Leta P. Hawk's Blog, page 16

Reminiscing With Casey Kasem

When I was a teenager, one of the highlights of my weekend was tuning in to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio show. I loved finding out which of my favorite songs might be in the top ten for any given week, and I loved hearing some of the stories behind the songs and the singers or bands that performed them. The long-distance dedications were fun too, and I liked to try to guess from the contents of the letter what song the writer would choose to dedicate to a friend or relative.

Like most things from my childhood, AT 40 has kind of fallen by the wayside. Casey Kasem passed away a few years ago, and I’m not all that interested in most of the music that is popular today. In fact, I don’t even know if they still do countdowns.

One day recently, my husband was fiddling around on the internet, and he came across iHeart radio. I’d heard of iHeart, but I never really looked into it myself. But he did, and he came across old reruns of Casey Kasem’s AT 40 from the 70s and 80s. Really?!?! Needless to say, we’ve found a new favorite source for background music at our house.

Last evening, we were listening to a countdown from 1982. I was just 13 then, and was pretty much just discovering popular music. As I listened to the songs that were hits back then, some of which aren’t played much anymore, I allowed myself to drift back to a time when my life was in some ways simpler, yet in some ways way more difficult than it is now. Dan Fogelberg’s “Run For the Roses” was on that countdown, and I recalled how at the time I loved horses. In fact, I was still juvenile enough to wish I could be a horse, running free across a field in Kentucky with the wind rushing through my mane. Other songs, like Ronnie Milsap’s “Any Day Now” and Alabama’s “Take Me Down” reminded me of our family road trip to Texas to meet my newborn niece Amber. Memories of Friday nights at the skating rink came back with songs like 38 Special’s “Caught Up in You” and Dazz Band’s “Let It Whip.”

There were some songs as well that I liked well enough at the time, but I really didn’t have an understanding of what they meant. Charlene’s “I’ve Never Been to Me” made me cry even back then, but it really meant nothing since I lacked the maturity and life experience to understand what it was to be “a discontented mother and a regimented wife.” It was just bittersweet to hear and now fully comprehend the situations she sang about.

I could go on and on about the music that meant so much to me then, and that still plays such a big part in my life, but I’ll leave it here for now. And for all you younger folks who prefer Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Skrillex, Ellie Goulding, or whoever else is popular nowadays, I’ll just quote another 80s song:

“Call me a relic, call me what you will.

Say I’m old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill.

Today’s music ain’t got the same soul.

I like that old time rock and roll.”

Kindle Countdown–The Newbie

Happy birthday to me! To celebrate my birthday this weekend, The Newbie will be on Kindle Countdown for $0.99 from March 5th @ 12:00 am PST until March 9th @ 12:00 am PST in both the US and UK.

This ebook is also part of Authorgraph, so you can request to have your copy signed!

‪#‎ParanormalMystery‬ ‪#‎99cents‬

http://www.amazon.com/Newbie-Kyrie-Carter-Paranormal-Mys…/…/

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book Day, I created a graphic to share an excerpt from my WIP, The Witch of Willow Lake.

 

Finding Me by Dawn Brazil–Release

Today is the re-release for Finding Me by Dawn Brazil, the first installment in the Finding Me trilogy. This YA Fantasy cover was designed by Yosbe Designs.

About the Book

Sixteen-year-old Chloe Carmichael’s perfect world is in chaos.

It’s not because she has a vision of her boyfriend murdered and then he’s found dead exactly as foreseen. It’s not because she suddenly has the ability to move objects when she’s upset. It’s kinda cool to close a door without touching it. And it’s most definitely not her overbearing mother, who only cares about appearances. Chloe has already grown quite accustomed to her family’s distance.

So what has Chloe cringing in fear?

It’s having to become another person for a new group of people. She knows she’s not perfect, but apparently she was in another life. In that other life, she was known as Amanda. Amanda was perfect. Chloe, not so much. Her new friends won’t allow her to forget.

Chloe struggles with a love that exposes the soul. It’s a love that defies reason. It’s a love that speaks to her heart and demands attention.

It’s the stench of impending death that hovers over her every move.

It’s that final threat as she tries to acclimate to a life of superhuman proportions.

It’s the enemy she can’t see and doesn’t remember.

