The Legend Of The Clean Romance

I never intended to write romance. I've always thought my tastes in literature were far too intellectual for me to be a 'romantic'. The truth is...
LOVE is fun. The insane lengths we are willing to go to in our search for it.The bizzarre circumstances that bring strangers together. The things we learn about ourselves when we realize it is the core of what life is about.
Whether it is lost, forbidden, unwanted, or unattainable. Loving and accepting ourselves is what makes happiness possible, being loved, and loving others makes any story better.There is no denying love rules the heart and mind of every individual. Whether it is in the desire to attain it or the fear of the pain that loosing it can bring.
One of the reasons "Romance Writers" have the ability to write the same seven story lines  a thousand times over is because they understand. Those basic stories have different characters, different jobs, and different plots , but you know where the story is going. To that happily ever after where you, as the reader, have a little piece of you fall in-love.  The warm excited feeling that brings is the reward for buying the book. It is a reward that readers come back to claim. 
A "clean romance" is this same principle but with out a sexual element. It shouldn't be that complicated.
I'm reading a book right now as part of some research I'm doing on different types of romance, which is the story of two best friends who haven't seen each other in 13 years. HE finds out SHE is tired of men who let her down and is going to hire a male escort for public appearances instead.
The plot is a bit predictable, like most romances. He becomes said male escort. SHE falls for him while finding out HE is long lost best friend.
Here is where the secret of Romance comes in. The development of the characters and their journey toward love is what sells romance. The fast paced, interesting plot twists and unsolveable situations that come about create the desire to keep turning pages. The inclusion of sexual content in some romance books provides this same feel, but how often can you be satisfied with someone  else's fantasy? For romance readers-the satisfaction is overwhelming but wanes without the hormonal pay-off having to increase . A challenge for any writer, but especially for those who write romance .Writers in other genre's can include little or no romantic content  and never have a problem.

My challenge for you writer's of romance is this...Can you create great romance, character development, plot urgency and satisfying results without using sex?
If the legend of good, clean romance is just that a legend; then why is the Young Adult genre, , traditionally clean, the most infiltrated genre in publishing right now?
Are we drifting in our tastes toward instant gratification in our reading because it is so prevalent in our society? Can we as writers provide the pay-off our readers want without being trapped into writing trendy content?
"Think out of the box." and "Tell me a story that is different than any other." are directions a lot of writers hear. There are 30,000 plus books published every year on amazon.com alone. Only 940 of those are categorized under 'clean romance'. Those numbers are a far cry from 'inside the box'.
I don't know about you, but that sounds like a wide open market. A challenge, perhaps, but it might be worth it to become a legend in your own time.

When The Monsters Are Quiet

Powerful childhood fears can leave a lasting Impact. Even as adults we still tremble with the sounds of the creepy night, the crack of an open closet door, the shadow that looks like an ax murder outside the window...Okay the last one is totally me, but you see what I mean?

 This 25 page, friendly picture book is a fun way children can start to become proficient readers by reading about one of their biggest worries- bedtime!"When Monsters Are Quiet" is a reminder to never be afraid of your monsters and has helpful hints for parents to help their children by exploring with early reading strategies
at home. 

You can find When Monsters Are Quiet for sale at Halo.com, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble


ISBN Number: ISBN 13: 978-1-61244-219-8

Alicia Lloyd is a senior at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and is working towards her Bachelor’s Degree in Early Grades Preparation
(PK-4) and Special Education. She has a strong passion for working with children and loves to write! Alicia lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania surrounded by
her wonderful friends and family.  

You can find out more about Alicia Lloyd, her book and World of Ink Author/Book Tour at
http://tinyurl.com/mxhj8vj

Follow Alicia Lloyd on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/whenthemonstersarequiet

or with her tour on http://worldofinknetwork.com

Today is the first day of...

