Heather Huffman's Blog, page 24

Thanksgiving Update: Three Days to Go

Shhh… don’t tell my sister or mom, but I’ve already doinked things up for this week’s Thanksgiving celebration. For a week solid, I repeated the mantra: I gotta take the turkey out of the freezer… I gotta take the turkey out the freezer. I’ll give you three guesses what I didn’t do this weekend. Yep, I kinda forgot to put the turkey in the fridge. So now we’re three days out with a bird that takes six to thaw. I guess I’ll be turkey shopping tomorrow. Fingers crossed it’s not too late to get a bird as big as the one I’ll need for our clan.

I really don’t want to admit this to my mother or oldest sister because they both give me the distinct impression they don’t think I can pull this off, so my boys are sworn to to secrecy. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Bernard the WonderDog

With Devil in Disguise, I had the pleasure of working with Booktrope editor Toddie Downs. While there were times it was painful to whittle away at my “baby,” Toddie pushed me to examine everything to be sure it all contributed to being the best book it could possibly be. Not only did she do a great job, she did it on a crazy schedule because I was, as usual, behind getting it written!

I was really excited to see Toddie’s own debut novel hit the shelves this fall. I bet she met her deadlines and didn’t expect her editor to turn it on a dime, too…

When I was trying to find homes for some rescue puppies recently, Toddie and I struck up a conversation about how rescue dogs are the bestest. I’m so happy that Toddie agreed to stop by my blog to share with us the story of her adorable new baby, Bernard. ~Heather

Bernard the WonderDog

We’d finally worn my husband down. Years of the “Let’s get a dog” chorus as sung by my 8- and 10-year old children and myself had finally chipped away at all the reasons my husband could think of for not getting a dog. So we decided, if not to actively look for a dog, at least to be open should the opportunity of a dog fall into our lap.

But what kind of dog? I personally have a deep and abiding love for Newfoundlands, but my spouse is put off by the drool and the size. So I call (in jest) the Newfie my rebound dog if my husband ever leaves. Really, the choice of dog needed to be a family decision. We knew more about what we didn’t want than what we did. We couldn’t have too big a dog, since we have a small house. We couldn’t have a puppy, since we have a cat who wouldn’t tolerate some whippersnapper chasing her around the house. We didn’t want too yappy a dog. But the one thing we did want to do, if at all possible, was adopt a dog who needed a home.

I began to look at rescue sites for specific breeds, as well as AdoptaPet.com, which manages to merge many of the area shelters into one large database. It also has the advantage of a pretty good search filter, which allowed me to look for medium-sized and small breeds. But even with the hundreds of dogs I looked at, none of them seemed like our dog. I know I could have visited any one of our area shelters around where I live; but truthfully, I was afraid that if I saw these dogs live and in person, their stories and their eyes would haunt me and I would want to take them ALL home.

[image error]In the meantime, our daughter had started her soccer season. One of the families that came every week brought their Shih Tzu, and he calmly watched the game and happily accepted all the love and attention that came his way. The family told us that this dog was wonderfully mellow and could be taken anywhere. I knew exactly what was happening. This was the universe presenting us with information about our future dog. I began to narrow my search on Adopt-a-Pet to Shih Tzus and Shih Tzu mixes.

Two weeks later, I got a notice that there was a 3 year-old Shih Tzu being fostered in Tacoma named Bernard. He was good with kids and good with cats, according to the report. My husband and I agreed that this dog would find a home quickly with those kind of credentials, so we immediately put in our application to Dog Rescue Around Washington, and days after, we’d made arrangements to meet the dog.[image error]

October 14, the doorbell rang, and Bernard and his foster mom stood on the porch. Within minutes of meeting Bernard, we knew we wanted to be his forever family. Apparently, he’d been rescued from southern California, where the euthanasia rates are far higher than here in western Washington.  With sweet, sad eyes, his tail thumped on the ground as my children petted him and tried to coax him into their laps. I didn’t want him to leave, but we had nothing prepared to take him that day. My husband offered to go into town and buy everything we needed if his foster mom was willing to have him stay. She was more than happy to have that happen, so Bernard became part of our family that day.

