Author name: Sayling@@Away

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen       Legends of Windermere  – The Mercenary Prince by Charles Yallowitz is new and is available on Amazon for $2.99  This is Book 9 in this fantastic fantasy series. About the author: I met Charles through the blogosphere and enjoy his sense of humor. Here is his description of himself: Moniker:  Charles Edward Yallowitz Origin:  Long Island, NY Birthday: April 9th (that’s all you get)                                        Marital Status:  Legally binding, I checked                         Sex: Ask my wife                                    Children:  No thanks.  I already have one.     He was born, raised, and educated in New York, spent a few years in Florida, realized his fear of alligators, and moved back to the Empire State. He recounts that he spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world, and the result is Legends of Windermere. When he isn’t writing, he  can be found cooking or going on whatever adventure his son has planned for the day. If you are familiar with his blog, you know he is a prodigious writer Synopsis: Delvin Cunningham has left the champions. Lost to his tribe in the Yagervan Plains, fear and shame have kept the former Mercenary Prince away from his homeland. With his confidence crumbling, he has decided to return and bring closure to his past. Reuniting with his old friends, Delvin’s timing could not be worse as a deadly campaign is brewing within Yagervan’s borders. Dawn Fangs are on the march and these powerful vampires are determined to turn the entire region into a graveyard. To protect his family, friends, and two homelands, Delvin will have to push his doubt away and become the cunning Mercenary Prince once again. Excerpt from The Mercenary Prince With the hint of a smirk, Selenia quickens her pace and unleashes a barrage of blows on her former student. Each strike and stab is deflected by the sweat-covered champion, his speed increasing to match her every time. At one point, the half-elf leaps forward and is struck in her stomach by his shield, which forces her to flip over his head. The headmistress lands in a crouch and whirls around to block the counterattack, the point of Delvin’s sword gently running along the leather patch over her stomach. Realizing that he is still holding back, Selenia bats his next attack away and delivers a painful kick to his exposed side. The blow knocks him against the fountain and he comes dangerously close to falling into the water. While rubbing his bruised side, Delvin circles the headmistress who turns to continue facing him. He makes a few feints that she refuses to acknowledge because they are clumsy and pathetically amateurish. The gathered students and teachers shout for more action, all of them believing the brown-haired warrior to be afraid of the legendary woman. None of them realize that his circles have been getting tighter and his fake attacks have caused Selenia to misjudge his distance. It is something she realizes when Delvin makes a quick swing for her hip and their weapons strike closer to their hilts than she expects. The moment the half-elf steps back to gain some space, her former student pushes forward with precise strikes that mirror the onslaught she previously unleashed. Without a shield, the headmistress finds it more difficult to block every attack and has to twist her body away from several attacks. The movements prevent her from throwing a kick or punch, which would probably hit the shield that he has yet to include in his advance. Selenia eventually catches Delvin’s blade and slides her weapon along its edge to step within his swinging range. The pair push against each other, their muscles straining to gain the upper hand. Every time one of them is about to gain ground, their opponent shifts enough to continue the frustrating stalemate. With a grunt of exertion, Delvin moves his shield in front of the headmistress’s face and blocks her view. Knowing she is expecting him to push forward, the warrior falls onto his back and lets the surprised half-elf’s momentum slam her face into the wooden disc. The back of his head bounces off the ground as he flicks his wrist to deliver an extra shot to Selenia’s chin. She rolls away from him to recover her senses, but Delvin scrambles to keep her in reach and continue his attack as they stand. “You actually hit me,” Selenia states when she notices that her nose is bleeding. She ducks under her opponent’s swing and aims her hilt for his stomach, the blow only grazing his shirt. “I think you’ve achieved two firsts for this academy, Delvin. Nobody has ever drawn my blood or made me dizzy during a match.” You can find Charles: Blog: Legends of Windemere Twitter: @cyallowitz Facebook: Charles Yallowitz Website: www.charleseyallowitz.com As always, if you enjoy this book, don’t forget to write a review for Amazon and copy it to Goodreads! 0 0

These stats got thrown my way so I thought I’s put them out there. Blogging hard to keep y’all interested!   Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. Click here to see the complete report. 0 0

