Dougie MacLean is a Scottish singer/song-writer, perhaps the best-known performer of his generation. I've been lucky enough to see him perform several times here in the US and one of the wishes of my life is to attend Perthshire Amber, the music festival he organizes every fall.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Trad Tuesday - Green Grow the Rushes performed by Dougie MacLean
The lyrics for this song come from Robert Burns. It celebrates the love of a man for women. He is a man who believes the “wisest man the war’l e’er saw” was also a person who “dearly loved the lasses, O.” Riches are not important if you have the love of a good woman.
Dougie MacLean is a Scottish singer/song-writer, perhaps the best-known performer of his generation. I've been lucky enough to see him perform several times here in the US and one of the wishes of my life is to attend Perthshire Amber, the music festival he organizes every fall.
Dougie MacLean is a Scottish singer/song-writer, perhaps the best-known performer of his generation. I've been lucky enough to see him perform several times here in the US and one of the wishes of my life is to attend Perthshire Amber, the music festival he organizes every fall.
Friday, June 26, 2015
New Book Release - One More Life by T.R. Lykins
Elizabeth Renee Watson never dreamt that she would ever be proposed to.
She's had several bad relationships end because of an illness that almost killed her. Now she has this wonderful guy down on one knee, asking her to marry him. Can she say yes or will her illness come back to haunt her? Will Tyler be able to deal with her illness or will he run like the rest of them.
Tyler James Smith had given up on finding his "forever girl" until he took his best friend's son to school one day. When he walked into that classroom, he finally met the girl of his dreams. Tyler had always envied his friends and their loving relationships. He wanted what they had.
Can Elizabeth and Tyler have the "forever" they've always dreamed of?
Book one
Book Two
Book Three
As a stay at home mom, I became an avid reader who loves and reads most genres. The love of these books spiked my interest to learn more about the book world and the process it took to become an author. Learning as much as I can about the wonderful world of writing, I had to write my stories. I’ve had these stories building in my head for over a year and I just needed to share them with everyone.
Educating myself in this industry has made me work hard to obtain my goals of writing and becoming an author. The learning process has also made me appreciate, what all these authors have accomplished and all the hard work they put into writing and publishing. I quickly learned that it is important to thank an author by leaving reviews of their work. Having many author friends who always answer my many questions has helped me and I love each of them. These authors are my inspiration.
I can’t wait to share all my stories with you!!! My novels are Clean New Adult/Young Adult Romance. Hope you enjoy my unique stories about love and happily ever after.
Why do I write clean romance novels? I wanted to share my story with everyone and focus more on the storyline. As a mother, I needed to know that my children would be proud of what I write and not be afraid to let them read and be apart of my journey as an author. This world already has too much going on in it that I can’t control them from seeing, but I can make my books something they can be proud to read.
Now I can share my stories with anyone at any age group. Adults and teenagers alike can read my stories and I am proud to have kept it clean for everyone to read.
Thank you for being apart of my world and taking a chance on reading my stories.
I love hearing from my readers so feel free to contact me and let me hear why or how you liked my stories.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Book Review - Rainy Day Women by Kay Kendall
Maybe I should have read the first book. This one was kind of blah, not particularly a mystery as you could figure out the plot by about one quarter of the way in. The characters were not engaging and I found the heroine just whiney. She complained about everyone else's mood swings but didn't seem to notice her own. I didn't like her constant lying to her husband who was only concerned about her and their child. If she was an adult she would be honest with him - she never told him she had been in training in the CIA and had people after her now? Really?The story takes place in my era so that was fairly interesting and the cover is great, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I received this as an ARC from the author for an honest opinion.
Link to Amazon
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Guest Blog, Book Release, and Giveaway for Foreverland by Tony Bertauski
Guest Guest Blog by Tony BertauskiOne is too many, a thousand not enough.
This quote is usually reserved for AA meetings, but not necessarily exclusive to booze. As humans, we all want something, whether it’s another cigarette, a larger slice of pie or our children home safe. Naturally, we want to feel to feel good. It’s built into our instinct, our sense of survival. Written somewhere on our DNA is the need for a happy ending, that when this is all over the narrator of our life will announce in classic Disney tone, “And they lived happily ever after.”
