Nicole Sharp

Writer, Wanderer and Coffee Lover living "la dolce vita"

Tag: Boise (page 1 of 4)

Short Story…

October 11, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Short Story…

Some of you might be new to my blog and wondering about my writing. I write books and short stories. My books are crazy adventures with elements of ridiculous entertainment, a dash of bizarre twists, a splash of spies and sometimes murder. They aren’t romance, but there’s occasionally kissing. There isn’t in depth personal analysis, but there might be some human truth. I write to entertain and keep myself engaged and it seems to work for my audience.

Now, my short stories are not a reflection of my books. Sure, they have the same voice and tone that are all mine, but I’ve always found my short stories are my time to get my angst out. Most of the time, after I’ve written a short story, I’m not sure where it came from or where its going. I so love the process.

Here’s a  piece I wrote a while back based on a challenge set forth by Terribleminds. It was something he did every Friday. (A writing challenge that is.) He hasn’t done one in awhile, but the man’s life has gotten significantly busier.

This challenge was easy. First, get a title from a random title generator. Then tell the story in 1000 words.

Here’s the title: The Apocalypse Ticket

Here’s where the story took me.

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A consideration of knots…

September 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

A Consideration of Knots…

So I’m a writer. It has taken me a long time to admit that out loud. I held it close, like a secret identity for so long. For years I kept my writing between myself, the local magazines I wrote for, the literary journals that published my short stories and the large number of agents that requested my full manuscripts. To the rest of the world I was just…well, “just”. Just a librarian. Just a barista. Just a tour guide. Just a lover of coffee. Just a purveyor of world travel. Just someone who learned the Italian language for love of the country. Just a member of a book club. Just a Capricorn. Just a kid from Stone Mountain, Georgia.

We do that to ourselves though, don’t we? We “Just”-ify ourselves. I was talking with a physical therapist, (I’ve got a ‘hitch in my giddy up’) and she asks questions while she works, and who knew all my angst would come up through the work. I used the word ‘Should’ a lot with her. She shook her head and gently said, “there you go again, should-ing all over yourself.”

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Changes…

September 22, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Changes…

Hello Friends!

So a few changes around my writing world. This might result in a few mistaken emails to your inbox. If that happens. I apologize, and hopefully it won’t be that intrusive.

What changes are afoot you might wonder…well!

First, the lay out of my blog has been tweaked just a bit.

Secondly, I have had a lovely long relationship with the Italian cappuccino. Aka a love of coffee. My four faithful readers will know about this. I started a side project blog awhile back, where I wrote about my love of coffee and ended up reviewing many of the coffee shops I went to in Boise, Florence and Southern California. (Because I’m lucky enough to travel between those lovely places.) I tried to separate that world from this, but now I see how imperative it is that I am fully present on my website Nicole Sharp Writes with all my interests, and flaws, and vulnerabilities and…stuff.

Okay, maybe it’s not a dire situation, but it comes down to the fact that I’m moving everything into this one place where Nicole Sharp writes.

I’ve also jumped on the social media wagon. No need to adjust your screen, you read that right. Me, the last holdout in social media land is following in suit. I’ve had nightmares and anxiety over this, but I’ve come to terms with it and how I have decided to face it. Also, no need to look outside, I can tell you that, yes indeed, hell has frozen over.

On my home page you’ll find the icon links. Here I’ll be old fashioned about it.

I am most receptive to Instagram and can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/nicolesharpwrites/

I have a bit on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NSharpWrites

And facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Nicolesharpwrites/

I’ll warn you now. I’m not good with Social Media, so please give me some growing space in that arena.

I am planning a very organic flow of interaction and entertainment in these areas, all based on the content published on my blog. Those who want to read what I have to offer will find a mix of my three passions I am fairly knowledgeable in: The writing life, Italy and coffee.

As always, my main goal is to entertain you dear reader.

(*Me standing in front of the mountain of words I’ve written since I was 12 years old, arms open wide screaming like the Gladiator, “are you not entertained?!”)

Whoa, sorry about that. Where did that come from.