Happy New Year has held the connotation of starting over, beginning something new, or setting a goal that is important on this the first day of the new year.
New Year's resolutions always sound best on this day but seem more like ignorance  and folly the farther into the year we progress. On January first, losing x number of pounds was a totally doable plan. There are 365 days before you. Why not?
By the time March rolls around the practical application of this little bit-every day goal has lost it's luster. Research shows that half of people have given up on their New Year's resolution by March, most won't even admit to having a resolution because they gave up on it the first day it was hard, uncomfortable or inconvenient to follow through.
That's the problem with Today being the first day of the rest of...whatever. If it doesn't work out right now, you've got year after year of calender's to find the "first day" again.
Back in November when I started NaNoWriMo(www.nanowrimo.org), I had already broken the 50,000 word count challenge down to a daily goal. I figured I shouldn't set goals for the days I may not get the chance to write because my kids had activities, my nephew got married, my family celebrated Thanksgiving, and I celebrated my anniversary. This left me with 25 days. I devote my time on Sunday's to my faith and my family and I don't work on those days. This left me with 21 days. My word count daily goals were getting higher and higher and I could feel the pressure building along with my shrinking calender.  I am a firm believer though, that realistic expectations of what you can count on happening turn into feelings of accomplishment when you do more than the expectation allowed for.
At first I celebrated just meeting my daily goals. However, the more I accomplished the daily goals the more I realized I could get ahead by surpassing them. One of my girlfriends and I would call each other and check on the word count and then figure out how early we could finish if we wrote an extra thousand today, or didn't stop until kids came home from school. It was invigorating at first, and before I knew it I was a mere 1500 words away and it wasn't even Thanksgiving. By setting a word count goal perdiem, and them by-the-week, I was able to finish my 50 K words in 16 days. Now before you curse me as an arrogant braggart, for alot of writers that's pretty pathetic. I have a friend  who can write an entire novel in 17 days. (
Emergence: C. Michelle Jefferies: 9781599928722: Amazon.com )
My husband is friends with the author of Monster Hunters International (larrycorreia.wordpress.com)and that guy can crank out 10 K a day sometimes.Also keep in mind just because I wrote the 50 k doesn't mean they were great literature or instantly publishable.
The only reason I bring this goal up is because a lot of people have asked me what my New Year's resolution is for 2014. Honestly, I don't have one.
I have a goal for how many books I want to write this year. I have a goal for expanding my writing practice by writing a short story every month. I have an expectation to sign my parallel novel "Burning Bridger with a publisher or agent in the next three months. And I have a goal to blog, today. Work on my new novel, today. Enjoy the last day of Christmas vacation with my family, today
Most importantly---To make this the first day of the best today can be.
Happy New Year. May 2014 bring you everything you need. May it begin TODAY

Why Love A Man Who Loves An Ugly Car

I'm a day late, because I took Christmas off to be with my family, but here's this month's exerpt from Jay and Alex's story. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Alex-

“I’m sorry baby.” Charles’ voice slurred across the phone.  “I love you, please just come. I miss your face baby, please”

     The boisterous background of the bar drowned out most of charles’ drunken proclamations. Freezing gusts from the snowstorm outside the gateway of her  disembarking plane, combed icy fingers over Alex’s scalp, driving her to the seating area to escape the chill.  Her eyes flew in panic over the dismal decor.  The black clad seats beside her gate,bound side by side in long awkward rows, offered no hope of comfort or reprieve. Alex clenched her jaw and bit down on the inside of her cheeks to fight back tears.

     “Charles,” she spit through her phone, “I borrowed money, I flew half way across the continent, my parents are freaking out, and your sorry that you asked me to marry you and then changed your mind?”

      The crowded gateway in O’hare International Airport drowned out the quiet shriek of his voice but she plugged her other ear to hear him.

      “I didn’t change my mind” Charles hissed, the sentence becoming one long syllable.  “I just talked to my mom and she pointed out to me that I should not have been so…crazy.”

       “Crazy” she snapped, “since when is getting married crazy?”

 “since the 1960’s, Alexandra”

     Tears brimmed at the edge of her burning eyes as Charles softened his tone and whined again.

     “We need to talk about this after you get here, that’s all baby. Don’t be mad at me.” 

Alex held back the sob she could feel ripping at her throat. The churning fury of her temper was always extinguished by her tears of humiliation.  Taking a deep breath to steady her voice and wiping at her eyes, she settled her emotions.. He would not hear her cry and he would face her, sober, with the truth.