The bad: losing my hard drive – I learned a few days ago that NOTHING was recoverable from the drive. I am only medium blue, because some things I did save to my external hard drive. The ugly: getting older – more wrinkles, hard work to maintain muscle strength, and aches and pains associated with arthritis. Perseverance is the name of the game, but discouraging to know it’s all downhill from here. From FreeImages.com/ There is a dignity to old age, though. This woman has gravitas. The good: more than enough to balance off the bad and the ugly. Publishing my second book, having a vacation in Chicago with my daughter and son-in-law, my trip to Maine, seeing my son (briefly), sky-diving (!), getting to the end of my third book and sending it off to beta readers, swimming anywhere there was water, and of course, the interaction with my family of bloggers. Never a dull moment there and lots to stimulate my brain. Learning should definitely be life-long. In keeping with what I hope will be a regular feature of my blog, I want to introduce new followers: Stuart Aken at http://stuartaken.net/. He’s a writer of news, reviews, writing advice and events and I’ve loved his blog for some time. Michael S. Fedison at https://eyedancers.wordpress.com/ – A site devoted to the young adult sci-fi/fantasy novel The Eye-Dancers. I know a lot of you out there like YA fiction. Blmaluso at https://somebodylovesmeblog.wordpress.com – Sharing God’s love with the world, one heart at a time. A very gentle and sweet blog. Rob A. Smith who blogs at https://tycobbsteeth.wordpress.com – Sound Bites with TyCobbsTeeth: LIFE — Reading, Writing, Roaming and the Experiences that come with. (Tips, Tools, Thoughts, and Stories) Really? How can you not like a blog entitled TyCobbsTeeth? Deke Solomon at https://dekesolomon.wordpress.com An off duty Marine with four cats. You know I love cats, and I’m a military Mom. How can I not like this blog? Ann Fields at http://annfields.com/ – She writes novels, short stories, magazine articles, novellas, scripts and the occasional essay. Check her out! AbbiLu at http://cafebookbean.com where she talks about books and drinks coffee, two of my favorite pastimes! Zipclickzoom, author, whose blog I couldn’t locate but hope he will contact me again. Very nice avatar! Bridget Whelan at http://bridgetwhelan.com – She’s published a book on creative writing with exercises. We all need a stretch from time to time! Vivi Metalium at https://vivimetaliun.wordpress.com – you have to translate her blog, but if you read Portuguese (I believe) you’ll be in heaven and her photos are great! Kathy at http://kafrak.com. She’s a retired teacher with three sons, 42, 36, 34 and three grandchildren, two boys and a girl. She is Living & Loving Life through thoughts, trivia, special times, and special people. Lots of us are retired teachers. A fabulous jewelry design center at https://wearjewels.wordpress.com. Check this out – gorgeous jewelry. Aquiliana at https://aquileana.wordpress.com. She is a young Argentinian writes in Spanish but so many of us can follow her. Check these lovely people out! Happy New Year to you all and thanks for following my blog. 0 0

To all my family and friends, near and far, the happiest of New Years and 365 days of joy and delight in life! Noelle 0 0

