Tag: #OpenBook

The Hardest Job I’ve Ever Done #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

July 21, 2025

Continuing on the topic of money —

What is the hardest thing you have done to earn money?

I’ve never dug a ditch for money, but I helped build a hiking trail (for free) when I was in the Girl Scouts. Dirty work, but fun because of the other girls working on the project. Being a camp counselor was hard, but basically was a summer-long camping trip and I enjoyed it.

Then there was the job I had cleaning a weekly newspaper office in a small town. This was back before the work was computerized, and the night before publication, there’d be the remnants of sticky paper all over the floor and desks. They had to be pulled or scraped off using a paint scraper. That would happen in the afternoon, after the final version of that week’s edition had been taken by car to a print shop in the neighboring city.

That evening, a small team of three would insert the week’s ads (The color ad pages came pre-printed to the office.) into the folded papers and put labels on the ones that were to be mailed. The address labels came on large rolls and were pasted on the papers using a machine controlled by a foot pedal. This was back in the day when the ink used on newspapers rubbed off on your hands, so imagine what my hands looked like when the tasks were finished!

Then there was my gig working at a sugar mill factory.

This involved sugar beets, not sugarcane. The beets came from local farms and would be brought to the factory by the trailer load. They would be ground up and processed, with white sugar being the result.

I had one of the easier jobs, collecting samples. I’d go to certain spots both inside and outside the factory, retrieving tubes of the partially finished product (in different stages of processing) and running a variety of tests on them.

One of the sample sites was outside, behind the factory, in a basically unlit area. Since I was working swing shift, the last sample of the shift was an adventure, requiring the use of a flashlight and nerves of steel.

But that isn’t why I left that job. I was a newlywed, and my husband was working revolving shifts at a different company. It seemed like we never got to spend time together. I didn’t mind the work, but hated being apart.

The worst job?

I did a short stint as a waitress at an extremely busy pizza/Italian restaurant. I’d worked at a small restaurant previously, and thought I knew what I was getting into, but was wrong. This new place was so busy that all I did was run. No time to interact with customers, just run, run, run. I lasted there only one week. And I don’t remember the tips being enough to make me regret leaving.

How about other authors? What is the hardest job they’ve done? Find out by following the links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

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Buying My Way Into Fame #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

July 14, 2025

Which would you rather have?

Money or Fame?

You’ve likely heard the saying, “Money can’t buy happiness.” But I’ve always thought happiness is a lot easier to achieve with money enough to cover the basics and more. Worry about having enough food? Pay for medical care? Being able to help others without having to check your budget? Not a problem with a good flow of cold, hard cash or the electronic equivalent. It won’t solve everything, but can go a long way.

What about choosing between money or fame?

Here’s my take. I’ve never chased the idea of fame. I wish for readers, but enjoy a quiet life. Like many authors, I’m a bit of an introvert, and it’s draining to interact with strangers for hours, even when the topic is writing. (Like I do when I’m out at events selling my books.)

And money can buy fame. Or, at least, a best-seller title. There are stories of organizations buying mass quantities of books (especially for pre-order) in order to inflate numbers to make it on a bestseller list. (The books are then distributed for free.) Political and religious figures have done this. Safeguards have been put in place to stop this tactic, not always successfully.

Money can also buy an author’s way into numerous opportunities to market their books. I have to limit where I sell my books because I can’t afford to spend money on airfare and hotels all across the country. Or even internationally. And some events can be really pricey.

I limit myself to one event a year where I have to stay overnight. And I’ve never sold enough books to cover the hotel room. I usually sell enough to cover the costs of the venue and supplies. With enough money, I could travel to many places to help connect with new readers.

But fame can bring in money.

In 2025, some of the gift bags distributed at the Academy Awards were worth over $200,000. The speaker fees for Nora Roberts can range between $50,000 to $100,000. Craig Johnson, the author of the Longmire series, “only” receives between $5,000 and $10,000.

So, which do I choose? Remember that I’m an introvert? I choose money. That way I have more control of my life, my time, my interactions with others.

What do the others on this hop choose? Money or Fame? Find out by following the links below.

And, as always, please stay safe until next time.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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July 14, 2025

Which would you rather have? Money or Fame?

