NG Geno 2.0 Results

I got my National Geographic Geno 2.0 DNA results back on November 21 (they received my samples on 10/22)  Here they are compared to Ancestry's DNA results:  

Geno 2.0 - 

24% Northeastern Asian (Lani)

22% Mediterranean (Richard)

19% Southeastern Asian (Lani)

13% Northern European (Richard)

8% Oceanian (Lani)

5% Southwestern Asian (Lani)

4% Sub-Saharan African (Richard)

4% Native American (Richard)

Ancestry DNA -

44% East Asian (Lani)

27% Southern European (Richard)

7% Eastern European (Richard)

6% Pacific Islander (Lani)

16% Uncertain (Richard)

What I know via my genealogy research - 

Lani's side:

Filipino/possibly Spanish

Hawaiian

Chinese

Richard's side:

Basque

Spanish

Cuban

Puerto Rican (Spanish/Taino/African)

Norwegian

possibly some French

The boundaries for the different regions vary on both tests, but they seem to say pretty much the same thing.  National Geographic obviously has more people who have taken the test around the world, so they were able to fine tune the percentages.

The funny thing is, they also say that I'm 3.5% Neanderthal and 4.4% Denisovan (which is another offshoot of the hominids that left Africa way before modern man)  I keep picturing Fred Flintstone as my ancestor peddling his car down the road, complete with sound effects.

I know it doesn't change who I am, but I find it all fascinating.  It gives me more cultures around the world that I want to learn about :)

For those of you who don't know, Lani and Richard are my birthparents.

I'm thinking of taking the 23andMe DNA test, which gives you medical information, but that will have to wait until I have a few more bucks in the bank, it's quite pricey!

Books Read in October 2012

Bevill, C.L.
- Veiled Eyes
Fiction.  Wow, action-packed paranormal fantasy about a woman, a mysterious clan who lives by a lake, and a giant catfish.

Lavid, Linda A.

- Teddy Bear

Fiction.  Short story about a middle-aged man pining after the young wife who has left him, only to finally being able to let her go and get on with his life.

Mittlemark, Howard & Sandra Newman

- How NOT to Write a NovelNon-fiction.  Humorous tongue-in-cheek look at the 200 most common mistakes made by hopeful published authors.

Finally caught up!

I've been feeling so guilty, because I was so far behind on my NaNo story.  It was stressing me out, which is a bad thing for numerous reasons, one of them being that I was getting depressed, which makes me sleep more, which makes me stressed out even more, because I'm not being productive!  Whew!  

But I'm doing better now.  The time-off I've spent since the last time I worked on Avienne wasn't doing me any good, and my characters seem to have run off to play in the forest without me, and they won't tell me where they are.  So while I'm hunting them down, I decided to just get SOMETHING down for NaNo, and in doing so, I have finally caught up, and my stress has greatly lessened.

One thing that has helped me is that I've been writing from 10pm to midnight every night, except Sunday, when I had a show to watch on TV and typed from 9-10, then 11-midnight.  I'm getting at least 2,000 words done a night that way, sometimes more.  I'm also crocheting at least five rows a night on an afghan I'm making my mom for Christmas.  Maybe there is something to having a schedule.  So far, it seems to be working for me.

I also suggest that anyone attempting NaNoWriMo invest some time in getting to know some good Writing Buddies.  They're invaluable!  Not only do they understand what you're going through, they're available as cheer leaders, beta readers, and resources, and you might just find yourself with new friends who will last beyond the one-month-long craziness that is NaNo.    

I've even managed to save some time to read one of my favorite authors, Yasmine Galenorn's most recent book, "Shadow Rising", another offering in her wonderful Otherworld series.  

Getting more out of NaNo

I'm getting a lot more out of my NaNo experience this year.  I've figured out basically how Scrivener works (awesome writing program, btw), I know what I'll be working on and have some plot points already sketched out, and I'm even more active on the messageboard this year.

There are two swaps that I'm involved in, a Tea Swap with a woman in the US, and a Goodie Swap with a woman in Australia!  Fun!  I'd love to participate in the local write-ins, but my laptop is in the boneyard, so maybe next year.  I would like to take the train and attend the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco sometime.  I hear a lot of craziness goes on during that event.

Avienne (Spirit of the Clans, Book 1)

Back when I began this novel during June's NaNo camp, I pictured it as a trilogy, with Aliyah growing up and returning to the Felisene in the first book.  But I got 50k words into the story, and she's still 4-years-old, and then I got stuck and couldn't decide whether to advance her to her teenage years, then advance her again to adulthood.  So I wrote something else for August's camp.  Now that NaNo is here again, I'm going to continue the fantasy, beginning when she's an adult and including a few flashbacks to her teenage years, and this phase of her story will be told in one volume.  I'll have her story continue in the 2nd book where she will resolve the issues in her own clan.  Subsequent volumes will revolve around other stories related in time and space but still separate.  

I'm looking forward to continuing her story and getting back into mad-writing mode with all the craziness that NaNoWriMo evokes.  I have some awesome writing buddies this year and look forward to sharing and caring with them.

In the meantime, I'm trying to, at least, finish reading "The Story of Norway" before the end of the month, although I also need to read "The Scarlet Letter" ick.  That's the one book from high school I could not get through, and yes, when it came time for me to write the report on it, I read the first 50 pages and the last 20 pages and wrote the darn report...the only time I cheated in school.  I still feel guilty, but it still doesn't make me want to read that book!  And to compound my feeling of guilt about it, when my grandmother learned that I was supposed to read it in school, she gave me a 2nd printing copy of "The Scarlet Letter" that had belong to her mother, Rosie Belle Tinsley, who had traveled with it across the plains in a covered wagon.  It's a family heirloom, and I will always treasure it because of that.