This year we were facing a really, really quiet Christmas with our son in Germany and our daughter in LA, so some long-time friends (of 44 years) offered to come from Virginia to share the holiday with us. We had met them when we’d rented the bottom half of their duplex in Newport Beach, CA, the first year we lived there (see my recent Moving Stories post). We had so many adventures with them including a camping trip to Big Sur, when we were nearly washed away in a flash flood, but that’s a story for another time. This year they offered to accompany us to Mass on Christmas Eve. Our church is always crowded for the holiday Masses, but we got there very early with the assumption we’d get a seat. No luck! The church was crowded and people were standing five deep. The seats in the narthex were also full. What to do? Of course! Grab a seat in an overflow room the size of a gymnasium with a closed circuit TV screen at the front. Just the thing, and so uplifting! With the 80 degrees temps outside, hardly felt like Christmas … but I did enjoy meeting two young boys who were sitting next to me, and together we counted the ceiling tiles while waiting for the people in the long lines for Communion to return to their seats. On the way out, I ran into a plate glass floor to ceiling window, thinking it was a door. No damage to it or me, except bruised pride from the spectacle! Christmas day, two colleagues from my former life as an academic at the University of North Carolina joined the four of us for dinner. As we were about to serve, I asked my husband, “Have you seen Elijah Moon recently?” Elijah is our much loved and very spoiled 18 pound orange striped cat. It was getting late in the afternoon, which we call “Coyote Time” since this is when these local predators emerge to hunt any smaller, four-legged prey. Naturally, we thought if Elijah was outside, he could become a meal. So we dropped everything, made two tours of the house to see where he might be lounging. Not finding him, headed outside, calling and whistling. Elijah may be lazy but he always comes when we call him, but not this time. By now, our guests were sensing our distress and volunteered to join the hunt. Turns out it didn’t last long, since this is where he was, the whole time! Hope you had a peaceful, love-filled, and memorable holiday!   On a sad note, I want to extend my prayers and sympathy to sister blogger Jo Robinson, who lost her husband yesterday (https://africolonialstories.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/on-hold/).  I hope she will be back amongst us soon, and that support from our community will buoy her during in this hard time. 0 0

I wish I could wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year or just plain Season’s Greetings. During this past year, you have enriched my life, taught me history, shown me the world through amazing photographs, let me into your life and supported me through thick and thin. It’s been wonderful and I look forward to more. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! 0 0

This was sent to me by a friend of mine. Wish I could claim to have written it! I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: “There is no Santa Claus,” she jeered. “Even dummies know that!” My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her “world-famous” cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true. Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. “No Santa Claus?” she snorted….”Ridiculous Don’t believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let’s go.” “Go? Go where, Grandma?” I asked. I hadn’t even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun. “Where” turned out to be Kerby’s General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. “Take this money,” she said, “and buy something for someone who needs it. I’ll wait for you in the car.” Then she turned and walked out of Kerby’s. I was only eight years old. I’d often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock’s grade-two class. Bobby Decker didn’t have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn’t have a cough; he didn’t have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that. “Is this a Christmas present for someone?” the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. “Yes, ma’am,” I replied shyly. “It’s for Bobby.” The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn’t get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas. That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, “To Bobby, From Santa Claus” on it. Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker’s house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa’s helpers. Grandma parked down the street from Bobby’s house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. “All right, Santa Claus,” she whispered, “get going.” I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby. Fifty years haven’t dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker’s bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were — ridiculous. Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team. I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95. May you always have LOVE to share, HEALTH to spare and FRIENDS that care… And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!         Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! 0 0

Just want to let all of my blogging friends  know I have managed to rig something up with a lap top that suffices for the time being in terms of emails and posting. I have still not figured out how to avoid neck stiffness if I sit there for more than an hour or two, no matter how many books I put under the lap top or how I raise or lower my chair. I also need binoculars to see the screen. Computer returns tomorrow, a blank book of empty files.  However, I have sent the fried hard drive off to CA and am hopeful the company on the receiving end can recover everything. Until then, I’m baaaack although intermittently, sort of like cell phone service in certain areas. Christmas is looking up, although we discovered a leak in the roof yesterday… 0 0

It’s been a truism in our family that Christmas always brings a disaster: the car throws a rod, a roof starts leaking, termite damage suddenly appears. This time my computer crashed, and at such an importune time: I’m starting the serious edit of my third book. The hard drive can and will be replaced, but I’m going to have to pay $$$$ to recover my files. Before you ask, yes, I do have an external hard drive, but I don’t always remember to save things to it and all of my pictures never made it there. I was told that our homeowners policy may cover the recovery (after the deductible, of course!), so there is a little light here. So, my dear friends, if you do not get messages from me on your blogs, please know that I have limited access to a working computer, especially for the time I need.  I hope to be back soonest. In the meantime. I’m giving you a picture of one of my Christmas camellia trees and its lovely pink blossoms to lighten the mood! 0 0

