Category Archives: My Family

Monday Blog Post: July Starts with a Bang!

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Mayor Evans, Connie Cockrell, Payson Book Festival Day Proclamation. Photo, Marie Fasano

Mayor Evans and Connie Cockrell with the Payson Book Festival Day Proclamation. Photo by Marie Fasano

On July 2nd, as the Chair for the Payson Book Fesitval, I received a Proclamation from the Town of Payson Mayor, Kenny Evans. The proclamation declares July 25th, the day of our book festival to be Payson Book Festival Day! You can see me and the Mayor in the above picture, shaking hands.

There’s only 19 more days until the festival and we’re hot and heavy into the marketing part of the event. Our Media committee member, Marie Fasano, has sent small articles to all of the major magazines in Arizona for their Calendar sections. She’s set up all of these interviews on radio and TV I’ve been posting about and she’s sent articles about our participating authors to their hometown newspapers to run. Marie has been doing a fantastic job. I hope you can make it to Payson on July 25th, 9am – 4pm, and stop by the festival to say hello!

If you missed any of the interviews or media releases or want to read the proclamation, click here to find everything.

It having been the 4th of July weekend I feel obligated to share that hubby and I went to a friend’s house and watched the fireworks from there. One of hubby’s pictures of the show is below. Our town does a great 4th of July festival in Green Valley park: children’s games and contests, food vendors, live music and then, a thirty-minute fireworks display.

Payson, Fireworks, Randy Cockrell

Payson Fireworks by Randy Cockrell

I’m still working on my Mystery at the Fair edits. After that will be the CreateSpace and Smashwords formatting and the release. I’m still shooting for the end of this week to finish the edits and then spend next weekend formatting and releasing. Cross your fingers for me, every one.

July is also a Camp NaNo month. As of today I have over 10,000 words. I completed the first draft of my short story for the Forward Motion anthology. Now I’m working on the second Jean Hays series book, Mystery in the Woods. When will it be out, you ask? No idea. I have two other books, that I wrote in April, waiting for editing. Maybe you can tell I’m not as enthusiastic about the editing and rewriting part as I am about writing the first draft.

My tomatoes have finally begun a serious growth spurt. I put the trellis for them up a few days ago and already they’re growing through the loops. The Sungold cherry tomato has tomatoes on it but still green. The rest of the plants are blossoming. Two of the six plants were volunteers that I dug up and put in the tomato bed. I can’t wait to see what they are!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

If you’re interested, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I make special offers to my newsletter people that I do not make on the website.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today! If you’ve read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It’s a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote their books. Thanks in advance.

Monday Blog Post: New Month – June 2015

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Rufus-sided towhee, Bird bath, Randy Cockrell

Rufus-sided towhee taking a bath by Randy Cockrell

Hooray! It’s June. Here in Arizona school is already out but for many other places in the U.S.A. it’s the last few weeks of finals and then, graduation. June is also a wedding month. I have no graduations or weddings to attend but for you that do, have fun and congratulations.

May Story A Day, or May SAD as I call it, is now over. I committed to write 10 stories for the month and actually shoot for 12. I didn’t make even the official goal, I have 9 and a half stories written, most of them are flashes but there are a couple of short stories in the mix, too. In my other writing group I kept up with my 5 minutes per day writing challenge missing a day or two here or there. I like these sort of challenges. They keep me moving.

I now have a basic site up and running at www.conniesrandomthoughts.com. Notice there is no more wordpress in the URL. I’ll be closing down www.conniesrandomthoughts.wordpress.com. You’ll notice at the top of the web page the notice. Please do transfer over to the website. I’d hate to lose you all.

Eavesdroppers came back from the editors and I made the final corrections to it. Then I sent it out to the Acorn Press, Apocalypse Chronicles contest. The contest doesn’t close until July 15th and then those people have to read all of those entries. It will be awhile before I hear anything back. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s less than two months now until the Payson Book Festival. www.PaysonBookFestival.org. Check out the site, especially the Meet the Authors tab. Is your favorite author listed? If not, come and find a new favorite author. Mark your calendar to come to Payson for July 25th to meet us. We’d love to chat with you.