       “Fine, Charles,” she stated the words absent of emotion. , “that’s a good idea. We’ll talk about this when I get to New York.”

       The screen flashed electric blue as she shoved it back into her bag.

      “You asked your mom?” she mocked. while trying to lecture him from half a continent away.

    Words from her reading of the manuscript echoed in her thoughts.

The greater part of love is trust.

  Alex’s hands shook as she ran them threw her hair.All she wanted was to collapse into an empty seat near the window. Frosty fingers of ice laced the glass, framing the White layers of frozen fury drifting in a blowing cloud across the barren airport grounds.

Thanks to the tortured weather, She had missed her connecting flight. The airline apologized before  putting her on standby for an empty seat on the next one, but she was exhausted, abandoned,  and cold.

Her light woolen coat wasn’t made for winter in the northwest. Shivers scraped across her shoulder blades as she curled into a vacant seat to wait. It was one o’clock in the morning in Chicago and when Charles had called in the midst of  this newest set of obstacles, she’d been  thrilled.  He was calling her, worried about her traveling alone, especially in the middle of the night. 

When she’d  heard his voice the quickening of her pulse brought a smile to her face,  erasing the exhaustion from the flight.  Charles voice was like syrup though, thick and too sweet. The slurring of his words into half sentences, explained everything. He was drunk.  He was always hopelessly in love with her when he had Jack Daniels and Jim Bean to feed his emotions.  It was a pinch of irritation in the back of her mind, until he started crying and apologizing for  not wanting to marry her.  Maybe she hadn’t translated drunken-ese correctly? Did he say it was a mistake because his mommy disagreed with something he’d done while thinking  for himself? Alex shook her curls out around her chilled shoulders, feeling the bite of the manuscript beneath her right arm.

     The two and a half hour flight had sped past the tiny circular window beside her seat in the small plane. Absorption  in the manuscript had taken her mind off the bucking and jolting of the aircraft traveling through a blizzard between Denver and Chicago.  With that thought to cling to during the flight, She’d  withdrawn the pages.

The beginning of the manuscript would take her into parts of her mother’s past she was unfamiliar with. It would take deeper concentration, keeping her thoughts within the plane’s interior.  The first words did not disappoint. Instead they startled her drowsy senses and white knuckled grip.

   “If this were a fairy tale…If I believed in fairy tales, I would have to start a few years  ago when I fell in love with my prince charming...”

With her brow furrowed, Alex glanced at the year printed across the top of the page. Confusion flooded her thoughts. her dad had been twenty one when her parents had met, but her mom was four years older than he was. The date  would have made him seventeen.  Her red pencil, clamped between her teeth where she’d been  holding it since take off, dropped onto her lap as the plane shuddered. The storm seemed intent on  breaking her attempt to correct the typo. If she refused to focus on the boiling sky in the window beside her, she might keep her heart from exploding from sheer panic. The survival instinct kept her eyes on the full description of what she’d read a few moments earlier.

Nov. 29

        “I suck at daily journal entries. When I am super-happy I write about it and when I am miserable I write dark and depressing stuff. It’s the in between times  when my life is quietly working that I forget to keep track of my memories.Today is my wedding day, so of course I’m writing. The story that made this day possible is a thousand heartbreaks earlier. A million tears in the past.

  So today, I have collected these entries as a way to show what love is,and if I can remember all the details accurately it will tell a real love story, better than a fairy tale because its true.

That stated I will go back a year, or two and try to make this crazy ride I call life make sense.”

     A wayward curl drifted over her sight until she tucked it behind her ear. The twin engine, aluminum can she was crammed into, shuddered in the wind.

Focus,  her mind commanded, forcing her eyes off the erratic movements of the plane. The violence of the storm shook the pages between her fingers as she found the first of her mother’s numbered entries..

