C.D. Hersh's Blog, page 16
November 21, 2024
Friday Features Time for Christmas Cards
If you are sending cards this year it’s time to start working on them so the post office gets them delivered on time. Do any of you even send Christmas Cards?
Christmas is Catherine’s favorite holiday. For years she changed every knickknack in the house to a Christmas decoration. She has a collection of nativities, a Christmas village, and an abundance of Christmas trees with at least five different themed sets of ornaments she uses to decorate. This year we are going a bit minimal. Not much reason to decorate a lot since it’s only for us.
Christmas cards have been a big deal in our house, too. We have a long-standing tradition of writing Christmas letters, filled with news of the year, and we often create our own Christmas stationary and even create our own Christmas cards. We’ve got to get busy with these projects.
Here’s one of our specially designed cards based on a Christmas window Donald painted at our church several years back. (Yes we have some artistic talent that we use on occasion.)
Born Under the Shadow of the Cross, original copyrighted art
For permission to reuse please contact author C.D. Hersh
The original drawing on the window did not have the dark sky and the radiated ribbons of color in the upper right hand corner because we couldn’t totally paint out the window. Those elements were added into the card to give drama. At night, the black sky in the church window had the same effect as painting out the sky in the card, minus the purple lines of color. This was a dramatic window in the evening. Note how the shadow of the cross creates the rooftop of the manger.
Have you created special holiday greetings? Are you going to do any this year? We’d love to hear about them.
November 19, 2024
Wednesday Special Spotlight Writing Tips
We recently came across an old email entitled Instructions for Life. The 45 positive recommendations on the list are meant to help make one’s life better. By turning some of the instructions upside down and we created bad life advice that will keep novel characters in turmoil.
Next time things are going too smoothly with your WIP try throwing one of these in the mix.
1. Let them believe in love at first sight, but fight it like it can’t exist.2. If they make a mistake, don’t let them be too quick to acknowledge it.
3. Let them fall in love deeply, passionately, and with people they would never choose. They might get hurt, but it’s the only way to live life completely.
4. Make them fight to keep their values, but make sure they do keep them. No one loves an un-heroic hero.
5. Remember silence is sometimes the best answer and unanswered questions are always suspect.
6. Let them dredge up the past; it makes for good conflicts.
7. Let them read between the lines … a lot. Miscommunication thickens the plot.
8. Let them slowly discover that not getting what they want is sometimes the best thing that ever happened.
9. Never let them mind their own business. You can’t get in trouble that way.
10. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risks, and make them willing to risk everything to get their goals.
Do you have a favorite trick for keeping your characters in turmoil?
November 18, 2024
Tell Again Tuesday the Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” after being challenged by Lord Byron.By Bennett Kleinman
Mary Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein is one of the horror genre’s most formative works, but it may have never existed if not for a playful challenge. In 1816, Shelley — who was then unmarried and known by the surname Godwin — vacationed at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She was accompanied by her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, English poet Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John William Polidori. Weather conditions were abnormally unpleasant at the time due to the lingering effects of the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora the previous year, forcing the group to largely remain indoors. Amid the dark and frigid evenings . . .
For the rest of the blog go to:November 14, 2024
Friday Features Crossed Lines
—Mark Twain.
I (The C in C.D. Hersh) personally experienced Mr. Twain’s quote when the telephone company crossed our phone lines with that of another customer. Upon calling customer service, I explained the problem and noted something different about the employee’s accent.
“Where are you located?” I asked him.
“The Philippines,” he replied.
As he was unable to resolve my problem to my satisfaction I asked to speak to his supervisor. Big mistake, as the supervisor had a thicker accent. To make a long story short, I finally got through to the person on the other end of the line that they needed to check my phone records, or rather the phone records of the number I was calling from—which wasn’t my number, and they would see how to resolve the problem as this was the second time they had switched my phone line with this person.
After much checking and rechecking on what I’d said, the phone company employee gave me a time that they would attempt to fix the problem. He said the technician would come to our apartments and look in our phone boxes. I repeatedly told him neither of us lived in apartments and there should be no need for the technician to come into our homes. We lived in houses a mile apart and no one had been messing with our phone boxes. The problem was on their end, or rather in a relay box somewhere near where we live. I should have taken the hint right then that we weren’t on the same page, English-wise or culturally.