And most importantly, it’s never discovering who she really is that truly frightens her.

Book Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the Author

Dawn wants to live in a world fully inhabited by fictional characters; she thinks fictional characters are cooler than real people, except herself, of course. But since the world is not comprised of dreamy book boyfriends, she creates them for everyone to fawn over. Her debut novel, Finding Me, book 1 in the Finding Me series, is set to release on March 3rd 2016.

When she is not writing, she can be found with her nose in a book – swooning over another book boyfriend, drying up tears from a recent heartbreak, or shouldering a wound she received in battle. She also loves to create magic in the kitchen, with an array of inspiring dishes she pulls from Pinterest. Dawn lives in South Texas with her sports-obsessed husband, three technology-infatuated teenagers, and her great big colossal imagination.

She is currently editing the final book in the Finding Me series, Becoming Me. The book is set to release the summer of 2016. She is a master juggler and is working on two other Young Adult standalone novels – a high-fantasy tearjerker, and a science fiction story with a romance that will make your heart ache.

Contact Information

Website: http://www.dawnbrazil.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DawnBrazil

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorDawnBrazil

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Brazil/e/B00JBWGE08/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8049152.Dawn_Brazil

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/brazildawn/

Blog: http://www.dawnbrazil.blogspot.com/

Extra Information

Finding Me

Publishing/Marketing Contact

Lauren Jones

Book Marketing Manager

Booktrope Publishing

lauren.jones@booktrope.com

About Booktrope

Booktrope is a new type of publishing company, founded in 2011 in Seattle, WA. Committed to the creation of quality books and to our unique marketing methods, we’re pioneering a book development process called team publishing. Learn mo

Review–Angels in Seashore Cove

“Angels in Seashore Cove” by Maggie Van Well follows best friends Sean Donovan and Dianna Sheldon in Seashore Cove, Long Island. In college, Dianna and some friends started the Saving It Sisters, promising to remain virgins until they found The One. With her thirtieth birthday fast approaching and no prospects in sight, Dianna decides she’s going to break that pledge. Sean, though a wild child and a bit of a womanizer, stands in her way, unwilling to let her make a mistake that she will regret for the rest of her life. What neither realizes is that they are soulmates, meant for each other.

Thank God for Divine Intervention! Sean and Dianna share a guardian angel, Adriel, who cannot stand to see his charges miss out on their happily ever after. Adriel and Archangel Jude enlist a couple of rookies from Heaven who will help guide the hapless soulmates as they discover their love for each other. Maybe, just maybe, as they help Sean and Dianna, they might put to rights their own life mistakes.

*     *     *    *

Overall, this was a wonderful story. The characters of Sean and Dianna were so well developed that I got attached to them. I hurt when they hurt, rejoiced when they rejoiced, and got angry when they got angry. At the same time, there were instances where I wanted to knock the daylights out of both of them. Their stubbornness, while somewhat understandable, drove me crazy, and it helped move the plot forward.

Jack and Angie, the pair of rookie souls brought back from heaven to help Sean and Dianna find themselves, were equally engaging. The story actually began where their earthly story ended. Without giving too much away, I was so heartbroken by the end of their story that I almost didn’t continue reading, as I could see no way for things to ever be well with them again.

Another thing I found enjoyable in this story was the way it wove in spiritual things without getting preachy. It was realistic, and all the characters had their good points and bad points, their strengths and their foibles. It’s important to note that some liberties were taken with theology in describing what went on in heaven, but for me, that didn’t detract from the story at all.

So if you want a light-hearted romance with real characters and lots of emotional appeal, this is an excellent choice.

I give this novel five out of five stars.

Memories for Sale

**This post is a response to The Daily Post‘s prompt “Memories for Sale.”

Every year at Christmas time, Mom would drag that thing out of the basement. I’m sure it was a thing of beauty when it was new, but after years of Air Force moves and existing in the cigarette-smoke haze that defined my childhood home, it was dingy and quite odorous. But it still lit up, and it still played “Silent Night” as beautifully as it had in my first memory of it.

What was it?

