Tuesday Photos – Kennywood Park

On By Stephanie IngramIn Photos2 Comments

If this isn’t your first time visiting my blog, then you may already know that last week we spent the day at our local amusement park and if you aren’t familiar with Pittsburgh, then I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if you’ve never even heard of Kennywood Park. Looking through my recent photos of Southwestern Pennsylvania in the summer, I decided that it would be fun to share a couple of the area via our local amusement park.

First stop: The train. This is a one-size fits all ride. If you are a native to the area, then you grew up riding the train and even if you think it’s a little silly as you get older, you still ride it for nostalgia. As a matter of fact, Kennywood has cashed in on the nostalgia factor, using it now to take riders on a tour of Kennywood over the years. I like it. I took this photo of the view over the river with one of the old mills. I love the trees and rolling hills that surround it.

Late afternoon as the sun sinks lower on the horizon. You are still surrounded by the sounds of roller coasters, rides, and people enjoying them, but there is also a new feeling of calmness. Maybe it’s simply because PA is so pretty? I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the roller coaster beyond the trees with the backdrop of late sun.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and share the fun.

Six Sentence Sunday

On By Stephanie IngramIn Six Sentence Sunday, Writing5 Comments

Happy Six Sentence Sunday! I enjoyed participating so much my first week that I’m back for more. I decided to stick with the same WIP from last week (Ghosts Don’t Wear Silk Stockings) and fast forwarded a bit into the story. Here I leave you with a brief interaction between Brianna and her ghost-friend, Greer. She’s just had a run-in with something rather unpleasant and seems to think that Greer should have been there a tad sooner…

***

“This is the thanks I get for saving your life?”

“Took you long enough.”

“I was busy.”

“Busy? You’re a ghost. What on earth could you possibly have to do that’s more important than haunting me?”

***

Thank you for indulging me for a few sentences. I look forward to sharing more next week. 🙂

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!

The Beginning of Between World

On By Stephanie IngramIn WritingLeave a comment

If you aren’t already aware, my first novel The Between World was published in September 2011. To celebrate this exciting milestone, I wrote a blog post introducing readers to the story behind the story. This is another of my favorite posts that I’m dragging across from my old blog and sharing anew. I hope you enjoy the glimpse into what started it all.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Six Sentence Sunday when I will share another snippet of the current WIP, Ghosts Don’t Wear Silk Stockings.

Enjoy!

***

I’m looking forward to September with its promise of rainy days and colorful leaves. Kids go back to school, pools across Pennsylvania will close, and we welcome days with lower humidity and cooler temps. I have another, more personal, reason to embrace the unofficial doorway into fall. September is the month I am scheduled to release my first novel titled “The Between World”.

It’s a project over a year in the making that started innocently as a short story I wrote for a contest. The contest challenged us to “write a story about an organization that rescues people. The catch is their organization is a secret and must stay a secret. The leader of the organization starts to care for a bystander. Will this put their organization in danger?”

I brainstormed about the possibilities starting with all the ordinary rescue organizations I could think of … police, firefighters, EMS, etc… but all of those didn’t exactly fit the criteria of being secret. Then one evening as I went to sleep thinking about anything other than the contest an image popped into my mind. His name was Yalen and he worked for a very special organization called The Guardian Angel Rescue Group. Apparently, even Guardian Angels need a little help every now and then.

When I woke the next morning, Yalen was still on my mind and so was his damsel in distress, the beautiful human girl named Nina who wandered aimlessly through her life not knowing that love lurked in the most unlikely of places. It took a near fatal car accident to put the two together and voila, we had sparks. Yalen had no place intervening in Nina’s rescue but he couldn’t pull himself away from her. This ruffled quite a few feathers in Between World by those who believed that Yalen’s actions put their organization at risk. All worlds exist in a fragile balance and one tip of the scales could have dire consequences for us all.

An unusual idea? Perhaps. I won the contest and maybe I should have been content enough with that and moved on to other writing projects. Not so easy. Yalen and Nina wouldn’t let me go. I played around with ideas to expand the short story into a novel and used November’s Nanowrimo as a springboard to develop the story.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2011. I scratched my Nanowrimo attempt and went back to square one by plotting and outlining on twenty-eight index cards until I finally had a proper beginning, middle, and end. Then I started all over again with chapter one.

Now after a lot of writing and rewriting, it is my hope that you will enjoy reading Nina and Yalen’s journey just as much as I have enjoyed creating it.

***

If you are interested in purchasing The Between World, please visit “My Books” to learn more…

A Day at the Park

On By Stephanie IngramIn Family and Fun1 Comment

Image

Yesterday we took the kids to the amusement park for the day. What fun! (That’s me in the photo with my dad and two of the kids. Can you see me?) The weather couldn’t have been more perfect – sunny, blue skies, high 70’s/low 80’s and low humidity. The park was the least crowded that I’ve ever seen it, which made it nice for getting on rides quickly. I didn’t think the kids would hold out long, but much to my surprise, we spent a full ten hours at the park. Whew! I am exhausted and a bit more sore than I should be but I loved every minute of it and I would do it again in heartbeat.

Now, it’s back to reality. It’s not the weekend after all, and I’ve got some writing to do…

Music and Happily Ever After

On By Stephanie IngramIn Writing2 Comments

Please note: This post originally appeared on my former blog in March 2012. Now that I’ve moved over to WordPress, I will be bringing a few of my favorite posts with me.

When it comes to writing, I’m no different to most other writers I know – I am more productive with music. As a matter of fact, 99% of my inspiration comes through music and if I’m stumped for getting into the right mood to write a particular scene, I won’t do the scene justice without first putting on a song that sets the stage. Sometimes entire stories have evolved without warning just by an unexpected chord struck by a song, usually at a moment that I wasn’t even thinking about writing at all.

I have three kids that will happily tell you that certain songs become “car songs” that we carry with us and play over and over. They have yet to complain about my obsessive repetition, which is good, because for some unexplained reason I need this in order to feed whatever story demons inside me demand the fuel to create my stories. Sometimes the songs that choose me aren’t even songs that I would otherwise like but I listen and listen again simply because they have tickled something inside me that is important to cultivate. Even more bizarre, often you could take my story and listen to the song that inspired it and wonder how the two ever could exist in my mind simultaneously.

I can’t explain the process but I certainly won’t complain about it. It works. It helps push me from the first chapter onward until I reach the end. It helps me connect with my characters on some deeper, more meaningful level than simply knowing names and a string of facts about that character’s motivations or past history. It compels me to learn more about the people and the worlds I’m creating. It begs me to live in their shoes long enough to weave the magic that is inherent in storytelling.

In my earlier blog post, I touched upon my wonderful obsession with Muse. (The irony of their band name is not lost on me.) I listen to a lot of Muse while writing. A lot. As a matter of fact, I can’t put on their CD Black Holes and Revelations without replaying in my mind my first novel. It almost serves as the soundtrack even if no one else ever has the benefit of seeing or understanding the connection. It makes me smile. It brings back those characters like memories of old friends I used to spend a lot of time with and think of fondly. It makes me reconsider going back to spend more time with those characters. After all, their story is not yet complete. There is so much left to say about The Between World.

But first things first. I’m knee-deep in my second novel and lost in the music that inspires its creation. This time most of that centers around yet another Muse CD titled Absolution. I can’t get enough.

Is there music that is special to your creative process? Is it a specific song, band, CD, or is it a collection of songs that you put together specifically for the purposes of your novel? I’m always interested in the ways others approach writing, or any creative endeavor. Is there a song or band that you would recommend to help put me in the mood to write paranormal? (Suggestions are always welcome!)