I saw many new and old movies this year, while none of them were super dynamite, these ten stick out as ones I did enjoy or found thought provoking.

The Hunger Games- Catching Fire
~I liked CF more than the first movie, I thought they stuck to the book spot on and really loved that Peeta and Katniss had way more chemistry.

Star Trek- Into Darkness

~It could be watching Chris Pine for two hours or the really great action but I loved this.

World War Z

First Brad Pitt movie I've liked in years. Nothing like the book {at all} but overall entertaining.

As Cool As I Am
A small Indie movie about a mom and daughter who come of age....simple yet really entertaining to watch and sad, funny, heartbreaking all at the same time...

Ain't Them Bodies Saints
Weird and that is all

Frozen
Cutest kids movie this year and loved the female power message to girls.

The Spectacular Now

My pick for great teen Indie this year

Safe Haven
Sappy, cheese romance, sign me up please.

Dark Skies

This movie did not get enough attention this year. It was super creepy and twisty...not to mention Keri Russell was fantastic in it. Probably my second favorite this year.

Prisoners

My favorite movie this year was Prisoners, not due to its dark themes but overall the questions it left you with and the really great acting of the characters. I found the subject matter hard as a parent to watch but also thought provoking in the terms of morality and the lengths one will go to defend whats yours.

(CC) Warner Brothers

~The Shows~

Sons of Anarchy
~I will not spoil anything here but the end of season 6...I gasped, out loud...and may have cursed a little...ok a lot~

The Walking Dead
Oh Rick...I want the Sheriff back, but I still love this show.

Orange is the New Black
Not sure if I was going to like this after the first few episodes but I wound up loving it....chicken!

How I Met Your Mother
Almost done, this show is in its last season, its been fun watching it.

Grey's Anatomy
I can't give up on this "has overrun it's course" show, I'm too invested, I need to see how it ends, but Lexi and Sloane... that killed me.

Homeland
~Holy S*#@# that end!! I can't decide who is who and what is what, but I know I cant wait to catch up on season 3.

Downton Abbey
Finally got to watch all 3 seasons, and yes Im a big fan 

The White Queen
I LOVED this series bases of the books by Philippa Gregory, very well done mini-series.


~Shows I tossed this Year~

The Vampire Diaries
- freaking doppelgangers everywhere, whatever....

Revenge
Bored now

Sister Wives
Done with the whining, done with the houses, done with it.


Shows I tried and didn't stick with

Reign
The Tomorrow People
Scandal

Shows Im trying out in 2014:

The Americans
Vikings
The Middle
Orphan Black

Christmas Traditions

by Adele Downs- 2013

Christmas is celebrated in a big way at my house. In addition to decorating our home inside and out with decorations collected over 25 years of marriage, hubby and I cook dinner together for our family and friends with all the trimmings, including a plate of ravioli like my grandmother used to make. We bake our own pumpkin and blueberry pies from scratch, using fresh ingredients from our local orchard. Dress is casual, watching football is allowed, and snoozing on the sofa after the meal is as much a tradition as the Christmas ham.

Ours is a multi-cultural, multi-racial family. Some of us come from the Midwest, others from nearby cities. A few were born in our small Pennsylvania town. Our ages range from very young to very old which probably makes us representative of America’s melting pot. On Christmas Day, we celebrate the unwavering love we have for our country and one another.

Thank you for joining me to celebrate Christmas and my new release SANTA TO THE RESCUE. I wish you all a peaceful holiday and a New Year filled with hope and prosperity.

Special Santa to the Rescue Excerpt

2013 was a much slower year in blogging for me but I still managed to read a ton of great books, watched a few great movies and had a blast catching up on my favorite shows. Here are my top favorites from this year.

