Six Sentence Sunday

From Tender Return, available at Red Rose Publishing.  The story takes place in 1943 during World War II:

Meagan Murphy  bolted upright.  She strained to hear what woke her, but the room remained silent.

She squinted until her eyes adjusted to the muted rays from the streetlight below her window.  Shadowed movement of tree limbs outside danced across the wall. Everything took on a eerie form.  The sweater she'd draped over the chair gave the appearance of someone sitting, and when she realized it wasn't, she released a pent up breath.

Murder is a Family Business

I've decided to give up my Examiner.com column in lieu of cutting back on my responsibilities. Through reviewing,  I intended to give more exposure to our industry, but the inception of ebook readers has done that already.  Therefore, I'm only going to review books I've read that I feel compelled to share.  I just finished Heather Haven's Murder is a Family Business and I was pleasantly surprised with the infusion of humor the author has added to this suspensful read. I never figured whodunnit until Liana shared the culprit's name with me.
  
You see, Liana Alvarez is part of a  private investigavtive business that deals mainly with computer software theft.  At thirty-four-years old, she and her fashionista mother don't always see eye-to-eye, but Mom's the boss and calls the shots.  Lee, as she's called, also doesn't share much in common with her nerdy computer-geek brother,, but they all work together in a family operation.   Uncle Tio and Tugger the kitty add even more of a family air to the story.

While Lee is staking out the husband of her mother's friend, she doesn't expect to get caught in a rainstorm, almost get struck by lightning, take a bath in San Francisco Bay or find the object of her surveillance dead.  The twists and turns the story takes will keep you turning pages, and the writing style will put you in the character's shoes.  Expect to giggle, as the verbal exchanges between the family members may strike a real and familar cord. 

This is the first book in the Alvarez Murder Mystery series.  I cannot wait until March for the second , A Wedding to Die For.  Ms. Haven has found a  new fan.

To get your copy, visit Muse It Up Publishing.

So You Think You're Ready????

Through the kindness of one of my new Coffee Crew pals at CTR, Virg Nelson, I have permission to share what she posted to the loop this morning.  I like the way she thinks.

 

Hey, I wrote this today after reading this note on FB that listed things you should do before thinking about having kids.

It was all lessons for preschoolers so I wrote this.  Hope it gives you a giggle: Some of you may have read the posting about having a child.  It lists things you should do before deciding... But all of them were for the preschool set.

As my darling children are all in the school ages now, one a full fledged teen and one almost a teen, I figured that people who make it through those lessons might (like most of us who make it through the preschool years) think they are prepared.  They may have the assumption that now that they have nailed working and coping with parental demands on zero sleep, that life will be simpler now that the child at least allows you to sleep.

I present these lessons before attempting parenting in your home...

Step One:
Drive to the nearest elementary school.  Head straight to the office.  Sit in an uncomfortable chair and think of all the reasons that you may have been called to the school.  Make sure none of the things you are thinking of are good and the more outrageous the better (bet you never thought you would get called to school because your child clucked like a chicken?  Was caught chewing toilet paper?  Didn't get in a fight but could have?  I have been called for all these reasons.  Be creative.)  Now hand your paycheck to the office.  Advise them that you will be back with the contents of the nearest Office Max.  The school will nod and smile.  They are used to it.  Then ask them to make you feel like you are the worst parent ever and how dare you have thought you were doing a good job parenting.  Once you have been thoroughly chastised, get in your car.

Step Two:
Go home and talk to a wall.  When the wall doesn't a. clean a room b. answer you about grades c. have an explanation as to why it thought it was a good idea to convince the baby that gummy worms and real worms are the same thing... continue to try to convince the wall to accomplish/answer a. b. and c.
You have now had a conversation with a child.

Step Three:
Get back in your car.  Drive in large circles.  Pause at museums, schools and random houses.  Get more gas while blasting a tape that repeats, "Are we there yet?  He is breathing on me again.  I'm hungry."
That's all.  Just do that.  Every spare moment you have.

Step Four:
Go back to the wall.  Give it three random directions. (Example: Take off your shoes.  Put them by the door.  Hang up your coat when you are done.)
Then ask the wall why it only finished one of the directions. 
Repeat.

