Anna M. Aquino

              Many of you read my blog a few weeks ago called ‘Thoughts on Christian Fiction from This Preaching Author’.   If not feel free to read it here http://www.annamaquino.blogspot.com/2014/03/thoughts-on-christian-fiction-from-this.html             I still agree with most of everything I wrote there, however I’m going to have to backtrack and recant a tad.   I still believe in realizing that films that are based on true stories sometimes take their own lives, but if you remember I said as long as it doesn’t ‘go down a very inaccurate path’ then we needed to support this attempt that Hollywood is doing with the film Noah.   Well. . . I have a confession to make.   My family desperately wanted to see Noah.   Months ago when we saw the trailer we became so excited.   We don’t go to the movies often.   Let’s face it; rent...

  My grandmother moved in with Jesus over 5 years ago. When I was a little girl, she used to sneak me out of the house if I’d gotten in trouble.   We used to go get a McDonald’s Happy Meal and eat it at the Harding Memorial.   I still remember rolling down the hill in a huge cardboard dryer box (which I did hear that all of that is officially illegal now.)   No matter how old I was her excuse for any deviant behavior I had was, “She’s only such and such years old.”   Yea I don’t think that excuse still works.     I inherited a lot of her kitchen extras.   You know what I mean, those random cooking tools that one rarely buys but somehow they end up in the drawer.   My family and I are in the midst of several transitions and a lot of my things are still packed in boxes.   I only unpacked the bare minimum when we moved a few months ago.   I have no idea where my crock pot is.   I think it’s in a box somewhere between my c...

            Last weekend we went to our local library.   They were doing some kind of treasure hunt for younger children, with a story time, and a craft.   It was a tie into the St. Patrick’s Day theme.   We thought it would be fun, and our youngest daughter wanted to go.   She did have fun.   Until she sat all of her things (Candy, a bracelet, a temporary tattoo) that she found in the scavenger hunt on a one of the mats that had been laid down for story time to go say something to us.   When she got up, another child and his mom felt the need to sit their behinds on top of my daughter’s things where she had been sitting. I’d like to think it had been a misunderstanding. When my daughter got back to her seat to find they had taken her seat and sat on her things she started to cry.   My youngest does have a tendency to cry easily but she may have had a point here.   The mother didn’t see...

            I have often joked that my ethnicity is Ohio Redneck.   Many of you have a shared a laugh with me as I’ve said it.   That’s partially true.   The best answer would be that my ethnicity is Appalachian, but before that:   My family tree can be traced back to Ireland, Scotland, Germany, with a Native American.   I still claim the Ohio Redneck, but the majority of my Heinz 57ness is Irish.   I often say I come from a long line of Irish story tellers: That my destiny was found somewhere in my genetic code. (grin) Somewhere in my stacks of papers I can find the shipping manifest of where my grandfather’s father (I believe it may be an extra generation back) emigrated from Ireland.   Within my cultural code, Ireland is the culture I find I most identify with, though I have a few German/Indian moments. One of these days I’d love to visit the country.      ...

              Many of you have heard me tell the story that I was NOT a writer growing up.   People who were writers were people I admired, but I can remember thinking to myself that was not me.   In fact the gifting never really appeared to my knowledge until after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit.   Which has just always been proof to me that I can’t take credit for this ability?   It’s a gift from the Lord plain and simple.             However, my oldest daughter and I were watching YouTube videos a few days ago.   I was subjecting her to some of my favorite songs as a kid, and she was laughing at the clothing and music styles.   Some of the music that I remember ringing such a cord with me as a kid were these songs that were statement pieces about injustices in the world, or historic pieces that were exposing the darkness in hu...

            When we were house training our dog Mojo, we hung a single jingle bell by a ribbon on the inside door knob.   The concept is fairly simple.   He learned quickly if he had to go outside to ring the bell and we’d let him out.   Last year when going out to go to the bathroom, was still a fairly novel idea to him we had some issues with our cable internet.   A worker arrived to fix the cable in the back.   Mojo started to ring the bell.   I thought the dog just wanted to bug the worker so I didn’t let him outside.   I ignored the first few rings.   But Mojo didn’t stop.   He got indignant ringing that bell.   I didn’t want to let him out with the cable worker.   He’d be in the way, I didn’t know how this man was with dogs, the back gate was open so the worker could go in and out, etc.   Mojo kept ringing the bell, and I kept ignoring him.   Finally I loo...

              While currently I am more known for writing nonfiction, I am a story teller at heart and write a lot of fiction.   I’ll be starting on my 20 th book soon, and out of those 20 books, 16 of them are fiction.   Thank you Jesus that God will open a door for a home (publishing house) for all these books so that their not setting with a cardboard sign by the literary highway that reads, ‘Will write for food” in purple marker.   (GRIN) As the story teller and preacher that I am, I love it when I am able to put a spin a Biblical story or use the Biblically based themes in a project.   I am excited that more and more movies and books are being done in this vein.   So confession time, my family is pretty stoked about the move Noah that is coming out at the end of the month.   I was shocked to hear that there was some kind of controversy going on about it.   I guess there is a ...

I have a fiercely intense love/hate relationship with super sad songs.   Our radio station here likes to over play them.   Call emotions a currency in my life.   Unless I’m willing to spend it on the song a perfectly good sad song will make me angry after I’ve heard it fifty times.   It’s the reason I loathe the “Christmas Shoes Song” that everyone likes to sing all the time.   My tear strings have been pulled one too many times, and the currency has been spent regarding the lyrics.   These songs always revolve around love lost and death.   The first time I heard “He was Walking Her Home” By Mark Shultz http://youtu.be/_ODSx0UfAcA I got so emotional I almost had to pull the car over.   It was hard to drive through my tears.   I wanted to yell at God.   But I began crying to Him, “I just don’t understand it!   Why would you put people on this earth to love and then just have them torn from them when they die?”   Had I...