Manuscripts, Music and Tears

A couple of years ago, my cousin, Emma, and I found our grandmother's manuscript on a disk. She saved a copy on her laptop, and I took the disk home when I came back to the US. I have recently started trying to read through it but found that the formatting is so off on the old file that I have to manually go through the whole thing to make it readable before I can even attempt to read it. The manuscript was denied by her previous publisher around fifteen years ago but Emma and I would like to try to get it published.

As I was re-formatting I had music on, because I can't work without some background noise that isn't my father's chainsaw or hedge clippers, and The Call Came on. This almost sent me into tears. Granny was so pleased wen I started piano lessons and even more so when I started vocal lessons. Having both Granny's work and my lesson music just made everything very emotional so I am taking a break and calming down by updating here and looking for a fairly cheap but professional publishing option and I came up with Xlibris.

But I haven't told you about why we have a house in Croatia, or why Granny would have a publisher in the first place. Granny was a travel reporter for the BBC and Grandpa Peter was the editor of Aerial Magazine, the internal mag for the British Air Force. I have a wonderful sketch of Granny on a horse in Spain with all her radio equipment in her saddle bags, that was drawn but one of her travel guides.

One of her trips took her to Yugoslavia, she loved it there and so did Grandpa Peter when he was a young man traveling to Greece straight out of University. The irony is that after hearing so much about it the first time Granny went to Croatia was without Grandpa Peter. He died before I was born, around the time my mom found out she was pregnant with me, but Granny and I were very close. Granny has two published books on Yugoslavia and the Adriatic one for the Essentially series on Yugoslavia and the other on the Adriatic Islands and Corfu. Her manuscript that I am currently editing is a travel book/ cook book/ memoir, which wasn't very popular years ago, but is now and even if it isn't I would like Granny's last work to be published for people to read. I'll try to post more about Granny and my work on her book later, but I seem to have done the exact opposite of what I set out to and need to find a new topic to calm me down.

Well here is my usual way of calming down:
mug of double strength green tea with honey as a sweetener or, even better, golden syrup. For all those american who have never had golden syrup it is sweet gooy golden heaven, especially with som whole grand oatmeal on a cold winter morning or drizzled over plachinke. Back on topic, I love Canadian Clover Honey, and I just found a three year old, barely used jar of it from Sainsburry's in the back of the kitchen cubbord. I't lovely and smooth and almost as heavenly as golden syrup which we are sadly out of. Now that I am emotionally stable, for the moment, I'll get back to my editing and sad music.
Untill next time, happy reading.

Ice Queen

For my Contemporary Fiction class the first semester of my senior year we had to write a review of an Alice Hoffman book. Originally I had planned on reading Local Girls, it was short and about Long Island, easy peasy what's not to like? Not so easy; I couldn't read it. I would read a few pages and promptly forget all of it. So I dug through the back of the school library and polished off Ice Queen in about a week of lunch periods. And now I'm going to see if the cut you can use on LJ works here. For those who want to read my review, clicky the linky, otherwise skip over and keep reading. It didn't work and the only way to make it work is all long and complicated so I'm putting it on my Creative Writing page under writing anomalies.
sorry if that didn't work, I'm still figuring out the formatting on here.
On a cleaner and less dreary note, I just got the mixed bag of soap (mainly black raspberry vanilla) that I ordered from Gassner Custom Soaps, a link is on the side. I love them all, especially the Pumpkin Spice soapsicle they put in and lots of lavender is always nice in the hotter weather. I'm also using a little peppermint essential oil instead of perfume as I've just started getting a mild reacting to any of the commercial body sprays with lots of alcohol in them. Which is not so great, I love my pear blossom spray from Bath & Bodyworks, as inorganic as it is, it's so light and summery.
I have a new musical obsession with Escala. An electronic string quartet that competed on Britain's Got Talent. They didn't win, but I think that they are absolutely amazing. I also have a (not so new) obsession with Legend of the Seeker TV show. Love it! Very SiFi/Historical Fantasy, not sure yet if I want to to read the Sword of Truth book series that it is based off of.
That's all for now. Until next time, happy reading.

Answering the Musical Call

I went for an interview for an officer position in the Honors Club at my college. They seemed to like me and I think it went really well. I applied for the position of Historian, it's really just archiving, newsletter, scrap-booking and a little pr work. Sounds like my kind of job.
It's raining here, the weather held all weekend so I guess it was inevitable. I tried to make a new header, but I can't find a text color that I like and that actually shows up. I really want to keep the background pic I have but I might have to change it all. Oh well, I'll keep playing with it.
I went to a makeup piano lesson after the interview and I just started playing The Call by Regina Spektor, who is one of my favorite artists; her voice is so dynamic, I'm going to learn how to sing it after I can play it well.
For all of you who don't know what Regina sounds like or want to hear The Call, here you go:

	Regina Spektor - The Call .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Until next time, happy reading.