Update!

Hey guys! How are you doing?

I'm very excited. On Saturday I'm going to start helping one of my friends in her Korean restaurant / backpackers lodge!!
I want to gain some experience in the tourism industry, because I really want to become a Travel Agent when I finish with school (which is scary close to happening!), so that will definitely help.

I'm so excited!!!!

This month I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo so I won't be posting the next chapter of the Blog Story, but I still need some suggestions for what should happen next before I can continue. So....


I'm doing a re-write on the novel I started for the July Camp NaNoWriMo last year.

I used Kindle publishing to create a cool cover for my novel

I managed to complete my goal (10,000 words), then I wrote about five thousand more words, then I went to South Africa and sort of forgot about it. Then when started writing again a few weeks ago I realized I'm basically doing a new, improved story line and decided I need to re-write the whole thing. So yeah,that's what I'm doing this month.
I started early (yes I was a little excited) my word count is over 4000 words now, but I'll be gone for a few days and I don't know if I will be able to write then so....

Are any of my lovely readers doing Camp NaNoWriMo?

Well, I need to get back to doing other stuff... This was just a quick update.
Enjoy the rest of your day!

~DFTBA

Blog Story Chapter 2!!!!

Hey!

As promised I finally finished the next chapter in my blog story.

To any new visitors...
This is what it is about.
This is what happened last time.

This chapter is dedicated to my mother, Betsie. She said: "One of the others is a talking cat... I love talking animals...." Well, I do too. And I really like bringing whackyness into this story.

Anyway... Here it is the next chapter in the BLOG STORY...

Chapter 2- Timer: 185 hours, 25 minutes

Jake felt like he had been walking for days, but in reality it hadn’t been much more than 12 hours. He hated how quiet everything was. It felt as though he was walking in a soup. So far he’d encountered seventeen cars; all of them had their drivers frozen in mid action, like his mother and father. He hated the feeling of knowing that their fate was depending on him.

  Jake’s GPS started vibrating in his hand. When he looked at the screen he saw a red dot had appeared on the screen. He checked his dot and figured out whoever was the other dot was two blocks away.

  New energy surged through his veins. Jake took off running toward the other red dot. As soon as he reached the street the red dot was supposed to be on he spotted her. She was the first moving person he had seen all day, and by the look on her face he was hers.

  “Are you one of the others?” Jake asked her when he reached her.

  “Yes!” She was nearly in tears. “Are you Jake?” she asked.

  Jake was startled, as far as he was aware he’d never seen this girl before. How does she know me?

  “Yes, and you are…” he asked the girl.

  “Sarah, but I don’t think we’ve ever met. I just know I needed to find you.” The girl said.

  “Me?” Jake asked

  Sarah handed him a stopwatch, like the one Jake had, and handed it to him. Its screen read 46 hours, 17 minutes. Jake looked up at Sarah with alarm in his eyes.

  “You have less time left than me!”

  Sarah nodded.

  “My letter said I needed to find you. It said we needed to fuse our stopwatches together and then I would be safe.”

  “Fuse the stopwaches together?” Jake was very confused.

  Sarah handed him a USB cable from her bag. “It said we needed to connect them with this cable.”

  Jake nodded, he took the cable and plugged it into the port on his stopwatch and took the other end of the cable and got ready to plug it into Sarah’s stopwatch.

  “Wait, wait. Are you sure we should do it this way?” He asked.

  “Yup, the letter said we needed to do it exactly this way.” Sarah answered.

  Jake took a deep breath and inserted the cable. Both screens lid up and Sarah’s timer started counting down very fast.

  “No! Don’t do that!” They both yelled. Jake tried to remove the cable but it was stuck. Sarah started to cry.

  The timer kept going until it reached zero. Sarah screamed.

“TRANSFER COMPLETE.” Jake’s stopwatch announced. “TIME LEFT: TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE HOURS, THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES.”

  Sarah and Jake looked at each other with wide eyes. Slowly Jake let out his breath.

  “I think it worked.” He said.

