Please join me in wishing Brenda a day of joy and peace…and anti-wrinkle cream. Actually, Brenda, rather disgustingly doesn’t need the anti-wrinkle cream.

Happy Birthday, Brenda!  Thanks for all you do to put out great books each month for all of us.  Here’s to a Blazingly good day and a celebration of wonderful you.

And not to beat a dead horse but while Brenda doesn’t seem to age, if  you want to post your favorite beauty secret or product, well, some who shall remain nameless would appreciate it.  Really…it’s not about me…I’d never try to get beauty secrets for myself on Brenda’s special day…but you know, there could be someone out there who needs it….

Or, you can just wish the inestimable Ms. Chin a happy day.

Here’s to ya, Brenda….

Keep It Simple Sweetie!

That’s my 2012 motto. I figure it’s somewhat appropriate for a romance writer to adopt KISS as their motto. Now for years I’ve heard KISS referred to as Keep It Simple Stupid. Uh, I’m rolling with Sweetie instead.

My goal is simplify, simplify, simplify and that goes hand-in-hand with if it is negative — “it” being people, places. things, or situations, let it go. Hence, my decision to go with Sweetie as opposed to Stupid.

Okay, yeah, I know there’s maybe some eye-rolling going on like, that’s cool Pollyanna but I hate my (circle one or fill in the blank)  boss/job/co-worker/husband/ex-husband/the neighbor whose dog poos on my lawn/_______.  Do the best you can.  Change what you can and let the rest go.

A friend jokingly told me I was a hoarder.  Uh, hardly, but I have noticed a tendency to hang on to things “in case I might need them one day.”  No more.  I’ve culled and cleared quite a bit, trusting that if I need something obscure in the future like the round table with the glass top that I recycled, well, it’ll come back to me.

I figure it’s better to de-clutter my house, my closet, my life, my emotions so I can really enjoy what I have instead of always search through the mess — be it clothes, “friends”, or emotions.

And then there’s the physical aspect of KISS — as a verb, rather than an acronym.  I’m going to KiSS more, both literally and figuratively — whether it’s my dog, my daughter, my family, or my friends.  You just can’t tell people too often that you love them or give a hug or kiss.  Well, actually, I guess there are some instances where you just begin to look like a weirdo if it’s some stranger on the street so you’ll want to employ good sense but for the most part, I’m going to tell and show the folks I love more often that I love them.

In the spirit of KISS, I’d like to say thanks to all of you.  I know some people write for the sake of writing. I write to tell a story.  It’s you, the reader, who makes my circle complete.  So, thank you.  Thanks for reading and loving the Blaze books.  That’s my KISS to you!

Roll on with your day and remember — Keep It Simple Sweetie!!!

There’s no way around it…tis the season to eat stuff you wouldn’t find on your table every day.  One of the most divisive foods this time of year has to be…drum roll…fruitcake.  Now admit it, you either just clutched your belly and shuddered or you gave an enthusiastic, “Oh, yeah!”

There’s just no ambivalence when it comes to fruitcake.  You either love it or you hate it.  I can’t profess to loving it across the board because I’ve had me some bad fruitcake over the years. However, I love my mother’s fruitcake.  It’s a recipe that she got from my grandmother, who had passed on years before I was ever born.  My grandmother, according to mom, used to make it and bake it in a huge washtub every December.

For several years now it has become a tradition that I would go home and the first weekend in December was devoted to decorating Mom’s house and fruitcake baking.  We’d make several with half of one being shipped to my brother in Maryland and the other half of one being shipped to my brother in Minnesota.  My sister in Florida doesn’t like nuts so she just skipped the experience. We also put a half or whole cake in the freezer to be enjoyed throughout the year.

