We're All in Jail

I’ve never committed a crime or had reason to sit in a jail cell, but I imagine it would be a pretty desperate situation to find oneself in.  Can you imagine the tiny space, the cold stone floor, the drab gray bricks, the public potty with absolutely no privacy, the lack of daylight, and the complete boredom?  I think I’d go insane after a couple of hours, not to mention a couple of months, and certainly not a few years.

And then what if you were all alone?  No parents or rich uncle to come bail you out?  I cannot visualize a more miserable scenario.

Guess what.  That IS our condition!  We were locked in our sin with no way out.  Oh, we could be nice to the jailer, but that would never get rid of the awful things we’ve already done.

But there’s good news!  Someone HAS come to bail us out, and His Name is Jesus.  We were under a sentence of death, so God in His great love sent us His only Son to redeem us from our jail cells.  It’s His Birth we celebrate at this time of year—what an awesome gift—and it’s His Death on the cross that swings the cell door wide open!  Jesus paid a debt He didn’t owe, because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay. 

Is there any gift you could receive this Christmas better than the promise of eternal life?  I don’t know about you, but there’s no package sitting under my tree that surpasses living forever in heaven.  And the gift is yours.  All you have to do is take it.  Revelation 3:20 will tell you how!

Camouflage

I have one more fun game for you to play when family or friends gather at your house for Christmas.  To prepare for this game, you’ll need to locate 20-25 small objects, such as a wooden matchstick, a safety pin, a red thumbtack, a paper clip, a white button, etc.  “Camouflage” is a search for these objects hidden IN PLAIN SIGHT in your living room, kitchen, entrance, or wherever you decide to tell your guests they have been placed.  The key is to hide them beside something of the same color so that they are not noticed.  It is always fun at the end to show your guests that the objects were “right under their noses,” such as the red thumbtack hidden in this wallpaper border or the silver key glued to this phone plate.

                           

For example, a black shoelace could be tied around the black leg of a piano.  A paper clip could be hung on a metal light fixture or from a chandelier.  It is important to emphasize to your guests that the objects are not UNDER anything but in plain sight beside something of a similar color.  Also, guests should be instructed not to give away the locations of the objects when they find them.  After all, why help anyone else in a game that’s a competition?  Give your company a limited amount of time to find the objects, such as ten minutes, or maybe fifteen if you have hidden quite a few things, then have a prize for the person who finds the most.  When you are going back over the list, let the guests who found the items show the others where they were hidden, something that will make them feel victorious!  

Before everyone arrives, type out a list of all the objects you are hiding, such as the list below, then make copies and give each person one, along with a pencil to write down where he/she found the particular item.  Your guests will love it, I promise!

ITEM                                 WHERE FOUND

1.  Penny                           ____________________________

2.  Bobby Pin                    ____________________________

3.  Key                              ____________________________

4.  Toothpick                     ____________________________
5.  Silver Earring                ____________________________

Ho Ho Ho!

If you’re planning a Christmas party, allow me to share with you two games your family and friends will love to play—games that will provide lots of fun and laughs. 

Divide your guests into two teams, and you’re ready to play “The Last Shall Be First.”  One team starts by naming a well-known Christmas carol.  Then you call out the LAST letter of that song for the benefit of the other team, who in turn must come up with a Christmas carol that STARTS with that letter.  Next name the last letter of their song, and the first team must think of a carol that starts with the new last letter.  Each team has fifteen seconds to come up with a correct title.  When a team is stumped, the other team scores a point, and the first team to score three points wins! 

Allow me to demonstrate exactly how this plays out:  Let’s say Team A starts the game by yelling out “Jingle Bells” for their song.  Then you say, “Now Team B, give me  a song that starts with an S,” to which they reply “Silent Night.”  Following that, you say, “Team A, a song that begins with the letter T,” and they respond with, “The First Noel.”  Team B must think of a song beginning with an L and could come back with “Let It Snow.”  The game continues until one team cannot think of a title within the time limit, and the opposing team scores.  The game is super entertaining so your guests may want to play again!