19 days and counting!

NaNo's coming up again, and I think I'll be ready on time.  I'm continuing the story I began last June during NaNo Camp.  It's a fantasy about a young orphan who is being raised by an enemy clan.  I originally planned this as a series, but 50k words into the story, my character was still the same age.  It's time for her to grow up, which is where I'll be starting in November.  

Books Read in September 2012

Allen, Sarah Addison

- The Peach Keeper 

Fiction.  Slightly magical tale about two men, two women, and their grandmothers, and a mysterious man whose special powers has the entire town up in arms...before and after his death.

Allison, Dorothy

- Dorothy Allison: A Psychic Story 

Fiction.  VERY boring story written by the psychic about some of her cases.  (Thought it was about the author Dorothy Allison when I bought it.)

Andrews, Ilona

- Magic Bites 

Fiction.  Shapeshifters, vampires, necromancers, all sorts of beasties all fighting for a spot as the top dog.  Heroine Kate is hired to sort through all the rumors and lies to solve the murder of her mentor.

Arthur, Keri

- Darkness Unbound 

Fiction.  Risa Jones, half-werewolf and half-Aedh visits the hospital at the bequest of her mother to check on a young girl in a coma.  Upon arriving there, she knows immediately that something is very wrong.  When faced with dealing with the girl’s grieving parents, she makes a promise to herself that she will find the person responsible for the girl’s condition.  In her quest, she meets two “men”, both of whom want something from her.

Ashley, Jennifer

- Pride Mates 

Fiction.  HOT!  Kim Fraser, rising star of her law firm, takes on a case involving the murder of a woman by a shifter.  In her zeal to prove his innocence, she takes on a mysterious, dangerous feline shifter and proves herself to be his equal.

Atherton, Nancy

-Aunt Dimity’s Death 

Fiction.  Engaging tale of love and loss and true happiness as Lori and Bill delve in the mystery of Aunt Dimity’s many secrets.

Blackwell, Juliet

- In a Witch’s Wardrobe 

Fiction.  Trouble finds Lily at the Paramount Theater during an Art Deco Ball.  A young woman’s soul becomes trapped, and Lily runs around town trying to help her, while at the same time colliding with Sailor in an unplanned way, and the SFPD is trying to track down a group of anti-witches who are seeking to harm all in their path.

Childs, Laura

- Bedeviled Eggs

Fiction.  Suzanne and the girls are busy at work in their cafe and with all of the events they have planned.  In the midst of everything, a promising mayoral candidate is murdered on the steps of the Cackleberry Club, prompting Suzanne to hone her sleuthing skills to find his killer.  Suzanne is sounding an awful lot like Theodosia in the Tea Shop mysteries.

Christie, Agatha

- The Secret Adversary 

Fiction.  1st in the Tommy & Tuppence mysteries.  Tuppence runs across her childhood friend, and as they’re both out of work, she suggests they begin their own enterprise, Young Adventurers, Ltd.  Tommy readily agrees, and in less than a day, they’re off on their first adventure, one that will take them from a shipwreck to the British courts.

- Peril at End House 

Fiction.  Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings appear again in this story.  Hercule has supposedly retired from crime fighting but is tantalized by the attempted murders of a beautiful young woman into sleuthing once more.

Cornwell, Patricia

- Cruel and Unusual 

Fiction.  Kay is the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Her professional life and her personal life seem to keep getting entangled.  A convict on death row dies, but suddenly murders start happening that imitate the crime for which he was charged, and strangely enough, his fingerprints are found in one of the victims’ homes, although he’s been locked up for 10 years.  Kay, and her detective friend, Marino, need to pool their resources to solve the crime, before anyone else dies.

- The Body Farm 

Fiction.  Kay’s life becomes more complicated when her niece, Lucy, takes on an internship with the FBI.  At the same time, a murder case in North Carolina of a young girl needs solving, and the working and personal relationships between Kay, Marino and Denton get very complicated and strained.  Kay has to juggle watching out for her niece, watching her own back and trying to solve the murder.

Dams, Jeanne M.

- The Evil That Men Do

Fiction.  Dorothy Martin and her ex-copper husband, Alan Nesbitt, are on holiday in the Cotswolds in a charming town called Broadway.  As usual with Dorothy, she becomes embroiled in a mystery involving a rock star, a counselor, an abusive man, and a wonderful new companion.

Evanovich, Janet

- Wicked Business 

Fiction.  Lizzy wants nothing more than to bake her cupcakes, but trouble seems to follow her around in the form of Diesel, her sometimes protector, sometimes bedmate, and always hot guardian, along with his sidekick, the willful Carl.

Gaynor, Hazel

- The Girl Who Came Home 

Fiction.  Heartwrenching tale of travelers on Titanic, from a group of 14 Irish men and women traveling to America to start a new life, to a brave steward who provided missing links from the past, to a young contemporary girl, great-granddaughter of one of Titanic’s survivors who connects with her great-grandmother in a very personal way.

Stockett, Kathryn

- The Help 

Fiction.  Gutwrenching at times, heartwarming at times, this tale of racial differences in Mississippi homes in the early 1960’s will drag you down into the bowels of racism and lift you up into the light of hope, as it tells the tales of black maids and their white employers.