          #1 March 1

“I thought I’d   met my prince a few years ago. Like an idiot I didn’t think about it too much and  I fell in love.   I should have known something was wrong when it seemed too perfect. I don’t believe in boy meets girl fairy tales so I’m not sure how I got blindsided by this one, but I did.I could tell you that I never meant to fall in love with Mike, but the truth is…I wanted to.  He was, on the surface, everything a fairy tale prince should be: Handsome, Charming, Sweet and funny.Best of all,   Mike was my best friend.  For me, the greater part of love  is trust.

I chose to fall in love with him,because I  trusted him: his tenderness, the time we shared, talked, laughed and then  spent in each others arms. The stupid girl I was even trusted the passionate parts of our relationship were more than just empty actions. I’d had other guys offer physical enticements, but I wanted Mike’s kisses and middle of the night whisperings to mean that I was his world. I believed actions meant feelings.Ni eve, I know, but I couldn’t let myself believe it wasn’t the same for him. Mike and I were best friends. Best friends don’t get physical and have it mean nothing, right?

It just didn’t seem possible, that for two years I missed the truth. I can see it now. Times he would smile at me, but not say the words. When people would talk about how perfect we were together, and he would withdraw.

If I had been paying attention, the physical part of our ‘friendship’ would have been a red flag instead of the last straw. Too many bad cliches, I know, but that was us. One giant, rotten, tangled cliche. That mess became my life, ,  and when he left me, I did not know how to  love without him.

No amount  of tears on both our parts could unwind it. There weren’t enough therapists or friends, or tubs of mint chocolate chip ice cream to bring him or my heart back. After months of pain and struggle, I realized that waiting and wanting would leave me nothing but alone, so I gathered the  remnants of my world, and  I let go. My whole life was suddenly rearranged, no best friend, no boyfriend, nothing but emptiness where I thought I was loved.”What hurt the most was realizing, I hadn’t fallen in-love; I just collided like a doomed, pain filled,  crashing comet into it.”

      “..”Alex shook her head as tears scratched at the back of her eyes. Mom’s best friend? Why hasn’t she ever told me about this? Thoughts of her mother’s first love mangled into images of Jay. She couldn’t imagine him acting like this Mike. She didn’t allow herself to imagine being his girlfriend, either. She’d let the thought cross her mind once or twice,but  what her mother was describing was exactly the reasons she wouldn’t fantasize about Jay. She would never let things go that far with him. She couldn’t risk what it might cost her.     

Alex's teeth sunk into the pencil before she let it drop into her bag.  This part of Tricia’s life  existed long before her parents had found each other.  This was a different woman than the mother she had known her whole life, this was a girl, raw and wounded displaying her bleeding heart.  Focusing again on the words , Alex kept reading.

      “I left behind more than my best friend and first love then, I moved, started school and work, in another city and began living with a group of girls that Mike and I both knew.. We   expanded our painful togetherness to include chances to be apart. Yet, we never were.

What made it worse was watching him flourish into a fuller social life with my room mates and girlfriends. I refused to be a  spectator and casualty.. He and I were uncomfortably apart and together as he dated, flirted, and focused on the people that were  my world as well. I don’t know if I wasn’t trying hard enough to get away from him or if he was unconsciously tormenting me with his interest in my girlfriends.  Either way I was crumbling beneath the pressure of my own broken heart, and  the  reality of how little he cared. My prayers were anguished as I begged for the desire to stop loving him. I still thought I could find true love, I just didn’t know how when I’d so thoroughly believed  the charade Mike had sold me.

In the months that followed ,  the ragged edge of my wounded heart always reminded me that I still loved him. A part of me wanted him to wake-up and come running back. Another part knew he wouldn’t. I wasn’t even sure after a year or so that I wanted him as much as I wanted him to suffer.

 The pettiness of that is embarrassing now, then, it was just plain wrong. I moved away again, only to end up on the periphery of his life once more.

This time though, I wanted him to move on as much as I wanted to be friends the way we had been. My pain had boiled down to just regret. I was sure I could live with the truth, and with him there to remind me of it.

   Alex wiped the silent tears that had begun to slip down her cheeks as she remembered the story. Before the landing, the night and storm had evaporated along with her fears, leaving raw emotion in their wake.  In Charles’ defense,” I was a little over sensitive when I got off the plane.   she thought.”

