Cathy Perkins's Blog, page 138

Seasons of Love: Parenthood

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN MILD SPOILERS FROM SEASONS 1-4

But none from the new season that just started last week. I promise. Because I haven’t watched it yet.

Parenthood is one of those little shows that could. It’s loosely based on a 1989 Steve Martin film, which was directed by Ron Howard. Howard has his hand in the television series, serving as an executive producer, as does Brian Grazer, who produced the original film. These two have worked together for a long time bringing seemingly small stor...

The Joke’s on Me

I used to write jokes for IBM. Seriously. Mostly, this was slipping bits of humor into speeches that needed a lighter touch, but once I actually produced/wrote/directed a whole show of skits. It wasn’t Saturday Night Live, but it was good enough to get laughs out of an auditorium full of researchers.

My brother-in-law got wind of this, and the line, “IBM is so stodgy, Peter writes jokes for them” had a minor vogue within the family.

I mentioned Johnny and his Weasley-like family in my first pos...

Guilty Pleasures and Wedding Dress Drama

How many of you have that secret TV show you watch for the guilty pleasure of seeing the train wreck that is always threatening? Mine is Say Yes to the Dress which airs on TLC. The show follows events of shoppers at Kleinfeld Bridal in Manhattan. Randy Fenoli is the fashion diector and head psychologist at the salon.

I had heard people refer to Bridezilla, but I had never watched. I happened upon Say Yes by accident flipping through the channels. I’m not even sure why I stopped, but they were...

Introducing Guest Author Cheryl Harper

I’m very excited to introduce everyone to one of my fellow Avon authors Cheryl Harper. Cheryl has a funny and clever new series out based on an Elvis-themed hotel called The Rock ‘n’ Rolla. The first book in the series is called Stuck on You. Her newest release is Can’t Help Falling in Love. Now if those titles don’t have you wanting to grab the books and drool, I don’t know what will.

Welcome Cheryl!

What’s on the Menu in Can’t Help Falling in Love

When you set out to build an imaginary hotel...

How Dad Got His Shoes to Fit, and What I Learned

My father was a MacGyver before there was MacGyver. He had a knack for twiddling solutions to stupid problems, like getting a crooked door to swing straight. Born in 1916 near Atlanta, Georgia, he’d been “raised right.” He respected his mother, took care of his wife and family and knew everything he needed to know about building a house. Nearly everything he owned The got a taste of his ingenuity – either something he’d learned in his younger years or knowledge acquired through his voracious...

Cover Reveal!

I haven’t done a “cover reveal” before, but I met Laura Kaye through our mutual publisher, Entangled Publishing. When she asked me to participate in the fun, I readily agreed. So take a peak and let us know what you think!

About East of Ecstasy:

Annalise Fallston made peace with postponing her big-city dreams to care for her ill father, but lately she’s been filled with a restlessness not even her beloved painting dispels. Worse, the colors don’t speak to her as they always have, and all her ef...

Life Imitates Art

Help me welcome Eryn LaPlant as our guest blogger today. Eryn grew up wishing she could have lived in another time, so now she writes her own romances and lives through her characters. When not writing, she spends time with her loving husband, and their handsome son in the land of Lincoln. If she can’t live in the past, she figures she can at least live amongst it!

Hello to the world! I am a former slave for the working world and presently a woman of many trades. I am a wife, a mother, an anti...

The Odd Odyssey

“Perry the Flying Squirrel” and “Moon Pilot” were among the handful of films I saw in a theater before I went to college. Most of the movies I saw growing up were black and white oldies broadcast on TV. And yet, I was obsessed with movie ads. Name a movie from about 1965 to 1974, and I can probably describe the poster in detail, including the slogan. “The mob wanted Harlem back. They got Shaft… up to here.”

I had spotted an ad for “Ulysses,” starring Milo O’Shea as Leopold Bloom. Since we were...

Sleeping Outdoors and Other Wacky Stuff

I like to write wacky Wednesday posts because, well, I’m a little wacky. My children say to hubby and I all the time, “You two are nuts.” That last word changes for variety: crazy, goofy, wacky, insane … you get the picture.

It started back when hubby started keeping bees. We had some years of great honey crops, but things went downhill the season our bees, whose hives were in clover fields, found buckwheat somewhere and presented us with dark, rich, molasses-ey buckwheat honey. (Some people l...

Building a Town in my Mind

Every author has to do book research from time to time. Usually this involves surfing the Internet looking for obscure things, like the time the sun sets on September 9 in the state of South Carolina.

Sometimes, though, book research gets me out of the house and out from behind the computer. Just recently, I got to do a little book research for a new series of books that I’m thinking about writing — books that I plan to set in a small, fictitious town in north western Virginia. Last week the D...