Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

  Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.   Be sure to visit the awesome co-hosts for the September 7 posting of the IWSG:  Kim Lajevardi,   Cathrina Constantine,   Natalie Aguirre,   Olga Godim,   Michelle Wallace,  and  Louise - Fundy Bl

  Title: Echo Mountain Author: Lauren Wolk Publication Info: Listening Library, 2020. 9 hours 14 min. Hardback published 2020, Dutton Books for Young Readers, 356 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: When the Great Depression takes almost everything they own, Ellie's family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed forests of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy, even for Ellie, as her family struggles with the aftermath of an accident that has left her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie. Determined to help her father, Ellie will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as "the hag." But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal and, with them, a fresh chance at happiness. Echo Mountain is celebra

Okay, so I'm a little late. It's still Friday! Days 3 and 4 of my John O'Groats trail hike. For the start of the trip, see last Friday's post .  Day 3: Ulbster to Wick Strictly speaking, this should have been Whaligo to Wick, a nearly 12 mile hike by the time we would add on the distance to our hotel. We opted to cut it a little short in the interests of time and preserving my hiking partner's increasingly painful knee. Our taxi driver in fact took us to a start point that was only about a mile up the coast from Whaligo, so we still had a nearly 10 1/2 mile hike! We began at an old farmstead labeled on the map as the Mains of Ulbster. Though the house appeared abandoned, the farm is being worked, and we followed the farmer in his little golf-cart farm vehicle down the road to our start. The farm buildings appear largely abandoned, and the small graveyard (with mausoleum, front left) was not particularly well maintained. The graves I could see dated to around 120 yea

       Titles: Raymie Nightingale   Louisiana's Way Home    Beverly, Right Here  Author: Kate DiCamillo Publication Info: Candlewick Press 2016, 2018, 2019 Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: For Raymie Nightingale: Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolutely everything, depends on her. And she has a plan. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie's picture in the paper and (maybe) come home. To win, not only does Raymie have to do good deeds and learn how to twirl a baton; she also has to contend with the wispy, frequently fainting Louisiana Elefante, who has a show-business background, and the fiery, stubborn Beverly Tapinski, who's determined to sabotage the contest. But as the competition approaches, loneliness, loss, and unanswerable questions draw the three girls into an unlikely friendship — and challenge e

Oh, yeah. I was going to do the whole 5 days in one post. Now that I've stopped laughing at my silly delusions, I'll share photos from the first 2 days, which is as much as I can even get through at a skim, just picking and editing the photos I want to use. Editing photos from nearly 2 months of hiking is a huge task! In fact, I couldn't even get this small post done in time. What is the JOGT? It's more of a route than a trail in some places, and runs along the coast of Scotland from Inverness to John O'Groats at the far NE tip of the mainland. It normally takes about 14 days , in stages running from about 8 to 15 miles. Don't let the lack of elevation gain fool you, either: with a rough and often overgrown track, those are long, hard days. We didn't have two weeks, and the southern parts of the trail didn't seem as interesting, so we started 2/3 of the way up, with what is officially the 10th stage.    Day 1: Dunbeath Harbour to Lybster One thing to kno

Title: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia Author: Mark Piesing. Read by Matt Jamie Publication Info: Harper Audio, 2021. 11 hours 17 min. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history: the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928. Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia—code-named N-4—was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles' greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen's body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic's most enduring mysteries . . . During the Roaring Twenties, zeppe