                                                                               

                                                                      

The second game I call “The Smells of Christmas.”  Round up all the candles in your house or buy enough small candles so that you have one for every guest.  On a piece of paper write numbers from one to the number of guests who will be playing.  Copy the  name of each scent beside a number.  Next write the numbers ONLY on a different sheet of paper, cut them apart, and glue each number onto the corresponding bottom of the candle with that scent, carefully covering the name of the scent.  Have your guests sit in a circle, and hand each one a piece of paper and a pencil, along with a candle.  Have them number the paper from one to the number of guests participating in the game.  Explain to them that they will have ten seconds to smell the candle, then write down the name of the scent beside the number of that candle.  Give them ten seconds to identify the smell before saying “Pass the candles.”

The game is over when everyone has smelled each candle, and the person with the most correct scents wins!  Don’t forget that prizes always make a victory more fun!

True or False?

I’ve got another fantastic game for you to play with your friends over the holidays.  I say “friends” because most likely family members will know you too well to pull this game off with any degree of credibility.  I’m speaking of a game called “True or False.”  It’s big fun, and your guests will love it.

To speed things along, I give my company a “heads-up” about the game before they arrive.  If I don’t, chances are they will not be able to come up with a convincing memory on the spot.  I ask them to think of a time they did something extremely unusual or daring or strange and to practice telling that event in a couple of minutes or less.  Then I tell them also to invent another “story” about themselves that is NOT true yet quite incredible or jaw dropping.

When we’re ready to play the game, I pass out paper and pencils to all my guests.  Then starting at one end of the room, I invite the first person to tell his/her two stories, one true and the other false.  It doesn’t matter which order they tell them in.

For example, my first guest would say, “My “A” story is that I once had a date with an Olympic gold-medal winner, and my “B” story is I met Elvis when he was stationed at Ft. Hood and had my picture made with him.”  Then the remaining guests write the person’s name beside #1 and which letter they think represents the TRUE story.  Every person takes a turn, and at the end, we start over with Person 1 again. He or she tells which story is the true one, and everyone else marks that number right or wrong, depending on if they guessed correctly.

The fun comes in hearing more details about the true story.  I can guarantee that True or False will provide your party with lots of great conversation, quite a few surprises, and lots of laughs!

Stay tuned because next week I’ll share with you two games perfect for a Christmas party!

Eye Gossip

Have you ever played the game “Gossip?”  Isn’t it amazing how the person at the start of the circle can whisper something to the one next to him/her, and by the time it reaches the last person, it’s a totally different statement?  I love that game.

If you love it, too, then I think you’ll enjoy playing “Eye Gossip” at your next gathering of family or friends.  Simply find an unusual advertisement in a magazine, something with lots of strange things going on (actually find about six), tear them out, and make sure you have at least eight people present to play.  In this example, I “Photoshopped” several ads together to give you an idea of something odd that would produce tons of laughs, but I’m sure you can find plenty of strange ads on your own.

                                                                   

Divide your guests into two teams, then send two members of Team A into another room so that they can’t hear what’s being said in the room where you’re playing.  Snap one of the ads into a clipboard and give a different player from Team A one minute to study the ad.  Then turn the ad around toward the players on Team B to enjoy what’s about to be said and give the player who studied the ad one minute to describe everything he/she can remember to the remaining player on Team A. 
 

                                                                              
For instance, the player might say, "On the right side of the picture there are stalks of broccoli standing up in white cupcake baking cups with white icing on top of the broccoli and two white candles in the icing.  Above that are some chocolate chip cookies.  To the far left is the black silhouette of a bare tree with a black bird perched on one of the branches.  Below that is a small carving knife, then a yellow goose directly beneath the knife and a kettle beneath the knife to the right."  And so on and so forth.

