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When I was growing up, my father would once or twice a month make what we called Saturday family announcements, such as “Today we’re going to clear land.” These pronouncements were made with a veiled threat of “or else” and all the imperiousness of his New England stock. If it weren’t for the fact that “the land” was about four acres, we kids might have laughed ourselves silly. There were five terraces leading up to our house, wild and full of brambles and wild blackberries. The lowest terrace, where our house had once been, based on the foundation walls we found there, was next to the main road, and it and the next one up had ancient apple trees that bore fruit sporadically. However, you put your pants and legs at risk if you wanted to eat one. The third terrace up was half-full of orange daylilies, which bloomed spectacularly in the summer and spread a little each year. The next terrace up contained even thicker bushes, and the terrace after, just before you got to the lawn, was where Dad had established a beachhead for brush burning. My father was determined to clear those terraces, and the fact that we couldn’t do this enormous job in one or two weekends a year meant that the brush never was truly removed; it just grew back to be cleared again. Nevertheless, Dad was undaunted, and we suffered on together in true pioneer form. We usually cleared the land in late spring/early summer or early fall, when it was warm and humid and the poison ivy was in full bloom. Dad would get a burning permit from the town and start bushwhacking early Saturday morning with his machete. Mom, my brother Jay, and I would find gloves and haul brush to the towering inferno below our lawn. In the early days, Dad wasn’t too good at recognizing poison ivy, and if we were really sweaty, he and I would come down with a good dose of it. Burning poison ivy also proved to be dangerous, since a good dose of the smoke would also cause insufferable itching. For some genetic reason, Jay and Mom were impervious to poison ivy, so I was also insufferably envious. Despite her lack of sensitivity to that evil weed, Mom found a great way to get out of the bush burning: she would haul brush for about 30 minutes and then retreat to the house, where she told us she had work to do. Dad believed her, and Jay and I would have been only too happy to join her. After each of these attempts to clear the land and despite the precautions taken – long sleeved shirts and long pants which became soaked with sweat – I never failed to be scratching away at my rash and wearing pink calamine lotion to social functions for the next week or so.   0 0

I met Anthony Vicino though his blog, One Lazy Robot. He writes perceptive and funny and helpful posts about the art of writing and also reviews of current movies and books in the sci-fi genre, most of them hysterical. I look forward to his posts and am frequently surprised by them. He also writes sci fi books and I love this genre, especially when it offers great concepts and a little humor, along with serious pathos. This is Anthony’s novella, Parallel. It begins with two wonderful characters, the super intelligent Hari and Gerald, long-time friends who accidently tear a hole in time and place. Then he takes the reader to the world of the Lenoreans. Here aliens have advanced millennia beyond humans in technology and mental ability, but suffer the same problems of limited resources – in this case, an energy source that is needed to save their world. When Hari and Gerald’s rift appears, Ryol is sent to investigate it on behalf of the Alliance to which her planet belongs. Ryol’s meeting with Hari and Gerald is comedic and wonderful. Unfortunately, she is followed to Earth by the insect- and war-like Gaesians, who want the energy source for themselves. The Gaesians plan to use it as leverage in their struggle with the Lenoreans, who want to evict them from the Alliance because of their belicosity. Their presence promises the destruction of Earth, and Ryol has to decide which word she will save – her own or ours. I raced through this novella and was wanting more when it came to the end: more about Keepers and Healers and First Engineers, the alien society, their technology and their world alliance. A novella doesn’t give the author much time to develop his or her characters, but Mr. Vicino did a cracking job. He gave me a tantalizing taste of a future world, and I hope Parallel leads to a full length novel. About the author: According to his biography on Amazon, Anthony writes Science Fiction and Fantasy in Oakland, CA where it never rains unless he has to ride his bike someplace. When he isn’t sitting in front of a computer screen contemplating the thousand different ways his character can escape the asylum with nothing but a fork, a shoelace, some chutzpah, and a lot of snark, he is no doubt out climbing a rock in the Sierra Mountains. If not there, you may find him in the ocean, pretending to surf. You can find Parallel at Anthony’s blog is: http://onelazyrobotblog.com 0 0

