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Life and HEAsDecember 26, 2009 at 5:00 am | Category: Guest Blogger, blog Back this past summer when Sandra invited me to do a guest blog (thank you Sandra!), I thought, Cool! I’ve got about five months to write a post. Not too hard to do. Guess what? It’s now the day before Christmas Eve, and I’m trying to figure out what to write about here. So after some thought, actually it was a three paragraph ramble, I came to the conclusion that the topic would be about my love for stories, atmosphere and my newest release. I like to tell a story that carry readers away from their daily life and put them in a world where just about anything is possible and the HEA is guaranteed. I think that “carried away” thing is why I like exotic settings or stories where the characters have ties to exotic places. It allows me to explore places I want to visit one day or those places I know I’ll never see. That’s the thing I love about books. They’re inexpensive transportation vehicles. Your mind does the walking to paraphrase an old commercial. The more exotic the setting, the more research you need (unless you’ve lived in the location) to get the ambiance correct.
As a courtesan, Allegra is extremely independent and always in control of her life. When that control is ripped from her, she’s not just angry; she’s experiences feeling lost and frightened. I think those emotions have happened to a great many of us at one time or another. Allegra is also extremely independent and determined not to take any flack. She’s her own person and refuses to be brow beaten. Shaheen’s issues are rooted in a need for approval and a guilt his father threw onto the shoulders of the boy he once was. Worse, he allowed a courtesan to come between him and his brother at a very high price. When he meets Allegra, he has no desire to be impressed, but he is. Like most alpha males, this doesn’t make him happy. He figures it’s his body talking, but deep inside he knows it’s something else, but he’s damn well not going to admit it. Against the background of the Moroccan plain, these two characters come to realize that the love they thought would always be denied them might actually be a realistic possibility. What I love the most about this story is that it’s about survival. It’s about experiencing a terrible event and having the inner strength to rise above it all. I understand that need, desire, to survive based on personal experience. There are things in life that can make one wish for it all to end, and yet with a little bit of faith, the offering of an outstretched hand, and a lot of love, that HEA is never too far away. It’s Kismet actually. It’s about believing in one’s destiny, and having the hope that despite life’s trials and tribulations we can all have a HEA of some kind. So tell me about a HEA you’ve had in your life. Did you have to walk on fire to get there?
Crazy Holiday Traditions ~ Roosters & Hens & Beets, Oh My!December 24, 2009 at 10:52 am | Category: blog If you gather with family every year for the holidays, I’m sure there’s got to be one holiday tradition that stands out for you. Whether it comes from way back, or in my case, was created as a practical joke… Yeah, you read it right. Practical Joke. But, I’ll get to that in a second. As I was saying, traditions abound during the holidays. There are some steeped in old lore, Catholic, and Pagan, and everything else. Some are even a combination. I was just reading up on the holiday tradition of Kucios, which is what I celebrate with the husband’s family each Christmas Eve. It is a traditional Lithuanian celebration. And it is a total mixture of Catholic and Pagan practices. And really, I find it all very cool. Now, we don’t follow all of the things mentioned in the Wiki about Kucios…Ummm, cause I might have been a little icked out, shocked at the very least, by the practice of pulling a rooster and hen from beneath the stove (Seriously? They just sort of hang out under there? I mean, with the whole house available to them?) and their tails are tied together. (Riiiight). So, if the rooster pulls the hen to the door, (Umm, why didn’t he try freedom in the first place…) there will be a wedding that year. But if he pulls her back under the stove, no wedding. Hmmm. Something’s got to be going on under that stove. Maybe they’ve got it backwards. Maybe there’s gonna be lots of little hens and roosters later that spring cause of the fun that’s had under that stove… *Ahem* ANYWAY, there are some really cool rituals and traditions that are practiced during Kucios. Only some of the more tame ones, like passing the wafer to each person around the table, are what we do. As they break a piece off, the person handing it to them makes a wish for the coming year. In our family, this can be a time of jesting and good natured teasing. Or, it can be heartfelt and endearing. None of us care which type of wish we get. It’s all about the gathering, after all. So, that’s what the Barkevich family will be doing this…what? That practical joke tradition? Sigh. I suppose I did say I’d tell you all about it. Okay, here it is~ When I first met my now husband, he invited me to spend Christmas Eve with his family. This would be the first large dinner I’d be spending with them. In fact, there would be new members of the family I had yet to meet there. I was a little nervous. That aside, I was also excited. I love my extended family. They’re lots of fun and full of love. They’re wonderful people. Okay, so my then boyfriend, tells his mother that I was raised to eat whatever is placed before me. No matter my like or DISLIKE of the food in question. (Hey! My mom brought me up well. What can I say. I make my kidlets do the same thing.) Well, he also informed her of my great, huge, IMENCE, dislike of beets. Blech. They taste like dirt. Seriously, I do not like them…not with ham, not with…oh, um. I digress. So, my future mother-in-law decided to inform me of the very important old family tradition of eating beets on Christmas Eve. It’s a must. Eating beets on Christmas Eve will bring prosperity and good fortune in the coming year. (Mind you, I’d have eaten them regardless. The whole, you have to eat whatever is placed before you rule, and all.) Man, oh man, I choked those things down. My eyes watered, my stomach turned, but I got ‘em down. And had a lovely time with my new family. It wasn’t until the following summer that my future mother-in-law came clean. She confessed her dirty little secret. There was never a beet tradition. She’d made the whole thing up. Nope. Eating beets didn’t bring prosperity or good fortune… Except, it had. For me. I was with a wonderful family, I’d gotten a new, much better paying job, I was in love. Those beets did hold some magic for me. And to this day, I eat beets once a year. ONLY ONCE A YEAR. On Christmas Eve. And my wonderful mother-in-law, that I love with all my heart, has spent each year trying to find a beet recipe that I will actually like. (And she kind of did. Last year. It wasn’t so bad, the beet soup, she made. I requested it again this year.) So, what does your family do this time of year? What’s your big, or small, family tradition? Happy Holidays! ~Sandy
So The Holidays are Upon Us…December 19, 2009 at 12:55 pm | Category: blog I’ve posted at Romantic Inks today. Stop on by and check it out. Happy Holidays! Sandy
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