I am preparing for my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. November has been deemed National Novel Writing Month and the goal is to write a novel (estimated at about 50,000 words) in 30 days. Last year I persisted for eight days before I gave up. I didn’t get very far because I was just free-writing, but this year, I’m determined to finish. I am ramping up with a story outline and character ideas.

I'm using RocketBook to help organize all my ideas.

I’m using RocketBook to help organize all my ideas. This was my first brainstorm of what to write about in November.

I have always loved to write stories since I was a child. In third grade I wrote a story that was chosen to be performed by the local theatrical troupe visiting my elementary school. It was based on the board game Candy Land, imagining a world where the characters came to life. I was thrilled to watch my story performed. That was just the beginning of love for writing and creating stories.

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You will feel sick reading this book. It will make you frustrated, melancholy, curious. I suffered nightmares and stomach aches.

Renting it from the library gave me only 21 days to cover the extensive 509 pages, which meant I was reading this book every moment I had free. The details surrounding the incident (how victims were killed, bodies left behind by the police, a teacher left for dead) left me feeling nauseous and appalled. Reading words from the killer themselves brought them back to life. Columbine by Dave Cullen is an enlightening, yet, stomach churning examination of the events leading up to, during, and following the Columbine High School Massacre of 1999.

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Borrowing e-books using OverDrive couldn’t be easier, except for when my e-book reader of choice, the NOOK, suddenly stopped opening the books. The joy of getting an email that the e-book I’ve been waiting for had finally been checked out to me was followed by disappointment that I couldn’t read it on my NOOK.

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It’s amazing how one dollar and a paper bag could bring me so much delight. And not just me, but everyone else scrambling in the small room. People squeezed through the aisles and hands fluttered over the tables. It was the Friends of San Dimas Library Buck-a-Bag Day book sale.

For $1, readers were provided with a paper bag to fill with as many books as they could fit or wanted. Joey and I got a total of 12 books: seven that I was interested in and five more that Joey picked out for himself.

One bag of books was about our limit since I had to haul all the books back home in my bike basket.

One bag of books was about our limit since I had to haul all the books back home in my bike basket.

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Earlier this year I reviewed In a Dark, Dark Wood, a story about a hen party (British slang for bachelorette party) gone wrong. The setting: an isolated cottage in the woods. The main character carpools with the one girl she knows besides the bride to someone’s vacation home for a weekend of pre-wedding shenanigans.

When I received news that the bachelorette party for my dear friend and sister-in-law, Candice, was planned for weekend away at a friend’s beach house and the only girl I really knew besides the bride is the one I would be carpooling with, it put me on alert. I joked with my husband, “I’m either going to be murdered, murder someone or solve a murder. I don’t know which yet, we’ll find out on Sunday when I return home –or not!”

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Even though you know that it’s her destiny to make the trip to California, your heart aches knowing that she has to make this journey. It yells out to her, “No! Don’t do it, Eliza. Think of your future!” but you know she must go and there is nothing you can do to stop her. So you prepare yourself for a tear jerker — the story of a Chilean girl who follows her lover to California during the peak of the Gold Rush.

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One February morning, even though I had the cold sweats and had spent the night waking up every hour in agony over my stuffed nose and sinus problems, I crawled to my computer and entered the virtual waiting room…and waited. For the next 40 minutes I watched as Saturday, Friday, even Thursday sold out. I felt defeated. I was sick and would have kept on sleeping, but I had set my alarm to make sure I was awake to purchase tickets and now I wasn’t even going. Just as I put my head down on my desk, eyes filled with tears over the wasted effort, the screen changed and I was able to add tickets to my cart. I instantly sat up straight, excited that my group was finally called and squealed as I checked out. I purchased two tickets for Sunday night’s Comic-Con.

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I know, I know. I’m obsessed with the Klatch. But their amazing coffee, cushy couches, and delicious sandwiches make it a wonderful place to hide away for a few hours and enjoy a latte with friends. This time I decided to get my exercise on the way to the Klatch and rode two miles to the coffee shop.

Nothing like a cozy to go with my coffee.

Nothing like a cozy to go with my coffee.

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My motto all year has been: 30, flirty, and thriving. The past year has not been good to me: I gained a lot of weight and outgrew everything I owned and on top of all that,  about a month before my 30th birthday, I took a fall and broke my elbow. But I’m bouncing back and now I’m healthier than ever. After a long and stressful 2015, the universe helped me get my fitness and health back in focus and it all started with an unexpected physical.

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Way to go, Alex! I was fitness-ing too hard.

On May 1, I woke up in a cranky mood. It was one day until Joey’s birthday and a week until Mother’s Day and I still had some shopping to do. I was concerned about what to get for Mother’s  Day because I couldn’t find exactly what my mom wanted and I was afraid that she would be disappointed. We were also two weeks away from going to Laughlin and spending the weekend on Lake Mohave and I had yet to start looking for a bikini. If I thought I was cranky before, I had no idea that by 6:00 p.m. that night, I would be puking in a park and holding my broken elbow up for support.

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