Tag Archive for: Clicking Our Heels

Clicking Our Heels: No New Year’s Resolutions Because Our Noses Are to the Grindstone

Clicking
Our Heels – No New Year’s Resolutions Because Our Noses Are to the Grindstone


WE LIKED DOING A GIVEAWAY SO
MUCH, WE’RE DOING ONE EVERY MONTH ON CLICKING OUR HEELS DAY (FIRST
WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH)!

To enter for a chance to win Paula Benson’s Let it Snow and Debra H. Goldstein’s One Taste Too Many just
comment on this blog with your what you are working on whether writing or in some other area of life. Good luck and happy reading!
— winner will be announced next Wednesday on The Stiletto Gang Facebook page
– https://www.facebook.com/stilettogang 

Most
people make New Year’s Resolutions, but the Stiletto Gang is a busy group.
Today, we’re going to tell you what each of us is working on and how it
differs, if it does, from things we’ve written in the past.

Julie Mulhern – I am currently plotting
the ninth Country Club Murder – more Ellison, more Anarchy, more murder, and,
of course, more Mr. Coffee.

Juliana Aragon Flatula – I recently was
invited to submit to the Colorado Online Encyclopedia by the Colorado Poet
Laureate, Joseph Hutchinson. It will help K-12 teachers search online for
poetry using key words. I submitted ten of my poems and look forward to seeing
the website.

Cathy P. Perkins – I’m currently working
on the sequel to The Body in the Beaver
Pond,
which just won the Claymore Award (squee!). I’m also slowly moving
forward with a more literary mystery, a book I’ve wanted to write for years,
but promised not to touch until after my father died.

Kay Kendall – My first two mysteries
are set in the late 1960s and feature a young woman named Austin Starr. She
becomes an amateur sleuth in order to prove her new husband is not a murderer,
and then she continues when her best friend becomes a prime suspect. The book
titles are from Bob Dylan songs:  Desolation Row and Rainy Day Women. My third mystery debuts in early 2019 and is a
prequel about Austin’s grandmother, set in small town Texas during the Roaring
Twenties. Because I have no emotional attachment to that decade, it was easier
and more fun to write. The prequel is called After You’re Gone, also the name of a tune that is still covered by
artists today, including Ella Fitzgerald and Fiona Apple among many others.

J.M. Phillippe – I feel like I am
really leaning in to world building these days, and really enjoying creating
worlds for my characters to run around in. 
It does make it harder to come back to the actual plot sometimes though.
Bethany Maines – Ohhhhh. I’m not sure
this is a conversation we have time for. I’m working on another sci-fairy novel
to be part of the Galactic Dreams universe that I share with two other authors
(Karen Harris Tully and J.M. Phillippe). Then I’ve got a Christmas mystery
novella that may or may not get done in time for Christmas, a literary
thriller, and another San Juan Islands Murder Mystery novel.

Debra H. Goldstein – I’m working on
Three Treats Too Many, the third book in my Sarah Blair mystery series while
preparing to launch the series’ first book, One Taste Too Many in January. I’m
also working on a group of new short stories.

Linda Rodriguez – I’ve been making
notes for a literary novel that my agent wants me to write. It will be a
different experience from writing the mysteries. I think it’s going to take a
longer time to completion. I’m just sort of feeling my way through it right
now. I have written literary short fiction before, but not for a long time. So
I’m really looking forward to it.

Shari Randall – I’m working on a
standalone. It’s a thriller with humorous elements based on a character in a
short story I wrote called “The Objective Case” in the Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder anthology. She’s been bugging
me to write her into a novel for years – I’m having a blast!

 TK Thorne – I’m stepping way out of my
comfort zone with my new Magic City Trilogy. My previous books have been
historical fiction set in the ancient past about strong women, given no name
and one line in the biblical stories (Noah’s wife and Lot’s wife), as well as
civil rights era nonfiction. But House of
Rose
, the first book, is set in current time with a different kind of
strong woman – a police officer with abilities to see glimpses of the past or
future. I called on a previous career in law enforcement and mixed it with
large doses of imagination.

Paula Gail Benson – I’m working on some
darker stories now. Learning how to respect the villain’s rationale while still
making sure justice prevails is a challenge!

