Autumn and Changes

 Where I live winter doesn't come early and it doesn't last long enough for me to get tired of it. I love the change, the cool winds in autumn. There is a song called "Southland in the Springtime" by the Indigo Girls, and each time I hear it, especially in the spring or fall, it doesn't matter which, I FEEL it deep in my bones. So deep I'll stand at an open window, close my eyes and feel the cool change in the air washing over my skin like a hand smoothing silk, so intense that I cry sometimes. Something resonates inside me when the air turns from baking hot humidity to chilly, light and fresh. I welcome it. I welcome the few months of cold weather I have to look forward to, even if my garden turns brown and is cut back to stubs. I don't think I'd do well in extreme temperature changes, but here in the south where the transitions are smooth, I thrive.

What are the changes taking place where you live? Do you like one season over another or welcome them all, just to have change?

CassaStorm, A Friend's New Novel Debuts!

THE STORM HAS ARRIVED! CassaStorm Now Available! Plus Cassa Facts, Trivia, News, and More!

Posted: 17 Sep 2013 01:00 AM PDT

Today’s tour spot is very special. Three years ago, a book blogger in Germany posted a review of CassaStar. He continued his support of the series by hosting me on CassaFire’s release day. And now, I am honored to be featured at Edi’s Book Lighthouse on CassaStorm’s release day with an interview, review, and giveaway. Edi, I continued this series for you. Thank you, my friend, for demanding more of me than I thought I could give. You rock!!

And tonight is the RUSHED Twitter Party! Between 8:00 and 9:00 pm EST, follow the hashtag #RUSHED for an hour of fun, questions, answers, treasure hunts, and giveaways. Hosted by the awesome Lynn Rush and featuring giveaways from both of us. It’s my first ever Twitter party, so please join us tonight!

And CassaStorm’s release week kicks off with prizes every day! Comment between September 16 and 20 to enter. (Ends 6:00 pm EST Sunday, September 22.)
Prizes include:
Cassa mousepad
Cassa Universe poster
Cassa magnet
Cassa mug
Autographed copy of CassaStorm
One person will be randomly selected each day and the five names will be drawn from a hat – first person gets first choice and so on.

This week I will be featuring my tour, unique Cassa facts, trivia, and prizes every day. Plus others are announcing CassaStorm’s release, and almost every post features a unique interview question. List of participants on the CassaStorm Page. So join the fun!

Launch Day – Final Book!

CassaStorm

By Alex J Cavanaugh

From the Amazon Best Selling Series!

A storm gathers across the galaxy…

Commanding the Cassan base on Tgren, Byron thought he’d put the days of battle behind him. As a galaxy-wide war encroaches upon the desert planet, Byron’s ideal life is threatened and he’s caught between the Tgrens and the Cassans.

After enemy ships attack the desert planet, Byron discovers another battle within his own family. The declaration of war between all ten races triggers nightmares in his son, threatening to destroy the boy’s mind.

Meanwhile the ancient alien ship is transmitting a code that might signal the end of all life in the galaxy. And the mysterious probe that almost destroyed Tgren twenty years ago could return. As his world begins to crumble, Byron suspects a connection. The storm is about to break, and Byron is caught in the middle…

$16.95 USA, 6x9 Trade paperback, 268 pages, Dancing Lemur Press, L.L.C.
Science fiction/adventure and science fiction/space opera
Print ISBN 9781939844002 eBook ISBN 9781939844019
$4.99 EBook available in all formats

Find CassaStorm: Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, and Goodreads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Umm2l0XdHc

"CassaStorM is a touching and mesmerising space opera full of action and emotion with strong characters and a cosmic mystery." - Edi's Book Lighthouse

“Cavanaugh makes world building on the galactic scale look easy. The stakes affect the entire known universe and yet Cavanaugh makes it intensely personal for our hero. The final installment of this series will break your heart and put it back together.” - Charity Bradford, science fantasy author of The Magic Wakes

“With a talent for worldbuilding and a compelling cast of characters, Alex J. Cavanaugh combines high powered space battles and the challenges of family dynamics to provide readers a space opera with heart.” - Elizabeth S. Craig, author of the Southern Quilting and Myrtle Clover mysteries

