I’m trying something new so be kind please! I wanted to give you a glimpse of the real me, how I look (after having a 24 hour headache!) and how I talk. The thing is I feel very strange doing videos, I’m obviously not an actress and don’t have a personal trainer! I hear the words and think do I sound like that?
I’ve also started with this company that pays you per click. You go there, sign up and they take you to all kinds of websites. I haven’t seen most of them before so it’s been fun research. Hey, when you’re a writer everything is research. If your interested click: pencildancer No big deal if you’re not interested. I’ll like you anyway.
Easter was fantastic. It goes without saying that John 3:16 became true on that day so long ago. I love Easter sunrise services, the music at my church is contemporary and I sing with love–not so much with voice.
The day was even better when I was able to get my family to assemble for a quick family photo. Josh and Bri are on the top left of the stairs, Andy and Sanita on the right of the stairs, Sara and Ben are on my left, then me and Hubs-Ed. hmmm, just noticed Ben and Sara are color co-ordinated!
The weather here is beginning to be nice so the trees and bushes are showing off, the cherry tree and lilac are in front yard and smell wonderful. The cats are enjoying the weather too.
Cleveland with his usual I’m too good for you pose. Wendell–didn’t want to pose for his photo shoot!
This is a work in progress. Or should I say works in progress? I have so many things I want to make with this fabric from clothes, to quilts, to covering pizza boxes! With only one day a week to play in my sewing space things do not get made as fast as material gets purchased.
I’m a work in progress too. I’m learning about social media marketing and would love to take Maria Andros’s course, but that’s to much money right now, so I will plod along looking through every free thing I can find on the web. I’m also still working on my latest manuscript as of yet not sold. I have to wait on God’s timing for that and it’s not easy!
The winner of the Daisy Chain Book is Deb (South Moon.) Deb you’ll be hearing from Mary soon so watch your email. Thank all of you wonderful people for leaving comments about the review.
April 8, 2009 01:03:57 Posted By Care Putman ***NOTE: Sara Mills, whose new book Miss Match (to follow the first release, Miss Fortune) from Moody Press, has just lost her husband to a heart attack. Please pray for her and her children as we help her promote her new book. Thanks to Cara Putman for allowing us to use her excellent interview. You can find Sara at http://www.saramillsbooks.com/.
Miss Fortune and Miss Match are delightful books set in NYC in 1947. Tell us how you got the idea for Allie and these books…
I got the idea for Miss Fortune in the middle of the night, when all good ideas come to me:One sleepless night I was watching The Maltese Falcon and I started to wonder how different the story would be if Sam Spade had been a woman. She’d never have fallen for Miss Wunderly’s charms and lies. She’d have been smart and tough and she would have solved the case in half the time it took Sam because she wouldn’t spend all of her time smoking cigarettes and calling her secretary Precious.The thought of a hard-boiled female detective got my mind whirling.I paused the movie and sat in my darkened living room thinking about how much fun a female Sam Spade could be. Intrigued but not yet ready to dash to my computer, I changed disks and put on Casablanca (my all time favorite movie ever). The sweeping love story, a tale full of hard choices and sacrifice was what finally made the whole idea click in my mind. If I could just combine the P.I. detective story of the Maltese Falcon with the love story from Casablanca, and make Sam Spade more of a Samantha, I could have the best of all worlds.
These books are so good, I wish I’d written them. How did you set the stage to capture that gritty PI feel without being dark?
I find that a lot of PI stories are gritty and dark, focusing on the worst of the humanity, and while I wanted the Allie Fortune mysteries to be exciting and tension-filled I didn’t want them to be stark and hopeless.One of the things I tried to do to counteract the darkness was to give Allie a multi-layered life. She has cases, relationships, friends and family, all of which I hope combine to make the stories textured, rich and full of life.
Allie is a character I’d love to have coffee with. What did she teach you while you wrote these books?
Allie was a great character to write. One of the things I learned from her was that human relationships (man/woman, mother/daughter, friends) are complicated and full of unspoken rules and expectations. Allie is a rule-breaker at heart and it complicates her life on a regular basis. One of the storylines I loved most is Allie’s relationship with her mother and how it grows and changes and how it’s shaped her.Another dimension of Allie’s character that really taught me a lot was her willingness to do whatever was needed to help those she loves. There is no price on that kind of friendship and it’s a characteristic I’d like to see more of in myself. Okay I admit it, I’ve got a bit of a friend-crush on Allie.
