As I've mentioned in the past, music is alive and well in Seminole County, Florida. On Thursday night I attended the concert which wound up an 8-day "band camp" for middle school students. There were four bands. The beginners with eight days on their instruments managed "Mary Had a Little Lamb" - well, half of it. But the two jazz bands and the concert band? Wow! They were amazing, and all of them "beginners" only a year or two ago. Well, perhaps not quite. Riley, who plays the Euphonium (sort of half-way between a French Horn and a Baritone), was asked to play the trombone for the first time in Band Camp and soloed on it at the concert (in the Junior Jazz Band - Video below.) Cassidy, with a year on trumpet, soloed directly after her. (That's Mama you hear screaming in the background.)
For video of the Reale sisters doing back-to-back solos, click here.
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A Time of Tragedy:
Although life goes on, as seen from the Band Camp story above, this was a hard week in the Orlando area. In the midst of memorials for the 49 killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre, the singer shot by a crazed fan, and the 2-year-old killed by an alligator, all within a day of each other two years ago, yet more tragedy struck. A woman walking her dogs was dragged into a lake by a 12' alligator and killed. Even more horrible, a woman who was being beaten escaped her house and called 911, leaving her four children, ages 1-11 behind. The first officer to arrive was shot in the eye through the door. (He's still fighting for his life.) After a hostage stand-off of 21 hours, it was discovered that the man with the gun (father of 2 of the children) had killed them all before taking his own life. Something almost impossible to comprehend. And no, the above is not fiction. It is what actually happened this week in Orlando, home of DisneyWorld, Universal Studios, Sea World, and all the other activities that turned our orange, celery, and cow town into the resort capital of the world.
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Grace note: In between finishing my SciFi series, rewriting & adding 10,000 words to a Christmas novella (once published as The Last Surprise & scheduled to come out this fall), plus creating the characters for a new Regency Gothic, I've been attempting to organize my posts on Writing & Editing into book form. (Far more easily said than done.) Meanwhile, we'll still have to rely on my twice-yearly Index. Sorry about that.
UPDATED INDEX TO GRACE'S WRITING & EDITING BLOGS
January 2011 - January 2018
Note: Topics with more than one post in the series are in Bold type.
WRITING
Formatting a Manuscript - 5/9/11
Nuts & Bolts, Part 1 (grammar, punctuation) - 5/16/11
Nuts & Bolts, Part 2 (punctuation, helpful books) - 6/16/11
Back to Basics - Punctuating Dialogue - 10/7/17 & 10/14/17
Tab conversion (from manual to auto) - 8/5/11
Using Italics - 2/15 & 2/22, 2014
Using Capitals - 4/12 & 4/19, 2014
Manuscript Format for the 21st Century - 5/6/12
Writing No-No’s - 5/28/12
Character Identification - 5/5/18
Point of View - 6/18/12
Dictionary for Writers (5 parts) - 2/4 - 4/7, 2013
Layering - 6/30/13
Layering, a Writing Technique - 7/16/16
Dangling Participles - 7/7/13
Misused Pronouns - 5/1/218
Show vs. Tell - 7/21 & 7/28, 2013
Notes on Writing Dialogue - 2/10/18
Playing with Tags - 3/19/16
The Colon is Down but Not Out - 2/24/18
Writing Fragments - 3/10/18
Varying Sentence Structure - 3/24/18
Treacherous Words - 8/11/13
The Difference a Word Makes - 9/1/13
“Modern” Punctuation - 9/15/13
Questions to Ask Yourself - 10/13/13
Third Person vs. First (2 parts) - 5/31 & 6/8/14
Rule-Breaking (3 parts) - 6/21 - 7/5/14
Don’t Be a “Rule” Slave (adverbs) - 5/6/17
To Be or Not to Be (was & were) - 5/27/17
Attitudes Toward Point of View - 2/20/16
Point of View - 12/9/17
Synopsitis - 4/7/18
Mystery vs. Gothic - 10/22/16
Telltale Signs of Amateur Writing - 10/1/16
How to Write a Bad Book - 3/12/17
What is Women’s Fiction? - 6/25/17 & 7/1/17
More on Women’s Fiction - 11/4/17
Shortcut Codes for Writers - 5/16/18
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS series:
What you need to discover about your characters - 10/15/2012
More questions about your characters - 10/29/12
The Rest of the Story - 11/5/12
Also:
Character Development (3 parts) - 11/7 & 12/5, 2015 & 2/6/16
Character Development - the Unexpected (2 parts) - 8/20 & 8/27, 2016
What’s in a Name? - 3/18/17
The Nitty Gritty of Names - 4/30/17
WRITING WORKSHOP (9 parts) - 12/6/14 - 6/28/15
[Ideas, Fresh Twists, Research, Title, Names, Opening & Hooks, Plot, Goals, Motivation, Conflict, Setting, Characters, Narration, Dialogue, Pacing, Point of View, Transitions, Mechanics, Self-editing, & Questions to ask yourself before declaring your work “finished.”]
