Sunday Bookends: Finished books (finally), news detox, and what really matters

On June 7, 2020June 10, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends16 Comments

I finally finished Sweet on You by Becky Wade and I thought I should explain that it didn’t take me so long to finish it because it wasn’t good, or didn’t hold my attention, but because I was finding it hard to concentrate with everything going on in the world these days. After clicking off the news and social media for an extended time, my focus came back and I was able to read again.

Which is why I finished Sweet on You and also progressed on Light in the Window by Jan Karon and The Knife Slipped by Earl Stanley Gardner (who also wrote the novels the Perry Mason show was based on).

Here is a short description of Sweet on You for anyone who might be interested:

Britt and Zander have been best friends since they met thirteen years ago, but unbeknownst to Britt, Zander has been in love with her for just as long. When Zander’s uncle dies of mysterious causes, he returns to Washington to investigate. As they work together to uncover his uncles tangled past, will the truth of what lies between them also come to light?

This is the third in the Bradford Sisters’ series.

This is also the third book I have read by Becky Wade and I’ve discovered that she is very interested in describing the fashion of her characters, while I am not. That doesn’t mean she is a bad writer or I don’t enjoy her books. In fact, based on her Instagram account, I think Becky and I would get along nicely and we would laugh about how much she enjoys describing the fashion of her characters and how much I hate doing that with my characters. I skim her descriptions of the fashion simply because – well, I don’t care. It doesn’t add anything to the story for me to know in a very detailed way the main character is wearing. Thankfully she’s not overly detailed, just gives enough to describe the person’s outfit really.

A description of a character’s fashion can add something to the story, because what a character is wearing helps to paint a picture of who they are, so please know I’m only teasing a little about not caring about a detailed description of what the character is wearing. But I really do just skim those descriptions myself if they get too detailed.

I follow Becky Wade on Instagram (when I’m on Instagram, which I haven’t been for more than a week now, maybe two. I don’t know. I don’t really like Instagram.) and she recently mentioned the books from her Bradford Sisters series is being optioned for a movie. I would gather a Hallmark movie. I’d be interested to see those movies as there is a lot of intrigue in each of the books. These are light, somewhat schmaltzy romances (yeah, sort of like what I write) just to let you know.

I wanted to offer a description of The Knife Slipped too (not so sure about that cover but I think it is made in the style of the old Noir crime novels. So far this book is not full of s-e-x (said like Miranda Hart in her show Miranda). Just intrigue and slightly off color language.):

At the time of his death, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century, and world famous as the creator of crusading attorney Perry Mason. Gardner also created the hardboiled detective team of Cool and Lam, stars of 29 novels published between 1939 and 1970—and one that’s never been published until now.
Lost for more than 75 years, THE KNIFE SLIPPED was meant to be the second book in the series but got shelved when Gardner’s publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool’s tendency to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.” But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities —however shocking for 1939—shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists.
Donald Lam has never been cooler—not even when played by Frank Sinatra on the U.S. Steel Hour of Mystery in 1946. Bertha Cool has never been tougher. And Erle Stanley Gardner has never been better.

This is a new genre for me so we will see if I stick with it or not.

So how am I doing on my news/social media detox I invited others to join me on this past week? Fairly well. I won’t say I’ve quit cold turkey. I still have the urge to check news sites and social media but last week something happened that really made me not care about the turmoil of fire the national media keeps flaming to line their pockets. My mom ended up in the ER. She’s fine. It was gastritis and not a heart attack but, you know what? That day I could have cared less about who was calling who racist. I could have cared less what one politician said about another politician. I just wanted my mom to be okay.

Clicking on a news site wasn’t even on my radar that day and it hasn’t been there since. Like I said, I do feel a sense of “I’m out of the loop” and think about “getting in the loop” but I just don’t go there. My brain had gone all the way to planning my mom’s funeral last week. Yes, I know. That’s nuts but the initial report I got was hazy and I thought “this is it. I finally move closer to my parents and this is it…” Even though it wasn’t “it” I was left feeling off for the rest of the day and I knew logging on to a news site would push me even further into unsettled darkness.

I decided it might do the same in the days that followed so I’m here, in semi-darkness about what is happening in the world (my husband works for a small town paper so I do know some things and I did log on Facebook once on Friday) and guess what! It feels great! I’ve never felt happier to be a clueless (or semi-clueless) schmuck with my head in the sand.

Join me.

Come to the light side.

Ignore the urge to watch the world burn around us (quite literally) and shut the computer off or click off the phone and go work in your garden, for a walk, paint, write, take a photo. I don’t know. I don’t care how you do it but just give your poor brain a break; it wasn’t meant to take in all that information at once. Of course, I sound like those people who are always telling everyone what to do here, so I’ll modify a bit and say: Do it if you want to, but I can guarantee you will feel less stressed if you take that break.

Seriously, how many more articles do we need to read with headlines like this: “[Celebrity] says he doesn’t think [politician] is/will/can/ever doing/do/do/did a good job.” I can’t find a care left for what a celebrity or politician thinks and I bet many of you are in the same boat.

Since I’m not watching news, or trying not to, I’m watching only what requires the least amount of brain cells. Things like Corner Gas (a Canadian sitcom), old shows like The Dick VanDyke Show, and British sitcoms like As Time Goes By. I also watched Murder Mystery on Netflix with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston. It wasn’t award winning, but it was entertaining and a nice distraction. (My son said to add it was a little stupid as a warning.)