After the minute is up, call in another player from Team A, and Player #2 describes the ad as he/she can best recall it to Player #3.  Then call in the final person, and Player #3 relays to Player #4 all that he can remember about the ad.

All the while, Team B is dying laughing at how the description has changed from one person to the next, some players leaving out important details and others adding details that aren’t even there!  That’s what makes the game hilarious.  To score, the final person, Player #4, has one minute to say everything he remembers about the ad, and each detail he gets correct is worth one point.

Play three rounds per team, and high score wins.  Your guests will love it!

Celebrate With Cranberries

In case you’re curious as to the two types of writing I like best, based on the photos I posted last time, the mask stood for Suspense (you probably guessed that) and the Corvette tire stood for chase scenes, which in turn stood for Action.

Today I’d like to share with you a great pie recipe I “test-cooked” over the weekend to see if it would be a nice addition to our Thanksgiving meal this week.  However, if you don’t make the crust with the Crisco piecrust recipe, I can’t guarantee fantastic results!  So here goes:

                                                                                  

                                                                                                    

                                                                                 

Place 2 cups of flour in a bowl and add one teaspoon of salt, then mix well. Measure ¾ of a cup of Crisco and cut in with a pastry blender until the mixture is uniform and very fine.  Add 4 tablespoons of water and knead with your hands until mixture forms a soft ball of dough.  Place half the dough on a lightly floured piece of wax paper and roll out to about 1/8 of an inch thick.  Slip onto the rolling pin and place in a 9 inch pie plate.  Roll out the remaining dough and cut into one-inch strips to crisscross over the top of the pie.

Next peel and cut two Granny Smith, three Gala, and two Golden Delicious apples into small pieces and place in a glass bowl.  Add 1 ¼ c. of cranberries and one tablespoon of water, cover, and soften fruit in microwave at medium strength for about six minutes. Add ¼ cup of granulated sugar, ¼ cup of brown sugar, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, an eighth of a teaspoon of nutmeg, 2 teaspoons of cornstarch, and the juice of one lemon.  Stir well, then dump into pie shell and cover with strips of crust.  Bake at 375º for about 40 minutes or until bubbly and golden.

Voila!  You've created a tart and delicious pie with a crispy crust.  It's a masterpiece.  Enjoy and have a
Happy Thanksgiving!

Tap Tap Tap

These two photos illustrate the two basic styles of writing I enjoy most.  The first picture exemplifies my all-time favorite—the second one stands for an approach I occasionally throw into my stories to enliven the plot.  Can you figure out the puzzles and guess the two types of writing?  Stay tuned, and next time I’ll come clean!

 

 

                                                                             

Today I want to talk about several techniques I LOVE to use when I write.  The first one is called TAPPING.  New York best-selling author Jodi Thomas was the person who explained this method of creating and building suspense to me.  Just touch or “tap” something lightly in your story early on; later mention it again; the third time you bring it up, do something with it, or your reader will be disappointed.  For example, the maid is dusting her rich employer’s desk.  She opens a drawer to put some pencils inside and notices a revolver.  Chapters later, the wealthy man’s nephew is looking for paper in his uncle’s desk, opens the same drawer, and sees the gun.  By the time the third person catches a glimpse of it, somebody needs to pick up the weapon and shoot a poor, innocent victim with it.  If not, the revolver becomes a “red herring” or a misleading clue that goes nowhere and leaves the reader feeling empty.  But if something DOES happen with it, your reader will find satisfaction in trying to figure out beforehand why that detail keeps appearing.

Another thing I LOVE is dropping PLOT-HYPERS into my novels.  For example, a man goes to the mailbox and retrieves a letter addressed to his wife, written in an obvious male handwriting he doesn’t recognize from a city his wife visited several months ago.  Or a strange odor—the smell of seaweed—wafts through the cabin in the forest where a young couple is playing chess.  Or a dog that always barks when anyone approaches a certain person’s front door does NOT bark, yet the visitor sees him lying on the entrance floor.  These are called “plot-hypers” because they add an element of uncertainty and tension to the story.  We as authors can raise our readers’ heart rates by sprinkling strange events such as these into our novels, then leaving them unexplained until the end of the story.