WORLD-BUILDING series (4 parts) - 12/28/13 - 2/1/14
[a look at the problem of creating a whole new world]
WRITING A SERIES (5 parts) - 1/21/17 - 2/18/17. Why Write a Series? “Single Title,” “Cliff-Hangers,” “Mixed Approach” & Summary +
Update on Series - 12/30/17
EDITING
I Ran Spell Check, I’m Done, Right? (self-editing) - 7/2/11
The Final Steps (self-editing) - 7/14/11
A Tale of Three Books - 9/24/16
The Difference a Word Makes - 10/15/16
More Thoughts on Final Edits - 11/5/16
Editing & Holiday Musing - 12/ 30/16
Editing Scold - 12/4/13
Misused Words (2 parts) - 10/4 & 10/25, 2014
More on Editing - 5/3/14
Editing Examples (4 parts) - 8/8, 8/23, 8/30 & 9/13, 2015
Editing Examples 2018 - 1/27/17
Copyediting Challenges (7 parts) - 8/29/15 - 10/31/15 + 4/3/16
EDIT THE BLASTED BOOK series:
Intro to Self-editing - 4/1/12
Should You Hire Help? - 4/28/12
Anatomy of an Edit - 8/5 & 8/19, 2012
SPECIAL TOPICS
**The Varied Faces of Indie Pub - 1/14/17
Reminiscences of Controversies (3 parts) - 5/13 - 5/26, 2013
[a look at writing controversies over the past 2 decades]
Guideposts for Critiquing - 1/28/11
Writing Mistakes, Near Misses & Just Plain Strange - 3/4/11
Shortcuts for Writers (ASCII codes) - 3/18/11
Rules for Romance - 9/18/11 & 10/16, 2011
How Not to Write a Book - 12/20/12
How Not to Write a Book - 4/4/15
Branding - Bah, humbug [writing multi-genre] - 1/21/13
How Does Your Novel Grow? - 4/ 28/13
Word Perfect to Indie Pub - 11/27/13
Questions Fiction Writers Should Ask Themselves - 10/13/13
On Being a Writer - 8/22/015
The Tricks to Track Changes - 1/16/16
Running Off at the Keyboard (rant) - 2/13/16
Why I Love E-books (2 parts) - 5/21 & 5/29, 2016
Organizing the Out-of-the-Mist Author - 7/9/16
Out-of-the-Mist Oops - 8/9/17
The Sound of Silence - 7/30/16
Transforming Truth Into Fiction - 9/4/16
What’s the Fascination with Fairy Tales? - 4/1/17
Cultural Confusion - 6/10/17
Twisted Times (the influence of today’s news) - 7/16/17
Random Thoughts - Making Changes to Published Works - 2/17/18
The Problems of Wrapping Up a Series - 4/14/18
Why Writers Must Read! - 4/21/18
**the post with links to indie-publishing information
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Grace note: Royal Rebellion went "live" on Amazon on June 14.
For a link to Royal Rebellion, click here.
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For a link to Blair Bancroft's web site, click here.
For a link to Blair's Facebook Author Page, click here.
Thanks for stopping by,
Grace
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