WRITING IS MAGIC
About ten years ago I discovered MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC. I had watched the original MLP when I was a kid, (yes I’m that old), and may have seen an episode or two of FIM in its first season but didn’t truly discover it, fall in love with it, until I stumbled across an airing of MLP EQUESTRIA GIRLS RAINBOW ROCKS.
Yesterday, my family and I attended the Memorial Day Services at our local cemetery. We have been at it each year since I was a kid, not counting the Covid lockdown, we have only missed one year. This service has been going for 87 years and has always been an important part of the town.
Being at this service is very special and personal for our family. Many family members are buried at this cemetery, and several have served. A great cousin was in the First World War, and then my two uncles served in the Second World War. Both my uncles would have a son that would serve during the Vietnam War.
Only one of them returned to the family, the other is buried in the family cemetery along with his father and mother (who also served during WWII).
People like them fought and died for the rest of us.
We will always remember the sacrifices of all that served and died.
We know not what the future has instore, but we must live up to their memories.
Kevin
Blog – The Hospital
Today’s blog is going to be brief, because of family issues.
In earlier blog posts I have mentioned a certain hospital. My father worked at this hospital for nearly twenty years. At this hospital, I was born, and so was my sister. My grandfather was taken care of after a heart attack at this hospital. My grandmother passed away at this hospital. My sister worked at this hospital for a short time, and now her husband works with the company that has been doing remodeling at this hospital.
When I was a young kid, elementary school age, as mention in a previous post, I had trouble reading. My parents took me to a special extra-curricular study place called The Reading Game.
It is no longer there. The building torn down and replaced by a multi-use apartment complex for students and others from the nearby University.
Reading their remedial booklets went on for many money, I no longer remember how long I attended there.
Then one day I picked up a comic book (I’ve already written about How I got that first comic), and it all changed. I was enjoying reading.
My parent’s asked the instructor if it was okay for me to be reading comics. The response was simple. If he’s reading, done stop him. Encourage him. And so, I have been reading comic books my entire life.
The next thing that got me further into reading was a series of books called: Choose Your Own Adventure. They were fantastic, especially as you could read it three or four times and get an entirely different story each time. Probably the only regular books I checked out of the school library.
(My relationships with libraries is a story unto itself.)
Comics would remain my mainstay reading content.
The reading material assigned to me in class, continued to be a struggle, hard to remain focused on whether it be elementary, junior high, or high school. It would be these outside sources, especially comics, where I could grow and learn.
If I could read something at my own pace, I could enjoy it. If it was an assigned book or chapter, I’d force my way through it but it was always a struggle, and I didn’t always learn anything from it unless the topic was of great interest to me and brought me enjoyment.
I’d later learn to enjoy doing research, but I had to find something interesting in it, something that was fun, in order to devote that much time to it. Otherwise, it was a real struggled.
The first real novel I thing I read was HG Wells’ The Time Machine.
I eventually discover the short stories and novels of Ray Bradbury. Then I found the essays of Harlan Ellison. So you know my creativity and learning process was growing.
Again, it would take an interest to get me to start and then complete reading of a book.
I remember reading a Shakespeare play in high school and enjoyed it, followed by Arthur Miller’s play the Crucible. Probably reading these in script format was probably easier than a full out novel.
During college and friend introduced me to two book series. Since I enjoyed Watch Doctor Who he thought I would like Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Which resulted in my writing several stories for class in Adam’s voice. I don’t think my teacher appreciated it.
He then introduced me to Steven R Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle. Looking back, I am still surprised by how fast I read through these books. They were heavy novels (figuratively and literally). I greatly enjoyed the books.
Over the years I would become more and more of a reader, but finding the books that appealed to me, that I enjoyed wasn’t always easy. The number of books I have read, per year, has been relatively few.
Sometimes it was the type of book, the type genre.
“So, what’s your favorite fiction genre?” – Here we are back at this question again, remember my last post.
As to Genre, I think the answer is the same as my “Doctor Who” answer previously:
I will admit I don’t like Horror, but when it comes to the rest of the genres.