AB Plum – Although I’m writing a
paranormal romance trilogy loosely based on The
Wizard of Oz
– quite different from the dark, psychological thrillers
series I recently finished, the major themes – family and misfits – remain
constant.

Dru Ann Love – Because I’m not a
writer, my blog, dru’s book musings,
keeps me busy.

Judy Penz Sheluk – I’m working on book
3 for both of my mystery series (The Glass Dolphin and Marketville), but I’m
also starting to do research for a collection of non-fiction essays, as well as
a non-fiction novel. The non-fiction doesn’t have a mystery element.

Clicking Our Heels – Diverse Women and Their Fairy Tales

Clicking Our
Heels – Diverse Women and Their Fairy Tales

(The winner of our Stiletto Blog competition is  Pamela Hopkins. Please contact Debra at dhg@debrahgoldstein.com
with your address)

WE LIKED DOING A GIVEAWAY SO MUCH, WE’RE GOING TO DO ONE EVERY MONTH ON CLICKING OUR HEELS DAY (FIRST WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH)!
To enter for a chance to win TK Thorne’s House of Rose and Galactic Dreams: A Cosmic Fairy Tale Collection featuring novella’s from J.M. Phillippe and Bethany Maines (and Karen Harris Tully) just comment on the blog with your favorite fairy tale. Good luck and happy reading! — winner will be announced next Wednesday on The Stiletto Gang Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/stilettogang 

The Stiletto
Gang spent the past two months introducing our new logo and letting you see how
diverse we are over something simple: 
red shoes. Not only are we different in the present, but we were raised
on different fairy tales, folklore and cultural stories. Thinking back, we
decided to share with you an early one we can remember and tell you why it was
so impressive. 

Judy Penz Sheluk – My Mom wasn’t big on reading me fairy tales, but I remember
making her read Heidi to me so many times that if she tried to skip a few pages,
I’d tell her she missed something and made her backtrack.  I remember it being a story of family,
friendship, hope and happy endings.

AB PlumHansel and Gretel
because from a very early age I spent summers with an aunt and uncle whose
house was on the edge of woods where I played with cousins and siblings. A
ramshackle cabin miles from the house (really less than a football field) made
it easy to imagine the witch lurking nearby.

Paula Gail BensonCinderella has a firm
hold on me. I wore a Cinderella Halloween costume for years and, when I began
teaching short story workshops, Cinderella
was my go-to example for story structure. I guess it’s a female Horatio Alger
story. Ultimately, Cindy wins when she is able to reveal herself.

Dru Ann Love – Your dreams can come true if you work hard for it. Because I
knew I wanted more from life than what was dealt my family. That’s why I was
the first to graduate college, the first to get a full-time job, the first to
travel internationally for pleasure, and the first to own real estate (co-op).

TK ThorneSnow White and The Seven
Dwarfs
because I was hung up on
Cinderella
being blonde and the “perfect” girl, and Snow had dark hair like
me. Could I be perfect too, or at least find my prince? Not very feminist
fodder, but that is what we were fed and I swallowed.

Shari Randall – My Italian mom told us the story of Old Befana, the good witch
who flies on her broomstick on January 8, going down chimneys to leave candy
for good children and coal for the naught. Befana was known as the best
housekeeper in the village, so when the Three Wise Men came through (yes, a
side trip to Italy!), following the star in their search for the Christ child,
they stayed at Befana’s house. The next morning, the Magi invited her to join
them on their quest, but Befana wanted to finished her chores first. The Magi
let and soon after Befana ha a change of heart and tried to catch them but she
couldn’t find the three kings.  The story
is that even today she still searches for the Child, always with her broom at
her side. I’ve taken that moral to heart – if adventure calls, don’t wait –
leave the housework behind!

Debra H. Goldstein – The Emperor’s New Clothes made a lasting impression on me for the
way in which it mocked hypocrisy, snobbery and social class. The child’s honest
cry that the Emperor is wearing no clothes versus the individuals who wouldn’t
speak out, including the Emperor, for fear of appearing stupid stuck with me.
It was the first time, even though I couldn’t put it into words, that I
realized the importance of speaking the truth – even when it isn’t popular or
goes against a prevailing rhetoric.