Honestly, this is the best dog. Sometimes I wonder what his secret doggie vice must be, because I can’t believe any dog is really THIS good. He’s my constant companion as I work at home, but perfectly willing to play and accept attention and love from my kids when they get home from school. He loves to go on long walks or short walks, and the only time he barks is when he’s telling you it’s time to play ball. The only one who hasn’t been utterly charmed by Bernard is our cat, who is frankly, still kind of pissed off about the whole thing. But the beauty of it all is that we have lots of time.[image error]

Bio: Toddie Downs is a freelance writer and editor living in Snoqualmie, Washington with her husband, spouse, kids, cat, and wonderdog Bernard. Her first novel, Summer Melody, has just been published.

Sources:

www.AdoptaPet.com

Dog Rescue Around Washington

Thanksgiving

[image error]I don’t think my family reads my blog. Just in case, I usually steer clear of anything that could ruffle feathers. But there’s something pretty monumental for me going on next week, and I just had to share. Hopefully I won’t get myself in too much trouble doing so…

There was a time, back when I was newly married and full of zeal, that I would bake pies from scratch. I loved to cook and bake. (Those who know me are probably pretty shocked by that revelation!)

Every family gathering, I would eagerly ask for my assignment, only to be given the standard task of bringing a green bean casserole or salad (that everyone knew would go untouched). To add insult to injury, the hostess usually provided a back-up green bean casserole, just in case I doinked mine up. Nobody bothered with a back-up salad.

Sometimes I’d be asked to bring paper cups. Sometimes I’d bring a surprise pie, just to take it home at the end of the day.

I became apathetic about holidays. I stopped baking pies from scratch. I got so irritated with the whole shebang that I stopped even offering to bring anything.

On my side of the family, when my mother offered to start letting her daughters host holidays, my sisters grabbed the choice ones. I got Independence Day because it was spent mostly outdoors. At the time, we had too many rescue dogs and too sparse of furniture for anyone to actually want to come by our house anyway.

So for me, holidays usually meant I was going to spend the better part of the day in the car, always feeling like I was running late, and always feeling inferior as a woman because I was never allowed to participate in the domestic goddess aspect of the whole day.

With our move this year, I figured it was as good a time as any to start some new traditions. After all, my husband and I have been married 15 years in January – surely we’ve earned the right for a few family traditions of our own, right?

So I put my foot down and said I did not want to spend holidays in a car, I wanted to spend them at home. We’d set a day in December to go up and celebrate Christmas with extended family, but this Thanksgiving and Christmas, I wanted to make dinner for my husband and children in my own home.

As it turns out, my niece who attends college near our home wasn’t able to get away for Thanksgiving. My sister had already decided to come celebrate Thanksgiving down here – they were planning on going out to eat. (Why that crossed their minds before coming to our house, I have no idea. I’m not even touching that one.)

Anywho, after a flurry of phone calls and emails, I found myself the proud host of my family’s Thanksgiving dinner. After not even being trusted to open a can of green beans successfully, I’ve now been handed the big game.

This is great, and I’m really excited to have my family in my home. The only problem is that it’s hitting me that T-day is less than a week away, I’m still working like a fiend to get the next book out, and my house is nowhere near ready for 20+ guests. And, of course, the puppies decided this week would be a good time to start their destructive phase.

The saying “be careful what you ask for” comes to mind. Still, I’m determined to make this a success. I’m going to bake pies from scratch. My home will be a warm, inviting place. I will not be a domestic failure.

Wish me luck.

 

 

Joevember

Two of my favorite traits in a person are a sharp wit and kind heart. When I met fellow Booktrope author Steven Luna in our super-secret Booktrope Facebook group, that’s exactly what I first noticed about him.

