Leta Blake's Blog, page 104

The Casey Stratton Documentary

I’ve been following Casey Stratton’s career for awhile now. He’s a hard working, now-independent musician with a lot of talent and heart. Awhile back, he was signed to Sony music, and what follows is a documentary of his experience. I think it’s really interesting to see a close view of the music industry experience. Check it out.

Casey on the web:

Casey Stratton Dot Com

Casey on Facebook

Casey on Livejournal

Buy Casey’s Music:

Direct from his website

Via Amazon

Via iTunes

Fires of Justice: Meet the Supporting Cast

Fires of Justice: Meet the Supporting Cast.

My friend, Sabrina, has a new romance book out. Curious? Check it out at the link above!

Fanwork Friday: Signature Blends

So, you’re a big nutty fan of tea? And a big nutty fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender? Well, just your luck. At Adagio.com you can get a signature tea blend made just for your air…water…fire…earth…I-believe-that-Aaag-can-save-the-world tastes.

With the calming sweet florals of chamomile and lavender paired with the tart fruit flavours of bergamot and cherry. This blend is fun and free spirited with a kick for the avatar inside. a soothing tea good for inward reflection

And, hey, if you ‘ship Aang with Katara? You’re in extra luck, because you can “let their love steep in your cupboard and get 20% off when you purchase both 3oz pouches”.

Or maybe Zuko is your guy? What with all of his honor and his teen-flavored man-pain. (Lord knows he’s my favorite.) Well, you can totally drink your fill of his lost-and-found honor, my friends.

THIS TEA TASTES OF CONFUSION AND ANGST. But deliciously so with the flavours of one of my favourite desserts, it will be sure to help you look within yourself to save yourself from your other self and help your true self reveal itself so you can deal with those peksy internal demons and reclaim your honor. Or at least forget about things for a moment while you drink this yummy tea reminiscent of chocolate passionfruit cake and vanilla ice cream.

They also have blends for Sokka, Azula, Iroh, and Toph. The reviews for the blends are interesting, too. They seem to be pretty good teas. I’ve never tried any. If I did, I’d probably go for one of the Teen Wolf blends.

Such as:

Don’t let his scowly face put you off, there is some sweet under that surly exterior! Far from sour, this blend is fresh and apply. The aroma is rich like apple pie and cinnamon with a swirl of warm vanilla. With a clean fresh finish it’s a perfect fall tea!

Or maybe:

Or possibly:

It’s your type, honest! Let it try to convince you. Earl Grey Bravo is a delicious Adagio favorite, the honeybush vanilla cuts the strong Earl Grey with a rich touch of sweetness. The blood orange highlights the citrus flavor of the Earl Grey very nicely.

And, guys, there are so many fandom blends available! There’s Lord of the Rings blends, True Blood blends, Mortal Instruments blends, Vampire Diaries blends, Buffy blends, Sailor Moon, Sherlock, My Little Pony! I mean, guys, they’ve got tea for it all! Go check it out!

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What’s amazing to me, aside from the clear dedication these fans to have both tea and their show, is the fan art. Especially the Teen Wolf fan art. The person making this tea blend not only went to the trouble to taste test each blend to make sure it was good, but also designed beautiful fan art for the blends. I’m really impressed.

Women Hold Up — Somaly Mam Foundation

I don’t have a lot of resources, but what I do have is this blog. So, I’m using my voice here to raise awareness about Half the Sky and the organizations that it supports.

HERE’S THE STORY:

Co-founded by Somaly Mam, a Cambodian survivor of sexual slavery, SMF works to eradicate slavery and empower its survivors, with a special focus on Southeast Asia.

What your donation can help support:

$10 covers one month of healthcare expenses for a woman or child recovering from being trafficked.

$25 provides a survivor of sex trafficking with one month of specialized vocational training.

$1,000 provides a ‘start-up kit’ for a female survivor to become an entrepreneur after leaving the shelter.

$3,000 sponsors a survivor, providing the cost to rescue, recover, educate, and reintegrate one girl.

Help empower women and girls worldwide. We can change the world.

You can learn more about Half the Sky:

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/halftheskymovement

Twitter — https://twitter.com/Half

Staying Motivated

Staying Motivated.

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I found this post very inspirational and motivational.

