On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Here are sixteen of my favorite quotations from children’s books.
I’m happy to welcome author Jodi Rath to the Power of 10 series. Today, Jodi shares ten important life lessons she learned from the felines in her life and her new release, Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Murder.
Here’s Jodi!
10. No matter how bad life can be, learn to be resilient and love IN SPITE of it all. Our cat Stewart has one-eye from being abused as a kitten. Yet, when we adopted him, we thought we couldn’t do it because it would be too sad. Stewart doesn’t care at all that he has one eye. He loves us unconditionally and is the happiest little guy in the world. He is on the cover of book two, Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Murder, that comes out 6/21/19 and plays a role in the book.
9. Sleep is a good thing. Cats sleep A LOT. I’ve always been one to sleep a routine 6 to 8 hours a night. After I began my business, my sleep schedule has changed a lot. My cats remind me to take naps if I can’t get a full night sleep. No, they aren’t running a business—but they also aren’t stressed, and they sleep a lot—AND their fur is shiny and beautiful! Great for us ladies and our skin too!
8. When it’s time to play—PLAY HARD LIKE NO ONE IS WATCHING! Recently, we adopted three five-week-old kittens. We mostly have adopted adult cats because most people want kittens. Our adult cats are playful at times, but they prefer food and sleep to play. NOT THE KITTENS! They are NUTBALLS! They do love to sleep and eat, but when they play—it’s like they are partying like it’s 1999! That’s important in life—adults need to play and let loose at times—AND don’t worry about who sees you or what they think. My three little girls, Lily, Lulu, and Luna, sure don’t care!
7. Race doesn’t matter. One of the themes of my culinary mystery series, The Cast Iron Skillet Mystery Series, focuses on a small village where the villagers are tolerant and caring for those around them. They aren’t so much with outsiders when people from the city (politicians) begin to buy up land for urban sprawl purposes, and the villagers have to (what they think) “allow” outsiders in. Being tolerant means being tolerant to ALL—not just to those that it is easy to be tolerant to—think about it. That makes no sense anyway. Some of my cats are black; some are orange and white, some are golden brown, some are black and white mixed—they don’t look at the color of each others’ fur and judge based on that or stereotype—they equally love each other as is.
6. Stop and smell the flowers every so often. We keep fresh flowers in our house weekly. Our cats get SO excited when we bring them in, and they always are on the counter wanting to smell them and maybe be sneaky and chew on the stems too. My husband and I have bought or picked fresh flowers weekly for each other for 17 years now. It makes a HUGE difference in our relationship.
5. Good litter box manners are important. Enough said! LOL
4. Don’t sweat the small stuff. We’ve had 16 cats in 17 years—never more than nine at one time. Many passes, especially when we adopt them as adults. Our first cats, unfortunately, are the ones we learned from. They would do things, and we would punish them getting SO upset. Once we lost them, we realized how stupid we were being. Some scratched furniture here and there? Who cares? It’s things—the things do not give unconditional love and trust.
3. Keep your mouth shut when you snore. My husband snores while sleeping on his back—LOUDLY. Stewart, the one-eyed cat, did not appreciate it—he sat on Mike’s mouth while he snored. Mike freaked out in the middle of the night. I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life!
2. Understand your place in life. We do not own our cats—we are their servants. We want it that way! They bring us joy and happiness. I’ve had a very good reason not to trust many people in my life—I’ve dealt with abuse as a child and in a first marriage. I’ve worked with many teens who have experienced horrific trauma. Not all people are bad—but animals love unconditionally.
1. Advocate for those without a voice. I learned this lesson the hard way when my 13-year-old diabetic cat was taken to a vet we typically don’t see, and she recommended we take him to the vet ER. We did; they kept him, and everything in us said not to let them. They kept him four days, and he died of a blood clot. None of that had to happen. We trusted those with an education that we didn’t have—but our hearts told us differently. Maybe he would have died anyway—but he would have at home—we spent close to 13 years loving and spoiling him, and he had diabetes for six of those years. We never left overnight to be sure he got his insulin twice a day. Because we didn’t advocate for him, he suffered for it. Trust your instincts and be willing to live with consequences.
