Recently, author Shannon Messenger, who writes the wonderful Keeper of the Lost Cities series began her book launch tour for her book Flashback. I was excited to meet up with a friend in our MG Lunch Bunch readers group and enjoy Messenger’s talk sponsored by Kepler’s Literary Foundation. I had met and interviewed her a couple of years ago (you can see the interview HERE) and was so very delighted to watch the mounting excitement as kids and parents entered the room. I sat next to a group of middle-school aged girls who were carrying sparkly backpacks and had home-made…
Inspiring Emerald Gem Discovery
There’s been some neat discoveries coming up on my radar as a gemologist, and I love to collect these tidbits for inspiration for stories, especially if it involves emeralds. I thought you’d like to share some of the most dramatic ones of late. My love of emeralds Emeralds have always fascinated me, even before I became a gemologist. I first encountered them when I was on a business trip for a large, international firm to Colombia years ago when they had travel warnings—not for weather but for the volatile situation with the drug cartels and drug czars in the area….
Happy Birthday Narnia and Everything C.S. Lewis
In honor of it being the birthday of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Narnia, which is sixty-eight years old this week, under the magical gazebo for MMGM I wanted to share some memories of my summer C.S. Lewis study abroad program. I also have some great Narnia-themed products and books to share. When I was a young girl, I discovered the world of Narnia and wonderful books by C.S. Lewis, never suspecting that those wondrous moments stepping through the wardrobe would shape my writing and love for portal fantasy stories. I didn’t know about the spiritual allegory…
Fall Delights! What’s coming from Thorn & Vine
I’ve been collecting great ideas for a wonderful fall series and wanted to give you updates about what to expect and some recent happenings! Due to a death in the family and some tech hiccups, the blog has been a bit sporadic. Thanks for your patience as we fixed everything! And nurtured our family for a while. Sometimes it’s important to slow down and simplify things while caring for one another. The good news, now, is I will share great content and hopefully some neat guest authors this fall. From entertaining posts we’re looking at changes at Disneyland (what will…
Happy Birthday Percy Jackson And The Jewelry Of The Gods
How meeting Percy Jackson shaped a generation of tween adventure books AND What the jewelry of the Greek and Roman gods might have looked like I’ll never forget the first time I read Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief. Oh, I loved that scene in the museum where everything goes wrong and the hero side of an awkward kid emerges with lots of magic and mythological characters coming to life. And the fact that the story continued with other novels and took us through all kinds of adventures meeting making real and mythic history come to life was so…
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