Emily Shaffer's Blog, page 5

Promise of a New Day…

After a solid week of eating fudge, cookies, ham, casseroles, cake, chips, dips,homemade pizza, full-fledged-sausage-gravy-biscuit breakfasts, those butter cookies in the blue tin,candy and any other food that was unlucky enough to wander into my house…I am giving up eating from now until the end of time. I realize I will probably cave within 2 minutes of publishing this post (afterall, leftover ham on a roll won’t eat itself).

This is a normal part of mypost-Christmas routine. The excuse to e...

Everybody’s Talking ‘Bout the Man With the Bag…

Santa has hit my house hard. In his wake he left behind presents, cookie crumbs, and a slew of empty beverage containers. We left him plenty of cookies and an apple for Rudolph, and the big man had his fill before writing a very gracious “Thank You” to the kiddo’s note. If my family and I are lucky, we will now get five or six hours of sleep before my niece wakes us all up to get the party started.

As is tradition, we each opened one present on Christmas Eve. I picked a mystery gift my Dad had...

Met My Old Lover at the Grocery Store…

I love Christmas music. I try to soak in as much as I can between the day after Thanksgiving, all the way up to 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Day. (I am a stickler for keeping Christmas-things at Christmas-time). I get roughly one month to enjoy my favorite tunes, and I try to make that month count.

Of course, I love the standards…White Christmas, O Holy Night, Happy Holidays, Silver Bells, and the list goes on.

While there will never be anything that can come close to the excellence of Bing Crosby o...

Mayan Joke-A-Day Calendar…

I have a sneaking suspicion that the world will continue to spin after Friday. Christmas will come and go. I will still have a boring job. 2013 will dawn, and life will continue on as it does.

With the approach of the alleged end-of-the-world, thereseems to be a tendency to focuson negatives. Bad things happen, andpeople cite those events as proof that the world actuallyis ending. I do not believe in that line of thinking. I believe a person may be bad, but that people are good; and that for e...

Sometimes You Gotta Zig Instead of Zag…

I usually write romantic comedies (for example, the one here, currently available for 99 cents on Kindle, thru the holidays). I love writing a good joke and smile-inducing scene. There was a time when I thought funny romps were the bread to my butter. I have a hopper full of chick-lit outlines and works in progress, and thought I would never look outside the genre.

So it is with a certain sense of “how-did-I-get-here” that I begin the querying process for my YA/NA novel that has a paranormal a...

Highlight of my Day…

Just noticed a section on Amazon for shared notes and highlights, where Kindle users can highlight a passage they like in a book or make a comment, and share it. The shared highlight or note is then put on a novel’s Amazon page. I was happy to see a few readers found me quotable!

Y’all probably already knew about this, but I’m a techno-dinosaur, so it takes me a little while to notice these things.

Happy highlighting!

The Tell-Tale Plate…

When I was but a girl of 18, my friend made me a plate (cause she was really into making plates at the time…hey, it was the 90′s). This plate was going to stand on a shelf in my dorm room, and was to be made up of pictures of all of the fellas I had my eye on. The plate was a mod-podge thing of beauty, and today, I came across the fabulous plate while I was going through a box of stuff.

This plate is as much a snapshot of who I was in 1995, as a diary. Looking at the plate now, I do question s...

K-I-S-S-I-N-G…

I’m pretty fanatical about lip balm. If I even think I am out and about without a tube in my purse, I immediately feel like my lips will turn to sandpaper and shrivel up until I look like a lip-less Muppet. I’ve kept the waxy moisturizer on my person at all times since about the age of eight, and I have a stockpile that could rival even the most dedicated extreme couponer.

Santa used to leave a hearty supply in my stocking every year…so I’ve had them all….Lip Smackers, Tinkerbell, Kissing Poti...

Cheap and Easy…

Now thru the holidays, That Time of the Month is available for just 99 cents on Kindle!