The Difference Four Years Made

May 2, 2015 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Five years ago in December we bought a house to restore and sell. Then we discovered we would soon be grand parents and we needed a bit bigger place. So our fixer-upper became our home. We moved in May 2011. It’s been four years and what a difference right?

Can you spot the differences?

In these four years, we made the house habitable. It had been sitting partially touching the soil. We built a three car garage with apartment above. (Because of city regulations, we could not put it where the original car port was, we had to move it seventeen feet from the property line. So, yes, it takes up the entire back yard.) We planted a few trees. Our peach tree is conspicuously missing. It was right in front of the house about twelve feet from the curb. (Someone dug it up and took it in the middle of the night last week.) We added a fountain in the front yard, you can’t see it because it’s behind a tree. The upstairs french doors were removed and windows added instead. The lattice was removed as it served no purpose that we could see. The bottom porch’s curved pieces of wood were removed because they were rotted. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, the wrap around bit of cedar shingles was replaced with roofing to give a more tailored look.

The house was built in 1910 by an insurance man who lived on LaSalle street. He built the house at about the time he married. The porches have always been the way they are with the Victorian wrap-around with the slim supports and gingerbread on the balcony and the craftsman style supports on the lower porch.

Nell lives a block away. She is 94 years old. She was born in the house she is living in. She used to play on our front porch when she was a little girl because her grandfather and the man who build our house were good friends and would sit and talk and tell stories on our front porch. It’s nice to know someone who has watched our house all these years.

Dad and daughter — Our girl and her father.

The other big thing that has changed since we moved in is that our lovely daughter married. Our precious grand girl has a wonderful step-daddy. We are just pleased as the proverbial punch about this.

Home and Family

A bit of my History in Pictures

April 18, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 4 Comments

It has come to my attention as I was selling and signing books at the Menil Fest today that I have failed to write any blogs for a very long time. It’s easy to rely on re-posting or re-blogging information that is sent to me. Add to that my daughter’s wedding and all that goes with it, I’ve been a busy monkey these past few months. I get lazy about posting.

So I thought, why not give you a few pictures of my father’s childhood home and my grandparent’s life.

My father was born in October of 1925 in Capetown, South Africa.

Now, if you knew my father you would never have guessed that he was born anywhere but Texas. You would never know that his father spoke with a Scottish accent and his mother spoke with a German accent, because all Robbie Thompson sounded like was a Texan through and through. His drawl was long, and like any true Texan, he never met a stranger, and he drank coffee with everything.

His mother, my Nannie, once told me that she could see Table-top mountain from her hospital window when she was giving birth to him. Here’s a picture of my father’s father when he was a tot. He was younger than two here. His brother and sister are in the picture. I met his sister when I was a child. She came to visit us. I remember she was very proper sounding.

My great grandfather was a hotelier in Durban, SA. When my grandfather was born in Glasgow, Scotland, his father took the rest of the family and went by wooden ship to Durban, leaving my grandfather and his mom in Glasgow until he was two at which time they took another ship and went to Durban. Here’s a picture of my grandfather’s parents:

My grandfather was a preacher for the government of S.A. He was assigned to provide protestant services to the Rangers at the ranger stations.Here’s a picture of him working in a native hut:

He and my grandmother were allowed to live in a caboose kitted out like a home. Here’s a picture:

The caboose was attached to the train and pulled to a ranger station and left on a side line. The train would travel all the way around the country of S. A. until they came back to that station. The caboose was reattached and taken to the next ranger station and so on. This went on for ten years. My father was born in 1925 and my aunt was born in 1928. My father lived on the caboose for seven years. Here’s a picture of my father and my aunt Ruth:

Here’s a picture of my grandfather, grandmother, father and Ruth:

Here’s another picture: My grandmother was born in Weimar, TX. Even though she lived in S. A. she always loved Texas best of all. She could travel anywhere in the world and she always wanted to come home to Texas more than anything else. She was German. You probably know that there is a huge population of Germans and Czechoslovakian here in Texas. Galveston was second to Ellis Island for taking in immigrants. In the late 1800’s there were a lot of Slavic and Baltic people coming to the U.S. My grandmother’s parents were from Prussia. She was a first generation American.

