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A Whole New Meaning to “Doll’s House” When I was a little girl, my grandfather built each of his seven granddaughters a dollhouse. It was a beautiful tri-level design. It was also seven feet long. Huge. I played with my house for hours at a time. My grandmother helped me make furnishings for it and I bought things for it with money I earned selling potholders I made. I have happy memories of that dollhouse. Now I am a grandmother. I have three granddaughters of my own. A couple of years ago I decided I would build each of them a dollhouse. After Christmas in 2016 I purchased three dollhouse kits. The plan was to put together the houses over the course of the following year. I figured it to be a cinch.  I had a year to complete three houses. Grandpa had less time to build seven of them. And he had to draw out the plans and cut the wood. I was smart. All I had to do was punch out the “precut” pieces and use the “easy to assemble” directions. Hammer and finish nails? Not ...

Uh, make that a few of my favorite Christmas posts. I must have been caught up in The Sound of Music ! No Snow for Christmas this Year... I hope you are enjoying the holiday season. I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. I spoke for a women’s program at church, hosted a dinner for widows and widowers at my house, and on December 18 recognized my forty-seventh wedding anniversary by having close friends over for my annual Christmas caroling party. {This will be the fifth Christmas Tom is  celebrating with Jesus in heaven.} I digress. As I was thinking about this post and my post for next week I looked back over the posts I’ve made these past seven years. Yes, in January,  A Novel Cre ation will be SEVEN YEARS OLD! Three of my Christmastime posts stood out. All three were popular with readers and all three were favorites of mine. I decided to share these posts with you and to tell you why I chose them.  The first appeared on my blog in December of 20...

Hey I’ve been there. I was a young wife, mother of three, full-time teacher, and active in my church. I know the sound of the word “busy.” And the weeks before Christmas seem to be the worse. You have visions of sitting down and enjoying your child’s concert, but your mind is elsewhere. You would love to be able to buy a few gifts for that sweet child on the “Wish Tree” who wrote “All I want is a soccer ball and a coat, but you wonder when you’ll have the time and where you’ll get the money.  I learned long ago the benefits of what I call The Standardized Christmas List. Here’s how it works and how it benefits you and your family: 1.  Recognize that Christmas comes on December 25 every year. Because you know it is coming, you can plan ahead. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Maybe, but I personally know people who act as if Christmas came as a total surprise. One family takes out a loan every December to buy extravagant gifts for their kids. They count on their inc...

I am a product of the space age. I was a bit too young to remember the launch of Sputnik by the Russians in 1957, but I remember when Alan Shepard went into space in May of 1961. I remember it because my birthday was only three days earlier. Everyone seemed obsessed with the notion of exploring outer space. This Computer is a Result of the Race for Space The science behind making the space race possible yielded curious new technology that soon spilled over into the consumer market. For example, space travel required maximizing power while minimizing space. Think transistor radio. (If you’re old enough to remember those.) I’ve shared with students through the years that we have computers today because of the need for them to operate rockets to conquer space. It’s true.  Space travel inspired futuristic comic books and movies. The idea of living in outer space or on another planet captured the imagination of everyone. Including the Hanna-Barbera team that produced th...

I’ve seen many Christmas trees in my life. My first grade teacher in Arizona brought in a tumbleweed for us to decorate. My trendy Aunt Pat had a silver tree with blue ornaments. Tom and I had fresh cut trees, live trees we later planted in our yard, and at least one artificial tree. I even bought a tiny tree at Jumbo for my coffee table in Kosovo last year. I put a picture of one of those live trees we planted years ago at the bottom of this post. It towers over me...and the house we lived in at that time! Newest in My Collection: The Crystal Palm Tree & Ceramic Angel Christmas trees in some ways anchor our memories to places and times. There was the tree our friend Carl gave us as a wedding present. We had been married almost a week. Christmas was in a couple of days and Carl, a boy in his in his teens showed up at our door with a tree.   As college students we soon learned that if you waited until Christmas Eve, you could get a free tree when the sales lot cl...

