New Release — Mr. Christmas Elf by Stephanie Burkhart

Christmas is on the way, but Jules isn’t in the mood this year. She and her dad are barely making ends meet, and with extra bills piling up, how can they afford Christmas? Jules needs a new muffler for her car, and school tuition is looming—but the peppermint on top? Her boyfriend has just dumped her in a text message! 

When her boss at the coffee shop insists that all employees must write a letter to Santa and post it on the window, Jules decides to be painfully honest about what she needs—but is there any hope she will get it? 

When Elvis, a handsome hunk, shows up to visit with her about her car muffler, she begins to have an inkling of hope that this Christmas will be one to remember, after all. Claiming to be one of Santa’s elves, Elvis tells her all the magic the Christmas season has to offer can be hers, if she only believes. Is that too much to ask for?

EXCERPT

     "Come on, Jules, write your Christmas list, or I'll dock your pay another thirty minutes."

     "Why do you have to bully me, Joe? It's a depressing list."

     "It's Christmas, and no one disappoints my Sally on Christmas."

     Yeah, I'd feel bad if I let Sally down, too.

     I wrote:

Dear Santa,

I need a new muffler, a hundred bucks to pay off my root canal, cigars for my dad, a lottery scratcher, and a new boyfriend. P.S. I'm praying for world peace too, especially on Christmas.

Love, Jules.

     I thought I'd throw the scratcher in there for a giggle. Hey, it's affordable. I probably won't win anything, but you never know.

Hand-Me-Down Family Recipes by Kaye Spencer #familyrecipes #recipes #oldfashionedrecipes

Hand-me-down family recipes offer more than mere sustenance. They give us a dash of history, a pinch of nostalgia, and a sprinkling of posterity.


I am fortunate to be the recipient of several old family recipes and recipe books. One of my older recipe books belonged to my Aunt Irene (b. 1926) that she used in her high school Home Economics class.

"All About Home Baking" c. 1933

I've been adding family recipes to my website and also to a Board on my Pinterest account. But this takes time, and I'm moving at a snail's pace, because so many other tasks pop up and distract me. My intent for 2019 is to add at least one recipe a month.

This is an example recipe that shows the format I've designed. (not an 'old' recipe)

I've kept the original wording and measurements from the recipes. I have 14 Hand-Me-Down Family recipes on my Pinterest Board, but only five of them on my website HERE. *sigh* Again, it's a matter of available time.

Anyway, if you're so inclined, you will find my Hand-Me-Down Family recipes on Pinterest HERE.

On a side note: I'm experiencing an ongoing issue with commenting and responding to comments on Blogger. If I am unable to respond to your comment, I will come back to this article and add comments in this area. Please check back, because I do read and respond to every comment. I appreciate the time and interest you've taken to write a comment.


Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
Writing through history one romance upon a time

Website/Blog- https://www.kayespencer.com
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kayespencer/
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/kayespencer
Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/kayespencer
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kayespencer23
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/author/kayespencer
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayespence
Prairie Rose Publications - http://prairierosepublications.com/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/kayespencer0203

THE WRITER’S GRATITUDE LIST, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

With Thanksgiving just around the corner (again!! Where did that year go, anyway?) it’s time to turn our thoughts to things we are thankful for. Big things; little things; things that matter only to ourselves. As a writer, I have a special list of things, and it goes something like this:

Higher Power,

Thank you for the gift of craft,

the quirk that makes me prefer to sit in a darkened room writing about a sunlit beach to being on that sunny shore in person;

that creates a playground in my imagination that Disneyland couldn’t begin to rival;

that opens up a universe otherwise denied me.

Thank you for the gift of eccentricity and introversion,

and for the gift of never being bored.

Thank you for my laptop, where I can instantly erase my mistakes… except when I don’t mean to erase them.

And for spell check… except when it doesn’t know the difference between pain and pane and Payne,

For Thesaurus.com, that fills in the blanks when the only word that comes to mind is “thing.”

Thank you for cats, my muses,

who walk on the keyboard, making

contributions of their own.

Thank you for writers, who inspire me,

readers, who validate me,

editors, who magically see the plot holes,

artists who turn my words into pictures.

Most of all, thank you for letting me be me, this crazy old cat lady writer.

Check out more blogs by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer at:

Mollie Hunt: Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries and more

Happy reading!

NOTE: I am having the same trouble with commenting in Blogger as Kaye Spencer. For some reason, I cannot comment or reply to comments. I'm so sorry not to be able to respond. Your comments mean the world to me. This is really frustrating! 

NaNoWriMo and the Monster Within, Part II

For my very first post for Fire Star Press I wrote about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and why it works for me. Once again, NaNoWriMo is upon us and I am busily pounding out words, determined to hit the 50,000 word goal for the first time in several years. Therefore, in the interest of time, I am borrowing a post from my personal blog and updating it a bit. I hope you enjoy!

Photo courtesy of www.123rf.com

As defined on the official web site, “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.” It is a completely insane idea that is also completely doable. This marks my eighth year of participating in the chaos that is NaNoWriMo. I “won” in 2011, 2012, and 2014 completing 50,000 plus words before the November 30th deadline. The other years all fell short for various reasons.