I don’t have much of an update on the garden because it’s growing very slowly. It rained a couple of times last week but other than that I probably didn’t water it enough throughout the week. Some additional flowers bloomed outside the house but I’m still waiting on the peonies.

I hope to have photos of them next week.

So how about you? What have you been you reading, watching, or doing lately? Let me know in the comments!

Sunday Bookends: Trying a little crime fiction, garden progress, and spending time outside

On May 31, 2020May 30, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends13 Comments

I decided to break up some of my light fiction this week with crime fiction suggested by my husband (after I asked for a recommendation.) I needed something different than what I usually read. So I’m trying Earl Stanley Gardner’s The Knife Slipped and so far I like it. I love his character descriptions. Here is one of my favorites:

“Her face was the color of a tropical sunset with rouge over the cheeks, and crimson lipstick trying to turn the upper lip into a cupid’s bow. The thing must have been weird enough so far as the average spectator is concerned, but to a detective who trains himself to look closely and see plenty of details, it looked like an oil painting done by Aunt Kate or Cousin Edith, the kind that are hung in a dark corner in the dining room where the open kitchen door will hide ’em during mealtimes.”

I also loved this dialogue:

“To hell with that stuff. I’m objective, Donald. I have no more feeling than the bullet that leaves a rifle barrel. If it’s a charging elephant that’s in front of it, the bullet smears him. If it’s a poor little deer, nursing a fawn, the slug tears through her vitals just the same. I’m like that Donald. I’m paid to deliver results, my love, and by God, I deliver ’em.”

I’m still reading my daughter Paddington books at night and right now we are re-reading Paddington Abroad, which is one of our favorites. I’m also finishing up Sweet On You by Becky Wade.

We are loving our new house and the children are too, especially Little Miss who wants to spend just about all day outside as long as it isn’t hot. I love that she loves to be outside, even though sometimes I need a break to do things inside. She was never outside this much at the old house, which had a smaller yard, was in town, and where we always felt uncomfortable because people drove and walked by and watched us (or maybe that was only in our heads.)

There was a lot of concrete and asphalt there and it wasn’t as friendly. Here we have neighbors who love to pet our dog (one of our neighbors up there did love our dog), welcome us to the neighborhood with hanging plants; wildlife to watch (I caught a toad the other day for my daughter who promptly decided it was her pet and she didn’t want to let it go), we also have bunnies hopping through the backyard, a space for a garden, and all kinds of plants and flowers popping up all over. And for my son, the best thing is that we are 5.3 miles away from his best friend’s house.

We have discovered peonies on one side of the house, which delighted me because I had peonies at the house I lived in when I was a child and they were over 100 years old. I’m so excited for them to bloom I just want to sit next to the bush and wait. My mom says they usually bloom around my brother’s birthday which is June 9. She said when they did bloom they would bother her asthma and a friend told her to have them pulled up so they would stop coming back each year.

“I can’t have them pulled up!” she cried. “They’re over 100 years old!”

I think there was some story about my great-grandfather being very sick one time and when he woke up and was healthy enough to leave the house, the first thing he saw was the peonies. It was some relative anyhow. Later this week I will have an interesting story involving my great-grandfather and his sister Mollie. (I know. You’re just on the edge of your seat waiting to read it, aren’t you? Ha. ;) But it has to be better than the news these days.)

We spent a lot of time outside on Memorial Day weekend too. It’s a family tradition to visit the cemetery down the road from my parents behind a 150-year-old (or so) church where my ancestors and sister are buried. My mom gave birth to my sister prematurely four years before I was born and she did not survive.

My daughter seemed oblivious to the fact she was dancing on the final resting places of her ancestors as she ran around, twirled, jumped and sang Frozen songs and occasionally helped my dad plant flowers. My son told her she needed to stop but I told him if the dead people could see my daughter they’d probably be delighted to watch her with all her en

We found a pigeon when were there and my daughter loves all animals so I thought she was going to try to take it home, especially when she saw it was injured. It couldn’t fly at all. Instead it would try to walk, limp and then fall forward on it’s face. We decided to let it go it’s own way since we weren’t sure what was wrong with it, but it was very sad to see. I wish we could have helped it but I think it was sick and not only injured.

My son thought he was funny to lean on the gravestone of his namesake (his great-great-great grandfather who was a Civil War veteran) and call him a “boomer” but then realized he shouldn’t joke since without the man he wouldn’t even be here. I agreed and that’s when I launched into a Biblical-type lineage speech.

“Yes, son, because John begot J. Eben who begot Ula, who begot Ronnie, who begot me, who then begot you.”

My son didn’t find me humorous. Why would he? He is a teenager now. (Don’t let the smile here fool you…his laughter was at his own joke, not mine.)

I finally finished planting our garden after my dad, son, and husband finished building the fence around the raised garden beds my son and Dad built. I have one more plant to . . . er. . . plant. Broccoli I almost forgot it. I’m really not sure what is going to grow and what isn’t at this point but the green beans and some of the lettuce are already sprouting. My dad finally found us some summer squash. The garden centers around here were wiped out. Summer squash was what I really wanted in the garden because that was the one plant that survived at the other house and actually produced a veggie I could use.

I’ve also planted tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and potatoes. We will see if any of them come up or not. It will be fun to watch.

So that’s about it for me here this week. How about all of you? What have you been reading, watching or doing this past week? Let me know in the comments.

Bookish questions: short chapters or long chapters?