“I like the one I am currently reading.”
I grew up on super hero comics, which lead into science fiction and fantasy, and especially mystery/detective fiction. Plus, over the last decade or so I’ve discovered a love for romance novels.
The first romance books I read were fantasy romance, about dragons.
Then I discovered a series called Once Upon A Con by Ashley Poston, starting with Geekerella. Telling a story that took place around a Comic Con, you had me, but these were fantastic stories, and I’ve been all of Poston’s books since.
Because of Poston, I’ve discovered other great romance authors.
Since the start of this year, I have read more books than I have in any full year I have ever had, and they were all Romance novels. Sure, they were all light novels, but still, it’s quite different for me.
Will Romance remain my Favorite Genre? Probably not, I’ll shift back to Mystery and Fantasy, Science Fiction, and shift back around again.
Looking back that the little kid I was, I am still so surprised by how much I am currently reading.
Reading is fantastic. Enjoy it.
It is a question that gets asked a lot, ever since childhood you are asked this question …
Who is your favorite teacher? Your favorite friend? Your favorite ice cream, and so on. Then there is the flip of that when a kid asks their parents about their siblings “which one of us is your favorite?”
Or
The Incredible Shrinking Blog
Remember those rides at amusement parks that had signs with a character holding of an arm and said “You must be this tall to ride.” Well, this is a story about a ride that made you even smaller than that.
It’s also going to be one of those blogs that give away my age again.
This one’s going to be a bit short folks.
I am in the midst of working on a Bible lesson I’ll be giving in Sunday School this weekend.
But the devil is putting up obstacles in my path.
No, I do not blame the devil for this. I don’t give credit to the devil for anything I do in my life. That’s not taking responsibility for my successes, failure, or mistakes.
It would be easy to blame him, especially when something goes wrong at absolutely the wrong time.
I am near finished in writing up this Bible study, but I want to include three or four drawings to illustrate parts of the lesson. So I turn on Photoshop and my Wacom table, which I use to do my webcomic and other artwork.
However, as I start drawing my mouse begins to slow down and it becomes a struggle to make the sketches.
Hopefully the computer isn’t going to crash on me. If I can’t do the drawings I’ll rework part of the lesson, but I also plan to use my laptop in class. It’ll be doomed if that happens.
Even if that happens, I refuse to give the devil credit for messing up my work.
I do know that I’m going to have to buy a new computer soon, but please dear God, not yet. I need a stable job before that happens.
It’s also the reason I have the Ko-Fi link on my page here. Any help is appreciated.
Talk to you next week and I’ll let you know how this turns out.
Thanks, God bless.
As the day before we drove down to the bus depot and caught the bus down to the Anaheim Convention Center. The price of parking there is just too high. In the past we’ve stayed at a local hotel, but that’s gotten to be too high as well. Hopefully, once I’m employed again, we’ll be able to stay for the entire weekend.
In the meantime, …
The movie Wicked is now streaming, but we did get to see it in the theater before it left. It is one of those films that is best seen on the big screen. Go out to movie theaters, people!
I absolutely enjoyed the play and liked the movie equally as much…
But this isn’t about the movie, rather the experience in the theatre and the Wicked Kid who sat behind us.
Remember in my last blog I mentioned that I didn’t know what I was going to write about? How I just rambled about walking around the neighborhood looking for ideas.
Well, God has other ways of providing interesting things for me to write about:
I had a visit from the police this morning.
There are times when you don’t know what to Blog about.
I know I need to create a calendar and list of ideas for upcoming blogs, but sometimes that takes as much work as writing the blog itself does.
So where do ideas come from? I have no idea.
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It all came to this
By kevinpsb4
On March 6, 2025
In 2025, Blog, Blog writing, Comic Books, ToastMasters, Toastmasters 4 Writers, Toastmasters Speech, Writing, YouTube
Engaging Humor – Writing a Compelling Blog
Okay, it took a couple of extra days, but I was finally able to do a recording of my Toastmasters Speech that was based on the blog series I began writing at the start of the year. So let’s get to it.
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