Step Five:
Tape a high pitched shriek that shatters your ear drums and makes your eye twitch.  Then go back to the wall.  Talk to it.  Every time the wall would be expected to reply, play the shriek.  To really do this exercise well, you must never raise your voice or lose your patience.  Continue to talk to the wall.  Do this for an hour.  You have now discussed something with a teenage girl.

Step Six:
Assume you are wrong.  About everything.  All the time.  Because between the children, other parents that don't seem to be frayed around the edges and the aforementioned school... You will realize  that you are wrong.  Always.
Luckily, your kids have an answer for everything.  Everything.  And they will tell you.  At length.  Usually when they should be sleeping.

Step Seven: 
Once, every so often, fill a bucket with a mixture of rotten potatoes, spoiled milk and kool-aid.  Set your alarm for 2:30am.  Wake up.  Pitch the bucket at your couch or the carpet or even better dump it on you and your bed.  If you want realism, have someone else wake you by dumping the bucket, preferably after warming it, on you while you sleep.  Wake up.  Notice that the smell hits you first.  Instead of shrieking in panic and disgust at the mess, grab a pillow covered in vomit.  Cuddle it and clean it gently while murmuring soothing things.  Then give it a bucket and clean up the rest of the mess.  For more realism, have a back-up bucket and have someone dump it when you are almost done cleaning up the first.
You have now experienced projectile vomit.  And no... they rarely ever make it to the bathroom.

If you can do all of these steps, continue to smile and never yell at the wall or stinky pillow, you are ready to love an older child.
This is tongue in cheek fun, people.  Kids are totally worth it.  You will never laugh so hard or be so willing to conquer anything as you are when you are a parent.  Kids make you brave.  Kids make you learn what love is. 
But there is still the projectile vomit...

You can 'befriend' this witty woman on Facebook.

So Little Time, So Much to Do

Funny how growing older changes ones outlook on things.  A few years ago, I was very lackadaisical in setting priorities and getting things done.  There was always tomorrow.  All of a sudden, I've become a senior citizen, and I wonder how many tomorrows I have left.  There is still so much I want to do...need to do, but I'm sure everyone feels that way.

In 2003, my best friend, Pat, died from Pancreatic Cancer.  She never smoked, didn't drink and took really good care of herself. But none of that mattered when the doctor delivered the diagnoses and gave her 6-9 months to live.  Watching her fade into a mere shadow of herself was more than I could stand. There was nothing I could say or do to make things easier, and often I felt that my being there and being healthy just didn't seem fair.  I didn't get to tell her goodbye because I didn't realize that tomorrow wasn't coming for her when I put off visiting one more day.  I miss her more than I can say. and I hope she knows how much she meant to me...still means to me because she's in my thoughts so often.

I've been giving a lot of thought to how much of my life I spend on the computer, blogging, emailing, promoting, etc..  This sedentary life is taking a toll so I really need to give some thought to what's important to me.  I've already resigned from book reviewing at Examiner.com, and I'm going to go no mail on most of the Yahoo loops that I only skim now.  I need to devote more time to my grandson, because if I have one goal before I leave this world, it's to see him kick Autism's butt! I really want to hang around as long as I can, if only for him.

I don't mean to sound maudlin, but turning sixty-five has really been much more depressing than I imagined it would be.  There's a difference between approaching a time when you'll be a card-carrying senior citizen and actually becoming one.  What happened to that thirty-five year old person I was just a few days ago? She's definitely not in the mirror anymore.  I've even forced myself to fill out a living will so no one will have to make decisions on my health care.  I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, but I've watched what my sons have gone through every time their dad wasn't expected to make it another day.  I never want to put them in the position of deciding whether or not to pull the plug.

I talked to my Mom today, and I really wanted to ask her if these kinds of thoughts occur to her.  Is she afraid of dying. Is her faith so unshaken that she doesn't question everything she's believed her entire life?  She just turned eighty-six in November and although I haven't seen her for a few years, she sounds full of energy and like the mom I remember when I was forty four and she was the age I am now.

I realize how depressing this blog is, but it's almost 3 A.M. and I'm fighting off a panic attack by sharing my innermost feelings with you.  So, I guess I'll try to go back to sleep and perhaps dream of something more cheerful.  I hope Heaven is all I picture it to be, and when my time comes, I'll find Pat waiting for me under the shade of a big tree where we can sit and catch up on old times. 