My mother, in addition to being just plain smart about lots of things, including how to handle Dad’s whims, was also very handy. She had painted all the rooms in the house, replaced panes of glass, and could do a rewiring job if necessary. She could hook rugs and was also a darned good cook. One thing she had never mastered was sewing. Memmere (her mother) was a whiz with the needle and  made her grandchildren’s clothes for years, but this was something Mom usually avoided. One summer, she decided to make me a bathing suit. I think she figured a bathing suit was an easy place to start sewing. It was a cotton knit affair, which she made because I’d grown up and out rather quickly in the past year, and my old suits had become dangerously revealing. What Mom forgot, and what I knew, is that with the development of breasts, I’d become hideously self-conscious. One of the things I could do well was swim fast. Technique was definitely not my forte, but I was taller and stronger than my teammates on the Eel River Beach Club team and could power my way to the end of the pool faster than anyone in my age group. At one particular swim meet with another club, I lined up at the deep end of the pool for the start of a freestyle race, proudly sporting the newly constructed two piece bathing suit. Many of the kids at the pool wore two piece suits at that time, even for meets, but what I realized, as I stepped to the line, was the suit had not been tested for its swim-worthiness, let alone its ability to stay in place during a racing dive. At the sound of the gun, I hit the water in a flat, extended position (in those days you did not do an extended mermaid kick underwater) and began to swim mightily, only to discover that I had nothing around my chest – but something was indeed wrapped around my waist. I continued to swim for a few strokes, then stopped in the middle of the course and pulled my top up, while all the spectators looked on. Instant, grinding mortification. I never wore that bathing suit again. As I grew older and swam seriously, the beauty of a one piece suit became clear, and to this day I’m a firm believer in the value of having your suit in one piece. Another morsel of memory: some Olympic training coaches visited our team once and talked to me and another teammate – a tiny pixie with blonde hair for whom the water just seemed to part – about whether we’d be interested in a serious training camp. I can’t remember what happened after that; they may have talked to our parents, who nixed the idea. But it’s nice to think about, all these decades later.   0 0

I do like to read the occasional political thriller, and this one was novel to me in that it was written from the point of view of a newspaper man. The author, Bill Johnstone, is a print journalist himself, having worked for The Times, The Observer and the BBC plus a host of other media outlets. There was plenty of tension in this, the sixth in Johnstone’s Mike McCabe series. The story is set in London and Washington and opens with McCabe looking forward to a leisurely day polishing his boss, off an easy piece and enjoying the evening on his barge/home. His plans are disrupted by a call from Scott Edmunds, editor of the Herald. He is sending McCabe to Washington to follow up on news he’s received from several sources, including his reporter in Washington, Brook Lawrence. US Senator Charles McKinsey has been shot in his home, apparently the victim of a break-in, and John Rochester, a media tycoon and owner of the paper McCabe works for, has been involved in a single vehicle accident and is near death. McCabe begins by meeting with Lawrence and interviewing the detective who is investigating the Rochester accident. He also meets a young woman who is a tie between both the Rochester and McKinsey families. A Chinese spy, brought to the US under the guise of an assistant to some high level US-China diplomatic meetings, bugs McCabe’s hotel room to find out what he knows. Soon McCabe and the reader is involved in a web of political intrigue and conspiracy concerning the national debt of the US and the amount of that debt being carried and supported by the Chinese, a contemporary issue affecting the economies of both countries and the world. Are the attack on McKinley and the car crash of Rochester related? Why are the Chinese interested in what McCabe is discovering for his story? Why is the FBI involved? There is a lot of potential in this tale of intrigue, but it took me a long time to become engaged because of the tremendous amount of backstory and “telling” at the beginning of the book. There was also a lot of jumping from one point of view to another, sometimes abruptly, which was confusing. The characters are well drawn and Johnstone’s newspaper background comes through loud and clear. McCabe is particularly likeable, as is the police detective. However, the weaving of the main plot and subplot especially at towards the end seemed uneven and, for this reader, was not particularly satisfying. Having said that, I am very aware spy thrillers are usually written by men for men. As a woman, I look for details and this book is spare in description, something I’ve noted in other books in this genre by men. But gender aside, I think anyone would want a fast pace, taut dialogue, and lots of tension. White Collar Option does satisfy this in parts. Bill Johnstone attended school in Scotland, where he studied engineering, but through his interest in radio ended up in journalism. After almost 20 years as a journalist, he got his Masters at the University of Westminster, London and then a Ph.D. at the University of Florida. He has taught journalism in the UK and the USA. His six novels are political thriller with the investigative journalist Mike McCabe.   0 0