Okay, the first thing I really noticed was the eyebrows. But the second thing was that if my kids were coming over to see what I was giggling about at the computer, it was usually him who’d made me laugh. I also noticed that he was one of the first people to step in with a kind word or encouragement for whoever needed it most.

Steven Luna is just good people.  And while his debut novel, Joe Vampire, is not my typical read, Steven’s unparalleled sense of humor made it worth stepping off my beaten path for a change.

He’s such a big deal that the month of November has been retitled Joevember in his honor. I’m pretty excited to have Steven as a guest on my blog today in my first ever interview. After you’re done giggling over his answers, be sure to swing by Amazon between Tuesday, Joevember 13 and Thursday, Joevember 15 to download your free copy of Joe Vampire  for your Kindle!

1) Joe makes it pretty clear that he is nothing like Fredward Mullens from Nightfall…so, uh, what do you have against Twilight?

What is this “Twilight” of which you speak? Actually, I had some hopeful communications about a pre-Joe Vampire book with the agent who reps the Twilight author (can I say her name without having to pay royalties? Let’s not chance it…) which fell off after the second book in that series exploded. I’m not ashamed to say it made me a little jaded toward the undead. And also agents. At some point I realized there was enough vampire material on the market to gently mock it – and hey, who doesn’t love gentle mocking, right? That mockery became the kernel of Joe. I saw that he could be an acerbic counterpoint to all the glam-tastic vampire romance, just a regular guy who can’t catch a break, who catches a bite instead and wants the world to know how it really goes down. Actually, I owe the agent and the other author a thank you for setting up the pre-story so I’d have something to riff on. I probably won’t be sending them cookies anytime soon, though…

2) Some of us like sparkles, and since you’ve made it clear Joe isn’t sparkly, why should we like him?

This would be a good opportunity to clarify my views and separate them from Joe’s. My take? Sparkly vampires totally rock. It’s actually a very inventive twist on the vampire-in-the-sun theme…and I’m all about the twists. Joe, however, is the Everyvamp – no sparkling, no sexy brooding. No tribal war with the werewolf clan. He isn’t special in any way; he’s the guy in the next cubicle over, stuck with a condition that makes him self-conscious and uncomfortable, even though most people don’t pay enough attention to him to even notice. Despite making all kinds of mistakes, he’s a good dude in a rough situation, handling it with humor and heart, and trying to make a life without losing his identity in the process. And if you read between the lines a little, you can probably see that Joe doesn’t entirely dislike the sparklers; he’s actually quite jealous of them, and more than a little resentful that they ended up as babe magnets while he shrank and turned the color of kindergarten paste.

3) Joe Vampire took an interesting path to publication – do you mind sharing that with my readers?

Joe began a character blog, which is a term I probably made up to make myself feel like the project wasn’t totally lame. He was originally meant to be an anonymous guy who offered advice and insight about being a real-life vampire. The blog was supposed to grow as a real blog would, organically and—for me as creator—like a multi-media art project. I had plans to add links to his band’s music and flyers and photos for his gigs, and links to vampire support group sites he’d discovered. But after I finished the ninth post, I saw a story forming and found a specific direction for what the actual “getting on with my life” would look like for him. So I plotted the rest of the tale as a novel in blog form and self-published it in February. Through social media marketing as an indie author, I had made some awesome Booktrope friends who read the book and thought there was a place for the dude vampire within their wonderful company.  So they brought me into the fold, and here we are today, with Joe Vampire firing up to expand into a series. It’s pretty amazing…I’m grateful every day for how it came about.

4) Joe 2 is coming out soon – can you give us a sneak peek of Joe and Chloe in the sequel? If there aren’t any sparkles, we can at least hope for romance, right?

