Hey! Merrie Yule today!

Yesterday I heard this from Spirit: "Before I die (90 or so at last check), Aunt Nancy will be reborn into the family (be looking!); because she likes the family. Thought someone might be interested to hear that.

Hope, also, you Christmas is Merry and Bright and all that.
love, Sara
aka Aunt Sara, and whoever else...

 Happy Thanksgiving!
Artfully Speaking, Freeing Creativity

One of the things I create every so often are dolls, like the one at the top (and bottom, which is a full view).  I don't do this a lot and it is months often between making the heads and sometimes hands and finishing it with a costume.
One of the things I've found that frees my creativity is to make watercolor messes really fast sketches without trying to make any shapes. Then sometimes I go back and draw pictures in or on them...just for fun.

Writing Update: I am on the home stretch of the latest Miss Kitty Mystery, starting with my writing today. (First I sort out how I want to finish the story up. This one took a sudden turn, with a new thought on how to solve the mystery, so I am having to revise what I intended to write as the end.) Hope all you writers out there are having great writing flow magically from your pen or keyboard...
Sara Tiger Ryan

11-06-2014

A Little Art, Writing, Spirit

The Artist . . .

Here is a watercolor of the main character in my latest print book, The Shape Of Magic,
Syllyn Chandry Yadro Bay, who is headed to Beacon Manor thinking it is a staid place. Will he be surprised!

The Writer Me

Keyboards aren't made for writers--especially fiction writers.  We use lots of quotation marks. All that extra shift-jab with our poor overworked little fingers. Ow, how time consuming.

Eventually my mind boinked up a suggestion. So I looked at my  keyboard and asked myself: "What key do I never use in my writing  that doesn't use a shift key?"

The options I found were mostly still  little finger keys: the accent key, the brackets keys, the equals  sign, the slash keys, the number keys. Sometimes I use numbers in my  writing; I decided the equals sign would work best for me.

Zip, my writing speeded right up.

Of course, at the end, you have to search and replace those non-quotation marks. (I don't use Word (R) normally, but I tested the  handy: turn-this-into-that option, which worked, so, in Word (R) you can have the weird key magically teleport into quotation marks as you go.)

So, if you want to speed your writing up, ask yourself the same  question; give yourself an answer, and try that key instead of  quotation marks a week or so, until you get used to it, and see how  much faster you can write.

I noticed.

Although, of course, it isn't about saving time, it's about:  when I'm writing, the faster I can get ideas down before they  disappear, the less I lose ideas to the cats wanting in, out, tuna, snuggies, in, tuna, out . . .

A (sorry, low res) Halloween type photo of my girl kitty, SugarDancer . . .

Greetings!

Greetings!
What am I doing here?

Sara Tiger Ryan is an author, artist, and metaphysician... among other charming things (like cat lover. We must mention the cats or else!) But she is concentrating on the first three with this blog.

So far the plan is to write an alternating blog on these three subjects every few days, but, being Aquarius, I seldom--immediately don't!--follow the plan... Don't expect me to be consistent...or to always spell words correctly.

I'm starting off with the sort of cosmic, metaphysical side because spirit is the basis of all my living and creating. Nope, I'm starting off with a little of all three.

To me Heartbraids are the three things that make you want to keep on keeping on. What you love and do best and what makes you feel scrumptious about yourself. I'm pretty sure there are things you do that make your life worth living. So what are they?


Book Review
a book for writers

If you haven't discovered The Synonym Finder by J. T. Rodale yet, you ought to at least take a look. It is wonderfully thick, easy to use, and has oodles of (over 1 million it says) synonyms to choose from. After I got it, I used my Other Thesaurus to hold up a shelf. I mean, this lovely book has all sorts of delicious words in it to perk your writing up. Of course, it is also dangerous. When I pick it up to look for the Right word, I get lost, only surfacing hours later with all sorts of words dancing in my mind . . . then I have to go back and look up the word I was hunting a cinnamon for . . .