Mom always served vegetables – canned when I was very young, then later, frozen vegetables, as they became more widely available. In the summer, we had fresh vegetables from Mr. Capozucca’s farm. Mr. Capozucca was a short, stubby Italian truck farmer, who used to drive up our long driveway twice a week in an old milk delivery truck and open up the back for Mom to pick out what she wanted. Squash, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, corn and eggplant packed the shelves in the truck. Mr. Capozucca didn’t speak English very well, but he made my mother laugh. Sometimes his daughter would come with him – a wildly beautiful, leggy girl, totally unself-conscious. This same girl actually volunteered to baby sit my brother, at a time when my parents couldn’t find anyone willing to do it. My brother was a tow-headed, blue-eyed monster, and every teenager in the town avoided us like the plague. Mom had been praying regularly to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, and when Mr. Capozucca’s daughter actually took him to the farm for a day, my mother elevated her to somewhere on a par with the Virgin Mary. Other trucks came up our driveway on the regular basis, one of them driven by the milkman. He always left the bottles of milk by the back door, the kind in glass bottles with a narrow neck in which a layer of cream rose to the top. Mom always decanted the cream to use for coffee. Since both my brother and I turned out to be the only left-handers in the entire extended family, the standard joke was that we had been sired by the milkman. And every year the knife sharpener came. He would ring his bell at the bottom of the driveway, and Mom would go out and wave to him to come up. He carried his sharpening wheel on his back, along with his pack, a blanket, and various instruments belted around his middle. His hair was long and tied back, and he was always neat and clean, wearing a dress shirt with worn denim pants. I was told that he walked up and down the length of the East coast, heading north in the spring and south in the fall, and made a good enough living to send his children to college. For weeks after his visit, I would dream of wandering around the country with just a pack, but without the sharpening wheel.   0 0

Looking back, I can see that I was extremely lucky. My summers in Plymouth were darned near perfect. New England summers by and large have wonderful weather, a great time to be outside, doing whatever. My brother and I were free range kids, year round. Our playmates were spread over a mile or two, and we could be found anywhere, and unless we were at the Eel River Beach Club, Mom used to ring a large cow bell to summon us home for supper. I used my memories of this club to write about the scenes at the swim club in my first book, Death in a Red Canvas Chair. So let me tell you about where I lived. My family and I lived in a then 100 year old house with 14 rooms, three stories high, counting the gables for the third floor rooms – square and unyielding even to hurricane force winds. Its many windows reflected the sky and ocean. It sat across the road from the beach, and at night, you fell asleep to the sound of waves or the lonely fog horn on Gurnet lighthouse. The house still sits on roughly five acres of land, arranged in terraces leading up from Warren Avenue; while it has been on the top terrace for many years, there was evidence that the entire thing had been moved from the first terrace by the road, back in horse and buggy days. You can only imagine what that might have entailed. The house has a porch which wraps all around it; at that time, the part off of our kitchen was screened in and we ate there almost every evening to the accompaniment of crickets and warm breezes. What I plan to do with this series of posts is tell all y’all (as they say here in the south) a few stories about my summers. Imagine warm, lazy days – Mom handing clothes out back in our drying yard to dry, bees and humming birds buzzing around the blossoms on the trumpet vines that covered the lattice work wall surrounding that space. Wind rustling the pine needles of the enormous tree in the back yard where perched our tree house (a platform two stories up, no ladder, you climbed), and in the two other tall pine trees, between which ran a 4×4 to hold my swing. My Dad had put the seat of the swing up high, so I could hang by my knees from the seat and swing with my hair brushing the ground. On the porch to one side of the house on the porch was a hammock, great for dreaming away an afternoon. Summer chores were few: help with hanging out the clothes and taking them in, setting the table, dishes after supper, keeping my room in some order. The rest was just FUN! Happy Fourth of July, everyone! 0 0