I digress, my updates are an attempt to make myself more visible, brand the writer and begin the groundwork for the publishing in the coming year.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your continued support dear reader!

It’s all Greek to me…

September 15, 2019 / / 3 Comments

It’s all Greek to me…

Odysseus and his men drive a burning stake into the eye of the giant Cyclops.

I’ve been doing an online course on the Ancient Greeks, my wheel house. I find when I start to learn ‘new things’, I don’t stray far from my field of interest. My degree is in History. Antiquities, think Romans and Greeks. An email popped up from Coursera asking if I would be interested in an Ancient Greek History course. Um, yeah-sure-you-bettcha I was interested. I was looking for something to side track a bit of my time as it was, I’m so recently immersed in my frantic world of writing.

You see, the kid is back to school. The triple digit (and 90 degree) weather has broken, and it has been lovely outdoor living. Windows open and a cool morning breeze rustling through the house…that sort of lovely. I have some big plans for my career within the next year. Just got a short story accepted for publication in a literary journal. (It’s slated to be published in February of 2020.) I’ve got a few tweaks coming to the old blog here and my ‘social network’. That one makes me uncomfortable and agitated, but we’ll deal with that later.

Needless to say, I’m back to spending uninterrupted hours a day in my head. Whether writing my new book, editing two old ones, submitting my work to the usual suspects, reading books on Italian literature and listening to Russell Brand’s podcast Under the Skin…my thoughts rush around, bouncing and snapping my synapses.

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Like the old days…

September 2, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Like the old days…

I was thinking about the way I used to do things.

Truth be told, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how my life used to be. In my younger years. When I was more outgoing. Not as worried and scared as I have become of late.

It’s a strange thing, there has been a noticeable timidness that’s crept into my once outgoing nature as I’ve gotten older. Yet, strangely enough, my self-confidence has been on the rise. I like to attribute the rise in self-confidence to exhaustion. I kind of don’t have time for the bullshit anymore. By Bullshit I mean worrying about what others think about my shorts in the summer, my unkempt hair, my submission to their magazines, my letting go of things that don’t serve me and never did. The other part probably has to do with my therapist and yoga practice.

(Oh god, there I’ve gone and done it. Made myself human to my three fans. Yes, I have been doing yoga on a daily basis for the past two years and yes, I have silently become that person who, upon hearing of someone’s woes, thinks to myself, “there’s a yoga pose for that.” Stupid yoga.

AND, yes, I’ve got a therapist. Sooo in touch with my feelings…(insert choking cough here.) But isn’t it interesting, the fear we have of showing our human-ness to the outside world. When my mom used to have parties at our house –and my mom was the original Martha Stewart; people came to her house and stayed long past the agreed upon conclusion time of said party -but I digress, when helping my mom to clean for those parties, she had us hiding all sorts of things. Put the toothbrushes under the sink, put the extra desk from the dining room in the garage; all clutter cleaned up and put in a closed closet. My sister and I would joke, as we helped that we needed to “hurry up and hide the human side”. I still do this, when people are coming over to my home I hide my ‘human’. I don’t let people upstairs to see the mess that didn’t get cleaned up. I hide the toothbrushes and vitamins under the sink. Little by little, I’ve been letting this practice go. I like to see other’s human side, why shouldn’t they be allowed to see mine? It’s a strange thing, allowing someone in that deeply. Past the superficial. And yet, that level of vulnerability is what draws us closer together. Isn’t this the stuff Brene Brown is always talking about?)

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Heroes…

August 13, 2019 / / 1 Comment

I love John Cougar Mellencamp. I saw him in concert two years ago and I’m still not ready to talk about it. Seeing him in concert was intense bucket list stuff for me.  I hold The Cougar in a private sort of way. I don’t hold him out in the open for all to see. His influence and presence in my life: I’ve always felt I needed to hold him close to the bone.