We all have moving stories, right? Moving as in translocation – but do let me know if these move you to tears! This is the first of two moving stories for us, this first from Cleveland to Irvine, California. When I had finished my graduate work at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland and graduated with my Ph.D., Hubs and I moved to Irvine, where my husband’s thesis adviser was now the Dean of Biological Sciences and in whose lab Hubs needed to work for another year to finish up his thesis work. We were still impoverished students – I didn’t have a job and now that I had graduated, our $466. 66 combined monthly salary was now halved. So we sold everything we owned except for one chair and our bed, which we placed on a moving van to be delivered who knew when. We had signed a lease for the downstairs of a duplex near Newport Beach (a low rate winter rental) – we were determined to enjoy the beach life in California, if only for a season. In the meantime, we were going to live with the head technician of Hubs’ adviser and her husband until September. Before we left, our Jewish neighbors treated us to a meal with so many delicious dishes, we lost count. Our neighborhood in Cleveland Heights was Jewish Orthodox, and we frequently were asked to come over and turn lights on or off or raise the heat, after sundown on Friday night. If it snowed on Friday and Saturday, we would shovel our neighbors’ walk. In return, we would find a large box of bakery goodies on our stairs when we came home from church on Sunday morning, since the husband worked in a local Jewish bakery. We left Cleveland at the end of May. The cats were being taken care of by some friends, to be flown out to California once we’d settled in. Since we were going to be camping along the way to save money, the cats didn’t figure into our plans. We spent our first three nights of the trip with friends in Milwaukee and then Northfield, MN. In Northfield, we visited the bank, now a restaurant, that the James gang had robbed and saw the bullet holes still in the walls. From Northfield on, we were on our own. I recall camping by the side of the road, along a river, one night, but other than that, I can’t recall where we camped until we got to the Grand Tetons. I know we visited the famous Wall Drug, in Wall, South Dakota, visited Mount Rushmore, and crossed the Bighorn Mountains, stopping at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument . Then we headed south into Wyoming to Grand Teton National Park. At that time, you didn’t need a reservation for the park, but we arrived late in the day at the Jenny Lake Campground, where we wanted to stay, and there were no campsites available. So we drove to Lizard Creek Campground on Jackson Lake, a more remote campground for tenters. We spent a really cold night in our little two-man mountain tent, complete with icicles hanging on the inside in the morning, and left to get to Jenny Lake early. Luck was with us, because a couple of guys from Ohio were leaving and gave us their site, based on our Ohio license plate! We took a hike that day, and that’s where things changed. I’d been having pain in my legs for about two months and it became severe by the time we hit the Tetons and I couldn’t deal with it any more. So we found an MD in Jackson Hole, who told me I had deep vein thrombosis. He warned if I took any more hikes into the mountains, I’d probably have to be carried out, maybe dead. His recommendation: five days in bed with my legs up. We scrounged up a bunch of change and called my parents on a local pay phone (no cell phones back then) to tell them what had happened. I remember crying on the phone about the move. They sent us money via Western Union (no instant bank transfers then either) for a motel. I did spend five days in bed with my legs elevated, watching soap operas on TV and eating take out. Hubs tried to amuse himself, but I could tell he was bored. At the further recommendation of the MD, I rode the rest of the way in the backseat of our car, with my legs up. Our next stop was Zion National Park. We arrived there in the late afternoon, pitched the tent, got some dinner, and decided to hit the sleeping bags early. We figured the warm temperatures would drop at night, forgetting we were now in Utah. When it failed to cool down, we first lay on top of the sleeping bags, then stripped down to our underwear, and finally removed even that. About 10 PM, two large RVs pulled in on either side of us. Lights came on, doors opened and kids clambered out, using flashlights to find their way to the bathrooms. When they passed out tent, they stopped to look inside. Of course. Then we heard, “Mom, Dad, there’s some naked people sleeping in the tent.” I don’t recall what Mom and Dad replied, but thank heavens the lights quickly disappeared. Cutting south from Zion to reach US 40, we stopped in Needles because our engine was overheating. The car we had at the time did not have air conditioning, and we drove with the windows down and two large containers of Cool Aid to drink when we got thirsty (no cooler – an added expense). We sat in a cafe chilled to about 60o, drinking coffee and shivering while a mechanic analyzed the problem. It turned out to be a radiator leak, the very last thing we needed. I could have cried. Since we were about to cross