She did not speak English until first grade. But after WWII she would not admit to knowing German, she was ashamed of what happened in Germany. But when I was a very small child she sang lullabies to us in German. I guess she thought we would never remember them, but I do.

The Writing Life

The Events in Austin

April 10, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

Unfortunately, the awards ceremony on the capital steps is cancelled because of the expected storm and rain between 12 and 3 tomorrow in Austin. However, I’ll still get the award. Sadly, the governor of Texas will not likely be at the awards dinner.

I will be at TLA on Wednesday. TLA or Texas Librarian’s Association is a conference that most librarians in Texas attend each year. The organizers have big-name authors there signing books. One year that I attended (as a helper) Gary Paulsen was signing books. You remember him? He wrote Hatchet. I loved that book about the little boy who used his wits to survive in the Canadian wilderness after the small plane he was a passenger in went down. Who could ever forget the skunk and the bear scene in the cave?

So I’ll be there signing books. If you live in the Austin area, come by and see me.

The Writing Life

http://deartexas.info/calendar/Kick_Off.html

March 27, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 3 Comments

If you’ll glance at this link, you’ll see what’s happening in Austin on April 11. I’m receiving an award for first place from the Texas Association of Authors on the capital steps that day.

http://deartexas.info/calendar/Kick_Off.html.

The Writing Life

A Great March Event(s!)

March 12, 2015 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Call me crazy but the Houston Writer’s Guild is putting on a mini-conference the day before my daughter’s wedding.

The mini-conference info is here: March 28 Pre-convention Conference Flyer full Page

As you can imagine I’m a bit busy with a lot of things going on at the moment. But I did want to let you all know that I’m well, and I’m excited about the wedding.

Take care of yourself. All the best!

The Writing Life

This Free Webinar Looks Great!

January 30, 2015 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Free is always good.

When PR by the Book offered to give us this free webinar about Twitter for our Houston Writer’s Guild Members I jumped at the chance and accepted.

I’m extending this invitation to join to those following me here.

Here’s more about what it’s about.

Does thought of having to tweet make you cringe? If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it can just seem like a lot of useless noise. But if you’re Twitter savvy, there are several tips and tricks to finding your target audience and having quality conversations with them, all while generating awareness about your book.

Join PR by the Book’s Director of Digital Marketing, Sima Thakkar, on Thursday, February 5th at 11 AM CST to learn about:

– How to find your target audience

– Twitter best practices – how often, how many post, and types of posts

– How to measure your results

This looks fabulous! No matter what business you are in, if you are trying to get someone to take a look then Twitter is a good place to start. Please sign up for this webinar. You can save it and view later if you like. Don’t delay!

Author Blog Tour

Hosting the Blog Tour of JOHN FIORAVANTI

January 27, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 19 Comments

THE GENESIS SAGA TOUR

I’m grateful to my host of this eighth post of THE GENESIS SAGA TOUR, and to Nonnie Jules of 4WillsPublishing who arranged it all! The full lineup for this tour can be found @ http://wp.me/P43s9i-2g

My purpose, is to give readers a greater familiarity with planet Genesis – within the Equations universe created by author and friend, Kenneth Tam.

To this end, we embarked upon a series of interviews of some key players in Book One of The Genesis Saga: PASSION & STRUGGLE. Nonnie Jules of the famed interviews, ‘Who’s On The Shelf With Nonnie Jules?’ agreed to lend her formidable skills to this process. She gave me the nickname “Fio” a while back – so keep that in mind in case she opts to use it!