Dystopia reveals the light of our lives by walking through the dark. It explores the true nature of our predicaments, the tragic adventure of the human experience. At times, it shows how dark we can become. How brilliant we are.
But no story really ends. It simply transitions into another. One ending begets another beginning. When we look back on our lives, those catastrophes that seemed like mountains are merely anthills that made us tougher; those eye-high hurdles made us stronger. We loved deeply and fought valiantly. If we’re lucky, we achieved our dreams: our children are safe, our grandchildren are healthy and our vast wealth, the proof our successes, the currency of our value, is inexhaustible. Happily ever after.
But when the time comes, when our ending nears, will we let go so easily?
We’ve worked so hard to become who we are, to build our castles and protect our young. Is it not unfair to walk away from what is rightfully ours? Especially when so many people in this world waste their lives, those moments that now—lying on our last bed counting our remaining breaths—seem priceless. It seems ludicrous—from our old, decrepit vantage point—that anything should die.
But death is our ending. Happily or not, it comes. It is part of life, we say, but those words leave our lips much easier before we’re sucking our numbered breaths, when we’re clinging to our last moments. Those moments that seemed endless and inexhaustible slip away as we draw our last breath. When the last one arrives, will we grasp at it, or let it go freely?
Is one too many, and a thousand not enough?
Foreverland Boxed by Tony Bertauski The Complete Foreverland Saga.
THE ANNIHILATION OF FOREVERLAND When kids awake on an island, they’re told there was an accident. Before they can go home, they will visit Foreverland, an alternate reality that will heal their minds. Reed dreams of a girl that tells him to resist Foreverland. He doesn’t remember her name, but knows he once loved her. He’ll have to endure great suffering and trust his dream. And trust he’s not insane. Danny Boy, the new arrival, meets Reed’s dream girl inside Foreverland. She’s stuck in the fantasy land that no kid can resist. Where every heart’s desire is satisfied. Why should anyone care how Foreverland works?
FOREVERLAND IS DEAD Six teenage girls wake with no memories. One of them is in a brick mansion, her blonde hair as shiny as her shoes. The others are in a cabin, their names tagged to the inside of their pants. Their heads, shaved. Slashes mark the cabin wall like someone has been counting. Hundreds of them. There’s wilderness all around and one dead adult. The girls discover her body rotting somewhere in the trees. As the weeks pass, they band together to survive the cold, wondering where they are and how they got there. And why. When an old man arrives with a teenage boy, the girls learn of a faraway island called Foreverland where dreams come true and anything is possible. But Foreverland is dead. In order to escape the wilderness, they’ll have to understand where they are. More importantly, who they are.
ASHES OF FOREVERLAND Tyler Ballard was in prison when his son created a dreamworld called Foreverland, a place so boundless and spellbinding that no one ever wanted to leave. Or did. Now his son is dead, his wife is comatose and Tyler is still imprisoned. But he planned it that way. The final piece of his vision falls into place when Alessandra Diosa investigates the crimes of Foreverland. Tyler will use her to create a new dimension of reality beyond anything his son ever imagined—a Foreverland for the entire world. Danny, living outside of Spain since escaping the very first Foreverland, begins receiving mysterious clues that lead him to Cyn. They are both Foreverland survivors, but they have more in common than survival. They become pieces of another grand plan, one designed to stop Tyler Ballard. No one knows who is sending the clues, but some suspect Reed, another Foreverland survivor. Reed, however, is dead. Everyone will make one last trip back to Foreverland to find out who sent them. And why. Kindle Edition, 935 pages Published March 21st 2015 by DeadPixel Publications
AUTHOR BIO
My grandpa never graduated high school. He retired from a steel mill in the mid-70s. He was uneducated, but he was a voracious reader. I remember going through his bookshelves of paperback sci-fi novels, smelling musty old paper, pulling Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov off shelf and promising to bring them back. I was fascinated by robots that could think and act like people. What happened when they died?
