My Christmas Gift to You
December 24, 2008
Last year this time I worked as a shelf stocker at Barnes & Noble. My job was to put books on shelves, not necessarily help people find what they were looking for, but every now and then someone would stop me and ask for help. So I thought I’d share with you the one book I handsold.
A man asked me for a book on personal finance, and I showed him Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace Revisited. I had discovered the book recently and loved it. Dave Ramsey is a personal finance guru who teaches old-fashioned, common sense money advice, and the book goes from showing how people get into financial trouble to how to get out of that trouble to how to save for your future, how to retire with dignity as he puts it.
With the economy scaring people, I know many are looking for ways to shrink their budgets and stretch their money. Having financial troubles can put a horrible stress on a marriage. Whether you fit any of those scenarios or are in good shape but would like to pick someone’s brain, Financial Peace Revisited is where you need to go. The book is one of the most helpful, encouraging, and fun books on money. It’s well worth your time and money.
Well, that’s probably the only non-fiction book I’ll ever review here. Now back to our regularly schedule fiction.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
There’s a First
December 22, 2008
We’ve done something we’ve never done before.
We Chicagoans-turned-semirural-Kansans have — hit an animal with our vehicle.
Where do I begin?
It was a dark and stormy — oh, sorry.
Although it was a dark night. That was the first problem. My oldest two kids had their school Christmas program Thursday night, the night where we were either going to have a small ice storm or thunderstorm, depending on how far north the warm Southern air decided to come.
As we set out to school, my husband decided to take it nice and slow. The road we were on had no street lights, was mostly rural with a few set back homes, there was low, dense cloud cover, and visibility wasn’t much past the front of our car.
Or rather wasn’t much past the possum a couple yards in front of our car.
As long and tall as a house cat, the possum was super plump. All white and gray. And about to get it.
It’s amazing how much you can think in less time than it takes you to open your mouth. I analyzed what part of our car was going to hit the possum and what part of its body would take it. And I realized that the tire I was sitting behind would hit it, probably right in the poor animal’s midsection. I had time to say, “Oh — !” and the thing disappeared in front of us.
And then –
Thabump. The tire hit the possum and rolled right over it.
Thabump. I still shudder thinking about it. It was the nastiest feeling, the nastiest sound. The poor animal. We poor Bradleys.
This is one of those firsts you never want to reach, you know? We’ve never, ever hit an animal, not even a squirrel or chipmunk. Okay, maybe an ant. Oh, yes, and lots of bugs.
But no animal. Ugh.
A moment of silence . . .
In case you’re about to dig through your recipe files, I do not need any possum stew recipes. No, I don’t have one I prefer. It’s just another first I refuse to do.
Now may I never have to write a post about the first time someone slipped me possum stew . . .
Dark Pursuit, Reviewed
December 5, 2008
This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
Zondervan (December 1, 2008)
by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brandilyn Collins is known for her trademark Seatbelt Suspense®. She is currently working on her 20th book. For chances to win free copies of her work, join her Fan Club on Facebook. Here’s what Brandilyn has to say about why she wrote Dark Pursuit:
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan’s followers, kicked out of heaven, boast about storming the gates and reclaiming their territory. Beelzebub scoffs at their boasting as merely “hatching vain empires” and suggests a different revengeful scheme: seduce mankind away from God. So Satan visits the Garden of Eden to teach humans the very thing he and his cohorts have learned to be futile—the dark pursuit of hatching their own vain empires instead of following God. He presented man with this “gift” of death, disguised as life. And man fell for it.
Upon this theme of man’s fall and spiritual blindness, I created the characters and events in Dark Pursuit. The story clips along at a fast pace, with much symbolism running underneath.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Dark Pursuit—A twisting story of murder, betrayal, and eternal choices
Novelist Darell Brooke lived for his title as King of Suspense—until an auto accident left him unable to concentrate. Two years later, reclusive and bitter, he wants one thing: to plot a new novel and regain his reputation.