~The Books~

top 20

Grown-up-books

Parasite by Mira Grant

The Returned by Jason Mott

Orphan Train by Christina Kline Baker

The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley

Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama

Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

Teen {ya}Books

Golden by Jessi Kirby
~Best message in a YA for young girls- Loved it~

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The Program by Suzanne Young

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma
~This was the most uncomfortable book for me to read, but I loved the writing~

How to Love by Katie Cotugno

The Distance Between Us by Kasie West

New Adult Books

Vain by Fisher Amelie

Finding It by Cora Carmack

Crash Into You by Katie McGarry

Reckless by S.C Stephens

Honorable Mentions

{Inspy Picks}

The Offering by Angela Hunt

The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

Hardcover, 320 Pages

Adult- Contemporary Romance

Review/ARC copy- TLC Book Tours

Warnings: Sexual Content, violence, language

4.5/5 Stars- (For 18&up)

For single mom Shandi Pierce, life is a juggling act. She’s finishing college; raising her delightful three-year-old genius son, Nathan, aka Natty Bumppo; and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced Christian mother and Jewish father. She’s got enough to deal with before she gets caught in the middle of a stickup in a gas station mini-mart and falls in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who steps between the armed robber and her son to shield the child from danger.

Shandi doesn't know that her blond god has his own baggage. When he looked down the barrel of the gun in the gas station he believed it was destiny: it’s been exactly one year since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him is about choice.

Now, William and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head-on, making choices that will reveal unexpected truths about love, life, and the world they think they know.

Thoughts

Set against the backdrop of southern delight Someone Else's Love Story introduces readers to Shandi and William, an odd and unlikely couple that meet under duress in a gas station hold up.

Jackson's characters had incredible depth and layers to connect you to their story, while William is rich in the past and cast mostly in his teen years with another woman, Shandi was developed in the present and her struggles with the now. Twelve years William's junior the girl has some problems..one of them being the men in her life. Left long ago by a father who remarried and started a new family, a male best friend who seemingly takes care of everything and a son who needs her for everything, I think as a reader I could tie the links between her attraction to older men and the present absence of a father in her life. Shandi also struggles with the circumstances of her son Natty, which until the gas station hold-up she has denied. While Shandi has a lot of garbage to sort through and a child to take care of, her feelings for William are overwhelming, she thinks its destiny, her Thor come to rescue her, but William comes with a ton of baggage and heartbreak, and as we see into his past and the inter workings of his thought process one can only hope that he can move forward and find love again but at the same time we know its almost impossible.

I loved this complicated yet realistic story involving all these characters, I wanted to see William and Shandi work their crap out and find a way to come together, there were sparks but never enough to push them completely over the edge, which as a reader I found so frustrating, I knew something was off but could never figure out why. When it seemed that the perfect time arises these characters just couldn't connect and not until the end did I see why, and not until the end do you see why Jackson is such a wonderful writer and gifted at telling a story.

A surprising love story that weaves its tale quietly within another love story that is touching and heartbreaking at the same time, leaving you guessing till the end and smiling when its done.

Joshilyn Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including gods in Alabama and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages. A former actor, Jackson is also an award-winning audiobook narrator. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband and their two children.

Find out more about Joshilyn at her website, connect with her onFacebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Thanks to William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for review copy.

(CC) Stock.xchng

by Ruth Mancini- 2013

My debut novel “Swimming Upstream” was born out of my own experience of ending a long-term relationship and having to “face myself” when events from my own past reared up to haunt me. I realized that I was not growing in the relationship and that although I still loved my partner, I was living his life, not mine. I had very mixed feelings. He was still the most important person in my life and I was scared to leave and be on my own. I lost my father at a young age and hadn't really got over that and I think that was part of what made it difficult. My romantic relationships had always been sticking plasters for that old wound. But I knew instinctively that being alone for a while was something I had to do. I was very young when I met and moved in with my partner, who was several years older, so it was easy to lose myself in the relationship. We were both very dependent on each other emotionally. So, leaving him was hard. I’ve been an avid reader all my life and I turned to books for the answers I wanted. I wanted to read a novel about someone who was going through the same thing as me and who had survived. I couldn't find anything suitable, so I wrote it down instead! 

Although I’ve drawn heavily on my own experiences in writing Swimming Upstream, it’s a story first and foremost. It’s been through several drafts since the time I first put pen to paper over twenty years ago. It’s the story of a young woman, Lizzie, who is going through a relationship break-up and the sequence of unexpected and explosive events that begin to change her life forever. Secrets emerge and there are themes of violence, betrayal and loss. But I think it’s a life affirming and humorous story too. Lizzie is strong – a survivor. I like reading women’s fiction novels with strong female characters so naturally those are the characters I like to write about. However, I do like a story with a bit of pace and enjoy psychological thrillers. I think that “Swimming Upstream” has both aspects to it.

