The Things You Can Control

For those who have followed my blog, you know I went through a major career change this year.  I have learned so many new things this year I can’t even qualify it all at this point.  Some of the lessons I have learned have been more prominent and useful than others. Focus on the things you can control. This is applicable in every area of your life. For me, I focus on the aspects of what I can control.  Prospecting, following up with prospects and current clients and learning as much as I can every day about the myrid of products at my disposal.  Multi-tasking and focusing on the critical activities that need to be done to suceed are important, but you must continue to not get hung up on the stuff you can’t control. As...

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Posted in: Control Focus Attitude Happy Enthusiastic Whisper No Rules Of Engagement

Discovering Who You Are

For those who have followed by blog you know that I had a directional change in my life this year as I lost the job I had held for over twenty years. First off losing my job has turned out to be the biggest blessing God has given me since my wife fell in love with and said I do and my children being born. Secondly God has further blessed me with an opportunity to begin a new career which has has challenged me in many new and exciting ways.  So much so that I have had to rediscover who I am. Each day I am faced with new vistas and discoveries as I proceed on my new adventure and career.  I am in one of those phases of life when you don’t fully realize what you are capable of.  You keep going forward, step by step, learning...

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Posted in: Journey Discoveries Happy important embracing success vistas Change Life

PASSED MY SERIES 7 EXAM

As a writer and someone who has experienced the thrill and wrath of written work being edited, the entire Securities Industry needs to be edited desperately! There is over ten terms which have more than one or two ways of referring to the exact same thing.  There is more definitions for the word BASIS within the same industry, @^#%$&$*. Any Editor worth their salt could have condensed that manual down by a quarter and determined for the industry what terms and phrases will be used and are acceptable and really clear up a lot of confusion and misunderstandings. Who ever came up with the bright idea of two three hour tests back to back with only an hour break in between should be tied to a tree and shot to death!  A lady was there testing for her CPA - four tests spread...

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Posted in: Editor Series 7 Exam Basis

New Directions - Training - Series 7 Exam

As I have hinted about previously - my life is taking a new direction.  Part of that is contingent on my passing the registration exam.  In this case it is the Series 7 Registration Exam. For the past three weeks I have been doing nothing but reading, studying, taking notes, taking tests and getting ready for this two part - six hour test. Tomorrow I go sit for the Exam.  I have never worked so hard for anything in the entire previous 46 years of my life!  I want this opportunity and chance at a new career and great opportunity. Please if any of you are of the Christian persuasion - even if you are not.  Say a prayer for me tonight. Going to go to bed early with this thought on my mind.  I have done the studying,...

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Posted in: Series 7 Exam Prayers New Opportunities Studying

Hibernation

On March 7, of this year I was let go from the company I had been employed with for over twenty years.  At the time I thought it was a terrible injustice and was extremely upset over the entire situation.  I did realize very soon after I had left that I seemed to be a much happier person without the stress associated with aspects of working there. At other times in my life, I had experienced something which during the time you are going through it seems terrible.  Only after time when things have changed and worked out do you realize you are in a much better place than you would have been in if the event which forced the change had not happened in the first place. This is what has happened in my life once more. ...

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Posted in: Hibernation New Adventure novelist future goals career writing editing

Cover Reveal

Cover Reveal Cry Me A River by Devyn Dawson Caide Palmer, Emerald Isle's resident chef and grieving father.  Everything in his life is turned upside down when his ex-girlfriend Heather dies from an accidental overdose.  She left behind their eighteen month old daughter.  Heather's parents filed for emergency custody of baby Lucy.  Now Caide is in the fight of his life to raise his daughter to the best of his ability.  The courts order Caide to attend parenting classes and Al Anon meetings.  It is there that he meets twenty-two year old River.  She is drawn in by his story, and she wants to mend his grieving heart.  Will Caide allow River in to his world, or will he find his role as single...

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Writing Fiction

It seems that some new writers have a hang up or problem with taking that leap in to altered realities of their made up stories. Taking that step into the unreal, into the part of your imagination that makes your story fiction, different, unreal, or magical.  What the new writer doesn't understand is that the readers are looking for that special moment or point in the book when it strays into that unreal part with altered rules of reality. Remember your favorite books or movies and the moments they crossed that line and hooked you.  You didn't need a huge drawn out description of the rules of physics for this particular story.  You didn't need to be lead around it, or have it hinted at to you through multiple chapters,...

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Posted in: Imagination altered realities fiction unreal magical moments stories

The Great Gatsby

Review of The Great Gatsby At the time of it’s original publishing in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby” received critical reviews and had disappointing sales. Fitzgerald once said in 1920, almost prophetically, “An Author ought to write for the youth of his generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever-afterward.” Well, he definitely did that.  “The Great Gatsby” didn't become great in it’s own right until about ten to twenty years after Fitzgerald had died.  When college students were reading it, later it became required reading in schools before ultimately being considered one of the top 100 pieces of literature from the nineteen hundreds. My daughter read Gatsby in...

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Posted in: Gatsby Fitzgerald Scott Nick Carraway Tobey Maguire Leonardo DiCaprio

Snow in May

I am extremely competitive and love to see records broke of about any type, but for snow in May, that one I can do without.  My wife looked it up and the previous record was 1.7 inches of snow in 1907.  Yeah that’s right.  We have the chance to break a hundred and six year old record for Snow in May, in Kansas City, Missouri. I remember feeling elated that the Ground Hog didn't see his shadow and how that was supposed to predict an early spring.  Somehow a snow storm in May doesn't sound like an early sprin...

