HOLIDAYS BY MARGARET TANNER

AN AUSSIE IN LAS VEGAS - MARGARET TANNER

What can I say?  All the razzle dazzle, flashing lights and excitement, we loved it.

We stayed in the older part of Las Vegas at a casino called the Four Queens in Fremont Street. Unbeknown to us there is what they call the Fremont Experience every night. A domed roof that was several hundred yards long was the venue for an incredibly colourful laser show. There was music, bands, performers and people walking around dressed as Elvis Presley, Batman, Superman, Mary Poppins, Dracula and heaps of other well known characters. Not forgetting the show girls, decked out in their skimpy costumes, fans and feathers. It was amazing, bus loads of tourist came down every night to see the display, but we were right in the thick of it, standing at our hotel door.

Many of the casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard - The Strip, have themes. We visited Paris Las Vegas which was very French with a giant Eiffel Tower as the main feature. You could actually take a ride right to the top, but for us unfortunately, it was too windy, so we missed out. Someone told us that the Eiffel tower here was exactly 1/3 the size of the Eiffel Tower in France, but it was still a huge structure. While we were there I bought the most decadent French pastry I have ever eaten. It was to die for.

New York New York, was another interesting casino, Circus Circus was actually like being at the circus, we were only there for a short time, but watched a world class juggling act. Hubby won $100 on the pokies so he was happy. I wanted to stay and keep trying our luck there because he was on a winning streak, but he grabbed his money and ran. Another very interesting themed casino was Treasure Island, and the name truly said it all. It really did look like an island from one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s books, pirate ship and all.

We went through the Bellagio, luxury personified. Unfortunately, this poor Aussie author didn’t have enough pennies in the piggy bank to be able to afford to stay there.

Did I mention the shopping? Wow. So cheap. We had to buy an extra suitcase to bring home all the goodies that we bought.

All in all we had a wonderful time. The only downside was the trip home, talk about the flight from hell. We were diverted to Sydney because the plane was running low on fuel, then after sitting on the tarmac for an hour, a passenger became ill and had to be rushed off in an ambulance, then security stepped in because the passenger’s luggage was on board and he no longer was.  Three hours later it was all sorted out, and we took off and headed home to Melbourne.

Website: http://www.margarettanner.com/

ADAM’S FRONTIER BRIDE (WESTERN ROMANCE)

Can a wealthy rancher ever hope to capture the heart of a beautiful English rose?

_{http://amzn.com/B01AHTA5GM}

WHAT'S IN YOUR FUTURE (or present or past?) by Shirley Martin

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Fortune-telling is as old as civilization. You may recall the biblical story of Joseph (Book of Genesis, Chapter 37 and following chapters.) Sold into slavery by his resentful brothers, Joseph was taken to Egypt. There, he gained the Pharoah's attention because of his ability to interpret dreams. The Pharoah told Joseph of his dreams, and Joseph interpreted them to mean that Egypt would have seven fruitful years of harvest and seven years of famine. The Pharoah realized that he should store corn from the fruitful years so that he would have a supply of grain to distribute during the seven years of famine. (More on dreams later.)

Scrying is another form of prophecy. It's not necessary to have a crystal ball; any reflective surface will do. The scryer must have absolute silence and clear her/his mind of all distracting thoughts. If the scryer has a certain piece of information she is seeking, e.g., the location of a certain person, she should concentrate on that before beginning scrying, then put it out of her mind before focusing on the task at hand.

Now, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I think there is validity to scrying. I can't give a reason for my belief but can only say that there may be logic connected with the skill.

In my fantasy romance, "Night Shadows," Fianna,the heroine, flees home to escape an unwanted suitor. She escapes to Moytura, the capital city of Avador.  Forced to support herself, she obtains a position as a fortune teller at a tavern. She has a magic mirror that enables her to look into the past, present, and future. She thus supports herself by the money she earns as a fortune teller.

Seances were probably more common during the Victorian period than they are today, although no doubt many seances are held during our time..The word "seance" means sitting. A group of people meet for a metaphysical purpose.  Usually six to eight people are involved in this gathering, and they usually sit with a medium who is the channel through which the spirit communicates. There may be a variety of reasons for holding a seance, but mostly the object is to contact the spirit of the dead. The majority of seances are held in the late evening.

Some seances meet solely to hold a "rescue," aimed to help those spirits that don't realize they are dead and enable them to cross over.

Tea leaves can be used as a means of prophecy. In my latest fantasy romance, "Magic Mountain"

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there is a scene in which the elven king reads the tea leaves of the human heroine, Princess Olwen. This method of prophecy was a favorite around the time of the last century and up to the 1930s and '40s. Gypsy Tea Rooms were popular at that time.