On May 27, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings13 Comments

As I started getting back into reading in the last couple of years, I’ve noticed there are all kinds of opinions among book readers. Everyone has different tastes, everyone has different interests and what one person likes in a book another one doesn’t. Of course we all have our own preferences. It’s part of being human.

One varying perspective among book readers is chapter lengths. Some like longer chapters, some like shorter. Personally I’m in between. I don’t enjoy super short chapters but I also don’t want chapters so long that I feel like the story is dragging on.

I know I mention Jan Karon a lot but when I was thinking about longer chapters in books, she came to mind because her chapters are quite long. Even though her chapters are long they are interesting enough to not make it feel like I am pushing through and dying to get to the end of the chapter. She makes the chapters easier to read by breaking them down into sections or scenes throughout the chapters.

The only issue is that sometimes these sections are too short so it feels like I am reading clips from a movie and not a fully cohesive narrative. At times, but not always, it feels almost as if I am jumping in and out of scenes and I lose track a bit, but I still love the stories Jan weaves.

As a writer it is hard to know how long to make a chapter and it’s even harder when a writer is sharing their book or chapters on a blog. When I share the chapters of my stories on my blog I tend to make them shorter because I know most people don’t want to read a long blog post, but when I rewrite them for the final book, I tend to add sections together and make the chapters a little longer.

There are tons of opinions online about how long a chapter should be too. Wordcounter.com says that 5,000 is too long and 1,000 is too short, in the opinions of many. However, Writer’s Digest says that as a writer, you should make your chapter as long as you need in order to propel your story forward. The article’s author, Brian A. Klems says that he thinks of a chapter as an act in a television show.

He writes: “When a TV show finishes Act 1 (which almost always happens just after something significant is revealed or an important question is raised), it goes to commercial break. Ditto for Act 2, 3, 4 and so forth. Look for your chapters to have those similar elements. When you find those “commercial breaks,” end your chapter and start a new one. In other words, let your content dictate your chapter length, not the other way around.”

So, how about you? As a reader, when you read a book do you like short chapters or long chapters? Do you like chapters with lots of scene breaks in them or one big, long scene? If you are a writer, how do you decide how long to make your chapter? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Gardens are too much drama, still reading the same books (I’m serious), and adding truth to Bible stories

On May 24, 2020May 23, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends18 Comments

My cellphone rang at 7:30 a.m. after a rough night of sleep. I struggled to find it where I’d dropped it somewhere in the sheets and looked at it with bleary eyes.

Dad. Uh-oh. Was something wrong? I’d better pick it up.

My dad sounded panicked. But my parents and the rest of the family was fine.

“Did you leave your plants out last night?” he asked hurridly.

“Uh..yes?”

“We had a frost last night. Listen, if you go out and sprinkle them lightly with cold water you can wash the frost off and maybe save them.”

That’s when I realized. . . taking care of a garden is way too stressful.

I don’t even have the garden planted yet and I’m already stressed about the plants. They’re in a tray outside my door and each night I go to bed and wonder if the deer will come this far down and eat them. I planted a few tomatoes and Dad says he’s pretty sure they won’t eat those. Deer don’t like tomato plants but they like shrubs and carrots and green beans and anything else they can get their mouths on, I guess.

We will see.

If I don’t give up on the garden all together. I still have to stretch a fence around the garden, which is why I haven’t planted the other plants just yet. I would like to plant carrots but my dad says they are a pain and probably won’t grow in my soil. I’m still going to try it, even though the topsoil we picked up really is quite awful and rocky. Who knows. It doesn’t hurt to try.

I’m still reading the same books and watching the same shows, for the most part. For books: Sweet on You by Becky Wade and then switching off with A Light in the Window by Jan Karon. These are books that are filling a type of comfort reading for me.

I’ve also read the first chapter of Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey. I’m planning a separate post on that book at a later date, but I can say for now that the book is broken down into simple, short chapters and it’s fascinating. I have a feeling it is going to spin my view of the real Jesus on it’s head, which I’m excited to have happen since it is coinciding with my watching of The Chosen.

If you haven’t heard about The Chosen before (or missed when I mentioned it before), it’s a TV series based on the life of Jesus and is available on The Chosen site, The Chosen app, and on DVD via their site. Purchases of the DVD help to support series two, which is currently being written. The Chosen has fictional aspects within the true story of Jesus in that it offers backstories of some of the most important people of the Bible – Simon (Peter), Mary Magdalene, Jesus’, the disciples, Nicodemus and many other supporting characters. This is not your typical Bible retelling.

My 13-year old son and I have been watching it for homeschooling and he said “I like how this makes the people of the Bible seem like real people.”

And that is what the show does. It shows the humanity and authenticity of the people we’ve spent our lives reading about on the page. I love how the show portrays Jesus as I feel he really was. So many movies about Jesus show him as stoic and serious and just very . . . how do I put it? Heavy and dramatic.

But in The Chosen, Jesus laughs and jokes and relates to his followers as any other person in real life would. It shows us a new view of Jesus. A view that he is God but he was also man.

Even if you aren’t a Christian, I’d encourage you to watch the show anyhow because it is very engaging and tells the story of people, not religion, which I believe is what our relationship with God should be – the story of us, not of what the world sees as simple “religion.”