 

 

Wasting My Time #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

July 7, 2025

What is your favorite way to waste time? (be non-productive)

Bird watching? Long walks? Does it help your writing?

What was the saying? Idle hands are the devil’s playground? I haven’t heard that for a long time, thank heavens. Because having free time is good for the creative process. I’ll come back to that.

Oddly enough, there are times I feel like I have less free time now that I am retired than I did when I was working. It took me time to realize that with no structure to my structure to my schedule, it’s easy to accomplish nothing. I’ve developed a severe case of I’ll-get-around-to-it-ivness.

I’m working on it with a mental list of things that need to be done. But there’s nothing holding me to it except my own determination. Some days, I’m short on that.

I’ve developed some new time wasters.

Bird watching was never my thing. But it’s interesting how many varieties of birds I see in my yard. I think we are on a migratory route and I’ll spot an unusual species occasionally. Once, I spotted a downy woodpecker pecking at the railing on my deck. On a regular basis, there are grackles and cardinals and wrens in my yard. This year, I added several kinds of orioles to my list. (I even put up an oriole feeder this year. I’ve had a hummingbird feeder for several years.) Sadly, I haven’t spotted my neighborhood ravens this year.


Another new time-waster is the time I spend dead-heading my outdoor flowers, so they will bloom longer. That’s a summer-only activity, of course. Doing yard work is productive, but does nothing to add to my word count. Or does it?

While I’m deciding which branches on my quince bush need to be cut away from the house, I may be wondering how many people know what an Army blanket looks like? Do I call it an Army blanket in my story, or describe it as being olive green and made of wool and scratchy? And what is the difference between a pine tree and a fir? More importantly, how does my protagonist deal with the senator’s son hiding out in the mountains? And cutting branches may be a metaphor for the word trimming I am doing mentally. 

So, I don’t believe that being non-productive is a waste of time. It refreshes the brain and allows creative juices to flow.

What is your favorite way to waste time? Check out other authors’ responses by following the links below.

And, as always, until next time, please stay safe!

July 7, 2025

What is your favorite way to waste time? (be non-productive) Bird watching? Long walks? Does it help your writing?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter


The Difference 150 Years Can Make #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

June 30, 2025

You have been chosen to participate in a time travel adventure, (You’ll end up the same area as you are now.) You get to choose between traveling 150 years in the past or 150 years in the future.

Which do you pick?

Before I begin, I’ll make a confession. When we were considering where to live after retirement, scientists’ guesses of anticipated environmental changes played into the decision. (Plus changes we’ve already seen. The weather along the southern coast of Oregon is different from what it was when we lived there 35 years ago.)

What the question doesn’t specify is how long the adventure would last. A day? A week? A year? That would play a huge part in my decision.

Would I be given appropriate clothing for the era? (How would scientists know the correct clothing for the future?) How about money?

I’ve always been a bit of a history buff, so going back 150 years sounds satisfying. This area was the center of the new oil industry and fortunes rose and fell as wells were drilled and ran out. But 150 years ago, the area was in a downturn from the oil boom and the economy was rough. So, I’d like to make sure I had enough cash to last the anticipated visit. A long stay might necessitate a job and that might be hard to come by at my age.

By Niagara - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21009058

By Niagara – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21009058

It doesn’t appear that I’d run into any of my ancestors. Most of them were farmers and came from various parts of Europe 25-35 years later. (And the genealogy records don’t indicate that any of them ever lived in the little village where we moved to.)

But it was part of the Gilded Era, and some of the grand old homes in the area were being built. So, there was money to be had, if you were in the right line of employment.

If I had the opportunity, I’d want to interact with the local native tribe, called the Senecas by white settlers. (Although the tribe has been displaced by the U.S. Government a couple of times, some of their descendants still live in the area.)

What about 150 years in the future?

Well, I expect the climate will still be livable. (One reason we chose to move here.) It shouldn’t be underwater or a desert. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it were more heavily populated as more people migrate from bigger cities.

I won’t even try to guess at the political climate. Hopefully, the medical field has continued to advance, and many common ailments have been cured. It would be nice to know what the future looks like for the sake of my descendants.

So, given the choice, I’d choose to go back 150 years. What about you? Backward or forward?

