Some of My Favorite Things...Authors

Happy Leap day readers. I thought I would do something a little different with today’s post. I am going to talk about my love of reading. I love reading so much that my senior year of high school I was awarded the biggest bookworm for the girls. I could be found reading a book while waiting for class to start, school to start, at lunch break, and on the bus.  Today I am going to discuss some of my favorite books and authors.

First off my favorite author of all time is Tamora Pierce. I have been reading her books since 5^th or 6^th grade when I found Trickster’s Choice in the school library. I have read almost all of her books multiple times since then. I still find the Trickster books to be my favorite. If you ever need a good break back to young adult books with strong female leads she is the author for you. The books are also good for young men as well as there are also strong male role models.

A new author I have found in the last year or so is Chanda Hahn. Her Iron Butterfly series is amazing and just sucks you in. The beautiful way this author writes her main character and strong support characters help draw you into the story. Her other series about the Grimm stories are just as magnificent, although I have yet to finish reading them. She has a new series coming out very soon.

These are just two of my favorite authors and I plan on writing about more in the future as I have a growing library of books.

Comment with your favorite author(s) and a comment of what else you would like to read about from me. 

Me the SLP

Hello dear readers and friends, I cannot believe another week has gone by. This month just seems to be flying by, soon we will have official spring and I will be celebrating my husband’s birthday in just 2 weeks. Michigan has been experiencing beautiful weather the last few days and I know almost everyone but those who ski and snowboard are loving it. My dogs even got out to play on their leads today, cannot wait until we get them a fence to extend their play area. Even with the warm weather I have had to focus my attention on the indoors of my house as we are redoing our family room. It has been repainted and today our friend started to place new flooring down. It will be beautiful when it is completed.

As I started my morning, before a little bit of work, I was wondering what I would write about this week in my blog. When I need good ideas I go to one of my best friends who is an amazing writer for a post idea. Being the amazing person she is she recommended I write about the day in the life of an SLP or speech-language pathologist. Many call us speech therapists but we do much more than speech therapy.

Well as any SLP can tell you no two days are the same and every setting is a little different. I currently work for in two skilled nursing facilities (SNF) daily with varying hours. I also have a PRN job within a SNF with the main population short-term rehab patients, but with more and more beds for long-term residents. One thing I love about my regular job is that I do not have a scheduled start time, which is a blessing during the winter when traffic jams increase. Sadly, I also am not guaranteed that I will work full-time.

For those of you who do not know what a SLP does within a SNF, I will give you some idea. We do a lot of things. Most often our many therapy consists of helping individuals with swallowing disorders or dysphagia. We do this by recommending diet changes, identifying safe swallow compensatory strategies, helping patients do exercises within their mouths or throats, and educating staff members. Another large population of patients we see are for cognition. This may mean they have had a stroke, brain injury, dementia, or general aging changes. We target memory, orientation (where and when), attention, word-finding, and many other areas. Our smaller populations of patients include those for trouble talking, voice problems, and many other areas that many people do not think about.

You may meet some SLP who have specializations in certifications. Personally I have training in LSVT LOUD, a program to help individuals with Parkinson Disease with their volume and intelligibility. I hope to one day be trained in one or more forms of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), such as VitalStim or E-stim. I also am interested in McNeill Dysphagia Therapy Program (MDTP).

Most mornings I start at the building furthest from my home arriving between 8:40am and 9:00am.  After seeing the patients on my caseload at that building I drive back towards where I live and stop at my second building. Lately, with a smaller caseload and reduced number of new patients to evaluate or screen I may work at my PRN position for a few hours doing evaluations, screens, or treatment sessions. My schedule is forever changing and I am so glad at my regular job I do not have a set schedule. There are days I show up and residents are not available due to a shower, sleeping, or a meal. Sometimes I find out too late that the resident has an appointment they must be at and have left the building before I have even arrived.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comment section below about anything you want me to talk about or if you have questions from this post. I look forward to reading your comments. 

What I love about writing!!!