Although the books I’m reading and the shows I’m watching are the same, I’m listening to some different things this week, including a new-to-me group The Dead South. Their language on some songs are not “clean”, just as a warning. (I always hesitate sharing music that might have some hard language because I don’t want to offend any of the Christian followers I have, but hopefully they won’t judge my heart for liking some of the songs, but not the language. )

On the blog last week I shared some thoughts on how social media kills our creativity (which I’ve actually blogged about before but forgot. Apparently this is a subject I feel strongly about *wink* ), shared Chapter 5 of Fully Alive and Chapter 9 of The Farmer’s Daughter.

So, how about all of you? What have you been up to lately? Reading? Watching? Listening to? Just simply doing? Let me know in the comments!

Sunday Bookends: Light romances (in book and movie forms) welcomed this week

On March 15, 2020March 14, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends16 Comments

I won’t be rambling too much about what the rest of the world is rambling about this week because first, we all need a break and two, I’ve discovered situations like this really bring out the crazies and I’m crazy enough for myself.

So, on to books I’m reading and watching this week. I’m sticking with light romances both in books and movies, even if they are a little bit stupid. I don’t mind if they are stupid because then I can make fun of them while I read them or watch them. Luckily, I read a book this week and watched a movie I didn’t have to make fun of.

I share a Kindle account with my mom, mainly because I’m more technical and set it up for her. Most of the time this is fine because my mom utilizes Kindle Unlimited more than me. The main issue is that Mom is retired and reads more and faster than me so, sometimes, while I am in the middle of a book Mom will return my book to “take out” another one, which is what happened this week.

Luckily, I was able to get the book, True to You by Becky Wade, back and finish it. It was really worth finishing and I’m glad I did. The book had me hooked from the beginning, even if the main character did grate on my nerves part of the time (a very little part of the time). I fell in love with the love interest as much as the main character did. If I wasn’t married and John Lawson was real I would. well — I’d still only stare at him from afar because I’m totally not his type.

Anyhow, this was the first of a three-book series about The Bradford Sisters. There are also two novellas in the series.

I shared the plot of the book last week, but thought I’d share it again this week, in case you are interested.

After a devastating heartbreak three years ago, genealogist and historical village owner Nora Bradford decided that burying her nose in her work and her books is far safer than romance in the here and now.

Unlike Nora, former Navy SEAL John Lawson is a modern-day man, usually 100 percent focused on the present. However, when John, an adoptee, is diagnosed with an inherited condition, he’s forced to dig into the secrets of his ancestry.

John enlists Nora’s help to uncover the identity of his birth mother, and as they work side-by-side, this pair of opposites begins to suspect that they just might be a perfect match. But can their hope for a future survive their wounds from the past?

I am planning to start the second book this weekend.

I also watched a light romance movie this week: Road Less Traveled with Lauren Alaina (A country singer), Donny Boaz, and Jason Burkey. Without giving too much away, I will say this movie was not your typical small-town girl who goes home, runs into an old boyfriend and falls back in love with her old boyfriend movie. Not exactly anyhow. It threw me for a bit of a loop. The acting was pretty good and realistic, but I will say that it made light of getting drunk a little more than I thought it should.

As I have mentioned before, I am a prude, in many ways, but not in others. Still, it doesn’t offend me if someone is drunk in a movie. What bothered me was how often the characters were holding a beer, wine, or in a bar and how many times they were roaring drunk – like to the point they couldn’t remember what they did while drunk. And I guess we were all supposed to laugh about that? I don’t know. That bothered me, but I still enjoyed the movie.

The weather warmed up this week, a little anyhow. On Monday it was 70 and the temperature steadily declined over the week, but it was still warmer than it has been. The kids and I walked to our local health store for snacks, unaware of the craziness that would settle over our country in the next couple of days and that shelves would empty of food.

Sadly, there are many in our community, like us, who can not afford to stockpile and instead live week to week so we are hoping those who have the money or are running up credit cards will leave us some food for our next paycheck. Even if we had the money we wouldn’t be stockpiling the way others are because fear is a liar. We will make it one way or another. My parents are the stockpiling kind and have assured us we can have some cans of beans if it gets too bad.

In many ways, I wish we could go back to Monday when we were sitting on our front lawn with our biggest worry being that people driving by as the busses let out for school would think that my children were actually drinking beer, instead of the natural soda they were drinking.

In house news, we are busy packing and are supposed to be moved out, per our contract, by April 3.

To keep the escapism alive, I blogged more of A New Beginning this week and am keeping the rest of my blog posts for this week as light as possible.

So what are you reading or watching this week? Is the weather getting any warmer where you are? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Light romances, what the kids are reading, and unrealistic TV shows

On March 8, 2020March 7, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends10 Comments

Since this weekly feature is called “Sunday Bookends” I decided I would actually start off by talking about what books the children and I are reading. I should mention what my husband is reading but he reads a lot of books and I can’t keep up, plus I would have to put in descriptions of them and what he thinks about them and, well, quite frankly, he can just start his own blog for that. Ha.

So, anyhow, my youngest is 5 and she’s “reading”, or actually having read to her, Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary.

I read the Ramona books when I was anywhere from 9 to 12 so it’s been years since I’ve read the stories. That’s probably why I forgot that this book would actually be better for my son to read because it’s from the perspective of Beezus, the older sister, who is trying to figure out how to deal with her 4-year old younger sister. Instead of my son reading it, though, I’m reading it to my 5-year old who is getting all kinds of ideas from Ramona’s antics. When I start reading a chapter I issue a warning (or two) to Little Miss.

