4.5 Blue Ribbons and a Yard Sale

I’m so psyched that Maria S., a reviewer for Romance Junkies, decided to give SECRETS & SPIES 4.5 Blue Ribbons! Her email said that the review should be posted on the RJ site sometime next week, but for now here’s some snippets:

“Fans of Jaci Burton’s Demon Hunter series will enjoy this steamy,
adventure novel set in sunny Mexico—minus the demons, but with plenty
of psychic power play and adventure to satisfy the thrill junkie…”

[This means I now have to read Jaci Burton, because I haven't before. Back to the review...]

“Ms. Lanel’s skill at writing the scenes in Mexico was so vibrant, I could taste the margaritas!…The sexual tension this leads to is palpable and when the two finally come together, a cold shower is in order for the reader!”

[Just what I was aiming for!]

“This is a book that will certainly keep you up past your bedtime, wondering what curveball the author will throw at you next. SECRETS & SPIES is a fun—packed thrill ride with a lot of laughter and some very hot sex thrown into the mix. I enjoyed every minute of Ms. Lanel’s work…”

[Awesome! Thanks, Maria!]

So I got this review in my email in-box the same day as the most successful yard sale we’ve ever had. “We” being my two best friends and hubby and son. We always do a joint yard sale, because it’s hard to come up with what looks like a substantial offering from the road individually. Plus it’s fun to pass the time together during lulls in our campaign to make money.

Of course, we usually only make enough money for lunch…barely. But this weekend the stars aligned. It helped that the big church up the road was having a huge sale, plus there were two other yard sales in our neighborhood. We even ran an ad this time–just a small one. We rarely had a pause in traffic until noon, and even then we still had paying customers. We never even used Tracy’s Buck-a-Bag signs.

The key with yard sales is not so much making a profit as decluttering the house. Therefore bringing the unsold items back inside defeats the purpose. Kind hubby usually does a Goodwill run for us with our leftovers and we often have tons for the recycle truck–magazines mostly. We also usually have 1 or 2 items sitting at the curb after with a “Take for Free” sign on them. Those items are generally gone by the time we return from lunch–where we spend all our profits. This time at the Cheesecake Factory.

I even sold a copy of Enlightened Love and handed out bookmarks to neighbors who had no idea I wrote romance. Not bad for a few hours on a Saturday morning. Now if only I could catch up on sleep. Did I mention the lady who stopped by BEFORE DAWN hoping for a preview? Give me a break!

Shara

September 11th and Elizabethtown

You’re probably wondering how on earth do these two things relate? One is a date we commemorate, one is a quirky movie with Orlando Bloom. They relate in my mind for the obvious reason that it’s the same week. I watched the movie Sunday night, not even realizing this week held 9-11. When I realized that it’s been 6 years since the Twin Towers fell, it amazed me. In some ways it feels like moments ago, in others, another lifetime.

How did we continue with normal life? Doing the laundry, making the meals, mowing the grass? Since then we’ve had the monstrous tragedy of Katrina, with lives still upended.

Elizabethtown, to me, is about putting things in perspective and going on no matter what happens. Orlando Bloom’s character loses a shoe company a billion dollars and feels like his life is over. Inside the shoe company everyone’s looking at him like a colossal failure, but beyond those walls…no one cares. Then his dad dies, postponing his suicide plans so he can deal with the details of death.

And they get it so right—someone dies and you have a family reunion.Weird, isn’t it? A dead body in the room and you talk about barbecue and worry whether the corpse’s hair and clothes look right. Like they care.

The mundane triumphs over tragedy every time. It’s not some epiphany that keeps us going after the hard times; it’s the boring and endless details. We argue over knick-knacks that no one cared about the day before because that’s how we heal, how we get on with it. Like the grass growing no matter how badly the drought has fried my vegetables. The mundane triumphs.

Shara

www.sharalanel.com

A Problem Like Maria

What to do when a song…or in this case, a whole soundtrack…is stuck in my head?! I started watching The Sound of Music the other day. Haven’t seen it in several years and decided to Tivo it in case my son wanted to watch it with me. He’d take some convincing, of course, since to him Harry Potter and Scooby rule (for the nonce).

So I watched up to the whistle scene and decided that was going to give me a headache, but that was all it took to get the ENTIRE soundtrack running through my head for DAYS. And I’d finally gotten rid of it when someone mentioned it on the Liquid Silver forum and now the songs are playing in my head again!

What’s interesting about my history with this movie is that for many years I never saw past the “Good-bye, farewell” scene, because my parents always sent me to bed at that point. This was before Tivo, you see, and before my family even purchased a VCR.

Now I have “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” running through my head. My son learned “Do-Re-Me” on harmonica for school last year, so I heard that quite a bit, but that didn’t grate on the nerves quite as much as “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” It’s like songs by They Might Be Giants. I was really into that group for a while until “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Birdhouse in My Soul” got stuck in my head for a few million hours. My friend still likes them, but she’s forbidden to include their music on cds played in my car. 

Now that it’s almost midnight, I’m hoping unconsciousness will solve the problem of Maria so that I can actually get some sleep!

Shara