Allie Pleiter on...is this a plot twist or villain?

I admit, this doesn't really have a lot to do with writing...except that you can be sure it will show up in one of my books one of these days.

It was just too darling and funny not to share.  If you've ever wondered what kind of zaniness goes on in the Pleiter household, here's a peek:

I'm thinking this needs to be uploaded to America's Funniest Home Videos--maybe it will help pay for all the toilet paper she wastes (this isn't the first time she's done this, but it's definitely a distance record....).  What do you think?

A Season of Love by Kim Watters

Kim Watters here. I'm proud to announce my newest release from Love Inspired.  A Season of Love is my fourth book with Harlequin and my second in Dynamite Creek, Arizona. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Blessings,
Kim

Blurb:

The Soldier’s Gift

Just in time for Christmas, a tall, dark and handsome Scrooge visits Holly Stanwyck’s holiday shop, threatening eviction. But once landlord Ethan Pellegrino sees the single mom’s plight, the former soldier becomes her protector instead. Suddenly he’s helping her with her struggling business and bounding with her troubled son. A wounded veteran come home to heal, Ethan is no stranger to sorrow. But something about the pretty widow fills him with hope. Will Holly be able to let go of her own painful past to see her future by his side?

Excerpt:

Ethan momentarily lost himself in Holly’s presence. Her swept back locks exposed her long, elegant neck and straight, slightly upturned nose. But it was her vulnerability that got to him.

Despite her attempts to keep it all together, he sensed just below the surface she suffered and struggled with her son, the shop, everyday life.

He should step away. Instead, when she turned her head toward him, he found himself staring into her deep green eyes that had seen so much pain. A pain he could identify with. He’d lost his father at a young age, and several of his friends in Afghanistan. But even that couldn’t compare to losing one’s partner, one’s soul mate.

He had no experience with that sort of loss, yet he felt the need to comfort. Protect. He wanted to draw Holly into his arms and absorb her pain and blend it with his own. 

For further information, check out my website at www.kimwatters.com

Merry Christmas from Camy Tang

Camy here, wishing a very merry Christmas to you and yours today! I'll share my favorite photo of my dog, Snickers, where she fell asleep in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas eve, waiting for Santa. :)

How My Latest Series Came To Be

Hi from Gail Gaymer Martin at http://www.gailmartin.com/ heading for Gideon Film Festival at Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina. Excited about meeting movie producers and learning to pitch my novels for movies.

My newest series idea came to me after the death of our daughter Brenda who died of ovarian cancer nearly three years ago. She loved animals and had two border collies and two parrots. The dogs, Miranda and Nike, were involved in agility and flyball. Brenda also taught obedience training and fostered dogs. So when I was looking for a new idea, Man’s Best Friend came to mind. The first book Dad In Training, released this September, involves Molly, a teacher of special needs students, who wants to open a dog shelter. Her friend Steph has a border collie, named Fred . Fred and Steph get dragged into Molly’s scheme of finding a building for nothing. It’s full of laughs and some tears too and a romantic hero that I hope you fall in love with.


Steph is the heroine of the second book, Groom In Training, to be released in February 2010. Fred is naturally a major character. Steph runs a doggie daycare in Molly’s building – Time for Paws, and Steph’s story revolves around a helpful man with a grouchy brother who lives next door to Steph. Fred falls in love in this book with Suzette, a Bouvier Des Flanders. You can see why from her photo. She’s rather exotic. Nick, the hero, is far from exotic. He’s playful, caring and often late. I hope the ending will make you laugh. . .and cry a little.



Presently I’m proposing the third and final book which I’m naming, Bride In Training, although I haven’t had a title used that I created for a long time. But maybe this time. The story’s heroine is Emily, a part-time employee at Time For Paws, a young woman with a difficult past but a heart for dogs. A cairn terrier will be the main dog in this novel. And you’ll never guess who the hero is. The grouchy neighbor who learns that self-worth is not measured by success but by love.

I hope you look for Dad In Training this September and have fun with the women who are involved with Time for Paws. They are determined to find happiness and to grow in faith.

Pet Perspective

We live on a farm at the intersection of No and Where. We've been through many dogs. Some we had to dispose of ourselves, some got run over, some just disappeared. Mostly we had a que-sera-sera attitude toward the dogs. When you live on a farm, most animals have to serve a purpose and that includes dogs and cats and horses and cows. When we got Toby, the dog in the picture here, we chose her for a purpose. Both her parents were excellent cattle dogs. And, we discovered, so was Toby. She was a natural and lived for the days when we had to move the cows to work with the calves or move them from pasture to pasture. But what set Toby apart from all the other dogs that roamed in and out of our lives is the fact that she was smart, loving, cute - and she stayed alive for fourteen years. She was the only dog that we had this long and, as a result, became a part of our family like no other dog had. She was loved and adored and appreciated by our children, by my family and by our own friends. She loved children and was always gentle with them. She let our 18 month old granddaughter sit beside her and put hats on her head. She would go with me on long walks as I untangled twisted story lines, prayed for my children and simply enjoyed being outside. For fourteen years, as I headed down trails and roads, always in my peripheral vision, was the sight of her black tail, waving like a plume, her head up, sniffing the air.

Over the past year she started showing her age. When we went out for a walk she would stay a bit closer to me and didn't go charging out after deer, or running off into the field following the scent of a coyote or scurrying off into the trees to chase down a rabbit. But she as always game to head out no matter how cold or hot. My husband had always taken her to the mountains when he went out on week long trail rides with his horses. This was the highlight of her year, but this year, we knew it wasn't going to be possible. She was just getting to old for eight hour long rides. We started to think that maybe, one day, this dog might not be with us. I started to wonder when we would have to make that fateful trip to the vet, though I knew it wasn't going to happen soon. Toby was still in such good health and I didn't want to contemplate having to make that hard decision.

Then, one night, last month, she and a visiting dog, headed off to check something out in the back field. The visiting dog returned and Toby didn't. I called and called, and when she didn't come bounding up to me, mouth open, tongue hanging out, looking as if she was laughing at some private joke, I knew something had gone horribly wrong. But it was 11:00 at night and cold and I didn't know where to start looking for her in the forest surrounding our home. Neither my husband nor I could sleep that night and as soon as it got light, we went out to look for her. Awhile later, we found her, dead, in the snow only fifty yards from the house. Killed by two wolves according to the tracks we found and the way she had been killed. As I knelt down beside her broken body, I could not believe how deeply I grieved the loss of this dog and how much it hurt. I used to chuckle at people who grieved pets, thinking, how much can you love a dog? Well, last month, I choked on my own words. I found out exactly how much you can love a dog. I found out exactly what kind of a hole they leave in your life when they go. Especially when all the kids are out of the house and sometimes the only conversation I would have was a one-sided one with my dog.

Toby now lays under a pine tree on a sunny hillside overlooking a field. A fitting final resting place for a dog who loved to run up and down those self same hills or sit beside us when we would enjoy the warm sun. My husband and I have had deeper, harder sorrows in my life. We buried a child, each of us a father, grandparents and cousins. We've stood by graves of friends, of children of friends. I know where to put this sorrow for our dog in the grander scheme of things. But it is still a sorrow and I know that anyone who has ever had a beloved pet understands.

Someday I'll find a way to channel this into a story. I'm a writer. That's what writers do. We take the good and bad events of our lives and shift and re-shape them and then put them in a book. It's a way of dealing and controlling events we have no control over. So some day, when you're reading one of my books, you might have the privilege of meeting Toby for yourself. I hope you enjoy her as much as we have.