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    • Teaser Tuesdays – Front and Center

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    teaser_tuesdays1MizB of Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event

    Here are the rules:
    * Grab your current read
    * Let the book fall open to a random page
    * Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12
    *You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
    * Please avoid spoilers!

    This week’s teaser is:
    “Grandpa Warren–Dad’s dad, who Win was named after–he had some pretty strange tastes in food. It’s a wonder we like anything normal considering how much he loved pigs’ feet and blood sausage and head cheese, all these strange meats that you eat when it’s your own animals and you can’t waste one little bit.”
    pg. 51  – Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

    D.J. Schwenk is back in the conclusion to the trilogy that began with Dairy Queen. I loved DQ and The Off Season, the first two books about her, and I can’t wait to see how it all wraps up. Catherine Gilbert Murdock is an uber-talented writer.

    front-and-center

    Happy Birthday Hannah!

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    I just wanted to give a shout out to my big sister Hannah, who turns 30 today!

    I’m just so glad that we’re sisters and, moreover, that we’re friends. I love that I can tell her every embarassing story about myself, and I know she’ll laugh, give me crap for it, and still love me. We were just reminiscing a couple weeks ago about the one semester we lived together in college. It was seriously one of the most fun times of my college career–what with Friends reruns over dinner every night, plans for her wedding, and lots of laughs.

    When I was a senior in high school, I said I didn’t want to go to the same college that my sister and brother were going to. But as it was, we all ended up graduating from Northern Arizona University, and it was some of the best years of my life. I think we’re all closer because of it.

    Hannah and John and their girls, Julia and Rachel
    Hannah and John and their girls, Julia and Rachel

    Love you, Hannah! Happy 3-0! (Are we getting old?)

    Friday Favorite – Christmas books

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    When it’s as cold and wintery as it is now, there’s nothing I like more than snuggling up under the covers in my bed and reading a great Christmas romance. I love YAs, historicals, and contemporaries. I just love a sweet holiday story.

    There’s something so romantic about snuggling in front of a fire, the mood set by snow falling, and spending time with ones you love. It just seems like the perfect time of year to fall in love. And I’ve always thought it would be fun to write a Christmas story. Maybe I’ll get my chance.

    Here are some books I’m especially excited about reading this winter. What am I missing? What is your favorite Christmas book?

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    Monday Movie – White Christmas

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    I think you’ll notice a little trend going on this week with my posts. See Colorado Springs has seen fit to dump freezing white-christmasrain and ice on our fine city, turning the roads into a mess and me into a hermit. And it’s put me in the mood for Christmas! (See pictures from yesterday’s post.)

    So in honor of an early winter in the Springs, I offer you one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time. White Christmas stars Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as a successful musical duo who team up with a pair of sisters to help save a Vermont ski resort, which is owned by a retired vet of WWII. There’s singing and dancing and some of the most memorable moments in classic musical history.

    How could you forget the scene where Crosby and Kaye fill in for the sisters in their classic “Sisters Sisters” routine?

    sisters-sisters

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    Classic laughs and a cute romance. Not to mention a group of army veterans who love their commander so much they come out to support him and save his resort. All set against the backdrop of beautiful Vermont snow (fake though it may be).

    White Christmas airs every year on TV, but don’t wait for it. Enjoy it as soon as the temperatures drop and snow starts coming.

    Walking in a winter wonderland until next time. -LJ

    You know you’re a writer when …

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    By no means do I consider this a blog for writers. I hope you’ve noticed that by now. I don’t give a lot of advice or interview a lot of authors on how to write. I mean, I definitely want to encourage fledgling writers out there, but this isn’t the blog to get the most information about how to become a writer.

    Instead this is a writer’s blog.

    As such, I feel compelled to share with you an anecdote from the other night. To set the scene, I was sitting at the dining room table with my revision notes spread out around my laptop. I was busy rewriting a scene that my editor didn’t particularly care for. In this scene my hero and heroine were having a fight, a nasty one, and it made me terribly sad. Just then my roommate Tracy walked into the kitchen and asked how things were going.

    “Okay, I guess,” I sighed.

    “What’s wrong?” she asked.

    “I’m just so sad. My characters are having a terrible fight. I think I’ll have to re-read the end of the book to remind myself that it all turns out okay.”

    She looked kind of a confused and said, “But didn’t you write it?”

    Hmmm. I did indeed write it.

