misfitmccabe.com Archives ⋆ Be the Cat

Construction Coming Soon to Griffie World

Liana Gardner — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:01:26 +0000

Griffie World, my main website will soon be under construction. I think I’m going to (finally) bite the bullet and upgrade it this weekend. So, if you stop by, please excuse the dust (isn’t there always dust with construction?), and the two by fours laying all over the place. I want to get it torn down and back up as quickly as possible, so hopefully the interruption will be minimal.

Why am I revamping the site? Well, when I had just the one site, management was pretty easy and I was able to utilize existing software and knowledge to create the environment I wanted. But, I have now outgrown that format and want to add a little pizzaz, and I need to integrate my sites to have the same look and feel to them. With Griffie World Happenings (this blog), it will be a little easier and faster because the site is already in the right format for conversion to a new theme. This is the same for Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?, my traveling book site.

So, don’t be surprised when you see the construction sign go up at Griffie World.

Oh, by the way, if you’re wondering if I am avoiding working on Nowhere Feels Like Home, I’m not. It is still in the content/copy editing process by other people, so I don’t want to make too many changes to it. The sequel to Nowhere Feels Like Home? Well, I have been working on chapter 1 (first chapters always go slow for me), but I don’t want to get too far into it, just in case there is a drastic change which needs to be made to Nowhere Feels Like Home.

———————————————————————————————–
LK Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit: Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
For other e-book formats, visit Smashwords.com
To read book reviews by LK Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

The post Construction Coming Soon to Griffie World appeared first on Be the Cat.

LA Times Book Festival ~ Day 1

Liana Gardner — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:32:48 +0000

The day was absolutely gorgeous. Sunlight streamed down from blue skies and the air remained cool from the breeze that blew through the campus. We could not have asked for better weather to join several thousand visitors and exhibitors on the UCLA campus today, to celebrate the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Denny and I arrived just shortly after the opening of the festival and Denny was completely awestruck with the number of people who were already there. We first wanted to get the lay of the land and determined that we should first find the booth in which I would later be conducting a signing and then find those essential items, such as food (Denny) and bathrooms (me).

I participated in the event with the AuthorsDen.com online literary community. AuthorsDen.com is an online community of authors where registered authors can post their books, publish articles, update people on events that they will be participating in, etc. AuthorsDen.com garners the traffic of over one million readers per month and provide the authors with additional exposure and web presence. I have personally found that the more content I have on AuthorsDen.com, the more people click through to either other articles or to my external links that I scatter judiciously through all of my content, such as to my website, blog, and traveling book site, as well as to the locations to purchase Misfit McCabe. AuthorsDen.com has just decided to start becoming involved with events, and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is their first venture. Matt and Jackie Miller were very welcoming to all of the authors, and I can’t thank Jenny enough for all of her assistance throughout the day. The tent was one of the larger ones, and we were located directly across from the culinary stage, and right by one of the food courts (which solved Denny’s issue of where we would find something to eat.)

My signing time went very well. I had steady traffic throughout my time and spoke to quite a few people, handed out lots of bookmarks, and even sold a couple of books. If tomorrow goes as well, I will be quite satisfied with the weekend. I brought along not only copies of Misfit McCabe in the original cover, but I had a few books printed with potential new covers to see what people seemed to be drawn to. So far the results are not conclusive, but there is still tomorrow. Interestingly enough, younger children and boys in my target age group were drawn to the original cover and grabbed the marketing materials I had on hand with the original cover picture. Starting with my target age girls and all adults were drawn to the new covers.

I had a nice chat with Chareline Sanders, who is currently taking some business classes, and she purchased a signed copy of Misfit McCabe in one of the new covers. She will be sharing not only my book, but the marketing materials, including a poster, as well with her instructor, so I am quite excited by that. I will go into some of the marketing things I have seen at the festival as well as posting some pictures that help to illustrate the sheer volume of people attending this event. I will just say, the children’s book area was nuts!! As it is now late, and I am worn out, it’s time to call it a night so I can wake up fresh in the morning and start the process all over again.

The post LA Times Book Festival ~ Day 1 appeared first on Be the Cat.

