Party Time by Priscilla Brown

 

Australian journalist Jasmine, stuck on a small Scottish island after a difficult assignment, finds herself learning reel dances at the local  Hogmanay party.  New Year's Eve had never been...so, well...so sexy...and is this stylishly kilted guy really who he says he is?

 

Find this contemporary romance at

  https://books2read.com/Dancing-the-Reel 

💖

 As teenagers many years ago, my cousin Sally and I hated family parties. The worst were those at Christmas and New Year hosted alternately by my parents and by hers. Having survived the excesses of Christmas at one house, we metaphorically took deep breaths and braced the New Year scene at the other.

Our mothers would sit at the kitchen table, their gossiping accompanied by rapidly depleting bottles of white wine and quantities of strawberry jam tarts. If a reason had ever existed for these specific edibles, it was lost in the annals of long ago New Year's Eves. If we took our clothes off and danced on the table, we doubted they'd have noticed. Our fathers occupied the living room, hers thumping away on the piano and mine making excruciating noises on his violin. Lucky the houses in this street were detached, so unlikely the neighbours would have their ears assaulted, but even so, anyone outside would surely cringe at the volume of noise. But the 'oldies' were having fun. 

For our 'fun,' and I don't remember how old we were, one year at my house Sally and I took from the wine rack a bottle of red wine which the parents probably thought they had hidden in a shoe cupboard, two glasses, and the few leftover mince pies. In my bedroom, we sat on the bed, disappointed there were no more pies, testing the wine while wondering how people could drink this disgusting stuff but nevertheless sipping away, and giggling over stupid boys in our respective high school classes. Neither of us felt at our best the next morning.

Chatting with friends about previous New Year's celebrations, mid-summer here in Australia, one described how his parents had hired a jumping castle to be installed in their large backyard for their extended family of children. Aged about ten, he and his twin brother had a fight while jumping, both fell off and each broke an arm. Another recalled how when teenagers their family joined with two others for a picnic in a park. She and a boy from another family ran a contest to see who could catch the most cicadas in ten minutes. Children nil, cicadas safe.

May 2023 be kind to you, with lots of good books to read. Stay safe. Priscilla.

 https://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

Leave It to Santa to Take Credit for Everything Us Moms Do by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page

      It is December, which for most, is the month of holiday cheer, presents, candy canes and Santa Claus, but for me its the inevitable month of writer's block. Nanowrimo--which for those of you that don't know is abbreviated for National November Writing Month (I think...)--- is the month where we write a bunch of words as fast as we can, with the ultimate goal of acheiving 50k words.

So 50k. It's a goal I used to find feasible, but after having spawn, realized it was way too &5^$ing crazy for me to ever accomplish now. SO I aimed for 10K and hit the mark. Now it's December, and I feel like a deflated bag of goo, chock full of little hairs, rocks and whatever else you may find stuck to the carpet. 

Me.

Now how am I supposed to write when there is Christmas to think about? Not to mention that I used up all my good ideas in an effort to get my draft done (which it isn't, by the way). I figure I have about 10k more words to go, but all I want is a good hoodie, some wine and true crime shows. 

Merry Christmas! Next up on Cold Case Files...

And you know... It used to be that if you finished Nano, you got a sticker. Now they don't give them out (at least where I am) so I can't even do it for the bragging rights! Not to mention that they changed the website and I can't even see my past achievements... you know... the days when I WAS able to write 50k in one month. 

So I guess I'll just keep writing and figure it out later. Afterall, that's what I told y'all to do when you get a case of writer's block. Wouldn't make any sense for me to tell others to keep on truckin' right? 

Ughh... I hope Santa brings me a nap...

Happy Mother's Day by J.S. Marlo

 

Seasoned Hearts

"Love & Sacrifice #1"

is now available  

click here 

 

 

The Red Quilt 

"a sweet & uplifting holiday story"

click here 

  

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

Today is Mother's Day!

When my kids were young, they drew cards, made me a gift, a cake, and breakfast in bed (sometimes with their dad's help). I still get cards and gifts, but nowadays, it's my granddaughter's drawings that end up on my fridge, not my kids' cards.

According to RetailMeNot, these are the Top Six Mother's Day Gifts for 2022:

- flowers: 47%

- chocolate: 36%

- gift cards: 29%

- dinner: 26%

- jewelry: 22%

- beauty products: 19%

I think books and wine should have been somewhere in there LOL

And here are my Top Three:

- hugs & kisses

- phone call

- family dinner

Did you know that more phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than any other day of the year? These holiday chats with Mom often cause phone traffic to spike by as much as 37 percent. 

To all the mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day!!!

Now I'll go call my mom.

Have a wonderful day and stay safe!

JS

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

 

The Ultimate Challenge...by Sheila Claydon

One of the important characters in my book Remembering Rose is an elderly woman, a grandmother, who uses a wheelchair and who is on the downward journey towards dementia. She has chosen to spend her final days in a care home despite having a large and loving family.

...so in the end she went into a nursing home. For the first week we thought she'd be heartbroken and we all felt guilty, but she took to it like a duck to water. Within days she seemed to have forgotten she had ever lived anywhere else, and Hester, who has always been the bossy one, set up a family visiting rota, so that rarely a day goes by without one or other of us calling in to see her.  She likes that, mainly because we take her chocolate biscuits and wine. Even at ninety-four years old she is still partial to a glass of chardonnay at six o'clock.