  “But what about my watch?” Sarah asked, holding out the now blank stopwatch.

   Jake took a deep breath and tried to think of an explanation.

  “I really don’t know.” He said.

  “I think I could answer that for you.” A voice said behind them. They both turned and stood face to face with a tabby cat. They stared at it for a moment then realized the cat had been the one to speak.

  “Well, don’t you want to know?” the cat asked.

  “You, you’re a, cat!” Jake said.

  “Why of course I’m a cat, do I look like a dog?” The cat looked at them as though they were mad.

“But you can talk.” Sarah said.

“We cats have always talked.” The cat replied. “You humans just never listen.”

  The three stared at each other for a while.

  “Well, are you going to stand there watching me like mindless carrots, or are you going to follow me?” The cat pointed his tail down the street.

  “I guess.” Jake said.

  “Good then try and keep up!” the cat darted down the street. Jake and Sarah looked at each other, they burst out laughing.

  “Mindless carrots!” They said in unison.

  They looked back at the cat; he was almost at the end of the street now.

  “I think we better get going before he gets cross at us." Jake said.

---X---

  “Here we are.” The cat said to them. He had led them through a maze of yards and streets, and was now sitting on top of a box.

  “Hey, I got one like that earlier.” Sarah said.

  “Me too.” Jake said as he approached the box, the cat jumped off and revealed Jake’s name on the box. Jake carefully lifted the lid and examined the contents. He took out two lunch packs and an envelope. He tore it open and read it out loud.

Dear Jake.

Good, you have found Sarah and Mittens. I trust you and Sarah have transferred her time to your stopwatch. You should now have a bit more than 230 hours left. As you find the others you will need to add their time to your watch. Trust me, you will need it.

You also need to stick together as a team. If any one of you leaves the group they will die and the time you transferred from them will be forever lost. You MUST stay together.

The four others should be on their way to you by now. Remember to keep an eye out for them. As soon as everyone is gathered I will reveal myself and tell you and your team where you need to go.

There are two bicycles at the end of the street waiting for you. Use them well.

Stay alert.

Stay safe.

Keep together.

Remember to rest.

I will write to you again soon.

Mr. X

PS: I know you must be hungry. Please enjoy your dinner.

  “Dinner?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, you’ve been on the road all day now.” Mittens said. “To your bodies it is about nine thirty at night, even though it looks like its seven in the morning.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that yet.” Jake said. “That sure explains why I’m so hungry. I didn’t eat lunch!”

  “Well then you had better eat.” Mittens said to the kids.

  “What about you?” Sarah asked as she opened her pack.

  “Oh, I’ve already eaten. You have no idea how easy it is to catch mice when they are frozen.” Mittens said licking his lips.

  After they finished their dinner Jake and Sarah stretched out in the shade of a tree and yawned.

  “Good night.” Sarah said.

  “Good night.” Jake said. He started thinking how strange his day had been, and hoped with all his might that this was only some weird bad dream.

 

There it is!

Comment below what must happen next, because I don't know about you, but I really want to know!

See you next time.

~DFTBA

Living life without sugar

 Hey guys!

 So back in January Gavin, also known as Sontard from the Shaytards, celebrated going a year without sugar. (To those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about; they are a family on YouTube)

 No cake.
 No sweets.
 No fizzy drinks.
 A completely sugarless year.

 To that I say. "You amaze me!"

 Sontard is a ten year old boy, one doesn't see such behavior at that age. Right?

 Anywho... Sontard inspired me to try this sugar free thing, but I knew there was no way I could make it a full year so I decided I'll do it for one month. February was out of the question, because I planned on eating chocolate on Valentine's Day, so I settled on March.

 When I told my mom about my plan she liked it too, and then we decided the whole family had to do it. And then a family friend, Matt, decided he'll join in as well.

Tell them Boromir

 Who would have thought it would be this hard? There are these little things that just frustrates me. For example, I want to make a sandwich. I decide on peanut butter and jam, then I realize I can't because jam has sugar in it. Then I realize I don't really eat non sugar things on my bread, (I hate Marmite and I'm not overly fond of cheese spread, and that's basically all other options I have) at least not easy spreads. And then of cause every time we visit someone we cannot accept their snacks because it is sugary snacks.