Now that I've totally depressed everyone...how prepared are you? Do you think about how much time you have left?  A wise person once said, "treat everyday like it's your last because you never know when it might be."

Welcome L.J. Holmes...

Duck…Cupid’s eyes ain’t what they used to be!

As age creeps…creeps? More like ZOOMS up upon us, one of the first things we notice taking a hike, is our 20-20 eyesight. Mine decided to skitter on outta here while I was not paying much attention to my eyes at all. I mean I was back in college, a single mom, working three jobs, raising two kids, and trying to maintain a high enough GPA to keep the scholarships rolling in.

The wavy lines, haloes, and pixilated interruptions in my 20-20’s I put down to growing fatigue that would right itself just as soon as I put in more than two hours of sleep, crashed out on the living room floor where I landed as son as I’d shut the door of our apartment behind me. I mean wouldn’t you?

I worked my first job, trawling around the neighborhood, tossing, none-too-gracefully the morning papers upon your lawns so you could hide behind them at your breakfast tables. This means I was up and out by 4:00 A.M. From there I’d zoom down the interstate for one glorious…please car do not break down…hour, giving a humungous sigh of relief when I finally found a free parking lot in the student’s parking lot at my college. Why it is the nearest parking spot always seems like it is a good mile hike from class?

Studying when you are on the downward slope of thirty requires great attention and tenacity. In between classes, I tried to catch a “z” or two curled up in a most uncomfortable chair…why is it there are never any benches free when you need SLEEP? During my many years pounding the academic pavement, I searched high and low for a “quiet” spot to catch those ‘Z’s” in…Okay I see you want to laugh up a storm. Go ahead, feel free. You wouldn’t be laughing though if at some point you hadn’t tried to find that elusive quiet spot, so we are both dumber than academic dirt.

In between my 8:00 A.M. class that ends at 9:00 and my 1:00 class, I have to zip back up that interstate…please car stop guzzling oil like its water…so I can get to my second job…keeping the books and making deposits for an Auto-parts store. That took me from 11:00 am thru 3:00 PM when I downed a few Saltine crackers and headed back down that ribbon of concrete towards the college. When I arrived there, I had to call home and take a few to speak with my kids, find out how they were and promise them I’d help my daughter build her tar pit for school, and play target practice with my son and his paintball gun. (Yellow is really hard to wash out of your hair, so it’s a good thing I was already blonde.)

5:00 sitting smack dab in the front of the room, because I discovered I had to squint too much from the back, I began  taking notes on the rights and requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act. We DID get a fifteen minute break at the halfway mark because three hours of sitting on hard benches makes just about everyone’s ass go numb…and for some reason you don’t’ learn as much on numb asses.

8:00, a quick rush to the library so you can sign out that book on Teaching Reading to the Handicapped you need for your term paper. 9:00 back on the road headed north. Okay car, now is SOOO not the time to give up the ghost. Get me safely home and I promise I will buy you 10/40 weight oil next time we go to Walmart.

11:30, for some reason there was a LOT of traffic on the road tonight, I get home, stagger up the steps, open the door, enter, close the door, and fall, like a tree cut down in its prime. I’m asleep before my face smooshes against the fortunately richly carpeted floor.

So is it any surprise I did not recognize the real reason I had to squint, saw haloes, or just suffered from an advanced case of eye fatigue. Name me any student who doesn’t believe that the lack of proper vision isn’t because the Sandman is not a frequent visitor.

So it came as a real shock the first time I was pressured by my children into seeing the eye-doctor.

Most people start out with single lenses. I’m no wuss. For me it was right to bifocals.

If you are not familiar with bifocals, let me correct that education deficiency. Bifocals are like wearing little telescopes with your nose as the bridge between them. Telescopes bring everything CLOSER. The bifocals make that hood ornament on your car that you use to guide you into staying properly in your own lane, closer, conning you into thinking the tank you are really driving is a VW Bug. I had to go out into the Country…way out in the Country, to learn how to drive again with bifocals. Mrs. Eastburn, I am really sorry I felled your prize yew tree. I didn’t realize I was that close to the roads edge…and well, your yew, it jumped out…I think it might have had a suicide by auto wish. IT probably needed therapy.

