My daughter, Teresa Gaskins, has a new story out in Promise in the Gold: A Cave Creek Anthology. If you enjoy cross-genre fiction, the Cave Creek series is a fun mixture of western, science-fiction, and fantasy:
Cave Creek, Nevada—Where the Unexpected Meets the Real World
Strange, unexplained events long plagued residents of Cave Creek, a former mining town nestled in a hidden canyon north of Las Vegas.
Promise in the Gold takes the reader into the future, where people who slip through the portals create new timelines—and past, present, and future cross paths in some very weird and sometimes scary ways.
Teresa’s story is sweet, not scary. And even better, it features a cat. I think you’ll love it!
Only a writer who loves wordplay (my daughter) would name her cat Hypocorism. Hypocorism’s hypocorism is “Puck,” which well suits the little trouble-maker. He loves to climb up to the top of the bookshelf by the window, where we hung a couple of toys for him.
When he was little, he used to climb across the curtain rod to the opposite set of shelves. He still tries it from time to time, though the rod bends under his adult weight. And at least once he took a fall and had to grab for the curtain on his way down. We didn’t see it, but that’s the only explanation we could think of for the huge rip we found later.
One other disadvantage to growing up: The places he loves to sleep have somehow shrunk. After playing for a bit, he stretches out for a nap — and his back hangs dangerously over the edge.
Since I started a blog streak in early August, I thought I’d see how long I can keep it going.
So this is what’s called in the industry a “placeholder” post. It keeps the blog streak live, even though I really don’t have anything to say.
In addition to working on my Prealgebra & Geometry Games index and finishing up the math activity booklets, I’ve been getting to know Mariah — taking long walks, and just plain having doggy fun.
Friday night, we discovered that she loves to fetch tennis balls — although she’s not so keen on the idea of giving them back so we can throw them again.
Oh, and she can catch a treat in the air. Smart dog!
Teen author Teresa GaskinsDo you enjoy binge reading tales of epic fantasy?
Love exploring magical worlds wracked by the struggle of good against evil?
Then don’t miss Teresa Gaskins’s four-book serial adventure, The Riddled Stone.
Those of us who read her earlier books have waited eagerly to hear how the story ends. Two years longer than we hoped, since she had to squeeze in her writing between calculus exams and college essays.
But finally, it’s done!
Now a homeschool graduate, she wrote the last few scenes right at the tail end of her nineteenth year — which means these will be Teresa’s final books as a teen author.
Check them out…
The Riddled Stone: Omnibus Edition, Four Books in One
How can a knight fight magic?
Christopher Fredrico loved the quiet life of a scholar-in-training. Plenty of spare time to spend with his friends. But the night Crown Prince Tyler came to dinner, everything changed.
Falsely accused of stealing a magical artifact and banished under threat of death, Chris leaves the only home he knows.
But as he and his three friends travel towards the coast, they find a riddle that may save a kingdom — or cost them their lives.
Discover the full story of The Riddled Stone, complete in one volume.
A gift she never wanted. A curse she can’t escape.
Alone in the dark, Nora of Yorc feels the dungeon walls pressing in. Even worse, the duke’s sorcery weaves itself around her, unseen and deadly. But as the spell tightens, shy, fragile Nora breaks — and something new takes her place.
Or something old beyond memory.
Nora joined this quest to help her friends. But can she stop herself before the wildness within destroys them all?
Find out in Revealed, the exciting conclusion of Teresa Gaskins’s four-book serial fantasy adventure, The Riddled Stone.
“There are some obvious protagonists and some obvious villains, but Gaskins creates a nice ambiguity around several of the key characters. The plot itself is interesting and engaging with multiple levels of motivation that drive it along.”
“I enjoyed the book and I am absolutely amazed at how such a young author can write so well. I definitely see her going far in her writing career, and I can’t wait to see what stories she publishes next.”
CREDITS: Feature image of Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwangau, Germany, (top) by William West via Unsplash. Author photo by Christina Vernon, MelliRu.com.
My youngest daughter wanted to do Singapore math. Miquon Red was her main math text at the time, but we added a bit of Singapore Primary Math 1B whenever she was in the mood.
We turned to the lesson on subtracting with numbers in the 30-somethings.
The first problem was pretty easy for her:
30 − 7 = _____
I reminded her that she already knew 10 − 7.
She agreed, “Ten take away seven is three.”
Then her eyes lit up. “So it’s 23! Because there are two tens left.”
Wow, I thought. She’s catching on quickly.
Mom Always Talks Too Much
We went to the next problem:
34 − 8 = _____
“Now, this one is harder,” I said. “But you know what ten minus eight is, right? So we could take one of these tens and—”
She waved at me to be quiet.
I was just getting started on my standard speech about how to turn a tough subtraction like 34 − 8 into the easy addition of “2 + 4 + two tens left.” But her mind was still on the last problem, specifically on the two tens and the seven.
“If you have 27,” she said, “and you add three more, you get 30. And four more is 34.”
“Um, yes, but…” I interrupted.
She shushed me again.
“And then you can take away the four. And then you can take away the three. And then you can take away one more…It’s 26!”
Mom Learns a Lesson
She continued through the next page that way. For every problem, she started with whatever number struck her fancy, usually containing at least one digit from the problem before. She added enough to get up to the 30-something number in the book.
Only then would she deign to subtract the number in question.
I don’t think she ever saw the point of the mental math technique the book and I were trying to teach, but she did have a lot of fun playing around with the numbers.
Only a writer who loves wordplay (
In addition to working on my Prealgebra & Geometry Games index and finishing up the math activity booklets, I’ve been getting to know Mariah — taking long walks, and just plain having doggy fun. 
It’s been a busy day, though I haven’t gotten much work done on my book. We welcomed a new member to our family: Mariah. 
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 