Original Nana - Overcoming Fear (of statues)

No I'm not a happy camper, but I'm
there. With the statues.
Taking pictures.

I have a fear of statues. I admit it. I'm not proud of it, but who in the world has ever been proud of having a fear? It all started with the church. Yes those huge statues of Jesus suffering on the cross looming over you. I used to clean my church in high school and college. In the foyer there was a crucifix- Jesus surrounded by John, Mary, and Mary. These statues were taller than my average 5'5 height. When I used to clean in the evening I would rush (translate as run) past the statue to leave. 

Things didn't get any better when there was a report one year of a statue crying blood. Oh boy! I don't think I ever cleaned the church in the evening alone again.

About twelve years ago I went to a museum in Connecticut with my friend's eight year old niece. Of course I couldn't show my fear when we moved through the statue section so I just rushed her through. 

This year I roamed through a museum in London. Turned out that they had a whole section of statues. By my lonesome I walked among the statues and appreciated them. Was I afraid? A little, but I made sure there were other people with me in the area. 

Have I conquered my little phobia - I think I'll have to test it in a church with loads of humongous statues surrounding me - I'm in no rush.

Do have a fear you've been trying to get rid of?

Original Nana - Funny Musings

Original Nana - Liking people

Original Nana - Buckle Down

Original Nana - The Appeal of IR and MC Romance

 Have you ever read an interracial romance? If you think your answer is no, then rethink it.

Take a quick look at my picture. Don’t I look like a black woman? That’s because I am, but delve into my genetics and you’ll find that I’m 12.5% white on my mother’s side thanks to my great grandmother. I have aunts and uncles who are darker than me who possess a whopping 25%. 

Any relationship I get into, no matter what his race, will be interracial, just because I am. It makes me wonder how many other people in the world are interracial yet don’t genetically show it.

Even in the 21^st century race is still an unnecessarily big damn deal. I can’t truly imagine how things were like in the past. What kinds of hardships couples may have had to go through just to be together. That’s what intrigues me about interracial romance. Relationships are hard to begin with, but when you add fundamental differences that some people don’t agree too, it makes things more difficult.

On the flip side, sometimes even in interracial romances, race doesn’t factor into the romance. The couple has too much other crap to worry about, so petty things like skin color doesn’t even get mentioned except to describe the characters.

In Love Undercover the heroine, Sarita Cerez is Columbian while the hero, Matthew Carter is of mixed race, it’s just that none of the inmates knows precisely races.

His skin reminded her of the caramel in a Twix chocolate bar. The girls had come to a consensus about his African American heritage, but no one could figure out if his light complexion came from being Asian, Latino, or Caucasian. His exotic features made it impossible to tell.

I read interracial romances for the depth it tends to add to a story. Why do you read them?

Original Nana - Puppy Love

Last year one of the dogs in the neighborhood had puppies. The owner of the dog didn't really feed her, so she would go out roaming for food. The puppies ended up behind my apartment also foraging for food with their mother. I will never claim to be the nicest person in the world, but when looking at a starving dog who barely had enough strength to breast feed them, and four adorable puppies, I had to do something. So I started feeding them (I'll admit that I wasn't consistent because as wandering dogs they weren't always behind my house).

My dog is the brown one on
the bottom.

One puppy in particular took to me. I swear he (although I thought it was a girl at first) fell in love with me right away. Oddly enough from the first moment I saw him, I found him to be the most entertaining of the four puppies. And he was so dag on confident and flipping adorable. The others were cute, too but there was just something about this one. It was as if he was mine.                                 

When I'd feed the puppies, instead of running for the food like the others, he'd run back and forth in excitement before coming up to me and trying to play. I had to lead him to the food so he could eat. When I went to work in the mornings the puppy would follow me. My landlord had to pick him up and hold him. One time he placed him in the basket of a bike, and the dog tried to climb down (Don't worry, my landlord caught him before he could tumble out).

On my return home, the puppy would come from nowhere and run up to me smelling my shoes. Then he would stand in front of me blocking my path or weave his little body in between my legs so I couldn't walk. He was a ham for attention. Everywhere on the property I went, he followed, sometimes he'd take his paw and step on the back of my shoe. At first I though it was an accident, but when it kept happening I knew the little rascal was doing it intentionally. 

I initially didn't want to take care of him because I knew I'd be travelling to the UK and I didn't want to get attached. It happened anyway. When I told my landlord it was a male (they tend to be good watchdogs), he took interest in the dog and named him Risky. 

I was told that the dog now follows my old landlord around as if he were his shadow. Such a loving dog. Every once in a while I wonder if the dog will remember me if he sniffs me again. 

True love is a wonderful thing.

One last story about Risky. When I was moving, I gave my neighbors a mirror. They rested it outside so they could pick up some other things. All of a sudden Risky started barking and growling. I went out side to see what the problem was and the girls told me he was looking at his reflection. I laughed so hard that day.

Original Nana - Into each series a little blah must fall

I should probably explain what I mean by blah - I wanted to write 'blech' or 'yucky' or 'oh crap why, oh why?'  And I'm sure this is still not clear for all of you lovely people outside of my brilliant head. 