Book Festival

Liana Gardner — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:35:29 +0000

I am very please and excited to be scheduled to attend the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books taking place Saturday, April 25, 2009 and Sunday, April, 26, 2009. Of course, I have a lot of stuff to pull together to get ready. I need more bookmarks, more books, and all sorts of other things that go along with getting the word out there about Misfit McCabe and I’m thinking about having some items for Nowhere Feels Like Home as well. Just to start interest growing for the next installment. Plus, I’ll have some posters on hand for Where in the World is Misfit McCabe? so that any educators, book sellers, or even Girl Scout leaders who would like to display one may do so.

I will be scheduling some time for book signings, and am generally excited about the networking opportunities. The theme appears to be along the lines of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a staple of the preschool set, which is having its 40th anniversary.

I also plan to go through the list of authors expected to attend to see if I can hunt down a few of my favorites. If you happen to be in the area – tickets are free. I’d love to see you there.

The post Book Festival appeared first on Be the Cat.

Nowhere Feels Like Home – Tentative Chapter List

Liana Gardner — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:34:50 +0000

Last night, or rather early this morning, I went through and did a tentative chapter naming for Nowhere Feels Like Home. Most of the names are set, but a few may change. I’m going to have to live with the chapter titles for a few days to see how well I like them, plus during the editing phase, which I am still in, these things do have a tendency to change. The titles are:

Dreading the Day **Untitled** Reliving the Nightmare
Out of Sarah’s Past
Bad Boy Rusty Motorcycle Ride **Untitled** Family Rift Overprotective Cousins
Overprotective Cousins Whiskey Kisses
Slander Anyone? Slander
Matchmaker Midge
The Accident
Keeping Secrets
Hiding Timmy Runaway
Crankiness Rising
Managing Anger Take a Deep Breath
The Deal is Done Admission of Guilt
The Talk
Added chapter Retaliation
Sneaking Out
Return to School Tell It To The Marines New Beginnings

Don’t get too wedded to these names as even this morning some of them are up for the chop. But, it helps me to have names for the chapters, so I feel good to have a list to start playing with.

**Addendum** – I’ve decided to edit the list every time I change a chapter heading just for fun to keep the list up to date, but leave the old title as well using strikethrough, so we can see how many changes the titles underwent before publication.

The post Nowhere Feels Like Home – Tentative Chapter List appeared first on Be the Cat.

Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Visuals

Liana Gardner — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:05:39 +0000

Every morning my commute takes me down the backside of the happiest place on earth (now there is a blog waiting to be written) and I always enjoy watching the employees on their way from the parking lot to the job. Sometimes I see solitary workers hustling across the street as I wait at the stoplight and sometimes it’s a whole group. Today I saw two men wearing faded blue jeans, with dark gray sweatshirts, holding identical red & white Igloo coolers. You know the kind I mean, the ones that hold a twelve pack and still have room for a sandwich or two. The both had white construction helmets on their head as well. As they crossed the street in the cross walk, they walked side by side in almost military precision, with shoulders squared and eyes straight ahead. As I sat there watching the duo I knew I wanted to use that as a description in a book sometime. They had a very uniform look, from the way they were dressed down to the swing of the Igloo coolers they both carried. The sun shone down to give the helmets and the white on the cooler a brightness that would have been lacking on a gloomy day. They could have been the Stepford husbands on their way to the job.

It’s not a description that I can work into my current project, but I committed the brief encounter to memory for future use. Then as I continued past Magic Way, I wondered how many times writers do what I had done. Experience something and as you are experiencing it, you are also tucking it away for future use. I think I do it without even realizing it most of the time. The other description I will definitely use one day is the row of palm trees that line the street and how on a gorgeous day in Mickey Mouse land, the palm fronds glisten in the sunlight as it streams down, and the the tips sway back and forth in the gentle breeze. Just the memory of those moments gives me a feeling of peace and contentment. Every experience in life, no matter how small, can be summoned up as a writer to use as background, integrated into a character, or provide the turning point for your work. Who’s to say how or even when you will use it in the future.

Without experience to draw on, could we write?

———————————————————————————————–

LK Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

The post Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Visuals appeared first on Be the Cat.

Weekend Updates

Liana Gardner — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:58:16 +0000

The design of my blog has been updated. I have more closely integrated the traveling book site, Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?, and put the link in a tab at the top of the blog (WITW is MMC). I have added a nav tab at the top to Griffie World in preparation for the revamp of that website, and have added a separate tab for the list of Book Reviews which I have done. I am also working on the tab for the Young Writers Series articles, but still need to do a little clean up on those which did not convert well, when originally imported.