Ha! Still no sparkles, but there are sparks a-plenty, and quite a few twists along the way. Joe Vampire: The Afterlife picks up a year after the first book ends. Things have gotten extremely happy for Joe: His vampire parts are playing nice, his love life has improved greatly, and his music project is looking up. Even his cruddy job situation has become something better than what it started out as. He picks up the blog again to tell the world that you absolutely can have a great life even if you have to spend it as a real-live vampire…though he really begins to trouble over the “forever” aspect of a condition like this. Of course, the good doesn’t last and things start sliding into the mud on all fronts. It would be an awfully short book otherwise.  In order to make it through with everyone intact, Joe has to mature a little and make some difficult decisions and hard sacrifices regarding the people he loves. As the tagline on the cover says: Even if you live forever, you’ll have to grow up sometime.

5) Random question… has anyone ever named a rooster after you?

Only the awesome people (yep…I said “awesome”)

Update & Prayers

It’s been eerily quiet on my blog lately because I’m desperately trying to get book eight off to the editor… I appreciate your patience with me. With a little luck, I hope to release a sneak peek over the next week or two, so stay tuned.

Another reason for my silence is a few new additions to our homestead. We added our first cow, whose name is still TBD. She’s a Jersey cross yearling, and she taught me very quickly the number one rule of cow ownership: They will humble you. I love our sweet little princess, but her ability to shimmy through fences is astounding.

Our Great Pyrenees/Corgi cross puppies also came home this week. I can’t say enough how much I adore these little fluff balls.

The tri-color one, Po, has become an instant buddy to our older dog, Charlie. They both prefer the company of people and much prefer to spend their time inside, guarding the two-legged members of the family. The brown and white one, Shoeshine, loves to hang out with our Anatolian, Kali. They’d rather be outside than anywhere and love their job guarding the feathered and furred residents of the homestead. Shoeshine is showing a lot of promise as not only a guard dog but a herding dog – just this morning he helped me move the ducks to the pasture as if he’d been doing it his entire life!


On a more serious note, I want to take at least a moment to wish our friends on the East Coast well as Hurricane Sandy prepares to make landfall. You’re in my family’s thoughts and prayers this week. Stay safe and know, for what it’s worth, the rest of the country is thinking of you tonight.

Spirit of Christmas Sale

So here’s the thing, I have these three charities I care a lot about, and I have a stash of first edition books with the original covers.

I’d love to end 2012 by raising more money for Project Liberty, The Covering House and LiNK.

I’d also love to end the year by getting those books into the hands of readers.

Then I had an idea that can accomplish both goals and help you do some Christmas shopping. If you donate a minimum of $10 through my Crowdrise campaign to one of the three charities I’m raising money for, I’ll send you an autographed copy of one of my books, postage paid.

Want more copies? No worries – just donate an additional $5 minimum per book requested.

First, contact me to be sure the book you want is available. Let me know who I should make the inscription out to and where to mail your order. Once I’ve confirmed your order, make your donation on Crowdrise’s secure site. When you make a donation, be sure to include your name on Crowdrise so I can match up orders to emails!

The offer is good while supplies last through December 7. I have the following books available at the moment:

Throwaway
Suddenly a Spy
Ring of Fire
Jailbird
Ties That Bind

Remember, these are first edition covers. I’m sorry, but I can only extend this offer to those in the United States.

If you have questions or if there’s something I forgot to cover, just let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Don’t pass up this chance to do some holiday shopping and do a good thing, all with just a few clicks of the mouse!

 

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Finding the Music in Life

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a mass blogging event on Finding the Music in Life. I’ve been pondering how to approach the post for a while. I mean, music is – pardon the pun – instrumental to who I am.

Before I write a book, I put together a soundtrack for it. The music I choose helps the movie unfold in my mind.

My earliest and fondest memories are of my mama standing at the kitchen sink, singing praise songs as she went about her chores.

Now, some of my most joy-filled moments are when I go about my own chores while singing praises and hymns, thinking about how very blessed I am with the family I’ve been given.

When I’m sad, I sing and I feel better.

Music is very much a part of who I am.

But then yesterday, I wrote a post about my son’s football game and how the moment one of the players soared into the end zone, hope soared in my heart. And today, as I sit down to write this post (late, because I’m a dork – sorry Robyn), I’ve begun to think that’s the true music in my life.