Blurb
Welcome to Leavensport, Ohio where DEATH takes a delicious turn!
Financial fraud of elderly villagers in Leavensport, an urban sprawl threat to the community, disastrous dates, cross-sell marketing gone wrong, and another murder? Jolie Tucker is ready to try dating again. Well, she has no choice—since her family auctioned her off to the highest bidder. Her best friend, Ava, has agreed to a double date, but both friends find out hidden secrets about their partners as well as deception by one of the village’s own, who will soon be found dead. This plot is sure to be spicy!
Buy Links
Amazon | All other e-platforms
Author Bio
Moving into her second decade working in education, Jodi Rath has decided to begin a life of crime in her The Cast Iron Skillet Mystery Series. Her passion for both mysteries and education led her to combine the two to create her business MYS ED, where she splits her time between working as an adjunct for Ohio teachers and creating mischief in her fictional writing. She currently resides in a small, cozy village in Ohio with her husband and her nine cats.
Website | FB Author Page | Twitter | Bookbub | Goodreads
Sign up HERE for my monthly newsletter to receive a free Mystery a Month and a chance to win prizes for those who guess the right answers!
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
One of my favorite writing craft books is Writing with Quiet Hands by Paula Munier. Here is one of my favorite passages:
There’s an old adage in gardening: Sleep, creep. leap. This typically refers to the growth pattern of newly planted perennials, provided they are nourished with sun and water and nutrients: The first year the plant will “sleep,” the second year the plant will “creep,” and the third year the plant will “leap.”
As your writing practice deepens over time, you will grow as a writer–in much the same way as a well-nourished perennial. You’ll take your seat, and you’ll write. You may think you are getting nowhere, but as you keep at it, and your pages pile up, you are literally growing yourself as a writer.
At first, this development may be unnoticeable–that’s the sleep part. But before you know it, you’ll find your prose creeping along toward good and then leaping right into great. Growth rates vary for writers just as they vary for plants, but whether your “sleep, creep, leap” development takes three months, three years, or three decades will depend on what you learn as you explore the many places your practice may take you and how quickly you apply that knowledge to your work in progress.
I’m happy to welcome Canadian author and editor Judy Penz Sheluk. Today, Judy shares ten interesting facts about her first anthology, The Best Laid Plans.
Whoot! Today is release day for The Best Laid Plans, 21 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, the first anthology published by Superior Shores Press. Here are 10 facts about the book:
1. The original call for submissions went out October 18, 2018, with a deadline of January 18, 2018. Seventy-two stories were received for consideration, with authors submitting from Italy, Norway, UK, U.S., Canada, Australia, and South America.
2. Authors included in the collection come from the U.S., UK, Canada, and a German millennial living in Norway. Three are members of Sisters in Crime Toronto.
3. Stories range from 1,500 to 5,000 words. Each story is preceded by a one-page bio of the author, with a link to their website or social media site.
4. One author, Mary Dutta, celebrates her first fiction credit in the collection, with her story, “Festival Finale.”
5. For the cover, I wanted an hourglass seeping blood instead of sand, and commissioned S.A. Hadi hasan to do the illustration. I also wanted all the authors names listed, and not just the names of two or three well-known authors. Graphic artist Hunter Martin designed the final layout.
6. Scene breaks in the book are…you guessed it…tiny hourglasses.
7. Stories are set in a variety of locations, including a ski resort, subway station, hair salon, nursing home, art gallery, coffee shop, rural Oklahoma, China during the Ming Dynasty, and a suburban McMansion.
8. Protagonists include a computer programmer with a unique plan to “help” single women, an unhappy wife looking for ways to kill her under-employed husband, a widow desperately in love with a married man, a paid-for-hire hit man, a pair of ATVing brothers with robbery on their minds, a financial planner with a questionable client, and two best friends with a dubious go-fund-me plan.
9. Every story has an unexpected twist at the end; all tie in to the underlying theme of the best-laid plans.
10. After reading, you might never again drink another daiquiri, order another latte, eat another chocolate chip cookie, or look at seafood in quite the same way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Synopsis
Whether it’s at a subway station in Norway, a ski resort in Vermont, a McMansion in the suburbs, or a trendy art gallery in Toronto, the twenty-one authors represented in this superb collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “the best laid plans” in their own inimitable style. And like many best laid plans, they come with no guarantees.