“We don’t do this in real life, okay?” I tell her. Or, “Don’t you ever invite all of your little friends over for a party without asking me, understand?”

She looks at me with wide eyes and says “Okay,” but I can just see her little wheels turning and I now wonder which mischievous activity of Ramona’s she will choose to emulate. I have been reading the book to her at night before bed, but unlike Paddington, she stays wide awake for Ramona, which has meant some later nights for us both. I’ve decided to start our nightly reading earlier now since my hope of her falling asleep while we are reading has now faded.

My 13-year old is finally reading the fifth book in the Harry Potter series. I say finally because it took him a year to finish the fourth book. It didn’t take him a year because he struggles to read. It took him a year because he kept getting distracted by video games, Legos, and building amazing creations in Minecraft. He finished the fourth book over the last month because I assigned it to him for his English class and this week he will be assigned a book report on it. He’s done a nice job with his last two reports, so I’m sure he’ll do fine with this one, as well.

As soon as he finished book number four, he went looking for the next book in his dad’s collection and spent two hours in his room, lost in Hogwarts instead of Youtube. It was heavenly for this book-loving mother.

As for me, I finished Take a Chance on Me, a novella by Becky Wade and really enjoyed it. Her first official book in that series, The Misty River Romance, is coming out in May and is called Stay with Me. While I wait for that book, I found True to You, the first in her Bradford Sisters Romance series. I am enjoying it so far. Her romances are, as Amazon says, “clean and wholesome,” but written well and not cheesy like other romances can be. Don’t look at me like that. My romances aren’t cheesy. Well, maybe they are, but hey, cheesy is a nice distraction some times.

For those who are interested, I’m including the description for True To You from Amazon (It is currently available for free on Kindle Unlimited if you have a membership).

Winner of the 2018 Christy Award Book of the Year

After a devastating heartbreak three years ago, genealogist and historical village owner Nora Bradford has decided that burying her nose in her work and her books is far safer than romance in the here and now.

Unlike Nora, former Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient John Lawson is a modern-day man, usually 100 percent focused on the present. But when he’s diagnosed with an inherited condition, he’s forced to dig into the secrets of his past and his adoption as an infant, enlisting Nora to help him uncover the identity of his birth mother.

The more time they spend together, the more this pair of opposites suspects they just might be a perfect match. However, John’s already dating someone and Nora’s not sure she’s ready to trade her crushes on fictional heroes for the risks of a real relationship. Finding the answers they’re seeking will test the limits of their identity, their faith, and their devotion to one another.

As for what I’m watching, I wasted too much time on Granchester and was turned off by how they tried to shove 2020 sensibilities into a show that takes place in the 1950s. I made it into part of Season 2 before I bailed on it. I would have bailed before, but the lead actor’s masculine jawline and cheekbones had me a bit mesmerized.

There were only so many scenes of him drinking his sorrows away with a glass of brandy, a cigarette, and some jazz that I could take. Not only that but this vicar is the most un-vicar like vicar I’ve ever seen. He’s completely ruled by his demons, which is realistic, but I like to watch shows where the main characters learn from his mistakes and this dude never does.

I know that I am supposed to recognize these are flawed human beings who are growing and learning but the main character seemed to repeat the same mistakes over and over with little to no revelation on his part. And I also questioned that he was a vicar but practiced very little of the Bible. In fact, he was almost never conducting the duty of a vicar at all, yet he never got fired.

As for what I was doing this past week, we’ve been packing, cleaning out and all-out panicking about our move in less than three weeks. One day at a time, though. We know it will all work out eventually.

My husband’s car is in the shop and will be there for a long time, based on the price for the repairs, so the kids and I have been pretty much marooned at home. This would drive most people crazy, but as an introvert, I don’t mind having an excuse not to go out into public and deal with – shudder – other people. It has also been made easier by the fact it’s been super rainy and cold this past week. When it warms up and we are stuck without a car to go to the playground, I might start to freak out a little bit. Luckily my husband is home from work early most evenings.

I added three chapters of A New Beginning to blog this week, not wanting to leave my devoted readers on a cliffhanger until next week. I’m also giving copies of the manuscript to friends and family to ask them to proof it and hopefully catch typos so I can publish it on Kindle sometime in April. You can find links to those chapters HERE or at the link at the top of the page under A New Beginning.

So, how are all of you? What have you been reading, watching and doing? Let me know in the comments and if you want to jump onto Sunday Bookends each week, feel free to do so and leave me a link so I can read your weekly review as well.

Sunday Bookends: house selling drama, Sweet Land and small town libraries

On February 23, 2020February 23, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends24 Comments

The house selling process plods forward and as it does I seem to be having more breakdowns than normal. The roller-coaster of emotions as we worry about something falling through with either the sale of this house or the purchase of the other is getting to me I guess. I find myself sitting down and having a good cry a couple times a week.

After an unexpected removal from the house when the inspector came and wanted to bring the buyers, I cried as we toured our small town, not so much because I will miss the place, but because of all the bad memories made while here.

“That,” I said as I pointed at the hospital, the largest in our region, tears rolling down my face. “is the last place I saw my grandmother alive.”

This was after we drove past the house where some family members live but who no longer speak to us, though they never spoke to us much before either. That situation has broken my heart for a long time and resulted in a lot of confusion and hurt feelings on all sides. In some ways, it’s as if we think if we pack up the house and get out of this place we can leave all the emotional baggage behind, but of course, we really can’t.