“I thought the revelation was going to be one thing and I was completely wrong … CassaStorm pushes the limits…” - Tyson Mauermann, Speculative Reviews

“…mesmerizing story of survival, personal sacrifice, tolerance, and compassion. It’s a rare jewel that successfully utilizes both character and plot to tell a story of such immense scope and intimate passion…” - Nancy S. Thompson, author of The Mistaken

"An exciting, nail-biting read which sweeps the reader off on adventures in another galaxy." - Nicua Shamira, Terraverum

“Cavanaugh creates such an unforgettable world, and these characters will stay with you long after their story is over.” - Cassie Mae, author of Friday Night Alibi and How to Date a Nerd

“…the racial conflicts propelled much of the plot in this story, driving home a message that's relevant to our own world and giving the book an interesting texture.” - C. Lee. McKenzie, author of Alligators Overhead

“Cavanaugh has created wonderfully moving moments of great poignancy… CassaStorm could have been a dark story full of hardship and angst, but instead it's a cleverly balanced story about hope and triumph.” - Lynda R. Young, author of Make Believe

“One thing Alex does really well is 'sell' the reader on his world building. …an enjoyable, fast-paced read that not only delivered on the final climax, but also managed to pleasantly surprise me.” - Bob Milne, Beauty in Ruins

Moving On

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

 The blogfest for September is "Moving On." Please click on the link below the photo here, to see what the other participating bloggers chose to write about this month!

This couldn't be more on topic for me. My father's birthday is the 25th of this month.

 

 

Spring

February 12, 2013. This was a day, a perfect day, for moving on.  Oh no, not me, not yet anyway. My father. But then again, it was a moving on for me as well.

“My bags are packed, I’m ready to go.

 I’m standing here outside your door.

Already I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

Summer

I stood in his room, alone with his body, tears running, my hands constantly moving over his arms, his neck, his cheeks, his hands. He hadn’t needed any bags to go on this last journey, but I certainly would. I stood with him for forty-five minutes. That’s how long it took the funeral home to get the gurney into the hospice unit at the VA. They came to take away the last part of him I would ever see or touch, his body. In the end he wasn’t afraid because the stroke took him so fast he had no time to ponder. I’m glad. He wasn’t a man to let fear take him without a fight, and at the end, he didn’t have to fight.

Fall

But now my journey has begun. I’m moving on to a life without my father in it. I thought I would be ready when the time came, but what a laugh, on me, that turned out to be. Seven months later I’m still crying. I dreamed of him last night and woke up unable to breathe because the grief was so powerful, heavy and pressing. I feel my baggage is my words. It is the file I made in which to keep my writing of him, dreams, thoughts, memories, photos. I keep one on my computer and in the “cloud” so I am always able to click open the suitcase and paw through to find what I need in any given moment. Or I open that suitcase to add a new page, a new thought or dream. These I will carry with me as my bags, my baggage, a part of his legacy to me as I move on. I know, well, I’ve been told that time will help give more laughter and smiles to the grief, but I guess I’ve not moved on that far yet. So I will write, dream, cry, mourn, love, and remember, as I move down the new road before me, traveling a bit lighter in one area and a bit heavier in another.

Winter

Balance. I’m looking for balance.

 

Images from:

1000awesomethings.com

favim.com

The Greatest Contradiction

Here is a Guest Post from Deb Clay (short story writer extraordinaire), who is a member of my writer's group. I so appreciated the way she put this together and thought my readers would enjoy it as well. Thank you Deb!

There is an interesting category of words in the English language called contranyms (or autoAntonyms). These are words that can have contradictory meanings depending on the context in which they are used. Here are just a few:

Bolt: To secure, or to flee

Bound: Moving toward a destination, or restrained form movement

Buckle: to connect, or to break and collapse

Cleave: to adhere, or to separate

Continue: to keep doing an action, or to suspend an action (as a ‘continuance’)

Dust: to sprinkle dust onto, or to remove dust from

Handicap: an advantage provided to ensure equality, or a disadvantage that prevents equal treatment

Temper: to soften, or to strengthen

Sanction: To approve, or to boycott

And the list goes on. But I believe the greatest contradiction on the face of the earth is woman. Any woman who has been a woman for a while (I refuse to state an age) is very familiar with this idea. Any man how has spent time with a woman (it

only takes about, umm maybe thirty seconds) is familiar with this idea. And if you are a married man you are either intimately familiar with the rest of this discourse or you are the most unobservant creature in the universe. So, let us delve into that mystery, that contradiction called woman.