Then he said we should keep our phone lines open.
Now I don’t know what that meant to him, but to me it meant staying on the line. “Do you mean you want me to not hang up the phone?” I asked, wondering how that make any sense and how it was going to work for the allotted time to would take to fix the line.
“No,” he said, “keep it by your side.”
“Keep it by my side?” That made about as much sense as putting Godiva dark chocolates on a hot sidewalk. “Do you mean you want me to carry it around with me?” I asked.
“No,” he replied.
I searched my brain for another definition of keeping the line open. “Then do you want us not make any calls or take any calls on our lines?” I asked.
He said some other unintelligible phrase, obviously as frustrated as I was at his botched attempts. Finally, he blurted out, “Don’t unplug the phone.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked, completely bamboozled at his definition. That, I thought, would be a stupid thing to do, and had absolutely no relationship to the phrase “keep the lines open.” What he tried to express to me, with what appeared to be a very basic understanding of English, was as close to lightening as lightening is to a lightening bug.
Next time I have to deal with the phone company, I’m asking where the customer service employee is located, and calling back until I get someone in America. Hopefully, they’ll know the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.
November 11, 2024
Tell Again Tuesday Words of history
Famous Words From Major Moments in HistoryBy Nicole Villeneuve
Some of the most profound moments in history can be encapsulated in a single, memorable quote. These succinct phrases, often pulled from longer speeches or events, distill complex ideas into digestible gems. At their best, they act as verbal snapshots, capturing the essence of . . .
For the rest of the blog go to:November 7, 2024
Friday Feature Thank a Soldier
Military Cemetery Crosses by Petr Kratochvil
In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, armistice was signed, ending the Great War—a war fought on what was known then as the Western Front. Thirty-six years later, on June 1, 1954, Congress changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day. President Dwight D. Eisenhower defined the day as a day for a grateful nation to honor veterans of all wars. Ninety-four years after the signing of Armistice our nation’s soldiers are still protecting us, and democracy, at home and around the world.
We don’t know about you, but both our fathers fought in WWII. We had high school friends and family who served in Vietnam. Donald served in the military during the Vietnam era. We have friends who spent their entire careers serving our county. Through his career Donald has worked with military service men and women. And we know families whose sons and daughters have chosen to step up and put their lives on the line to protect America and democracy, many of them ending up in Middle Eastern war-torn countries.
Today we don’t have a military draft. The men and women who serve choose to do so, often reenlisting when they know there is a good chance in today’s turbulent political atmosphere that they could end up on a war front. Yet they still go.
Being a warrior can be a thankless job, filled with danger, pain, homesickness, loss of life or limb, or terrible struggles readjusting to civilian life. These courageous men and women are making sure you and I can remain free. This November 11, on Veteran’s Day, find a soldier, a former soldier, or a family member of a soldier and tell them how much their dedication and sacrifice to liberty and freedom means to you. Let them know that they are not forgotten. If you can’t find a soldier, or one of their family members, then say a prayer for the safety of all our military people.
On a writing note, if you like to read military romances here are a couple of authors we recommend. Karen Foley and Catherine Mann.
Here is a sample of each author’s writing:
November 5, 2024
Wednesday Special Spotlight Simple Pumpkin Pie
You invited family and friends over for the Thanksgiving meal. The menu for the meal, at least in America, is fairly common including the desert of pumpkin pie. Do you have a recipe for the pie?
Well we’ve got you covered. Here’s a recipe we found at the allrecipes site that sounds simple and quick. What more could you ask for with the rest of the meal being so time consuming and somewhat complicated. To make this pumpkin pie you just need four ingredients. Your guests will think you’re a talented baker when they taste this desert. This Thanksgiving check out this recipe that has been tested by the Allrecipes Test Kitchen from Bob Altman.
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 50 mins
Servings: 8
Yield: 1 (9-inch) pie
Step 1
Gather all ingredients. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F 9220 degrees C).
Step 2
Fit pie crust into a 9-inch pie dish and place it on a baking sheet.
Step 3
Combine pumpkin puree, condensed milk, eggs, and pumpkin pie spice in a large bowl; mix until combined.
Step 4
Pour mixture into the pie crust. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and continue to bake until filling is set, 35 to 40 minutes.
