

“Paid?” The public asks aghast. “By who?”

By every single person who buys a Miley Cyrus CD, poster, tape, or downloads her songs on their ipod. We are paying Miley Cyrus to act that way. That’s right. If you really want to take a stand against this kind of “twerking” behavior, don’t buy her stuff. Send her a message. Believe me when her sales drop to an all-time low. We (the public) will receive an apology and she’ll change her ways. Then maybe our teens won’t think acting that way is so cool. 🙂

However, sometimes when parents openly boycott a celebrity, teens immediately want to know what all the fuss is about, and we all know teens can be defiant don’t we?

So, what’s the answer? On this one, I don’t know. My best guess is if you have a good relationship with your teen, and explain to her why “twerking” isn’t really cool she’ll listen. Again, it all boils down to developing a good relationship through those early years. Building a trust with your child so she knows she can come to you with questions. That way she won’t fall for Miley Cyrus’ marketing ploys. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post! I’d love to read your thoughts. So, leave a comment and share them with me! 🙂

Emblazoner Opening!

It’s the official opening of the Emblazoner’s Website! And to celebrate we’re doing an awesome giveaway! Keep on reading and check it out!

Here is the link to enter the rafflecopter giveaway! 🙂

http://emblazoners.wordpresshttp://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/4bcc3d2/com/rafflecopter-giveaway/

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about a brand new site and give you a chance to win some great tween books!

I recently joined the Emblazon group. As Indie authors, we know the importance of group support. I have been learning all of this firsthand since joining. Let me share with you some details about our group.

Emblazon is a blog maintained and written by a collection of indie and traditionally published authors who care about producing high-quality stories for kids. We have a particular focus on ages 11 to 14. We call them Tweens. The purpose of Emblazon is to celebrate tween literature. We want to draw attention to this fabulous genre, interact with other enthusiasts, whether child or adult, and encourage new writers.

Emblazon launches its first post on July 10. Please consider helping us spread the word by mentioning us on your blog today or later this week. You may cut and paste from this website and use our attached logo if you wish. All bloggers who participate are eligible to enter our $100 Amazon gift card drawing that will be held the following day.

To thank all those bloggers who help us announce Emblazon‘s launch, we will be giving away a $100 Amazon gift card on July 11, 2013, as well as a smaller second place prize.

To enter the drawing, you must post about Emblazon on your blog on Wednesday, July 10, our official launch day. Then tweet your Emblazoners post to @CassidyJonesAdv and include the hashtag #Emblazoners. (Note: You will not be entered into the drawing without your blog post tweet that includes @CassidyJonesAdv and #Emblazoners.)

@CassidyJonesAdv will confirm you’ve been entered into the drawing by “favoriting” your tweet. If your tweet wasn’t “favorited,” tweet it again.

We appreciate your help getting the word out about our new website!}

You can also treat your readers to our upcoming Sizzling Freebies bash that will be hosted on Emblazon on August 1, during which a great selection of ebooks will be free for one day only.

Thanks for reading this post and leave a comment we’d love to hear from you! And don’t forget to enter the giveaway and win some awesome books!

Please Welcome JQ Rose as She Gives Teens some Awesome Advice

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 is the complaint of everyone trying to be the same and not stand out, but conforming to what someone else thinks they should be. Pre-teens and teens especially want to “fit in.” A person is embarrassed or humiliated for being different. Wearing the wrong clothes, having big ears, not speaking clearly can all be reasons for a bully or uncaring person to criticize and make fun. Sad to say the teasing happens all the time, and it is hurtful.

In my non-fiction ebook for girls, Girls Succeed: Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women, the family of a woman I interviewed moved so many times when she was a child, she couldn’t make friends. She was always the odd one in a group. Because she didn’t want to stand out, she tried to hide how smart she was and was not proud of it. Finally her last few years in high school, she joined the band and sports teams and made friends. She blossomed into the person she really was. She is now a medical doctor and researcher at a university.

No matter what your age, I think everyone should live by this quote from Oscar Wilde:

Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

~~Oscar Wilde

 

It’s very easy to forget to appreciate all the wonderful qualities each of us has. Instead of grumbling about what you don’t have, list the positive things in your personality. Every person is special with gifts and talents inside us just waiting to be developed along our life journey.

 

Tagline: Inspiring and empowering girls to achieve success in their dream careers.

Smashwords Link http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/241825

Amazon Link  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NY6ZAS

Kobo Link http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=girls+succeed%3A+stories+behind+the+careers+of+successful+women

Barnes and Noble Link http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girls-succeed-jq-rose/1114041658?ean=2940045118033

Sony Link https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/j-q-rose/girls-succeed-stories-behind-the-careers-of-successful-women/_/R-400000000000000883970

Bio: After writing feature articles in magazines, newspapers, and online magazines for over fifteen years, J.Q. Rose entered the world of fiction writing with her published mysteries released by Muse It Up Publishing. With Girls Succeed: Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women she returns to her first love, writing about real people.  Blogging, photography, Pegs and Jokers board games, and travel are the things that keep her out of trouble. Spending winters in Florida with her husband allows Janet the opportunity to enjoy the life of a snowbird. Summer finds her camping and hunting toads, frogs, and salamanders with her four grandsons and granddaughter.

Connect with J.Q. Rose online at

Girls Succeed blog http://girlssucceed.blogspot.com/

J.Q. Rose blog http://www.jqrose.com/

Author website http://jqrose.webs.com/

J. Q.  Rose Amazon Author Page http://tinyurl.com/aeuv4m4

 

 

Book trailer http://animoto.com/play/QcAByshul5wZ5Bob9bdiug

Thanks for sharing your words of wisdom JQ! I’ve got your book on my TBR pile and will be writing a review soon! 🙂

Please share some of your stories of courage or when you started to bloom! We’d love to read about them! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and reading JQ’s Post today! 🙂

Please Welcome Billie Thomas–Author of “Murder on the First Day of Christmas”!

