Of Terrorists and Sparkly Jeans           I don’t travel a lot, but if you’re reading this blog, you might beg to differ.  By evidence of the frequency of travel posts, it appears that I fly more than I write.  That isn’t so.  Anyone close to me (or anyone who used to be close to me before my new business venture) knows that I hate flying—more specifically, taking off and landing—so I do it as infrequently as possible.  However, for whatever reason, when I do fly, stuff …read more

We sent our children to school again. For some of us, it was the first time; for others with seniors in high school, it was the last time. There it was. Another school year beginning and I had just one question: Would I make it through the day without crying? To moms everywhere, this is for you. Whether you work a job outside of the home or have chosen to stay home and work, this is for the moments when you sit at your desk or keyboard or kitchen table …read more

One family’s trek to professional baseball I’m writing this blog series at the urging of an unlikely source–a sports agent. You know, a Jerry Maguire, he was an agent who was vying to represent our son in the 2008 amateur draft. I’ll give you his name later, somewhere in the following blog entries when I take on the task of describing the fantastic journey to professional baseball. Jarret at the Area Code Games in 2006 as a junior He thought I’d done my due diligence in our search for an …read more

The random diaries of a frantic traveler To kick off my annual summer travel blog, let’s begin with my travel agent’s decision to fly Southwest Airlines—the friendliest little (and recently only mildly dangerous) airline of them all. Southwest Airlines does not fly out of Bakersfield, so instead of a 5-minute drive to BFL, my day began at 4:30 a.m. Driving to LAX is never easy, but given the choice of flying at 7, 9, or 10 a.m., my travel agent decided that I’d get more sleep if I took the …read more

I get by with a little help from my friends A few weeks ago, I started a contest to name my blog. When I first created my blog, naming it didn’t seem important because the actual name doesn’t show anywhere on the site once you open it. However, when posting blog entries to social networking sites, the blog name displays prominently — so it suddenly became important to come up with a suitable title. I loved so many of the entries; all of them were very specific to my work …read more

Travel follies with Dana, Part One To friends and family who read this blog, it may appear that I travel a lot – at least more now than ever. After Major League Baseball’s easternmost team drafted my son two years ago, I’ve had little choice but to get on airplanes and fly all day just to see his face. Yet when compared to people who travel for work, I really don’t fly that much. But when I do… I notice things. I notice that whether I am flying out of …read more

If you don’t help me, who will? I’ve had it with this “being creative” stuff, and now I’m “running” out of time. It’s time for my first ever BLOG giveaway!   To get things “running” in the right direction, let’s start easy: NAME MY BLOG.  It began as “Dana Martin Writing and Editing” and you can see how original that is. Now, it’s morphed into “Dana Says…” which looks only marginally better on the tab, but is really no better than my first attempt.  I’m “running” out of steam and am …read more

One family’s trek to professional baseball I’m writing this blog series at the urging of an unlikely source–a sports agent.  You know, a Jerry Maguire, he was an agent who was vying to represent our son in the 2008 amateur draft.  I’ll give you his name later, somewhere in the following blog entries when I take on the task of describing one family’s fantastic journey to professional baseball.  Jarret at the Area Code Games in 2006 He thought I’d done my due diligence in our search for an agent–a search, …read more

          It isn’t that my old blog was bad, it was fine. But “fine” to a writer about her blog is the equivalent of an airline pilot confessing that his company’s safety record is just “fine.” I am looking for “spotless” or “unblemished” or “immaculate” when it comes to flying. (Can you tell I’m a little obsessed with airline safety?  Even my analogies incorporate the fear of flying.  I need to get over this.) So when I created my website last year, I had the web designer …read more

I was asked recently to talk about the critique groups that Writers of Kern facilitates, and I thought it was an interesting enough topic to bring up here.  Many writers have never belonged to a critique group and don’t know how they work.  In fact, some of you might even be hesitant to join for fear of rejection or worse—fear someone will steal your idea.  Thankfully, none of that happens at WOK.  Critique group discussing a submission. Let me begin by explaining what makes a good critique group.  When I …read more