Have you noticed that in every series you fall in love with, there is one book that's just not as good as the others even though you totally expected it to be. If the read is bad enough, this one book can turn you off to the rest of the series, but if you're like me you'll give the author another chance, all because the seventy-two (I'm exaggerating a little) previous books were rock your world awesome.

I'll admit that there are some authors who keep delivering on every book they write, and as a realist (my mom used to call it pessimism) I'm kind of waiting for the let down book. Hopefully it will never come. 

If you have never experienced this phenomenon then yay! Keep on reading with only high expectations of the author  delivering.

If you have experienced this phenomenon, you have my condolences because it's very disappointing. What did you do? Keep on with the series or chuck it? 

Original Nana - A Simpler Life

Original Nana - What If

Original Nana - Favorite Characters

My niece is one of my
favorite people. 

As an author I know we aren’t supposed to have a favorite character, but as a human how can we not? In real life I don’t like all people the same. Heck there are some I don’t care for at all. I don’t like all the characters in my book. These tend to be the secondary characters, never the hero or heroine.

Do I have a favorite character? Absolutely. Am I going to tell you who it is? Nope. Why? Because who I like most in my books is irrelevant. Who you like in my books is more important.

I write characters people can relate to and enjoy because they’re seen as real and engaging people.

I appreciate when I see a bit of myself in a character, even better when the character holds qualities I’d love to have, and could attain if I worked at it (I so wish this was true for paranormal books – mind reading and time transport would rock the world to have).

That’s what I want for my readers. To fall in love with my characters and have all of them be their favorites, except for the highly annoying ones- you don’t have to like them at all, unless you do.

Do you have a favorite character?

Original Nana - A Yearbook Blooper

Do you remember back in high school when we used to sign each other’s yearbooks? For the people we hung out with we founds something clever to say because we knew them. For the others it was something like, “Have a great summer.” And if it was our senior year and they were nice, they’d say something like “Stay the same.” (That used to annoy the heck out of me because even back then I knew that life was all about change, but this post isn’t about that).

I will admit to my weirdness. I don’t always flow in the same direction as others, and for the most part whatever is in my head comes out, especially when I’m writing. If I had gotten into writing novels back then I would’ve known I was a pantser.

For one yearbook entry I wish I’d been a planner.

“You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss.” Why I wrote this in my friend Mary's yearbook will forever stump me. When she asked me why I wrote it, I shrugged my shoulders and told her I had no idea. We had never kissed. I'd never even thought of kissing her or any female for that matter (Chuck on the other hand was a different story).

Maybe the movie Casablanca came into my head or just the song did. Who knows?

Do you have any yearbook bloopers you'd like to share?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qp7aq6adr8

Original Nana - Impetuous People

Original Nana - Color Coding Candy

I know I'm not weird because I've seen people do it, seen commercials about it, and even read it in a book once (This kick ass secondary character did it and I really wanted to read his story).

I like to split my candy up into their various colors before I devour them. I don't do this with all candies, only the fruity ones. Although I will admit that I used to do it with M&M's but I stopped a long time ago- now I like to mix and match those.

But the fruity candies such as gummy bears and Skittles are another matter. Fruit punch is not my favorite flavor of drink. I like my flavors separated so I can enjoy them. Plus if I eat all the candy without separating them, one of the flavors tends to dominate and I'm not a fan of that. 

Do you separate your candy?

Original Nana - Romance vs. Porn

I've been wondering this for years. If I'm reading a romance novel, am I actually reading porn if the characters have sex? Ever since I started writing sex scenes into my romances the question has been on my mind. I've looked up answers on other blogs, but they weren't satisfactory.

Things get even more complicated when you break down romance into erotica and erotic romance.

Erotic Romance

Sigh. 

What do you think? Or does it even matter?

Original Nana - Hell

Original Nana - Rubik's cube

Did you ever play with a Rubik's cube? I did. It was a frustrating adventure that I loved to hate. 

Days can be spent working on this to get all the colors on each side to match. Days! It annoyed me when I used to get four sides correct, but two sides had a color which belonged to the other. Grrrrr.

The thing is once I learned how to complete it, it wasn't as difficult to do it again. Over the years I've found that life is just like that. The first time you do something, it's hard as hell, and rarely ever fun. Things get easier the more you do something. 

That's the lesson of the Rubik's cube. Try, try, and try again. If you can't ever get all of the colors on the correct side then do what a friend of mine did and remove the stickers and put them where you want. Is that cheating? Eh! Some might call it thinking outside the box.

I loved the triangle version. I found it easier to complete and the shape just tickled me.

Original Nana #amblogging

Hi everyone,
   2016 started out with one original post a week. Something happened (time kicked my ass) and the only posts I did were book reviews (my heart) and book spotlights. I think I posted only two interviews the whole year (total laziness on my part).
   I'm here to say that 2017 will be different. Will I be a busy beaver this year? For sure. But I'll have one original post every week for the the whole year - except the three weeks we've already missed. I will warn you that I have come up with some memes that crack me up and these will suffice as an original post.
  Otherwise I'm going to push fear to the side and let you into the workings of my mind. Now you should be scared (laughing). I'm calling the post Original Nana - unique I know, but it works for me.

Until next week I leave you with this:

Do with it what you want.