After the tea is drunk, there should be very little of the leaves left in the bottom of the cup. The client tips the cup and rotates it three times before upturning the cup in the saucer. Then the cup is turned right side up, and the diviner studies the pattern of the tea leaves as they are distributed about the inner surface of the saucer. How does this process reveal anything about the past, present, or future? This method of prophecy, called tasseography, has an elaborate interpretation system, so for both the client and the diviner, it apparently reveals the desired revelation.

Astrologers believe that there is a very real relationship between the heavens and the earth. They believe that every element of the cosmos influences the whole. Originating in Mesopotamia, this art has been practiced for 5,000 years. The sun signs are the names of the twelve main divisions of the zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. One of my fellow authors, Janet Lane Walters, has done astrology forecasts in the past, along with a partner. Some day I'd like a forecast done for this most untypical Leo.

Known as the Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce was an American mystic of the twentieth century. While in a trance, he answered questions ranging from healing, wars, Atlantis and future events. He used his mystical powers to heal people. While asleep, he was able to diagnose a person's sickness and pronounce the cure.

Not all of his prophecies have been realized. We have yet to discover Atlantis.

There are many more means of prophecy, enough to fill a book. But this list may give you and idea of how important fortune-telling is to people, and the different ways of achieving these revelations.

Now to return to the subject of dreams. There are four levels of sleep, and dreams usually occur in the theta level, and usually, too, with the REM (rapid eye movement) stage.

I believe we are all psychic to some extent; I know I am. And I believe that dreams can tell people about the past, present, and future.

Years and years ago, (more years than I care to count), my youngest son attended kindergarten. A neighbor friend had a son in kindergarten at the same time, so we walked our boys to school together. One morning, I told my friend about a dream I'd had the night before. It was a short dream but so vivid I woke up with tears in my eyes. I saw a small private plane crash to the ground and burst into flames. My friend and I discussed the dream for a few minutes, both of us saying we hadn't seen anything in the news about a plane crash. I forgot about the dream until about fifteen years later when my friend's retired husband was taking flying lessons. He crashed the plane and it burst into flames, killing him instantly.

Please check out my website at www.shirleymartinauthor.com

My books are sold at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noible, KOBO, the Apple 1Store and other sites where ebooks are available online.

Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

       I was born in New Westminster, B.C., Canada, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. While raising my own family, over the years I also worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. I also began my writing career. But I don't write in just one genre. Sometimes I have a story idea, write the manuscript and then decide what genre it fits. My past writing has consisted of historical and travel articles, seven travel books, four mystery novels, and two science fiction novels.

       I was taught in school that Canada doesn't really have an exciting history. Right now I am trying to dispel that myth by writing Canadian historical for young adults/adults, the first two of which are: West to the Bay and West to Grande Portage.

       My mystery novels are Illegally Dead, The Only Shadow In The House, and Whistler's Murder all in The Travelling Detective Series (boxed set), and the stand alone novel Gold Fever. My science fiction novels are The Criminal Streak and Betrayed in my Cry of the Guilty-Silence of the Innocent series.

       I love change so I have moved over thirty times in my life, living in various places throughout Alberta and B.C. I now reside on an acreage on Vancouver Island with my husband and three cats.

West to the Bay

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In 1750, Thomas Gunn, along with three friends, join the Hudson's Bay Company and sail from Stromness on the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland to York Factory fort on Hudson's Bay. They believe they are starting a new and exciting life in what is called Rupert's Land, but tragedy follows them, striking for the first time on the ship. At the fort Thomas finds his older brother, Edward, who had joined four years earlier. He also meets Little Bird, sister of Edward's wife, and her family.

During the first year Thomas takes part in the goose and duck hunts, the fishing, the woodcutting, Guy Fawkes Day, the Christmas celebrations, and the burial of a friend. He also deals with the snowfall, the cold, the boredom, and a suicide, and learns how to survive in the lonely and sometimes inhospitable land.

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West to Grande Portage

On his sixteenth birthday Phillippe Chabot is told that his brother-in-law has hired him to be a voyageur. He will be paddling west from Montreal to Grade Portage to trade supplies with the Indians for furs. He is overjoyed and receives all the appropriate clothing from his family as birthday gifts, even a tobacco pouch.

As the loaded canoe brigade gets ready to leave, his cousin, Jeanne, accepts the proposal of marriage yelled at her by the clerk who is going along to keep track of the trading.