Villains We Love to Hate: Mama Argent from Teen Wolf

Villains We Love to Hate: Mama Argent from Teen Wolf.

Keira’s and my post at Darker Temptations today. Check it out and consider giving the blog a follow. We’ve got 14 regular bloggers and we all have things to say!

Pleading for Relief from Your Morality

This says everything.

Fanwork Friday: Shake it Out by mresundance

Fans and fanworks are often discounted. I think that fans and fanworks offer some of the best commentary on our culture, past and present, out there. For example, the vid Shake It Out by mresundance. This is the kind of vid that could be used in a classroom to illustrate in a short period of time the damage done by colonialism. To quote mresundance’s post at Livejournal:

1. This is an allegory. It might work better if you think John Smith = Europeans, Matoaka (Pocahontas) = Native Americans.

2. Like an allegory, this narrative greatly simplifies very complex ideas. It is one of the unfortunate limits of both the choice to use allegory, and the structure of a vid itself. I have only five minutes to make a coherent point of some kind.

3. The target audience for this vid is white European Americans. Mainly because, I don’t necessarily think Native Americans are the people who need to “hear” this message. They heard it, unfortunately, loud and clear, ages ago.

4. I am a white dude and this vid, despite my best efforts, remains a European perspective on colonization in the Americas.

5. Because the vid is a European perspective on colonization, and is targeted at European Americans, the primary goal is simply to provoke. I wanted the vid to provoke a reaction, and to provoke discussion about a topic which is too often glossed over, or actively ignored, in American culture.

For me, the final shot in this vid is absolutely moving, chilling, and shaming. See what you think.

Women Hold Up — New Light

If you can give women the means, they’re not going to invest it in themselves, they’re going to invest it in their children and in the future. — Melinda Gates

HERE’S THE STORY:

Since 2000, New Light has been providing safe shelter, education, and recreational facilities for the children of local sex workers, particularly the daughters.

What your donation can help support:

$40 buys school uniforms and shoes for a child of a local sex worker for one year.

$60 funds food for one month for one child of a local sex worker.

$250 supports a child’s education for one year.

$500 provides vocational training to an at-risk young adolescent for one year.

Find out more about helping HERE. And find out more about New Light on Facebook.

Help empower women and girls worldwide. We can change the world.

You can learn more about Half the Sky:

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/halftheskymo...

Twitter — https://twitter.com/Half

Writer Wednesday: Liz Crowe

1. I love your website’s tagline. Romance for Real Life. Tell us a little about what that means to you and how that represents your books.

Romance for Real Life is actually a phrase coined by one of my early fans after she read the Stewart Realty series. I experienced the basic timing bad luck of having those books come out about the same time as another, much bigger and more best selling erotic fiction trilogy did and a few people who had not bothered to actually read my books accused me of poaching on “her idea.” Without getting into a discussion of how mine were a lot more original from the get go I will just say that a reader who HAD read them came up with this phrase that I co-opted with her permission. I think it is an amazingly acute description of what I write on many levels. I take every romance convention readers expect and flip them on their head, reversing emotional roles for hero and heroine at times, making everyone very real, as in with flaws that lead to life-changing mistakes. Sure you will most likely get to an ending you find happy, but it will be a journey of self-discovery for the characters that at times may be frustrating for reader who want the fairy tale. And my characters don’t make drastic personality changes that feel forced. They live their lives, screw up and change…slowly, and not completely either, but in my view real people just don’t.

There is nothing wrong with the fairy tale. However I write what I like to read–books with longer or more complex plot arcs, involving real people (I don’t read or write paranormal, sci fi but do have one sort of historical set in the 1960s) with very real life situations. Billionaires are few and far between but the characters are hard working professionals for the most part, many in real estate or in the brewing business like this story. I have readers contacting me via my website or facebook or twitter who are mad at me for writing such compelling, yet frustrating stories that “keep them up all night long” nearly every day now.

That said, I have been lambasted by a couple of “traditional” and big time romance book reviewers.

And that allows me to rest my case, I suppose. The categories I am a best seller in on Amazon are NOT romance but “family saga” and “urban fiction.” Don’t be intimidated by this. My books include smoking hot explicit sex (in many cases) but as part of the story, not just to have a sex scene. But are long on plot, have secondary characters who end up needing their own stories at times, and truly do compel people to keep reading.

