Author: CAstfalk

Top 10 Tuesday: Things I’m Still Learning After 20 Years of Marriage

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Things Learned 20 YRS Marriage

My husband and I will be married twenty years this week. Twenty years. Not sure how it’s even possible that so many sunsets have slipped by me.

As a twenty-five-year-old bride, I thought I came into marriage well-prepared. Relatively speaking, I did. My parents provided a good example of a long and faithful marriage. (Remote preparation.) I understood, more or less, what marriage entailed, at least as well as any never-been-married person can. We attended the Church-required marriage preparation and consulted with a priest. (Proximate preparation.) We discussed the important stuff: faith, babies, finances, and lifestyle. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: N is for NaNoWriMo

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

N blogging
N is for NaNoWriMo

For those who do no know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. It was during NaNoWriMo 2010 that I wrote the first draft of Rightfully Ours, then tentatively titled All That Glitters. I hadn’t ever attempted writing fiction longer than a short story, and even that had been a decade earlier. Suffice to say, I didn’t really know what I was doing, only that I wanted to get 50,000 semi-coherent words written during that November. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: M is for Medals

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

M blogging M is for Medals

A personal item or token of some sort can tell you a lot about a character. It may be a piece of jewelry, a memento kept in a pocket, or a treasure tucked in a nightstand drawer. I’ve used religious medals as items important to Catholic characters in my novels.

In Ornamental Graces, it was a Miraculous Medal pinned to the inside of Grandma’s bra (!), later given to a special young woman. In Rightfully Ours, it is a St. Paul medal given as  birthday gift to Paul from his friend Rachel. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: L is for Lentils

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

L blogging
L is for Lentils

Yesterday I bypassed “kiss” for “karst,” despite the kisses in Rightfully Ours. Today, I’m going to skip the overly broad “love” for “lentils.” Yes, lentils. The legumes.

I don’t believe I ever tasted a lentil until I was in my twenties, and my husband encouraged me to make lentil soup. I found a recipe in one of his cookbooks and gave it a shot. In fact, it earned a regular spot in our menu and has a tiny place in Rightfully Ours when Rachel makes a pot for her family’s dinner. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: K is for Karst

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

K bloggingK is for Karst

We’re almost halfway through the alphabet, and I’m feeling a little loopy. What is “karst” anyway? And why did I choose it over “kiss”?

In Rightfully Ours, between the fracking, a rainy spring, and some other geological factors, conditions are ripe for a phenomenon I’ve seen plenty of in south-central Pennsylvania – the sinkhole. No, karst isn’t precisely what I imagine going on underneath my fictional world, but it’s pretty close, what with limestone deposits being prevalent in these parts. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: J is for Jekyll and Hyde

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

I bloggingJ is for Jekyll and Hyde

I have no business writing about Jekyll and Hyde. I have not read the book, and I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t recall that Robert Louis Stevenson was the author until I looked it up. I’ve had an affection for Stevenson since I played the Authors Card Game with my family as a kid. His books were never assigned reading during my school years, but as an adult,  I read Treasure Island. Kidnapped is on my soon-to-be-read list, and now, The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been added to the list as well. But I digress. Continue reading →

Blogging from A to Z Challenge: I is for iPod Playlist

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Blogging from A to Z April 2017 Challenge

For the first time, I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge! The concept is simple: Each day in April I’ll be blogging on a topic  starting with the letter of the day, beginning with A and progressing to Z by the end of the month. Posts will be short and will relate to my chosen theme: my new coming of age story, Rightfully Ours, released April 1.

I bloggingI is for iPod Playlist

I didn’t listen to the radio much until I reached the middle school years. Until then, I listened to whatever my brothers played (The Beatles, Wings, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more) or albums my parents owned. (I remember listening to a lot of Mitch Miller and On Top of Spaghetti.) When I developed my own interest in popular music, the only way to assemble a playlist was by creating the infamous mixtape, camped out in front of the radio with a cassette recorder. Continue reading →