We can drive away but we will still carry the scars we’ve gotten here. From the broken family relationships to the loss of my husband’s grandparents to driving by the last place I saw Grandma alive so many times in the last 16 years to the knives in our backs from former places of employment and former friends, living in this town hasn’t always been easy. I know only God can heal those scars so I have to lean on him now more than ever.

In happier news, I watched a movie called Sweet Land this week, which was actually pretty “sweet”, so it lived up to its name. It starred Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, Alan Cumming, and Alex Kingston. I kept writing in circles when I tried to explain the plot (that’s how muddled my brain is this week), so I pulled it off Wikipedia:

In the aftermath of World War I, Inge Altenberg (Elizabeth Reaser), an orphan from Snåsa, Norway, arrives in America to a very cold reception. The parents of immigrant farmer Olaf Torvik (Tim Guinee) remain in Norway, where they met her. Dialogue reveals that the four of them have worked out an agreement that allowed her to emigrate to America for the purpose of marrying Olaf. The Minnesota farming village of Audubon, in which her intended husband lives, is horrified to learn that she is a German immigrant with no papers. To make matters worse, she has accidentally obtained membership papers for the American Socialist Party. Scandalized, both the town’s Lutheran minister and the county clerk refuse to marry them.

When events lead them to openly cohabit with each other, they find themselves ostracized by the entire town. They are then forced to harvest their crop completely by hand and alone. This particular harvest season brings not only work, but love as well.

I streamed the movie on Amazon, but I’m sure it is available on other services as well.

On the book front, I am still reading Love Begins at Willow Tree Hill and still enjoying it. I haven’t had as much time for reading with all the “drama” (so to speak) in our life, but this week I hope to escape that drama a bit with reading and working on my two novels. (If you haven’t been following my novel, you can find a link to the chapters at the top of the page or HERE. I post new chapters on Thursdays and Fridays and will post it to Kindle when I’m finished, possibly with changes, but definitely edited and revised.)

I visited what was once my local library and will hopefully be our new local library when we move. My son and I had headed to the new house to pick up a radon test we’d ordered ahead of the inspection. After we left the house we mailed the test and then I asked my son if he wanted to see the little library in town. It was the library my mom and I always went to when I was a kid.

“You don’t understand,” I told my son. “I didn’t have video games and social media when I was growing up so books were my only way to escape and experience life.”

When I walked into the library, the smell of books overwhelmed me just like it did when I was a kid. That smell was a sign to me that entire worlds were opening up to me and my mom and I would spend probably an hour choosing the books we wanted. We’d drag them home in a big bag and my dad would say “More books?” Sometimes we would bring home books we bought from the book sale and Dad would say, again, “More books? We don’t even have room for the books we have!”

But he let us have them anyhow and Mom and I would delve into them and float away from our small house in the country to worlds far away that were much more exciting than cleaning houses and cooking dinners and washing clothes and doing homework. And we met new people, learned new ideas, developed new vocabulary, and for me, dreamt dreams of sharing stories as compelling as the ones I was reading.

Before we left town, I decided to let the little old library ladies sitting at the front desk know how important the library was to me when I was growing up. They appreciated me letting them know, they said, and hope it works out for the library to be our home library by spring.

As for what I’m writing this week:

A flash fiction piece about a “sugar report” (letter to a soldier from a romantic interest);

Did you drink your water?

Faithfully Thinking: God’s Kingdom is in Your Own Backyard

Fiction Thursday, A New Beginning Chapter 22

Fiction Friday: A New Beginning Chapter 23
I’ve also joined *eyeroll* Wattpad…the place that teens apparently share all their bizarre pubescent sex fantasies. My story, however, is nothing like that so it will not, most likely, get traction on Wattpad. But, why not try? Life is short and we need to go for it, right? If you want to follow The Farmer’s Daughteron there (though this version probably won’t be what I finally publish on Kindle), you can find it HERE.

As for what I’m listening to this week (something new I’m adding):

Oldies to get me in the mood for revisions on A New Beginning (which takes place in the mid 60s):

Marc Martel:

and sermons like this one:

So, how about you? What are you up to this week? Reading? Watching? Learning? Listening to? Share with me in the comments!

Sunday Bookends: big house news, books finished, books to start

On February 16, 2020February 16, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends28 Comments

I finished two books this week. One was a middle school-aged book and the other was an adult book (not that kind of adult book!). The adult book was a library book, the first I’ve actually read in probably 10 years, if not more. Normally I borrow books or read them on Kindle.

The middle school book, The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glenn McCarty was one my son and I read together for his homeschool English. It was a fun book, full of adventure and perfect for every age, but especially 5th to 7th-grade boys.

I helped my son write a book report about it and realized it really is not easy to write a book without giving away the entire plot. Of course, I realize this when I mention books on the blog, as well. I decided I’d share part of my son’s book report to let my readers know what it was all about and why he said he felt sad when he realized he had reached the end of it.

The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson (or M.S.T.T.), a book made for kids about the Wild West, was written by Glenn McCarty and is his second book. This book follows Eugene Appleton and the son of a shady businessman Tumbleweed Thompson. They go adventuring, doing kooky stuff like being tricked into looking for a fake treasure to getting kidnapped.

The story starts when Eugene Appleton was walking in Rattlesnake Junction when he saw Tumbleweed and his dad “performing. After a scandal involving a misunderstanding about what was actually in Mr. Thompson’s tonic, they became friends, despite the fact the tonic worked as a laxative. Eugene, Tumbleweed, and Charlotte (the love interest) go on crazy adventures, but it gets serious. While they are looking in a widow’s old house, they found out robbers were living there with plans to rob a train. The rest of the book is them trying to stop the robbers.

