Your hobby?

What do you like to do, other than write?

Read.

2/6/2011


Alice..

My two passions are art, photography and oh
yes reading books..

Cheers..Joe

alice wrote:

What do you like to do, other than write?

I like reading. Is that considered a hobby?

Desktpp publishing. I wrote much of my own curriculum before I retired, and for several years after I moved here, I assisted the communications director at the church I attended. I learned a lot, including how to use WordPerfect, but I still prefer word, and I love working with graphics, but get frustrated with Photoshop, so I still use Print Shop.

It's very relaxing to put a concept together, just for the fun of doing it.

Ann

Ten years ago, I wrote a curriculum and supporting text and guides for the University of South Florida. It was designed as an interactive process rather than lecture -based. I wrote the text and guides in word perfect. It included a lot of special boxes, illustrations, references, etc.; but the project went quite smoothly. The materials were printed by the University in binders so students could add to their text and professors could add their own research.

My experience with Microsoft Word has never given me the ease with which I wrote those materials. During the same time, I wrote a program for the State of Florida to put a series of grants into an electronic system that accumulated demographic and performance data. The technical manual I wrote to accompany that program and instruct users was also written in Word Perfect. It was easy and flexible. The university printed those manuals also, and they looked like any off the shelf instructional text.

I later wrote a personnel manual and a policies and procedures manual for a corporation employing sixty employees and serving 15,000 customers. Both were tedious and cumbersome experiences compared to using World Perfect. I no longer have the shortcuts for Word Perfect in memory, so it is entirely lost to me. I felt it was a far superior product for my uses than struggling with Microsoft word and its updates. I've never developed the creative formatting skills and print-ready design that I used in past projects with Word Perfect.

My first word processing was with Word Perfect. I loved it. It was not practical in the work environment since company PC's had Word as a standard, and therefore I changed. I didn't know it was still being used.

We have many talented folks here.

I make all my own greeting cards on Printmaster 18. I don't like to buy cards because they never say what I want them to say.

Writing is my hobby so I'll go with the open source projects I'm involved with, MaXX Desktop and OpenCDE, writing documentation.

I used to use FrameMaker for my writing but now it's Windows only so I can't use it on my Unix laptop anymore.

Does anyone snowski, watersli, golf, hike, fish, etc.?

alice wrote:

What do you like to do, other than write?

When The Elf isn't writing, she can be found:

* wandering about the country and Canada (it's great having a job that is more like a hobby)
* at home she does fun stuff with the husband, the kids, the grandkids and family ... stuff like hiking, riding bicycles, riding the motorcycle, going up to Tahoe, going to Virginia City, enjoying husband's BBQ, visiting, going to the park, etc
* she likes to doodle ... it almost resembles drawing
* she likes to take pictures while on the road ... they almost resemble photography
* she likes to learn. she reads books on subjects like: astronomy, geography, nutrition, mythology, psychology, and other stuff
* she goes to the gym with her son
* she does yoga and GiGong
* she shops organic and tries to live green

... bottom line: her hobby is LIVING

JoElle,

Where is home?

Alice,
My official residence is in Northern Nevada. But I spend most of my time on the road.

Here's a couple of snapshots from the road and some doodles I did in my logbook:





Oh wait! I also LOVE to read nice steamy romance novels!!
With lots of goo-goo eyes, yummy kisses, and ... mmm!
It is like brain candy.

My current project - a working cover for the Hill Country Trilogy. On the upper right you can see the pink granite edge of Enchanted Rock. Still a work in progress, just trying to get a concept going.

JoElle,

How clever you both are!
Thanks for sharing.

Hobby? I don't have a hobby. No time for one. I'm too busy doing things I like to do to have a hobby.

Al,

Good--glad to hear it!

Ann, is the Aicey (sp?) book you were working on part of that trilogy?

LC wrote:

Ann, is the Aicey (sp?) book you were working on part of that trilogy?

Not really, LC, although she is there in spirit. Ailcy(you came very close) was a real person, my 3rd g-grandmother, and I have had a really hard time fictionalizing her story, so I've set it aside for a bit, and taken my writing in a new direction, one where the characters are all fiction.

I was named for Ailcy's daughter, Martha Ann. She married a Thorne. Their love story is really cool, and was going to be a sequel to Ailcy's book. Several of the major characters in this new trilogy are named Thorne. I did some research on the name's origin. My characters in this series are based on what I learned, but are also total fiction. I know nothing specific about my gg-grandfather's history other than that they were in Kentucky in 1850 ( from census records). My fictional Thornes may or may not have been connected.