Silently scolding her fly away temper, she pulled the bent pages from her bag and turned back to the first page, to start the story again. The frozen air drifting up the gang plank sent a shiver down her spine as her mother’s words became auditory in her mind.

# 9 April 4

We all went dancing again tonight Yeah, all of us. I swear my new roommate’s know three quarters of the single guys  in the valley and they follow us around like we hold the secret key to the cookie jar. . I’m not sure why I keep tagging along with Laura and Melanie to these things except that I don’t want to sit home wondering if there is something else I should be doing. Laura is always trying to find anyone to add to the entourage. the crowds at the club keep her calendar full and her social life frantic. Mel on the other hand seems fairly particular. She has introduced me to some of the guys she knows. They seem a little more…mature.  Tonight there was only one that made an impression though, maybe because it wasn’t the first time I have ever met him.

I don’t know how long he’d been sitting beside me when his voice firstcaught my attention.

     “Hi, again.” He said with a crooked smile,”I think we met a couple of months back? I used to be your roomate’s boyfriend.”

 I thought I remembered the smile but mostly it was his cobalt blue eyes and the sound of his voice that made me focus on him. He explained that we had met a few months earlier when my old roommate Ashley had introduced him to  a group of us going dancing.

It sounded familiar because Mike had been particularly focused on Ashley that  night, despite the fact she  had a boyfriend. I must have  been  distracted by Mike’s presence as usual, because I barely remembered this  guy.

     I almost choked as our first meeting suddenly came to mind. That was the night she was going to break up with him, because she and Mike were messing around. From this guy’s description of how I knew him, she had done it.

Living with Ashley for over six months taught me to recognize the victims of her tease ‘em and leave ‘em games, so when his introduction had included the words ‘I used to be your roommate's boyfriend I’m sure I must have cringed openly at him.     

 He just offered a crooked grin and a shrug, as he laced his fingers behind his head to stare off into the crowd. I clumsily apologized for her behavior, feeling more guilty for knowing Mike’s part than really feeling sorry for Ashley.

     No big deal,” he said.”We just had different  idea’s about dating. I wasn’t totally sold on her and she wanted it to include   all  other guys.”

     I shake my head even now, thinking of it, but he hadn’t seemed to upset. It was a good sign that he was there at the club. Ashley told me a few weeks ago that he was lost without her and spent all his time alone. This guy did not seem to me like anyone who was lost. talking to him for just those few moments tonight made more of an impression than any other conversation I’d tried to have in the midst of screaming music and clamoring crowds.

 He seemed solid, confident, , quiet but polite. I didn’t see that much of him, I don’t know why I remember except that Ashley and Mike are a sore subject for me. Part of me believed Mike  got from her what he was good at handing out, because she played with him before dumping him for another guy. The whole mess just felt…rotten. I didn’t know this guy, but  I went from feeling sorry for him to being glad he’d dodged that bullet. It had only taken a few words.

Anyway…it doesn't matter Melanie and Laura came and grabbed him to dance, and  before I could even ask his name he was gone.

     

Alex shook her head again, digging in the bag for her red pencil.  This random guy was so arbitrary here.  What was her mom thinking including him.  The manuscript had black marker covering portions of the journal entries that her mother didn’t think were needed. Perhaps in her zest to discard more intimate parts of her life story Tricia had marked out the portion that would have connected this memory with her broken heart, but having no idea what parts she was Missing Alex once again felt the impatience of her trip flaring her criticism. She jotted a note in the margin to Tricia.  Random Mom,  she scribbled. Who is this? Is it Dad? is he with your roommates. Connect him or this experience more clearly to Mike.  She pursed the  pencil between her lips to read again, when her phone’s tone rang from her bag.

      Alex scrambled for it, hoping Charles had called her back and decided to be a man.  Her fingers fumbled impatiently racing against her quickened pulse to answer the call and hear his voice, when her eyes caught sight of Jay’s number flashing across the screen.  Alex smiled as she answered without hesitating.

      “”It’s waaay past your bedtime. What are you doing calling me so late.”