Eugene, Charlotte and Tumbleweed are the main characters of this story. Eugene is smart, brave, and trusts people too much. Tumbleweed is dumb, brave and lies a lot. Charlotte is smart, brave, and a love interest of Eugene and Tumbleweed, who sometimes compete for her attention. Together they try to stop a band of robbers named the No Shave Gang. It’s probably important to say everything is told through the eyes of Eugene.

Well, in conclusion, this book has everything a children’s book should have. It has adventure, interesting characters, and slapstick comedy. I love how three dimensional some of the characters are, take for instance Widow Springfield the local widow whose husband got in trouble with a local gang. The plots and the great description of the locations are on point and make you feel like your really there. If you like stories that make you think this is the book for you. Even if you don’t like thinking, there’s a lot of action.

I also finished Falling Home by Karen White.

The book was well written but was fairly melodramatic and cliche. Since I like books that are melodramatic and cliche, that didn’t make me hate the book but I did find myself rolling my eyes a few times. (Let me clarify that the books I write are also melodramatic and cliche and sometimes I even roll my eyes at my own writing, so this isn’t a negative review ;) ). I ended up skimming through some of the chapters toward the end because the subject dealt with a very real fear of mine and I couldn’t handle reading about it. White did such a good job of bringing out the emotion of the situation I could immediately see myself in a similar situation. She’s a wonderful writer, but during those chapters, I almost wish she hadn’t been and I could have had an excuse to abandon the novel. I read all the way to the end, even though I had figured out both plot twists well toward the beginning of the novel and I was squirming reading the one plot twist because of the aforementioned personal trigger.

Up on the reading block this week is a book recommended by Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs: Love Begins at Willow Tree Hall by Alison Sherlock. I’ve started it and so far I’m really enjoying it. It’s a nice light read, which I need right now. The description, according to Goodreads:

A feel-good love story in a gorgeous country village, perfect for fans of Milly Johnson and Heidi Swain.
Previously published as A House To Mend a Broken Heart.

Willow Tree Hall has been the proud ancestral home of the Cranley family for centuries. But now the house is falling apart, and the elderly Earl is growing too frail to manage it himself.

Annie Rogers is looking for a job that will allow her to disappear. The role of live-in housekeeper to Arthur, Earl of Cranley, and his reluctant heir, Sam Harris, is just perfect. How hard can it be to run a household? But with no qualifications, and Sam criticising her at every turn, Annie suddenly finds herself completely out of her depth.

But it turns out that Sam and Annie have more in common than they think. Both of them are running from their past. And both of them have fallen under the spell of Sam’s beautiful, once-grand home. Maybe, just maybe, together they can save Willow Tree Hall … and bring each other back to life at the same time.

As for what I watched recently, not a lot. I’ve been reading and writing more than watching. I did watch a movie by myself on the recommendation of my brother: About Time, starring Domnhall Gleeson (what a name) and Rachel McAdams. If you don’t recognize Domnhall’s name you might recognize him from the newer Star Wars movies as General Hux:

And if you have children, you might recognize him as Thomas McGregor from the latest adaption of Peter Rabbit:

Or from the Harry Potter as Ron Weasley’s brother Bill (which I added here after my brother reminded me.):

After I saw him in Peter Rabbit, I recognized him in Star Wars I said “Hey! It’s that guy!” Since I don’t know how to pronounce the man’s name, I will most likely say “Hey! It’s that guy!” And honestly, I’ve been saying that a lot lately since he’s been in a lot of movies we have watched recently. When my brother mentioned About Time, I looked it up and said “Hey! It’s that guy!”

Anyhow, the movie was very good (rated R for language, just an FYI if you sit down to watch with the family). The R rating surprised me in some ways because the movie really was pretty clean. I think a couple uses of the f-word were what gave it the R rating. The basic premise is that the main character learns that the male members of his family can go back in time to certain points in their lives to change what happened without changing the timeline drastically, as long as they don’t go back before a child or person is born, which can pretty much mess everything up.

The theme was love in all forms – between couples and family, but especially love between a son and father. Yes, I cried. I cried a lot. I think I damaged a muscle in my cheek from crying toward the end because for the rest of the day a muscle along my cheek and temple jumped.

I will probably be burying myself in books the next few weeks while we deal with the stress of selling and buying a house and moving. Last week someone made an offer on the house and we accepted and hope to have it sold by the beginning of April. We also hope to be able to move into our new house around the same time, if all goes as planned.

Last week on the blog, I shared photos from our winter; wrote about my need to trust in God even when I don’t feel he’s near; and I shared Chapter 20 and Chapter 21of my novel in progress, A New Beginning.

Up on the blog this week will be a post sharing some of my favorite blog posts from the last month and two more chapters of A New Beginning and a post about nightmares in children and adults.

How about you? What are you reading or watching or simply doing this week? Feel free to share in the comments.

This post is part of Readerbuzz’s Sunday Salon and Caffeinated Reviewer’s Sunday Post.

