Happy Halloween!!

Yay! It's my second favorite holiday today! I love Halloween and we kind of celebrate it all year. At least my husband does. You should see his office where he writes. It's like a giant homage to the horror genre. It's one of the things I love about him. Also, it's our wedding anniversary! We were married on Halloween. Yes, on purpose! So there you go! I hope you have a spooky, safe,candy-filled, and fun Halloween. Watch out for ghosts and vampires. Unless the vampire is one of mine or Eric Northman.

Oh and BTW... I'm looking for beta readers!

Right now I am desperately looking for beta readers for the second book in my The Primigenio Tales series called Blood of New Beginnings!!! If you are interested, let me know and if you are truly into being a beta, I will shoot you a copy! Share this with someone you might know who wants to be a beta reader!

Give it away Give it away Give it away now!

There is my nod to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. OH MY GOD. I have been listening to them since I was in high school. Almost thirty years ago. WTH? Hail to Armwood High! But I digress.

I am giving away 5 free Kindle editions of Life in Moonlight!! YAY! Please enter here by cutting and pasting( the click link is giving me trouble) https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/23190ceda257319e/?ref_=tsm_4_fb_h_o_li_r#ln-fo

It's how I roll

So these days I am only mobile by this thing pictured above. Unfortunately mine isn't pink. I'm on this for about 10 more days because of a repair surgery they did on my left foot and ankle. I've been on one of these before back in 2013 but I apparently have gotten worse in manipulating it. I have the bruised toes, run-over things and bumped walls to prove it. My daughter loves it though and can build up some steam on it going up and down our halls. So that's good. While recovering I have gotten caught up on my to be read pile, my binge watching pile and have gotten plenty of sleep. But no writing. I hope to do a bunch of writing on the third book in my series and have been doing a ton of research but right now, my characters aren't talking to me. Writing the first two felt super easy to get the first draft because the characters never shut up. I mean it didn't matter where I was or what I was doing either. Now when I have free time, they are silent, which sucks.I'll be patient with them. I might even try making it my NaNoWriMo project. Blood of New Beginnings was one. I cranked out 50,000 words easily. Maybe it will work for this one.

Home sweet home...for now

So my husband and I recently got back from our trip to Germany and Poland and it was a typical Beightol Baker trip overseas. Some one got sick and ended up under a foreign country's medical care. It just isn't a trip without that happening. Even on our honeymoon in Germany I ended up in a Berlin ER. Our trips are always...adventurous. The trip over was okay. We had to fly economy so there was that. We try to fly business class but this time it didn't happen. Which was fine because we stayed at the absolutely AMAZING Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin.

The Adlon was almost the best part of the trip. I've been to Berlin before but never like this. Anyway, we had a great time in Berlin. Visited some historical sites that we had never seen. I'd say they were sites that very few visit. LOL. And some that everyone should visit, like the German resistance memorial. It was great minus the anxiety attack I had at the train station over how high up it was.I have a crippling fear of heights and I very nearly freaked out and shut down because the station was 4 floors high AND WIDE OPEN INSIDE but I didn't. After a few days, we headed to Krakow Poland. Now we had never been to Poland before but we should have known that it wouldn't go as planned when the GPS in the car wouldn't recognize Krakow but instead Crakow. Also, just so you know, Poland really doesn't have any highways. So the GPS routed us down every goat path, back road and twisty, windy road they could. SO whatever should have been like a 4 hour trip per Google Maps, was an 8 hour trek. At least we got to see some BEAUTIFUL countryside and castles along the way. Ok, so we get to Crakow at like midnight (we expected the trip to end around 9) and we had only been able to find Mc Donalds to eat. We don't speak Polish and the Poles don't speak English except in the big city so Mickey D's had a picture menu and we knew what stuff was.

Anyway, so my husband Scott when we get to the hotel starts feeling bad. He looks rough but I figured it was it was fatigue from driving. By the next morning he looks dead. Or right before dead. He's running a fever, having GI issues(big time) and can hardly move. We are supposed to go on a six hour tour of Auschwitz in a few hours but I didn't think that was happening. I went and got breakfast and he slept, expecting some miraculous cure in a nap. When I came back, I had to take him to the ER. Only in Poland there is no ER. Well there is but not like we know. So we take a cab to the hospital and they send us to some doctor to evaluate him to see if he needs an ER. It reminded me of a doctor's office south of the border. Trust me, it was nothing like I have ever worked in or been to. Anyway, the poor doctor evaluated Scott and gave him the choice about going to the ER. I had seen enough and opted to do a fluid challenge for Scott using bottled water. Never have I ever wished for Gatorade so much and I am bringing Gatorade powder with us next time. And the doctor gave him some prescriptions, which we waited in line for 30 minutes at the drug store and got his 4 prescriptions that he left in the cab back to the hotel. So no Auschwitz and we are off to our next location, Warsaw. Of course it took twice as long to get there and we had to order room service when we finally ate. However we did discover a new soup that we are in love with, Zurek, which is a sour rye soup. It looks like this.

The next day we got in the car(groan) and went to the Treblinka concentration camp memorial. This was a very moving experience and I felt a lot of random spirits.(I'm sensitive to spirits. I always have been so it makes traveling interesting. I felt several people at the resistance memorial and Plotzensee Prison) I felt someone who was shot in the head, someone who was shot in the chest and a few people I got the sensation of being suffocated and not being able to breathe. This was an extermination camp so it figures. After visiting here and paying our respects, we headed to Wolf's Lair in the north. Traveling along I noticed the road signs in Poland are more entertaining than America or anywhere. This was my favorite.