I don't really have this ravishing need for sugar, but I miss it. I suppose it is because eating sugar is such a habit to me.

But as that song says "I WILL SURVIVE!"*I hope*

Anyway, I'm using the sugar free month as my excuse for not posting the next chapter of the blog story. I'm an author. We needs our sugars to write the books, precious, we must have it....

But seriously it will hopefully be out by Sunday.

I'll leave you now to sulk about my sugarless life...

~DFTBA

Blog story CHAPTER ONE!

Hey guys!

So I finally sat down and wrote the first chapter of the story I am writing with you.

If you are a new reader and you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about check THIS post out.

I loved all of the suggestions you gave me. They are awesome!
I couldn't choose just one. So I decided to use them all!

I also decided I'll dedicate a chapter to the person who's  suggestion I used the most.

This chapter, it is Tanya! You can find her blog over HERE
 She said: "A person (Boy or girl) who wakes up one morning to find that his/her alarm clock hasn't gone off yet to wake up for school. He/she waits for a few minutes and realizes that the time hasn't moved forward -it's frozen on 6:57AM. He/She has to find the source of the problem, and everyone (with the exception of a few people that help the MC) is also frozen."

Thanks Tanya!


Okay. Without any further ado..... Here it is ladies and gentlemen..... The FIRST chapter of, something I 'cleverly' titled, THE BLOG STORY!!!!!!!

(Hope you like it!)

---X---

  Jake woke up feeling totally refreshed, a feeling he didn’t normally experience first thing in the morning, and definitely not when he had spent most of his sleeping time reading comic books by flashlight.

  He sat up and stretched his arms and looked at his alarm clock. It read 6:59. He was supposed to wake up in one minute, so he decided to wait it out. But the clock never changed to 7:00. After a few minutes Jake realized this and jumped out of bed as fast as he could. He was late for school!

  He dressed as fast as he could and ran down the stairs to grab something to eat before he rushed to school. Then he remembered his mom and dad were probably still sleeping, since they didn’t come to wake him up, so he rushed to their room. No one was there.

  Jake was confused, why would his mom and dad go to work before waking him up? He didn’t have time to think though, he was really late. He ran down the stairs again and froze when he entered the kitchen. His heart sank right to his feet.

  There, by the kitchen table, was his mother, her arm was frozen in mid air as she was about to place an apple in Jake’s lunch sack. She wasn’t moving. Not even a bit.

  Jake looked around the room and spotted his dad, who was also frozen. He was packing his suitcase for work.

  Then Jake realized how quiet it was. Not a sound could be heard except his own breathing. It was very eerie. He cautiously walked over to his mom and touched her arm. He gasped. Her body was warm, as that of a normal living person. He ran to his dad’s side and touched his arm too. It was also warm. Then Jake looked at the microwave clock. It read 6:59. He rushed to every clock he could think of in his house. All of them weren’t ticking. All of stopped at the exact same spot. And all of them read 6:59.

   Jake fainted.

---X---

  Jake didn’t know how much time passed since he had fainted, and he couldn’t very well look at a clock to see, but he didn’t think it was too long. He checked on his mom and dad again, who was still frozen, and decided to find some help. As he was about to go down the porch steps something caught his eye.

  A box just sat there on the porch. It was covered in brown wrapping paper and it had his name, in big fat marker letters, written all over it.

  Jake called out to the street but not a sound was heard. The entire street was still eerily quiet. Jake gathered up courage and approached the brown box, still waiting patiently for him. His mind started playing tricks on him.

“What if it’s a bomb?” He thought to himself. “It could blow up as soon as I open it up.”

  Jake carefully put his ear to the box to listen for any sounds, he couldn’t hear anything. But that didn’t prove that there wasn’t a bomb. Not yet anyway.

“Jake, you’ll just have to man up and open that box!” He commanded himself.

