My two year old granddaughter has so much personality. I just love her to pieces.
Here are two pictures of her wearing her fake glasses. It is so much fun to accessorize.
Month: November 2015
Wild Water
By Jan Ruth
Book Blurb
Will life and family conspire to keep these lovers apart again?
Wild Water is the story of forty-something estate agent, Jack, who is stressed out – not only by work, bills, and the approach of Christmas, but by the feeling that he and his wife, Patsy, are growing apart.
His misgivings prove to be true when he discovers Patsy is having an affair, and is pregnant. As his marriage begins to crumble around him, he becomes reacquainted with his childhood sweetheart, Anna, whom he left for Patsy twenty-five years before.
His feelings towards Anna reawaken, but will life and family conflicts conspire to keep them apart again?
My Review
Just about everything his life touches – work, his home life, his wife Patsy’s infidelity – leaves Jack Redman stressed. When he confronts Patsy, she says she wants a divorce and runs off, with their youngest child in tow, to live with her French lover Phillipe. While dealing with this major upheaval, Jack’s father sends him to talk to Anna Williams, a former girlfriend from long ago, about selling her farm. Thus, we have basis of the love triangle – Jack, Patsy, and Anna. Phillipe is, for most of the story, in the background and his character doesn’t really come into play until the later part of the book.
The characters are so well drawn; they came to life for me. Jack is somewhat of a tragic character that evokes the reader’s sympathy. Patsy is the easy to dislike. She fits the stereotypical idea of a wife who runs off with her lover, forsaking many happy years of marriage and family life. Without regard for her young daughter Lottie’s feelings or the feelings Jack and of the other members of her family, she uses the child as a pawn in the divorce. Anna is easy to like, she is a friend, a single mother, a caretaker of her farm, and finds that her long buried feelings for Jack are still burning strong.
Wild Water takes place, in part, in rural Wales, which the author describes in such vivid detail you can visualize the mountains, the farm, the beauty of the area as you read. The plot has a many elements seamlessly woven through it to keep you turning the pages. Well written so that fiction could be one with reality, Wild Water is the kind of book you never want to put down. It is the first of Jan Ruth’s books that I’ve read, and it won’t be the last.
To Read a Sample Chapter: Mybook.to/wildwater
Available as Kindle or Print Book
Publisher: ACCENT PRESS
Publication Date: July 2015
90,000 words (324 pages print)
Genre: Contemporary Family Saga
About the Author
Jan Ruth lives in Snowdonia, North Wales, UK.
This ancient, romantic landscape is a perfect setting for Jan’s fiction, or simply day-dreaming in the heather. Jan writes contemporary stories about people, with a good smattering of humour, drama, dogs and horses.
ABOUT JAN RUTH
Jan was born in Cheshire and moved to North Wales in 1998, although she has always maintained a strong connection with the area from a much earlier age. Her feel for the Welsh landscape is evident in all of her work.
The real story began at school, with prizes for short stories and poetry. She failed all things mathematical and scientific, and to this day struggles to make sense of anything numerical.
Her first novel – written in 1986 – attracted the attention of an agent who was trying to set up her own company, Love Stories Ltd. It was a project aiming to champion those books of substance which contained a romantic element but were perhaps directed towards the more mature reader and consistently fell through the net in traditional publishing. Sadly, the project failed to get the right financial backing.
Many years later Jan’s second novel, Wild Water, was taken on by Jane Judd, literary agent. Judd was a huge inspiration, but the book failed to find the right niche with a publisher. It didn’t fall into a specific category and, narrated mostly from the male viewpoint, it was considered out of genre for most publishers and too much of a risk.
Amazon changed the face of the industry with the advent of self-publishing; opening up the market for readers to decide the fate of those previously spurned novels. Jan went on to successfully publish several works of fiction and short story collections. Jan is now pleased to announce that throughout 2015, she will be re-published with Accent Press.
ABOUT JAN’S BOOKS
Fiction which does not fall neatly into a pigeon hole has always been the most difficult to define. In the old days such books wouldn’t be allowed shelf space if they didn’t slot immediately into a commercial list. Today’s forward-thinking publishers – Accent Press being one of them – are far more savvy.
As an author I have been described as a combination of literary-contemporary-romantic-comedy-rural-realism-family-saga; oh, and with an occasional criminal twist and a lot of the time, written from the male viewpoint.