I'm a huge fan of NaNoWriMo and probably make it sound like it's all unicorns farting rainbows. Alas, it is not. All these years I have harbored a deep, dark secret. I thought that I was the only one until I saw the following tweet from Derek L Reiner (@DerekReiner) on November 16, 2014:

#NaNoWriMo turns me into someone I don’t like. I doubt I could write professionally as the deadlines would turn me into a monster.

I could have hugged the man. I am not alone! I could finally air my dirty little secret – NaNoWriMo turns me into a monster. There. I said it. For thirty days, my world revolves around reaching the 50k goal and heaven help those who get in my way. In order to write 50,000 words in thirty days, you must write an average of 1667 words per day. Life being what it is, I don’t get to write every day which means that I have to double up on other days. I find myself struggling to be nice to those around me. Heaven help my hubby if he invites me to go to a movie, or something else equally innocent.  He deserves better than the response he receives. I snarl at him, my newly grown NaNo fangs dripping venom: “A movie? Are you kidding me? It’s NaNoWriMo – I’ve got 2000 words to write! I don’t have time for a movie.” He slinks off to hide in another room while my claw-tipped paws return to tapping out words.

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but only just. Most of the time in November I seem like a normal, friendly, middle-aged woman. Most of the time I manage to keep my sarcastic replies locked away inside. On the outside I say “A movie is a wonderful idea! What would you like to see?” while on the inside the NaNo monster howls and threatens to burst out of my chest and rampage through the Nostromo, sparing no lives. Wait, wrong monster. Any way, you get the idea.

To make matters even worse, November is when we celebrate both Thanksgiving and my birthday. The past few NaNos have not gone well for me. November turned out to be the month when an elderly parents health began to fail or one of them passed away. Now that they are no longer with us, my husband has stepped up to fill in the gap and will be having surgery on the shoulder he damaged while we were getting our house ready for Hurricane Michael. So, now that I think about it, may the real monster is November. It senses my determination to compete and throws obstacles in front of me - occasionally insurmountable ones.

However, I'm entering this year's NaNo with a different mindset. Yes, I would like a successful year to prove to myself that I can still do this. However, the past few years have taught me that it's okay to not "win" - it's not the end of the world. So, win or lose at the end of the month I will have quite a few words written that I didn't have before and I'll have a novel ready to go into revisions. So, whether it's a "win" under NaNoWriMo guidelines or not, it will still be a win for me.

Do you NaNo?

Sign up for my newsletter here:  http://madmimi.com/signups/112968/join

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New Release — Desert Rose by J. Arlene Culiner

A secret life is the best protection against love…

Men love Rose Badger, and if the other inhabitants of dead-end Blake’s Folly, Nevada, don’t approve, she couldn’t care less. With a disastrous marriage far behind her, settling down is the last thing she intends to do. Isn’t life for fun? Doesn’t a stable relationship always mean predictability and boredom? Well… perhaps things might be different with Jonah Livingstone, but he is off limits for anything other than friendship. Even though he’s started a slow burning fire inside her, he’s still entangled in a complicated past relationship. And Rose has another secret life—one that she’ll never give up for any man.

The last person geologist Jonah Livingstone expected to meet in a semi-ghost town is Rose Badger. She’s easy-going, delightfully spontaneous, and Jonah is certain their attraction is mutual. But Rose is always surrounded by a crowd of admirers and doesn’t seem inclined to choose a favorite. Though Jonah has also suffered a failed marriage, he can’t help being drawn to Rose—and he dares to hope she may feel the same for him. But is Jonah too independent to settle into a permanent relationship again? He’s leading his own very private life, as well…and secrets are an excellent protection against love. Will he do what it takes to hold on to his DESERT ROSE?

EXCERPT

     When the bell above the shop door tinkled, Rose’s well-practiced welcome smile was almost in place. Almost… Then it stopped in mid-stretch. Stunned, she stared, blinked, stared some more. My goodness: wasn’t he gorgeous. Her interest increased, and her heart did a pitter-patter tippy-toe dance as she took him in: tallish — but anyone would be tall when compared to her tiny size — rangy, with tousled hair so dark it appeared blue under the lights, an explorer’s bone structure and weather honed skin, deep brown eyes. And, here she was, acting like a complete idiot, frozen into place, gawking at him, as if he were of another species, or something totally new-fangled dropped down from a distant stretch of the Milky Way.
     Not that he seemed to be faring any better than she, not moving, staring at her, his gaze unwavering, the wide-open door letting in frosty air and snowflakes. What was that gaze of his telling her? That he was surprised? Pleased? Oh, yes. He liked what he saw, all right — men did like her, she knew that. She was used to their admiration. They liked naturally golden curls, slanting blue eyes, and the broad, flat cheekbones of the Russian steppe. But, wasn’t it especially nice to be admired by such a gorgeous specimen? Yes, indeed.

     Mentally, Rose shook herself, forced herself out of her stupor — somebody had to do something. This was a store, a business, not a blind date. If a man suddenly showed up in a ladies’ dress shop, that meant there was already a woman in his life. Unless he was a cross-dresser. Or was lost and needed directions out of this half-a-horse hellhole.