Jodi Thomas informed me that one of the best movies she’d ever seen was “The Sixth Sense” because of all the subtle clues the writer left along the way that foretold the ending. However, most of us, when the shock was revealed, had to kick ourselves for not picking up on the signs we’d been shown.  Stories like this are the epitome of viewer (or reader) satisfaction.  If we hit our audience with an ending that is a total surprise but doesn’t actually make sense, then they’re upset with us.  But if the ending is totally cool, and we’ve given clues throughout the pages as to how it would end—our readers just didn’t see them—then they’ll LOVE IT!

In one of my novels (I won’t say which one) I mention ever so slightly that two young men’s voices are so similar, Person A hears one of them speak and mistakes him for the other adolescent.  But Person B doesn’t agree and dismisses Person A’s comment—most likely the reader does too.  However, it’s a great clue, and if the reader notices it, he will immediately solve the mystery.

It’s big fun to weave subtlety into a story.  We mustn’t hit the reader over the head to build suspense.  We must simply create uncertainty or drop unexplainable facts to raise the tension level.

Past or Future?

Welcome one and all to my blog!  Please bear with me as I step out of my comfort zone and into a new experience of talking about a subject I absolutely love—creativity!

Since God is creative, and we are made in His image, it’s only natural that we should desire to create, originate, and orchestrate all sorts of things.  Making something that has never existed before is deeply gratifying.  You must try it.  It’s at the top of my list of fulfilling and fun things to do. 

The most recent type of creativity I have delved into is writing.  I think I may enjoy it more than anything else I’ve ever tried.  As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a camera.  When I was ten years old, my parents bought me a Brownie camera.  I loved it.  I wish I hadn’t lost it . . . it might be worth a small fortune today!  Anyway, because I have always enjoyed taking pictures, an idea for a story about a camera came to me one day.  This camera would be unlike any other camera in the world.  Wherever you pointed it, it would take a picture of what happened in that spot a day ago, a week ago, a month ago, or even a year ago, depending how far you rotated the aperture ring.  How amazing would that be if such an object really existed!  Perhaps I should spend my time trying to invent such a device rather than simply writing about it.

The second thing to tackle was where would someone find it?  Since my sister and I have always loved to explore old deserted houses and shacks, I thought an abandoned cabin in the woods might be the ideal location.

Next I needed to decide who would find it.  How about three teenagers (Brandon, Mark, and Natalie) on an outing in a wooded area close to Austin, Texas, the day after Thanksgiving?  Yes, that sounded perfect.  Once my teenagers discovered that the camera could take pictures of the past, they would definitely be the adventurous types to find exciting ways to use it. 

Then I thought it would be really cool if they accidentally realized that when they twisted the aperture ring in the opposite direction, it would show the future. That made the camera super-valuable.  The picture would reveal to them what would happen in a certain spot the next day, the next week, or even a year from then.  Talk about amazing!

After that I had to create the plot and determine what the teens would do with their valuable possession.  What would you do if you had a camera that was capable of telling the past and the future of any spot you photographed?

The three teenagers considered taking a picture of the winning lottery numbers, then buying a ticket with those numbers.  However, Natalie discouraged that idea.  Everyone she had known who’d won a vast sum of money overnight did wild and crazy things with it, and the fortune eventually ruined their lives.

So what should Brandon, Mark, and Natalie do? 

The neat thing I’ve discovered in writing stories is after I’ve given my characters their personalities, they seem to write the account themselves.  I just type what the individuals tell me to type—you know—I simply record what I hear them saying or doing in any given situation.  Sometimes I have no idea where their actions will direct the tale, but I love it.  The process really works!

