Christa Allan

With thanks to KRISTEN BILLERBECK for the heads up on this!
Baby Got Book (OFFICIAL)

I’m at Writer…Interrupted today.  Click and visit!

“Breakage” by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the [...]

from 2008 Erma Bombeck Workshop

Garrison Keillor: Writing humor when life isn’t funny (2008 from Erma Bombeck Workshop)

Since I renamed my blog Fictionary after Natalie Jost designed this site, almost all of my blog tours, author interviews, and book reviews can be found there. A few exceptions-like yesterday’s My Beautiful Mommy (my subtitle: after she’s had her nose fixed, tummy tucked, and boobs lifted) which I presented here as social commentary.
Today, however, [...]

Wait, Christa, isn’t your other blog, FICTIONARY, for book reviews (a bit of shameless self-promotion)?
Yes.
Surely My Beautiful Mommy is a sweet children’s book that you’ll be promoting there, right?
Wrong.
I discovered this book when Tanya Dennis wrote about it on her blog, which I read on High Calling Blogs. I bookmarked this site weeks ago, fully [...]

This offer expires at 8:00 pm Eastern time TODAY. 
Go HERE for the link to find the free download of Suze Orman’s new book: Women & Money.

Musing
Last year, the College Board and ETS surveyed Readers asking general questions about the reading experience. Hats off to them for listening because this year they provided a hospitality room in the hotel that provided soft drinks, coffee, water, and assorted munchies like chips, cookies, fruit,  and hot pretzels. Then, Saturday night, we had [...]

Tour of Zoomii Books

Solutions - BRAINTEASERS 05
1. A=5, E=2, F=1, G=9, L=0, O=7, R=8, S=6. W=3
2. The third letter of each name is the same as the third letter of the method of transport, so Lucy travels by bicycle.
3. The second and fifth letters of each word in the top list are consecutive,so OBJECT.
4. The numerical value (A-Z=1-26) [...]

Not sure what happened here. . . I’d saved this before I left for Florida and set it to post on WGW. I didn’t set it to NOT post the letters for #1. If you were able to solve this without the letters, call MENSA immediately.
1. In this puzzle, each letter represents a different number. [...]

I’m HERE today!

I’ve featured a few of Jessica Hagy’s sketches from INDEXED before. Her blog is one of my favorites. She has the ability to envision relationships among people, places, and things with startling insight and wry humor. The epitome of clever. Her blog makes me want to buy index cards for no particular reason.
Here are a [...]

Thanks to Ivy Madison, CEO and founder of Red Room

Tales Of Mere Existence

9-letter word - NAVIGATOR

Some other words of five letters or more containing the hub letter R:

agora, antra, aorta, argon, argot, atria, grain, grant, griot, groan, groat,
groin, intro, naira, noria, organ, raita, ratio, riant, riata, taira, tiara, train,
varan, vigor (US), virga, angora, organa, rating, ration, raving, roving,
trigon, virago, aviator, orating, vagrant, variant.

How many words can you make from the letters in the wheel?
Each word must contain the hub letter R. Can you find a 9-letter word and at least 20 other words of five letters or more avoiding proper nouns?
CHECK BACK THURSDAY FOR SOLUTION!

One of the required ninth grade readings is THE ODYSSEY. Not all twenty-four books of it, of course. Those who determine selections in textbook anthologies tend to underestimate the endurance and curiosity of high school students. But that’s a rage for another day.
Homer’s epic poem, which consists of over 12,100 lines, covers the ten-year period [...]

A recent survey showed that two-thirds of today’s teens use “nonstandard elements” in their school writing assignments. 
This is news? OMG.
I’m LOL with my BFF who’s a real QT.
“Half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant [...]