It was a large musical church that my mom acquired at some point before I was born. It wasn’t ceramic, as many similar pieces today, but as I recall, it was made of (or at least covered in) a waxy material not unlike a candle. It was lighted from within, and its stained glass windows glowed warmly when it was plugged in. The roof of the church was covered in what looked to be quilt batting that had been sprinkled with glitter so that it looked like sparkling snow. It was very, very heavy, so wherever my mom placed it when it came out for the holidays, that’s where it stayed until it was time to put it away.

Even though that church wasn’t much to look at by the time I was old enough to truly appreciate it, I did love it, and it said “Christmas” more clearly than any other decoration we owned.

As life moved on, I married and moved out, then had my first child. My dad died when my son was a year old, and at that point, Mom decided to downsize. One of the first things she did was to weed out the old Christmas decorations. Among the things she wanted to get rid of was that old church. “Do you want this old thing? Because if you don’t, it’s either going to the church rummage sale or out in the trash.”

Did I want it? A part of me screamed, “Yes! That’s a piece of my childhood, and I want to keep it forever!” Another part of me–as well as my husband–said no. It was old. It was heavy. It was quite large, and we didn’t have the room for it. And yes, it still smelled of cigarette smoke and probably would for all of eternity, and with my allergies and my son’s asthma, it just wasn’t practical to keep it.

I really don’t know what she did with it. Did she take it to the church for the rummage sale (I always hoped she had), or did she put it out with the trash? She died before I could ask her for certain.

Still, every year I make the drive up to Millersburg for the church rummage sale, hoping against all odds that it might have ended up as part of someone’s collection, and that they would have grown tired of it or wanted to downsize and so brought it in to sell.

If I ever do find that old stinky church, I won’t hesitate to plunk down $5 or even $10 to bring it home with me. Where it belongs.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/memories-for-sale/

Ghost Hunting Equipment That Might Save Your Life

Interesting and useful information.

Miranda always felt uneasy in her basement, especially near the doorway that linked the two rooms together. When she stood there, she felt as though someone was watching her, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. After a while, she avoided the basement as much as possible, believing she had a ghost lurking down there.

When she called me, I was happy to help. As a paranormal investigator, that’s what I do. If I find signs of a haunting, I attempt to document the activity and then work with several psychic mediums to help me alleviate the anguish that is causing the haunting. The very first thing I do though is look for normal, natural reasons for the activity.

Many people in the field call this process “debunking.” While many investigators are eager to capture evidence they can share with their friends, serious investigators always rule out…

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Are you a Christian Atheist?

Let's Talk About Sunday

I need to make a confession: I have been weak in prayer lately.  Does that make me a Christian atheist?  What I mean is that for the past number of years, five or so, I haven’t prayed much.  I lead prayer meeting, and we pray at Leadership Team meetings, and I go to the ministerium monthly prayer meeting, and my family prays before meals and bedtimes, but personally, privately, I don’t pray much.  Some people would say Christians who don’t pray much are Christian atheists.

It wasn’t always that way.

I really had my eyes opened to the importance of prayer in college.  I took a course on prayer, taught by my wife’s father, though he wasn’t my father-in-law at the time.  We not only read great books about prayer and studied what the Bible says about prayer, including the great prayers in the Bible, but we were also required…

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Scent of a Woman: Farting in a Freshman English Class

This is hilarious!

Kosher Adobo

NB: Everything here is true, except for W.’s physical details. “W.” isn’t even his real name. If former students read this, don’t even try to ask me who W. is:  I’m never going to tell.  He knows who he is.

Imagine your typical freshman boy W. Now add Coke-bottle glasses. And curls that look like an onomotopoeia. And a voice that hasn’t cracked. And make him short. His best friend R. rests his chin on his head when they’re in line for chicken fingers.

Now put him in an English class where 15 freshmen are reading Romeo and Juliet and the girls are shiny and beautiful and you know he has a crush on one of them, L. You know because he’s written a sestina about her and he’s titled it “My Heart Hungers for a Thyme When Lo Mein.” L., in turn, is infatuated with a sophomore, who looks…

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I Did It My Way—and Wish I’d Done It Differently

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…”

~Frank Sinatra

 

Who among us doesn’t look back on his life and wish he’d done things differently? I know I have, and the vast majority of my friends have at least one thing they wish they could do over. Maybe they’d go back to their high school days and stand up to that bully, or perhaps they’d ask out that seemingly perfect guy or girl they thought they didn’t have a snowball’s chance with, or maybe they’d even pass on that dream job that quickly turned into a nightmare. Whatever it is, everyone has that one thing they’d like to go back and have just one more shot at.

