Tag: read read read

Things I Like Thursdays – Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant

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As I’ve been laboring over a Christmas romance novella I hope to have ready for this fall, I’ve been thinking about what readers want most when they pick up a book.   Snappy dialog, action, romance, suspense.  A few laughs, a few tears.  Any combination of these can make a passable story.  But what I really want when I read is someone I can root for.

Tessa Johnson is definitely someone to root for.

Sixteen-year-old Tessa, who’s moved not only to a new city but is also the new girl at a prestigious arts school, has to prove to herself, more than anyone else, that she’s a romance writer.  But that’s hard to do when your words suddenly ghost you and your best friend is hundreds of miles away, even in this technological age.

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Things I Like Thursdays – The Cleaner on Britbox

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When I first heard of The Cleaner, the premise of a crime scene cleaner originally had me prepared for CSI style storylines.  But I wasn’t disappointed to find stories centered on the living, not the dead.  So far, there are six half hour episodes of this British series told through the experiences of Paul “Wicky” Wickstead, as he goes about removing the signs of violent death.

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Thoughts About A New Year

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Honestly, after the last two crap fest years, I really don’t want to say anything to jinx 2022.

Two years ago, the prospect of 2020 and its clear vision of normalcy with a little travel thrown in, began with a late December 2019 trip to Texas, taking a train from San Antonio to Houston for Christmas at NASA.  March 4, 2020, found us on a day trip to San Diego on Amtrak, wondering how worried we should be about a virus we’d heard about lately.  Nine days later, we were locked down.  The Husband didn’t work for months, while I was lucky enough to work from home.  In hindsight, the word for 2020 would be Uncertainty.

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An Angel Named Hector

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Who says angels can’t be furry?  And have a big pink mouth and giant brown feet?

Hector didn’t begin life as an angel.  The happy little hand puppet was a 21st birthday present from my BFF, Zan, the month before I set out from Massachusetts to California with my mother in an LTD station wagon packed full of our earthly goods.  He relaxed on the bench seat between us down the Eastern Seaboard and shared our shock as, driving from Nashville to Memphis, we heard about the death of Elvis.  He quaked as we drove through blinding sheets of rain in Arkansas and dodged bats at an eerily dark campsite in southern Texas.  He soothed me as I experienced my first desert—all that empty space and endless horizon freaked out this suburban girl.  He settled with us in Orange County, where we decided to start our new life.

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Thanks Pop!

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Like most families, our story is complicated.  After a fairly idyllic childhood, my father walked out the door and never returned.  Naturally, even that part is more complicated than a patently dramatic statement.  Suffice to say, there’s a longer story and someday, maybe I’ll publish it.  But for now, the fact is he turned the world my mother and I thought of as solid and comfortable into chaos one August morning in 1973.

For the next 47 years, after awkward initial attempts to stay connected while I still lived back East, I only saw him once.  I kept our contact to exchanging letters because talking to him was just too painful.    Even though he had my phone number, he never called.  But he did ask to pass it to his step-son, so he could call me in an emergency.

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The Lost Art of Editing

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I warned you I might include rants on my blog.  Hey, here’s one now!

Disclaimer: I’m not perfect and don’t claim to be but I do my best to publish with the least amount of errors possible.

I’m not going to mention names in this rant.  I don’t want to embarrass anyone.  But please, if anything I mention here gives you pause to examine your own blog or social media posts, print or online articles, self-published books, etc., then this rant will not have been in vain.

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Book Review * The House in the Cerulean Sea

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The Book:

Linus Baker, a by the book orphanage inspector for the Big Brother-like Department in Charge of Magical Youth, embarks on a life changing journey when he’s tasked with a month-long assignment at an unusual location at the end of the rail line.  Accompanied by his aloof black cat, Calliope, he finds a place both dangerous and hopeful that he’d never dared to dream of.  Will he summon the strength to defend the vulnerable children of Marsyas Island and claim the many kinds of love offered him by those he has learned to hold dear?

Approved by Miss Evie, the librarian.
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Time Enough At Last, The Happy Ending

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We probably all have stories, written or filmed, that had endings we hated.  Maybe we also revisit them from time to time and come up with happier endings.  For me, this is a pretty obvious one.

For those of you who’ve never seen Season 1, Episode 8 of the original Twilight Zone series, let me do a quick synopsis of Time Enough At Last, starring Burgess Meredith.

Here’s Henry Bemis, at his bank job.

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Children and Young Adult Fiction Recommendations

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In my last post, Gray Hair Does Not Equal Grandma, I mentioned reading middle grade and young adult novels.  Here a few of my favorites from the last few years.

The Silent Lee books by Alex Hiam

Photo from Alex Hiam’s Instagram

Middle grade books with a strong female lead and lots of action.  Silent lives in modern day Boston.  Every morning she leaves by the side door of her Aunt Gen’s house to attend The Girl’s Academy of Latin and Alchemy in the early 20th century.  Her two worlds collide in adventures that involve men in black, horse drawn carriages and giant bee girls.

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