Sunday Bookends: Books finished and started; the never-ending house showings; and Ancestry.com’s rabbit holes

On February 2, 2020February 2, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, recap of the week, Sunday Bookends, week in focus8 Comments

This past week was fairly tame, for the most part, with things speeding up toward the end of it while we prepared for yet another house showing. I think we are on number 14, if you count the one buyer who came to look at the house three times but still didn’t buy it. We are all suffering from a bit of battle fatigue with this house selling thing, as I’ve mentioned several times before (have I whined about this enough yet? Yes, I think so too.). However, we recognize many houses are on the market for months of years before they sell so it could be much worse.

What’s difficult about house showings, as anyone who has sold a house while still living in it knows, is trying to keep the house clean and then leaving it for an hour or so to allow perfect strangers to walk through it and judge you. I’m sure most people truly aren’t judging, but as the homeowner, it can feel that way and that’s the man stress-inducing part of it all.

I actually welcome the requests for the showings, even if we have had a lot in only a couple months, hoping someone makes an offer and buys it, allowing us to move closer to my husband’s job and my parents. I do like our neighbors but we don’t have friends or family up here, making it a rather lonely existence.

I distracted myself from all the weird news this week by going down several rabbit holes on Ancestry.com. I seem to discover something new about my family every time I go on and this past week I found out even more about the people I loosely (very loosely) based ‘A Story to Tell’ and ‘A New Beginning‘ on.

I’ll ramble about that in a blog post later this week when I tell a little bit more about the real story of Blanche and “Hank” (whose actual name was Howard.). What I will say is that Howard, my biological great-grandfather, isn’t looking too good at the moment, but, hey, it was all almost a century ago and I wasn’t there so who knows what really happened. He did seem to be a bit of a cad, however.

The problem with me and Ancestry.com is once I get on there, I can’t stop looking up information, I guess because I’m a storyteller and I want to know the stories of my ancestors. I get way too wrapped up in the digging and I’m sure at some point I’ll get myself in trouble with asking questions like “What was this person or that person really like?” from anyone who might still be alive and knew one of my relatives. It might be better to simply read about them on Ancestry instead.

On the book front: I finally finished a book this week! Okay, so I’ve finished books before but lately, I’ve been reading very slow. This past week I finished the book I talked about last week, Borders of the Heart by Chris Fabry and started a new one by him, Under a Cloudless Sky.

For anyone interested in Borders of the Heart, here is the description on Goodreads:

Desperate to escape haunting memories, J. D. Jessup travels from Nashville to Tucson and volunteers on an organic farm. The hardened landowner has one prevailing rule: If J. D. sees an “illegal,” call the border patrol. But when an early morning ride along the fence line leads him to a beautiful young woman named Maria, near death in the desert, his heart pulls him in another direction. Longing to atone for the choices that drove him to Tucson, J. D. hides her and unleashes a chain of deadly events he could never have imagined. Soon they are running from a killer and fighting for their lives. As secrets of their pasts emerge, J. D. realizes that saving Maria may be the only way to save himself.

The book was definitely fast-paced. I thought a couple of the last chapters were unnecessary in some ways, but it still added to the suspense and I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book.

The description for Under a Cloudless Sky:

A charming and engrossing novel for fans of Southern fiction and the recent hit memoir Hillbilly Elegy about a lush and storied coal-mining town–and the good people who live there–in danger of being destroyed for the sake of profit. Will the truth about the town’s past be its final undoing or its saving grace?

1933. In the mining town of Beulah Mountain, West Virginia, two young girls form an unbreakable bond against the lush Appalachian landscape, coal dust and old hymns filling their lungs and hearts. Despite the polarizing forces of their fathers–one a mine owner, one a disgruntled miner –Ruby and Bean thrive under the tender care of Bean’s mama, blissfully unaware of the rising conflict in town and the coming tragedy that will tear them apart forever.

2004. Hollis Beasley is taking his last stand. Neighbors up and down the hollow have sold their land to Coleman Coal and Energy, but Hollis is determined to hold on to his family legacy on Beulah Mountain. Standing in his way is Buddy Coleman, an upstart mining executive who hopes to revitalize the dying town by increasing coal production and opening the Company Store Museum. He’ll pay homage to the past–even the massacre of 1933–while positioning the company for growth at all costs.

What surprises them all is how their stories will intersect with a feisty octogenarian living hundreds of miles away. When Ruby Handley Freeman’s grown children threaten her independence, she takes a stand of her own and disappears, propelling her on a journey to face a decades-old secret that will change everything for her and those she meets.

I’m not sure if some of my blog readers are familiar with the movie War Room, or not, but if you are, Fabry also wrote the book version of that movie. The screenplay was originally written by the Kendrick Brothers, of course. If you haven’t seen the movie, and you’re a Bible-believing Christian, I highly recommend the movie and the book and I also recommend Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer, by Priscilla Shirer, who is also in the movie.

I’m also reading (and hoping to finish this week) The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glenn McCarty, a middle school level book my son read for English, and starting In the Field of Grace by Tessa Afshar.

My son finished Tumbleweed this week and said: “My life feels so empty now that it’s done.” I love to hear that because it means it was a good book and he was completely engrossed in it. I plan to write a separate post about the book later in the week.

My daughter and I are switching between the first Paddington Bear book (rereading it) and

The Cat Who Went Up the Creek because she found out The Cat Who books are about . . . cats. I think she quickly realized most of the books are about the newspaper reporter Jim Qwellerin after the first night because the next night she asked for Paddington again. She’s five and there are more accents I have to do in Paddington, plus Paddington is about a cute bear and his crazy adventures. If I was five, I’d choose Paddington too.

So how about all of you? What have you been doing this past week and what is on your reading list? Let me know in the comments.