LOL.One last question: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would that be and who would you take with you?
If I could go anywhere right now I’d head to Monterey, California (I’m writing a book set there right now) and I’d plant myself on the beach with a notebook, writing my story as the waves crashed. Sounds like my idea of heaven on earth. There’s something about the wind-shaped Cypress trees and the crash of the surf in Monterey that calls to me. I don’t know why, it just is.
I’ve asked a good friend and writer, Elaine Stock to post her review of Mary E. Demuth’s new book on my blog.
DAISY CHAIN by Mary E. Demuth
DAISY CHAIN takes the reader back to the 1970s, a time before teenagers isolated themselves with computer games or tuned out the world with music downloaded onto an iPod. Yet, like any slice of present or past, not all is perfect or safe. Set in Defiance, Texas, DAISY CHAIN, part one of a trilogy, sets into motion the thought troubling many people: How can a good and loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?
Jed, a 14-year-old boy, lives with his tough-as-rusty-nails preacher dad, his emotionally unstable mom who gives her love the best she could, and a younger sister who at times is seized with a lisp. At times, Dad Pepper’s actions are as hard as his words. His family suffers both physically and emotionally from his abuse. A family secret, they keep this from the public eye, although a few have suspicions.
The beginning of the story sets Jed’s world upside down. The stability and probable future soul mate he has in his life, Daisy, is snatched up and away, joining the ranks of missing children. Jed’s guilt and self-blame over Daisy’s disappearance is carried throughout the story: a heavy burden for anyone, especially so young, to carry.
Jed meets and befriends some very special people. Muriel, who is fighting cancer, comes from a bizarre marital past. Hixon, who is often thought of as the town prophet, suffers through prejudice against him, and his own demons. Combined with the companionship of Jed’s young sister, and what seem to be Daisy’s whispers of faith, Jed finds the strength to stand up for his convictions.
DAISY CHAIN is not light reading, but is thought provoking, leaving the reader asking several questions about life and God, and wondering what will happen to Jed and those whom he loves. It’s well worth spending time in Defiance for a walk with young Jed down a very rough road, one we all seem to travel on at one time or another.
Reviewed by Elaine Stock
Thanks Elaine! This sounds like a book I can’t wait to read. Good news for one of you! Mary has offered to give away a free copy as long as there are ten people who post a comment! So please leave a post and MOST IMPORTANT leave a contact email address or you won’t get the book if your name is picked! You have until April 8 12:00 pm central standard time!
More fabric. I really have good intentions, this is going to be a skirt and a top. I just don’t know when I will get time to sew them. So for now the fabric has been washed and will go onto the stash shelf.
Next week won’t be sewing week. Josh and Bri will be coming home for Easter. Bri is allergic to Cleveland so I will have to spend extra time cleaning and shampooing carpets and pray she doesn’t have a reaction to him. He was supposed to be living somewhere else by now, but that hasn’t happened. I’m still praying that it will soon. He’s a sweet cat, he just won’t get along with my cat. Right now he looks like a shiny black wooly caterpillar!
This week was spent going through my galleys for Hearts on the Road. I’m super excited that the book will be coming out in June. Still waiting to see what my cover looks like. Will those on the cover match my vision of what Randi Davis and Matthew Carter look like? And what about their truck? Will it be on the cover? Stay tuned!
Keep reading your mind loves the engagement! signed, Pencildancer
This is another creative space challenge. This is my cutting space in my sewing room. I had a box of scraps I couldn’t bear to part with, some are pretty and others are well…pretty ugly! Still they were a good size and throwing them away didn’t seem responsible. I did some looking on the internet thinking there had to be a way to use scraps. I found quiltville and there was my answer!
I began cutting that box of scraps. I cut for almost seven hours and that box is like a huge plate of pasta! It never seems to get empty. I took a break and put one of the blocks for the Crayon Box quilt together. I think it will be a fun quilt when I’m finished.