Stories by Tom Barlow, Susan Daly, Lisa de Nikolits, P.A. De Voe, Peter DiChellis, Lesley A. Diehl, Mary Dutta, C.C. Guthrie, William Kamowski, V.S. Kemanis, Lisa Lieberman, Edward Lodi, Rosemary McCracken, LD Masterson, Edith Maxwell, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Peggy Rothschild, Johanna Beate Stumpf, Vicki Weisfeld, and Chris Wheatley.
Bio
Editor Judy Penz Sheluk is the author of the Glass Dolphin Mystery and Marketville Mystery series. Her short stories can be found in several collections. Judy is also a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she serves as Vice Chair on the Board of Directors. Find her at http://www.judypenzsheluk.com.
The Best Laid Plans: 21 Stories of Mystery & Suspense is available on Kindle and in trade paperback at all the usual suspects, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Chapters/Indigo.
Happy Release Day!
I am thrilled to announce the release of Edge of Danger: A Mystery Thriller Sampler featuring a collection of sample chapters from the novels of the following Wild Rose Press authors: Vincent Morrone, Oliver F. Chase, Lance Hawvermale, Karen C. Whalen, Sylvia Nickels, CJ Zahner, Randy Overbeck, Cynthia Harrison, June Summers, and Joanne Guidoccio.
Torn Away by Vincent Morrone
Drew Duncan swore he’d never go back to Ember Falls again. After he was wrongfully charged with his high school girlfriend’s murder, he waited for a trial that never came. When he was released from jail a year later, he left everything behind. But when his sister is murdered, Drew is forced to return to the hometown where he and his sisters were brutalized by their alcoholic father.
Camelot Games by Oliver F. Chase
When a secret political machine maneuvers California war hero, Scott McHale and his beautiful activist wife, Angie into running for political office, an entirely new and frightening evil is unleashed upon the American public. As the wildly popular Latino couple’s success and independence grow, hidden kingmakers quietly put into play a plan designed to plunge the nation into chaos.
The Echo Holders by Lance Hawvermale
Rookie anthropologist Emily Radsco has come to the Colorado mountains to investigate old and mysterious carvings on aspen trees. She soon finds herself at odds with the local logging industry. If she doesn’t work quickly, she’ll lose the very trees which hold the clues to the riddle she’s trying to solve. Complicating matters is her increasing attraction to soft-spoken Hopi, Mason Hitapwa, one of the loggers endangering her research.
Just What I Kneaded by Karen C. Whalen
While shopping for bread to serve at her gourmet dinner party, Jane Marsh overhears the pastry chef’s murder in the bakery’s kitchen. The killer also destroys an elaborate and expensive wedding cake made for a celebrity couple.
To recoup the loss, the bakery owner files a lawsuit against his insurance company, a client of the law firm where Jane works.
With a murderer on the loose, and Jane as the only potential witness, she must solve the crime in order to defend her client…and take a killer off the streets.
Disguise for Death by Sylvia Nickels
Royce Thorne had a good marriage, at least she thought she did. when her husband, a police officer, is killed in the line of duty, Royce’s life is turned upside down.
Royce soon finds out her life has been a lie- her marriage was not as good as she thought and her husband was not the man she thought he was. Lies and betrayal is what if left behind after her husband’s death, as well as a bank account with specific instructions for Royce.
The Suicide Gene by CJ Zahner
Doctor Emma Kerr had no right counseling them. Adopted and her birth records lost, she believed she was born a McKinney. Her face, intelligence, and depression resembled theirs. For years people mistook her for their sister. So she devised a plan. What begins as a scheme to counsel the McKinney family and determine if they are blood relatives, quickly causes Emma to wonder if she had truly done the manipulating. Is someone following her?