The hot weather has finally hit. It was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday. Time to get watering and put in my tomatos, peppers and such. I pulled out a giant red-leaved bush from our front yard next to the garage and front walk. It was growing out of control, had developed some rot in the branches and well, hubby has never liked it. I’m sorry to pull it out. It turned a bright red in the fall after a few hard frosts and in the spring had tiny pink flowers that smelled good and the bees loved. I’m going to replace it with lavender. Lavender does really well in this climate and after it’s established, hardly needs any watering. Plus, when it blooms, I’ll be able to pick a lot of those wonderful blossoms. Bees and butterflies will love it too. Win-win for everyone.

If you follow me on Chicklets in the Kitchen, this month’s recipe will be crockpot pulled pork. I love crockpot cooking in the summer and who doesn’t like pulled pork. That post will be out on the 25th of June.

Today’s picture is of our birdbath. The Rufus-sided towhee is again featured enjoying a bath.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

If you’re interested, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I make special offers to my newsletter people that I do not make on the website.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today! If you’ve read any of my books, please drop a review on the site where you bought it. It’s a big help to me in the book rankings each vendor uses to promote their books. Thanks in advance.

Chicklets In The Kitchen Blog Post: Grilling Chicken and Asparagus

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Grilled Chicken Quarters and Asparagus by Connie Cockrell

Grilled Chicken Quarters and Asparagus by Connie Cockrell

For most of us Memorial Day weekend is the start of the summer season. Not so much in Texas, Oklahoma and the mid-west this year though. Anyway, summer means grilling. I grill a lot here in Arizona. Unless there’s snow on the ground and I can’t roll the BBQ out, I can grill. Summer grilling means making meals outside where I’m not heating up the house. I love that. Here is my go to grilled dinner, chicken thighs and asparagus. Add a potato or macaroni salad, made in the morning while it’s still cool, and you have a fast, easy, pan-free meal that’s practically hassle free.

See the rest at Chicklets in the Kitchen.

 

Monday Blog Post: Memorial Day Weekend

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Hummingbirds, Bees, Feeder, Randy Cockrell

Hummingbirds vs Bees by Randy Cockrell

So how was your Memorial Day weekend? Do anything fun? Go camping? Have the whole family over for a BBQ? My town’s Farmer’s market opened for the first time this season on Saturday. Mom and I went early, saw all the stalls, some new, many returning again. She bought a huge cinnamon bun from the local bakery and we both bought tamales from the tamale lady to eat for breakfast. I had the green pork and she had the red pork tamale. Yummy in my tummy. On Sunday, hubby, me and my mom went to the Pine Craft Fair. Randy had the Navajo Taco to eat. One of our hiking friends was a volunteer making them. So that was fun. Then we had what hubby and his brother call a Taco Feast on Sunday evening. The two brothers had fun reminiscing about taco night when they were boys.

This month’s challenge is called May Story A Day, May SAD, and I committed to write 10 stories for the month and actually shoot for 12. As of the 23rd, I have 9 stories written, most of them are flashes but there are a couple of short stories in the mix, too. In my other writing group I’m still keeping up with my 5 minutes per day writing challenge. I have missed a day or two but I’ve been diligent about putting something on the screen every day.

Last week I mentioned that I’ve upgraded my my website. I now have a basic site up and running at www.conniesrandomthoughts.com. Notice there is no more wordpress in the URL. I’ll be closing down www.conniesrandomthoughts.wordpress.com. Last week I asked you to go check up the new site and follow that before you lose out on weekly stories and my writing updates! Unfortunately, the site subscribe button was missing. I’ve spent many hours this week putting a subscribe button on there as well as social media follow and share buttons. I’m not a web site developer or a programmer but I’ve got things operational. Take a look.