Hello friends and followers of Noelle! My name is Fia Essen. I’ve been an expat since childhood. I grew up in the stables of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, surrounded by horses, philandering polo players, and the occasional Boa Constrictor. Currently, I live in Athens, Greece with my Yorkshire Terrier. I’m an author. I’ve written two novels and they’ve both been published this year. Now I’m working on my third novel. I love to write. I get to make up stories on the job. What could be more fun?  But as I’ve discovered since I made the decision that I wanted to become an author, the actual writing is a relatively small part of being an author. Promoting my books and finding readers takes up a lot more time and effort. That’s why I’m so grateful to have kind friends like Noelle who are willing to help me out. Today, she has offered to let me tell you guys a little more about my books. Ariel is a half-English, half-American, lifelong expat who was born in Hong Kong and now lives in Singapore. At the age of thirty-four, she is in debt and out of luck. She used to have a great career, a penthouse she shared with her boyfriend of ten years, and a group of fun friends. Now she has a dead-end job, a rented hovel of a home, and a rising stack of unpaid bills to keep her company. In essence, this is a story about finding the courage to pick yourself up when you’ve hit rock-bottom and starting over. Of course, there is also intrigue and romance in the book. Ariel is summoned by the mysterious Muse Agency and she has no idea what they could possibly want with her. She meets a charming Irishman who makes her feel alive again. But can she work up the courage to take another chance on love? Anna thought she knew exactly where her life was heading. She was wrong. After ten years of climbing her way up the stressful corporate ladder at Milton International, her dream of one day occupying her boss’ corner office has been ripped from her thanks to a round of downsizing. Her boyfriend of five years has dumped her because he didn’t think she shared his vision of their “ideal future” together. In addition to losing her job and boyfriend, she comes to the conclusion she might be losing her mind too. A sane person wouldn’t follow a perfect stranger they meet on a plane to a tiny village no one has heard of on a Greek island, would they? The stranger in question is an irresistibly handsome Englishman with a sympathetic ear. But that’s no excuse to follow him to the place he calls his home and practically move in with him, is it? I’d be thrilled if you read the books and find out how things turn out for Ariel and Anna! You can find Ariel on Amazon in paperback and Kindle here: http://mybook.to/ariel and Anna here: http://mybook.to/anna And if you’d like to get social with me, you can… Visit my Website – http://www.fiaessen.com/ Follow me on Twitter – @FiaEssen https://twitter.com/FiaEssen Join me on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/fiaessen  Thank you! Fia   PS Note to my followers: Do read these books. Aside from being a great writer, Fia is a wonderful person to get to know, so do visit her blog! 0 0

I met the wonderful Olga online via the blogosphere and have enjoyed her posts. She has become a good friend, and I was enthusiastic to participate in her blog tour. She now has six (!) books published, twelve if you count that this bilingual author has translated them into English! There are three books in the Angelic Business Trilogy, which I am posting about today, with Olga’s assistance. The trilogy concerns angels, demons, and teenagers but is far from Land of the Living Dead. Rather, each book is humorous and practical, dealing with issues that are larger than life to a teenager – very appropriate for a YA audience. So without further ado, here is my friend and fellow author: My name is Olga Núñez Miret and I’m a writer, translator, reader, psychiatrist, I love movies, plays, fitness, owls and recently have taken up meditation (mindfulness). (I thought I might as well summarize and not take too much of your time). I’ll leave you some links at the end just in case you want to find out even more about me (I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but hey…do your worst!). I’ve been writing since I was quite young and I write in whatever style the story I have in my head wants to be written in. So far literary fiction, romance, YA, thriller…and a few unfinished works. Around five years ago I discovered and read quite a few interesting Young Adult books and had an idea for what I thought could be a series. At the time I wrote the first of the novels and after trying to find an agent or a traditional publisher without much success, I started self-publishing, but decided to publish some of my other books first. Since then I’ve published 12 books (6 original books and their translations, as I write in English and Spanish). I kept thinking about Angelic Business and a few months later wrote the second novel in the series: Shades of Greg. (No, nothing to do with…) And last year, as part of NaNoWriMo I wrote the third novel in the series, Pink, Angel or Demon? As I had written the three, I thought I’d publish them pretty close to each other so people wouldn’t have to wait to know what happened next (at least not too much). The three books in the Angelic Business collection are now available for pre-order at the special price of $0.99 each. It’s a bargain price and they’ll go up shortly after publication. Here, a video: Link: https://youtu.be/ZKWP_Q89CiQ Angelic Business 1. Pink Matters You are Pink, not the prettiest girl, but smart and with plenty of resources. What do you do when your best male friend offers to have sex with you, because he thinks you’re a lost cause? You plot your revenge with your two best female friends, of course! It seems you’re in luck when a new and mysterious student appears. And, to top it all, he seems interested in you too. He could take part in the plan. But then, he seems to have a plan of his own… He insists he’s not just an ordinary boy. And what seemed so easy to begin with, gets more and more complicated when Heaven and Hell come knocking at Pink’s door. Pink Matters is the story of Pink, a 17 year old girl, good student, articulate and smart. What she has never been the centre of attention or made the top ten of the most popular and attractive girls at school. When two guys, both claiming to be angels, insist that she is, indeed, ‘special’, fight for her attention and help and tell her she is the key to the future of the universe, she can’t help but ask: Why me? And a snippet: “Who are you?” Lorna asked. Before she could say anything else, she froze as if paralyzed. And the same happened to Sylvia. “Oh no, not again” I said. “Hi Pink. I’m Azrael. I’m…” “Let me guess…You’re an angel.” I could say he smiled but it was more like a white light radiating from between his lips. His voice also seemed slightly “otherworldly”. He was nothing like G. Flesh and blood didn’t seem to be his priority. “Yes. I am.” “O…K….And…to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? If you are going to make an announcement of some sort…I could have done with some notice.” The light now seemed to radiate from his whole “body” if that was what it was. Somehow his show was much more believable than G’s. And scarier. “It’s not an announcement as such. But you should know…G…” “Yes?” “I know he told you he’s an angel.” I looked at him. Maybe he was different to G but he could be as annoying as him. And interfering. “Yes. I also “know” things…In my case it is because “I” am an angel. He has not been truthful about his identity.” Pink Matters is currently available for pre-order and will be published on the 26th of June 2015(Amazon time). So, if you’re reading this post after the 26th of June, you’re in luck and can get the book straight away! (I’m also publishing it in other platforms although as their processing speed is different the dates might vary. Do check there or in my website, that I regularly update). Link: http://rxe.me/YIHTW96 In case you’re intrigued, I leave you the cover (reveal!) and links to the other two books. Angelic Business 2. Shapes of Greg What more could happen after the death and resurrection of your mother? What could Heaven and Hell toss at Pink to top that? Well, to start with, she gets a new hellish babysitter, who is seriously hot. And although everybody likes him, he only has eyes for her. When she learns what the price was for the ‘miracle’ of saving her mother, she realises that she must be careful, as Hell doesn’t lose gracefully. One of her friends wants to find