Kaitlan Sering, his twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, once lived for drugs. After she stole from Darell, he cut her off. Now she’s rebuilding her life. But in Kaitlan’s town two women have been murdered, and she’s about to discover a third. She’s even more shocked to realize the culprit—her boyfriend, Craig, the police chief’s son.
Desperate, Kaitlan flees to her estranged grandfather. For over forty years, Darell Brooke has lived suspense. Surely he’ll devise a plan to trap the cunning Craig.
But can Darell’s muddled mind do it? And—if he tries—with what motivation? For Kaitlan’s plight may be the stunning answer to the elusive plot he seeks…
Read the first chapter of Dark Pursuit, HERE.
Sally Says: Man, Brandilyn Collins is good. I like a gripping suspense novel, and she really knows how to write them. If you’ve read her blog, you’ve heard her say how much she struggles to write, but for Pete’s sake, it never shows in the final product. She’s written so many different suspense novels that you’d think they’d begin to get repetitive, but nope. Not a bit.
And in Dark Pursuit she’s come up with another unique story with realistic characters. If you’re a suspense fan, you must read her latest book. Just a warning, though — don’t start reading late in the day because you won’t be able to put the book down.
Review of Lauraine Snelling’s One Perfect Day
December 2, 2008
This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
FaithWords (October 22, 2008)
by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Today, Lauraine Snelling is a member of the more than Two Million Books In Print club, but when she first began, she was a mother of three teenagers with a simple dream to write “horse books for kids.”
All told, she has over 50 books published. She thinks. She’s not sure. She’d rather write them than count them. Lauraine’s work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish and German as well as produced as books on tape.
Awards have followed her dedication to “telling a good story”: the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.
Helping others reach their writing dream is the reason Lauraine teaches at writer’s conferences across the country. She mentors others through book doctoring and with her humorous and playful Writing Great Fiction tape set. Lauraine also produces material on query letters and other aspects of the writing process.
Her readers clamor for more books more often and Lauraine would like to comply, if only her ever-growing flower gardens didn’t call quite so loudly over the soothing rush of the water fountains in her back yard and if the hummingbirds weren’t quite so entertaining. Lauraine and husband Wayne have two grown sons and a cockatiel named Bidley, who loves to tease their Basset Hound named Chewy.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two mothers end up more closely connected that they could dream…and yet they are strangers to one another.
The first has two children–twins, a boy and girl, who are seniors in high school. She wants their last Christmas as a family living in the same home to be perfect, but her husband is delayed returning from a business trip abroad. And then there’s an accident–a fatal one involving a drunk driver.
Meanwhile, the other mother has a daughter who needs a new heart, and so the loss of one woman becomes the miracle the other has desperately prayed for. While one mother grieves, and pulls away from her family, the other finds that even miracles aren’t always easy to receive.
If you would like to read the first chapter of One Perfect Day, go HERE
Sally Says: This was my first Lauraine Snelling book, and while the book didn’t wow me, I did enjoy it.
The plot isn’t anything unusual — one person’s death leads to life for another — but I thought Snelling did a good job of showing both sides of the story. One thing she dealt with that I particularly liked is the horrible fear that they’d actually killed their family member by agreeing to donate organs, the whole “What if they would have woken up in another week or two?” thought. I’ve never dealt with this situation so I don’t know any of the medical information needed to make this decision, but when I’ve thought about organ donating, I’ve always wondered, “How do they know that person really is gone?” So I liked that she included that in the story.
The one thing I didn’t like was that the story didn’t seem to have a real ending. I know that when you’re dealing with grief and the loss of a family member, it’s hard to find that Happily Ever After ending, but still, there needs to be something that brings finality to the entire story, and to me it felt like the book just stopped.
While this review obviously isn’t a ringing endorsement for the book, I do think that those who are fans of women’s fiction and tear jerkers will enjoy One Perfect Day. Snelling is a very good writer and I think that most who read the book will enjoy it.