I look at that box of scraps and I wonder if God sees my mishaps of managing my life in the same way. I know the box will never be empty, yet God is always able to put me back together and usually not in a way I thought! He uses the ugly and the pretty parts of my life to bring me to a new place on this earth. Right now He’s sharpening me with learning patience. We work on that one together quite ofen.
Today I’m joining in with Kootoyoo who started the creative space Thursday photo journey. Today I chose my desk place because I am working on editing a manuscript. I’m loving having two monitors–now that I know how to use them. Thanks Ben! My desk is usually a volcanic eruption of paper and books. I have it under control right now, again thanks to Margie Lawson’s course on defeating self defeating behaviors. The first week of the month it is on my goal list to clean it off.
Yes, I know there are two books on my desk! Before the Season Ends was so good I wanted to write an endorsement for it. I did that! There is a review of it further down on my blog, or look for the review link on the right side.
I’m just starting When the Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. He is an excellent writer. I don’t know if he’s taken any of Margie Lawson’s courses or not, but he is a writer to read to see how it’s done.
What book do you recommend as a well written book? I’d like to know!
Amazingly a lot. I’m editing and adding a subplot to my manuscript. One of the things I’ve recently learned about was running a program to check for repetitious words–as if writing wasn’t already a challenge now it’s a good thing to do math! So not my favorite thing!
After I ran the test I found some interesting –oh shall I write this word???? sigh statistics (didn’t like that class in college by the way!0 In a 65k word manuscript I have: pillows 27 times! How can that be? It’s not a book about a woman who sells them! I will need to work on that! Over 144 times! I don’t remember using it at all and then there is a favorite Shoulder! 725 times shocking! This makes it sound like my manuscript is pretty awful. It isn’t though and it will be much better once I change things around. Maybe I’ll throw in a few knees and toes in place of those shoulders.
What possessed me to discover this trick? Margie Lawson’s class on Empowering Character Emotions. Margie is an excellent teacher using her whole brain skills in a way that works for right and left brainers. I’m whole brained which is good because I do like organizing and playing with highlighters, and then right brained–love to create things. Just don’t ask me to do any math!
I’m sad, blue, down in the dumps and it’s Valentine’s day. What is wrong with me? My computer has worn itself out working for me. That is why. Poor thing, it’s tried to keep up with my blasts of inspiration, furious note keeping in one note, random thoughts and manuscripts in word, dizzying messes in excell, and then there is photoshop and all those photos and digital scrapbooking kits, and of course hours of spider solitaire, the nights I couldn’t sleep and tried to bejewell myself into a hypnotic state, facebook, packrat, twitter, email, online classes. No wonder it called it quits.
Truthfully I am happy, my youngest is home for the weekend with his huge stack of laundry. He’s sleeping, I haven’t seen him yet, but it makes me happy to know he’s upstairs. Tonight is the friendship dinner at church and I’ll be sitting next to hubs, and another son and his wife. Life is good.
The new book Hearts on the Road got it’s dedication and acknowledgement pages written. I can’t wait to see the cover. As soon as I can I’ll let you all see it too.
Patty Smith Hall sent me this fun quiz. Rules: It’s harder than it looks! Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag 10 people. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions.
1. What is your name:Diana 2. A four letter word: Drat 3. A boy’s name: Doug 4. A girl’s name:Denise 5. An occupation: Dentist 6. A color: dusky blue 7. Something you wear: dungarees 9. A food: doughnut 10. Something found in the bathroom: dental floss 11. A place: Destin 12. A reason for being late: dragging my feet 13. Something you shout: Do you know how to drive? 14. Something you drink: Diet Dr. Pepper 15. A musical group: David Crowder Band 17. An animal: dog 18. A street name: Douglas 19. A type of car: dautsun (do they still make those?) 20. The title of a song: Diana
T.V. news Reporter, Dani Richards moves to Lincoln, Nebraska to care for her Aunt Jayne who has Alzheimer’s.
Taking her aunt to see Cats, Dani prays she won’t see Caleb Jamison, the man who stole her 16-year-old heart. Not only does she see him, she has to work with him when she discovers a dead body at the theater. Caleb is on the police force and is assigned to keep Dani safe, but can he protect her heart from him?
Deadly Exposure is a page turner. A delight to read a suspense novel that doesn’t go into grisly details. Yet, Putman gives us enough to thrill and scare us into saying “don’t go in there!”