Nonnie and I have followed our host, Professor Marco Rossini, back into the kitchen of his home on the University of Genesis City (UGC) campus. Marco found an apron in a storage slider and handed it to Nonnie to put on. She reads the writing imprinted on the material and immediately lashes out at her host.

NJ: (Indignantly) Marco! You expect me to wear this sexist apron?? (Marco opens his mouth to explain, but Nonnie continues…) Well sir! You have misjudged me and…

MR: (Holding his hands up in surrender) Nonnie, please! It’s just a joke between Pat Conroy and me. He gave it to me as a gift before the Quest Fleet left Genesis almost five years ago.

NJ: (Somewhat mollified) Oh. I feel silly. (Turns to Fio) Maybe it’s time…

JF: To help me with the salad. Tell you what, I’ll chop the lettuce and you chop that onion over here…

An hour and two glasses of wine later, the trio sit at the kitchen table to enjoy their meal. Marco tells his visitors a couple of stories about growing up with the Conroy brothers in Darymanis City, until Nonnie reminds Marco of his promise.

MR: Of course… Divine Scepter! Now that was one impressive ship!

Any way one looks at this starship, it was a technological marvel. It was built over a fifteen-year period by the Untied Nations Space Agency (UNSA) in their Lunar Yard facility, and completed late in 2084. Divine Scepter, originally intended as a long-range exploration ship, had design features that made it possible to expand the ship’s size from parts manufactured aboard.

The industrial deck, dubbed the Plant, was prodigious. It housed massive, computer-driven fabricators – evolved from 3D printers created earlier in the century. The fabricators along with the huge stores of raw materials made Scepter a self-sufficient entity in space. In the Plant, both civil and military needs were met: from weapons to domestic appliances to computers, and the like. Spare parts were manufactured at will.

NJ: Hey Fio, that sounds just like Star Trek!

MR: (Looks to John in his confusion) Star Trek? Is that another ship?

JF: (Gives Nonnie a look) Not sure, Marco. Continue, please. (Marco shrugs and carries on.)

When they decided to use the colonizer, to assist a select group to escape from Earth and the Omega virus, ship designers and builders were among the technical specialists chosen to board Scepter. The original ship had seventy-five hexagonal pods attached to each other and to the outer hull of Scepter. Each pod had an access hatch to each pod it touched as well as to the interior of the ship’s hull. Exoskeletons of new pods were manufactured in the Plant and assembled on the hull’s surface, where the assembly specialists were protected by Scepter’s shields.

The residential pods were small cities with roughly 20,000 citizens each. As the population grew, new pods could and were built throughout the ninety-five year voyage to Genesis. They resembled the towns and small cities on Earth, with comfortably large attached housing units, schools, entertainment centers and business districts all connected by streets laid out in grids. The lighting within the pods mimicked the shifting shades and hues of natural daytime light on Earth’s surface. When appropriate, the pod’s ‘sky’ went dark and street illumination was activated.

NJ: No wonder JoJo didn’t realize he was in a space ship! (Marco smiles and continues.)

Some specialty pods produced food products, safe water, and oxygen for the entire ship community. Others housed research labs, higher educational facilities, and hospitals. Many of Earth’s plant species were preserved in bio-pods. A defensive force field was designed to surround and protect the ship from space matter and attacks from any alien encounters.

Within the ship’s hull were many decks connected by high-speed vertical elevators, called ‘Lifts’ and horizontal transport tubes. The transport vehicles that traveled the various ‘Tubes’ were dubbed ‘Bullets’. So moving from upper to lower decks was as quick as moving aft to forward, and port to starboard. The interior decks housed the propulsion, navigation, environmental systems, weapons systems, and the military. The Crusader Army controlled by the Church was larger and better equipped than the Navy Marine Corps. Navy personnel controlled and navigated the ship. These two military groups were housed on different decks at opposite ends of Scepter. The massive Landing Bay occupied the aft section of the ship, four decks high. Several shuttle craft of differing sizes and purpose occupied about one-third of the Bay.

