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Welcome to my Geeky Grandma website with a built-in blog.
I'm a retired Community College teacher, a busy volunteer, writer, grandma, and webmaster, managing four websites, including this one:
www.ruthsuckow.org -- celebrating Iowa writer Ruth Suckow, our first feminist writer
www.cfauthorsfestival.org-- a literary festival, 2017-2018, honoring our five nationally known best-selling writers with ties to Cedar Falls (Ruth Suckow, Bess Streeter Aldrich, Poet James Hearst, Robert James Waller & Nancy Price)
www.lwvbhb.org -- the website for the League of Women Voters of Black Hawk/Bremer Counties.
I started a blog on blogger, designed to help new bloggers several years ago, and continue to post there periodically. It depends on whether I'm working on one of my novels!
bloggingbasicswithcherie.blogspot.com/
I've also neglected my blogs to start writing a trilogy that became a series. Grandmother's Treasures is a series of books about a fictional Iowa town, Jubilee Junction, and a young woman name Gracie O'Connor whose ancestors founded the town over 150 years earlier. Each book features dual narrators, a war or era in the past, a "treasure" that is usually a quilt, and a mystery or forgotten part of her family history.
Book One, The Gift, will be published this summer. We hear dual narrators of Gracie and her grandmother (WWII).
Book Two, The Legacy has gone to the publisher but will be read by a group of Beta writers. Dual narrators of Gracie and a young widow in Virginia (The Civil War).
Book Three, The Promise, is my current project while waiting for more feedback on The Legacy, with dual narrators of Gracie and a young woman anticipating high school graduation and her engagement, when America enters WWI.
Book Four, The Recollection, is a Jubilee Junction Christmas Novella with dual narrators Gracie and a young wife whose family has just lost their farm during the Depression.
Book Five, The Sacrifice, begins with David and Gracie arriving on the scene of a horrible car accident, where they rescue a baby and call for help for her parents. A box with an unfinished quilt and cassette tapes is discovered and David and Gracie unravel the mystery as they fall in love with little Ava. While her parents undergo medical treatment and rehab, Mark and Kathy take her in as a foster child and their twin babies see her as the third twin. We hear from dual narrators Gracie and her grandmother Grace in correspondence with Kathy's grandmother and get insight into the War in Vietnam.
The Sower and the Seer: Perspectives on the Intellectual History of the American Midwest. A book about the Intellectual History of the Midwest. (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, March 2021)
This is a collection of essays. My chapter focuses on the city of Cedar Falls, Iowa, my 'adopted' hometown.
"Mind & Soil: An Iowa Town that Grows Writers."
$21.84 Prime for Paperback, $15.99 for Kindle
Guest Post on Gail KIttleson's Blog, https://www.gailkittleson.com/
Gail is a friend from the Cedar Falls Christian Writers Workshop, and the author of a number of wonderful books, including the series Women of the Heartland. See them here at her author page at Wordcrafts.net and Amazon.
Grandmother’s Treasures series Update
My first novel, The Gift, has been accepted for publication by WordCrafts Press and will be published this summer.
WordCrafts Press | We Tell Stories
It's the first book in a series titled Grandmother's Treasures. I describe the series as Midwestern Fiction with a twist of history, faith, and mystery.
Look for it in the Summer of 2022.
The picture above is my Aunt Jeanne, my mother's youngest sister. I based a character, Aunt Violet, on Aunt Jeanne's personality and real-life experience going to California and working at an aircraft factory, building bombers! However, it's a work of fiction of about 90 percent of it is from my imagination and research!
The Midwestern Moment
I've written a chapter about Ruth Suckow for a book that came out June 1, 2017. The book is titled The Midwestern Moment, and it is a collection of essays about Midwestern Writers and Regionalism. It is NOW available on Amazon!
Opening the box!
The front Cover. Jon Lauck is the editor.
The back cover lists the names of the contributors.
The book is available on Amazon for $24.99. Midwestern Moment
My Chapter, "The Realistic Regionalism of Iowa’s Ruth Suckow," focuses on Suckow's life and work and argues that she is worth remembering for her remarkable story telling ability, her realistic portrayal of characters, especially women, and for her contribution to the regionalism debate. While she resisted being labeled, she certainly fits into realism and regionalism.
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Welcome to the Geeky Grandma website!
When I took early retirement to write, I had NO idea that I was about to become a webmaster for two more websites, and get involved in volunteering with the League of Women Voters. However, I love retirement.
I'm Cherie--a geek and a grandma who loves to write and play with technology.
One of my favorite geeky gifts from my husband, and fellow geek, Mike. It's a pair of hands that holds my old iPhone (now used as a mini tablet).
I've been writing all of my life: my mother saved one of my first stories about a mother pig who rolls over and squashes her baby. She buries it, but the wise farmer realizes that the baby pig is still alive and digs it out and returns it to the mother. The story is written in pencil, with several glaring spelling errors, typical of six-year-olds; however, my mother thought it was worth saving. My early efforts reveal my fascination with writing, as well as my penchant for creating stories with tragedy, miracles, and happy endings.
Throughout my life, I've loved reading, telling and writing stories: growing up, if I wasn't writing a story, I was reading one and daydreaming about writing in between those two activities! However, I don't think even my wild imagination as a child could have seen me using a PC, smartphone or iPad to record my thoughts, write a column, and work on my website and blog. As a Community College teacher, I've taught a variety of classes using technology for the past 25 years and discovered that various technology tools enhance creativity and make it easier to collaborate, share, and archive writing. Besides that, it's fun, as my two grandsons remind me every time they get their hands on my old iPhone (loaded with Educational games and Apps) or iPad.
This website will explore the intersection between the act of writing and using technology such as social media, web tools, and mobile devices and apps. It is both a writer's blog and a place to gather resources to help other writers. I've been writing a Technology Column for almost 3 years and have included those archives as well. For that reason, I decided not to go with a typical blog: I hope you will find something useful here. If you do, please let me know. If you have a technology question, please contact me using the email on my contact page.
Please note that the Subscribe button does not work on Google's Chrome Browser but does work on Internet Explorer and Firefox!
This site has been saved as a template and then copied to a new Google Sites account, giving me additional space.
Last Updated July 1, 2022
PLEASE NOTE THAT I CREATED A NEW PAGE FOR THE BLOG POSTS--THEN, EACH POST DOES NOT END UP ON THE NAVIGATION MENU! IT IS THE FIRST ENTRY--BLOG POSTS FOR GEEKY GRANDMA.