Returning to Fern Lake after ten years for the funeral of his cousin and teenage enemy, Simon Parker learns his high school sweetheart is nine months pregnant and seven months divorced from his cousin. Their meeting is complicated by her...
amazon.com
The Sun sign is a character's inner nature, the Moon the emotional nature and the Ascendant the face shown to the world. Seldom does one character be a pure sign most of the times they have two of three signs in their nature. Bear this in mind when you're creating your characters and layering them. But let's begin
For a character with an Aries Sun think action. I always have a picture of someone sword in hand leading the charge. Aries can be aggressive and direct in expressing themselves. Creative energy abounds but they can invest everything they have into a new project until they lose interest. They need to prove themselves through action and are often impulsive, acting first and then thinking. They may ignore the advice of others. Often they don't finish what they start but they are competitive. Recognition is their need. Their strength is in their refusal to accept defeat.
Now the Aries Moon which expresses emotions. Here the emotions can be volatile, impulsive. They may not consider the consequences of their actions. While their temper might flare, the anger is temporary and easily forgotten.
The Aries Ascendant is the face shown to the world. This character will project intense energy and decisiveness. They will act on their ideas immediately and hate wasting time. They are competitive and have a desire to excel and to prove themselves through action.
This past month we've been busy putting together some of our reader favorite novels into boxed sets, and the bargains are amazing. Three and four book sets at prices under $5.00 per set give everyone a chance to read some of the best of Books We Love's older and newer novels, all together in one package, linked by style and subject matter.
We have some wonderful romantic and wholesome adult and young adult novels from Ann Herrick and Sydell Voeller. In Seasons of Love young adult readers will be delighted with the seasonal themes in My Fake Summer Boyfriend, Snowed in Together and How to Survive a Summer Romance (or Two).
One of my favorite things to do when I'm
not writing is embroidery. Another is quilting. I’ve found a way to combine the
two.
First, I made baby quilts for two of my nieces. White on white, I machine
embroidered them with the darning stitch so I had control. They turned out really
nice, but I really love to hand embroider. That’s when I discovered red-work.
During a quilting shop-hop, one of the stores highlighted red-work. For those
of you who don’t know what red-work is – it’s embroidery done in all red floss.
Just the outline of the picture, not filled in like other embroidery patterns.
Anyway, I fell in love with it. Every year I
make something for Christmas (often a Santa) for my six children and give it to
them on Thanksgiving. I found a Santa pattern and did it all in red-work,
framed it and gave it to them.
That's when I decided to make a queen-size quilt for our bed, using
various flowers. I found a book with different flower transfers and proceeded
to iron them onto fabric and embroider them. It took the better part of a
year to finish the quilt and many times I wondered why I started it and was
tempted to quit. I’m glad I persevered. The quilt turned out beautiful and I
use it every spring/summer.
Once I finished that, I decided to make a baby
quilt for each of my
grandchildren – for their first born. I started out looking
in coloring books for designs. I traced the images onto 12x12 squares of
muslin. After I finished embroidering the squares I cut sashing and sewed them
together. For the backing I used various fabrics, not nursery print. None of
the quilts have nursery fabric in them at all. I've used patterns from animals
to Winnie the Pooh to Sunbonnet Sue.
Eventually, I found transfer books and started
using them for designs. I looked everywhere for baby designs. I finally
finished my
14th and last quilt. That’s a lot of baby quilts. Most of them are
done in red work, but I varied some with other colors, too. It took a couple of years to do all the squares.
Four years ago, I made quilts for my niece’s twins using kitten and bunny
patterns. They’re done in many colors. Since then she had another child,
another boy, so I made one for him using baby animals. Four years ago, I also gave my first
grandchild’s quilt to my oldest granddaughter, whose baby boy was born in June
– my first great grandchild. That same year, my fourteenth grandchild was born, another boy and I did puppies for him.
April
12th, I gave my second quilt at another granddaughter’s shower. She’s
having a baby girl in May. It’s exciting to see the look on their faces when
they open the quilt. I hope they cherish them and love them as much as I loved
making them.
