Sandra Cox's Blog, page 253

Garden Critter

Either Walk Sticks are on the up swing in NC this year or this spritely fellow has been hopping all over the yard. This is about the third one I've encountered. Also saw a Copperhead in the road yesterday. Shudder. I much prefer the Walking Stick.

Three for the price of two at Muse Publishing

Buy 3 for the price of 2!!
https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/our-authors/contests-a-events/romance-madness-special

~*~Twin UpdateI got a twin update last night. The little girl (Emily) is now a pound and her brother Marshall is fourteen ounces.  I've also been told she has big feet:)  She's active, while Marshall is more laid back. I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't turn out to be the ringleader of the two.

VBT: The Reluctant Bride

BLURB:Emily Micklen is proud, passionate – and left with no option after the death of her loving fiancé, Jack, but to marry the scarred, taciturn, soldier who needs to secure a well-connected wife.

Major Angus McCartney hopes that marriage to the unobtainable beauty whose confident gaze about the ballroom once failed to register his presence will offer both of them a chance to put the past to rest.

Emily’s determination to be faithful to Jack’s memory is matched only by Angus’s desire to win her with honour and action. Sent to France on a mission of national security, Angus discovers how deeply Emily has been duped, but the secrets he uncovers lead them both into danger. Can Angus and Emily unmask the real conspirators before they lose everything?EXCERPT:‘It’s not a sin, unless you get caught.’
The gentle breeze seemed to whisper Jack’s teasing challenge, its soft, silken fingers tugging at Emily’s ingrained obedience. She put down her basket and stared with longing at the waters below, sweat prickling her scalp beneath her poke bonnet as desire warred with fear of the consequences.
‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Em?’
Still resisting, Emily closed her eyes, but the wind’s wicked suggestiveness was like the caress of Jack’s breath against her heated cheek; daring Emily to shrug aside a lifetime of dutiful subservience – again – and peel off her clothes, this time to plunge into the inviting stream beneath the willows.
She imagined Jack’s warm brown eyes glinting with wickedness. Taunting her like the burr that had worked its way into the heel of her woollen stockings during her walk.
Exhaling on a sigh, Emily opened her eyes and admitted defeat as she succumbed to the pull of the reed-fringed waters.
Desire had won, justified by practicality. If she had to remove one stocking to dislodge the burr she might as well remove both.
Scrambling down the embankment, she lowered herself onto a rock by the water’s edge. Her father would never know. If he glanced from his study in the tower room, where he was doubtless gloating over his balance sheet, he’d assume she was a village lass making her way along the track. Emily had never seen him interest himself in the poor except …
Like most unpleasant memories, she tried to cast this one out with a toss of her head, still glad her father had neverdiscovered what she’d witnessed from her bedroom window one evening five years ago: the curious sight of BartholomewMicklen ushering the beggar girl who’d arrived on his doorstep into his carriage.
Then climbing in after her before it rumbled down the driveway and out of sight.
Now was just another of those moments when Emily was glad her father remained in ignorance. Her insurance, should she need it, was that she knew a few of her father’s secrets the excise men might just want to know.
By the time the first stocking had followed Emily’s boots onto the grassy bank she was bursting with anticipation for her swim.
What did one more sin matter when she’d be Mrs. Jack Noble in less than a week? AUTHOR Bio and Links:Beverley Eikli is the author of eight historical romances published by Pan Macmillan Momentum, Robert Hale, Ellora's Cave and Total-e-Bound. Recently she won UK Women's Fiction publisher Choc-Lit's Search for an Australian Star competition with her suspenseful, spy-based Regency Romance The Reluctant Bride.
Beverley wrote her first romance when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her romance-writing career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.
After throwing in her job on South Australia's metropolitan daily The Advertiser to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley discovered a new world of romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire.
Eighteen years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s as an airborne geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the French Guyanese jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia teaching in the Department of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University, as well as teaching Short Courses for the Centre of Adult Education and Macedon Ranges Further Education.
She writes Regency Historical Intrigue as Beverley Eikli and erotic historicals as Beverley Oakley.
Beverley won the Choc Lit Search for an Australian Star competition with The Reluctant Bride.Shortlisted for the 2012 Australian Romance Readers Award for her novel Rake's HonourFinalist in the 2011 Australian Romance Readers Awards for her novel A Little Deception.Links:http://beverleyoakley.com/Beverley_Oakley/Welcome.htmlhttps://www.facebook.com/beverley.eikli?ref=tn_tnmnAmazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/The-Reluctant-Bride-Beverley-Eikli/dp/1781890862/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1372649516&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=beverley+eikliAmazon.co.uk - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Reluctant-Bride-Beverley-Eikli/dp/1781890862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372649607&sr=8-1&keywords=the+reluctant+bride+beverley+eikliBarnes & Noble - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-r... Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Beverley-Eikli/e/B0034Q44E0Beverley will award a $20 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour.The tour dates can be found here: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2013/08/book-blast-reluctant-bride-by-beverley.html

