Books, authors and friends

A book launch is an exciting moment for any author. It's a time to celebrate the culmination of months or even years of hard work, and what better way to make it truly special than by sharing it with friends and local artists?

I've known these two lovely ladies for quite a few years now. Rosalyn Eves and Heather b.Moore are both remarkable writers, amazing mentors and superbly intelligent. 

Heather and I attended Rosalyn's book launch for her newest book, An Improbable Season. Rosalyn told her audience that she wrote this book for herself. Plus, she wanted to try this genre. 

This story is her first attempt at a regency romance, and she did very well! If you like regency, you'll enjoy Rosalyn's book!

Opening:

Oxfordshire, late February 1817

Charis Elphinstone was missing.

When Thalia, Kalliope, and Charis set off to Regency London for their first Season, they know exactly what they want. 

Thalia means to make her mark among the intelligentsia and publish her poetry. Her sister, Kalli, aims to take high society by storm, with parties and gowns galore and a proper husband at the end of it all.

 Their cousin Charis hopes to earn her place among the (nearly exclusively male) scientific elite. But it doesn’t take long for things to fall apart. Kalli finds herself embroiled in scandal and reliant upon an arranged marriage to redeem her reputation, Thalia’s dreams of becoming a great poet are threatened by her attraction to a charming rake, and Charis finds herself an unexpected social hit—and the source of a scientific dilemma that her heart might not survive. 

Can these young women find their happily ever afters in this turbulent London Season?

A Few of My Favorite Things Right Now

I'm reading:

Fiction: The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by Heather B. Moore
 

A powerful story based on true events surrounding Donaldina Cameron and other brave women who fought to help Chinese-American women escape discrimination and slavery in the late 19th century in California.
hen Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization--the criminal tong--brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.





Audible: The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows

In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck’s father, a United States senator, cuts off her allowance and demands that she find employment on the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program. Within days, Layla finds herself far from her accustomed social whirl, assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, and destined, in her opinion, to go completely mad with boredom. But once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of the town is entangled in the thorny past of the Romeyn dynasty.




Nonfiction: Just Mercy: A Story of Mercy and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

There was also a movie made based on this book, Just Mercy, with Jamie Foxx!

Kindle: Her Three Suitors by Anneka Walker

Sophia has three suitors vying for her hand, but the scandal behind her birth could ruin her reputation and her chance at love.

Sophia never expected to grow out of her awkwardness and be nicknamed society’s darling Golden-locks during her first London Season. Now, three of the most eligible men of the ton are invited to her house party in hopes of securing a most advantageous match. Shortly before they arrive, Sophia stumbles upon her birth record and an alarming discrepancy. She is determined to discover the identity of her real mother at all costs. Can she choose someone to marry before her secret is out, and her reputation is ruined forever?



I'm watching:  Hallmark Spring Movies!



You're Bacon Me Crazy

Cleo, a spunky young chef with a popular food truck, becomes a favorite among the bustling and competitive local food scene. But when Gabe, the handsome chef of a rival food truck, parks across the street, Cleo's goal to win a local food truck competition takes a turn.

https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/spring-fling



I'm writing/editing: Snowy Kisses

Passing out while trying to help a woman in a car accident wasn't what Mason McCormick had in mind. Asking her to be his plus one at his estranged family's Christmas party wasn't what he had in mind either. 
Will his family forgive him and let him in again?

Goldie Sanderson was only driving a little over the speed limit when she hit black ice and slid into a snowbank. Now, she's strapped with babysitting a baseball player with a concussion and a chip on his shoulder. Why would she say yes to going to Juniper Valley to his family's Christmas party? It's only for the weekend, right?
But as she gets to know Mason and his family, she finds she's falling in love with them. Or is she falling in love with the idea of having a family again?



FOOD: That's It. Fruit Bar

I'm loving this new, all natural, fruit bar! There are usually two fruits in each one. I think they literally grind up the fruit and shape into a bar.





What about you? 
What are you reading? 
What are you watching? 
What are you working on?



This post has affiliated links

A few of my favorite things I'm doing

I'm reading:

Fiction: A Lady's Maid by Jen Geigle Johnson


Molly O’Malley, lady’s maid to the progressive Lady Amanda Halloway, is determined to continue the life’s work of her lost love, killed in the Peterloo Massacre.

