Today a box came in the mail. I won a copy of Sharon K. Mayhew’s Keep Calm and Carry On, Children and a variety of English snacks since the book is set in England.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Sharon knows how I spent my Sundays growing up. First, we all went to church. Then I, later my sister and I , went to my grandparent’s house. First we fixed lunch. Maybe we watched a movie. Grandpa liked John Wayne, Laurel and Hardy and he and Grandma both watched Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. I may have been the only grade schooler who has seen every On the Road movie that the pair made.
Then we would read. Often I would read and the adults would nap. But reading at Grandma’s meant reading and grazing. Grandma grazed on peanuts, mixed nuts or bridge mix. Occasionally there would be Pringles or Buggles or Brach’s Neapolitan Coconut candy. That was Grandpa’s favorite.
This would defintiely have drawn a crowd. And today is supposed to be rainy, snowy and cold. The perfect day for reading and grazing. Grandma and Grandpa would definitely have approved.
Thank you, Sharon!
–SueBE
I wish I had gotten pictures of the two Little Free Libraries we saw in the Eureka Springs area. One was next to a school. The other was near the library. I just love these tiny libraries!
Recently I saw a 
Halloween picture books fascinate me. When my son was little, our favorite was probably the Berenstain Bears Spooky Old Tree. If you have never read it, it is an early reader picture book about whether or not the bears will dare to go inside this massive spooky tree. Of course, they do it or it would be a really short and rather pointless book.
Writing fiction based on fact is always tricky. Often the problem is that we are tempted to avoid making changes. “But that’s how it really happened!” Maybe so but it may require a few changes to make a believable and compelling story.
You also have to decide how much of your story is fact and how much is fiction. If you are writing based on your own life and it is very factual, you may be writing autofiction. This is a term I didn’t know when a friend used it so she explained that autofiction is a memoir treated as fiction. Perhaps the writer created dialogue or couldn’t remember details that needed to be filled in to make the story believable. When that happens, it is not longer nonfiction but autofiction. Autoficiton is written in first person and the main character is the author. So in Juliet the Maniac by Juliet Escoria, the character is named Juliet Escoria. Another work of autofiction is by her husband Scott McClanahan and is titled The Sarah Book. 
They asked us if we had every been down into the Grotto Spring which they were sitting next too. The cave-like grotto was down a set of stairs and shrowded in darkness. No way was my friend going to go down there but I’m often nosier than I am bright. The light from my phone wouldn’t let me see back into the corners so all I could get a look at was the shrine against the back wall. I’m not super spooky but it was creepy.
One Writer's Journey 