My life couldn't be more different from Lizzie’s now. I’m married with two children aged 11 and 8 and I work as a lawyer as well as a writer, so, like the lives of most working mothers, mine is completely and utterly hectic. Also, my eldest child is severely learning disabled and can’t talk, feed or dress himself so needs a lot of help. Coming to terms with his disability was hard emotionally and on a practical level it’s still pretty hard work but there is a lot of love and laughter in our family and I have good friends, so despite the many challenges I’ve faced over the years, I consider myself a very fortunate person. I’m definitely a bottle-half-full kind of person and I hope that comes through in my writing. Like most people, I get down from time to time but when a problem arises I always begin looking for a solution straight away. Sometimes (as with my son) the solution is simply acceptance. But I do believe that we have the power to attract what we wish for.

Ruth Mancini was born in South-West London and educated in Cambridge and London where she gained a bachelors degree in French and Spanish and a post-graduate diploma in Law.

She now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children. She still practices law and juggles that with writing and raising the children.

Hi there Mr. Rose, welcome to the blog, please tell us about yourself. 

Every night, at midnight, moonshine or snow, I walk Frank down to the end of Hedgehog Row …… and back again. I call it Hedgehog Row. It’s actually Queen Elizabeth Walk, but I have never seen Queen Elizabeth walking there, at any time of the day or night, whereas hedgehogs do make not infrequent appearances and, when they do, it’s always a cheery sight. Why did the hedgehog cross the road? To get to the other side, of course. I am partial to very old and silly jokes. If a small scampering hedgehog is intercepted by Frank, who is bouncy and large, it really will roll itself up into a prickly ball and patiently wait to be sniffed. If Frank gets too close, he gets a prickle up the hooter and never fails to look surprised. 

(CC) Stock.xchng

A while back, I kid you not, Frank encountered a large crab, sitting on a sleeping policeman. Naturally, he immediately went to sniff this surreal apparition, which proceeded to pinch him on the nose. It was like a scene from a Guy N. Smith horror novel – man walking dog along leafy London lane adjacent to the Thames encounters improbable shellfish and the next thing you know gigantic killer crustaceans are devouring the population. It turns out that this was a Chinese Mitten Crab, one of the world’s most annoying invasive species. You can find out all about these pestiferous blighters at http://mittencrabs.org.uk/. So, why did the Chinese Mitten Crab cross the road? I’ll leave that one with you.

What inspired you to write The Conspiracy Kid?

That’s a good question, because this book, The Conspiracy Kid, starts off with the poet, Edwin Mars, wondering about exactly that. Where do ideas come from? Why has he written this sonnet about The Conspiracy Kid Fan Club, with which the novel kicks off? To what extent am I responsible for what I write? To what extent do ideas come from somewhere else? In other words, it’s the old egotistical sublime versus negative capability discussion. Did I create this whole damn thing myself? Or did someone else or something else, as in the Conspiracy Kid, drip-feed these thoughts into my head? It’s great fun playing with ideas like this.

Then I was once at a dinner party, where most of the attendees were in the arts in one way or another, but the host was a full-on, rampant businessman, and several gallons of pinot noir into the proceedings, he began expressing the opinion that he was just as creative as everyone else around the table and how dare they suggest that he wasn’t? Well, I thought he had a point. So that’s sort of where Joe Claude comes from. What? Oh yes, the Joe Claude/Joke Lord thing is not a coincidence – or, on the other hand, maybe it is. It’s hard to say. And then there’s the whole bereavement and forgiving thing. I mean, this book is a comedy - I dip my quill in comedic ink - but I think that all the best comedy is underpinned by Death and Disaster and Darkness and Doom – the Four D’s. Oh, and here’s four more: Dare to Defeat Depression by Dancing. A bit Reader’s Digest, admitted, but still that’s the sort of impetus that gets me out of bed and sends me to my writing station.

What authors have inspired you or your work?