Linda Rodriguez – Some of the earliest tales and teaching stories that I recall
came from my Cherokee grandmother, who was a huge influence in my early life.
One of the most influential was the story of Stoneskin, a giant cannibal who
ravaged the Cherokee, the early people. In the story, the Cherokee fought
against him by arranging one menstruating woman after another in front of him,
until the power of them overwhelmed him. As he lay dying, he told them all
kinds of secrets and medicine lore, which became the foundation of the Cherokee
traditional medicine teaching. So, much that is truly important about
traditional Cherokee culture comes from a dying monster killed by a the power
of women, who are capable of getting pregnant and giving birth. That story told
me as a young child that there was power in the female, even though the world
around me said that women and girls were weak and powerless.

Bethany Maines – I’ve recently been re-reading fairy tales and somehow I didn’t
remember them being as horrible as they are. Rape, murder, incest, lots of
removing of limbs and for some reason turning into rose bushes.  The one I liked as a kid were the Arabian
Nights. I think it was Ali-Baba where the maid poured boiling oil on the forty
thieves hidden in the oil jars. The hero seemed like an idiot and the maid saved
the day. Somehow, the idea of boiling a bunch of guys in oil didn’t seem as
horrific to me then as it does now.

J.M. Phillippe – Growing up, I was greatly impacted by the “Ugly Duckling”
story. The message I took from it then was that if I was feeling like an
outsider, I just had to wait to find my own personal “tribe” – the group who
saw me for who I was and wanted me to be a part of them.

Kay Kendall – Once upon a time, when I was in first grade, my father brought
home a full set of The American Peoples
Encyclopedia.
He also sprang for the related sets of adventure stories and
fairy tales. I treasured the entries in the regular encyclopedia but fell hard
for the fairy tales. The one that sticks in my mind still – and not one of the
more common ones at that – is “The Princess on the Glass Hill.” I now know that
this was a Norse tale. It featured handsome horses that helped the hero get up
to the top of the slippery glass hill to win the fair maiden’s hand in
marriage. Illustrations of the horses were gorgeous and won my heart. I was a
horse-crazy little girl.

Cathy P. Perkins – I didn’t grow up on fairy tales. Instead, my brother fed me a
stead diet of science fiction. I desperately wanted to be either an astronaut
and explore space or move onto Pern, bond with my very own dragon, and save my
people from Thread.

Juliana Aragon Flatula – I love the story of how the moon and stars were created when
Huitzilopochtli slayed his sister the moon and his 400 brothers the stars and
cut them into pieces and threw them to the heavens. This is why the moon has
phases.

Julie Mulhern – I was an early feminist. I didn’t understand why Disney
princesses’ happy endings were dependent on princes. Snow White? I did not buy
into the idea of cleaning up after seven men. How stupid did she have to be to
eat that apple? And how shallow is a prince who falls in love with her based on
her face?

Red Shoes! The Stiletto Gang’s New Look – an Open Clicking Our Heels Letter to Our Readers

Red
Shoes! The Stiletto Gang’s New Look– an Open Clicking Our Heels Letter to Our Readers

Dear
Readers,

We
adore you. It is a joy to know you habitually read our posts directly from our
blog page, through an e-mail subscription, or from our Facebook page. Your
comments telling us you appreciate the diversity of our writings, backgrounds,
and personalities gives us the incentive to write our next blogs. Because you
support us, it is our constant goal to provide you with the best experience possible.
That means not only the words we give you, but the visual experience, too.

Many
years ago, our first logo featured a stiletto and a spiked red heel. A few
years ago, we updated our website to reflect the changes happening in fashion
and with our bloggers. The result was a new logo, featuring a gold platform
shoe. It was beautiful.

From
your comments and clicks, we know you are enjoying what we are doing, but we
are not willing to stand on the status quo. It is our pledge to continue to
produce diverse and edgy writings that let you into our inner thoughts as
people and writers. To support this promise and keeping ourselves in the height
of style, we are introducing an updated logo:

What do
you think?

During
September and October, each member of the Stiletto Gang will be writing a blog
that reflects our different thoughts on red shoes. Subscribe to the blog, leave a comment on today’s
post, comment on the various September and October red shoe blogs, and let your friends
know about our logo change and we’ll keep track of what you each do. Check the November Clicking Our
Heels to see how we recognize the person who earned the most points doing any and all of these four things the most. Oh, and one more thing – next month Clicking Our Heels will be back to its first Wednesday position and Judy Penz Sheluk’s October post will be on the first Monday.

