Thanks for the Memories

Most of the time I enjoy the holiday season, mainly for all the reasons so far listed on this blog—the sexy Santas, the tasty food and lovely decorations, the uplifting movies, the delightful music. However, don’t forget that snuggled among the ornaments and tucked away in the stockings awaiting their placement at the hearth are memories that glitter like red and green butterflies emerging from a year-long cocoon. When released, they’ll swirl and flit among us as we engage in that crazy dance of the blending of traditions of this busy, crazy time of year. They’ll make us laugh. They’ll make us cry. But mostly, they’ll make us wonderfully aware that we are not, nor have we ever been, alone.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You all knew Cameo, like the Ghost of Christmas Past, had to bring her own special brand of melancholy charm to the holiday party. But who would bring the nostalgia if I didn’t? Don’t worry, I won’t slip into a bout of the holiday blues. No, I just wanted to remind everyone, with the help of some hunky friends, to take a few minutes to remember those who are far away, those who live in our hearts and our memories even if they can’t be with us right now, and those who have sacrificed to give us a better life.

Many of the men in my life have been in the military, and so I'm quite supportive of our troops--man, woman, canine. I'm also supportive of those who sacrifice on the home front, especially parents who are single or who are left to fill the role of both parents when their mate is deployed, and who struggle daily to provide the kind of life we'd all want for our children.

A few years ago, in honor of these two groups of people, I wrote a short story and posted a version of it on my Web site as a free read. It then morphed into You're All I Want for Christmas, published by Wild Rose Press under another of my pen names, Arleigh Bish. A sweet romance with some hot sex and hopefully a few laughs thrown in for good measure, it brings together single mom Heidi and Rick, her BBF's older brother and a recently divorced soldier just back from Iraq. Together they symbolize the eternal hope each person has of doing the right thing when the time comes, of letting go of the past, of learning to forgive, and most importantly, of remembering how to love.

This year, I have another free read in the works for the holiday season. I will post a link once it's up and available. Until then, and without further adieu, here are some pictures I hope will inspire some great Christmas memories…and/or fantasies. lol

Sights and Sounds of the Season

Christmas comes during the most sensual of seasons. By sensual I mean a time of year that excites every sense. We savor delicious holiday recipes. Shiver as snowflakes kiss our nose and cheeks. Snuggle with someone special by the roaring fire or beneath the mistletoe.

And we’ll always remember those visions of many things other than sugarplums that dance in our heads whether we’re sleeping or awake. Whether gathered by the family piano or strolling the sidewalks and singing Christmas carols, we’re caught up in the holiday spirit.

Here are some videos guaranteed to bring back memories. Grab a mug of hot chocolate, coffee or tea and enjoy these sights and sounds of the season.


Sexy --- Santa never looked so good…



Funny --- Original Trailer for A Christmas Story…



Romantic …



Rockin’ …




Poignant…



Modern Classic…



All-time Classic…



Wishing you all many happy holiday and reading moments,

Shawna Moore
TO HELLE AND BACK AGAIN -- Ellora's Cave
TORMENTED (Recommended Read) -- Ellora's Cave
ROUGHRIDER -- Ellora's Cave
HELLE IN HEELS -- Ellora's Cave
Shawna's Myspace
Helle's Myspace

New Age Santas--Take Your Pick!

These Santa's bellies definitely don't jiggle when then laugh...so what do you think?

Do the clothes/beard, make the Santa? This costume reminds me of a Victorian swashbuckling pirate type Santa. Think Robin Hood in Santa clothes.

The young Santa would make a teen heartthrob, don't you think? A few years and all the girls, young and old, will want to sit on his lap!

And there's wolfish Santa with oval eyes and the start of a beard. Definitely a wolf in Santa costume.

And smiling Santa. He's good wholesome, furry fun. :)

The last I have pictured here is muscle-bound Santa, who could bring you some pretty hefty presents!

So what do you think? When the Seasons music and present buying gets old, will you tire of "old St. Nick"? Or you think he might last a while longer under the tree? And if you had a choice, which Santa would you give extra cookies and milk to, encouraging him to stay a while longer?

A few weeks at least. :)

Stay tuned! I'll be sharing some more next Saturday!

Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male, and Santas too!"

www.terryspear.com

Hanging at the Guy Fieri Road Show

by Kristin Daniels

Okay, I admit it. I'm addicted to the Food Network. But not just that... I'm also a Guy Fieri junkie. For those of you who have no idea who this guy is, he's the spiky-haired, bleach-blond, bowling shirt-wearing star of three Food Network shows: Diners, Drive-in and Dives, Guy's Big Bite, and Guy Off the Hook. He won the second season of The Next Food Network Star, and hasn't looked back once.


If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace, then you know I have a serious crush on this guy. Not like a romantic crush, more like a "I really want to go on a road trip with this guy" type of crush. I could totally see myself in the passenger seat of his Camaro as he goes from diner to dive on Triple D.