No question my books are Contemporary and Rural. Family and Realism; these two must surely go hand-in-hand, yes? So, although you’ll discover plenty of escapism, I hope you’ll also be able to relate to my characters as they stumble through a minefield of relationships, family, working, pets, love …
I hesitate to use the word romance. It’s a misunderstood and mistreated word in the world of fiction and despite the huge part it plays in the market, attracts an element of disdain. If romance says young, fluffy and something to avoid, maybe my novels will change your mind since many of my central characters are in their forties and fifties. Grown-up love is rather different, and this is where I try to bring that sense of realism into play without compromising the escapism.
Jan Ruth. 2015.
Discover More About Jan Ruth
Jan writes a variety of posts – funny, serious, informative – about Snowdonia and it’s landscapes. Horses and history, her inspiration to write fiction set in Wales and her publishing journey so far.
Connect with Jan
Find Her Books
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Sunday Lunch Invitation – Sherri Matthews and Michelle Clements James.
My thanks to Sally Cronin who so graciously invited me, along with Sherri Matthews, to a luncheon today. We each brought a guest and shared recipes, chatted about books, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
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Book Launch – Tales from the Garden – Fairy stories by Sally Cronin
Congratulations to Sally Cronin. Tales from the Garden is now available in Ebook.
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Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways: A Primer on Unintended Consequences
By Jane Hanser
Book Blurb
Joey, the chocolate Labrador, loves to run and run. Living in the neighborhood of the Boston Marathon, he runs as many as twelve miles a day, early in the morning, with his dad. But after they return home from a run, Joey still wants more, much more. Keenly observant, he allows no opportunity to explore the world pass him by. But will his insatiable sense of discovery lead him to gratification? Or to danger? Planning his moves long before, a decision Joey makes early one morning forever changes his life and the lives of his mom and dad, his running partner.
Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways is a true story with a unique voice and a lot of adventure.
Readers love Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways for its colorful and heartfelt story-telling, but book’s main story – about discovery and freedom, rules and boundaries, communication and caring for a dog, and, of course, our dependence on the kindness of others – is a message about life itself.
My Review
Joey is a loveable dog who cannot stay out of trouble. He loves to run with his dad, and gets bored when he is home by himself or with his mom. His morning run just isn’t enough exercise for a Labrador retriever. He is always using his senses to find ways out of the backyard fence to explore the world beyond. This always gets him in trouble with his “mom” who usually gets a call from a friend or neighbor who saw him out wandering. One day after Joey “escaped” from his backyard; a car accident nearly kills him. The road back to healing and health is a long and arduous climb for both Joey and his family.
Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways is a well written, character driven story with numerous escapades by Joey. Writing from Joey’s point of view must have been a difficult task for the author. Though it can be an enjoyable read for an adult, I believe it would be better suited to a child who is old enough to read chapter books. I tired of reading the dog’s words and thoughts.
Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways is based on a true story.
About the Author
Jane Hanser has developed software to teach writing, self-published a grammar book and taught English as a Second Language at several campuses of the City University of New York. She has an M.Ed. in English Education and ESL from the Graduate School of Temple University. In her other life, she is dedicated to many and varied community activities. Her poetry, essays and movie reviews have been published in numerous print and online journals and newspapers such as Poetica Magazine, The Persimmon Tree, Every Writer’s Resource, The Jewish Journal, and others. She spends way too much time on the computer. She is married and lives, works and plays in Newton, MA. Joey’s descriptions of her in Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways are, except for a few insignificant details of time and place, true and accurate.
To find out more about Joey
https://twitter.com/joeythebookdog
Sample Chapter – Chapter One
That’s Not Me
In some families, little dogs sit on people’s laps all day. I’ve tried sitting on my Dad’s lap but he keeps saying, “Ouch! Joey, you think you’re a little dog but you’re not. Get down.”
There are also dogs who live in the coldest places on Earth and who run in teams. These dogs work hard, running long distances to help pull heavy sleds over huge fields of silvery snow to transport people and their belongings from one place to another. Well, I’m strong enough to do this type of work, but this isn’t me either. When the ground is covered with snow, Mom gets her cross-country skis, and she and I go outside and eagerly walk to The Woods nearby. We descend down one trail into a valley where it levels off and meets new trails and we stop at the base of the first uphill we encounter. She lays her skis on the snow, steps into the foot bindings, attaches one end of the lead to my collar, holds on to the other end, and instructs, “Joey, go go go!” Leading the charge up the hill, I enthusiastically and easily pull her up the snow-covered trail as the lead stretches behind me to its full length. Soon we are almost at the top of the hill. But then I notice some dogs in the distance and those dogs are now much more interesting to me than pulling Mom up the hill is, so I seek the most direct path to the dogs, weaving through the bushes and saplings that impede Mom’s person and entangle her in a web of tree trunks and branches.