I've
marked each quilt with the name of which grandchild they're supposed to go to in
case I’m not around to give it to them. My daughters have been instructed to
pass them out. I hope I'm around to give them all away. This last quilt I made for another niece's baby. I'd say it's one of my favorites, but honestly I say that about all of them. It's impossible to choose one. They were all fun to work on. Now I have to find something else to keep me busy. I think I've found it, chip carving but that's a topic for another blog.
Check out my books at Amazon Here's one of my favorites. Forced to stay in a nursing home while undergoing therapy, seventy-two year old, Mike Powell refuses to get out of bed, won't cooperate with the nurses, and won’t take his medicine. At least not until he meets Elsa. The tiny, spunky little Elsa sparks new life into him.
Seventy year old, Elsa -left in the home while her son takes a family vacation - joins forces with Mike, setting the home on its heels, and later discovers deception and fraud. Can they find happiness together?
Who says life begins at 40? Life is wonderful at any age, as long you're willing to live it. Elsa Logan and Mike Powell prove it. And I want to be just like them when I grow up! One of Roseanne Dowell's best, and my personal favorite! Elsa Logan bears a striking resemblance to a romance writer I know who shall be nameless but whose initials are R. D. ~ Romantic Suspense Author, Gail Roughton
The legend is that it was the comedian W.C. Fields but this is frequently disputed. It is generally accepted, however, that working with either children or animals on stage always carries risk. A child may steal the whole show or, instead, behave in an entirely unpredictable way, either of which is a challenge for the other actors. This is only too well illustrated by this TV clip from 1969. Admittedly the presenters were probably asking for it as they don't seem very prepared for what might go wrong on a live recording, but what did go wrong remains a favorite memory for everyone who saw it. Over forty years later it's still shown on British TV from time to time, and it still makes everyone laugh.
Using animals and children in books though it's an entirely different matter. They can be the focus of the story or act as a link between the main protagonists. They can inject humor, fear or pathos into the narrative or just provide a colourful background. They can also be used to give individual characters status. After all if a writer wants her hero to be a father, then he must have a child. The trick for the author is to decide how much of the story should be given over to the children.
I've just finished reading those great imaginary essays on history, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel and she uses children brilliantly. There are many of them woven into the epic story of the court of Henry VIII and yet none of them have a star part. What they do instead is, by their behaviour, show the reader who the adults are. Thomas Cromwell, for instance, reported by history to be many things from great statesman to cold-blooded opportunist, is, in Mantel's books, a loving father and uncle. His house is full of children and when his own daughters die of the sweating sickness that was so prevalent in London at the time, he doesn't forget his responsibilities to his dead sister's children, but makes a home for them even though they can never replace his own. Yet despite this, none of the children are more than shadowy background figures. What they do, however, is remind the reader that whatever else he was, Cromwell was a man full of human warmth who was kind to those he loved. He also loved dogs and in the books is never without one and from time to time he has the sort of conversation with his dog that all pet owners will understand.
In the same books, Mary Tudor, only daughter of Henry and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is portrayed through the eyes of the many adults who surround her. She rarely appears herself even though she is integral to the story. Instead, the reader learns much about her and about how cruelly she is manipulated while she is still a child through the words and sniggers of the courtiers. As a consequence of this clever narrative much is learned about Mary's royal parents, Anne Boleyn her stepmother, and also about Cromwell himself. Whether any of it is true is a matter for conjecture, but as a story telling technique it is masterful, as is the reference to Anne Boleyn's small dog whose untimely death supposedly caused her more grief than the loss of her own infant baby.
Ruminating on this after I read the last page, I thought about my own books. Slight they may be compared with the epic histories of Mantel, but I realised that in some of them I have used the same technique. In Mending Jodie's Heart I've gone even further. Without the children, the dog, the birds and the horses, there would be no story. The children's likes and dislikes, their hopes and ambitions are the things that fuel it. Without the children and the animals the reader would never have learned about the hero and the heroine's flaws and their strength. The children and the animals were also the reason I had to turn what was meant to be one book into a trilogy. I had to know what happened to them. Whether I managed to use them skilfully enough to show the true characters of the adults in their lives is for the reader to decide.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