Not everything about this old lady is a figment of my imagination. A ninety-three year old friend, who has recently died, checked herself into a care home when she no longer felt able to manage alone. She had daughters who loved her and would have cared for her to the end but she wouldn't let them. She had no intention of being a burden to anyone, least of all herself. Instead she downsized her life but not the way she lived it. She still socialised, still went on holiday, still went to church and to Bible class, and still poured herself and anyone who happened to be visiting a glass of wine to the very end. She was also slim and elegant with immaculate hair and nails despite being registered blind. She loved company, especially dogs, who she favoured over her human visitors, and was the best listener I've ever met. She was totally my heroine for many years and if I am lucky enough to live to her great age I want to be just like her.

Nor is she the only one. I have another friend who is almost ninety. She is very deaf, is in constant pain, and can only walk with the aid of a frame or a stick because her body has become twisted and lop-sided with age, but none of this stops her from being a demon Bridge player, a welcoming and gracious hostess to any and all visitors, and a wonderful raconteur. She still manages her own home too, although with increasing difficulty, because she values her independence above almost everything else. Although she has lived a very interesting and eventful life, to the unknowing onlooker she is a tiny bird of a woman, overtaken by old age and fragility. Only when they notice the subtly coloured and carefully curled hair, the plucked eyebrows and the lipstick do they realise she was once something far more, and still is if they would only take the time to listen.

To quote the great Bette Davis, old age is no place for cissies, and it's true. Age brings aches and pains, chronic illness, the loss of loved ones, and being sidelined by the young. However, she also said, 'The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this he's dead.' And that is what my dear friends have done. They have accepted the challenges of old age, which in their case includes illness, frailty and widowhood, and decided that life is not only still worth living but is worth cherishing as well.

In old age not everyone is lucky enough to have sufficient money to be comfortable or the mental capacity to face life head on, and even for those who can it is still the ultimate challenge. There is no one stronger than a very old person who has seen it all, however, and their resilience is something to aspire to. The grandmother in Remembering Rose, although a very different character to my friends, has something to offer the heroine that nobody else can and she doesn't care who she has to inconvenience to do it.

We live in an era that considers youth and beauty two of its most valued commodities. It's a time where the younger generation knows little and understands less about the way life was in the recent past let alone almost one hundred years ago. Such ignorance is an incalculable loss. Listening to very old people is a history lesson in itself, and watching them face the challenges of their ageing bodies  and minds with stoicism and wisdom is a lesson worth learning because one day it will be us.

Never ignore an old person because hidden in their silences and half forgotten memories is a rich history, and if you listen to them you will be able to see the years fall away as they remember what the world was like when they were young.

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/

Sheila Claydon on facebook

The Process by Victoria Chatham

 

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Earlier this month I attended the When Words Collide conference in Calgary and spent nearly three days listening to presentations, discussions on various writing topics by panels and – best of all – talking to other writers. One topic that seemed to consistently crop up was that of the process of writing. What is this magical process? As it turns out, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

What one writer loves, another abhors. Take Scrivener, for instance. I know several writers who swear they could not write a book without it. I looked at Scrivener, but whichever way I looked at it, however many people explained parts of the program to me, it made no sense. Rather than make the writing easier, it seemed like more hard work. Another author writes in longhand and then revises when she transcribes her work to the computer. That I can understand a little more. There’s something very basic about sitting with pen and paper and letting your words flow across the page in total freefall, the method by which Canada’s great W.O. Mitchell (Who Has Seen the Wind, Jake and the Kid, Roses Are Difficult Here to name just a few of his titles) wrote and which has been the basis of many authors giving birth to their ideas.

The idea of freefall is to simply write, with no attention to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation or any kind of editing. Use as many adverbs as you like! As Nora Roberts has said, you cannot edit a blank page. In getting down the bones of whatever your idea is, you are filling your pages and therefore have something to go back to revise and edit. Freefall is different to stream of consciousness which is an internal monologue reflecting a person’s thoughts, feelings or observations on what they see about them, whether it is another person, an event or something that has caught their attention. It is written in much the same way as freefall. That is, without worrying about grammar or the editing gremlin on your shoulder. Stream of consciousness writing does not actually tell a story.

You may be familiar with the term pantser, which refers to a writer who sits down at his/her computer and writes. I lean towards being a pantser. The only time I resort to actual plotting is if I get lost in the middle, when it becomes something of back-paddling scramble. My usual process is to write timelines for my major characters, decide what is going to happen to them, do whatever research I need to do and then sit down and write. Being an editor at heart I usually read the last six pages before I start another writing session, just to get myself up to speed on what I wrote yesterday and revise as I go. At the start of a book I’ll decide how many chapters it will be and stick a post-it for each chapter on my white board. There may be some notes about that chapter, more often not. I have to say that the further I get into a book, the less social I become. In fact, at about the half way point I am so engrossed I have been known to become quite grumpy if interrupted.

Once my book is finished, it goes to my critique partners and beta readers and when I’ve done whatever revisions might be necessary I kiss it goodbye and send it to my publisher. My process after finishing a book is similar to après skiing. There’s wine, chocolate, cozy blankets and sleep – lots of sleep.  

Find me and my books at: 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/chatham-victoria/

www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaChatham

http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca.