Lindsay Detwiler's Blog, page 27

A Naked Christmas: Why I’m Loving Urban Decay Naked 2

I got an amazing surprise this Christmas thanks to my awesome mom…not one, but two Urban Decay shadow palettes! I got the Naked 2 palette and the Smokey palette, both of which I’m obsessed with.

$55 for an eyeshadow palette seems absurd, but it is worth it! My best friend Jamie introduced me to Urban Decay, and now I can understand why she was obsessed. I don’t even wear any other eyeshadows anymore. These are super easy to blend and they always look good. Even if you are in a hurry and can only swipe on one color, they look great. I get so many eyeshadow compliments since I got hooked on Urban Decay.

I used to think professional looking eyeshadow was out of my league, but Urban Decay makes it easier. I’m still mastering the looks, but here’s a sample of what you can do with the Naked 2 palette.

 

Step 1: Apply the Urban Decay Eden base all over lid.

Step 2: Apply Foxy all over lid from eyebrow to eyelashes

Step 3: Use a blending eyeshadow brush to apply Snakebite in the corner and crease. Blend, blend, blend! I have the It Cosmetics Blending brush, and I love it!

Step 4: Use a flat eyeshadow brush to apply half baked to the lid and center of your eyelid.

Step 5: Apply busted using a flat eyeshadow in the corner of your eyelid only.

Step 6: Apply Bootycall under your eyelid and in the inner corner.

Step 7: Blend the lines between colors so you can’t see the transition.

 

After the Holidays Sale: Without You for Kindle

There’s nothing better than shopping after the holidays…because you can finally afford to be a little selfish :) Now that the cookies are gone, the presents are unwrapped, and company is gone (or soon will be), take some time for yourself!

Without You is only 99 cents today to celebrate the end of the holiday season and the beginning of what I like to call reading season. It’s a perfect time to cuddle up on the couch with some coffee and a cat (or 5, in my case). Grab your copy for your Kindle today for less than a buck :) Check out the book reviewers are calling “real,” “haunting,” and “beautiful.”

Available now on Amazon

 

Happy Holidays to My Fellow Bookworms, Readers, and Writers!

It’s been a wild ride. My blog has only been up for about a year now, and it’s grown so much in that time. Thank you so much to all who have read, commented, liked, or shared my posts. I’ve met some wonderful people through the blog and am so happy to have connected.

Happy reading, happy writing, and happy holidays from Lindsay Detwiler!

Petit Vour December Box: Beauty Subscription Finds

I know I don’t need any more makeup…but I adore getting the Petit Vour box in the mail every month. For $15, I get four new products to try…and they are all cruelty free, which makes me happy. Check out the December box.

I got:

Mai Couture Blush Paper

These are little travel papers that you rub on your cheeks for blush. I was skeptical…but I love them! They give you a perfect flushed look, and the colors are gorgeous

Zabana Essentials Beauty Balm

This stuff is amazing! It’s basically a huge chapstick, but it smells like a lovely tropical drink. Awesome!

Blisoma Natural Deodorant

Love the idea of an all-natural, cruelty free deodorant…hate the product! It smells, looks, and feels like clay. The worst part? After about an hour, my armpit was on fire! Like really burning! Ugh. This is a no go for me.

Kani Petal Polish Face Mask

I haven’t tried this yet, but it is a super awesome face mask treatment. I’m going to have a mini spa day over winter break and give it a try.

 

Reviews for Without You by Lindsay Detwiler

The reviews are coming in, and readers are enjoying the realistic portrayal of love and relationships in Without You. See what reviewers are saying, then check out the book on Amazon. Married or single, you’ll find yourself in the pages of Without You.

 

Shades of Sydney by Brittany Coon

Sydney West enjoys sampling summer boys, but this year, one refuses to be a one-night stand…

Twenty-one-year-old Sydney doesn’t believe in relationships. Her parents’ toxic divorce has taught her love is nothing but a sinister fairytale. So every summer she parties, hooks up, abandons her lover before dawn, and repeats.
 
That is until she meets gorgeous local surfer Jason King at the beach…
 
When Jason fails to flirt—or even give her a second glance—she decides something must be wrong with him, and it’s safer to stay away. But when Sydney and Jason’s best friends hook up and become Malibu’s hottest couple, they are forced to spend more time together than either of them cares for.

Armed with a sharp tongue, Sydney works to keep Jason at bay…
 
In a moment of weakness, Sydney lets her guard down and confides in Jason, realizing he’s more than just a hot guy—he’s also a friend. And when Sydney’s need for a summer boy results in her falling into bed with Jason, despite her better judgment, she runs away from him by morning.
 
