Larriane Wills a.k.a. Larion Wills

Prizes and fun. Read more!

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:38:00 +0000

Mustitup Publishers, where I have three releases coming out in 2011, say t’s time, dear readers, to announce what Museitup Publishers have in store for you...one

surprise at a time.

Beginning October 1st, and on the first of each month, one lucky reader will win

a FREE e-book.

The rules you ask?

Simple: join our discussions, ask questions to our authors, have fun,

that’s it. Participate and you have a chance to be one of our monthly winners.

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/MusePub_Readers/ (sorry about the smiley face, but if i type out the full, correct addy, spamers snatch it--finks--just delete it and fill in the "/)

But that’s not all:

Join in our readers group for our December 1st Launch Party and you

have a chance to be one of our two lucky winners:

First prize: a year’s worth of ebooks (12 in total)

Second prize: six month’s worth of ebooks (6 in total)

Hold on, they’ve got more...

Between October 1st and 31st they’ll be hosting a Masquerade Blog Festival where

each day one of us authors will entertain you with a variety of posts, from

short stories, recipes, historical facts of the Halloween season, to decorating

tips. In-between these posts there will be random YouTube videos posted and the

first reader who jumps in the loop and calls out the title of the song posted

will have his or her choice of any one of our released or soon to be released

e-books. If soon-to-be-released you will receive the e-book once it debuts.

So tell your friends to join in because they’ve got tons of goodies in store for

you each month.

I'll be a part of this. Watch for me.

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Just a little fun blog today

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:30:00 +0000

When you know you’ve been too long shopping.

When you’re feet hurt. Well that’s a given. How about:

When you pull into a drive way to turn around, back up and mailboxes,that you didn’t see and you barely missed, suddenly appear in your side mirror,and you count yourself lucky on that one. Or in a parking lot and it's a cart, lamp post, another car.

After your all most miss, you drive like a drinker who knows he's drunk, so much so the cop you pass thinks maybe you are and stops you. Fortunately you did remember to put you current proof of insurance in the glove box and can walk a straight line.

When the books you held in your left hand (that you’vealready read or didn’t want) to get them out of the way while you searched through the stack (for those you did want and held in your right hand) are thebooks that ended up in your sack.

When you get home and discover you have already have two of the same thing as one of the things you just brought home, one of which you bought the last time you were out shopping too long.

When you open a sack, look at what you bought and wonder ‘What in the world did I buy that for?’

When you stare at something knowing there is a reason you should buy it, but can’t remember what.

When you stand in a store and wonder, what did I come inhere for.

When , when it’s time to go home, you can remember you went to town for a specific reason (that you were saving for the last), but you can’tremember what it was and the list you made of all the things you had to do—so you wouldn’t forget-- is home on the table.

When the blouse you found that is exactly the right color,but you forgot to check the size. It’s either too small, reminding you of thoseextra ten pounds, or too large, making you fool yourself into thinking maybe those ten pounds aren’t so bad.

When you do remember something you should do and your attitude is ‘No way am I making another stop!’

This one I picked up on a loop today, when you don’t read the label in the ‘perfect’ modest bathing suit you finally find, do so when you get home and read,’ this material may become transparent when wet.’

So what's your favorite, I know I've been shopping too long?

More On Things That Go Wrong.

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:26:00 +0000

Why can't anything be easy?