It’s a brilliant symphony of moments: some sad, some happy, some scary and some poignant. Moments that, like the notes of a favorite melody, blend together to create the soundtrack of my life.

The moment each of my children was laid upon my chest. The moment I realized I’d had my first miscarriage. The image of a horse’s hoof connecting with my son’s forehead. Rolling his lifeless body over and failing at CPR. Seeing his blue eyes again when he awoke from his coma…

Laughing until my sides hurt. Cheering my boys on in a victory. Holding them when they cry. Being held when I cry. Lifting my voice in praise. Sitting in quiet contentment, watching my chickens and horses or the boys playing.

Burying someone I love. Finding out I’m going to be an aunt again.

Watching my son with his first girlfriend. Seeing the boys get off the bus each day, still laughing with their friends.

I’m thankful beyond words for this soundtrack, these memories that I cherish. And when I stop to think about it, I realize there is music all around me.

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Today’s post is in participation with Women On Writing’s mass-blogging event, Everybody is Talking About Finding the Music in Life. We are celebrating the release of Sonia’s Song by Sonia Korn-Grimani. To read Sonia’s post and follow our symphony of participating bloggers visit The Muffin at http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/. Share your comments on any participating blog for a chance to win a copy of Sonia’s Song!

Sonia’s Song is the story of one girl, who rises from war’s ashes to sing the songs of hope and love world-wide. A heart-wrenching and poignant memoir, by internationally renowned singer Sonia Korn-Grimani. Learn more about Sonia athttp://claygrouse.com/sonias_song/.

 

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Underdogs

[image error]

Shoeshine, one of our Great Pyrenees/Corgi mix puppies.

I have to warn you – I’ve been pondering this post all day, trying to figure out just what it is I want to say. I’m not any closer to having it coherent in my brain, so I’m just going to start typing and see where it leads… consider yourself warned.

If you’ve read many of my books, you’ve probably realized I have a soft spot for underdogs. I don’t know why I feel compelled to write about them and passionately root for them in real life. Maybe I see myself as one. Maybe I’m following Christ’s example. Maybe I’m just a sap. Maybe it’s a little of all three.

I have to admit, I’ve been struggling a little lately – wondering if the underdog really can win. I feel like all of the underdogs I’ve been pulling for aren’t faring so well these days.

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My oldest son, Dylan, holding one of our Great Pyrenees/Corgi cross puppies, Po.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the puppies we’ll be adding to our farm this fall. They’re Great Pyrenees/Corgi crosses that we’re getting with the intent of them protecting our horses and cows. What I didn’t mention in that post was that when my friend took in their mother and found out she was pregnant, many people encouraged her to abort the puppies because nobody would want them. For reasons I’ll never be able to explain, I obsessed for days about these dogs. I couldn’t stop thinking about the throwaway puppies. So I told my friend that if she’d let her dog have the puppies, I’d do everything I could to help her find them homes. I shouldn’t have been so worried about the puppies. The friend is as big of a softie as I am; I think she’d already made up her mind.

So now the puppies are five weeks old and everyone was right – they are a tough mix to find homes for. Maybe we’ll have better luck when they’re weaned, but so far, people are hesitant to commit to a puppy whose size is such an unknown. To me, both breeds are known for being great dogs. I think they’ll get the best of both whatever their size.

And while I understand most people like big dogs or little dogs, so they’re apprehensive about a dog that’s a total wild card, it drives me to distraction that something this sweet is considered undesirable. I know they have value, their life is worth something. I’m just at a loss how to prove it.

It’s all around me lately. The child who lights up the world with his kindness struggles to find friends. The homeless man who came so close to getting his life back together, only to wind up a statistic. The person who tells the truth and is ostracized for it, the one who’s duplicitous and mean is praised. Corporate America rages on while the average person drowns in grocery bills.

Unfairness abounds.