The problem is, he won’t accept being another one-night stand, and will do anything to prove…


Love really does exist.




Brittney Coon graduated Magna Cum Laude from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Communication and a minor in Film and Media Production. Brittney has always been creative and turned to writing to share the stories playing through her head. In her spare time she reads, watches Friends, and hangs out with her cats. She currently lives in Arizona.
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Shades of Sydney Cover Reveal Giveaway

We Will Always Have the Closet by Natalina Reis

Petra Galatas sees the world through rose-colored glasses…
 
Petra has always chosen to see the best in people. Even her ex-husband’s extramarital affairs couldn’t destroy her faith in humanity. However, as much as she craves love, she’s not ready to trust another man with her heart.
 
The last place Petra thought she’d meet a guy was a closet in her ex-husband’s house…
 
While investigating Jonas Linden for millions of dollars in art fraud, Sam Corra’s clues lead him into the most unlikely of places—Jonas’ closet. Even less likely was meeting a woman there…a beautiful woman with honey skin and big brown eyes. Though neither of them divulge the reason they’re there, there’s an instant mutual attraction. And when Sam pursues her, he discovers the beautiful woman is none other than Jonas Linden’s ex-wife.
 
He’s on a mission to prove Jonas’ guilt. She’s determined to prove his innocence…
 
Unwilling to believe she had been stupid enough to marry a criminal, Petra attempts an investigation of her own, and unwittingly puts herself—and Sam—in danger. First comes an “accident” that lands Petra in the hospital. Second is a kidnapping that puts Sam’s life in grave danger.

 

 

 

When they both become pawns in a deadly game, money, art, and love are all at stake.

 

 

“Hmph.” She felt herself bump into someone. Her first instinct was to run out, but her common sense dictated she stay put. If she left the closet, Jonas would catch her red-handed, and she was not going to give him the satisfaction. It was pitch dark in the oddly small closet and she couldn’t see who was behind her, but she could feel his hard body crushed against hers, his muscle tight against her softness.
Unsettled, she wiggled in vain, trying to put some space between them. The empty hangers swung by her head and she reached up to stop the ensuing rattle. Who made such a tiny closet?
Strong hands spun her around until she was facing the stranger.
“Don’t say anything,” the male voice whispered in her ear. His warm breath on the side of her face sent an irrational shiver of pleasure through her. Her forever curious hands, caught between their bodies, moved of their own accord to explore the stranger’s sculptural hard muscles in unabashed awe.

 

“Get a grip, you idiot,” she chided herself in a soft, but audible voice. 


Natalina wrote her first romance in collaboration with her best friend at the age of 13. Since then she has ventured into other genres, but romance is first and foremost in almost everything she writes.

 

After earning a degree in tourism and foreign languages, she worked as a tourist guide in her native Portugal for a short time before moving to the United States. She lived in three continents and a few islands, and her knack for languages and linguistics led her to a master’s degree in education. She lives in Virginia where she has taught English as a Second Language to elementary school children for more years than she cares to admit.
Natalina doesn’t believe you can have too many books or too much coffee. Art and dance make her happy and she is pretty sure she could survive on lobster and bananas alone. When she is not writing or stressing over lesson plans, she shares her life with her husband and two sons.
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The Struggles of Writing: To Give Up or To Write On?

Yesterday, I almost gave up writing.

The “I’ll nevers” were creeping in, and I felt like giving up.

The “I’ll never” be a bestseller.

The “I’ll never” be a known author.

The “I’ll never” see my next book published.

With the ups and downs of writing, the rejections, the perceived failures…it’s easy to almost give up writing.

But then I thought about it some more and realized I can’t.

What will happen to the next set of characters’ stories? How can I not tell their story, let others connect with them?

How can I stop on chapter two with the story after that and let these women sit in a state of limbo, their stories never finished?

The more I thought about giving up writing, the more I thought about the characters waiting to meet the world. The more I couldn’t stop obsessing over their lives, their words, and where their stories would go next.

I wrote their stories in my head, even though I vowed to give up on writing.

To say I will give up on writing is like saying I will stop laughing at a crazy animal commercial or crying when I see a homeless one. It’s like saying I’ll stop loving chocolate and eat fish sticks instead. It’s like saying I’ll quit the color pink, my favorite.

Because writing is a part of my personality as much as anything else. And to say I’m giving up on writing is like shutting off an entire part of myself.

So today, I decided I’ll keep writing. I’ll write through the failures and rejections, the “nos” and “we’ll pass.” I’ll write through the “yes” and “we love it.” I’ll write through the nobody author syndrome of seeing my book placed against millions.  I’ll write when I’m at the top of the rankings and when I’m dead last. I’ll write when I get great reviews and when I get bad. I’ll write every story I have sitting in outline form. I’ll write them even if only ten people read them. I’ll write them if I have to print them on computer paper.