For ninety-five years, this mighty starship – the only one of its kind – carried the hopes and dreams and the only remnants of humankind remaining in existence, to their final destination. Genesis would be humanity’s new beginning.

NJ: (Stifles a yawn) Thank you Marco, you’re very sweet. I’ve enjoyed our visit a

lot, but Fio, I think it’s time…

JF: (Reaches out and touches Nonnie’s arm.) As you wish…

Join us tomorrow for another adventure with Nonnie and… Fio!

Author Bio:

John Fioravanti is a retired secondary school educator who completed his thirty-five year career in the classroom in June, 2008.

Throughout his career, John focused on developing research, analysis, and essay writing skills in his History Classroom. This led to the publication of his first non-fiction work for student use, Getting It Right in History Class. A Personal Journey to the Heart of Teaching is his second non-fiction work; it attempts to crystallize the struggles, accomplishments, and setbacks experienced in more than three decades of effort to achieve excellence in his chosen field.

John’s first work of fiction is Passion & Struggle and is set within Kenneth Tam’s Equations universe (Iceberg Publishing). He claims that, after two non-fiction books, he’s having the time of his life bringing new stories and characters to life!

At present, John lives in Waterloo, Ontario with Anne, his bride of forty-one years. They have three children and three grandchildren. In December of 2013, John and Anne founded Fiora Books for the express purpose of publishing John’s books.

The Genesis Saga Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqwuCcAEyU

Contacts:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fiora-Books/516763875088924?ref=hl

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FioraBooks

Website: https://fiorabooks.cm

Book Purchase Links:

Amazon USA: http://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B00O7X5SXK/

Amazon Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/ebook/dp/B00O7X5SXK/

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/ebook/dp/B00O7X5SXK/

Amazon Australia: http://www.amazon.com.au/ebook/dp/B00O7X5SXK/

Chapters/Indigo Canada: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/9780993655821

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/1120573892?ean=9780993655821

Blog Tour Links:

Goodreads Event Page – https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/953117-the-genesis-saga-tour

Rafflecopter Giveaway Page – http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/4af5be7f10/?

“This tour sponsored by 4WillsPublishing.wordpress.com.”

The Writing Life

For teachers and librarians who love free books

January 10, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

But there is a catch. There is always a catch, right?

The catch is we need reviewers.

The Houston Writers Guild would like to put together an independent review board made up of teachers and librarians who are not writers but who love to read. Our reviewers would receive a free book of their chosen genre in either an ebook or actual book along with a check sheet with space to comment. We need reviewers to review books written by our members. Each book will either be approved or disapproved by three individual reviewers who normally read that genre. These approved books would then be highlighted on the Houston Writer’s Guild website.

This is a good opportunity for librarians and teachers to acquire some free books. I can say that a lot of the books available are really good, but I’m not that unbiased. Although I am a highly critical reader.

If you are an interested librarian or teacher, or know someone who is, please use the “contact me” page to let me know.

The other thing I want to mention is the HWG state of the guild address, which will take place Tuesday evening January 13 at the Westchase Marriot at 2900 Briarpark Drive from 6-8. Come have happy hour with us and find out what inspirational and amazing things will be happening with HWG.

The Writing Life

The New Year

January 4, 2015 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

I just received some incredible news and I can’t talk about it. Sorry about that. But I can say that 2015 is already taking the shape of an exciting year.

With the wonderful news of my daughter’s up-coming marriage, and the great conference in April for Houston Writer’s Guild, I can talk about a few great things to come.

My daughter is marrying a kindhearted, loving young man who, when he proposed to my daughter, gave my little grand daughter a ring at the same time. That’s what precious memories are made of.

The upcoming conference will be at the Houston Marriot Westchase in April. There are a lot of details that we will be adding to the houstonwritersguild.org website soon.