One snowy day when Mom was gliding along on her skis and I was pulling her around our block, I saw Mary, our mail carrier, going from house to house; with Mom in tow, off I galloped toward Mary to get some of the pocketful of tasty dog biscuits she carries with her in her pockets. What happened to Mom? I don’t recall. The last I heard her, she was calling, “Joey, stop. STOP!” and the last I saw her, she was heading right for the hedges. So this type of working dog would not be me.
In other families, people take their dogs out into the fields and then locate ducks, pheasants or rabbits or other small animals for food for the family members. These dogs have very good noses, and after these people have shot the ducks or other small animals, the dogs work hard to help their owners by running out into the fields or swimming out into the ponds to track, locate and retrieve the downed animal. This also would not be me. I view these animals as my friends. Besides, I like my parents to set out breakfast in the morning and dinner in the evening for me. And foods like oranges, chicken, rice, cashew nuts, popcorn, and broccoli are also welcome in between.
Some dogs live in families where they help guide a family member who cannot use his eyes to see. These dogs work hard to assist their partners and masters with walking down sidewalks, crossing streets, going up and down escalators, going shopping, going to work, and coming back home again. This also would not be me. Dogs who do this important type of work sometimes wear a nice jacket that says, “Do not talk to me. I am working.” Wherever I go, I like to wag my tail and personally greet everybody I see. When my parents and I are outside walking along the sidewalk, I look ahead and see where I want to go, or with my nose to the ground or pointed into the wind I smell where I want to go, and step down from the curb into the street toward that destination. Sometimes I step off the curb at a spot where another road is crossing. That’s when I hear Dad sharply call out, “Joey, stop. Sit. Cars are passing here. Do you want to get hit? Sit until I say it’s okay to cross.” So I stop and force my body to form the “sit” posture, though my bottom doesn’t like to cooperate, hovering and vibrating slightly above the pavement, waiting for some sign that Dad really means what he says. In this position I remain suspended and I plant my gaze firmly on Dad’s face, until he looks back at me and repeats even more emphatically this time, “SIT,” and my bottom finally and reluctantly cooperates. This I do only because he tells me to.
My parents have a lot of rules for me. They have rules for whether I can jump up on the sofa or not. They have rules for whether I am permitted on their bed or not. They have rules for whether I am allowed to beseech them for food when they are eating, other rules for when they are preparing food, and even more rules for what foods I am allowed to eat, and not eat. They have a rule for where I must sit and wait when people enter our home, and one for who walks through the door first (and last) when we are leaving and entering our home. They have a rule for who goes first when we’re going up and down stairs. They have many rules for how I must behave when we go outside. Whether I am allowed past the gate that separates our yard from the world beyond is one such rule. Where I walk, how I walk, how quickly I walk and trot and run when we are outside are others.
When my parents ask me to do something, or expect me to do something, I hear anything from a pleasant sing-song “Good boy, Joey” to an emphatic “Joey, come on! Come on! Come on!” to an irritated “Joey, NO! What did I tell you?” – which is something I hear a lot.
To be honest with you, I don’t always obey the rules, but I’ve learned to put up with many of them, more or less, because with them comes the opportunity to be part of a family where, after dinner, Dad puts on his heavy winter coat, Mom puts on hers, Dad says, “Joey, you don’t need a coat. You already have two coats” and then gets my lead, attaches it to my collar, opens the front door and then out we three go, into my promised land, into a cold dark snowy night. All around us the snow is falling so gently and quietly, each dainty flake seems suspended in the air, dancing a silent and unpredictable dance, until it evaporates or reaches the now carpeted ground and lays gently on top of other fallen flakes, or upon my coat, where it nestles, unconcerned.
Dad says that when I was a puppy, I used to try to catch the snowflakes in my mouth. Now, he, Mom, and I are the only ones outside and together off we head in one direction, walking in the middle of the white road. We follow it to where it bends, head up one long small hill as it twists and turns, then up another longer and steeper hill as it twists and turns, and then yet another, where we are so elevated that we can see the tops of trees and the tops of homes all around us in all directions. We cease moving and wonder. I can also pull on the lead and let Dad know where I want to go next, and we walk on, deeper and deeper into the ever expanding world of evening and time and sky and snowfall, closer and closer to the top of the world. I can smell the trails of the bunnies in the snow and though I’d love to follow those trails, I don’t. On such nights, I have everything a dog could ever want.
