Friendly Friday - Critiques for Christmas

I'm a Catholic. Grew up Catholic, went to Catholic schooling all my life. Before you stop reading because you're a different religion or have different beliefs or no beliefs, I'm not trying to talk about religion or convert anyone. Just stating a fact about myself.

As a Catholic, I celebrate Christmas every year.

While I hate how commercialized the holiday has become, I love to give presents. Seeing other people smile when they open their presents - it makes me so happy.

So while I've been looking around online for presents for my sons and my hubby and my siblings and parents, I thought about you all.

The writing world is such a wonderful community and I want to give back. So I'm going to do something special for some of you this Christmas. I've giving away critiques. Calling this contest Critiques for Christmas. (So creative, I know, but it's really late when I'm typing this post so forgive me for not coming up with a better name.)

Anyhow, if you win, you can pick your prize:

Query critique
Synopsis critique
First page critique

Number of winners will be determined at a later date.

How to enter? Be a follower and comment on this blog. If you tweet/FB this, you get an additional entry (up to one per day). Leave a link in the comments.

This contest will be open until December 17th. I'll announce the winners on the 20th. If you get back to me right away with your query/synopsis/first page, I'll try to return the critiques before Christmas.

Enjoy!

Friendly Friday

I love horses. I used to tease hubby that I wanted two mustangs: the car and the horse.

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One time, hubby took me horseback riding as a date. I absolutely loved it even though I had no idea what I was doing. But it was incredible.

Then on our honeymoon in Hawaii, we took an excursion riding horses. We even went into the water. Now that was a thrilling experience! The backdrop of sapphire blue water. And I'll never forget our tour guide. Crazy guy, we're pretty sure that when he left our group for a little while, that he was enjoying a smoke. Yeah. Crazy.

One of my former coworkers back when I worked as a chemist owned a horse and took horseback riding lessons. We got to talking about riding and she gave me the phone number of the place. I signed up for lessons, once a week.


At first, it was hard. My legs didn't appreciate riding on such a large creature. And my allergies certainly didn't like it. But I continued with my lessons, got to be somewhat decent.


Then I became pregnant with son #1. I had to stop taking lessons. It's not safe. Although I had never fallen off of Jake, I couldn't risk it.


I still haven't resumed lessons. There's no point to, right now at least. I plan on having two more children. Might as well wait until they're all in school. But I will return, someday.


There's something majestic about riding a horse. Being so high off the ground, guiding a horse to where you want to go. I love everything about riding.


Have you ever gone horseback riding?

Friendly Friday

So last Friday, I talked about dinosaurs and how I wanted to be a palentologist. (And now I have several awesome plot bunnies about dinosaurs and a really cool shifter story). I thought I would share in this post what I actually worked as before I quit working to be a full time mom and writer.

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I went to college with my original major as law and society. I wanted to be a lawyer - a prosecutor. But that didn't last long. I ended up switching my major before the first day of classes when I learned that they were starting a new track with the sciences to add a forensic track alongside chemistry or biology. So I became a chemistry major. Ended up with a BS in chemistry with a concentration in forensic science and a minor in biology.

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For the most part, I didn't mind my science courses, but I loved my cj courses and my psych courses. I was one course short of a psych minor. My absolute favorite course was called Crime Lab. Best course evah. I also took Forensics and Criminal Investigation, Forensic Psychology, and Dangerous Minds: The Psychology of Antisocial Behavior.

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I followed this course of studies because I wanted to work in a crime lab and be a crime scene investigator. But once I graduated and started looking for a job, there weren't any avilable.

I was devasted.

Well, that's not exactly treue. There were some openings. In California.

I live in Pennsylvania. And was engaged at this point in time so there was no way I was moving across the country.

So I ended up taking the first job I was offered - as an organic analyst in an environmental laboratory. Not what I had in mind but it paid the bills.

So you might be wondering why I write fantasy with my background. For one thing, I love to create whole new worlds. And I love magic. And mystical creatures.

But I would love to write mysteries someday, to use my forensic background and incoproate it into stories. But to write mysteries, you have to be a plotter. I'm a pantser. So that is going to take a lot of time and effort on my part to write a mystery. So it probably won't be for years until I try that.

But I also love all of the psych courses I took in college and plan to use them in stories too. I have an idea for several mind thrillers, stories about people and the mental cages that they build for themselves. It's gonna be interesting to write those stories, very interesting.

So if you have any questions about science or forensics or psychology when writing your stories, feel free to ask me. I might know the answer, I might not, but I'm more than willing to help a fellow author out.

Friendly Friday

I wasn't sure what to talk about today so I thought I would talk a little about myself. If you enjoy this, I might make it a weekly thing.

I always wanted to be a writer. I used to make up stories in my head all the time. My mom used to give my sister and me paper and pencils and told us to write. It's no surprise that we both want to be authors.

Anyhow, my mom, ever practical, told us that we would have to do something else in order to support ourselves until our writing careers took off. After first, I didn't want to hear it, but she did have a point. So I started to brainstorm.

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Shortly thereafter, I watched Jurassic Park and decided that I would be a paleontologist to support my writing career. Getting paid to dig up bones, how cool is that? Sign me up! My aunt even bought me paleontologist Barbie (which I still have, btw)

When I informed my mom, she sighed. Apparently paleontologists are also poor and have to beg for grants in order to dig.

That was disappointing.

I still read up a lot on dinosaurs. Even back then I enjoyed doing research.

If you like dinosaurs, you have to read the book Raptor Red. It's fantastic. I've read it countless times. It's told from the POV of a raptor!

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I still read up on dinosaurs when I get the chance. Earlier this week, there was an article on cnn about Tyrannosaurus Rex. Appareantely there is evidence that T-Rexes were such scavengers that they would eat any dead dino, even dead T-Rexes! Those cannibals!

A couple of months ago, I watched a show about dinosaurs and theories about their extinction. (If you haven't already guessed, I'm a huge nerd, lol) I never knew what to think of the whole meteorite/extinction theory prior to watching the show and now I'm more certain that the meteorite may have killed some dinosaurs, but that they were already dying out before the large rock hit.

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There were many reasons why they became extinct. First, on Pangaea, there were a lot more volcanoes than there are now. And there were huge eruptions that would kill most of the vegatation in the region. This would weaken the dinosaurs in the area. Gradually, the eruptions grew closer together so that the earth didn't have a chance to regrow all of the vegetation and reset itself before another one hit. This contributed to the dinosaurs dying.

Also, there is evidence that the water level greatly receded before the dinosaurs died out. This revealed new land bridges. Dinosaurs began to migrate to new parts of pangaea and brought with them germs and diseases that other dinosaurs weren't immune to. This also greatly reduced the number of dinosaurs.

Finally, the meteorite hit and killed what few remaining dinosaurs there were. If an asteroid alone had killed the dinosaurs, there would be a massive amount of dinosaur bones in that rock layer in the soil. There are very few dinosaur bones to be found in the ashes though.

So even though I never did become a paleontologist, I still developed a love for the giant lizards. And I still would love to go out on a dig . Anyone want to join me?

Oh, and if you get the chance, visit the Author Hotspot. I'm talking about Mertales. I would love it if you stopped by!