Melanie Sherman

Writer Melanie Sherman

Melanie Sherman lives in Southwest Washington and has been writing for years against her better judgment. By day she poses as a numbers cruncher in a small manufacturing firm. By night she chases these two cats off her laptop who really can’t write well at all.

Melanie is in love with the sea and writes beautifully about it on her blog, Meanderings of Melanie, that is when she is not crafting humorous posts about everyday life that will flip you out of your chair.

Two words of advice: buckle up.

In 2009 Melanie competed in an international writing contest and won second place in the mainstream category for her manuscript, "Pirates Reckoning." Her critique group claims full responsibility. The members are often heard saying, "We can criticize anyone to success."

Winner PNWA Literary Contest, Mainstream Category, Second Place, 2009

Finalist PNWA Literary Contest, Mainstream Category, 2009

Sharon Axline

Writer Sharon Axline

Born to a troop of traveling gypsies Sharon Axline spent her early years trapsing about the US never stopping long in one place. She learned at an early age to play the banjo and tap dance while whistling the star spangle banner all the while dressed in a sequined mini skirt and platform shoes.

After settling down she joined the work force in the adventurous job of computer programming. While battling bits and bytes during the day as a caped computer crusader she relaxes by working for a secret organization known only as DBC.

Sharon likes cooking, writing, cooking, playing with her dogs, did we mention cooking?

Enjoy Sharon's blog at Preposterous Ponderings.

Local blogger gets noticed with Google post

It's reaffirming when someone visits your blog. It's even more exciting when a large website notices and promotes your post to their online audience.

That happened this weekend to one of our friends, Carol Doane. She wrote a post on research tabulated recently by Google Analytics.

Her post was picked up by The Customer Collective and appeared on their home page on Sunday and remains up today.

Keep blogging, Carol! We're enjoying the internet trail you're blazing.

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High marks for Active Qu3st friend

Kailynn Doane and her proud mother, Carol Doane.

Grades came out last week, and our youngest public relations friend, Kailynn Doane, performed extremely well. We did a little digging and discovered she completed her sopohomore year of high school with a 4.0.

We were able to obtain this picture from Kailynn Doane's grandfather of her initiation into the National Honor Society.

It's been quite a year for the teenager. In April, she traveled with the Washington Cultural Exchange to Guangzhou, China as a student athlete on their annual Swim & Dive trip. She had the honor of training in the pool with the Chinese future Olympic hopefuls and reports the experience was, "Awesome."

We're still waiting to get a slideshow of young Miss Doane's pictures. If there were some framing in her future we suspect she could get a gallery show. In fact, we'd help promote it.

Hint. Hint.

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Party in the USA? You bet.

Wishing you a happy, jubilant Fourth of July.

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People and Promotion

The Active Qu3st office has been quiet lately as everyone is busy on big projects. We did want to take a moment to congratulate Carol Doane on her promotion announced in The Columbian May 29. (We guess that would let you know we are at almost a month behind).

Here's the report:

"Carol Doane has been promoted to general manager with USD Media, a video and audio team that will produce programs and features for the company’s website. Doane will oversee website production and development staff. Doane is a former advertising sales manager for The Columbian."

Congratulations, wishing you the very best!

You can read the entire post here.

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