I never figured out what it meant. Did mean people danced in front of cars or were there ongoing games of Deathrace 2000? But we made it to Wolf's Lair where our accomodations were...spartan. There was no heat(it was in the 40s) and the blankets we had were so thin they were probably left over from the war. Which would make sense because we were staying in former German soldier's barracks. Yes, we take those kinds of trips. But the plus side was we were right on the the old bunker headquarters. We walked among the ruins and stopped at the sight of the attempted assassination site of Hitler.

Meanwhile through all of this, Scott is sick and I am cranky because I have been missing meals because he doesn't want to eat. But we both have brave faces on and haven't killed each other. After leaving the Wolf's Lair, we headed back to Berlin. I have never been so happy to be back in Germany!! After a long day of driving we arrive at our hotel for the last night. I'll just say it was no Hotel Adlon but it was better than the barracks we slept in the previous night. However there was no dinner for me to eat and we didn't eat lunch. So I was ticked. But it worked out because we got an upgrade on our return trip home to business. The next morning in the business class lounge I ate like two breakfasts and drank a gallon of orange juice. And while I was happy to be going home to our daughter, I was sad to be leaving Germany again. But I know I'll be back. You can take the girl out of Germany but not the Germany out of her!

Revamped

Well, I am re releasing the novels in my paranormal romance series, The Primigenio Tales. BUT these stories have undergone some changes. They have been...re VAMPED! LOL. That's so funny to me. Anyway, yes. I recently got the rights back from their original publisher and they have been re edited, revised, re titled, and re covered! I'm very happy about this :) Blood Betrayal, the first book in the series is now Life in Moonlight and Blood Beginnings is now Blood of New Beginnings. In celebration I'm doing a Goodreads giveaway so if you haven't read it, enter!(see earlier post) I'm working on the third book tentatively titled Death Hunter and I hope to have it finished by the end of December.

Goodreads giveaway!!!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Life in Moonlight

by Alison Beightol

Giveaway ends October 17, 2016.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Happy Vladurday!!!

Happy Vladurday!!!

Happy Vladurday!

one day I'm moving to Germany

I say this all the time when I am frustrated but I secretly hope that one day I am moving to Germany. Even if it's only for a couple of months or so. The above picture was from when my husband and I went to Germany this past December.
There is something about the country that just calls to me. Like it is my home. The buildings, the history (not that history from 1933-1945), the people and the land all seem like home. Being of German descent I guess you could say it was someone in my family tree's home. I try to cook German food, observe German customs and have tried several times to learn to speak German. Let's just say the Spanish I know is pretty deeply ingrained and I can't get the German to stick in my brain. Year before last when we were in Berlin, I had to go to the emergency room. They started to speak in German and I replied in Spanish. Finally we agreed on English.
My husband of course humors me when I get in my let's move abroad mood. He usually quells my moods with short trips there to keep me in check. But actually that is just solidifying my dream of moving there because the first thing I usually ask is when are we going back.

More pics from December. The top is the Nurnberg Christkindlmarkt.The bottom one is of a random castle that we past driving. We don't have random castles here.

Happy Vladurday!!!

One last Hell Yeah, it's the Governor Sunday!

I know his character was killed but I'm just bringing him back for one more visit. I'm watching the season five marathon of the Walking Dead while I try to write and he had an appearance in Tyrese's dying thoughts along with some other characters that had and impact on Tyrese's life during the zombie apocalypse. 
David Morrisey did such a great job bringing the character to life in a way that was almost completely different than the graphic novel. Morrisey made the character his own and kept you guessing, never knowing the depths he could and would sink to. You either cheered his death or you frowned because you knew there would be no more Governor. I was in the latter camp.
I had the opportunity to have a photo op with him at MegaCon last year in Orlando(he's very tall)
and the chance to talk with him as my husband got his autograph. It was more like a fan gushing but he is probably my all time favorite Walking Dead character.

I finally found my lost voice

Somewhere about a year and a half ago, I lost my voice. Not my actual speaking voice because that's been going strong ever since. But instead I lost my writing voice, which to me is as important as my speaking voice because it took away a ginormous piece of me.

Now this loss wasn't from unknown reasons. I have had a rough time. My father passed away, I was still getting used to married life, I switched jobs to an albeit super stressful but more rewarding job. Along with all this my writing voice vanished. I just didn't have it. Of course it made me even more depressed than I already was. So I pretty much gave up. Gave up my novel writing and my blog.

But lately I felt the scratchiness of a healing voice. I also felt the desire to write which had long since been absent. And that made me happy and gave me something to look forward to. It's one thing I can do for me. It doesn't require anyone else. It doesn't cost anything and I can do it anywhere and any time. But mainly it's for me. It's something good for me.

So I'm back. My crazy life hasn't changed much. Although I have a husband now, another boxer dog making two, and a cat. And a teenager. I don't know who is more challenging but I'm sure you'll hear about how I try and deal with them.

Wow. It feels good to have gotten my voice back!

Oh yes, it's back...Happy Vladurday!

Yes, after almost a year and a half of silence I'm back with Vladurday and anything else crazy that might cross my mind. I've also started writing again so look out for those posts.