Step 5
Remove from the oven, set on a wire rack, and cool completely before serving.
Step 6
Serve and enjoy! 
[image error]
Per serving: 478 calories; total fat 20g ; saturated fat 9g ; cholesterol 69mg ; sodium 313mg ; total
carbohydrate 67g ; dietary fiber 3g ; total sugars 39g ; protein 10g ; vitamin c 4mg ; calcium 220mg ; iron
2mg ; potassium 426mg
November 4, 2024
Tell Again Tuesday Writing by Crayon
James Joyce used crayons when writing his novels.By Michael Nordine
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James Joyce didn’t just write some of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century — he did so using crayon. Though it sounds like a quirky affectation on the part of the Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man author, it was actually a medical necessity. Because Joyce . . .
For the rest of the blog go to:November 1, 2024
Friday Feature Kissing Fun!
Photo from the U.S Navy files via Wikimedia
As we’ve mentioned before, we’re hooked on the Bachelor television show. Yes, we know 99 percent of the “in love” couples at the end of each season don’t make it past the screening of the series. Yes, we know it’s a lot of drama and cat fights. Yes, we know it’s probably all hokey. Nevertheless, deep down we are romantics who hope that some lucky couple will find true love.
The Bachelor season with Sean had a couple of romantic dates planned for his ladies. On week two there was a group date photo shoot with Harlequin, one of the most well-known publishers of romance novels. On week three Sean took Lesley Murphy to set a new Guinness World record for the longest onscreen kiss. The old record was 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Sean and Lesley set a new record with a live audience cheering them on.
Watching that long on-screen kiss made us curious. If two people who barely know each other can lock lips for over 3 minutes and 16 seconds, how long can a couple who are in love kiss? So, we did some research from a purely writer’s point of view. We set the timer and read a love scene from a romance book for 3 minutes and 16 seconds.
If you were reading a 3 minute 16 second love scene (referencing kissing only here) it would take approximately two pages of lip-locking description to break the world record, assuming you are not a speed reader. That’s an estimated 600 words in Times New Roman font. When we searched the computer’s thesaurus for alternate words for kiss and kissing—because you would surely not want to use the same verb each time you mentioned kiss—we came up empty-handed. Roget’s Thesaurus netted us a measly six synonyms: smack, buss, osculate (caress), brush, graze, and shave (touch). What shave has to do with kissing, aside from whisker burn, we have no idea. Roget forgot an obvious synonym, in our humble opinion—smooch.
On the hunt now, because we couldn’t believe how few alternate words we’d found for kiss, we went to the Romance Writer’s Phrase Book, by Jean Kent and Candace Shelton, where we found one hundred and five kissing related phrases. However, only 61 were suitable for use in 3 minutes and 16 seconds of lip-locking, record-breaking kissing description. To win the record both parties’ lips must be touching the whole time, and some of the phrases in the book involved kissing other body parts.
Next, we did an internet search for synonyms for kiss and kissing. Here’s a few more that we came up with: snog (British slang for kiss), neck, canoodle, peck, suck face, make out, spoon, get to first base, French, plant one on, Yankee dime/nickel (a favorite of Catherine’s parents), bill and coo, cupcake, spark, make whoopee, and mwah (onomatopoeia for the kissing sound).
The next step in the research is to write a 600-word kissing scene. Better yet, we think we’ll set the timer and create our own Guinness World Record for kissing. That’s bound to be more fun than struggling to write 600 kissing related words on the computer. 
Have you kissed someone you love today?
October 29, 2024
Wednesday Special Spotlight Halloween History
Most people think of Halloween as a holiday for trick or treating, dressing up in costumes, a time for ghouls, ghosts and monsters to roam, a celebration of the harvest, or an excuse to have a really scary party.
In reality, Halloween has its roots in four religious holidays, three that deal with death:
• The celebration of the Celtic Druidic holiday Samhain
• The celebration of the pre-Christian Roman goddess Pomona
• The Roman festival of Feralai
• And Christianity’s All Hallow’s Eve, also called All Saints’ Eve
Samhain, celebrated on October 31st, marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter for the Celts. Druid priests performed ceremonies in honor of their sun god Baal, whom they thanked for the harvest and asked for support to battle the coming winter. They also believed that the veil between the world of the living and the dead was opened during the celebration of Samhain, and the souls of the dead roamed the earth. The ghosts were believed to play tricks on the living and cause supernatural events to happen, the origins of today’s belief that ghosts and ghouls roam freely on Halloween evening.