My plan was to get a lot of editing done this weekend. Unfortunately, my mind was stuck on revamping my website and I ended up at war with myself over modifications or editing. Then I got the sucker punch from puppy dog eyes.

I decided (on some foolish whim) to integrate The Paw Princess Diary into this blog, but to have a separate tab to display those posts and not mix them in on the front page. Sounds simple enough right? An entire day later, I have finally accomplished what I set out to do. One of the issues was that the creation of the page to pull the information by category worked great, except for the fact that it broke the navigation, so that you couldn’t look at older posts. I finally found something indicating that this was an issue with setting the category. And when I excluded the paw princess category from the front page, it broke the navigation there as well.

My page design was actually pretty slick, because I could put the post footer information into the meta area and that meant I didn’t have to put it in each individual post. Imagine my chagrin, when I decided to sidestep the navigation issue by using a redirect to the category search, and therefore, the footer information in the meta area no longer applied. So, back to the editing function went I and now have updated all of the posts individually. I haven’t deleted the page template, because ultimately I would still like to find out why the use of query posts would break the navigation. I found a plugin to allow me to exclude the category from the front page (without breaking navigation), so I may (later. . .much later) look at that code to see if I can get an idea as to how to unbreak it for the query post on the template.

While I got actually quite a bit accomplished, it wasn’t what I had planned. I guess I’ll just have to get it done during the week.

———————————————————————————————–

The post Weekend Updates appeared first on Be the Cat.

Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Twitterizing the Workplace

Liana Gardner — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:25:37 +0000

I was chatting online with fellow author, Shannon Yarbrough (Stealing Wishes, The Other Side of What) this morning before getting ready for work about a post on Twitter. I noticed that he posted that he was staying home from work due to illness and commented on it as our communication continued. Then, as we went far afield on several different topics, he had to take a break so he could call work and let them know that he wasn’t coming. I had to laugh. What if we used Twitter as a device to call-in to work, instead of using a telephone.

Of course, since on the way to work myself not long after that thought, I mused over the different possiblities that invoking the Twitter mentality in the workplace could foster. Just think of it. . .managers would check those that they are following on twitter every morning to see whether anyone would not be arriving at the work place as expected. What if the employee blocked the manager so that they couldn’t see their updates?

Every company has them. The people who go on and on and on and on in email and never quite get to the point. Just think how implementing the Twitter mentality in email would be. Everyone would be limited to a certain number of characters, so they couldn’t waste all that time typing up their latest dissertation to confuse the masses with and would have to get to the point. Straight to the point every email. No room for fluff. And for those who tend to pontificate and never say anything of value – that’s the beauty of the block function. Most companies would save paper because those employees who insist on printing out their emails so that they can be maintained in paper files, would now be reduced to printing a single page which could contain several communications.

(Now, this one’s my favorite) Meetings. . .I’m in meetings all the time, and if not meetings then conference calls. Wouldn’t it be great to implement the 140 second rule? Once the time had passed, your turn is over and the floor turns over to someone else. We’d get them over with in record time, and you eliminate having to listen to someone drone on and on for an hour on a topic that actually has nothing to do with your job.

Let the Twitter revolution begin.
———————————————————————————————–

The post Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Twitterizing the Workplace appeared first on Be the Cat.

Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Griffie World

Liana Gardner — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:11:12 +0000

This morning as I was driving along, I started thinking about change. Most of us don’t like change when it is thrust upon us, and I’m no exception to that. At work we have been trying to keep all of the machines running although they are getting up there age-wise and are definitely past their use-by date. I’ve been hording some laptops that we were given to use as replacements for a couple of reasons. Once you replace an old laptop with a new one, the breakage rate increases astronomically in a wave of me-too longing, as soon as someone else sees that there is a new laptop to have. Now mind you, my stock is a handful, so I have to control the release to do the least damage. We have gone through all of our stock on hand of the old laptop models and have used them for parts until we now no longer have any parts left that are usable.

How does this relate to change for me? Well, in order to keep the status quo, I am having to take on one of the new laptops so that my current/old laptop can be used for parts. Most people would be thrilled with this event. I’m not for a couple of reasons. I know that the unit I now have due to putting my old laptop on the chopping block is only temporary, so I will have to go through the process of transferring all of my pertinent files again in the near future (whenever they finally break down and decide the time is right to buy new equipment). So, that’s an inconvenience and I’ll get over it.