John Cougar Mellencamp, this man who stood for himself and did things his own way, regardless of what the world was doing…well, I was inspired, impressed, and wholeheartedly related to his message. As a sixth grade girl whose friends were evenly divided between Duran Duran or Michael Jackson (those were the times my friends, MJ hadn’t gone all creepy in ‘85. Not that we knew about anyway.) But those were the two camps available to me at that point in my life, and I decided to stand alone in camp with The Cougar.

He gave me a voice when I felt voiceless. He was a friend I rocked out to in my room, my small tape player turned up as far as it would go, distorting the sound of the music from a full rift of a guitar to a high pitched twangy strain of technology. He was honest and heartfelt and didn’t care what others thought about him, and that’s what I was desperately trying to be; but a girl in 6th grade in ’85 wasn’t really encouraged to stand out from the crowd. And still that was the beginning of a twinkle, when I began to think I wanted to do things differently than all the other around me. That was the beginning of my iconoclastic ways.

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Un-rejection?

July 7, 2019 / / 2 Comments

A woman writes in 1901

This is not the rejection you thought it was, it’s a different rejection of rejection. I’m pretty sure Yoda said that at one point.

So, this morning, I’m sitting in my haven of a backyard, the weather is nice and cool, cloud cover with active squirrels whooping it up, rummaging through the trees along my fence line.

I go through my normal morning moves: coffee, jazz, journal, and then check the email. I’ve subscribed to several informative ‘writer’ blogs and such over the years, and this morning as I read through one such one, an interesting article caught my eye, “Levels of rejection and what they mean.”

Of course, my gut reaction: What the fuck?! You mean there are different levels of rejection to feel bad about other than just the normal rejection that’s eating me up on the insides?!

A glutton; of course I read on.

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A short story…

June 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Here’s a weird bit of information. When you publish short stories on your own personal website, it often voids the chances of said story to be published in a literary magazine, most of them require pieces that have never been published before.  That rule includes one’s own blog.

That is one of the reasons I tend not to put any short stories on my blog.

But I love this one. I wrote it for a short story / essay contest held here in my little corner of the world where the theme was Fuel. Well, when I think of fuel, the one thing that always comes to my mind is my love for coffee. It truly fuels me!

Coffee Shops by Nicole Sharp Continue reading

And the Author Bio goes to…

February 20, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I haven’t blogged much lately because I’ve been stuck in the void of grant application deadlines and short story submissions. While a bit of a challenge, the experiences haven’t been bad. One positive is that I’ve been given the opportunity to stand up for my writing and passion. (Even if I’m standing up to myself.) I’m a writer. There is only one direction. Forward. Always.

(Oooh, it works for lots of stuff going on in life right now, too. Weird, huh?)

That’s one side of the grant application. The other is an exercise in self examination.  I’ve had to come up with several personal statements that cause me to question, “who am I?”

Wait. It’s not like that. Not the way you just read those words. Off handed and quickly,  ‘who am I’.

Read it again. With gusto. Read it like the self-inflicted, insidious introspection it’s become. Like it’s a torturous, soul bending, hair pulling, lying prone on the floor scream of: “WHO AM I?!!”

There you go, that’s how you should read it. Continue reading

Wow…Mary!

January 26, 2019 / / 1 Comment

A few years ago, maybe only two years ago, now that I think about it. Two years ago, I found Mary Beard. And since then, the more I find out about her, as she shows up in my peripheral, the more of a crush I develop on her.

Mary Beard has a laundry list of ‘things she is’ behind her name. In summation, she is a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. She is an English scholar and classicist, think study of ancient Romans and Greeks among others. She’s been made a Dame of Commander of the Order of the British Empire, which puts the title Dame in front of her given name. There are more titles she touts as well; and she has a regular blog that appears in The Times Literary Supplement.

I first came to know of Mary’s in an article written in the New Yorker. I was fascinated with the easy going, long gray haired woman with no make-up that was practically glowing because as she sat comfortably on a velvet chase, she looked like she had the whole world figured out. The article was wonderful as well, and instilled the beginnings of my crush. Apparently, Mary’s not so polite trolls on social media are no match for her. She often engages them. So much so, that she engaged one such young man and they are now friends. She did indeed, if I am remembering correctly, garner an apology as well.

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