We can’t
wait to hear from you. As we said, we adore you. 

The Stiletto Gang

Clicking Our Heels – Television and the Gang

New Year’s Resolution – Don’t leave blogs
until last minute. New Year’s Reality – Oops!

I cannot tell a lie.  Between a self-imposed deadline, holiday fun,
and a million other things, I spent last night sprawled in front of the television
vegging out. I completely forgot the first Wednesday of 2018 fell two days
after January 1 because I was engrossed in the Tuesday night line-up of NCIS,
Bull, NCIS-New Orleans, and Major Crimes (which I will miss!).  Now you know my guilty pleasures, but here
are some of my blog mates’ favorite TV shows and a word about how they
influenced them. Me? Mindless joy. – Debra
H. Goldstein.

Judy Penz Sheluk: Gilmore Girls. Great
writing and a stellar example of character development. I also loved the 2016
Netflix four-part series that caught us up on the characters as they are today.
#TeamLogan.

Bethany Maines: I’ve had several favorite TV shows over the
years.  I usually tend toward shows that
have a humorous or whimsical take on life, but with realistic characters. From
Better off Ted, to Firefly, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even the West Wing,
all of them had very serious characters who must contend with the superb
ridiculousness that is life.  I think my
writing reflects that taste.

Shari Randall: Did it ever. My favorite show as a child was
The Avengers. From the moment I first saw super cool, catsuit-clad
martial arts expert Emma Peel, that’s who I’ve wanted to be. Hasn’t quite
worked out that way, but her panache, her boots, her style inspire me. I
occasionally try a few of her poses when I’m psyching myself up to write.

Jennae Phillippe: Star
Trek: The Next Generation — full of progressive values and characters that
cared a lot about doing the right thing. Also responsible for a lot of my
teenage crushes. But I think what I remember most was their willingness to
tackle an issue and not have a clear message about how people should think
about it. It was okay for people to debate and disagree. I wish modern times
were more like that. 

TK Thorne: Don’t watch much TV, but when the new Battlestar Galactica was
on, I couldn’t wait to see it because everything you thought you knew got
turned on its head frequently. I realized that was an important part of
enticing drama and try to incorporate that concept into my writing.

B.A. Plum: The GOOD WIFE served as a good model for the kind of female
character I wanted to paint on the page. Alicia was much savvier than my
heroine, AnnaSophia in The Dispensable
Wife
.

Dru Ann Love: Mary Tyler Moore Show. She showed that women can do anything
that a man can do and still be feminine at the same time.

Linda
Rodriguez
:  Star Trek.
To this day, if someone’s trying to bully or emotionally manipulate me by
threatening a public scene, I go into Spock mode and become more and more controlled
and infuriatingly calm as they up the threats or bad behavior. It’s never
failed me yet. It passed into the next generation, and now my grown son uses
the same technique.

Juliana Aragon
Fatula
: The Walking Dead characters are larger than
life, pun intended. My characters in The Colorado Sisters may seem
strange to some readers but are based on people I know and love, even the
villains. My Atlanta Butcher killer cuts up the billionaire Reggie Hartless who
likes to grab pussies. He gets butchered. Many of the women are strong
characters that kick ass in stilettoes and cowgirl boots.

Untitled Post

Clicking Our Heels – Redoing Life – Maybe


At some
point in life, one looks back and contemplates a re-do. Stiletto Gang members
are no different, but the question is whether given the chance to re-do
anything, would they?

Paula
Benson
– Maybe I would have gone to the Bristol Speedway to watch a race with
my father, uncles and cousins. 
Maybe.  But, I don’t think so.

Cathy
Perkins
– Not work 9-gazillion hours at the day job and spend more time writing
or enjoying one of my other creative outlets.

Dru Ann
Love
–Would have gone to graduate school.

A.B.
Plum
– Start Writing for publication earlier.

Juliana
Aragon Fatula
– Go to college when I was twenty not fifty. I would have a Ph.D
in

literature instead of a Ph.D in life.

Linda
Rodriguez
– I’d try to worry less and have faith that things would eventually
work out, as I’ve found they usually do. 
I say “try” because this is a lesson I’m still learning.

Bethany
Maines
– Community college. Not the actual going, but the rate at which I did
it. I took far too long to figure out where I was going and what I was doing.