For some this past year wasn’t easy. I’m so sorry if that was the case for you. I know the sad things happen, the horrible things, the crushing things, because we live in a world that, as C. S. Lewis described it, is bent. Some day this world will be straightened. I hope that your new year will have only the best in it. This is short. I really wanted to simply get on here to wish all of you wonderful friends a brilliant 2015 and the same to all your loved ones.

Author Blog Tour

Blog Tour: Meet JEFFREY VON GLAHN

December 18, 2014 Rebecca Nolen 2 Comments

Today’s blog tour is with Dr. Jeffrey Von Glahn.

Jessica had always been haunted by the fear that the unthinkable had happened when she had been “made-up.” For as far back as she could remember, she had no sense of a Self. Her mother thought of her as the “perfect infant” because “she never wanted anything and she never needed anything.” As a child, just thinking of saying “I need” or “I want” left her feeling like an empty shell and that her mind was about to spin out of control. Terrified of who––or what––she was, she lived in constant dread over being found guilty of impersonating a human being.Jeffrey VonGlahn, Ph.D., an experienced therapist with an unshakable belief in the healing powers of the human spirit, and Jessica blaze a trail into this unexplored territory. As if she has, in fact, become an infant again, Jessica remembers in extraordinary detail events from the earliest days of her life––events that threatened to twist her embryonic humanness from its natural course of development. Her recollections are like listening to an infant who could talk describe every psychologically dramatic moment of its life as it was happening.

When Dr. Von Glahn met Jessica, she was 23. Everyone regarded her as a responsible, caring person – except that she never drove and she stayed at her mother’s when her husband worked nights.

For many months, Jessica’s therapy was stuck in an impasse. Dr. Von Glahn had absolutely no idea that she was so terrified over simply talking about herself. In hopes of breakthrough, she boldly asked for four hours of therapy a day, for three days a week, for six weeks. The mystery that was Jessica cracked open in dramatic fashion, and in a way that Dr. Von Glahn could never have imagined. Then she asked for four days a week – and for however long it took. In the following months, her electrifying journey into her mystifying past brought her ever closer to a final confrontation with the events that had threatened to forever strip her of her basic humanness.

Twitter Handle: @JeffreyVonGlahn
Website: http://jeffreyvonglahn.com

Purchase Link for book: http://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Autobiography-Jeffrey-Von-Glahn-ebook/dp/B00IUCKOD8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418530951&sr=1-1&keywords=JESSICA+by+jeffrey+von+glahn

This excerpt is the extreme lengths Jessica went to to avoid seeing herself in a mirror. Here she’s 17.

She stood in front of her dresser. Behind her, on the other side of the room, a small lamp on the nightstand next to her bed cast a pale yellow glow. Pictures of dogs with soulful eyes hung from the sky-blue walls.

She reached for her hairbrush on the dresser and slowly raised her arm until her hand was poised just above her head. Then she locked her arm in place. With her eyes glued to the silhouette of her head directly in front of her, she tightened her grip on the brush. With a slow, deliberate stroke, she guided it through her long, brown hair. As her arm moved downward, her eyes tracked the moving shadow on the wall. Her mind automatically cemented into place the trace of the brush. The mental image of the slightly curved arc on the wall was her only guide as to where to comb next, besides a sixth sense based on touch. After several minutes of concentrating on her silhouette, Jessica decided she had run her brush through her hair about as many times as it usually took to get a compliment. She quietly placed it back on the dresser.

Jessica had always been terrified of mirrors. As far back as she could remember, mirrors seemed to exist for one reason: to torment her. Any reflecting surface was like a torture chamber that held a sinister being whose only goal was to take pleasure in her misery. Whenever her antennae failed to warn her and she unexpectedly caught a glimpse of herself in one, she felt a terrifying urge to rocket backward and shriek, “Who are you?!”

This tour sponsored by 4WillsPublishing.wordpress.com