Amie Borst

While I try to keep my personal life to a minimum here in my little corner of cyber space, there are some things you should know.

My family has been through a whole bunch of crap over the last few years. And right now, it feels like it is all spiraling out of control. Though, I suppose that's a good thing, right?

Because in writing, we have a step-wise process:

A - Everything is hunkey dorey for our MC...until one day....
(Dun,dun,dun!)

B - They make a choice, a decision, exercise their free will and agency or an event occurs and...
(WHAM!)

C - Conflict arises.
(Ka-POW!)

D - They battle that conflict, either physically, emotionally, spiritually or even a combination of these "lly's" and out of nowhere, more conflict arises.
(Whap Bam!)

E - Things get a little worse....
(Sob, Bawl, cry!)

F - Your character must make another choice. They can either:
1. admit defeat
2. surge forward with more power, energy and determination than ever
or
3. find an alternate resolution

G - Once that cour…

I'm super long overdue to announce the winner of the earrings from my post/giveaway on April 18th. SORRY!

Anyway, I thought, I'd do things a little differently...

So....
EVERYONE who entered wins a pair of earrings!

So who entered this craziness back on April 18th- April 22nd 2011?
Well...

Laura Pauling
Christine Danek
Eliza
Jen Daiker
Casey
Anne N Kenny
Melissa
Amy

Yes, that's 8 people! Yes, I'm crazy, insane and out of my mind. No I didn't include Rose Cooper. Because she's my partner in this crazy etsy venture, that's why!

So why am I selecting 8 people to send a pair of earrings to? Because I heart my followers and am so grateful for each of you who listen to my ramblings. That's why. :)

Hurry and send me an email (before I change my mind dawgs) at Amiegr8tstuff (at) aol (dot) com with your mailing address. No. You won't get to choose the earrings I send. Like my kids elementary school teacher says, "You get what you get and you don…

So it's late at night and a meteor strikes, a power plant explodes, a government-created-illness gets out of control....and WHAM! Zombies begin flooding the streets. And they're hungry. For. Your. BRAINS!

What do you do?

Well, if it were me, I might scream, grab a baseball bat and start knocking some heads off of some corpsified-brain-eating-mongers.

But I'm not super strong. Or coordinated.

So I decide the only way to really protect myself is to grab my kids and RUN!

I high-tail it outta sight with my kids in tow. Only problem is - I have no food, clothing or water. ATMS are broken and I ain't got no cash.

Well shoot, Vern. This is a bit of a problem.

Especially since my tank is only 1/4 full.

Especially since there aren't no stores open on account that everyone else has fled.

Especially since the nearest water source (which I wouldn't drink from if you paid me) seems to have green fumes wafting from it.

I'm so screwed.

Now my kids are arguing because they a…

I particated in National Picture Book Writing Week from May 1- May 7th and boy, what an interesting challenge! I'd never written a picture book until now (well, actually that's kind of a lie, I did write one picture book when I was in college....wish I could find that sucker, it was pretty good!). But I'm really glad I participated in the challenge.

For one - it encouraged me to do something I hadn't tried before (or, well, in a long time).

For two - it was an easy goal. 500 words a day (or thereabouts).

For three - it got me writing again. I've been in a funk ever since I started querying my MG book and sadly haven't written anything in a long time (and by long I mean 6 months or more). I realized that I missed writing a LOT. I mean, I knew I missed it, but the querying process beat me down so bad it took the joy out of writing. Especially when I was hearing stupid reasons for agents not liking my book. The most recent one said she wanted it to be more sp…