I'm a cynical reader. I demand the writer sweep me into his/her story and carry me to the end. I'd rather sail a boat than climb a mountain. That's the sort of stuff I want to write, not the assigned reading we got in school. I want to create stories that kept you up late.
Having a story unfold inside your head is an experience different than reading. You connect with characters in a deeper, more meaningful way. You feel them, empathize with them, cheer for them and even mourn. The challenge is to get the reader to experience the same thing, even if it's only a fraction of what the writer feels. Not so easy.
In 2008, I won the South Carolina Fiction Open with Four Letter Words, a short story inspired by my grandfather and Alzheimer's Disease. My first step as a novelist began when I developed a story to encourage my young son to read. This story became The Socket Greeny Saga. Socket tapped into my lifetime fascination with consciousness and identity, but this character does it from a young adult's struggle with his place in the world.
After Socket, I thought I was done with fiction. But then the ideas kept coming, and I kept writing. Most of my work investigates the human condition and the meaning of life, but not in ordinary fashion. About half of my work is Young Adult (Socket Greeny, Claus, Foreverland) because it speaks to that age of indecision and the struggle with identity. But I like to venture into adult fiction (Halfskin, Drayton) so I can cuss. Either way, I like to be entertaining.
And I'm a big fan of plot twists.
EXCERPT
Click-click-click-click.
The
walls inched closer. Reed gripped the bars of his shrinking cell.
His
legs, shaking.
The
cold seeped through his bare feet. The soles were numb, his ankles ached. He
lifted his feet one at a time, alternating back and forth to keep the bitter
chill from reaching his groin, but he couldn’t waste strength anymore. He let
go of the bars to shake the numbness from his fingers.
He’d
been standing for quite some time. Has it
been hours? Occasionally he would sit to rest his aching legs, but soon the
cell would be too narrow for that. He’d have to stand up. And when the top of
his cage started moving down – and it would – he’d be forced to not-quite
stand, not-quite sit.
He
knew how things worked.
Although
he couldn’t measure time in the near-blackout room, this round felt longer than
previous ones. Perhaps it would never end. Maybe he’d have to stand until his
knees crumbled under his dead weight. His frigid bones would shatter like
frozen glass when he hit the ground. He’d fall like a boneless bag, his muscles
liquefied in a soupy mix of lactic acid and calcium, his nerves firing
randomly, his eyes bulging, teeth chattering—
Don’t think. No thoughts.
Reed
learned that his suffering was only compounded by thoughts, that the false
suffering of what he thought would
happen would crush him before the true suffering did. He learned to be present
with the burning, the cold, and the aches. The
agony.
He
couldn’t think. He had to be present, no matter what.
Sprinklers
dripped from the ribs of the domed ceiling that met at the apex where an
enormous ceiling fan still moved from the momentum of its last cycle.
Eventually, the sprinklers would hiss another cloud and the fan would churn
again and the damp air would sift through the bars and over Reed’s wet skin,
heightening the aches in his joints like clamps. For now, there was just the
drip of the sprinklers and the soft snoring of his cellmates.
Six
individual cells were inside the building, three on each side of a concrete
aisle. Each one contained a boy about Reed’s age. They were all in their teens,
the youngest being fourteen. Their cells were spacious; only Reed’s had gotten
smaller. Despite the concrete, they all lay on the floor, completely unaware of
the anguish inside the domed building.
They
weren’t sleeping, though. Sleep is when you close your eyes and drift off to
unconsciousness. No, they were somewhere else. The black strap around each of
their heads took them away from the pain. They had a choice to stay awake like
Reed, but they chose to lie down, strap on, and go wherever it took them. They
didn’t care where.
In
fact, they wanted to go.
To
escape.
Reed
couldn’t blame them. They were kids. They were scared and alone. Reed was all
those things, too. But he didn’t have a strap around his head. He stayed in his
flesh.
He
took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Started counting, again.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…10.
And
then he did it again. Again.
And
again.
He
didn’t measure time with his breathing. He only breathed. His life was in his
breath. It ebbed and flowed like the tides. It came and went like the lunar
phases. When he could be here and now, the suffering was tolerable. He counted,
and counted and counted.
