A while ago I was invited to participate in “ A Tour Through Blogland,” also known as “The Virtual Blog Tour Award.” When my nominator, Linda from Nutstrok, https://nutrstrok.wordpress.com introduced me to this project, I was immediately intersted and excited. Afterall, it has to do with our creative writing process, and allows other bloggers to know the ins and out of how and what we write. Linda comes from a long line of storytellers. The hilarious, mishap stories about her mother are heading toward an E-book. Her mother’s growing up during the great depression is a longer book project in the works. Visit her blog site, there are more stories for you to enjoy.

Now, the rules for this project:

1. Pass the tour on to up to four other bloggers.
2. Give them the rules and a specific Monday to post.
3. Answer 4 questions about your creative process which lets other bloggers and visitors know what inspires you to do what you do.

The last part of Tour Through Blogland is to write a one-time article which is to be posted on a Monday (the date supplied by your nominator). This article can be in the same post in which you answered the 4 questions. The article can be anything of your choosing.

Please see my article presentation Author Showcase after the 4^th question.

The date supplied by my nominator is Monday, January 19, 2015. The date changed to Sunday, January 18, 2015. On the 19^th, I’m on-call to be with my best friend who is in the hospital.

The date my nominees have been supplied by me is Monday January 16. 2015, or February 2, 2015. It’s their choice.

Drum roll please! My 2 nominees are:

Sally Georgina Cronin – http://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com

Nicholas C. Rossis – http://nicholasrossis.me

My 3rd nominee, Teagan Riordain Geneviene http://teagansbooks.wordpress.com was unable to participate in the Tour Through Blogland at this time, however I’d like to acknowledge her incredible work as an author. Teagan writes fantasy fiction. Her urban fantasy, Atonement Tennessee was a 2012 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWrMo) winner, and she published it on Christmas Eve 2013. She has more book projects written up on her blog site.

A blog post introducing the Interactive Serial with a new late 19th century setting, and new characters caught my interest right away. Fellow bloggers contribute a mix of food related things and random things and she takes these and writes each episode spontaneously according to how that “set of three” inspires her. The first set of three contributions was Copper, Alchemist, and a Woman in Trousers. I read the story she created and thought, how did she ever weave those ingredients together and come up with such a well-crafted, clever story. I was fascinated by how her mind works! I can’t wait for the next episode. I’m trying hard to come up with three ingredients to send to her. Visit her blog site, read her versatile writing, and join the Interactive Serial fun!

                                           Copper!                                            Woman in Trousers!

Questions Section About My Creative Process

1. What are you working on at the moment?

I’m ambitious and working on three books! The 1^st book, my own. Happily Ever After is about my life from age five as a kid growing up in small town, Lovell, Maine, to around age twenty when I lived in a good sized city, Danbury, Connecticut, and I graduated from nursing school. I ask you what five year old girl knows she wants to be nurse at that age, and lives the part. That’s me! There are real life stories to prove it, but with some creative enhancements to keep readers’ interest.

The 2^nd book, Before Sundown everyday, I’m coauthor with a dear friend, in his mid-eighties, who lives in Lugano, Switzerland. It’s a true, old fashioned love story of his 60 plus year marriage to his teenage sweetheart, and that’s where the story begins. He and his wife lived in five countries over fifty years. I can say it’s not the classic dry, ho-hum, old-fashioned love story. Humor is the front runner and there’s plenty of it, even in the face of tragedy.

The 3^rd book, Your True Self: the Logotherapy Way, I’m coauthor with a psychiatrist friend, who I worked with as a nurse practitioner in psychiatry. This book has a heavy meaning of life theme and plenty of reasons why the target audience, Baby Boomers, need to read it. You know all of that drama around raising kids, caring for aging parents, retirement, financial worries, etc. Sounds like a downer, but there are some up sides with Logotherapy work.

Blogging, blogging and more blogging. I’m trying to keep up with featuring friends’ adventures and successes, ideas that pop into my head and won’t go away until I write about them, and reading/commenting on fellow bloggers’ writing in blog posts. So, I’m working on balance to juggle everything and keep the creative thinking part of my brain working! Some of you might know from reading About Me on the blog site, Before Sundown, that if I need help with that, I make a little side-trip into my whimsical fairyland where I’m a beautiful princess wearing a velvet blue gown sprinkled with fairy dust. It’s a kid thing, when I was brave, optimistic, hopeful (and beautiful) and I could do all things big and small, like a Disney Princess super star. Works every time, I get right back to writing!

2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?

Two of the books are creative writing in memoir form. Real stories written like fiction. Plus, there’s a basic theme in each book that carries the story forward. The third book is non-fiction and it has a basic task for readers to work on to benefit from the book’s content. I believe the individual themes are strong and recognizable, and the content is easy to follow. I know many creative writing and non-fiction books have a message, however is it the same, from beginning to end. I’ve found many change as the story unfolds. In my work, readers are going to say, “Wow…I get it!”