Blood on the Chesapeake by Randy Overbeck
Wilshire, Maryland, a quaint shore town on the Chesapeake, promises Darrell Henshaw a new start in life and a second chance at love. That is, until he learns the town hides an ugly secret. A thirty-year-old murder in the high school. And a frightening ghost stalking his new office. Burned by an earlier encounter with the spirit world, Darrell doesn’t want to get involved, but when the desperate ghost hounds him, he concedes. Assisted by his new love, he follows a trail that leads to the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even the Klu Klux Klan. Then, when two locals who try to help are murdered, Darrell is forced to decide if he’s willing to risk his life—and the life of the woman he loves—to expose the killers of a young man he never knew.
Lily White in Detroit by Cynthia Harrison
Private investigator Lily White has a client with a faulty moral compass. When the client is arrested for murdering his wife and her alleged lover, Lily follows her intuition and her own leads. If she’s wrong, she’ll at least know she did her job.
Detroit police detective Derrick Paxton remembers Lily from another case. He understands she suffers from PTSD and thinks her judgment is impaired. He goes after her client and the evidence he needs to close the case. When Lily is kidnapped, the case takes an unexpected turn.
Before We Fade Away by June Summers
Horrific, recurring nightmares are making Danielle Reynolds’ life miserable. Losing sleep and falling grades lead her to seek help from her college counselor, a psychologist, and against her better judgment, a psychic medium. To her amazement, she discovers her dead grandfather is trying to contact her to prove his innocence in the murders of the Cunningham family on Halloween night back in 1971. Turning to the police, she convinces a handsome young officer to reopen the murder investigation.
A Season for Killing Blondes by Joanne Guidoccio
Hours before the opening of her career counseling practice, Gilda Greco discovers the body of golden girl, Carrie Ann Godfrey, neatly arranged in the dumpster outside Gilda’s office. Gilda’s life and budding career are stalled as Detective Carlo Fantin, her former high school crush, conducts the investigation. When three more dead blondes turn up, all brutally strangled and deposited near Gilda’s favorite haunts, she is pegged as a prime suspect for the murders.
Buy Links
I’m happy to welcome award-winning author Jessica James. Today, Jessica shares her latest release, Lacewood.
Blurb
Thrust together by chance. Bound together by destiny. A disillusioned socialite and a special operations veteran find a way to save a small town while healing themselves. A haunting read about the journey to restore an abandoned 200-year-old mansion and the secrets it reveals about a long-lost love.
Excerpt
Turning in a circle, Katie studied the room again. Faded wallpaper curled and peeled above the dusty wainscoting, but the walls themselves appeared sturdy. On the far side of the entryway, and dominating the wall, stood a mammoth fireplace with an ornately carved hearth. Her attention was immediately drawn to a painting of a woman in nineteenth century dress that hung prominently over the mantel.
“Who is she?”
The sheriff turned to the dusty, sun-bleached portrait in the heavy carved guilt frame. “One of the previous owners, they say.” He shrugged. “The family history kind of got lost with the house. Everyone around here calls her the Widow of Lacewood.”
Katie stood spellbound. The woman was clothed completely in black, but the magnificence of the gown gave the impression of sophistication and class. Her chin was slightly elevated as if to project strength, yet there was more than a hint of sorrow and pain in her eyes.
“She looks so sad.” Katie spoke without removing her gaze. “And so young. How could she be a widow?”
The sheriff had already started to walk away, but he turned back and glanced at the painting. “Not sure, but they say she never remarried.”
Katie’s heart suddenly struggled to beat. The anguish in the woman’s eyes kept her riveted. She could see the pain. Feel a heart ripped apart. Something was missing that could never be replaced. Katie had felt such loss before. In a way that’s why she was here.
“You coming?”
Katie heard the sheriff calling from the next room, and turned to follow. With one quick glance back, she noticed particles of dust now swirled and danced in a shaft of light, almost like a living thing. Her breath caught in her throat as the dust seemed to materialize into the form of a woman, her eyes dull with the same tortured despair and disbelief as the one in the portrait.
Katie jerked her head around for a closer look and blinked. The woman was gone.
Book Trailer
Author Bio and Links
Jessica James believes in honor, duty, and true love—and that’s what she writes about in her award-winning novels that span the ages from the Revolutionary War to modern day.
