Coffee Blog

It’s always tea time.” – The Mad Hatter

Writing Sparkle

This tea is full of surprises.

A sweet cinnamony smell reaches my nose as I prep my teabag this morning. This loose leaf is pretty to look at with its varying shades of orange, tan, and light brown with occasional sprinkles of deep brown. There are no leaves in this tea. It’s apple, almond, cinnamon, and beetroot. Forever Nuts is one of my favourite caffeine free teas. Even steeped, this tea has a delicious smell. The colour of the tea, once steeped, is lovely too. It is a soft transparent pink. It’s the almond that dominates the taste.

If we were having coffee tea, I would share with you that I am going to change my Weekend Coffee Share Feature Image. From the Keurig pods to this lovely image that reminds me of the orange, tans, and browns of my tea this week.

If we were having coffee tea, I would share with you that I had a mother and son Friday night movie night. My husband and my older son went going out camping, but my younger son wanted to hangout with me. We ate popcorn and watch The Jurassic Park movies from start to almost finish (there are a couple pending for this afternoon). I think he is preparing for the new Jurassic movie that is coming out in June. It was fun.

If we were having coffee tea, I would share with you that I finished an Advanced Reader read of an urban fantasy novel called Obscure: Ghostmaker Book 1. It was good. The author is Krista Walsh. I am now reading a novel by another Canadian Indie author. It’s called Willow Awakened, Ascended, Avenged. It’s classed as dark epic fantasy and it’s by Don Bourque. I will share reviews for both on my Goodreads platform.

If we were having coffee tea, I would ask what you are reading? What is your genre of choice?

By Shari Marshall – 2022

Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Natalie the Explorer. I hope you have a chance to join us for a virtual cup. Coffee share #71 or week 19 of 54.

18 thoughts on “It’s always tea time.” – The Mad Hatter”

  1. I like how the colors in the new image match your book cover. Hope you continue to enjoy your mother/son movie binge to tend of the movies. I’d rather be camping, but that’s just me 😉 Have a great weekend!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi Shari,

    I like your new Weekend Coffee Share Feature Image a lot. I noticed the image included the cover of your Ember Stone – very cool. I wanted to ask how you came up with the overall image?
    Is that your hand in the frame with fairy lights in the higher background – a wonderfully composed shot or is the image a by-product of photo-shopped canva-magic?
    Either way – it looks great.

    I too am looking forward to the new Jurassic Park movie. I’m a long time fan of Michael Chrichton and was an early adopter of Andromeda Strain back in 1969 and drug all my friends into reading it with me, So his JP series is just a way to sorta keep enjoying one of his major ideas.

    Which takes me to my favorite story genre – Hard Science Fiction with well done human drama.
    I’ve tried starting a couple of HSF stories myself, but those were premature efforts and I really didn’t know what I was doing nor did I have the writing skills that I’ve since collected.

    I don’t write much in that genre mostly because my perception is that fewer people enjoy it as compared to well-done human drama – so that’s where my efforts landed. If I can get “good” at writing compelling human drama, I might yet collect a following. We’ll see.

    Thanks for the virtual visit.
    Hope you have a great week ahead – and oh yes, I also hope that your hosting the wretched covid bug is now almost forgotten history and your life is back to normal.

    Blessings.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. This image is not Canva this time. I was introduced to a new program, similar to Canva, but specific to books. It’s called Bookbrush (Bookbrush.com) and that was where I made my new Coffee Share Image.

      I haven’t seen the Andromeda Strain. I don’t mind watch some science fiction, but I haven’t yet found a book that I can commit to reading in the genre. “Dune” was recently recommended to me (to read, not watch), but I’m not 100% convinced to pick it up yet. Now, “Hard Science Fiction” I had to check what exactly that meant. Accuracy? I could see that might be a hard group to please, a huge amount of research and fact checking would be required to nail a piece of writing.

      As for growing your following, I think your writing is spectacular. Time, persistence, and visibility. Are you still considering doing a collection of writing for an anthology?

      Like

      1. Hi Shari,

        I’ve been waffling about trying to figure out how to answer your note.
        Finally decided to just do it and admit I don’t have all the answers to everything.

        First, the easiest to answer is that I’m going to have to get my head around both Canva & checkout Bookbrush. Both have potential I’d like to be able to engage.