Published: April 2014
Genre: Reality-based Fiction, Non-fiction – Animals, Memoir, Nature and Pets, Fiction
Age Group: All adults, children 5th grade and up
Cover photo: Mark Thompson of Gatehouse Media
Available: Paperback (162 pages), all e-book forms: .epub, .mobi
Published by Ivy Books (an imprint of the author’s educational software company)
Indie Book
April 8, 2015 – Honored with the prestigious B.R.A.G. Medallion for Literary Fiction
To Purchase the Book
The author gave me a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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Dust Bunny Fairy Tales
The Legend of the Dust Bunnies
a fairy’s tale
Dust Fairy Tales: Absolutely Aggie
Both By Michelle R. Eastman
And Illustrated by Kevin Richter
My Reviews
Fairies enter your house at night, and yes, it’s true, they spread dust, spider webs, and crumbs EVERYWHERE. That is, all but one very sad and lonely fairy named Artie. Artie collects thread, lint, and hair. What does he do with it? Artie makes a dust bunny to keep him company. When all of the other fairies see it, they each want one too, so Artie sets about making dust bunnies for everyone. And, now you know!
Michelle Eastman’s The Legend of the Dust Bunnies: a fairy’s tale is a delightful story about where dust bunnies come from. Every child is sure to love this wonderfully illustrated book with colorful characters and lilting text.
Dust Fairy Tales: Absolutely Aggie is the second book in the Dust Bunnies series. Aggie is an awkward, unconventional fairy. She just doesn’t fit in with the
other fairies. Aggie tries to join the fairy band but her bagpipes are too loud, and she isn’t dainty like the rest of the fairies.
Each evening as the fairies played, Aggie would find a dark corner, and with tears in her eyes, she would hug her dust bunny. One night a little cherub heard her, invited her to join their band, and told her, “You don’t have to be perfect, to find your perfect fit.”
This lovely story is my favorite of the two because it teaches children that individuality is okay. You don’t have to be just like everyone else to fit in. Once again, Kevin Richter has illustrated this book with the same charming little fairies as he did with The Legend of the Dust Bunnies: a fairy’s tale.
These charming books would make the perfect gift for either a young boy or girl.
Genre: rhyming picture book for ages 4-8
Available as e-book, hardcover, or paperback
About the Author
Michelle Eastman is the author of Dust Fairy Tales: Absolutely Aggie as well as The Legend of Dust Bunnies, a Fairy’s Tale. Michelle’s books take a lighthearted approach to the compelling desire kids have to fit-in. The stories validate the need we feel for acceptance, while imparting a subtle message about the joy that can come from embracing one’s individuality. The lively, rhyming stanzas and vivid illustrations appeal to boys and girls alike.
Michelle began her career as an elementary teacher in the West Des Moines School District. At Iowa Public Television, she wrote and produced educational content.
Her work with children, and passion for picture books, inspired her to found the literacy initiative Picture Book Pass it On (PBPiO), to get free books to kids in need. http://www.facebook.com/PBPiO
When she’s not chasing dust bunnies, or her two cats, she likes to cuddle up with a good book and her son. Michelle lives in Waukee, Iowa. dmeastman@msn.com
Michelle donates $1 from each book sold to Operation Christmas Child.
Books are for purchase on her website, at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.
www.facebook.com/michelleeastmanbooks
I received both books from the author in exchange for an honest review of each.
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May All of Your Days be Amazing!
A wonderful little book that is beautifully written. See my here.
As a monarch butterfly conservation advocate and author/illustrator of the children’s book AMAZING MATILDA, I was fortunate to capture several photos of these amazing butterflies at our farmstead in Central Maine this summer. This one landed on our phlox. Read along to discover more about our amazing monarch butterflies, and about my children’s picture book as well.
Here’s wishing that all of your days be amazing!
~ Bette A. Stevens
Monarch butterflies are a near-threatened species. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety filed a legal petition requesting Endangered Species Act protection for the monarch and its habitat.
Eighth-generation monarch butterflies in the US and Canada migrate south each fall—destination: Mexico and California’s coast where they over-winter before mating to create the first generation of monarchs for the northern migration that begins the following spring.
About Bette’s award-winning monarch butterfly children’s book
One concern parents…
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