Lenya's Seven Brothers and Mork's Return

Lenya's Seven Brothers
Lenya Holt sat beside the river and places her pouch in her lap.  Her seven brothers found comfortable places to bed down in the reeds around her.  She could have gone back to the human villages in the valleys.  She might have been married by now, with perhaps a few smiling red-haired children.  But she hadn't.  Her brothers were her only family, and she was their only link to reality.  Many would have deemed it sentimental and ridiculous.  However they just couldn't bear to toss away the last remnants of their old life...the one that was full of summer picnics where the whole hoard of young, red-headed Holts used to swarm over the countryside as they played.  Where their mother and father used to build a fire and roast cinimon apples and fish on sticks so that the smell would draw the energetic children back from their games.  Those times were long gone.  Yet...family was all they had left...even if nothing would ever be quite the same.

 

Mork's Return
"Mork!"  Jane ran forward and scooped up the limping white cat in her arms.  Then she did what she'd always wanted to do, ever since that sarcastic, talking feline had strutted into her life five years ago.  She held him close and stroked his silky fur.  She kissed his ears and rubbed her cheek against his.  She expected her teacher to yowl and complain that this was a ridiculous display of affection, but he surprised her. 
He let her cuddle him and bask in the fact that they were both alive and well for nearly five minutes before he said gruffly, "Now, now...that's enough of that foolishness.  I see you didn't quite manage to get yourself killed.  You have some promise after all." 
"I looked for you.  You weren't at the bridge after the seige like you said you'd be.  I thought the Baron's men must have...or his dogs might have gotten--"
"Those flee-bitten gits?  Don't insult me!  I could've evaded them while napping.  Now, what I really want right now is a nice bowl of tuna and creme.  Don't suppose you remembered to grab any when you raided the Baron's supplies did you?"
"Actually, I did." said Jane with a smile.  The cat looked very surprised at this.
"Really?  Well I guess you really aren't as hopeless as I thought.  Now stop mussing my fur and carry me inside.  It's going to take me three hours to get clean after this little adventure of ours and I don't want you adding to the problem!"
Chuckling to herself at the return of her mentor's prickly nature, Jane carried Mork inside and shut the door.

 

5 Star Movies

          Recently, my friend Rachelle made a post on her blog where she listed movies that she thought deserved 5 stars.  I thought I might as well do the same.  So here are some movies I think are very well done.  I've included the movie poster of each one as well as the trailer (if I could find it).

 

• Tangled

• Lord of the Rings

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)

• How to Train Your Dragon

• A Knight's Tale

• The Secret Garden

• Anne of Green Gables

• Megamind

• Brave

• Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness

 

 

• Star Wars

 

• National Treasure

 

 

• The Chronicles of Narnia

• Pirates of the Caribbean:  Curse of the Black Pearl

• Pride and Prejudice

 

• Karate Kid

• Around the World in 80 Days

• The Blind Side

 

• The Hunger Games

• Flywheel

 

• Facing the Giants

• Fireproof

• Courageous

• Ever After

• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

• The Three Musketeers

• The Nativity Story

• Sherlock Holmes

 

 

• Sherlock Holmes:  Game of Shadows

 

 

• Now You See Me

 

 

 

• 12 Angry Men



 

• Hotel Transylvania

 

 

 

• The Amazing Spiderman

 

 

• The Hobbit

 

 



• Iron Man 1 and 2

 

 

 

 



 

• Rise of the Guardians



 



 

• Captain America: The First Avenger

 



 

• The Avengers

 

 

• Soul Surfer

 

• The Prince of Egypt           

 

Help From A Fellow Author

          Recently I have been having some problems with my writing.  Somehow I found a blog by an author and speaker named Jody Hedlund.  She's written dozens of posts to assist beginning writers.  I've only read a few of them, but all were well written and really helpful.  I want to eventually read them all. 

          The one thing that I utilized from her blog right away was her Character Worksheet.  Unlike a lot of people, I find my main character to be the hardest to create.  I can make all kinds of individual and unique minor characters, but for some reason my main character never gets much attention.  I suppose it's because I usually (not always, but a lot of the time) give my main character a backstory where they've already gone through something really hard (usually losing a loved one) that has tested them.  They've already overcome a huge obstacle and it's made them into the person that they are.  Now they are ready to help the minor characters face even more obstacles and to teach them what they learned from their past experiences.  So you see, most of my main characters are the teachers.  They've already had their big change and now they are ready to help others overcome their fatal flaws.  It makes it really hard when I'm trying to create a main character with depth when they are not going to change much in the course of the story. 

          I've tried a few different kinds of character worksheets before, but I always get distracted by insignificant details, and I still concentrate more on my minor characters.  I really liked Jody Hedlund's worksheet for several reasons.  For one, it wasn't fifty pages long like many character worksheets are.  Not that that's a bad thing.  However I tend to get to involved in tiny details.  Secondly, I liked how she tells you to list synonyms when you list the character's physical descriptions.  Also, she asks questions meant to make you think about how this character is different from all the others.  What makes this person unique?  What are the little things that they do that make them recognizable? 

          I decided to try this excersize with my main heroine and see how it went.  It was incredible how much it helped.  Now Anne (my main character) was not just a stagnant character.  She had come alive.  I came up with a more intricate personality for her.  Now I knew not only what she did, but why did the things that she did.  It has really helped my story.

          I'll probably write more posts about Jody Hedlund's blog as I read more of it.  It truly is amazing and I can't wait to apply even more of her advice to my own writing.  I highly recomend that all amateur/want-to-be authors check it out.  If you go to the "For Writers" part of her website, that's where you can search for her advice by subject.  She has everything from developing characters, to pre-writing, to getting published, to editing, to time management, to drawing the readers in.  She also recomends books that give even more writing tips to beginning authors.  The blog is titled "Jody Hedlund: Author and Speaker" (this is the link to the home page).  She's also on Pinterest.