How about the other authors? Would they choose to go back 150 years or look to the future? Find out by following the links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

June 30, 2025

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Wandering The Rolling Hills #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

June 23, 2025

Chat with readers about a childhood event that still sticks out in your mind,

Something you’d like to go through again.

I have a lot of warm memories of my childhood. Being one of nine children, it may not have been typical, but it helped shape who I am. To pick one event that sticks out doesn’t seem possible. Should I chat about sledding on a car hood in the neighbors’ cow pasture? Or swimming in a deep spot in a creek? Helping on an archeology dig as part of a summer program? Spending hours wandering the woods and fields that surrounded our home?

How about the summer I went on an overnight trip to practice wilderness survival skills? That may have been the summer after my sophomore year in high school. It was part of a summer school program which was an enrichment opportunity, not a requirement for grades.

The trip was the culmination of a several-week course, in which we learned the basics about local flora and fauna. Since I’d been involved with the Girl Scouts for years, I already had a solid base of knowledge, but wanted to expand on it from a different perspective.

We were a small group, maybe a dozen kids, and two teachers.

I was one of only three girls. (No, I never fit in the standard teen-girl mold.) We met at the school, with our backpacks or bedrolls, and took a school bus to a lake about an hour away. The adventure was “survival light” in that we didn’t have to find our own water and some basic food was provided.

The afternoon was spent fishing for sunfish at the lake, which would become our supper. With the help a a park ranger, we gutted and filleted our catch. At the campsite, a short hike away, there was an abundance of trees with edible leaves (think sassafras) and wild carrots. (We didn’t have to haul in pots and other cooking implements.) We collected our own firewood, and slept on the ground. There was no rain, thank heavens. (I was already experienced in starting fires, so I left the fun to others.)

I don’t remember what we did for breakfast, probably a typical egg-in-a-hole. (Basically French Toast with an egg in the middle.)Then, we cleaned up after ourselves, and hiked to a different spot to be picked up by the bus.

As I wrote this, I wondered what my parents thought about it.

They were brave, letting me find my own way on an unusual path. Did they regret it when I hopped on a Greyhound bus a few years later to go to a college in Wyoming, sight unseen? It’s probably a good thing they didn’t know about it when my husband and I took our three-day old baby camping in a wilderness area.

What about the other authors on this hop? What childhood event are they sharing? You can find out by following the links below. (Most post Monday morning.)

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

June 23, 2025

Chat with readers about a childhood event that still sticks out in your mind, something you’d like to go through again.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter


Remodeling #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

June 16, 2025

Hypothetical: Someone will pay to redecorate your living room. what would you like it to look like?

Thanks, but no thanks.

My living room doesn’t need much, other than a lighter color paint on the walls. (Maybe even just one wall.) It already has two matching deep brown recliners you can sink into, a matching sofa, a coffee table with a faux marble top that looks straight out of a Victorian room (and a matching side table) a curio cabinet, a full-height bookshelf, and a gas fireplace. It’s a room that wraps around you and welcomes you in when you enter through the front door. The house is an old Victorian era house (but not Victorian style—it looks more like an old farmhouse) and the room matches the house’s personality.

Now, my kitchen is a different matter, and I’d welcome a full remodel.

It’s smaller than I expected from the pictures. The first thing it needs is more square footage, and that requires an addition. It also needs new cabinets, sticking with a natural wood (I’m guessing these are over fifty years old) and new flooring. The laminate was installed badly, and it can’t stand up to the amount of foot traffic it gets. (The flooring is on my to-do list.) A large family were the previous owners, and I can’t imagine cooking for a family that size in the current space.

I want the room to be big enough to have space for a small kitchen table. I’d prefer to not sit at the dining room table to eat every meal. Seriously, I don’t think anyone who does any real cooking would get along with the room.

The color of the walls needs changed, too. They are currently a millennial gray-blue and I’d prefer something bright and airy. A pale blue could work. A shade of yellow might look okay, but I’d need to ponder my choices. The appliances should be replaced, but I doubt I’d be able to find any with the personality and reliability of what is there already.

I have no clue how much this would cost. (The addition alone would likely be an arm and a leg.) But unless I get rich off my next release, it won’t happen.