My oldest son joined the football team this year. This team is the epitome of the word underdog. They’re small (in numbers); many of the boys play offense, defense and special teams. The program doesn’t have a lot of money to play with. This is the first year they even have enough coaches for both the seventh and eighth grade teams. Dylan summed it up well when he said, “You know, Mom, the movie ‘Facing the Giants’ is all well and good, but every team we face is the Giants compared to us.”

Since August, I’ve watched this team work their tails off only to come home each week with another loss. With the exception of one team that simply played a better game, a certain amount of unsportsmanlike conduct or even flat-out cheating came in to play with the games.

One game, our boys were up at the half. When the other team came back from their “pep talk” with the coach, they came out swinging – literally. They were throwing punches, late hits, and even kicking our boys while they were down. Another team resorted to biting - biting. Yet another didn’t run the clock for four different plays at the end of a game to try to give their team enough time to score.

Through it all, our boys kept their heads up and played a fair game. They kept trying. They didn’t make excuses, they simply worked even harder. I wanted nothing more than to see all of that hard work pay off in a win.

It became about more than winning a football game. It’s like I needed proof that someone could play fair and still win. The underdog could still come out on top. My faith in humanity had become entangled with the season of a junior high football team from a little bitty town in Missouri.

This week’s game was a heart attack in the making. A total shoot-out, the scoreboard bounced back and forth between the two teams for the entire game. When the other guys pulled ahead with three minutes on the clock, they – coaches included – started celebrating on the field. They’d written our boys off.

That’s when I started praying. Well, I’d been praying the whole game. It was more like begging at this point.

“Dear Lord, I’m not sure if you care about football scores or not, but I know you care about these boys and their hearts. Please, please let them win this game.”

Turns out my son was on the field praying pretty intently, too.

In what was truly a beautiful play, they scored on that drive. As the teenager soared into the end zone, hope soared in my heart. They just might win this thing.

Once we’d stopped jumping and screaming like crazy, my husband leaned over and said, “If they could force a fumble and land on the ball, that would be great. I’d rather these guys not get a chance to answer that.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Our boys came home with their first win last night. I cried. People kept asking if I was going to be okay. All I could say was, “They’re such good boys. They’ve worked so hard. I’m so happy for them.”

But maybe I was happy for me, too. Because those boys reminded me that underdogs still win sometimes.

 

 

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Guest Post at The SUBCLUB Books

Be sure to stop by to check out my guest post over at The SUBCLUB Books, where I talk about how my world was forever changed by a dream I had years ago about a prostitute and a police officer.

Many thanks to the wonderful people at SubClub for including me as one of their featured authors for the month of October!

God Hugs

Some hugs are just better than others. When my boys were little and they’d wrap their skinny little arms around my neck, those were just about the best hugs on the planet.

The last few days have been rough – it was one of those weekends where if something could go wrong, it did. It didn’t help that fall allergies have felled the entire family. It doesn’t take long for the chore list to get out of hand when nobody feels well!

One of the many things I truly love about God is that He always knows when I need a hug.

My husband and I were honestly debating if we’d somehow made God mad at us Sunday morning as we got ready for church. Had we blatantly stepped off the path without even realizing it? Not that I think God’s mean to you if you get something wrong, but I wondered if He was trying to get my attention or something.

Then we got to church and the gist of the sermon was “Don’t get discouraged. Tough times aren’t necessarily a sign of God’s displeasure. We live in tough times, and God raises up ordinary people to do extraordinary things in tough times. If God calls you to something, stick to it – no matter how hard it gets.”

I left pretty much speechless, simply trying to soak in everything that had been said and how it answered, almost word for word, every doubt Adam and I had talked about not an hour before the service started.

Then my sister called to tell me about the sermon at her church. The topic? Don’t get discouraged.

Then I watched a favorite pastor of mine online that night. The topic? Don’t get discouraged.

And then, driving home this morning after dropping the boys off, The Redeemer by Sanctus Real came on.

I can be a little dense sometimes, but I was beginning to get the picture. I’m still having a rotten day, and I still feel crummy, but I know I’ve been hugged by God, and He’s got this.

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