Kay
Kendall
– I would quiz my parents and grandparents about their lives in an
in-depth way, making notes so I would never forget.  There are many things I want to ask them so
much more about, now that it is way too late.

Sparkle
Abbey
:

  Anita – I can’t think of anything I’d like to
redo. Maybe the last family road trip. 6 people, jammed inside a Grand Caravan
for 20 days. We saw Mt. Rushmore, Custer Park, Yellowstone Park, the Redwoods,
Napa Valley, San Francisco, LA, Laguna Beach, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas … maybe
it wasn’t as great as I think it was.

  Mary Lee – I can’t say that I have many
things I’d re-do.  Even some of the bad choices
eventually led to good things.  However,
if I could re-do anything in my life, I think it would be my education. At the
time, I simply didn’t realize all the options out there…

J.M.
Phillippe
– I would have stuck with dance when I was a kid, and made it more a
part of my life. I have found myself at various times in my life drifting to
and from it – and I always wish I could make more room for it in my life.

Debra
H. Goldstein
– Given in to being a writer and comedienne vs. a lawyer and
judge.

Clicking Our Heels is Moving – and swag for your thoughts!!!!!!

Clicking Our Heels is Moving — and swag for your thoughts!!!!!!


Beginning in November, Clicking Our Heels is moving to the first Wednesday of every month! 

We know you’ve gotten used to finding out what we all have to say about different topics on the last Thursday of the month, but now you’ll get our wisdom during the first week. We’ve got a few topics up our sleeves, but leave a message in the comments about things you’d like to know.  If your topic is one we use this year, Debra promises to send you a treat (not a trick, but a treat).

We’re excited about some of the changes members of the Gang have experienced….and we’ve written about them.  New books, new homes, new family members, and new pets, to name a few we’ve shared with you. We even updated our logo from a red stiletto to a gold one (any thoughts on that?)  What’s most exciting is there’s more to come! 

We’ve been sad to see a few members of the blog leave, but we’re excited about the new gang members joining us in November.  Stay tuned!!!

Clicking Our Heels – Pets We Would Pick

Clicking Our Heels – If We Could Have Any Animal as a Pet, What We Each
Would Pick
 Sparkle Abbey: That’s a difficult question for us because we both
have households with pets.  We’ve mostly
had cats and dogs through the years…or the occasional fish.  It’s easier to say what we would never want
as pets – spiders, snakes and bats.

Jennae
Phillippe
:  While completely
impractical, I think I would love to live with a giant panda. I did have a
friend who had a raccoon as a pet, and I always thought that was pretty cool,
too. Although considering how much my cat keeps me on my toes, I am not sure I
could handle a more demanding pet.

Bethany
Maines
: Let’s face it, dogs are the best pets – they have the matching
factors of cute, I’d have a polar bear. 
We would go on adventures and scare unwanted door to door salesmen.

Paula
Gail Benson
:  I would like to have a
mythical animal pet, like a unicorn.  I
could ride it, talk to it, and admire its beauty, while it could take care of
any physical needs it might have, like for nourishment and rest.  And, being mythical, it could be immortal.

Kay
Kendall
:  I need a fictional animal –
a unicorn.  I was horse crazy as a girl
but was allergic to horse dander and to hay. I figure a unicorn would have no
dander, no smell, not need to eat. Perfect. And beautiful too.

Paffi
Flood
: If could have any animal as a pet, it’s be an elephant. I just love
elephants.

Kimberly
Jayne
: There are so many to choose from! For different reasons, I’d love to
have pandas, goats, meerkats, and koalas. 
They’re all cuddly and funny to watch, like cats whom I could watch all
day. Fortunately, they’re not really good pets (except for some goats), or I’d
spend all my time messing with my exotic pets instead of writing my books!

Linda
Rodriguez
: If my city would allow it, I’d own a pygora goat.  They’re cute, small, easy to handle, and
affectionate, and they bear cashmere quality fiber that you can comb off them
in the spring.  I’m a spinner and would
love to have the fiber to use.

Dru
Ann Love:
A cat who would listen to me and give me insights into what life
should be.

Cathy
Perkins
:  I’ve wanted a dragon ever
since I was a kid and read (devoured) all of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern Stories.

Debra H. Goldstein: A puppy to cuddle.