A.A.Milne. Lewis Carol. Daniel Defoe. Laurence Sterne. Charles Dickens. Wilkie Collins. Damon Runyon. Gustave Flaubert. Franz Kafka. Kurt Vonnegut. Richard Brautigan. Joseph Heller. Agatha Christie. Oscar Wilde. T.S.Eliot, Raymond Greene. John Donne. Hunter Thompson. George Orwell. There’s a few to be getting on with. Oh, and special thanks to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee for everything Marvel-ous and in particular The Silver Surfer.

If you could pick a song that encapsulated your book what would it be and why?

Now, that is a very curious question. One song? I think it’s more of a play list, if anything. The book is a kind of a collage of characters. They come and go. It’s like a soap opera. That’s how I think of it. I think you probably get most out of it, if you approach it like that, as a soap. So does the Conspiracy Kid have a theme- song/tune/music? There is music in the story, which is divided into three parts: Fan Club, Hamburger and String. One chapter in Part One, Fan Club, is entitled Up On The Roof, so let’s have Up On The Roof by The (fabulous) Drifters for that (http://youtu.be/puM1k-S86nE). Part Two, Hamburger, well, much of the action takes place in Red, White and Blues, which is a restaurant where the blues is always playing. I’m going to choose All My Love In Vain by Sonny Boy Williamson, which is a lovely lolloping song (http://youtu.be/vQAjQjfXRrA). And in the big set-piece scene in Part Three, String, which is an art show at the Blue Square Gallery, the crowd is being serenaded by The Incredible String Band, so here’s Log Cabin Home In The Sky from Big Tam and the Wee Huge (http://youtu.be/4N5XXTL6z6M). Then there’s “Puttin’ On The Ritz”. Not only does Joe Claude end up living in The Ritz, but while I was writing the book, whenever I was out walking Frank, in between paragraphs, I could not get that song out of my head. Have you ever seen the amazing Moscow flash mob version of Puttin’ On The Ritz? No? Check it out. It’s terrific. (http://youtu.be/KgoapkOo4vg). There is hope for the world.

Alright, OK, if I have to choose one song, it’s going to be this: Sh-Boom (Life Could Be A Dream) by The Chords – (http://youtu.be/SBgQezOF8kY). That’s The Conspiracy Kid’s theme song. Having said all that, of course, it’s probably worth pointing out that on the whole the Conspiracy Kid tends to operate according to the Three S’s – Secret, Stealthy and Silent. And me, when I read, I turn the music off. Also when I write. I can’t think when music plays. Writing has a rhythm of its own.

What do you want readers to walk away with after reading your book?

I would like my readers to walk away with a smile. I would like my readers to think about The Conspiracy Kid’s slogan: “You don’t have to be kiddish, but it helps.” I would like my readers to consider seriously the suggestion that it is easy to forgive the forgivable, it is forgiving the unforgivable that is so very hard. And I would like my readers to walk away with a sense of time pleasurably spent.

What’s in store for the future?

I am writing a new novel, working title: Mee and I, which is inspired, somewhat, by the time I once spent with Lionel Bart, the composer, trying to write his biography. I don’t think that will be ready before 2015. In the meantime, next year, if all goes according to plan, I want to publish November, Ralph Conway’s Immortal Diary – which is the diary Ralph Conway wrote, during the month of November, when he kept on killing himself and coming back to life again.

GIVEAWAY

Today I have one eBook (Kindle or other format) of The Conspiracy Kid to giveaway. To enter please just fill in the copter. This open to everyone.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A sonnet is penned and, lo, the Conspiracy Kid Fan Club is born. Beware. To read this sonnet is to join the Club. Membership is automatic and irreversible.

This is the story of the earliest unwitting Conspiracy Kid Fan Club members: Edwin Mars (poet), Joe Claude (billionaire), Walter Cornelius (werewolf), Muriel Cohen (chef), Ewan Hoozarmi (artist), to name but a few.

Thanks E.P Rose for being on the spotlight today!! Loved reading your answers. Find out more about this author at:

FACEBOOK~WEB

Paperback, 448 Pages

Review/TLC Book Tours

Warnings:

4/5 Stars (Recommended to 18&up)

Seventeen-year-old Morgan Monetti shocks her parents and her community with one simple act: She chooses to stand by the man everyone else believes has exploited her—popular high school teacher TJ Hill. Quietly walking across a crowded courtroom to sit behind TJ, and not beside her parents, she announces herself as the adult she believes herself to be.