Last year I celebrated Thanksgiving with other Expats in Kosovo. Several of our friends who are Nationals were there as well. We had turkey with all the trimmings. Mostly. I took roasted vegetables. I had trouble finding fresh rosemary and thyme. I settled for packages of the herbs with pictures on Roasted Vegetables: Kosovo 2017 the front that looked the part. My friend Ruth was with me as we shopped. I’m not sure what language was on the label. Even Ruth’s translation app on her phone wasn’t sure. The recipe also requires butternut squash. I was about to give up when my friend Jill offered me one a mutual friend found on a trip to Greece. The vegetables were acceptable. The pumpkin pie was a team effort with several of us in the kitchen offering possible substitutes for missing ingredients. Christopher’s cranberry sauce was delicious even though it was made from cherries. Hey, sometimes you have to make do with what you have. After we ate we played an interesting game of...

Outtakes are those scenes or conversations that are cut from the original version of a book, movie, or television program. If you remember the television show Home Improvement, you’ll likely remember the outtakes shown at the end where actors messed up their lines and so forth.  I think of outtakes in my writing the way I think of purging my closet.  Don't Judge! You Know We All Need to Purge! Sometimes clothing pieces are removed they’re because they no longer fit with my wardrobe…or fit me. Sometimes they’re tossed because they’re outdated. And sometimes I kick out portions of the manuscript because, like that crazy shirt I bought on impulse, the words I used were useless and needed to go. Sometimes the purging is not my choice. When I pitched  Breathing on Her Own   to  Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas , I proposed an eighty thousand-word novel. As I was finishing the final work with my editor, the publisher decided I should cut the boo...

I planned to write a post about “community” for today. I am part of a camping community, a writing community, as well as many others. But when I recently talked with a young woman about possibly serving in Kosovo, she asked me several questions. One question she asked was about where I worshiped while I lived in Prishtina. That led me to think about a much larger community of which I am a part.  My church. In Kosovo I was part of a wonderful church family called  Drita e Botës . It means Light of the World. When I told her it is a Nazarene church she seemed surprised. I told her of other churches in the city including the Catholic church, the International church and other congregations meeting on a regular basis. I had friends at all of them. “So how did you choose?” “I like the feel of the church. The music is wonderful and the pastor offers thought provoking messages. He’s smart and studies the scriptures diligently. And I love the people. They are like f...

In 1999 my husband and I went snow skiing in Salt Lake City, Utah. We wanted to check out the slopes to be featured in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Our first morning of skiing was fun. Park City is an incredible venue. As we neared the exit for one of the lifts late in the morning, we decided to race down to a nearby lodge for hot chocolate. Everything was perfect. The snow. The weather. Everything. Well, everything except the setting on my right ski binding. Bindings are set so that if a skier falls the boot releases from the ski.  I fell. My left boot released. My right boot stayed in the binding. The right ski planted itself firmly in the snow while the rest of my body hurled down the slope. I screamed in pain. Tom got to me quickly as did the ski patrol. I won’t go into the details. Suffice it to say that even though it did not break the skin, the fall sheared the patella off. In essence, I had a broken knee. Not a typical break by any means. My surgeon in Ohio cleverly f...

Join me in  welcoming Award Winning Author, Carole Brown, this week's guest on A Novel Creation. Carole is one of the nine authors selected for From the Lake to the River: Buckeye Christian Fiction Anthology 2018 . Her story, Christmas Angels, is a tender and emotional story taking place during WWII. I asked Carole to share some of her secrets to developing believable characters. "Shadowy forms. Vague details. Expanding. Decreasing. That's how my character developing goes." -Carole Brown Most times I know the beginnings of the plot to a new story. And as I study the structure line, the two main themes: romance and suspense/mystery develop fairly quickly. I know what I want to create in the suspenseful realm, what the mystery will be and sometimes the ending or how it will be revealed. The romantic side's greatest challenge for me is deciding how to end the story. I may not know some details, but with research, conversation with my best go-to peop...