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

It’s a compulsion to see words on paper and make some sense out of them. I started writing poetry years ago and liked making up short verse. I found that I had a knack for it and even published a few poems in a nursing journal. Over the years I experimented with writing essays and short stories, but nothing won a prize so I gave it up. I hadn’t learned yet about the show don’t tell rule, the balance of narrative and dialogue, the importance of style and voice, and the need for transitions. So, being a lifelong learner (even in my nursing career), I got a writing coach, completed a yearlong copyediting certificate program, took courses on how to write a Synopsis and a Book Proposal, then, just started writing, and rewriting and rewriting. At some point the words just started to fit into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and they were on their way to becoming books!

I do give credit to a best friend who was a terrific storyteller and had a story to tell. But, she got stuck on sentence structure, and I offered to help out and coauthor a book with her. By then, I knew a lot about the writing and copyediting process and I was itching to put it all together in a real “book.” We worked on it for a few years and got at least 400 draft pages written before she was struck down with a serious illness, and we opted to put the work on hold. So, there’s another book, or something similar to the original work, waiting to be written.

That’s the why do I write/create what I do. Picture thousands of words and punctuation marks crammed into the creative thinking spot mid-way between my right and left brain just waiting to find space on paper, and do their happy dance in a finished book!

4. How does my writing/creative process work?

The first bright idea or thought is quick, but from then on it’s a hard task to put structure to it. I work on an outline of where the story’s going and where it ends (learned from book proposal know how). But, doing the sections of the story comes as it will. I free write and add to it over a period of days. The rewriting goes on forever, and I love the process, it’s full of surprises. I know I copyedit too much. I can get stuck in sentence structure and grammar. I need to learn to put that off, and not interrupt the story flow. Most important is to stay on track, and lose all extra words, and that means most of those that end in ly, seriously!

When I’ve got a section or chapter close to finished, then I read it out loud. If something sounds off, I make a note on a gold (color of the sun) post-it! I do have readers; family members, good friends and now new blogger friends. I take in all comments and suggestions, and realize that what makes sense to me, because I know the story so well, might not make sense to a reader. And readers are most important to me.

Author Showcase… Author Showcase…Author Showcase

NOMINEE: Author Sally Georgina Cronin

Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life

http://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com

Sally lives in Spain currently, but plans to move back to the UK this year. She’s published books and developed Indie Moyhill Publishing. She has many talents as you can see by her impressive list of topics on her blog site. It’s exciting that her next projects are; a health book focused on care of the elderly at home, a people management development program, and a “novel.”

I’ve known Sally for a short time, however, I recognized her right at the start as a prolific, talented writer. Her interest in health and nutrition, focus on brain health, and care of the elderly at home is similar to my own interests over the past several years while working as a nurse practitioner in psychiatry, and now in retirement. Sally says it so well, keep your brain healthy, in her topic Brain Health –Dementia, Nutrition with articles about that on her site under the heading.

It’s a worth-while visit to her site, she offers a smorgasbord of information for all tastes!

Sally Georgina Cronin’s Impressive List of Topics on her Blog Site

Home,- About Me– Bone health– Brain Health – Dementia, Nutrition– Candida Albicans–Cholesterol and Blood Pressure– Endocrine system and Hormone production.–Food allergies & intolerances–Food Safety and Pharmacy–Guest contributors–My books–Nutrient Directory & Foods–Pet Health–Self-Publishing.–Skincare–Sugar Addiction–The Afternoon Video–The Food Pharmacy–The Sunday Shows–Weight Loss–Cook from Scratch–Dementia- Garry George Wilkes –Heart health–Liver and Kidney health-.Soft tissue – ligaments, tendons, collagen–Stress–The blood and Circulatory System.–The Respiratory System–The Digestive System–Change – 3 part series–William Price King Jazz singer and Composer – Meets Nat King Cole and Mel Tormé–Moyhill Publishing and David Cronin–The Ebook Doctor – Formatting your Book

Brain Health – Dementia, Nutrition

“The health of our brain is a lifetime challenge.  This complex and fascinating organ is where all our automatic functions are managed as well as our ability to think, feel and move. There are certain nutrients which we need on a daily basis that are very easy to provide.  Like the rest of the body the brain needs exercise to maintain its functions and stimulation is required throughout our lifetimes.  Especially when we get into our 50’s and 60’s to prevent the risk of dementia.” 

Sally’s Books

Sally’s seven books are in E-versions on Smashwords for those readers without Kindle. There is more information about her books in the My Books directory, or you can click on the links below (on her blog site).