My editors at Silver Jay Media helped me cut the final 600 words in my short story, Eavesdroppers, and it’s now in their capable hands for the final line and copy editing. If you’re thinking that it’s quite a process, you’re correct. At any rate, soon the story will be as good as I can make it and I’ll send it off to a contest. I’ll keep you posted on it’s progress.

The Payson Book Festival is at www.PaysonBookFestival.org. Check out the site, especially the Meet the Authors tab. Is your favorite author listed? If not, come and find a new favorite author. Mark your calendar to come to Payson for July 25th to meet us. We’d love to chat with you.

Today’s picture is of our hummingbird feeder. Somehow tiny cracks developed in the bottom of the feeder. The leaking nectar attracted the bees. It went on like this for several days and the hummingbirds were not happy. Anyway, Friday, hubby took the feeder down and repaired the cracks. No more nectar for the bees. The hummingbirds are happy. The bees got a head start on their honey making.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

If you’re interested, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I make special offers to my newsletter people that I do not make on the website.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today!

Monday Blog Post: Updates for May

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Bird, Rufous-sided Towhee, Randy Cockrell

Rufous-sided Towhee by Randy Cockrell

This month’s challenge is called May Story A Day, May SAD and I committed to write 10 stories for the month and actually shoot for 12. As of the 16th, I have 6 stories written, 5 flashes and a short story. In my other writing group I’m in a 5 minutes per day writing challenge. I’m supposed to write at least 5 minutes per day. I’m keeping up with the 5 minutes of writing per day pretty well. I have missed a day or two but I’ve been diligent about putting something on the screen every day.

Our illness appears to be over. There is still some coughing but we felt well enough to go hiking last Tuesday. Probably not our best move. We hadn’t fully recovered yet and the hike wiped us both out. We’ll be better on this Tuesday, really, we will.

Last week I mentioned that I’ve upgraded my newsletter. I’m also upgrading my website. I now have a basic site up and running at www.conniesrandomthoughts.com. Notice there is no more wordpress in the URL. I’ll be closing down www.conniesrandomthoughts.wordpress.com. Go check up the new site and follow that before you lose out on weekly stories and my writing updates!

I have finished content editing Eavesdroppers  but the problem is the story ended up 600 words too long. I’ve been cutting words without cutting the changes however I still have 150 or so words to go. The editors at Silver Jay Media have offered to help me with it and I think I will. Then I’ll go to the line edits.

The Payson Book Festival is now hot and heavy into finalizing author lists and starting up the production of a print program for the event. We have so many great authors, sponsors, and vendors; we hope to get a great program that attendees will treasure for a long time to come. Want to help the book festival this year? Buy an ad! Mark your calendar to come to Payson for July 25th to meet us. We’d love to chat with you.

Today’s picture is a rufous-sided towhee sitting on top of the metal hook that holds the hummingbird feeder. A handsome bird.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

If you’re interested, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I make special offers to my newsletter people that I do not make on the website.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today!

Monday Blog Post: Month’s End

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Apple Blossoms, Connie Cockrell

Apple Blossoms by Connie Cockrell

It’s been a hectic quarter for me, and I can hardly believe it’s over.

The yard and garden continue to be worked. I have trimmed 3 more of the 12 rosebushes and did yet another run of pulling mint out of my deepest square foot garden bed. The peach tree seedling I transplanted into a small container is doing well. So are the mystery tomatoes. I think I’ll just buy hot peppers and sweet peppers and a few of the other things I put in the garden. I really should put the peas and beans in now. It’s already a hot spring for us. A neighbor gave me a lot of ancient flower seeds. I’m going to set up some pots and see if anything will sprout. Who knows, I may end up with a lot of flowers this year.