This year the tradition came to a halt.  My mom broke her hip late this spring.  Rather than the recovery we’d all prayed for, she, instead, has had a fast, fast decline.  This year there was no sitting on her glassed-in porch laughing while we chopped pecans and candied fruit to prepare for the “mixing.”  We didn’t hang wreaths or put up the tree that held crocheted white angels.  Instead,  my brother from Maryland, his wife, and I hung a Happy Holidays sign on the wall beneath the clock in her room in the nursing home.  It’s the wall facing her bed.  None of us are sure whether she really sees it or knows that it’s there, but at least we “decorated” her room.

And last Saturday night, rather than cutting into a fresh cake, because there was no baking going on, my stepfather and I each had a slice of the fruitcake from the freezer.  We didn’t say much other than how good it was as we ate.  I don’t know  about him, but as I savored each bite, and I did, it also tore at my heart.

Wow, this was not the blog post I started out to write but this one has sort of written itself.  As you can tell from the title, I just wanted to know whether you liked it or not…cause you either do or you don’t.  Which is it?  Where do you stand?

Fall is my favorite time of the year.  I absolutely love the sometimes brilliant, sometimes subtle but always beautiful colors of the changing leaves.  A simple drive from here to there becomes a special treat given some of the spectacular yellows, reds, and oranges to be found along the way on poplars, oaks, and maples.

However, one of my favorite things to do is hiking.  I’m lucky enough to live in an area with an abundance of hiking trails.  There’s something about walking along tree-lined trails as leaves flutter to the ground around you.

On Saturday we were hiking one of our favorite trails up at Red Top Mountain in Kennesaw, Georgia.  There were surprisingly few people out and as we walked along, we were fortunate enough to have a white-tailed hawk fly directly across the trail in front of us.  He or she — I’m really not versed in determining the sex of hawks :[ — landed on a tree to our right.  He sat there for a moment and then decided the right-hand side of the trail suited him better so he treated us to another in-flight display.  My hiking partner had brought a camera.

Enjoy…

Hey, it’s fall in Good Riddance, AK!  Well, okay, it’s not exactly as if that’s some news flash considering it’s fall everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.  LOL.  It’s definitely fall here in Georgia as well.  And that got me to think just what a different experience that is depending on where you happen to live.

Now for the folks in Good Riddance, Alaska, the days are already mighty short and there’s snow on the ground.  It’s a bit of a shock for Logan Jeffries when he travels from Atlanta, Georgia.  I mean, let’s get real, it’s gonna be eighty degrees here today — when he arrives in Good Riddance, there’s a blanket of white on everything.

Fall tends to invite baking and in Good Riddance Nancy Perkins is baking cookies and they’re a big hit.   Hope you enjoy Nancy’s molasses cookies recipe as much as the folks in town love them.

Molasses Cookies:

3/4 c butter

1 c brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 c molasses

2 1/2 c all purpose flour

1/2 to 1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp each cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice

White sugar

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg and molasses and mix well.  Fold in dry ingredients.

If  it’s not too cold in Good Riddance I stick the bowl out on the front porch .  Otherwise, stick it in the fridge for an hour or so.

Pinch them off and roll in white sugar.  Bake at 350 for about 9 mins.  Let them rest on the pan for a few minutes when you take them out of the oven.  If  I can keep Leo out of them long enough, they’re a big hit over at Doctor Skye’s office and over at the airstrip office.

So…whether you’re baking cookies, going to apple festivals or still having cookouts because it’s 80 degrees outside, enjoy this lovely fall day.

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Thus goes the first verse to one of my favorite songs, My Favorite Things, a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music.

I think we all stay so busy that we often forget about all the little things that make life grand. I mean, really, we’ve got budget deficits, gas prices out the yang, and don’t even get me started on the price of groceries. Some days you’ve got to dig pretty deep to remind yourself that there are still good things that in an instant can bring us pleasure and joy.

So, here are a few of my favorite things (however, they’re not going to rhyme :

A  very cold can of seltzer

My dog

The blue sky scattered with white clouds

A friend’s smile

My daughter’s hug

Sinking into a warm bubble bath

The feathering of a cool breeze against my skin on a hot day

Driving with the windows down and the music up

A walk/hike through the woods

If you will, take a few minutes to jot down your own list of favorite things.  Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that they’re there…and ain’t life grand after all.