We’ll begin with something simple. Body temperature. She may stand in the back yard on a frosty February morning wearing only a night shirt, sweating as if she had just run the LA marathon, all after cycling between being very hot and very cold three or four times every hour during the previous night. Talk about wreaking havoc on the circadian rhythm. One wonders why she doesn’t explode or simply drop from lack of sleep, but amazingly she seems to be adept at doing that Timex thing-you know, take a licking and keep on ticking. Speaking of taking a licking, one also has to wonder how the gentler, weaker sex, in spite of all her frailties and delicateness can carry and birth a child and live to tell the story. My mother calls childbirth standing at death’s door. Isn’t it ironic that a woman has the strength to stand at death’s door yet is so frail that men feel compelled to open doors for her?

Then there is the seat of the most contradictory part of woman, the part most notorious, the part that causes the strongest of men to quiver in their boots. The emotions. Just say that word and most men will break into a cold sweat and search frantically for the nearest exit. They are lucky. They can escape. Woman is stuck with them—emotions, not men. She is ecstatic one minute and crying the next for no apparent reason. Oftentimes she doesn’t even know the reason.

And for you men out there, have you ever been through this scenario? “Hold me! Don’t touch me! Hold me! Don’t touch me? Hold me! Don’t touch me!” No wonder the men try to escape.

Yes, woman is indeed a contradiction. She holds within her a tenderness that can soothe the hurt of man, child and beast alike, yet her fury can bring a nation to its knees. Many men try their best to avoid the challenge of dealing with a woman’s many contradictions. I suppose that’s why they play golf, or go fishing, or sequester themselves in the den with the TV on weekends. But to the man who has the courage to navigate that heaving ocean of contradictions called woman, belongs a love and a devotion so sweet it will bring tears even to his eyes.

Images from:

nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com

thewallpaperhd.com

www.theguardian.com 

nekomata091.deviantart.com 

Disposable Words

I have a guest blog post today as my post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group this month. I'd like to introduce, to those of you who don't know him, Chris Hamilton. He is a writer and the blogger for the Florida Writers Association, of which I am a member. After reading this post I thought it would be perfect for today's posting. Please let me know what you think...

 

 

 

 

August 29, 2013

by Chris Hamilton

Every child my age made an ashtray like this. in some cases, it's more rare and valuable than our words. Makes you wonder.

I did the math once about the number of words I write each year on this blog. Without getting into the algorithm, the numbers around 120,000 words a year.

I thought about that as I looked at a bowl at my parents’ house that I think was made by someone too young to vote–a grandchild. And I thought about artisans and other artists and what they produce and the value of what they produce.
And then I thought about writers and about writers who blog.
It would be pretentious to equate what’s produced on this blog with actual artwork. It’s not the design of this blog to be art. It’s supposed to provide information and something for you to think about as a writer. It’s not meant to be something to treasure and hang onto for generations to come.
In a related note, there’s a lot of talk about how the inundation of digital content is driving down the monetary value of what we produce. But if you look at the economics of the situation, what we produce is more plentiful than it ever has been. And I don’t mean just self-published books. There are blogs and an infinite number of websites for fun and information.
When I was a kid, the only way to find out how the Mets did and check details was to wait for each day’s Schenectady Gazette. Because it was the only place to get information, it was worthwhile for me to pay for the paper. I kept up the tradition for years, moving past the Gazette to the USA Today, the Albany Times-Union, the Washington Post and Washington Times, the Arizona Republic, and the Chicago Tribune. Only after we moved to Florida did I decide that the paper wasn’t worth the money for me because there were an infinite number of places to go for box scores and other news.
And so here we are, us writers, blithely producing content to build our online presence. The amount of free content is nearly endless. And we complain about how the value of our work seems to be falling–with good reason.
But maybe it’s falling because at least some of it is built for now. By tomorrow at this time, another post will appear in this spot. This will become just a single pebble under the stream. In two or three days, no one will remember it.
It’s too bad that way. Leads you to wonder if more is necessarily better.