     Lex, you OK?”

      “Jay,” Alex chided playfully, “Its after one in the morning.  Why aren’t you asleep?”

     The hard edge of his voice softened noticeably and Alex heard him let out an unconscious sigh.

        ““”Well, Its only midnight here, and my best friend has been highjacked by a storm somewhere in the Midwest.  I couldn’t go to bed,  until I'd at least heard the ransom demand.”

      Alex laughed letting the tenseness of her jaw muscles unclench with his teasing.  She glanced around the cold room drawing in a deep breath.

     “I’m in Chicago, right now.but the delays in Vegas made me miss my connecting flight and I may be spending the night in O’hare..”

     “you could be back here in a couple of hours and if I meet you in vegas you could spend at least part of the night in your own bed.”

     Alex heard the wistful tone of his voice and her heart ached to just follow his advice.  She did not respond to the silence palpable through their wireless connection and Jay cleared his faltering voice again.

      “so, assuming you can fly anywhere… what happens after you get out of Chicago?”

      Alex opened her mouth to give him her practiced explanation, but retracted it before it could leap off her tongue..  What was her plan now? To go and convince Charles?, To break up with him? For a brief moment her mind screamed that she should just turn around and go back to McCarran. If she were going somewhere tonight maybe it should just be home.  She could hear jay’s stumbling footsteps keeping pace with his breaths across the line, and she quickly silenced the arguments in her mind.  He would  meet her in Las Vegas, and it was the middle of the night. She couldn’t do that to him, she had to get a hold of herself and be reasonable.

     “I don’t know, Jay.” She relinquished in a broken breath. “Charles is…reevaluating..uhh…us.  I’ll have to get back to you on that.” 

Jay’s breaths were heavy and even now, as if he was trying not to hyperventilate as Alex bit her lip waiting for his response.

     “I don’t care what Chucky’s plans are,” Jay stated.  “What do you want to do?”   

she clenched her teeth expecting the pause to give him a chance to start ranting about this stupid plan and her idiot boyfriend.  The line remained silent though until Jay spoke again.  His voice, so quiet it came only as a whisper.

      “Every relationship takes work Lex, no matter who you decide to be happy with, as long as your happy.  Are you sure this is the one you want to work on?”

          Alex gulped back her fraying nerves. “This is the one that needs me to work on it.

      Lowering her escalating tone, she cleared her throat with a shuddered breath. “It’s like you said, I just have to choose to be happy.”

    She was glad that he was a thousand miles from where she now sat.  she would never have been able to  convince him if he  had  looked into her eyes. If she was aware of the tension between them, Jay was probably ready to chew through his tongue.

 “then I guess you’re going to New York.” Jay said, his voice gruff and tired. “and I’ll see you …uhh…when you get back.” 

“until then,” she said leaning back against the frigid window. "Tell me about the game tonight?”

Jay groaned bringing a smile to Alex’s lips. “I didn’t get any draft offers from the NBA.”

“What about from your Dad and Grandpa?”

“How did you know I met with the Jorge’s tonight?”

Alex twirled a curl around her index finger. “Its Thursday, right?”

Jay’s low chuckle caressed her cheek again. “Yeah, well I didn’t get any further with my dad than usual. He did offer me a part time gig as a busboy at Mama’s restaurant.”

“Because the 12 hours a day you put in at the shop aren’t enough?”

The line remained quiet until Jay cleared his throat. “Speaking of that, I’ve got to get some sleep before work. Are you Okay? Have you got the pepper spray I gave you?”

“Yeah Dad,” Alex said. “I know you’re not this worried about my being attacked by strangers. What’s wrong?”

“Alex I just-“ The phone became silent again. “I just want you to be happy.”

Alex sniffled. “I will be, maybe not stuck in this airport, but eventually. Don’t worry so much.”

Before she’d hung up Jay had stopped talking. He gave her yawns and grunts, but she knew he’d said everything he was going to. The more they'd talked the more distant he'd become. Something was bothering him. She wished she were close enough to find out what. Her hand tightened around the phone as she fought with her desire to call him back and get him to talk about it. The blinking of her digital clock caged the temptation. It was the middle of the night. She'd take care of it tomorrow.