One thing I should note: I have no experience as an interior designer. I’d be leaning on others for help.

What about the other authors? What are they remodeling? Find out by following the links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 June 16, 2025

Hypothetical: Someone will pay to redecorate your living room. what would you like it to look like?

Unpacking Plots Of T.V. Shows #Openbook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

June 9, 2025

Do you find it is harder to not unpack a plot in a movie, predicting what will happen, now that you write your own stories?

I no longer watch TV.

Well, not on a regular basis. And I don’t follow any shows. I gave it up years ago, when I was working full time and taking college courses in the evening. There was no time to keep track of television programs. Besides, I hated commercials. I spent more time picking them apart than paying attention to what they were selling, irritating the heck out of my husband.

Back them I was critiquing their use of devices like the obvious minority representation. There had to be an African American, a Hispanic, and a woman. Or twisting a stereotypical representation of a woman to a man. So, instead of a dumb housewife, you had a clueless guy. Don’t forget the nerdy, glasses-wearing, blond kid with a bad haircut.

Of course, that bled into critiquing the shows themselves for similar infractions.

And man, there were a lot of them. Which led to critiquing for plot holes. (this was before I started writing my own fiction. Great training, eh?) When I began to analyze the first few minutes to figure out how the story would end, it destroyed the experience. The last show I sat through was when Longmire was still on a “regular” channel, not Netflix. And I only stuck with it because I’d enjoyed the books. (I read the first ones before the show started.) Still, I’d pick at the changes that had been made to the stories to make them fit television.

Shoot, I’ve found myself judging the performance of weather forecasters.

Especially on overdone storm predictions. I realize they are working for the ratings, but seriously, not every storm needs to be seen as an end of the world event.

But I do the same thing to many books I read. (Especially romances.) I once had someone complain they didn’t know who the villain was in a book I wrote by the end of the first chapter. I took that as a win rather than the criticism it was meant to be.

What do I do instead? I’d love to claim that I spend the time reading, but no, I spend too much time in front of a computer screen. Writing, on social media, sometimes mindlessly scrolling through various sites. It’s a bad habit and too easy to fall into.

How about other authors? Do they attempt to decipher the plots of T.V. shows while  they are watching them? Check out their posts by following the below links.

And, as always, please stay safe until the next time.

June 9, 2025

Do you find it is harder to not unpack a plot in a movie, predicting what will happen, now that you write your own stories?

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My Favorite Summer Plans #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

June 2, 2025

What are your favorite summer plans?

In childhood, summer meant long walks on the backroads of Pennsylvania,

And thru the fields and forests. Bicycling. Hours of reading and doing crafts. Fishing in the “crick” down past the neighbor’s pasture.

For many of my adult years, it meant trips to the mountains. The Big Horns. The Beartooths. The Never Summer Range. Or maybe walks on the Oregon Coast beaches with my children, where the hills tumbled down to the ocean. There were also the years when the West Coast got switched to the East Coast, and the walks were on the long, sandy beaches of Florida and the Atlantic.

Since I retired, my summer plans have changed. I spend my time in my yard, tending to whatever flowers and other plants I’ve managed to keep away from the local white-tailed deer. I no longer have to go to the mountains, since I am living among the rolling hills of the northern Appalachians. I’m there. Or maybe I will repaint my front steps. (Yes, they are purple.) Mornings, I can birdwatch from my little deck. Of course, I have a list of normal chores to take care of.

Then there are the weekends.

And a whole range of festivals and similar events. (You can check the front page of this website to see the current list. https://www.pjmaclayne.com/  ) This year, I’m trying something new. Our borough has a community yard sale the first weekend of June that brings in lots of people, and I’m going to attempt to sell my books this year. It’s free, so worth the try. I’m also adding a few new events to my repertoire. (Waterford and Lancaster.)

So, those are my plans. And somewhere in there I have a short story I need to finish. (I’ve restarted it three times now. Each version has been an improvement.)

How about the others who are  posting on this hop? What are their plans? Find out by following the  links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

June 2, 2025

What are your favorite summer plans?

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It’s A Kick In The Pants #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

May 26, 2025

What are your triggers for writing? (For instance, what gets you hyped or starts the story in your head).

What chills your drive to write?