 

As I’ve begun to take myself seriously as an author, I’ve thought back to my younger days and dreamed about how different my life might be now if I’d approached things just a little differently, if I’d known earlier what I could accomplish if I just took that chance. When would I start? How far back would I have to go to start making those changes?

 

I’ve always loved writing, and I can remember writing little stories and even poems as far back as third grade. At that time in my life, it wasn’t so much the need to change what I did, as much as I might have needed others to change, to recognize and encourage my budding writing skills, rather than giving me a pat on the head, saying “How cute,” and sending me on my way.

 

If I’d time travel back to high school, when I started writing poems, one thing I could have done differently was that I might have talked to my English teachers, or even the school librarian, about writing contests and publishing, or maybe I could have started a writing club. Of course, I went to school in a very small district, and our town was often fondly (or not-so-fondly) referred to as “The Bubble,” which pretty much meant we were isolated and not always up to snuff on what happened in the outside world, so things like writing contests and even writing clubs were almost unheard of in our little town, and I wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue those things anyway.

 

By and large, I think my best bet for changing things would have been in my college days. While I enjoyed college and made excellent grades in every class I took (well, except for that rock climbing course at Lock Haven that earned me a C, but that’s another post), I have to admit that I wasn’t very focused. I took whatever classes caught my fancy instead of having a plan, a goal in mind that I was working towards. Again, I feel some of the fault lies with my academic advisors and even professors who could have stepped in to offer some advice, to ask “Where do you see yourself in five years? What do you plan to do with your degree?”

 

How would I have answered those questions? I’m not really sure. Yes, there was the writing aspect of things. I loved writing, but at that time I was extremely focused on poetry and thought I wasn’t able to write anything else. I wish I’d tried my hand at fiction writing (which I avoided partly because the professor scared me), or even technical and scientific writing (I also loved earth science and dabbled quite a bit in geology, meteorology, and astronomy). Whatever I might have focused on, at least I would have been honing my writing skills.

 

There was another part of me that had the desire to teach literature. Like most other writers, I was also a voracious reader, and I loved delving into books, reading what others had written and exploring the themes and images used by various authors. I was especially fond of British literature, specifically the Arthurian Legends. Now here is where I did have a bit of a plan, and that plan was to graduate from Lock Haven and then head right off to graduate school to study British Lit. I would do a concentration in the Arthurian Legends and write my thesis on the changing treatment of women in Arthurian legends throughout the centuries.

 

What stopped me? Lots of things, I guess. The biggest was probably the lack of funding. I already had a load of debt from my undergraduate years and was hesitant to  add more. I had been accepted at Bucknell University’s graduate program, as well as the one at Wooster in Boston and Trinity over in Ireland, but none of the teaching fellowships I’d applied for came through, so I put off going to grad school, during which time I rethought my plan. If I earned myself a degree in British/Arthurian Literature, what on earth would I do with it? The best I thought I could hope for would have been becoming a college professor, which I would have loved, but there weren’t a lot of jobs available at that time. Again, there was the looming fear of debt. I didn’t want to be another $20,000 in debt without a decent job prospect.

 

I could have turned to my other love, writing. I could have penned my own Arthurian novels or done my own research projects and published them. But did I need a Masters degree to do that? No, not really. Still, I wonder if that unattained degree might have opened doors that I’d never even known were there. Maybe I could have been a writer for one of my favorite shows, Merlin, or come up with my own.

 

In the end, it’s futile to sit around wallowing in regret over what I didn’t pursue or choices I made years ago. But the regret over things I didn’t attempt actually serves a purpose in the here and now. Now, I am much more likely to take a leap of faith and pursue something that catches my interest. Those regrets have fueled my efforts at writing and publishing my novels. I’m sure there are opportunities I’m missing even now that I will think about years down the line, but at least I’m no longer cowering in my corner, afraid to take a chance, afraid of failing.

 

Because I have come to a point in my life where I realize that sometimes the fear of regret far outweighs the fear of failure.

How about you? What do you wish you could have done differently? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

I Did it My Way