    These writers are strange people, I think. Myself definitely included. Oh, well. I didn’t even try to explain the complex workings of my weird, weird writer mind. Suffice it to say, I did re-read the ending, and I was infinitely happy with how things turned out.

    Even if I already knew that’s how they would end.

    The Problem with PaperbackSwap

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    Okay, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Gosh, Liz hasn’t posted in a while. Has she been up to something really cool? In answer: Nope. Just busy. I’m sure you understand.

    But today I decided it was time to share a rant about one of prior Friday Favorites. I do believe you might remember this little ode to paperbackswap.com. To refresh you on this topic, I offered many a lovely details of the book swapping site known as paperback swap.

    I love it. I really do. I love the concept. I love the price. Free membership and orders. You just pay to ship your books to others that request them. Simple. Easy. What more could you ask for?

    A faster response. That’s all I want. You see, what happens is I hear about a new book, and I’m so excited about said book that I immediately go to paperback swap and look it up. It says they don’t have any available, so I add it to my wish list. No problem, I think. I say to myself, Self, I’ll get this book in no time. So I wait. And I wait. And I wait a little while longer. Still no word back from paperback.

    I reason the delay away, saying that it’s a popular book. I’ll get it eventually. And pretty soon, I’m sitting like I am now, waiting for Sophie Kinsella’s newest book Twenties Girl. See I added it to my wish list–which means I got in line for it on August 25. And I’m still number 778 in line for it!!! PBS thinks that it’ll take 65 weeks for me to be offered a copy. 65 weeks! That’s more than a year! I could probably save up my change and afford to buy it in 3 months.

    So really, my beef isn’t with PBS. My beef is with the users of PBS. If you’d quit being so stingy with the new and amazing books, I could get mine sooner! See, it’s simple. 🙂 My problem solved. Post your books. Fast!

    Thank you. 🙂

    Forced to read the many, many other books on my shelf until next time. -LJ

    Friday Favorite Flashback – Hang Time

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    This week I thought I’d offer a bit of a flashback–to 1995 to be exact.

    Back in 1995, I was a freshman in high school with a thing for Saturday morning shows for teens. Oh, yeah. I was all over Saved by the Bell, City Guys, Running the Halls … well, you get the picture. My deal with my mom was if I folded laundry while I watched, I could watch these shows every weekend. My favorite of these shows was Hang Time.

    Hang Time was a show about Julie Connor, who loved basketball. But when she transfers to Deering High School, she discovers that they don’t have a girl’s basketball team. So she tries out for the boy’s team. Seems logical enough.

    That’s pretty much the premise of the entire show, and even though I’m not a big fan of basketball, I loved this show. The guy players and coach seem to come and go over the course of 6 seasons (I’m not sure how that works with Julie’s 4 years in high school), but Julie and her cheerleader friend remain the same.

    So you’re probably wondering why it’s making an appearance on my blog, some 14 years later. Well, I just discovered that nearly every episode of Hang Time is available on YouTube.com. Thank you, YouTube. So I decided I was going to watch some episodes, starting at the very beginning of season 1.

    You know what? The show is awful! I mean really, really cheesy. And I like a bit of cheese in my books, movies, and TV, so you know it’s saying something about Hang Time. But I can’t seem to stop watching the bad acting, poor dialogue, and really bad fashion. I keep hoping it’ll get better. Maybe by the last season it’ll be really watchable. So I thought I’d share just the opener with you, so you can see what I’m talking about.

    But refamiliarizing myself with Hang Time has made me wonder what other things I loved (slouch socks, hair-sprayed bangs, Union Bay striped shirts) that are actually really cheesy. Hmm … what did you once love that you’re now realizing is really terrible?

    Cringing over how I spent my time 14 years ago until next time. -LJ

    Scenes from the ACFW Conference – next year Indianapolis!

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    Teaser Tuesday – Straight for the Heart

    Posted on by lizjohnson
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    teaser_tuesdays1MizB of Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event

    Here are the rules:
    * Grab your current read
    * Let the book fall open to a random page
    * Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12
    *You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
    * Please avoid spoilers!

    This week’s teaser is:
    “Shock rolled through Sarah, forcing her to look away from her husband for fear she might cry. Had he found her so lacking already, without giving her a fair try, that that he was ready to be rid of her the first chance he got?”
    pg. 70  – Straight for the Heart by Vickie McDonough

    – Another book from ACFW shopping spree. 🙂 I’ve read books about women who married men to rescue them from jail time, but I’ve never read one where a man marries a woman to save her. Looking forward to it!

    straight-for-the-heart