Art. This is an illustration of a character from my mystery-fantasy series, Miss Kitty Mysteries:

.

Sazzancy Delicious Jinn, Private Spy (Miss Kitty Mysteries)

A Briefly Bio
As a writer, Sara currently has 4 series going (Younger Fates Entire, Beacon, Miss Kitty Mysteries, and Relays). The Relays series is sequential and includes five books, the other 3 series are open-ended right now.
As an artist, Sara has been creating a hand-painted wall calendar since 1981, which she sells through her business, Tiger Moon Press. Along with calendars, she produces Christmas and Yule cards, note cards. Her favorite medium is water colors. She has stacks! of them on her walls. And pen and ink, and acrylics, which, lately are on unstretched canvas and featuring gods and goddesses.
As a metaphysician, Sara has taught classes in psychic development, dreamwork, astrology, Tarot, and visualization. In the mid 70's, she was a reader at the Bottom of the Cup Tea Room in New Orleans. In the late 70's she was assistant director of the Foundation for Metaphysical Awareness in Tallahassee, working with Kelly Powers. She also combines her art and spirit work by painting or pasteling (the 4th favorite medium) spirit guides.

Oh, right, I'm supposed to title this:
Cosmic Hugs sounds like a good enough title . . .
Hmm, I'm a bit slow, but I have discovered how to do a new post here. Yipe, that was a ferocious full moon eclipse last night. Now I get the news that my best friend's cat had Cancer and is no longer physical.

Actually I want to turn this into something that touches on spirit, but I am upset over kitty above and am not hearing well right now. I can hear murmuring. What is that? A big cosmic hug. Oh, thanks, I needed that.
The last time I did Circle, Hathor asked me, "When was the last time you felt beautiful?" I had to stop and think quite awhile before I answered. This is a choice.
How about you? Have you felt beautiful about yourself lately? If not, why wait any longer!
merry day, Sara

Hi. Here goes my first blog post. Yike! I have been thinking about what to write first, so instead, I will leap in. Heart Braids to me are the things that keep you keeping on. For me that's: writing, art, and metaphysics. What about you?

I read the Sisters In Crime blog and wanted to do their answers.

'Which authors have inspired you?'
Richard Bach, Louisa May Alcott (I wanted to write more on her story when I was young), and a whole list of favorites. See the list.

'Which male authors write great female characters? Which female authors write great male characters?'
I am enjoying Mike Shepard's Kris Longknife series. I enjoyed Mercedes Lackey's male characters. I enjoyed Bujold's Miles character. I don't usually check one way or another--just am I enjoying the way the character is portrayed.

'If someone said, "Nothing against female writers, but I enjoy male writers," how would you respond?'
More like what is your issue with it?

'What's the best part of the writing process for you? What's the most challenging?'

I enjoy all parts of the outlining, writing, and editing till I get the detail, tweaking edit that involves last check research, checking maps, dates, and time (as in, how many days did I get in that week???)

'Do you listen to music while you write?'
No.

'What books are on your nightstand right now?'

One of mine to edit. One of mine that I need to read to continue the series. A couple of Mike Shepard's Kris Longknife series. A couple metaphysical books I'm not ready to read yet. I don't have many books on hand, I read too fast!

'If you were to mentor a new writer, what would you tell her about the writing business?'

Read books, read writers books, write, write, write, gather encouraging quotes. I just had someone say to me, "I started a zombie story." Zombie stories aren't even on my list anywhere to read, but I say, "Go for it." I encourage anyone to do what they love best and makes them feel good about themselves.

Now, after getting to the end of the questions, they tell me I didn't need to answer them all...

links to 2 of my favorite people's blogs to read:
Janet Hardy,  Fiction University/ The Other Side of the Story
Elizabeth Spann Craig blog

Oh, well, I don't know how to do links here yet.
Merry Day, Sara