        Then, Andromeda Strain. This is one of the earliest hard science fiction books that I read and was hooked. It’s a great example of Science Fiction but where the science is all plausible and could happen. Dune really doesn’t fit in Hard SciFi as much of it is just too far out. Some of it does fit, but I doubt that many devoted HSF readers would include Dune in this genre. If you want to try something fun in the HSF genre, Andromeda Strain would be a great book to try out. Almost anything by this author would be. His story pacing gets old as he presses too hard I think on having cliff hangers at the end of each chapter and after a while it gets too predicable but he was a great HSF and Science Thriller writer who died too young.

        HSF fans can go hard on writers who don’t color within the lines of accepted science. When I wrote, “Defending Canopy Station” as my first longer HSF story, I worked hard at getting the details of the station and the speed of light correct. There’s a bit at the end which is speculative science, something that is likely but untestable on Earth (it’s the surprise at the end of the story) but only science nerds would care to think it through – so I tried to make sure that whoever did would not come away with an “oh-get real!” response. Obviously – I like it a lot but it’s not to everyone’s taste.

        But your last question . . . I’ve gone back and forth on this so many times.
        I’d like to publish but can’t get past the effort it would require for the potential sales I think I would actually pull. I really don’t believe I have sufficient following and should just keep trying to grow my blog following as a partial indicator of what might happen if I put a book out there. I certainly don’t want to put out the effort only to have the book flop. If I kept at my writing, getting better, more consistent with quality of content and found a genre I could sell into and see something that looked like popular support – I’d be a lot more tempted.

        Thanks for your very kind thoughts and opinion. That you think this is golden to me and leaves me thinking I need a couple of hundred Shari’s out there following and reading my story blog. My site itself could use a revamp too and I might need to use blog posts more that blog pages.

        All that to say I might yet get there, but I just don’t see even an anthology coming in the immediate future. But your encouraging me has moved the needle in the right direction. This is one of the reasons I love following your progress. I love seeing you succeed and getting closer to concluding that I too could do that some day.

        Blessings

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Thanks for the kind words, Gary. I really do enjoy following your blog. I have an upcoming post, related to your review of The Ember Stone, on my new Instagram account, where I recommend people to check out your website.

          Now, Sci-fi – I don’t consider myself a science nerd by any scope, but I do love a good read so perhaps I need to challenge my normal reading pattern a bit.

          Blog – Updating the blog is a lot of work, but it can be a lot of fun especially when you get an end product that you like. I think joining Groups like The Coffee Share and Carrots Ranch Literary Community are great spaces to find new followers (and new great blogs to follow ourselves). Another blog challenge that I have found really helped me get followers is the A to Z challenge that happens in April. The only thing with A to Z is the amazing time commitment it requires.

          Publishing – Sales is something that has to be considered for sure. It also goes hand-in-hand with budget and goals. The big question of, Why are you writing/publishing this book? Is it money? Is simply a passion to write and share? Is it fame? Is it something else? Then taking all those things and looking at them with a realistic lens. For me, its because I love to write and I hope people who read my stories will be entertained. Lots of research into publishing options and prices has been important to. I don’t know my final expenses yet and no sales stats, but in 6 months to a year I will be in a better position to share what that ends up looking like…

          Like

  5. What a nice gift to have your son all to yourself. Enjoy the Dino series. Have a funtastic week.

    Like

  6. Thank you for that lovely cup of tea! I love cinnamon in tea, one of my favourite teas of all time is a red rooibos with cinnamon. It’s so soothing.

    It sounds like a very enjoyable weekend, with some quality parent/kids time for everyone. So important! I took my daughter out to one of the fancier cafés in town yesterday. It was a great time, and it improved her end-of-the-school-year-tiredness-mood immensely. I think everyone is very ready for a summer break here 🙂 Enjoy the last movies!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I think you are right about everyone having that end-of-school & end-of-yucky-weather tiredness. Some is just around the corner. My boys have 5 weeks left of class. Is your daughter’s school on the same time line?

      Thanks for stopping in Maria.

      Liked by 1 person

  7. My genre of choice varies but I’ve noticed I gravitate towards non-fiction or true crime. But I feel if I read plenty of those, after a while, I crave a light fiction or a “guilty pleasure” book.

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.