Thomas Flaherty, a footman in the Halloway household, has been with Molly from the beginning, but he fears she will never trust him with her heart. Even though her cause and happiness are of foremost importance to him, his loyal patience is tested by the fears that keep her at a distance. 



Audible: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A Craig

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Nonfiction: Permission to Feel: Unlocking the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves and our society survive by Marc Brackett

This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don't have to be. Marc Brackett's life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

I'm watching:  The Marvel movies in chronically order (yeah, I'm an idiot)

https://melvinmaya.com/best-order-to-watch-marvel-movies-tv-shows/

I'm writing/editing: Love in Greece

A romance set in Greece. I'm pantsing the last half so I can edit next month (if I can ever finish editing Old-Fashioned Wishes).

FOOD: Popcorn

I've been craving popcorn for weeks and have tried several different brands. I still love popcorn from the movie theater!


What about you? 
What are you reading? 
What are you watching? 
What are you working on?


Affiliated posts are happening.

A Few of My Favorite Things Right Now

I'm reading:

Fiction: And They Called It Camelot by Stephanie Thornton

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.


Audible: Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson

Zuhra and Inara have grown up in the Citadel of the Paladins, an abandoned fortress where legendary, magical warriors once lived before disappearing from the world--including their Paladin father the night Inara was born.

On that same night, a massive, magical hedge grew and imprisoned them within the citadel. Inara inherited their father's Paladin power; her eyes glow blue and she is able to make plants grow at unbelievable rates. 

For fifteen years they have lived, trapped in the citadel, with little contact from the outside world...until the day a stranger passes through the hedge, and everything changes.


Nonfiction: Children of the Dustbowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp by Jerry Stanley

his true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.

I'm watching:  Sanditon

About Charlotte Heywood, a spirited and impulsive woman who moves from her rural home to Sanditon, a fishing village attempting to reinvent itself as a seaside resort. Jane Austin's last books.

I'm writing/editing: Love in Greece

A romance set in Greece. I'm pantsing the last half so I can edit next month (if I can ever finish editing Old-Fashioned Wishes).

FOOD: Olives

I found a snack-size pouch of Kalamata Olives at Walmart! I love these olives!


What about you? 
What are you reading? 
What are you watching? 
What are you working on?

A few of my favorite things I'm doing

I'm reading:

Fiction: The Light After the War by Anita Abriel 

It is 1946 when Vera Frankel and her best friend Edith Ban arrive in Naples. Refugees from Hungary, they managed to escape from a train headed for Auschwitz and spent the rest of the war hiding on an Austrian farm. Now, the two young women must start new lives abroad.

Fiction: While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax

When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other…

Audible: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Hyer

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophia with his sister, Elizabeth Rivenhall, in Berkeley Square. Newly arrived from her tour of the Continent, Sophy invites herself into the circle of her relatives. When Lady Ombersley agrees to take in her young niece, no one expects Sophy, who sweeps in and immediately takes the ton by storm.


Nonfiction: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.

I'm watching:  Firefly

My son gave me the complete set and I'm bingeing!

I'm writing/editing: Old-Fashioned Wishes

My contemp romance! I'm 3/4 of the way through.


What about you? 
What are you reading? 
What are you watching? 
What are you working on?

Reading AND writing

QOTD: What are you reading this summer?

When summer hits, I envision writing All. The. Day. Long.

But that doesn't usually work out.

The biggest pluses for me with summer is the ease of a routine, a schedule: there isn't one. Even when we have tried to do Field Trip Friday or Taste Test Tuesday, we haven't lasted through summer. But I wouldn't change it for the world. I've come to understand that I need to 'chill out' during summer, enjoy myself and my down time, but most of all enjoy my family time, because it slips away fast.

One of my hobbies that I seem to be able to catch up on is reading. Reading by the pool, reading in the car (I take ginger to counter car sickness) or staying up late to 'just finish one more chapter.'

And I firmly believe reading and writing go together.

I find that I enjoy writing in the morning, have lunch, then read in the afternoon or evening. Reading opens my mind and creativity to other worlds and characters and thoughts.

I LOVE leaning! I LOVE reading books from other countries and cultures. This women's journey to read a book from every country made me think about my reading habits. I'd love to expand my world even more. I'm including Ann Morgan's Ted talk and the link to the books she read in a year from other countries.