25. January 2010 by Starr.

If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy?

Would you not buy your wish fulfilled?  What, then, would that wish be? 

“He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.”  Blake

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15. January 2010 by Starr.

A simply thought today as I continue on this planet, as Satan uses others to try to throw slings and arrows to try to distract me from my purpose and my work at hand, to try to hurt me or dissuade me from what I know is true…

“You can tell what they are by what they do.”    ~Matthew 7:16

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23. June 2009 by Starr.

 Yesterday, I  spent the day floating down the Current River with family.  Some of my family was missing, however, and I was quite aware of their presence not being with us.  But the day was fruitful and the water inviting.  Time out of my home-office is necessary for relxation of the mind.  It always amazes me how, when in moments where I am “winding down,” the best ideas occur to me.  When I’m still and just listen and relax, my mind opens to new thoughts and ideas.  Yesterday was a day of play and reflection, today is a day of networking and research with adventure and fun sprinkled in.  I can’t think of anything I do for work as anything but great fun…and I can’t think of any adventure where I can’t find something within it to use in a story or an article.  Adventure and work just go together…that’s the blessing of getting to do what I love, as a career.

While I’m at Mansfield, I plan to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Museum and Home and visit the cemetary where she and her husband, Almonzo, are buried.  As a writer, I look up to Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I have always enjoyed her Little House books, and loved reading them as a young girl.  I also read them to my classes when I was teaching.  Her books survive the times and almost anyone who reads them, can take away from them many lessons and valuable insight into life.  I can only be so lucky as to be able to do that with my own readers.

“It is the small things, that are the most important, after all.”  Laura Ingalls Wilder

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4. June 2009 by Starr.

I like to focus on the little ideas and the little signs, as much as the large ones.  Especially those ideas that just nag at me and don’t seem to want to go away.  Those are the ones I pay especially close attention to.  I have always believed that is one of the ways God guides me.  He gives signs along the way to point me in the right direction or sometimes, just to give me a little nudge that may indicate that I’m on the right path, or working on the right idea.  I know that God must have an awesome sense of humour, because some of the things He has used over the years as signs or ideas have been quite unusual, like the Pickerel Frog I saw in a small cave near Alley Mill , for example.

 In various scenes in book one of the Enduring Forever Trilogy, Something’s at the Gate,  there are several scenes down in the cave system where herbs, flowers, roots and mushrooms are used to make healing salves, tonics and etc., so when I was rolling an idea around in my mind about a specific poison that Wynter, the main character needs to make in book two…I knew she needed to do it down in the cave, but I wasn’t sure how or what she was going to use to do it. 

 While I was at Alley Spring, I had scenes playing out in my mind’s eye that I was planning to construct from that area, I was paying close attention to the wild flowers, water cress, trees and other fauna.  Then the frog was pointed out to me, which, at first, was just a flicker of an idea, but of course, I questioned at first if the idea of using that frog in that poison would work at all.  After a friend did research for me on that frog, I learned that the little frog in the cave was the Pickerel Frog, which, even though a small amount of it’s skin toxin will not stop a human, it’s toxic secretions definitely have poisonous qualities to other frogs, snakes and mammals and in large doses can be harmful to those who have not developed an immunity.  That was when the “Aha!” moment hit.

 This is the only poisonous frog native to the U.S., and it’s only seen active from April to October, for the rest of the year it is in hibernation in bottom debris and silt of their aquatic habitats.  I had already been seeking something to assist my character with her poison, inside a cave, in the summer, that would also fit the other criteria she needed as far as other mammals and snakes…and this little frog is the perfect tool.  I honestly didn’t think of that, nor did I even know about this type of frog.  That frog being in that spot, that day, in that little cave, was a small sign…a small idea, that is the stepping stone to help pull my plot along. 

 When I see signs like that or feel ideas come into fruition, even before I’ve started writing the first line of that scene…I know I’m onto something. 

 ”Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.” - Carl Schurz

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