Thu, 27 May 2010 17:11:00 +0000

When someone asked me that question my first thought was what a negative attitude. After this last week, I understand the feeling completely. Actually the ‘problem’ started over a year ago. Roaches! Ick! Ugh! Nasty things! And I don’t mean the kind you smoke. Our daughter needed to store some things in our shop. Knowing she came from a roach ‘I don’t care how manytimes you bomb, you ain’t getting rid of me’ area we set out roach motels immediately. I had used them years ago with wonderful results. This time the bugs moved in and set up homes in the little plastic containers. They must have thought them just the right size, because even though they didn’t seem to multiply and didn’t migrate out of the kitchen area they didn’t go away either.I can’t stand roaches. I hate the mess they leave, hate the idea of the diseases they carry, etc, etc. I bombed. After moving myself, the dogs and bird out for the required 3 hours and staying out the additional hour to air the house out, we all moved back in. The roaches had not cooperated by dying or moving out. We sprayed. The funds gagged me; I choked and coughed. The roaches laughed. We keep the galloon sized spray in the kitchen. I turned my head away, stretched my arm out as far as I could, sprayed any roach I saw and ran from the funds. The roaches danced. They were laughing at me I know. I started getting paranoid. They got braver. Open the dishwasher, they ran across the inside of the door. Cooking dinner, they dashed back and forth across the timer, inside the stove. Those suckers had had it. They were laughing at me, I know. We called an exterminator. For us that was a drastic measure. We’d always been able to deal with the filthy things on our own before. The guy came in, a nice young man, gets down on his knee to peer between the stove and counter,under the drawer where I saw them the most, and tells us, you’ll have to empty all the cabinets and drawers. Nice young man or not, my first thought was ‘are you out of you mind?’ My second thought was if I took all that stuff out, wasn’t I taking roaches out with it?I mean I wasn’t going to open every package just to see if one had managed toslide itself in, and I didn’t want to move them from the kitchen to the rest of the house. Sure enough when I unpacked the boxes, ROACHES dashed around the sides and bottoms. Oh, okay, I only saw about three, but they say if you see one, there’s a dozen or so hidden. Told you I had gotten paranoid. I, however, am getting ahead of the story here. I was really thinking ‘why can’t anything be easy’ when I packed box after box, climbed the ladder to reach the back of the top shelves, crawled around on my knees and buried my head in the bottom cabinets to reach the far corners. After all, now that all those cabinets were empty, there was no way I was going to fill them up again without sanitizing. Then there were those things that had some how migrated to the back corners that I pulled out wondering why in the world I’d kept it or when did I get that? Those type of things just had to be sorted out. Boxes full went to Goodwill—and I hoped no roaches went with them. But again, I’m getting ahead of the story. The dogs, bird and I had to move out, but only for the hour it took him to spray and the hour to air the house out. Now all I had to do was put everything back.Right, after I line the shelves again, going up on the ladder, crawling on my knees and burying my head in the cabinets. I got help, my 6’1” grandson to carry boxes in the boxes I had used a dolly to move out, and he brought a friend, a sweet little girl who fit into the cabinets much easier than I did.She got them lined while I decided what was going to go where and what needed to be washed before it did. Love my dishwasher. So after days of packing, hunting down boxes to pack more,cleaning, unpacking, cleaning more am I roach free? Remember, I said I’d gotten paranoid? The spraying was done five days ago. Today is the first day I haven’tseen at least one roach, dead, sick or healthy and running. Our spray is still in the kitchen. We’ve used it for four days, chasing down those nasty, filthy BUGS!!! The nice young man said if you see more of them after a week, call me back. You better believe it, and I AM NOT GOING TO EMPTY ALL THOSE CABINETSAGAIN!!! I don’t care if I did end up with more room, more organized, easier to use, I am not doing it again.

Now to move onto a positive note, I just signed a contract for my 11th book, 5th in the western collection. White Savage is slated to be released May2011 through Museitup Publishers. It’s Still Tomorrow, however, has suffered a delay. Some kind of software problem resulting from a computer crash added to a ‘knock me down’ bout with the flu for my publisher. Things haven’t been ‘easy’ for her either, and I don’t think I’d trade places with her. Look for It’s Still Tomorrow in July. No word yet on the release date for The Eternal Search. I’ll let you know on that when I know. And a reminder for this month’s contest; take a jump over to the contest page for details

Please let me know you’ve visited by signing my guest book. If you don’t like to leave comments, you can send me an email, larriane @ larriane.com (remove the spaces for it to work) and you’re invited to join my blog site as well. <http://larionmusing.blogspot.com/>

responses

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:15:00 +0000

One of my readers has responded to both blogs with stories andopinions. I asked permission to post them. He's agreed and promisedmore to come. Welcome Larry.

Just got back from your blogabout living with pets. I enjoyed it and it reminded me of our lifewith a dog and a cat. I've told you some about about our cats, butwhen we had Sugar the Spitz dog, it was just her and our tomcat,Prancer. My wife is in the habit of bringing home an occasional burger& fries from the drive-thru at McDonalds and Sugar had an incurablehabit of begging for table scraps. I discovered that Sugar lovedFrench fries. I could never finish all my fries so I'd flip them toher and she'd snap them out of the air and then one day, (the devilmade me do it, honest) I flipped a pickle slice instead of a fry. Shesnapped it out of the air and immediately tried to spit it out but itwas already in the back of her throat, so she had to go ahead andswallow it. For the next several fries, she'd let them go by and sniffcarefully at them before she gingerly picked them up and eat them. Iwas almost convulsed with laughter. Thereafter, I'd insert a pickleslice at random. I'll have to tell you some tales about her and mytomcat sometime.WhileI was there reading your blog, I went ahead and read the other oneappropriately titled "Number One," which I thoroughly enjoyed. Youwrite very well indeed for a little old lady. LOL I know what youmean about finding errors in spelling and continuity in publicationsof all kinds and size. Our local rag, the Daily Times, has theirshare. I enjoy calling and chiding them about the errors, usuallyspelling. I once wrote a letter to the editor about an unfortunatewrong word in a want ad. It was in the column under Trucks For Sale. In it, the owner of a pickup listed the things it was equipped with,you know, new tires, etc, along with a wench. I looked up the exactdefinition of a wench and proceeded to write my letter with glee. Init, I pointed out that if I was still single, I would be veryinterested in this unusual piece of equipment and then inserted thedictionary definition of a wench. They didn't print it. Occasionally there is an especially glaring error in a headline. Theydon't use a proofreader anymore and depend on......you guessed it.....aspell checker. You have to pay a proofreader wages so when the cuts inspending come along, the first one out the door is the proofreader.