T'was The Week Before Christmas

There was a Christmas rage a few years ago where "parenting experts" recognized that children were becoming too caught up in the materialism of the season. The recommendation that was announced on a popular daytime talk show was for parents to adopt a new sort of shopping list. It should look like this:
#1. Something the child wants-just one item.
#2. Something the child needs-just one item.
#3. Something to wear-you get the idea.
#4. Something to read.
It became a nationwide brilliant concept for at least one holiday season.
I was a little confused about the talk this idea generated, especially amongst the women I know. It relieved parents of undue pressure to over spend. It took the pressure off to buy your children's approval. It put an importance on removing materialism from the tradition of Christmas.
Perhaps because I have never considered myself my kids friend, I didn't get caught up in the movement. Perhaps because I have always avoided materialism where my kids are concerned. Perhaps because I'm chaep and work on a budget year round.
Regardless, the short list was something I worked off of before it was officially a list.
The older my kids grow, the harder it is to keep the budget from getting crazy but the most important things surrounding Christmas have never been gifts. I must admit though, when it comes to the last item-something to read. I loose all semblance of control.
My sons are huge readers. We have been reading, out loud and in private since the boys were babies. I buy my husband "Daddy" books for Father's Day, even though he doesn't read a lot. I want to order everything off the school book order. I have to stay off of amazon.com or I'll blow the grocery budget on books.
So as I went looking for books for my kids for christmas, I had a difficult time narrowing it down to one book. One of my boys got an entire series, one a 525 page novel, and one the first three in a 5 book set, the fifth has not been released.
While cringing over the final bill, I realized I hadn't gotten myself an audio book. I went shopping again.
My tastes for reading are ecclectic though. I like medical drama, historical fiction and non-fiction, romance, mystery, thriller, fantasy, and some Sci-fi. I didn't have enough budget left to satisfy my reading desires.
A friend of mine sent me a link to her Christmas Anthology and I hit pay dirt. 12 short stories based off of classic christmas carols but told from a multitude of genre's and author's points of view.
I can't buy every bookI want to or cover all the talented author's out there so instead I'm leaving a list of Christmas Anthologies for this holiday season. Give yourself a gift this year and go check it out.
www.amazon.com/Sing-We-Now-Christmas-Anthology/dp/1479266248
All I'm Asking For: A Contemporary Christmas Anthology Amazon.com
Love Under the Christmas Tree (Christmas Anthology ...
www.amazon.com ›
www.likesbooks.com
christmas.html
Christmas - A Treasured Anthology - LifeWay Christian Resources
www.lifeway.com/ 2013 -
Next week is Christmas and I will post the next chapter in Why Love A man Who Loves An Ugly Car-Enjoy and Happy Holidays-Merry Christmas

Author Review: Scott Driscoll

Are Three some things worth risking everything for? Are there some things that have too high of a price? In Scott Driscoll's Novel "Better You Go Home" he answers these questions from the viewpoint of not only a man in search of a lost home from his childhood, but lost family, history, and maybe even his own life?
The Main Character,Charles Lenoch,  needs a kidney, he needs to find the truth of his father's escape from Checkylslovakia in 1938, and he needs to find his half sister before his kindney's fail.
As a diabetic who has gone through kidney transplant, pancreas transplant, blindness and the other trials of the disease, I connected with this character. I know the pain, struggle, exhaustion, and depression that can accompany critical and permanent illness.
While these aspects of Friscoll's main character added urgency to the story, it was the enviroment of post communist Checkylslovakia that kept me in the story. The fear, paranoia, bitterness, and even the blooning hope felt very genuine throughout the telling of this story. The advice to go home permeated the checkylslvakian's  advice to littner. His passion to do just that while remaining in Checkylslovakia was an interesting juxta-position in the novel. Going home becomes the remaining desire of each character as they explore the true path leading them there.
Home is never so distant nor cherished as it is when you are there and still can't find your way back to your family.
"Better you go home" is a tragic tale of loss and oppression punctuated by the deeper understanding of who and what home and family really are.