But her mother, Dinah, wants justice. Dinah is a fighter, and she believes with all her heart and soul that TJ is a man who took advantage of her daughter. He is a criminal who should be brought to justice, no matter what the cost to his family.

Rain, TJ’s wife, is shocked that her handsome, loving, respected husband has been accused of a terrible crime. But has her desperation to start a family closed her eyes to the fault lines in her marriage? And can she face the painful truths about herself and her husband?

Told from the perspectives of these three remarkable women, The Whole Golden World navigates the precarious territory between childhood and adulthood, raising questions about love and manipulation, marriage and motherhood, consent and responsibility. It’s a novel both shocking and unforgettable in its power.

~REVIEW POSTING SHORTLY!!!

Kristina Riggle is a former newspaper reporter now pursuing her first love, writing fiction. Her character-driven novels have been honored by independent booksellers in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, and her debut, Real Life & Liars, was a Target “Breakout” pick. She finds people of all walks of life fascinating, as in the old A&E “Biography” slogan, “Every life has a story.” She’s the co-editor for fiction for the e-zine Literary Mama, and has published short stories at Literary Mama, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. When not writing, she can be found taking care of her two kids and dog, and squeezing in time to read whenever she can.

Find out more about Kristina at her website, follow her on Twitter, and connect with her on Facebook.

by Christopher Hoare-2013

The first consideration for my novel "Steam and Strategem" was that it should feature a young woman of Regency Britain with a very anachronistic career, and that she would be pursued by several eligible bachelors. The career should be in one of the primary disciplines of the Industrial Revolution. She would be a commoner and at least one of the bachelors should be the heir to an aristocratic title so that the novel featured some of the social conflicts of the age. And to pay homage to the 'Britain that ruled the waves', she had to design steamships. 

The protagonist of the novel is Roberta Stephenson, the fictional daughter of George Stephenson, called The Father of Railways. She is the manager and chief designer of his steamship yard on the Clyde and is producing steamships to defeat the new French invasion plans that use steamships to nullify the British superiority in sailing warships. Napoleon's steamships are a development of the vessel built by Marquess Claude de Jouffroy in 1783 and are called pyroscaphes in honour of that promising experiment. Napoleon also has a larger steam powered ironclad constructed in secret, designed by the American, Robert Fulton, who actually built a submersible for him in 1801.

In order to have both practical steamships and Napoleon's empire meet in Regency times the novel had to use a steampunk device and concertina thirty years of steam development into a puff of wind. The first real steamship crossing of the English Channel was by the Clyde-built "Margery" in 1816...and she took 17 hours. My protagonist's "Spiteful" of 1814 can cross the Channel at ten knots. I also speeded the development of railways by the same thirty years so that the Middleton Railway of 1812, the first to use a steam locomotive, was cheek by jowl with the Liverpool and Manchester of 1830 and the South Eastern Railway (that my characters ride from Dover to London) which opened in1842.

Roberta's warships are technically called rams, that became popular with navies after the Battle of Lissa in 1866 when an Austrian flagship sank the Italian one by ramming it. I prefer, and sometimes use, the much older term galley, as the vessels of Athens, Rome, and Carthage also carried a reinforced metal prow to attack enemy ships with; but the Royal Navy called them rams. The Royal Navy lost their enthusiasm for ram bows when HMS "Victoria" was rammed and sunk at Tripoli, Lebanon, by HMS "Camperdown" in 1893 due to confusion in following an admiral's order. Roberta's rams re-ignite a new flame of the 'Nelson touch' and have a much more honorable record.

Christopher Hoare was born in Britain three months before WWII started. Later, that resulted in a scholarship place for secondary education under the Butler Education Act and eventually to some engineering training at a Ministry of Supply establishment. While he appreciated the training, he really wanted to be a writer so he left halfway through the course for a stint in the Artillery, and then in the N. African oilfields, followed by a move to Canada and work in the Arctic and Northern bush. He had intended moving on but met his wife of 43 years and is still here–diligently writing.