Let’s start with the easy one. What chills my drive to write? There are two main ones: stress and lack of privacy. Stress can come from a variety of sources, but financial is the primary one. (Isn’t that true for many of us?) You’d think writing would be a way to relieve stress, but that doesn’t work for me.

Then there’s the lack of privacy. My writing space is now in a public area of our house. There’s frequent foot traffic passing by. Even if I’m deep in writing, I can be interrupted frequently. Not just when I’m writing, either. I could just be surfing the net or listening to music and I’ll get a tap on the shoulder. I frequently feel as if someone is watching me. Plus, there’s too much noise. My headphones cancel out a lot, but not all of it. It makes it hard to concentrate. (I think I have a harder time concentrating in general these days.)

What gets me hyped? 

I didn’t use to need to get hyped to write. It was a constant state of being. Give me ten minutes and a piece of paper and pen, and I’d be spitting out words. But I’ve slowed down. It might be that I’m trying to work on too many stories at once. (I’m working on three.) I used to work on one at a time, so my concentration is scattered. Or it’s all the outside pressures I’m dealing with. Or maybe I’m worried no one cares about my writing.

But a good idea will spark my urge to write every time. I’m currently working on my third version of a short story, and the more I work with the main character, the plot keeps shifting into something new and better. Or maybe a twist will pop into my head as I crawl into bed after a writing session, as my character tells me what I’ve missed. (His name is Amos Headley. Love that name.)

Anyway, the longing to write is still with me constantly, even if I don’t get to it. (Which makes me feel guilty. Which, in itself, is a deterrent to writing. Vicious cycle.)

What triggers the other authors on this hop? Find out by following the links below.
As always, until next time, please stay safe.

May 26, 2025

What are your triggers for writing? (For instance, what gets you hyped or starts the story in your head).
What chills your drive to write?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

We’re Living In The Future #OpenBook Blog Hop

  By Open Book

May 19, 2025

Which sci-fi invention would you like to see made real?

We’re living in the future.

A few years back, I had a few episodes of vertigo, and my doctor was trying to find the cause. They referred me to an ear, nose and throat specialist, and I went through a battery of standard tests. As we were discussing the preliminary results, I mentioned the injury I’d received as a teen when I’d had a bicycle accident. The technician asked if I’d had an MRI back then to examine potential damage to my inner ear. I laughed and reminded him MRIs didn’t exist back then. He blinked, cocked his head, and quietly said “oh” before moving on to the next test.

I’ve also been involved with personal computers since the early days. In the early days, there was upper and lower memory, accessed through DOS commands. That was before gigabyte hard drives were a thing. Now, we have access to storage thousands of times larger that we hold in the palms of our hands.

How about phones? When I was a child, party lines were a thing. Yes, you could pick up the phone attached to the wall or sitting on a desk and listen to your neighbor’s conversation (if they were talking to someone,) and you had to wait your turn. And long-distance calls cost an arm and leg. Now, land lines are almost a novelty.

Speaking of phones, cell phones didn’t exist back then. And the first ones were strictly phones. Now, we hold more computing power in the phone stuck in our back pocket than the first computers that sat on our desks.

But what does the future hold?

What hasn’t happened? How about teleportation? In these days, when our lives often take us far from friends and families, how much easier would it be if we could get from place to place in a matter of seconds? It sounds good, but I wouldn’t want to be one of the early users. From what I understand of the technology, it sounds risky. Not one I want to be a part of.

How about interstellar travel? That sounds like fun. I’d love to see far-off planets. But I’m old, and I don’t believe I’ll see it happen. That’s okay, because there are plenty of places on Mother Earth that I haven’t seen yet.

But if I could choose which sci-fi inventions would happen, it would be in the medical field. Cures for cancer. Diabetes. Alzheimers and so many more. Heck, throw better vision correction and a cure for the common cold in there. Medical care for free, of course. I’ve seen too many people who live in pain every day. I’d like to see an end to that.

So, we’ve come a long way since I was a youngster, but there’s a long way to go. 

What invention in sci-fi would you like to see become reality? Tell me in the comments. And to find out what the other authors that take part in this hop hope for, check out the links below.

As always, until next time, please stay safe.

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

May 19, 2025

Which sci-fi invention would you like to see made real?