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Posted in: Snow May Ground Hog Record Spring

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is . . . Is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance. "meaningful coincidences" a causal connecting principle an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events. Any of you who read my stuff, here or in my books, will find out sooner or later I am religious, converted later in life mostly because of my wife.  I still have a problem with cussing, in that I still do it habitually out of habit even though I know it is wrong.  My wife and two young boys have enlisted in the crusade of trying to correct my bad habits. I am a devout Christian because of things I have witnessed which can...

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Posted in: Amazing Sand God Plans Coincidences connecting Synchronicity

New and Different Paths

In 2010 I made the decision to challenge myself and try to start and finish writing a novel.  I primarily did it just to see if I could do it, and the book “Whisper” is the result of my efforts which I published in January 2011. Prior to writing a novel I had spent the last seventeen on the same path, with the same job, with the same company.  I have heard about prisoners developing a fear of being able to exist outside the walls of their prison because they had gotten so comfortable with what they know.  I have felt pangs of that fear recently as my life has taken what I would call drastic changes. On Google Plus, Jillian Michaels, posted a picture that said "Every Accomplishment starts with the Decision to TRY." ...

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Posted in: New Challenges Directions Decision path Chance afraid skills talents

Write Down Your Ideas

Before I started writing full time I read everything I could about writing, especially the stuff that was written by my favorite authors. I remember reading that Piers Anthony wrote that he lost more story ideas than he ever wrote because he didn't write them down at the time he had them. I can’t count the number of wonderful ideas I have had in the morning taking a shower and how they vanished like the fog on the mirror by the time I was dressed and had reached work. I have had numerous discussions with individuals about the need for a way to take notes while taking a shower.  One of the last people I had that discussion sent me a picture and link to get a water proof computer. I have lost several ideas...

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Posted in: Write Ideas Down Notebooks Piers Anthony Character Scene Novel

Writer Versus Singer

90 Seconds versus the first Chapter! As I was watching the television show ‘The Voice’ it reminded me of hearing Johnny Cash recall how during an audition where the music producer told him to sing something, anything, in 90 seconds to convince him that he had what it took to be signed by him. On the show, ‘The Voice,’ the contestants have 90 seconds to sing in order to get one of the four judges to turn their chair around.  How many times throughout music history has an artists career been decided in 90 seconds or less? As a reader for years before I became a writer, I know that avid readers are a bit more tolerant and patient than 90 seconds before deciding to not read something new.  Trust me, the pressure is just as great...

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Posted in: 90 seconds Voice Writing Reading Singing published books market store printing press reader

Names For Characters

I devised a system a while back that I use for coming up with names for characters in my books.  I use names from people I connect with on-line through social media sites.  Not the peoples names directly as I find them on the different sites but I put the names in cells in a spread sheet so they can be manipulated and re-arranged.  Then I put first and last names together at random until I find a name I like for a particular character. Even as random as this system appears to be, I am sure that I come up with names which match the names of real people somewhere.  Many years ago and what feels like a different life time ago I was a clown (Hobo) with the Red Cross Clown Corps.  In doing so we needed to make up...

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Posted in: Characters Name Novelist Novel Random Real People Books

The Vernal Equinox

The word Equinox comes from the Latin and means ‘Equal Night.’  The Vernal Equinox is the Spring Time of the year where the days and nights are roughly equal and from here on out the days will be increasing in the amount of daylight, the temperatures will be warming up, and the earth will begin the rebirth of plants until fall comes. The grass will turn green, the trees will regrow their leaves, and the flowers will grow.  Soon will be planting time to begin gardens and refill the flower beds for the summer. Summer time is on the way.  Once again the cycle of rebirth will begin and transform our world in the northern hemisphere one more time. Please take time to enjoy the season, see the new plants sprout, plant...

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Posted in: Spring Time Equinox Vernal Trees Grass Plants flowers days nights equal

Changes and Silver Linings

From time to time life presents us with changes.  Maybe we move to a new house, get a new job, a new relationship, or a new car.  Sometimes these changes are planned for and expected while other times they are a total surprise.  Changes manifest themselves in many wondrous ways. Maybe your old car died.  Maybe you had to move to a new residence.  Maybe you lost your job.  Maybe you lost a person who was close to you.  Obviously the many wondrous ways changes can manifest themselves isn't always in the delightful, heart warming, fuzzy way you would have liked it to come about. “All Changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; WE...

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Posted in: Changes Success Silver Linings Opportunity New Book Characters Coping Capabilities

The In Between Time

My favorite days are the ones In Between. Everybody has a certain amount of routine which naturally gets sifted into their lives.  Life then invades our time with dinners out, shopping trips, birthdays, party's  special events, deaths, funerals, visits to the hospital and on and on.  Sometimes it’s bigger interruptions like planned trips to places you have never been before, sort of mini adventures away from your stomping grounds and venturing in to a new region of the world just over the horizon. Most people spend their lives living from one special event to the next.  They have to have something to look forward to, a reason to check the days of the calendar to count down to that next big event. ...

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Posted in: Carpe Diem In Between Special Courage Goals Plans