So when I heard he was having his first-ever Rock and Roll Culinary Tour, I was sold! Like Guy said on his website: It's food, rock-n-roll and everything they won't let me do on tv. How much fun could that be?

Well, let me say, it was a blast.

The show started off with Hayden Wood, a World-Champion Flair Bartender from Australia and author of Woody's Liquid Kitchen. With vodka bottles and shakers flying through the air, my daughters and I sat there amazed. But it wasn't just that. This guy was genuinely entertaining. Funny, quick, and the way he spun a to-the-brim margarita had me saying "Wow!".



And then Guy came out. Motley Crue's Kick Start My Heart blared from the speakers, t-shirt cannons launched souvenirs into the audience as Guy and his sous chef's tossed other goodies to a lucky few. There was a little cooking going on, and we could smell the savory aromas even from our seats way toward the back. He told a few funny stories, had an American Idol-type singing contest (which an adorable 10 yr old girl won), and just generally gave us all a good time.


It ended up being a special night spent with my two gorgeous daughters. And if Guy ever decides to go on the road again, we'll be the first in line for tickets!

Do You or Don't You - Decorate?

My son sold fresh Christmas wreaths as a fundraiser and the wreaths came in yesterday. Because they're fresh, I wanted to deliver them promptly. When I dropped off a couple of items at my friend's house, she was already knee-deep in Christmas mode. The outdoor lights were up and she had several decorations in her house -- candles, knick-knacks, even an undecorated tree. And her three-year old daughter was making gingerbread men. Really?

I felt like such a slouch. I have nothing outside or inside my house yet that remotely looks like Christmas (OK, except for the aforementioned wreath, which I of course bought from my son and which my husband is now refusing to allow me to nail to the semi-new front door). Sheesh, when I dropped the wreath off with my friend, I had just gotten off work, picked up said wreaths, returned home to get son #2 cranked up on homework, ventured out to deliver said wreaths, and then was on my way to the grocery store to do my weekly shopping, making sure to pick up some rice to go with the teriyaki beef in the crock pot at home. I then returned home with the groceries, finished making the dinner, helped both boys with homework, read with son #1, and then sat down to write for an hour before bedtime. Gingerbread men? (This friend is a stay-at-home mom, which is a topic for a whole other post!)

Back to the Christmas decorations. I do put up outdoor lights on occasion because the kids like them. But if I don't get those suckers up by the week after Thanksgiving, I never will. Then the excuse becomes, "I'm not going to put up lights for two freakin' weeks." Notice the outdoor lights fall under my purview? Isn't the "man of the house" the one who usually hauls out the ladder and gets tangled in strings of lights and lets loose with a few choice epithets? Not in our household. My husband: "I don't care if we have lights, but if you want them you can put them up." Chivalry is dead, I tell you.

That's for the outdoors. For indoors, my Christmas decorations are pithy indeed. I have a few Christmas-themed candle holders, which I drag out, and the kids' stockings go up on the fireplace. We usually get our tree, a fresh one because I like the smell, a few weeks before Christmas and then we take it down the day after Christmas. My husband is paranoid about fires. (He's coming across as a real Scrooge, isn't he?) Although I've seen fancier, prettier, neater trees than ours, I love our ornaments because a lot of them consist of crappy pieces of popsicle sticks stuck together to form a reindeer with antlers or used CDs with a picture of one of my boys as a toddler stuck on it, and other (poorly) homemade ornaments that my kids created in pre-school. I love those crummy ornaments. When we decorate the tree, I always insist on playing Christmas music. I usually put on The Philadelphia Orchestra playing The Nutcracker or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Christmas carols.

Which brings me to one of my favorite aspects of Christmas - the music! I love Christmas music. Son #2 is in choir this year in middle school (don't ask me why, he barely moves his lips when he sings in a choir performance - looks like he's experiencing some major fright or something, which is weird because he's a really good singer otherwise when he's singing along with Jay Sean or Fergie). That's totally off-topic, but I'd much prefer to sit and listen to Christmas carols (and sing along) than decorate my house!

Happily, not everyone feels that way and we have a "Candy Cane Lane" in our town. It's a street where every house on the block decorates. I've heard it's even written in the contract when someone sells their house in this neighborhood. One house has a train track in their front yard; another house has an outdoor movie theater set up where "It's a Wonderful Life" plays continuously; one house plays Christmas carols from speakers in the yard; and Santa holds court at the end of the cul-de-sac a few nights a week.

That is my decorating confession. How about you? Do you go all out or do you barely get a tree up?