The current trilogy has come from a series of journal entries I wrote some time ago - purely imaginary - about a series of heroes (male and female) and their connection to a mystical place that was all conjecture, involving a red stone with healing powers.

I recently happened upon information about this new (for me) place called Enchanted Rock, and realized it had much of the same significance as the red stone in my journal stories. So I decided to put them together. This trilogy is the result.

Daniel Thorne-Redstone is the hero of the first book. His daughter, "Maggie" for Magdalena, is the heroine of the next two. She meets, and is sort of involved (not giving away more, just yet) with a very distant cousin named Jack Thorne. Maggie is my way of honoring Ailcy's daughter, my gg-grandmother, Martha Ann, but by focusing on fiction, I am freer to let the story tell itself. It's coming together much faster this way.

At the same time, I am a historian, so the setting is real. Even the fantasy part is based on a real local legend.

Right now I am remembering an evening when my husband and I took the kids out for an informal dinner. Susan ordered a turkey sandwich. When it came to the table, it turned out to be this humongous pile of thin turkey slices between two halves of a sub roll. Susan looked at the server with her very expressive eyes and said, "I didn't want the whole bird."

I have a tendency, sometimes, to give people the whole bird. Sorry about the elongated answer to your question.

Ann

Ann,
I'm having a problem of a similar nature. I wrote about my family history - all true events, however there are some things that would cause grief to those still living. To fictionalize the story is a real problem for me. How do you handle that?

That's a good question, Abe. I had originally planned the family history to cover as much as I was able to learn about my mom's maternal ancestry. The earliest bit was a mention of "Sarah, the wife" on a land sale document in 1801 Virginia. This Sarah, I had learned through genealogical research, was Ailcy's grandmother. The family history from Martha Ann down was pretty well known, and I wanted to keep it going through the early 20th century, when my mother was a child. At the time I started, three of her brothers were still living. Every good story needs at least one villain. Mine had two: Ailcy's husband, who probably rode with William Quantrill during the Missouri-Kansas border wars, and who personally knew Frank and Jesse James. The other was Martha Ann's daughter, who was known for selecting certain family members, including my mother (her granddaughter) to treat cruelly.

I solved the latter by choosing to confine the story to the Civil War time period. I had planned to treat Ailcy's husband as honestly as I could, but keep my portrayal of him as objective as I possible, and let the readers decide whether he was a good guy or a bad one. He has quite a few living descendants, though I do not know them personally; that side of the family split away from the rest; so that was still a concern.

But, as I've said, reality kept getting in the way. The main characters in this series are all fictional people. The historical figures are peripheral, but the statements made about them are recorded fact. Samuel Maverick, for instance, was a real person who was known to have been at the Battle of Bandera Pass in 1842, with the Texas Rangers, when they first used the early Colt pistols, which could fire five times without reloading. and changed the balance of power between the native Comanches and the white intruders. Since Daniel Redstone is a complete fiction, Maverick didn't actually shoot him, but he did shoot more than a few of the real Penateka who were present that day.

I will borrow bits and pieces of the known love story between Martha Ann Richardson and Perry Wayne Thorne, my gg-grandparents, when I write about Maggie Redstone and Jack Thorne, and Maggie's parents, Daniel and Maria, met at the same time, historically, as David and Ailcy, and Maggie will be born on the same day and year as Martha Ann, but that will be about where the similarity ends.

It's easier this way, and nobody gets hurt.

Ann

Thanks Ann,
Perhaps I can use the civil war as a basis. On the way to Gettyburg, Jeb Stuart rode through Wellsville, Pa., and his troops stole some horses from David March my great grandfather. David put in a claim for the loss, but it was never paid.
Also JEB's troops cleaned out the Harness store in Wellsville and paid them with Confederate money. That was as good as paying nothing.

Anyway, you've given me some ideas.

Thnks again,
Abe

Abe F. March wrote:

Ann,
I'm having a problem of a similar nature. I wrote about my family history - all true events, however there are some things that would cause grief to those still living. To fictionalize the story is a real problem for me. How do you handle that?

Abe,
Are the true events about the people still living, or are they about now-dead ancestors of those people?

Al,
it is about the dead ancestors, however what I wrote would have a negative impact on those still living.

In order to stay sane in this world I have decided to designate LIFE as my only hobby everything else is work!