Happy Valentine’s day weekend!!! Hope my readers are spending time with someone they love, whether that be a lover, friends, or family. This is the time of the month to celebrate all types of love, including: agape love, phileo love, storge love, or eros love. All are important in their own way.

I spent my Saturday helping out at a basketball tournament making popcorn and helping sell concessions. I also found out I have an inner ear infection that is most likely viral. So after my crazy day I am relaxing with my husband and our pups. I am also writing this beautiful blog about so many randomness, including writing. So let me get onto the topic of this post.

Katize86 has requested that I talk about my favorite part(s) of the writing process. Well here we go!!

My favorite part of the writing process is to see where the book takes me. I plan a basic outline for my book, but I never know where my book will take me between each of the bullet points on my outline. I enjoy meeting new characters I never expected to meet (see my previous post about characters). I also find new events happening that help push the story along.

I also enjoy getting to know my characters and building the world they belong in. I have been having a blast slowly developing a religion for my world. Creating myths and legends slowly but surely. Some days I do find world building tedious, but most of the time it is so much fun to create.

Lastly I enjoy the writing as a whole. It is something new for me to do to help share my passion of the fantasy world with others. To give women heroines to look up to in this world of body shaming and frustration. To show girls that women can be as strong as men.

I hope this helps answer your question.

Keep those post topic suggestions rolling in. Also, Leia says hi!

Connecting Readers with Characters

Happy Sunday readers,

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend, whether you are relaxing or working (I have been doing both). Any of my readers out there planning to watch the Super Bowl? I have yet to decide if I will be watching or not. Usually, I only watch for the commercials and maybe the halftime show depending on the performer.

In my last post I asked for requests for future topics for me to write about. The first request comes from a fellow author whose work I admire. He is also one of my beta readers. Today I will be discussing how I create characters in my book that matter to the reader.

This is a little tough to put into words now that I sit down to write this blog. I write what I know. I put a little of myself into each character, add traits of people I know or have read about. I try to make my characters all seem real. They have their faults, their weaknesses, their strengths. They may even have strengths that they have not realized themselves, but the reader may start to notice. It is human nature for us to not always recognize our own strengths, although others may notice them and be the ones to point them out.

I must confess I do not always plan out all of my characters right away or plan to have some characters. But as life happens so does a book. New people appear when your character or the story needs them. In my book I am currently writing I have had at least 5 unexpected characters appear within my book. Characters that helped the story grow and take on a life of its own.

To fully develop the characters I occasionally attempt to fill out a character profile, but sadly I still haven't found one I really like. Often when developing characters I write a quick description in my file of notes about each character and details I need to remember. Not all characters have been fully developed if they only appear for a brief interaction. I would not mind suggestions on character profile sheets my readers find helpful when developing their characters.  I might try using a Facebook profile or Linkedin profile to help me develop my characters. 

I hope this answers your question Josh.

Readers keep those topics coming. They can be about being a SLP, an author, or about my dogs.

Back to Blogging

Hello those who are fans of reading blogs. It has been quite a while since I wrote a blog entry. I used to write about my experiences in graduate school while working on my master degree in speech-language pathology. Now I will be writing about life, being a speech-language pathology, and my love of books.

Since my last post I have married, graduated from grad school, and now work full-time in skilled nursing facilities as of the last 1.5 years. I spend my evenings in with my husband and our two beautiful dogs. We have 4 year old Calli, our rescued mutt, and 1.5 year old Leia, our shy pitt bull mix. My husband rescued her and named her Calli after her calico like coloring. Leia sometimes goes to work with me, but often hides from both employees and residents. She is afraid of strangers and even some of our friends who are over about once a month. One of her favorite people outside of our family is a staff member at Petco who she gets very excited for whenever she sees her.

I am also working on writing a book. I started the November after graduation during NaNoWriMo. I did not finish my book during NaNoWriMo, but have completed one draft since. I am now working on draft two and adding further chapters. I hope to one day publish my book and a series of books to go along with it. I have been working on creating a world around my book.

I look forward to starting to blog at least once a week on differing topics that may interest any readers I may have. If there is a topic you want me to discuss feel free to comment below. I do not plan on going into excessive detail on my book with more details after publishing.