Unfortunately, disaster strikes the brigade as the men paddle the rivers, make their portages, and get onto the sometimes violent and unforgiving Lake Superior. In Montreal, the city is ravished by a fire and many residents perish before it is extinguished.

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

The Schuyler Sisters

A Master Passion

 

Seen from a certain angle, the Schuyler girls were fairy tale princesses. They had white wigs, French dresses and a daddy who owned most of upstate New York. They had other identities, too, as frontier girls, occasionally in peril because their father’s kingdom really was land which had once belonged to the first people who'd come here. This backstory is a familiar feature of the early days of America, how plantations--that obscuring euphemism--took root, their aim to "tame"  (harvest) all they could get from a bountiful "wilderness.” 

That's not the foreground of my stories. The girls are. They drew my  interest particularly because I'm deprived--an only child. I've had to research the experience of siblings. As I read about the life that these girls lived, I realized that Margaret, Elizabeth and Angelica literally grew up together. Dutch ladies they were, but you could almost call them "Irish triplets", these same sex sibs born bam-bam-bam in 1756, 1757, and 1758. How could they not be emotionally entwined?

Back to the fairy tale idea. As it happened, these Schuyler girls each grew up and each one married a handsome prince.

Margaret was the youngest and the last to be married. She chose a life in the old-time Hudson Valley Dutch style, which, by that time, was already passing away. She married a van Rensselaer—her cousin, a boy she’d known all her life, whose family owned "the other half of upstate."  Land was the basis for her husband's wealth, though this, i8n the next generation would prove impossible to keep.  It was a safe and well-nigh predictable marriage--even though her father was, as usual, incensed because it began with an elopement--so romantic it was almost de rigueur for any spirited 18th century lady of fashion.
 

 Margaret Schuyler van Rensselaer

Elizabeth, the middle sister, married a wanderer, a fortune-seeker, a self-taught knight in shining armor who sometimes, like Sir Lancelot, went completely mad. Her life overflowed with drama, and she was nowhere near as materially comfortable or secure as the other two sisters, but she always knew who she was: her husband's "Queen Bess." She bore eight children and raised every one in a time where this wasn't a given. She lived almost until the Civil War, still standing by her man and his reputation fifty years after death had parted them.
 

 Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton "Betsy"

 

Angelica was, by all accounts, "the fairest of them all." She picked for herself a dashing lord of the material world, a buccaneer with a credible alias as an English gentleman. Her daring husband knew how to conduct a lady out an upstairs window and down a ladder in the middle of the night, away to a forbidden marriage. After the romance was over, he became a businessman with the stamina to write insurance all day and gamble all night. With his position and money, he took Angelica to London, and to Paris where her wit and beauty enchanted royals as well as the brilliant and the notorious.

Angelica Schuyler Church

 

Of these ladies, I’d imagine that only Betsy would ever have stood before a blackened, cavernous fireplace with a stick of wood or a ladle in hand, directing the business of her kitchen. The complex odors of a wood fire, which seem to us moderns like camping, would have filled the room and saturated clothing. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn't have worn her good dresses down in the cookshop, barely even for a visit. A certain amount of greasy smoke would have been everywhere, necessitating a spring cleaning that ended with a white washing. There was little of the new stove technology in her world, except, perhaps, in the better city homes she shared with her husband in Philadelphia and New York.

 

Like the English great houses, these early American “mansions” would not have been in a rush to modernize. The best they could do was to create a wing to house a kitchen, often a one story addition to the back of the house. In the cities, the kitchen would be down stairs--way downstairs!

There were plenty of hands—labor both slave and free—and plenty of fuel, for the menfolk are busy chopping down the great northeastern boreal forest, consuming it for building and energy, for shipping and industry. She might not have dirtied her hands scrubbing the floors, but she’d know how it should be done, and she wouldn’t hesitate to explain it to you while you worked on your knees before her. She wasn’t retiring, although she probably wasn’t taller than five feet. Nothing shy about this lady within the confines of her home; she was a Leo and a Schuyler, too, after all.

 

The Grange, NY, NY

Alexander Hamilton's final home

Upon which he spent entirely too much money.

 
Theirs is a delightful family/historical story, three women living through such a profound transition. I only wonder that it hasn't been retold more. It's been an honor and a delight to attempt to try.

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic

 

Books We Love Launching its St. Patrick's Day Contest

It's Time for The Wearing of the Green.

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 featuring Alexander Hamilton, The US First Secretary of the Treasury

 

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featuring the Hudson's Bay Company and their recruits from the British Isles

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