  Jake picked up the box. It was heavy. He carefully tore off all the wrapping paper off and stared at the now uncovered box. He could hear his heart beating loudly in his ears, and his breathing started to quicken slightly.

“Come on Jake!” He said to himself. “It’s just a box, it can’t hurt you.” As much as he wanted to believe himself he was still afraid.

  Jake carefully placed his fingers on the box lid and took a deep breath. Slowly he lifted it. What he saw surprised him.

  There was no timer with big red numbers telling him when it would blow up. No wires he would have to worry about cutting. Indeed, there was no bomb. But there was something.

  Jake lifted out an envelope which was also addressed to him. He opened it and started reading.

Dear Jake.

  

If you are reading this it must mean time has frozen, for all except you.

Or so you think.

 All around the world select individuals, such as yourself, finds themselves in the same situation as you.

Time is frozen.

It is your duty, Jake, to fix this again. In your box you will find a smaller box containing a watch. This is your countdown timer. If those numbers reach zero you, and everyone on earth, WILL DIE.

Your first instruction is to find the others. Together you have to work to save the earth.

The timer is equipped with a GPS, which you will use to find the others.

There is also a bunch of tools you may need during your mission.

A knife, compass, first aid kit, and some energy bars to keep up your strength.

Use them wisely.

Keep a lookout for your next letter.

Mr. X

  Jake looked back in the box he found the timer and stared at it. It read “197 hours, 15 minutes, and 39 seconds.” He quickly did some maths. This gave him just over eight days to save the earth.

   Jake ran back to inside to his room with his new gear and packed them in a backpack. He also packed some other things, like a sweatshirt, extra socks, and a box of matches. He went to the kitchen pantry and packed some crackers, chips, cookies, and a few water bottles. Now he had only one more thing he had to do.

  He needed to find the others.

 ---X---

Okay, there you have it. The first chapter!

Tell me what you thought of it in the comments. 

Remember too also suggest what should happen next. Like, who should Jake find first, and what their next mission should be. I can't post the next chapter without you!

Tell your friends about this too, if you think they'll like it. There's always room for more people over here!

Well that's all for now!

~DFTBA

Move the tree!!!!

Hi guys!
How has your day been so far?

 I'm turning eighteen in a few months then I can apply for my driver's license. I can hardly wait! I can't really say my parents are all that excited but I sure am.

Yesterday my dad called me outside. He pulled the car out just a little bit, got out and told me to get in the drivers seat. I think my face must have turned grey. Our car is a Ford Ranger (affectionately called Aragon by the family. I think you know why. Right?)

It is a big car.

My dad explained to me what all the pedals are and what they do. Aragon is a automatic so I didn't have to worry about changing gears just yet. (Phew)
Then it happened. The explaining was over. My dad told me to release the brakes and guide the car down the hill on which it stood. I carefully released, then SLAMMED on the brakes again. I told my dad I couldn't do it.

You see; we have this tree planted next to the house. A big tree, not just some bush. And it was right there in front of me, a few meters away. I was convinced I was going to drive right into it and total the car, probably injuring my dad in the process.

I asked my dad to drive the car to the bottom of the hill and I would go the rest of the way. He refused and coaxed me all the way to the bottom of the small hill. I managed to do so without anyone getting hurt.

Then he told me to press down on the petrol a little tiny bit so that I could park the car on the grass for its bath. That was pretty easy.

Just like that the lesson was over. I shakily climbed out and handed the keys back to my dad.

Later I found my dad and mom laughing hysterically at something. I asked them what the big joke was. And my dad said.

"Megan, do you realize that earlier in the car you asked me to move the tree?"

I had no idea I said so.




I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day!

~DFTBA

Life is like a movie

I was thinking earlier; as I do quite often, and I decided I would share my thoughts with you.

My thoughts was about relationships. Not romantic relationships but rather everyday contact with people. And I came to this one conclusion.

LIFE IS LIKE A MOVIE.

Why would I say such a thing?