Distracted,
he looked up at the fan. The blades had come to a complete stop. The air was
humid and stagnant and cold. Around the domed ceiling were circular skylights
that stared down with unforgiving blackness, indifferent to suffering. Reed
tried not to look with the hopes of seeing light pour through them, signaling
an end. Regardless if it was day or night, the skylights were closed until the
round of suffering was over, so looking, hoping and wishing for light was no
help. It only slowed time when he did. And time had nearly stopped where he was
at.
1, 2, 3—
A
door opened at the far right; light knifed across the room, followed by a
metallic snap and darkness again. Hard shoes clicked unevenly across the floor.
Reed smelled the old man before he limped in front of his cell, a fragrance
that smelled more like deodorant than cologne. Mr. Smith looked over his
rectangular glasses.
“Reed,
why do you resist?”
Reed
met his gaze but didn’t reply. Mr. Smith wasn’t interested in a discussion. It
was always a lecture. No point to prolong it.
“Don’t
be afraid.” The dark covered his wrinkles and dyed-black hair, but it couldn’t
hide his false tone. “I promise, you try it once, you’ll see. You don’t have to
do it again if you don’t like it. We’re here to help, my boy. Here to help. You
don’t have to go through this suffering.”
Did
he forget they were the ones that put him in there? Did he forget they made the
rules and called the shots and forced him to play? Reed knew he – himself – he
had gone mad but IS EVERYONE CRAZY?
Reed
let his thoughts play in his eyes. Mr. Smith crossed his arms, unmoved.
“We
don’t want to hurt you, I promise. We’re just here to prepare you for a better
life, that’s all. Just take the lucid gear, the pain will go away. I promise.”
He
reached through the bars and batted the black strap hanging above Reed’s head.
It turned like a seductive mobile. Reed turned his back on him. Mr. Smith
sighed. A pencil scratched on a clipboard.
“Have
it your way, Reed,” he said, before limp-shuffling along. “The Director wants
to see you after this round is over.”
He
listened to the incessant lead-scribbled notes and click-clack of shiny shoes.
When Mr. Smith was gone, Reed was left with only the occasional drip of the
dormant sprinklers. He began to breathe again, all the way to ten and over. And
over. And over. No thoughts. Just 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3… 1, 2—
Click-click-click-click.
Reed
locked his knees and leaned back as the cell walls moved closer. Soon the fan
would turn again and the mist would drift down to bead on his shoulders. Reed
couldn’t stop the thoughts from telling him what the near future would feel
like. How bad it was going to get.
He
looked up at the lucid gear dangling above his head.
He
took a breath.
And
began counting again.
BUY LINKS Amazon
Nook
Kobo
Apple
Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Tony_Bertauski_Foreverland?id=cYITBwAAQBAJGiveaway a Rafflecopter giveaway
Trad Tuesday - Down by the Salley Garden by Maura O'Connell with Karen Matheson
I was recently in Normandy in a little town called Sainte-Mere-Eglise at the WWII Paratroopers Museum where in the background was playing one of my very favorite traditional Celtic songs. The lyrics are by W.B. Yeats. It was set to the tune of The Moorlough Shore in 1909 by Herbert Hughes.
It has been sung and recorded by many individuals and groups, but one of my favorites is this Trans-Atlantic Sessions version done by Maura O'Connell and accompanied by Karen Matheson.
It has been sung and recorded by many individuals and groups, but one of my favorites is this Trans-Atlantic Sessions version done by Maura O'Connell and accompanied by Karen Matheson.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Book Review - Finding Home by Jackie Weger
I loved this book. I want Phoebe to be my friend as well as Gage and the rest of the Hawleys.This is not the type of book I usually read and I approached it with some skepticism but it was terrific. Phoebe is all guts and gumption, taking care of her siblings and everyone else around her. She falls in love with Gage and makes him fall in love with her despite himself and the bad experience of his first marriage.
I highly recommend this book. I was given a copy for a honest review.
Link to Amazon
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