Enjoy your day!

There’s a new love in my life. Go figure. I go for forty-something years (not like I’m revealing some state secret here — if you’ve been to my website no one out there is mistaking me for a twenty-something) and then wham…I’m in love. I just never knew I could feel this way. That I could appreciate and truly enjoy all the subtleties. I’d given it the old college try numerous times and it just never struck a chord with me. I often thought that perhaps there was simply something wrong with me because there were people everywhere that got it. But I really didn’t sweat it. It just wasn’t my thing. And then a couple of months ago that all changed.

I now love coffee. I’ve always loved the smell but couldn’t abide the taste…until now. I can’t do the straight-up-put-hair-on-your-chest black cuppa, but I do love a nice strong cup with a dash of sugar and some cream or simply a healthy splash of Bailey’s Hazelnut creamer in there. And now I’m having fun with it. Yesterday at the grocery I did three small containers of freshground — a decaf so I can have a cup in the evening, a nice freshly ground Columbian, and something called “Foglifter” that smelled yummy.

My friends and family are all dumbfounded — “You want a cup of what?” But I like the idea of expanding my horizons, even if it’s something as mundane as coffee.

Have you recently discovered a food, drink, or activity that you really enjoy that was simply never part of your life before?

Oh, and on a kind of discordant note but in the same category of something to drink — now that it’s getting hot (going to be 90 her in Hotlanta today), might I recommend a glass full of ice, plain seltzer and a generous splash of cranberry juice, with or without a squeeze of lime/lemon? Yummy and refreshing.

The thing I’ve noticed lately is just how many movies I’ve never seen. Well, it’s actually been more as if the realization smacked me upside the head. It seems as though I’ve been involved in lots of conversations where people are discussing different movies and I’ve never seen them.

I’m starting a list of recommended films. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
There Will Be Blood
Tender Mercies
Cat Ballou
Sunset Boulevard
Life is a House
Meet Joe Black
Being There
Gattica

Last week I saw The Big Heat with Glenn Ford filmed in the 50′s. It was great!! Excellent writing and the actors really delivered. Anyone else seen it?

Tonight I’m treating myself to Get Low with Bill Murray and Jeff Bridges.

So, I’m looking to add to my list to bring myself up to movie speed. What would you recommend?

And I’m not talking about a road race. I’m talking runaway bride here. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept — the idea that something could hit you so hard, that you’d simply beat feet and run. In my March Blaze, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, that’s precisely what happens to Andi Mitchell. Panic follows fast and furious in the wake of an epiphany and Andi simply runs. Lucky for her, Major Colton Sawyer is there to help her with her getaway.

I’ve seen movies and read a couple of stories in the newspapers but I’ve never actually known anyone who was a runaway bride. Heck, I’ve never even known anyone who knew someone who knew someone else who was a runaway bride. It would be kind of freaky to know someone who’d bailed out on their wedding. It’d be equally freaky to show up as a guest at a wedding that wound up not happening.

Okay, so anyone out there ever been in that boat — you either knew a runaway bride or you showed up for a wedding but the bride or groom didn’t? Inquiring minds want to know.

Well, I just posted that title because I liked it. No one’s crying here, but there is a party. And it’s a birthday party, folks. I take birthdays seriously. I think it’s truly the day to celebrate that person. And today we’re celebrating Blaze’s senior editor’s birthday. That’s right, Brenda Chin is the party girl today cause it’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to — although we hope she’s smiling instead.

And I suppose we’re only supposed to say nice things about the birthday girl, but I’m going to beg your indulgence to complain for a few minutes. I’ve known Brenda now for thirteen years (I think that’s right, my math’s not so good). You know, most people have the decency to add a few wrinkles, put on a few lines — ya know, that thing call aging. Not Brenda. I’m telling you, it’s just not fair.

Okay, whew, I feel a whole lot better having gotten that out. Thanks for your indulgence and now let’s party on.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRENDA!!