Sunday I made a new batch of soap. The last batch was made fifteen months ago. This time I made half the batch a rosemary scent, leaving the other half unscented. The unscented stuff I’ll use to make my own shampoo. Since I’ve been making my own shampoo I think my hair is much softer and not all dried out. I poured the liquid soap into a 2 qt glass measuring cup and poured out the unscented soap into silicon muffin cups. Then I mixed the ground rosemary (from my own rosemary bush that I dried and ground myself) and a half ounce of rosemary essential oil into the remainder and stirred it all through. I poured that into a second silicon muffin pan. Twenty-four 4oz bars of soap are now curing in my dining room.

I finalized the editing on After Math and sent it to Clarkesworld, who rejected it after two days. I immediately sent it back out to EscapePod. No, the two day turn around wasn’t particularly fast. I once had a submission rejected in 3 hours.  So, we’ll see how EscapePod likes it.

I’m excited that a new month starts Wednesday, along with the April Camp National Novel Writing Month. I’m all ready to go on that. While waiting for that I used some time to update my web site a little bit. I’ve added a Media page where you can find my contact information, a sub-page with information about me, and another sub-page where I point out I’m available for speaking events. I tried to load an audio file of my February presentation to the Arizona Professional Writers, Rim Country Division but the site requires me to upgrade to a premium service. That’s the big push now. Since I have to upgrade, I’m going to go full website. I will retain the site as Connie’s Random Thoughts but it won’t be a blog only anymore. I also bought my name as a domain. I now own conniecockrell.com, along with 2ndWindPress.com and ConniesRandomThoughts.com.

The Payson Book Festival planning is moving right along. You can see the information on www.PaysonBookFestival.org if you’d like. Authors, there’s still time to sign up for a table. You can share a table, too, to make your costs less. Fill out the Author Registration and get that in to us so we can reserve you a table. Author registration closes at the end of April so we can put the program together. You’re not an author? Then mark your calendar to come to Payson for July 25th to meet us. We’d love to chat with you.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today!

Rainy Day Lasagna

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Rainy day, Birdbath, Central Arizona, Connie Cockrell

Rainy day at the Birdbath in Central Arizona by Connie Cockrell

We had a long stretch of cold, rainy days at the end of February and early March here in central Arizona. Very unusual weather for us but the rain was very welcome. What better for a cold rainy day than to substitute my usual spaghetti Saturday night supper with lasagna?

See more at Chicklets in the Kitchen

Gluten and Dairy Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Gluten and Dairy free Oatmeal Cookies, Milk

Gluten and Dairy free Oatmeal Cookies with Milk by Randy Cockrell

February, for a lot of you, has been a cold, snowy misery. What better than warm from the oven cookies to make everything feel better. At my house we love oatmeal cookies. My mom sometimes eats them as breakfast. I mean, they’re oatmeal, right? Anyway, this recipe comes from the back of the oatmeal box so super easy to find. I made it both gluten and dairy free by making some substitutions. I also replaced the chocolate chips with raisins so that makes them even more like a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, am I right? Here we go.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

From

The back of the box of Great Value 100% Old Fashioned Oats

Mise-en-place for cookies by Randy Cockrell

Mise-en-place for cookies by Randy Cockrell

1 Cup All Vegetable Shortening (I use lard but if you can find a gluten free veg shortening, go ahead and use it.

1 Cup Sugar

1cup light brown sugar firmly packed

2 eggs

2 T Milk (I used cashew milk with makes this recipe dairy free for my hubby)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour (I used a 4 bean flour blend to make the cookies gluten free for me! See the recipe for it below.)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp backing soda

1 tsp cinnamon

4 Cups Old Fashioned Oats

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used 1 cup of raisins instead)

See the rest over on Chicklets in the Kitchen!

Monday Blog Post: Am I Catching Up?

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February, Gardening, Parsley, Connie Cockrell

February Parsley by Connie Cockrell

 

I had a great time speaking on the 18th, last Wednesday at the Arizona Professional Writers monthly meeting.  I talked about my adventures as an Indie author, provided a hand-out with a ton of great links and sold a few books. Many thanks to everyone who came.