Many years have passed since Mrs. Eastburn’s favorite yew gasped its last sap. My eyes have gone through many changes, including surgery for cataracts, and laser surgery when the cataract surgery left me with a thick wall of scarring. I asked my eye doctor about contacts, and he had the nerve to laugh. At MY age, he chortled! Hell, I am only 59, I wanted to respond, but I remembered something I read somewhere…about old eyes not producing as much tears. I imagined contacts plastered against my eyeballs without tears to keep them comfortably floating.

Maybe the doc was right. At my age keeping foreign things outside my body is probably a good thing.

Now that I have made all your stomachs flop and you eyes bug, let me tell you why you need to have vision that is in tip-top shape…

I am L.J. Holmes and I have a slew of e-books coming out from Muse Publishing, Inc. in the magical year, 2011. Yeah, I KNOW we are already IN 2011, but my first 2011 book does not release until February 1^st.

So lean back and let me regale with my February and March releases. No, I am not going to tell you about my May, June, August, September, November, or December releases this time. You’ll just have to wait till I visit with Miz Ging again.

February 1 brings you one of my all time favorite tales…a really short one called Forever With You. Coryne is a family court lawyer who has recently come into a lot of money. She inherited some lake front land in the mountains that she had planned on building her dream home on one day in the future…the future though has caught up with her, and except for some needed alterations, the time to build is now.

Keith Patterson owns Patterson Construction. Coryne takes one look at him and wants to run. Surely someone who looks like a god and is built like a sinner, cannot possibly build the house Coryne needs built and in the limited time frame she requires? Besides what he does to parts of her she had decided were dead, was sinful.

Her co-workers convince her that Patterson Construction is the best. Coryne hires him but also purchases a camping trailer so she can be on the spot overseeing the progress. Not the wisest of choices, she would come to admit, but she would not turn coward now. Each day Keith filters into more and more of her daydreams, and x-rated night fantasies. It’s hard enough to avoid your own wild dreams, but much harder when the object of those fantasies lets you know he’d be more than willing to trip the light-explosive with you.

Will Coryne be able to avoid giving in to Keith’s magnetism?

Forever With You comes out from Muse It Hot, the erotic wing of  Muse Publishing, Inc. on February 1^st. You do not want to miss this book, nor do you want to miss the surprise ending. I promise it will stay with you long after you have read the last line.

On March 1^st, The Pendulum Swings releases, also from the Muse It Hot Side.

Guess you can tell from the cover there will be some erotic belly dancing going on. But that’s not the half of it.

She wakes up in a room that has the weirdest things she’s ever seen. What is this thing she is lying on…a bed, but not like any bed she could remember sleeping on before? And why doesn’t her hand look familiar to her?

The door whooshes open and in walks a gorgeous man whose carefree expression turns into a blistering scowl when he realizes she’s awake.

He calls her “Joanna.” Why would he do that? She’s not a Joanna? But as she wrestles with her mind to bring up through its many layers her name she is panicked to discover she does not know who she is. How can that be?

She poses the question to the angry man. Her question makes his face morph into a horrible mask of dislike and distrust. The next word he throws at her makes her recoil even more. Amnesia. What or who is Amnesia?

Almost on the next heartbeat he tells her he’s her husband. This man who obviously hates me, owns me? Something inside her began quaking. Why would he take as his wife someone he obviously hates, and why can’t she wrap her mind and heart around the idea that she is the loathsome creature he obviously despises?

The Pendulum Swings releases from the Muse It Hot side of Muse Publishing, Inc. Join this poor woman as she seeks the answers to these questions and more. Meet the sexiest fireplace this side of Scheherazade, and the paneled door that takes prisoners.

I want to again thank Ginger for allowing me to come in and play in her toy chest.

I can be reached by e-mail at spatzdkat1212@yahoo.com

I also have so many blogs I don’t know what to do, but I will give you the one where I do most of my own mouthing off…on a semi-regular basis, and the two I have for the cover blogs for Muse authors…if you don’t know what a cover blog is, Miz Ging has dubbed them Stationary Trailers and you can learn a lot more about ALL the authors and their upcoming releases.

First my…mouthing off blog.  http://linsownspeculations.blogspot.com

Second is the blog I set up for the adult muse stories form the Muse It Up and Muse It Hot Side… http://linsownblog.blogspot.com

Finally the one I set up for our YA authors… http://linsownbooklounge.blogspot.com