 Scott Driscoll, an award-winning instructor (the University of
Washington, Educational Outreach award for Excellence in Teaching
in the Arts and Humanities 2006), holds an MFA from the University of
Washington and has been teaching creative writing for the University of
Washington Extension for seventeen years.
Driscoll makes his living as a writer and teacher. While finishing Better
You Go Home—a novel that has been several years in the making and which
grew out of the exploration of the Czech side of his family in the 1990s after
Eastern Europe became liberated—Driscoll kept busy freelancing stories to
a variety of magazines, both commercial and literary. He most often writes
feature stories on subjects ranging from health to philanthropy to education
to general reporting for Alaska and Horizon Airlines Magazines, but he also
does profiles and book reviews, including an October 2010 profile for Ferrari
Magazine 11, and a July/August ’08 profile in Poets and Writers Magazine.
Driscoll’s short stories and narrative essays have been published
extensively in literary journals and anthologies, including Image Magazine,
Far From Home (a Seal Press anthology), Ex-Files: New Stories About Old
Flames (a Context Books fiction anthology featuring high-profile writers such
as David Foster Wallace, Jennifer Egan, and Junot Diaz), The Seattle Review,
Crosscurrents, Cimarron Review, The South Dakota Review, Gulfstream,
American Fiction ’88 and others.
Driscoll has been awarded seven Society of Professional Journalists
awards, most recently in 2009 for social issues reporting, and including best
education reporting and general reporting 2004. His narrative essay about
his daughter’s coming of age was cited in the Best American Essays, 1998, and
while in the MFA program, he won the University of Washington’s Milliman
Award for Fiction (1989).
You can find Driscoll on the Web at www.scott-driscoll.com

Bricks or Walls

I am almost certain my husband's head is going to explode if he has to listen to me analyze any more of our problems while I try to find solutions. I can hear him roll his eyes at me while I pick every aspect of every barrier apart.
I don't know if this is true for men vs. women. If it's a phenomenon that occurs when a linear thinker has to compromise with a bottom line thinker. Maybe it's just the nature of how we have  made it through the last sixteen years together. I'm not sure, but I have learned a few things about problem solving from him.
For example, when I take on a writing project, I  see the great wall of china towering over me: Protagonist,Antagonist, helper, catalyst, setting, time period, problem to be overcome, romance?, backstory, conflict...
The list of my individual bricks goes on and on. I can't sit down at my computer and whip out more than about a thousand words pertaining to the first item on that list, Much less the details of the list itself.
My husband's comment to this is:
 "A thousand words sounds like the wall to me."
He can fix, build, renovate, roof, wire,figure out just about anything. If an engine has a cracked head he knows how to get it re-surfaced. If the washer won't shut, he knows how to get it to cooperate. To him those are bricks. To me those are walls
It seems to me that compromise is just a matter of perception. He thinks of bricks as problems he knows how to solve or that he can learn to overcome without too much effort.Wall demolished.
I think of bricks as things I can practice doing to learn how that will dismantle the wall.
My walls don't come tumbling down in a grand show of shattered bricks and clouds of dust. My walls are stacks of bricks  set off to the side and out of my way.
There are benefits to both. His way is a great show where we mere mortals ooh and aww when he's finished.
My way is a brief letting through of light that becomes first a window and eventually a door.
Not as showy or impressive as his, but cleaner.
As I try to wrap my brain around our differences and appreciate them for what they both contribute, I also recognize a larger truth.
Whether I'm moving bricks, or he's blasting walls. The light will come in. If my goal is the light of growth, knowledge, and experience, then why am I so worried about the condition of the wall?
Some day perhaps I will learn to use a wrecking ball. It's  a visual I I have a hard time focusing on because all I hear is the overwhelming noise.
Perhaps one day he'll want a door, or window, but it's more likely he'll spend time building them instead of moving bricks.
The secret is to know your self, and your obstacles. If your a blaster, blast away. Just remember not all walls hold you back. Some hold you together.
If you're a brick mover, just remember.Not all bricks can be moved aside. Sometimes moving those bricks creates a new wall.