I edit my stuff as I write byfrequently looking over what I've written and sometimes I decidesomething can be said a little more succinctly or whatever. I alsofind my continuity errors that way, and my spell check automaticallyhighlights spelling mistakes. I play with changing the word untilspell check likes it or sometimes I have no idea how to spell the wordI want to use. Then I have to indulge the spell checker and sometimeseven it doesn't have any suggestions, then I have to go to myMerriam-Webster program and play with it until I find the word. Itmakes for part of being a slow typer. The rest of the slow typing isthat my typing speed is only about 30 words or so per minute. I'venoticed that in the things I read and find those errors in is that thewriter misspells a word once and the rest of the time he/she spelled itright etc. The writer was too lazy or in too much of in a hurry toproofread their material. If the same word is misspelled all the waythrough, then the writer either didn't use his/her spell check ordidn't have one. I have also noticed that many writers have stoppeddouble-spacing after a period at the end of a sentence. We live in afast paced world and people let a lot of things fall by the wayside intheir rush to get things done. I grew up in a much slower era. Backthen, the saying was, "in a little bit" or something like that, then itbecame " in a minute" and now it is "just a sec". I get a chuckle whensomeone, a waitress or other, uses the latter "in a sec" and I tellthem that they had better hurry because their second is already gone,or I tell them that they had better take a minute because their secondis gone. LOLLarry

pets, don't you just love 'em

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:43:00 +0000

Pets, don’t ya just lov’em.

I have two dogs, Maltese, giving to me by my brother.Tonight they have been entertaining me, though I’m sure that isn’t theirintention. Guy, the larger of the two is a chow hound. Usually Nekko issatisfied to stand back and wait his turn, but tonight I found out they bothlove macaroni and cheese. How? While doing the dishes, I sat the empty dish (Icheated, it was a paper tray from one of those just stick in the oven things) forthem to snack on. The dish never hit the floor before Guy had it and was running.Nekko looked where he had gone and looked at me with that ‘what’ expression onhis furry little face. I took the dish and received another ‘what’ expressionfrom Guy, scrapped it out and put that on Nekko’s plate and gave the dish backto Guy. That seemed fair to me. Not to them. It’s an hour later. Nekko now hasthe dish, on my bed, and Guy is doing the tail wagging, yip-yip thing to melike he thinks I’m going to take the dish from Nekko if he’s cute enough. Notgoing to happen. Fair is fair. I’m not too sure how Nekko ended up with it,probably when Guy left it to try for a bite of pie from my husband. They’re atan impasse now. Nekko has chewed and licked every possible taste out of it, butstill isn’t ready to give it up. I think he’s stiff miffed over Guy not beingwilling to share to start with, and Guy knows that even though Nekko issmaller, he’ll fight. Nekko is lying beside it, guarding, and Guy is giving methe ‘please, please’ look. Ah, I see what the problem is. During the chew andlick to get the very last drop, Nekko turned the dish upside down and can’t getit turned back over. Am I going to get up and turn it over for him? No. In justover a year they have me well trained, but I am not making a special trip toturn it over. I do have to draw the line at some point. I’ll wait until I getup to do something else.

Once upon a time I used to make fun of little old ladies,calling themselves Mommy to their pets. One day after getting our first small,indoor dog, I heard myself say something and calling myself Mommy TO A DOG.Yeegads, I’m a little old lady.

All funning aside, pets so enrich our lives if we let them.Experts say those who have pets have lower blood pressure and live longer. Ican see why. Sure, they take time, they’re a responsibility, and you have to beprepared for the occasional mess and expenses, but for me the benefits faroutweigh the inconveniences. How many of you agree or have a favorite pet storyto tell?

BTW, I ended the impasse. I put the tray in the garbage.

Here they are. ahhhhhhh. That's Nekko in the front and Guy in the back.

Number one, or should I say first one?

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:25:00 +0000

Writing a blog for someone who can pour out a 100,000 word manuscriptought to be easy. So why do I find it so hard? I've pondered thatquestion every time I put off committing myself to having a regularblog, not that I don't have ideas for one, usually when I'm doingsomething that doesn't take a lot of brain power. Boring stuff likecleaning house. Do I get graded for grammar in a blog? Ummmm, maybethat's why I put it off, dreading the time it will take to do acomplete edit. let's see, there's already an incomplete sentence andone that rambles breathlessly. Oh, and there's a sentence that didn'tstart with a capitol. Or is that capital? Once into an editing modeit's hard not to think red ink even when I'm reading a book publishedby a well known company. Read one today, (actually finished it when Itook rests between doing boring stuff like house work) and was amazedby the errors I saw. I see more and more which makes me wonder are thebig publishing houses cutting corners by cutting back on editing? I'vehave heard that more errors are occurring because so much editing isdone electronically now. Is quality suffering for convenience and cost?Finding an error in a big publishers book used to be rare. In the bookI just finished, and no I won't tell you the publisher, there had to beat least twenty and that was in continuity, words missed, wrong wordsand isn't including punctuation. They weren't simple little errorseither. Is it just me becoming more aware since I became an editormyself or are those errors becoming more and more frequently andglaring? What's your opinion?