Happy Labor Day

May your day be laborless. Can you believe its September? Christmas will be here before we know it.~*~
Apologies for being a slug about visiting buds' blogs recently. Here's my excuses, err, let me rephrase, here's my reasons (Not that there's any reason or excuse good enough to miss your blog): I've been painting the kitchen and getting Shardai on CreateSpace. I still need to proof but after that I should be wrapping it up. I couldn't use my e cover because the writing bled into the edges, but I was able to use the same pic. You can see the e cover down on the right. What do you think?  

Have Fun This Weekend

23 Skidoo

Here's a bit of trivia for Thursday.
Are you familiar with the term '23 Skidoo'? It's American slang for 'getting out while the getting's good', skedaddling, or being forced to leave quickly.
The story originated around the triangular-shaped Flatiron Building at Madison Square. The shape of the building and its location to the park caused a wind-tunnel affect. In the early 1900's, men would hang out to watch women's skirts blow up, exposing their ankles and legs, when they walked by.The constables would come by and disperse the men. Hence, 23 skidoo.

Sacrificial Fern

Let's have a brief moment of silence for my poor fern that was sacrificed to the bird's nest. I haven't watered it in weeks, afraid I'd disturb mom and ruin eggs or drown babies. Even though we've got bird droppings on the porch, there's been no animated sounds coming from the fern and the eggs are way past the hatching point. The last time I checked the nest, mom shot out of there in a twitter so I've left it alone. I got up my nerve yesterday and peaked inside. No mom. No Babies.There'd been a nest built over the old nest and instead of four eggs there was one. My best guess: A cowbird removed the little wren's eggs and left one of hers but Mama Wren was too smart to dupe and deserted the nest. You got to admit those cowbird's have taken adoption to a whole new level. Lay the egg and get someone else to raise the offspring. Anyway...that's my theory and I'm sticking to it:)
The Sacrificial Fern

The Butler

We went to see The Butler this weekend.

I fall for period piece trailers and end up in a movie that doesn't leave me all warm and fuzzy when I walk out. I'm a fantasy girl. I like feel-goods or hair-raising adventure. In other words escapism. Lets face it, while real life can be great, it can also be grim. So while I'm not sorry I saw it, both the hh and I agreed if we had a do-over, we probably wouldn't have seen it.

It's truly a superb movie. The acting is wonderful. The storyline is in depth. I look for both the movie and the actors to be up for awards. But its centered around a brutal time in our history. To quote the hh, 'we lived through that hurtful experience. I'd just as soon not be reminded of it'. And hurtful is a good way to describe what Americans did to other Americans. Its almost beyond belief. How can anyone treat another human being like that? Especially people that claim to be God fearing Americans.

 I know every country has its share of brutality, but you always want yours to be the exception. Unfortunately, we're not.

 Did you see it? What were your thoughts? Again, it was an emotional, in depth, wonderfully acted movie. It's just more realism than I like to deal with. Though, realism is not necessarily a bad thing.

 Oh, and did you see where a former Korean war vet who trained Vietnam fighter pilots is refusing to show it in his theatre because Jane Fonda is in it and her stance on the Vietnam war? For more information: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/08/22/Jane-Fonda-opponent-wont-show-The-Butler-at-his-Kentucky-theater/7951377220674/

Done and Done

Thanks for forwarding the pic, Ryan. I finished my WIP today. And its only taken forever.  It's off to a few kind souls who have agreed to be readers and then to my agent. While, I'm waiting for responses, I'm going to convert Shardai to paper.  Gosh I feel so industrious. grin.
I ran across another quotable. This one was from Sue Grafton's 'C' Is For Corpse. "I'm not a process person. I like goals and closure, the arrival instead of the journey itself." Can't you relate with that? Whether you're writing, sewing, cooking, or reading a good book, aren't you excited to start and impatient to finish? I know I am.
So what's on your agenda? Have you finished an 'its taken forever project?
Oh, and by the way, may your Monday pass quickly:)

Woo Hoo! It's The Weekend.

Is this cute or what?