 

Please give a warm  welcome to Billie Thomas! She’s the author of “Murder on the First Day of Christmas”.  Take it away Billie! 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

The Story Behind the Story.

By Billie Thomas, author of Murder on the First Day of Christmas

We’ve all heard (and cheerfully discarded) the writing advice “write what you know.” While true to a degree, we’d all prefer to let our imaginations drive our stories rather than our SAT scores. But writing who you know – in other words having a thorough, personal and intimate understanding of your characters – is advice I believe in wholeheartedly. Luckily, when it comes to the core relationship in my Chloe Carstairs mystery series – the relationship between Chloe and her mother Amanda – I have a lifetime of inspiration from which to draw.

My mom and I have always been big mystery fans and we traded books back and forth endlessly. No matter how our relationship was going at the time (can you say ‘rollercoaster’?), our love of mysteries was always neutral ground. So when I set out to write one, I knew Mom would be my biggest fan and toughest critic. The idea of a fun, funny mystery with a mother-daughter relationship much like our own, appealed to both of us, and our relationship was the perfect inspiration. The first draft was a joy to write. I’d work on a chapter, send it to my mom, she’d make suggestions and I’d rewrite. Easy. Fun. Maybe even therapeutic.

Sadly, my mom died unexpectedly of an aneurism at the end of 2011 and never got to see Murder on the First Day of Christmas get published in December 2012. While the book is the perfect tribute to her, I still have 5 things I wished I’d thanked her for more explicitly. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but a heartfelt one and one that shapes everything I write.  

 

She gave me a life-long love of books.

My best Christmas present ever – even better than my go-cart or Commodore 64 – was a library card in my stocking. I was seven or eight at the time and when I gravely signed the back, I knew this was a Big Deal. It’d be years before I figured out how big. We went to the library every Saturday and I could pick out as many books as I wanted. By the time I was nine, Mom and I had an unofficial book club where Nancy Drews, Judy Blumes and eventually, Agatha Christies were enthusiastically traded and discussed. Reading and writing have been constant joys in my life and my Mom deserves all the credit.

She turned off the TV.

For several years, the TV remained mostly dark in my house. My parents watched the news and “60 Minutes.” My sister and I could only watch one hour a day during the school year and slightly more during the summer. That was it. No daytime TV at all except a few Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah, I hated having to fake-laugh when kids recounted SNL sketches, but that dark TV helped make me creative, healthy and able to entertain myself.

She cooked.

My mom wasn’t a fancy cook, but some of my favorite meals were hers. Spaghetti. Pot roast. Pork chops with a ring of crispy onions on top. Fried chicken for my birthday. She kept it all pretty healthy. Breakfast, always, sugar cereals, never. A side salad at every meal. Family dinners were the standard and we read Trivial Pursuit cards at the table. I don’t know why. She also understood that it was sometimes necessary to delay breakfast till ten when Taco Bell opened. Loved that.

She taught me to be a girl’s girl.

I don’t know how she managed this, since my dad was her whole world, but Mom always stressed the importance of cultivating friendships with girls and never letting guys come before them. (Husbands notwithstanding.) She said the only woman you couldn’t trust or respect was one that didn’t trust or respect other women. I completely agree.

She was willing to be the bad cop.

Any journals I kept before 1988 only had two or three entries in them, all detailing with Anne Frank-caliber anguish show stupid, cruel, unreasonable, lame, wrong or mean my mom was. Once I called her a “bourgeois bitch” – I can’t imagine why, but suspect it’s because I had recently learned the word bourgeois. I’m sure I communicated those feelings in thousands of other ways over the years. She didn’t care. Even if it hurt her feelings, she didn’t let it stop her from enforcing rules, teaching discipline and saying no when she needed to. You only have to meet or work alongside someone who thinks the world is their juice box to know why that’s important.

As I said, not an exhaustive list. I hope Mom’s somewhere where she knows these things and is proud of the job she did raising me. I miss her every day and am thankful I have the series to work on because it makes me feel close to her. If I ever hear that a daughter loved Murder on the First Day of Christmas and passed it along to her mom, or vice versa, saying “this is so us”, I will be thrilled. I’ll bawl my eyes out, probably, but sometimes I do that when I’m thrilled.

About Murder on the First Day of Christmas:

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Christmas-Carstairs-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00APPOR40/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-on-the-first-day-of-christmas-billie-thomas/1113992722?ean=2940016095981

Finding a severed hand at a client’s house might throw lesser decorators off their games. But Chloe Carstairs and her mother, Amanda, won’t let a little thing like murder keep them from decking the halls. With a body under the partridge’s pear tree and a dead Santa in a sleigh, they have to crack the case before the killer strikes again – this time much too close to home.

Filled with laugh-out-loud humor, romance and a delightfully difficult mother-daughter relationship, this new series from Billie Thomas offers a fast-paced caper as these two southern ladies try to keep their very merry Christmas from turning into the Noel from hell.

Connect with Billie Thomas and her protagonist Chloe Carstairs at:

www.chloegetsaclue.com

https://twitter.com/ChloeGetsAClue

www.facebook.com/chloe.cartairs.73

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6877693.Billie_Thomas

Thanks for being my guest today Billie! You’re story sounds like a great read and I’ve got it on my TBR pile. 🙂