The screen on the new unit is wider, but shorter. I’d love if it were wider and the same height, but shorter? Come on. Ok, I’ll get over that too – eventually. But as I was driving along musing over the fact that I was bugged by a change that would have thrilled most, it hit me. The old laptop had a software on it that I am not going to install on the new one as we are driving away from it, and I need to let go as well because I no longer use it for work.

The issue? I do use it to work with my website on occasion and will now be forced to do what I have actually wanted to do for awhile, which is change platform for how the Griffie World website is set up. I’ve been meaning to, but don’t actually want to go through the pain of again rebuilding the whole thing. There are so many reasons that I should. Better integration of the website and blog being a primary factor, plus some of the additional flexibility/functionality that I will have at my fingertips that I don’t have to build from scratch, like I do with the current website.

So, while I’m thinking about revamping the website, the characters in Nowhere Feels Like Home and its sequel were popping up to say Not so fast. I realized that they are right. Before I can even think about revamping the site, I need to get the editing process completed on Nowhere Feels Like Home because I don’t want to lose the momentum on the project. In the meantime, thoughts of what I would like to do with Griffie World kept surfacing and I really am going to have to figure out how to carve a little more time out of the day. There truly are not enough hours to do what I want to do, as well as those things that I have to do.

Don’t look for a revised site in the near future. I’m going to have to get all of my ideas marshalled and map out my strategy, and besides Katie McCabe won’t let me work on that until I finish her story.

The post Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Griffie World appeared first on Be the Cat.

Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Traffic

Liana Gardner — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:08:54 +0000

Today, I thought that I might do a little blog about St. Patrick’s Day as I left for work wearing green pants and a blouse with some green in it. Maybe some musing on how much trouble you can get into drinking green beer (not that I have any personal experience with that), or perhaps some leprechaun lore, to help celebrate the day. But, instead, I got sidetracked by traffic. Several people were driving like idiots this morning, so what starts going through my head? Not leprechauns, pots of gold, or even green beer (seriously, I’ve never even had a sip of it), but Star Trek. Ok, not all of Star Trek, just the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty.” as I sat in a line of unmoving traffic.

Which took me off course and I started to think about how it would be if we could actually beam places. No – wait! I don’t want to beam anywhere, I want to travel like Elizabeth Montgomery in her role as Bewitched! A little wiggle of the nose, with the appropriate sound affects, and bam you’re at your destination. No Scotty to have to rely on. Really, what would happen if Scotty had to answer the call of nature when Capt. Kirk and Spock really needed that beam? Samantha handled her own stuff. Plus, I can remember as a child trying to twinkle my nose like Tabitha and being very disappointed that it didn’t work in the same way. I mean after all, we were much the same age, we both had blue eyes, and we were both blondes with petite noses, so why didn’t mine work like hers did? She didn’t even have to wiggle it on her own. . .she could use her finger to help herself out.

Many times I tried to get my room to clean itself up, or the bed to make itself, and all with utter failure. Was it true, was a I mere mortal like Derwood, I mean Darren? And if Darren were such a mere mortal, then how could he change his appearance like that?

Well, now that I have really gone off the beaten path, it’s time to get back to editing Nowhere Feels Like Home. Do you think I can get it to edit itself if I wiggle my nose?

PS Letting my thoughts wander that way did take my mind of the fact that I was crawling along on the freeway, so maybe the nose wiggle did work.

———————————————————————————————–

The post Thoughts From the Morning Commute – Traffic appeared first on Be the Cat.

Let’s Read

Liana Gardner — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:19:08 +0000

I can’t believe that it’s almost over and I almost missed it! March 2nd is NEA (National Education Association) Read Across America day, which focuses on motivating children to read. The date for the celebration was chosen to coincide with the birthday of that childhood favorite Dr. Suess. (It’s ok, you can still like Dr. Suess as an adult. . .we won’t tell). I still can recall while in elementary school we had to write an essay on our favorite author or a poet or something like that. I really don’t remember the exact nature of the assignment, what I do remember was that my essay was on Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess, and I came to admire him not only as a children’s writer, but for all of his writing. It surprised and fascinated me that he also penned political cartoons during the war effort, in addition to writing illustrated books for adults. Just a few years ago, I was excited to be able to obtain a copy of The Seven Ladies Godiva. It was after the failure of this book to sell that Geisel is noted as stating that he’d rather write for kids because, “Adults are obsolete children, and the hell with them.”

Before this turns into a rewrite of my elementary school essay, let me get back to the actual topic of Read Across America. On the NEA website, they give a brief history of the event.