I created Brandon to be a big, tough, muscular fellow who is ready to tackle any problem, no matter how dangerous it might be.  Therefore, he suggested they use the camera to solve crimes, then collect the reward money.  That way they weren’t gaining a ton of money at once—just enough to pay their way through college—and they’d be helping victims of the crime and the police at the same time.

They discussed his proposal and agreed to his plan.

But guess what.  That might have sounded like a great idea, but things began to go wrong—they have to in a story, or you don’t have a story—and the nasty characters the teens encountered could not understand how three immature teenagers kept bringing them down, so the criminals eventually came after Brandon, Mark, and Natalie with a vengeance.

Anyway, my story (their story) continued until it reached a satisfying conclusion, and when it did, it ended.  So a word to the wise—you must throw lots of problems at your main character or characters and lots of challenges for them to work through to keep those readers turning your pages.

I still remember what my dad said years ago when our whole family sat watching a thriller on TV.  Someone would invariably say, “They shouldn’t have done that,” or “How dumb of them,” or some such comment.  His answer was always, “If you had written it, there wouldn’t be a story!”  How true.  Stories need to be filled with problems the protagonist must conquer, or the tale won’t hold our interest.

Anyway, these were my thoughts when I wrote my first book.  And before I finish writing any story, I always try to think of a catchy title.  After all, I’ve bought many a book simply because I found the name of the book intriguing, haven’t you?  I oftentimes like to name my stories a familiar saying or a line everyone’s heard, like The Mouse Ran Up the Clock or All That Glitters Isn’t Gold.  Don’t get me wrong—I’ve never named one of my books either of those two, but don’t such titles pique your curiosity?  I thought so.  Anyway, I opted for Time Will Tell . . . that’s a catchy phrase we all say often, and it fit the book perfectly.  After all, the past or future actually did tell the teens what they needed to know.

The final thing to do with a story you plan to self-publish is to design a cover for it.  That was a total blast.  I photographed an old camera of mine, then took the picture into Photoshop and blurred everything but the lens.  Next I drew two boys and a girl running to indicate the tension of the plot, scanned them in, and with a few funky filters skewed them to make their images look like they were reflected on the curvature of the glass.  If there’s anything more fun to play with than Photoshop, I don’t know what it is!

 

There you have it.  The journey of the creation of my first book.  You must try writing one.  It’s big fun.

My Bio

Here's Who I Am!

Hi, I’m Bettie.  My full name is Bettie Chrisman Haller, but in art circles I’m better known as B. Haller.  I was formally educated in art at Texas Tech University, but I attribute my real training to my father, Palmer Chrisman, noted hill country and bluebonnet artist.

Can I say I love to paint?  Oils are my favorite medium, and the subjects I enjoy painting are westerns, along with the Texas hill country, Italian street scenes, and African wildlife.

I have been one of the feature artists in Southwest Art magazine, had seven of my paintings published on Leanin’ Tree’s line of Christmas cards, and one on the cover of True West magazine.

Another facet of creating that I enjoy is illustrating children’s picture books for my youngest daughter, Rachel Kelley.  She decided to write stories for kids in order to point them to God and teach them certain principles of His Word, and I welcomed the chance to honor Him with the art talent He has given me.

A few years ago I decided to take a few hours every week away from art in order to write novels, finally putting down on paper the ideas I’d had forever for suspense stories.  Alfred Hitchcock greatly influenced the type of writing I do because I always loved the twists and turns and surprise endings in his TV programs and movies, and today that’s the way I write—hopefully you won’t be able to figure out how my mysteries will end!

And guess what else I’m addicted to . . . parties!  I love to party, and I love to have family and friends over for food and fun and most of all lots of laughs.  I never tire of finding a new recipe to try out on my guests.  In addition to cooking, I find it extremely exhilarating to create games for small and large groups alike to play.  I must really be weird! 

So now I invite you to join me on my journey.  Perhaps you’ll be inspired to initiate plots, paintings, and parties of your own.  I can’t wait to create, and I hope you can’t either!