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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
Of Apple Cider and Foot MassagesNovember 7, 2009 at 8:57 pm | Category: Guest Blogger, blog Today was a strange, strange day. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just A Day. I had writing goals for today, as I always do. I try to write every single day, a minimum of a thousand words, and slightly more now because I’m under deadline on one book and madly working to put together a proposal on a book I want to write so badly I’m giddy with love for it. First, I went grocery shopping and picked up a bunch of stuff I was desperately out of, including allergy meds, which no one wants to see me without, especially me. And wow, that was a long sentence. But I digress. I also happened to wander by the drink aisle and found a brand of hot apple cider that I fell in love with way back in grad school. Oh, yeah, that went home with me. But I got to the front of the store and there were no check stands open. None. I had to do self-check out, which I like when I have a few items, but not when I have an enormous basket of melting frozen items and wilting lettuce smushed under my canned goods. The manager actually looked at me like I was an idiot for trying to self-check with so many items. He got the Hairy Eyeball look in return. Cuz, seriously! I didn’t want to be there either! I hate shopping. A lot. As we can see, it hates me back. Then I came home to try to sit down and write and make those daily goals so I could forget the pain of the little automatic voice telling me to put my items back on the weigher thingy (technical term). And then my downstairs neighbor starting playing music so loud it shook my floor and gave me a foot massage. No writing got done. At all. I couldn’t concentrate with the floor vibrating. I also had car issues today, which meant I had to cancel dinner with a good writer friend I haven’t seen in a while. That was the crowning blow for the day. Seriously, it took the cake. It didn’t help we were going to an amazing restaurant together that we both love and have fond memories of. So, I suppose, while I’m sitting here sipping my apple cider–not eating my awesome food with my awesome friend–and getting my slightly nauseating foot rub, that what I want to say is stuff happens and that means there are days you get a free pass on the writing. Don’t feel guilty. Just don’t let it become a habit that gets you out of the habit of writing.
Kate Pearce ~ Guest Blogging on the Weirdness of the Writing ProfessionSeptember 26, 2009 at 8:34 am | Category: Guest Blogger, blog Writing is a weird profession. The way traditional publishing is structured means that you are constantly looking back at yourself and your work. From a print book standpoint, it takes about a year from acceptance of your manuscript to seeing it on the shelves. I’m currently getting early reviews for my latest release, “Simply Wicked”, which I handed in to my publisher almost a year ago. While I’m trying to remember what that one was about, I’ve already finished the next one, ‘Simply Insatiable’, and I’m dealing with the copy edits, and I’ve finished the next one which is still titled ‘Simply VI’ which is due back in October. And within those time frames copy edits galley pages, proposals for new books, books for other publishers flow back and forth. It’s less like a stream and more like a whirlpool where things constantly get thrown back at you. When I look at the book that is out this month, I always know that I could probably write it even better, even tighter now, but it’s too late. It is how it is- because at that point in my writing life it was truly the best it could be. I’ve often wondered if I’m the only author who thinks like this, but I doubt it. I know a lot of my writing friends won’t even go back and read their published books in case they hate them. Not me, I read every page and enjoy where I was when I wrote that book and look forward to making the next one even better. How about you? Writers do you ever refuse to let go of a piece of work because you are convinced it will never be perfect? Readers do you ever wish you could rewrite a favorite authors book for them? ~Kate Pearce **One lucky commenter will receive a copy of Kate’s latest release. So go ahead, make yourself heard. And, good luck!
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