2. The blurb for Paradise Hops begins “A brutal attack left Lori Brockton convinced she was damaged goods. By the time she emerges from hiding two years later, ready to run her family’s famous brewery, she’s determined to be independent–never rely on anyone ever again. ” Were you at all worried about how to deal with trauma in a romance novel? Did you do anything specific to try to avoid falling into the possible cliches there, or were you interested in embracing those cliches?

As I said earlier, I embrace romance formulas close enough to turn them into something else. And all of my books contain personal trauma and offer opportunities for characters to overcome them, growing and learning and suffering, yes, but always growing. Since I am not a reader of traditional romance at all, it’s not hard for me to avoid cliches because if I hit anything resembling a cliche in any of the books I read I put them aside for something else.

I am actually trying to get away from categorizing my books as “romance.” I would not really call this book romance and my early ARC reviews are all glowing but say that straight up–this is NOT traditional romance. Yes there is a love story, but its wrapped up in something that is completely different (not weird, creepy or superficial either mind you, just different).

3. Your bio on your blog opens with, “Microbrewery owner, best-selling author, beer blogger and journalist, mom of three teenagers, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town. Years of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as an ex-pat trailing spouse, plus making her way in a world of men (i.e. the beer industry), has prepped her for life as erotic romance author.” Wow! That’s a lot going on, lady! How do you handle the stress of having it all?

Well, I enjoy both of my jobs so I make time and room for it all. I do try and de stress by doing Bikram yoga (the hot kind) which helps keep my head from spinning around into the outer atmosphere. And I have a solid support group both at my house and in the publishing world–folks who will smack me around when need be if I get too Diva, or too consumed by one particular project — reminding me to live my life, if you will, with writing and beer as part of it.

The things that suffer are (in no particular order):

housework

food preparation in any organized fashion

laundry

but those were never things I was terribly “into” mind you.

 

4. Tell us more about Paradise Hops and what makes it different from other books out there.

I’m going to quote a review that came out before the release:

“Liz Crowe doesn’t write typical romance. She doesn’t write those romances that most of us are so fond of, those that wrap up all the conflict and angst by the end of the book and present readers with a happily ever after that takes readers to cloud nine for a while. Not that there’s a problem with those, but Liz is different. …

Point blank, Paradise Hops has the tragedy of a Shakespearean play, the love triangle of Pearl Harbor (the film) and the emotional upheaval of P.S. I Love You. This is not an easy journey, it is full of confusion, angst, difficult choices and heart breaking situations that put love to the test and forces one woman to confront the consequences of her choices head on.

Lori Brockton is in a tough situation, she’s caught between two men who could be “Mr. Right” for her. If only she could be sure which man IS the right one for her.

It would be easy to judge Lori for her inability to choose between Garrett and Eli but before you bring out your pitchforks, think about this: Could you choose between one man who completes your need for a quiet, strong, dependable love and another man who completes your need for a wild, passionate, addictive love?

Uh huh, not as easy to judge her now is it?

Neither man is wrong for Lori, they just appeal to totally different sides of her emotionally and sexually. It’s nearly impossible to hate either one of them because both Garrett and Eli love Lori deeply and sincerely but each in their own unique way. Author Liz Crowe created sympathy for all three characters when it would be so easy to cast one or more of them as villains. The only true villain were the circumstances Garrett, Eli and Lori find themselves in.”

I could really not have said it better myself. This reviewer/reader really got the gist of what I was trying to accomplish with this book. I wanted to push boundaries, craft characters that were compelling, realistic and sympathetic in their own way.

5. Of your back catalogue, do you have a secret favorite? If so, which book and why?

Hmmm….well, I’m pretty partial to another brewery based stand alone that is more along the lines of suspense: Cheeky Blonde. But my absolute favorite is the first book of the Stewart Realty series: Floor Time. It was the book that started the whole “romance for real life” ball rolling for me. That series has sold the most of any of mine so far.

BUY PARADISE HOPS

A YouTube Trailer for Paradise Hops

LIZ’S LINKS:

www.lizcrowe.com

www.brewingpassion.com

www.facebook.com/lizcroweauthor

www.twitter.com/beerwencha2

www.facebook.com/romanceforreallife