Because the truth is, a writer can’t just quit writing. A writer writes because it is what she needs to do, not what she chooses to do. It’s what her soul craves.

So I write on.

Available now on Amazon

A Not-So-Perfect Christmas: Overcoming the Stress of the Holidays

You want to be the spirit of Christmas, but instead you’re feeling like the Grinch. Or Scrooge. Or both.

Traffic jams and asinine drivers have you cursing out the cars in the shopping mall parking lot. The grandma beside you in Sears got the last sweater in the exact size you needed for the final gift on your list, and you have no idea what else to get your Aunt May. You have exactly twenty-eight batches of cookies to make and exactly four spare hours to accomplish this monumental task. There’s wrapping to be done, lights to be put up, Christmas hams to buy, the house to clean, stockings to hang, and five hundred other festive tasks to be completed.

Thus, when the carolers come pounding on your door, you feel like shouting a savory “screw you” instead of offering them hot cocoa. You feel like bursting the Santa bubble just so you can stop playing the charade. You feel like serving your family KFC instead of a home cooked meal. You feel like tossing gifts in grocery bags tied shut instead of dealing with the fiasco of losing your tape every five seconds while wrapping.

In short, you feel like skipping Christmas.

The Holiday Façade: A Not So Merry Christmas

The commercials and ads make us feel like the holiday rush is truly the most memorable, remarkable, magical, (insert other cheesy adjective) time of the year.

But if we’re being real, this rings true for very few of us.

Instead, the holidays are filled with stress, burnt cookies, screaming children, and fighting family members. We leave December feeling exhausted, like we need to go to Tahiti, and/or like we may be soon struggling with a mild drinking problem.

And then come the after effects: the Christmas remorse. We’re told by commercial America that we’re supposed to simultaneously drain our bank accounts to buy everyone perfect gifts while also remembering the true “reason for the season”: religion and spending time with family. To accomplish anything less than this oxymoronic task is equivalent to failure.

But balancing the two is truly an impossible task. Many if not all of us often come short and get short-tempered.

So when the family isn’t singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in gorgeous red sweaters around a perfectly roasted turkey, we feel like failures. We feel like we’ve ruined the “most magical time of the year” for our families, for our kids, and for ourselves. We feel like we’ve failed at Christmas.

Who the heck wants to be known for that?

Overcoming Perfectionism During the Holidays

Henry’s first Christmas :)

So what do we do about it? Do we keep plastering on the fake smile and pumping out holiday cookies like Keebler Elves? Or do we hole up, forget about Christmas, and go all out Grinch?

I’m pretty sure I’ve been in both categories at one point or another in my life. Our first married Christmas, we definitely Decked the Halls. We went all out with lights and our Christmas party. We obsessed over every detail, worried that everyone who was  a part of our celebration was having THE Christmas.

Now?

Not so much.

Yes, we still celebrate. But we’ve taken a much more laissez-faire approach. If we get to homemade Christmas cookies…awesome (except when I burn them. Then, not awesome). If we don’t…we buy a tray at Giant Eagle and call it a day.

Our tree constantly has one of the five cats in it. Thus, it constantly has a gaping hole and missing ornaments. Do we obsess over it, tirelessly modeling it after the Home and Garden magazine?

Nope.

We leave the gaping holes and fix it when company is coming over. We’re sly like that.

There have already been dozens of stressors and disasters this holiday season. There always will be.

But we’ve learned that a perfect holiday season doesn’t exist, nor should it. There will never be the perfect holiday where the family holds hands and smiles at the gorgeous festivities. We will never have the final scene from the Grinch where we all sing around the Christmas tree.

But that’s okay.

The holidays shouldn’t be about obsessing over perfection. They should be about participating in traditions that make you happy, and skipping the ones that don’t. They’re about trying your best to have a nice family get together, but laughing it off when your cousins fight over a situation that happened fifteen years ago at the dinner table.

It’s about just sitting back and knowing that like many things in life, the holidays are never going to be the commercial-style picture of happiness. They’ll be messy, frustrating, stressful, aggravating, and insane.

Christmas spirit is about recognizing this and knowing it’s okay.

And if all else fails, an adult beverage and the movie Elf can always help turn your Scrooge-esque mood a touch more festive.

Happy Holidays. Stay Strong. January is approaching.

Lindsay Detwiler

Win a Signed Copy of Without You by Lindsay Detwiler

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Without You
by Lindsay Detwiler

Giveaway ends December 24, 2015.

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