Also on the 18th was the first installment of Lost Rainbows as a serial. It’ll be posted on my blog and on Wattpad (www.Wattpad.com).  I’m ConnieCockrell on that site. It goes live on Wattpad  Wednesday, the 25th.  A new chapter will be released each Wednesday for 16 weeks. Enjoy. I’m also posting my monthly contribution to Chicklets in the Kitchen on the 25th so it’s another banner Wednesday for me. I’ll be showing you how to make gluten and dairy free oatmeal-raisin cookies. Yum! Please feel free to share those posts with friends and family.

The Payson Book Festival planning is moving right along. We’ve begun the Sponsorship drive and you can find a form on www.PaysonBookFestival.org to contribute if you’d like. We have a Kick-off pricing on author tables, too. Half price now through mid-March. Hurry, sign up for a table, you can share a table, too, to make your costs even less. Fill out the Author Registration and get that in to us so we can reserve you a table. They’re going fast at this great price.

The warm weather here has caused the green onions to come up and self-seeded parsley to start sprouting.

February, Gardening, Spring Onions, Connie Cockrell

February Spring Onions by Connie Cockrell

The fruit trees are starting to bud out too. Several flowering trees in the neighborhood are already blooming. It’s too soon, of course. If my fruit trees bloom now, they’ll get frost blasted for sure and I won’t get anything. I keep telling my trees to go back to sleep. I don’t think it’s working. We haven’t had rain in a long time, I may have to water. Ack!

I also volunteer for the Northern Gila County Fair. (www.NorthernGilaCountyFair.com) We’ve come very close to cancelling the fair because we didn’t have enough volunteers. Fortunately, we did a big newspaper and radio push and several people stepped up to help us out. Yay! The 61st Northern Gila County Fair is a go!

The Book Festival and the Fair have been taking a lot of my time this month and I haven’t done much writing because of it. But this week has no appointments so I think I can get back to my writing. My All About Bob story has been languishing long enough. I also need to edit my November story, Mystery at the Fair and finish editing my short story, After Math, so I can re-start submitting it to magazines. Lots of writing still to do, so I’d better get cracking.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today!

Monday Blog Post: Running As Fast As I Can

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Wading, creek, hiking,

Wading Sycamore Creek by Randy Cockrell

How many of you are helping a parent through the Medicare maze? I am because as I mentioned in my December posts, my mom moved in with me. The move has inspired a complete redo of her Medicare insurance, this being another state and all. What a mess! It’s a federal program! So why aren’t there federal guidelines, places to go, consistent standards and pricing? I’ll live through this process but the aggravation is all on the government.

Lost Rainbows is up on both Smashwords and CreateSpace so you should be able to find the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple and other sites.

Mybike ride on a Greenway path from Scottsdale to Tempe Town Lake and back again, about 30 miles was fantastic. What a wonderful resource for the town. After a year break from bike riding, yes, I was sore. But, I’m healed up now and the ride is so lovely that I may do it again. The Tuesday hike had us wading a couple of streams. A picture is at the top of the blog. Stream wading isn’t something we usually have to confront in Arizona and a few hikers had some reservations. However, in the long run, everyone crossed safely, in both directions and we had a wonderful hike.

On the writing front. I’ve done practically no writing last week. I’m the chair of a committee for putting on Payson’s first ever book festival as well as a board member for a couple of other volunteer organizations. All of them have collided this week to put me off of my regular schedule. This weekend my hubby and mom and I snuck away and I have had time to write. I’m excited about new stories.

Sign up for the newsletter on my blog, www.conniesrandomthoughts.wordpress.com. You’ll get the scoop on what I’m writing much earlier than I post it here.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Lost Rainbows released January 25th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy it and my other books at: Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords today!