She is a two-time winner of the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction, and has won more than a dozen other literary awards, including a Readers' Favorite International Book Award and a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America. Her novels have been used in schools and are available in hundreds of libraries including Harvard and the U.S. Naval Academy.
James is a member of the Romance Writers of America, the Historical Novel Society, and the Independent Book Publishers Association.
Website | BookBub | Pinterest | Goodreads | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Amazon Author Page
Buy Links
Giveaway
Jessica James will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.
Follow Jessica on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Here are twenty quotations that inspire and motivate. At this point in time, the words of Maya Angelou, Tommy Lasorda, and Zig Ziglar resonate with me the most.
June is National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month, a month set aside to remind us that fruits and vegetables are essential components of a healthy lifestyle.
As a cancer survivor with a family history of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, I am always on the lookout for any dietary changes that can help support a healthy heart, mind, and immune system.
A few years ago, I took special note of the following research conducted by the American Institute for Cancer Research in 2004. If every American consumed 15 to 30 ounces of fruits and vegetables every day, the incidence of cancer could be reduced by at least 20 percent.
The Institute suggests we aim for nine servings or 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables a day. This may sound daunting, but it is doable. With careful planning and a few doses of creativity, we can increase our daily intake of fruits and vegetables and stay within our budgets.
Here are 10 tips:
• Learn about serving size. In his book “Anticancer,” David Servan-Schreiber provides the following helpful guide: One serving equals ½ cup cooked or 1 cup raw vegetables, 1 medium fruit, ½ cup cooked fruit, ¼ cup dried fruit, or 6 ounces of fruit juice.
• Start small. At breakfast, top your oatmeal or cereal with sliced bananas, fresh berries, raisins, or apricots. Add one cup of fresh or frozen berries to pancake batter. Mix eggs and vegetables for a healthy and hearty breakfast or lunch. Adding minced broccoli or finely grated cauliflower will not change the texture of the eggs. At lunch or dinner, add strawberries, mandarin orange sections, and raisins to green salads.
• Use a spiralizer to create zucchini, squash, asparagus, or cucumber noodles. Top with your favorite sauce and enjoy! You won’t miss the carb-laden pasta dishes.
• Hide the vegetables if your children ignore or push away anything green. Instead, try incorporating vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, or spinach into your favorite pasta sauce, chili, lasagna, or stew recipes. As you stretch the recipe, you will obtain more servings and also cut back on the meat content.
• Pinch pennies on produce. Buy whatever fruits and vegetables are in season. Apples, oranges, grapefruit, and bananas are always available and usually last for a week. The cheapest vegetables are broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, celery and onions.
• Consider buying frozen fruits and vegetables. These foods are flash frozen at their peak and contain the same amount of nutrients as their fresh counterparts. Frozen vegetables can save dinner preparation time since washing and cutting are not required. Frozen fruit can be used in smoothies, low-fat muffins, yogurts and salads.
• Sneak in extra fruit servings with the right juice. Stick with the top four—orange, grapefruit, prune, pineapple—and check the sugar content on each label. Whenever possible, buy in bulk. This will cut down your costs and help avoid the excessive packaging associated with single-serving bottles and juice boxes.
• Create quick, no-cook meals using fruits and vegetables. Fill a cantaloupe or honeydew melon with low-fat cottage cheese. Combine fresh or frozen berries, a banana, whey or soy protein, water, and ice to make a delicious smoothie. Mix a bowl of low-fat yogurt with fruit.
• Create more fruit-based desserts and snacks. Cut up some plums into chunks and roast them in the oven. Serve warm over a small scoop of frozen yogurt. Mix blackberries or blueberries with a few chocolate chips to create a quick trail mix. Freeze individual grapes on a cookie sheet and serve later as cool, healthy treats.
• Plan ahead and add convenience to your day. Stock your glove compartment and desk drawer with apples, pears, and bananas. Cut up your favorite vegetables into snack-size pieces and store them in clear plastic containers at home and at work. This will cut down on visits to the vending machine and coffee shop.
Any other tips to share?
Joanne Guidoccio 