“There is a selection of the books we have designed and published over the years on the site, but we now provide a webpage with selling facilities for our authors which they manage themselves. An example of this would be some of my own books at the following links.”

http://www.moyhill.com/sam/ -Sam, A Shaggy Dog Story http://www.moyhill.com/sm/ –   Size Matters, especially when you weigh 330lbs http://www.moyhill.com/jaojg/ – Just an Odd Job Girl – grown up chick lit. http://www.moyhill.com/ftvpmac/ – Forget the Viagra….Pass me a Carrot – Men’s health manual. http://www.moyhill.com/tbtc – Turning Back the Clock – Anti-Aging programme. http://www.moyhill.com/mttm _ Media Training The Manual – building relationships with local media. http://www.moyhill.com/fof – Flights of Fancy – Short Story Anthology with a Novella

NOMINEE: Author Nicholas C. Rossis ~ sci- fi fantasy & children’s stories

http://nicholasrossis.me

Nicholas lives in Athens, Greece. He writes fantasy, children’s books and science fiction He’s published Runaway Smile, a children’s book, The Power of Six, a collection of short sci-fi stories that includes his award-winning short story, I Come in Peace, and a best-selling epic fantasy series, Pearseus. He’s had numerous science fiction short stories published in Greek magazines and in an anthology. All of them have reached # 1 on Amazon! He blogs about writing, publishing and book marketing. When he’s not writing, he works at Istomedia, his web development company.

He’s multi-talented and takes part in blog hops, and host posts and interviews. His blog site has a variety of interesting topics. The entertainment section has some fun reading! The photography sections of Greece and The World are outstanding.

When I met Nicholas in Blogosphere, his blog site mesmerized me with its rich color and exceptional design. No wonder there, he’s a web developer, architect by training, and has a PhD in Digital Architecture! I’d not read much science fiction, but I was intrigued by his book titles. Then the maroon cover of Runaway Smile caught my eye. With an invitation to read the digital copy, I clicked, read it, and was sold on his writing style. So, now I’m going on to a new reading venture into the epic fantasy series.

There’s more on his site then books. I found an article that made my brain happy, Writing Makes You Healthy! It’s short and to the point. The benefits of writing are research based and can heal wounds faster, improve diseases such as asthma, AIDS and cancer. Stress levels go down because writing allows people to take a look at their lives and replace obsessing over an event with moving forward. To get these benefits you don’t need to be a novelist, you can be a blogger or journalist. So, good news for all of us writers and bloggers out there.

I back this up with my own use of Expressive Writing as an adjunct therapeutic tool in psychiatric practice. As a nurse practitioner, I introduced patients to a three day Expressive Therapy exercise. Worked like a charm, they got healthier identifying and working through a specific problem. Research on this type of therapy came from the 2004 book, Writing to Heal by James Pennebaker, PH.D. A recent 2014 Business Insider web article by Drake Baer, Expressive Writing is a Super Way to become Way Happier, is easy to read and cites James Pennebaker, and Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy’s meaning therapy. The premise of this is disclosure. Avoiding to disclose emotions or express thoughts makes your body stressed, your brain impaired, and that means sick! The simple take-away is to keep writing, writers and blogger friends, and be healthier!

Not only do I love Nicholas’s writing, but I love his country, Greece. From 1975 to 1980, I lived in Kifissia, near Athens. In our blog comments back and forth, I’ve been able to relive memories of the wonderful, laid-back, we’ll do it tomorrow, Greek people, and the local store keepers’ wise custom of closing up shop in hot weather from 12 noon to 3 for an afternoon siesta to rest for a cool, late evening dinner at a favorite taverna. Not to forget the food; calamari, olives, feta cheese, fried zucchini and spanakopita, or the views; stunning blue/green sea, sparkling white and blue trimmed island homes, and spectacular sunrises and sunsets. I’ve borrowed a few “sun” photos from Nicholas’s collection for my blog site Welcome Page.

I can promise you an adventure when you visit his blog site. You may find yourself there a while and becoming his avid sci-fi, fantasy, and children’s book fan!

Nicholas’s Book: Links to the books are on the blog site

Thank you Sally and Nicholas for accepting the nomination to Tour Through Blogland and for allowing me to showcase you in this article presentation. I’ve given fellow bloggers only a glimpse of your writing talents, and book successes, and there’s so much more to read on your blog sites!

Thank you, Teagan for allowing me to acknowledge your creative writing. Readers must visit your blog site and join in the fun of writing and riding along with you in the Interactive Series.

As you can read, I have a brain health (nutrition and writing) connection with nominees Sally and Nicholas, and a fascination, how the brain works connection with honorary nominee Teagan.

Happy Writing!

Please feel free to choose your Tour Through Blogland Photo!