In May 1997, a small reading task force at NEA came up with a big idea. “Let’s create a day to celebrate reading,” the group decided. “We hold pep rallies to get kids excited about football. We assemble to remember that Character Counts. Why don’t we do something to get kids excited about reading? We’ll call it ‘NEA’s Read Across America’ and we’ll celebrate it on Dr. Seuss’s birthday.” And so was born on March 2, 1998, the largest celebration of reading this country has ever seen.

While not being an official participant this year, as I just found out about it, I feel like I am hosting my own Read Across America event with my traveling book project, Where in the World is Misfit McCabe? I have sent eight special edition copies of my young adult novel, Misfit McCabe out into the world where the purpose is for them to be read and passed to the next person. It will be very interesting to see how far they go. My whole reason for starting this project was to promote reading. I loved to read as a child and still do to this day. I firmly believe that children who are motivated to read, not only do better in school, but in their adult life as well.
———————————————————————————————–

LK Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe
in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

The post Let’s Read appeared first on Be the Cat.

Celebration Dance

Liana Gardner — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:00:52 +0000

I think I can finally come down from the clouds now. I finished writing the sequel to Misfit McCabe late Monday night, and inside have been dancing on table tops ever since. It is a fantastic feeling when you put that final period of a manuscript on the page.

I did a quick read through of the manuscript last night, and I do have some editing work cut out for me, but overall I am definitely pleased with the shape and the scope of the book. The good thing is that I also have set myself up for the next book, because apparently I’m writing a series (I wish the characters had clued me in to that a little earlier). There is definitely more story to be told.

This weekend I’ll be able to get into the editing process and will hopefully come up with a title. I usually give my books at least a working title prior to writing, but this one I deliberately didn’t try to title because I wasn’t sure where the book was going to end (I had a feeling once I started that it would develop into two books)

The post Celebration Dance appeared first on Be the Cat.

Recharging the Batteries

Liana Gardner — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:53:02 +0000

While it may appear that I have been not posting many messages of late, appearances can be deceiving. Since this past Saturday, I have been working almost exclusively on articles for the blog, but haven’t yet published any of them. The reason is that I have been been reading and reviewing books for the Lulu Book Review and now am 10 reviews ahead of the game. That should give me a few months to focus on some other things .

Friday night, I attended a concert in Laguna Beach put on by a friend of mine with the music of ABBA. It was really good. My friend, Saif was the director, the pianist, and pretty much running the whole show. I just sent him an email giving him what for, for not having his website launched yet, so you can see what he’s up to and where he’ll be next.

Anyway, the show was so good that it stuck with me for days, the music running through my head and never quite leaving me. Normally this wouldn’t have been an issue because I love music and would have just given in and sung along, probably prolonging the stay of the music in my head. Well, since I have been trying to get the sequel to Misfit McCabe written, I can only listen to certain music which helps to set my writing mood. Unfortunately, ABBA is not that music. For those of you who have read Misfit McCabe you will understand how ABBA just doesn’t fit the storyline.

Just to be clear, I am not the only writer who uses music to help the muse. Several authors use specific music to assist them in setting the mood for their writing and enable them to get into the world of their characters. Stephenie Meyer’s is one, and I recently ran across another author who listed on the acknowledgement page several bands that helped them write the book, although of course because I’m trying to remember who, I’m unable to right now.

So, I found myself taking a little break from writing the sequel. The good thing, I was able to read some books and recharge myself a little bit. It helped that the majority of the books that I read over the weekend were good and really helped to fill me back up. I was getting a little depleted with how hard I was working on the sequel. (I really am going to have to name this thing soon – I ususally can’t write without a working title at a minimum).

The characters are starting to invade my sleep again, so it is time for me to get back to work, and finish this thing up. If I don’t my characters are going to run away with the book (as if they hadn’t done that already) and I’ll be up to 5-6 books instead of working on two.

Imagination takes flight on the wings of fantasy.

———————————————————————————————–

LK Griffie
Visit me at Griffie World
To buy Misfit McCabe, visit my store at Lulu.com or purchase at Amazon.com
To track Misfit McCabe across the country, visit:
Where in the World is Misfit McCabe?
Own a Kindle? Download Misfit McCabe
in an instant.
To read book reviews by LK Griffie, visit: The Lulu Book Review

The post Recharging the Batteries appeared first on Be the Cat.