A few weeks ago, I posted about the death of Grayson Queen. His wife, Rara, has a blog, Rarasaur, which given her current situation, she is unable to use. I sent her a letter quoting all of the condolences that people posted to this blog, and here is what she wrote me back: “Thank you for your condolences and kind letter. I especially appreciate the bouquet of warm wishes you collected from the blogosphere. There’s nothing like the wild array of beauty grown from the blogging community. The world is full of love, so full that I am oft overwhelmed by it. In a good way. Please extend my gratitude to all who have reached out with a word or thought. My family appreciated it and I am completely humbled by it, I am also grateful for the mail – it keeps me focused on something other than my worries! I am not quite sure what to write or where, but I am home in 40 days and will be posting again soon, I hope.” If you would like to write to Rara or send her a card, leave a comment and I’ll send her address to you. Thanks to all of my online friends who sent wishes of condolence and encouragement. It clearly meant so much to Rara, and I am honored to have such wonderful people following my blog. 0 0

Trouble Comes in Threes Inspired by today’s humorous post from TanGental (http://geofflepard.com/2015/06/19/international-rescue-south-london-branch/), I feel compelled to comment on what happened when we came back from our last trip. It was sort of like our Christmas curse: every year at Christmas something expensive happens to our house or a car. We now have a Christmas catastrophe fund. But I digress… Number 1: We are packing up to leave Las Vegas for home and my husband opens our computer, which had been sitting on a desk in our hotel room. The screen displays a lovely abstract of lines and colors right in the middle. At that point, we might have been in an evangelical church for all the calling on the Lord. I commented to Mr. Doctor that we could still read around the edges and maybe by making whatever we were looking at very small, we could see the whole thing. Plus I pointed out that I had worn the letters off the keys and was working with a rubber pad printed with keys laid over the originals. The pad did keep moving to the left though, resulting in some interesting compositions. Resolution: We bought a new laptop. Cost: You don’t want to know. Number 2. Upon arriving home, we pull out all our dirty clothes to wash because we are leaving again for a 3 day, thousand mile marathon to Georgia to see my son and get our truck back. He was taking an eight week course at Fort Benning and needed wheels while he was in the States. The washer starts up, goes through the wash cycle and then stops, full of water, and refuses to spin. Mr. Doctor removes the towels to the wash room sink and attempts to get the washer to drain. Some luck, so he starts another, lighter load. Same result. We now have a towering pile of wet clothes. Resolution: I hand wring the towels (where is that wringer my mother used to have on her washer?) and put them in the dryer. They’re still sodden and it takes two hours for them to dry. Only then do I find the lint screen is totally clogged. Mr. Doctor takes twelve dollars in change to the nearest laundromat, along with the wet, partially washed clothes. He barely makes it back with fifty cents – prices for a load have really skyrocketed since we last used a laundromat! We call Sears, schedule a repairman for when we get back. Cost: $400. Number 3: Making the guest bed up for our next set of house and pet sitters, I find huge yellow stains all over the bedspread. House sitter #1’s dog has been using the spread at night instead of going outside. Resolution: Costly trip to the cleaner’s, dragging said bedspread.   On the good side, there are two jars of moonshine in our refrigerator. Owner unknown. Resolution: Guess! 0 0