When I watch a movie (or tv show) I feel a personal connection with the characters. The moment I take the time to watch the movie I become emotionally involved with the storyline for that time period (and sometimes even longer). A good movie or show is supposed to do this, otherwise no one would want to watch it.

When you watch something you become the main character. I don't mean you dress like him/her (or maybe you do) but you feel attached to that person. When he/she goes through some kind of trial you go through it with them.

The supporting characters become your friends, even if they are fictional. They are important to the main character so they, therefore, become important to you. You are sad when one of them dies. You are happy when they overcome conflict. You grow to love them.

You hate the villains. You wish they could just stay away from the main character so that he/she can finally go on with their life.

But what about the extras.

Those people who are nameless and unimportant. Without them the picture doesn't look right, but you don't care who they are, what their job is, why they are where they are. They are just supposed to be there.

Life is like that.

There are some people I put in my "friend"circle, some I put in my "enemy" circle, and some I put in my "unimportant" circle.

The supporting characters.

The villains.

The extras

If the main character's friend, I'll just call him Jimmy, comes in and says Tom's car was stolen, he couldn't care less. He doesn't  know  who Tom is, he probably never even met him. If it was up to him, Tom didn't even exist.
But if Jimmy came to the main character and said the character's sister, Selena, just phoned him and said she couldn't find her car, the main character would be very concerned.

Everyone is so caught up in their own existence that they never give a second thought to the person they see standing in front of them at the check out counter, or the guy who just passed them in his car on the highway.
All they think about whenever they do something is, what will this do for me? And, what effect will this have on the people close to me? They don't care what happens to the people who are unimportant to them, because to them they are just that. Unimportant.

But something I've observed in many tv shows is that you might see an 'extra' character and think, "why was he just there" and then a few seasons later you couldn't imagine the story without him. Like Rory from Doctor Who. At the beginning of series five I couldn't care less for him, but at the end of his time in the series you couldn't imagine the show without him.

So I guess my final words for you today is, "Remember, that the person you might think is unimportant today might be your best friends tomorrow."

~DFTBA

How strange African weather is...

Hey!
I have a real life story for you today. It happened yesterday at church. Hope you enjoy it!

---X---

Church was different yesterday...
Everything seemed calm when we arrived.
We sang as usual, we had our first break, sang, had our second break, sang, and the kids were sent to Sunday school. My dad got up with his translator and began his service. All was well...

Then it happened.

The clouds began to drip water, softly at first. Thunder clapped, and the giant tap in the heavens was opened in full blast!
Our church's roof is a tin roof so my dad had to move closer to the congregation to be heard. It was a futile move. His voice was swallowed by the water descending like bullets onto the roof. At first I thought it might be hail, but it wasn't. It was large, fast moving raindrops making the racket.

The rain was a surprise because during the first break, a hour earlier, I was thinking about how hot the sun felt on my pale skin. The sky had only been slightly clouded when we finished our second break. And now, twenty minutes later, you had to shout to speak to the person next to you.

I looked out of the glassless window next to me and watched water rushing over the soil in the garden. The tiny pathways were flooded up to the point that they looked like rushing rivers.
Minutes passed and we finally realized that the storm wasn't going to calm down soon. My dad talked to the elders and explained to them that he would continue his sermon next week. We picked up our Bibles and hymnals and walked to the door. Taking a deep breath we opened the door and ran the five meters to our car. We couldn't move too fast or we would slip and fall on the mud, and by the time I reached my car door I was soaking!

We drove to the house and was pleasantly surprised to find the man who lives with his family in the small apartment on our yard had opened the gate for us. We parked in the car port and went inside to change our clothes as fast as we could.

I was thinking afterwards, in the three and a half years we had been attending this church never once had it rained this hard. Sudden storms isn't something unheard of here but it had never happened while my dad was preaching before. And I hope that it won't happen again!

---X---

The brown next to the road is water rushing out of the half meter ditch

The road to our house

I'm really enjoying your comments on my last post. My brain is spinning with story ideas. I think it will be very possible to include everyone's ideas into one crazy story! :)

~DFTBA