FREE Kindle book!

Bookworms Anonymous is available FREE through Christmas Eve!  Click here to get your copy now.

Part memoir, part cookbook, and part informational guide, Bookworms Anonymous is a laudatory examination of reading as a hobby, diversion, obsession, even sport. The book features a Bookworm's eye view of eight meetings as well as menu plans, recipes, and instructions for establishing your own chapter of the fresh, frugal, fun book club known as Bookworms Anonymous.

The book includes lists of the club's favorite reads, Book Handling Commandments, book shuffling and other literary athletic pursuits, strategies for finding reading time every day, anecdotes about life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and many book reviews (mostly positive).

A light, fun read, it makes a great gift for any reader in your life.

This is your chance to get a last minute Christmas gift for the readers on your list...especially the tech-savvy readers who enjoy reading on their Kindle devices or apps.

Birthday Celebrations

My birthday falls three days after Christmas. Most people, when learning this, assume my 'special day' is often overlooked and that I was cheated, present-wise, as a child. They respond with a sympathetic comment not regarding my age, but regarding the date on which I acknowledge my age. I've always liked my birthday, even as a child, mainly because if I didn't receive my entire wish list of gifts on Christmas I merely had to wait three days to open another mountain of presents.

My parents weren't rich but they always made sure I had a separate celebration for my birthday. Three days after Christmas (it's also 3 days before New Year's Eve) is actually the perfect day to celebrate, creating a festival atmosphere on the last week of the year.

As I contemplate my upcoming birthday, a milestone only if one is concerned with prime numbers (I'll be 43), I realize most of the birthday celebrations in one's life are for other people. The first birthday usually passes with the gift recipient unaware, drooling on chocolate cake and toddling about to entertain the guests. By the second birthday, the child is able to enjoy opening the gifts but still has no idea why they are receiving them. Birthdays 3-25 are generally anticipated and celebrated by the birthday kid, her friends and family, co-workers and significant other(s). After 25 though, at least for me, the birthday reverts to yet another event requiring observance, if only to avoid appearing gauche for ignoring it. 

The Bookworms ladies still call me kid.  I'm the second youngest Bookworm, the eldest being 74, and the next eldest ringing in at 71 or so.  Although they are loathe to use the 'seventy' word, so they tell people they are sixty-fourteen and sixty-eleven, respectively.  They're both aging in grand fashion, retaining their curiosity and joy in small pleasures, so maybe they're on to something. 

FREE Books Giveaway is over

I hope everyone entered the contest to win a FREE copy of Superior Sacrifices on Goodreads.com!  If not, I'm sorry you missed the opportunity for a free book.

The contest ended last night and I'm shipping out the winning 15 copies today!

To see the book on Goodreads, click HERE.

To see it on Amazon, click HERE.

De Tour Village: A Village Christmas

Join us on December 1, 2012 for A Village Christmas!

 

It's a Village-wide event, featuring various artisans and crafters from the Eastern Upper Peninsula.  The Village merchants join in the fun too, offering sales and great deals during this festive day.

 

See the official Facebook Event page for more information, and plan a trip to De Tour Village!  If you haven't been here yet, it's time you came to see what all the excitement is about.

Magazine Flower Bouquet, Magnets

Writing is my preferred creative outlet, but every now and then I need to relax and disengage my mind a bit, and create something...else.  Of course I love paper, and words, and words on paper, so my creations usually incorporate these elements somehow.

It all started with Pinterest.  Somehow Connie Stewart's Upcycled Magazine Flowers drew my eye, and I started punching out all magazine pages with interesting colors.  I didn't have any gifts to wrap or cards to  make (Connie used hers to embellish gifts and cards), so I quickly devised a way to add a sturdy support (beer bottle cap) and stem (large paper clip).  Once I started making these little lovelies, all I wanted to do was stay sequestered in my craft room hunched over my pile of used bottle caps, hot glue gun in hand.


Start with Connie Stewart's blog and make the flowers--she has an excellent step-by-step tutorial on there, which I won't try to duplicate here. 

Once you have several flowers made, gather some bottle caps, paper clips and a piercer.  And a hot glue gun, with lots of glue!

Pierce each bottle cap in the center, and bend the end of a paper clip to insert it in the bottle cap and glue it in.  You'll have to hold the paper clip in place for a minute until the glue hardens as it tends to move around a bit.

Once the paper clip is secured, pull the trigger on that glue gun until the bottle cap is about half full of glue.  Insert the flower, pressing carefully in the center.  The bottle cap will heat up quickly!  The tricky part here is to avoid burning your fingertips off.  I haven't lost any fingerprints yet, but I can't guarantee you won't suffer a minor burn during this step of the process.

After the glue is hardened, adjust/trim the paper clip stem as necessary to create different heights for the bouquet, and place them all in a small vase. 

Voila!  Flowers that will never rot or die. 

I also made some into magnets by gluing the flowers into bottle caps, then gluing a magnet on the back (instead of installing a paper clip stem).  There must be other possibilities out there...see what you can come up with! 

Meanwhile, I must get back to my book.  No more procrastinating.
 

Superior Sacrifices: It's Here!

Superior Sacrifices

has hit the shelves of several fine stores in Northern Michigan, and Amazon.com! 

A tale of betrayal, redemption and the consequences of silence by the author of Bookworms Anonymous and The Word That You Heard. This is the story of Mitch and Marcia: twins, best friends and local celebrities in the small town of Iron Falls, Michigan. Mitch’s superhuman dedication to his detective job and Marcia’s near-obsessive focus on her family and bookstore business appear ordinary until the secret they’ve shared for three and a half decades threatens to surface.

 

Get your copy today! 

Also available on Kindle.

 

 

Writing Weather

It's a grand day for writing. The wind is whipping the trees around (no power outages at our house yet, but there's still hope) and the rain comes and goes so it's impossible to plan any outdoor activities. The clouds are cruising west to east so fast they look like the time release camera shots on reality TV shows, the sun only winking at us now and then. It's sweatshirt weather, and it's about time! We've had a long, hot summer but it's been so nice for so long, I'm ready for a stormy day.

The muse likes days like this. It's easy to motivate oneself to write, to work on the latest story or novel, when the air is calm and comfortable inside and I can draw energy from the invigorating weather outside the window. And it's a three day weekend! Maybe we'll have three days of crazy weather and I'll finish my entire project...

The only other activity that's mildly entertaining on such a day is cooking, but of course that comes after writing, then reading, and it's a pretty distant third option. Maybe I could start a large pot of soup and let it simmer so I can say I cooked all day, when I'm really engrossed in words and agonizing over syntax and comma placement (not realistic, if you know me at all).  I'll daub some flour on my face for effect.