The Roman celebrations honoring the goddess Pomora and the festival of Feriala were also held in late October. Pomora was the goddess of fruits and trees. The use of these fruits for fortune telling stems back to her celebration. The feast of Feriala honored the dead, much like the Celts’ Samhain festival.
The Christian festival of All Hallow’s Eve is a celebration honoring the dead saints and martyrs of the church.
When the Romans conquered the Celts their autumn festivals and the Celts autumn festivals were combined until the Romans decided too many of their Roman citizens were adopting the Celtic religion. Rome’s answer to this problem was to ban the Druidic religion and kill its priests. However, the Romans could not wipe out the old Celtic beliefs and many people continued to keep the traditions alive.
When the Christians came into power they, too, wanted to do away with the very popular, old pagan rites. So, the church moved their feast of the saints (which was held in May) to November 1st , and later to October 31st, in an attempt to absorb the ingrained Samhain traditions and rites into a Christian holiday. By doing so they hoped to hold onto their new followers by allowing them to celebrate a festival on a date they had long held sacred. Once they had established the new Christian festival the church tried to discourage the old practices in favor of more Christian ones, but, like the Romans, they were not successful.
Using Christian holidays to absorb pagan ones was a tactic the church used often. Elements of pagan celebrations can be found in Valentine’s Day, Easter and Christmas celebrations. Over the years, most of the pagan holiday traditions in these celebrations were christianized. Not so with Halloween. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Puritan founding fathers of America, who banned the celebration in the New World, could not christianize this pagan holiday.
It’s no wonder that Christianity hasn’t been able to overcome the pagan elements of Halloween. Celebrating all that death seems to be a perfect transition into one scary holiday. Ghosts, ghouls, and all things magical keep Halloween’s roots firmly planted in the otherworld that many people are drawn to…and you have to admit, they are perfect elements for stirring up for a wild paranormal tale.
While not normally thought of as a romantic holiday, Halloween has its share of divination traditions for finding true love. Since this is a website of romance authors, we would be remiss not to include some of this holiday’s romantic folklore in this article.
• Insert a plain ring, a coin, and other charms in a fruitcake, known as a barmbrack (báirín breac), before baking. The one who gets the ring in their slice of cake will find true love in the following year.
• You can divine your future spouse by peeling an apple in one long strip. Toss the peel over your shoulder. The peel will land in the shape of the first letter of your future spouse’s name.
• Unmarried women should sit in a darkened room and gaze into a mirror on Halloween night and the face of their future husband will appear in the mirror. But beware. If you are destined to die before marriage a skull will appear instead of the face of your intended.
• Name nutshells after prospective love interests and place them near a fire. If they burn steady it indicates true love. If they crack or pop or fly off the hearth your prospective love interests are only a passing fancy. Another version of this divination involved throwing two hazelnuts, named for two different suitors, into the fire. The nut that burns steadily is the suitor who will be true. The nut that bursts will be the one who will be unfaithful.
• Bobbing for apples is a traditional game used for fortune-telling on Halloween. (Bet you didn’t know that when you had your head in the barrel with some boy, or girl.) The first person to pluck an apple from the water without using their hands will be the first to marry. If a bobber catches an apple on the first try it means he or she will experience true love. If it takes many tries they will be fickle in their romantic endeavors.
• Water was often used for divination. To determine someone’s romantic fate, fill four bowls with water. Place soap in one, pebbles in another, clear water in the third, and leave the fourth bowl empty. Ask blindfolded guests to stick a hand in one of the bowls. If they choose the bowl with the clear water they will have a happy marriage. Soapy water foretells widowhood, the pebbles predict a life of hard work, and the empty bowl represents a single, happy life.
• Another popular, and dangerous, activity practiced when young women wore long dresses, was jumping over lit candles. If a woman made it over all the lit candles without extinguishing them she would be married before the year passed. Every candle her long skirt blew out meant another year without a husband.
Do you have a romantic divination you’ve practiced on Halloween or another time? Share with us in the comments.