Ah, and to make the season even more hectic, it is son #2's birthday today. He's 12 and is now as tall as I am. Once he surpasses me, I will be the shortest person in my household. Son #1 already towers above me. So for the big birthday bash, I am taking him and 8 of his closest friends to see the movie The Blind Side, then I'm taking them to In 'n Out (don't ask - exclusively West Coast burger joint), then they're returning to our house for cake and ice cream, an Xbox fest, and a sleepover (that means I will have 10 boys in my house for several hours - can't wait). My husband will be holed up in our bedroom with his earplugs in...

Always Connected?

Recently, I read an article that said email has had a good run, but its day is over. A good run? The spoken word had a good run – thousands of years. The postal service didn’t do too badly – more than a century. But now email is supposedly passé after a mere decade. How long before Twitter stops chirping usefully? And what will be next in this nonstop rush to allow each of us to communicate, literally, with everyone else on the planet?

Speaking of Twitter, those 140 characters mean there’s no point in crafting an elegant letter. Okay, I never did. But many famous writers have had their letters immortalized. Will your ‘Gone to the kitchen - Be back when I gain 5 pounds’ Twitter ever see the light of day again? No, and that’s not a bad thing. But will anyone put the effort into thoughtful communication when limited by time, the disinterest of a vast pool of anonymous readers, or by the fact that the communication mode itself physically limits how much you can say?

Facebook. Myspace. Fansites. Instant messaging. Texts. Blogs. Amazon Connect. Flickr accounts. And of course, websites.

How easily can all these methods of communication overwhelm us? And how do we determine which are useful? Both in providing content we can use, and in telling the world about our writing. In the midst of this constant flow of information, how do we choose which is important to us? Conversely, how to we become important to all the people sitting by the stream of information, watching it flow mindlessly by?

The ability to connect with others via all these modes of communication is amazing. I have found or been found from friends all the way back to my childhood. It’s great fun. I never would have expected to see pictures from that memorable sixth grade slumber party posted online. But there we were in all our glory – nightgowns and cowboy hats. How ineffably sweet to experience the fun and innocence of that moment again, even if for an instant.

And as writers, it can only benefit us to connect with as many readers as possible. I can publicize my work on Amazon, on Library Thing, on countless loops, and on all the sites listed above. Plus many more I haven’t mentioned.

So what is the problem? First, the time sink is significant. Second, you need to find a way to stand out, which is not easy when the entire world is clamoring for the same attention. Third, it seems that as soon as I master (if I may exaggerate) one application, another pops up to supersede it. Fourth, and perhaps most important from a business perspective, it’s very difficult to determine which of these many avenues of communication/promotion are actually effective in spreading your word.


So here’s my question to anyone reading this – what avenues of communication have you found to be effective in promoting your message?


Carly
www.carlycarson.com

History of the Caber Toss

The hero of my latest release, Kilted Lover, tosses cabers at the Scottish Games. I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the history of the caber toss and see why it was invented.

But first, what is the caber toss? It is a heavy athletic event at Highland/Scottish Games. A caber is a 15 - 23 feet long log, usually peeled, weighing between 70 and 200 pounds (depending on who you ask, and the type of tree). The athlete squats with his feet flat on the ground and wedges the caber between his shoulder and neck, pushes upward with his hands, and lifts it slightly, just enough to slide his interlocked hands beneath the smaller end. (During the event, no one can assist him in lifting it.) Then, with the caber resting against his shoulder, he lifts and stands upright. He must balance the log in the air. Remember, the heavier, larger end of the log is up, so he may stagger around a bit until it is balanced. He takes a short run forward and flips the log in the air. He must make the large end hit the ground and the small end flip over and land straight ahead, away from him. This is an event of accuracy rather than distance, so it doesn't matter how far he throws it. For the best score, the small end of the caber needs to land at the 12 o'clock position, straight out from the thrower.

Caber tossing, also called turning the caber, or the "tossing (or casting) of ye barr" was first recorded as an athletic event in Scotland at a 1574 "wappinschawes" (weapon-showings) which were sporting contests of strength, agility and speed which related to military prowess.

As for the history of caber tossing... Round Hill Highland Games website says: "The history of the caber is elusive. The term 'caber' derives from the Gaelic word "cabar" or "kaber" which refers to a rafter or beam. The most prominent legend surrounding the origin of the caber toss is that of breaching barriers or crossing streams during wartime. In the Scottish highlands, you often have freezing-cold streams that you need to cross. During battle, the caber was tossed from one side of the stream to the other to quickly make a bridge, allowing fellow Scotsmen to cross and continue on to chase rival clans. This is why the caber is tossed for accuracy, rather than distance."

This makes perfect sense. Scotland is a very wet place, with many lochs, bogs and streams. It would take lots of practice and great skill to put the caber exactly where it needed to be, across the stream, and not in the stream where it might float away.




Now, to change the subject slightly, I'm thrilled that the book video for Kilted Lover placed first in the You Gotta Read Video contest! Thanks again to everyone who voted!



Check it out!
Chapter 1 excerpt where the hero, Scott, tosses the caber.
Thanks!
Nicole