FRESH CONTENT DAILY . . . MAYBE - OLD

Blog Tour Begins

2009-08-03T10:27:00.003-04:00

We're off and running with the start of my very first Blog Tour.

Today you'll find me at:

1. BlogCritics with an interview

2. The Romance Club with a guest post

3. Dear Author with a "First Sale" guest post

Like I said last week, you'll know more about me when this tour ends than the DH does.

Blog Talk Radio and other goodies

2009-07-30T18:29:00.005-04:00

Kim Smith, writer and wonderful Blog Talk Radio host, interviewed me on Tuesday and to say I had a blast is putting it mildly. If you'd like to listen, click here and follow instructions on the screen.

Did I tell you about the totally terrific Bonnie Blose at Accessible World who invited me to spend an hour with her and her wonderful readers, talking about writing and love and life? I'll be back again for another visit at the end of August but you can listen to last month's free-wheeling chat right here. This was pretty much a writer's dream visit. Bonnie hosts a romance novel book club and somehow they found Sentimental Journey, a twenty year old Harlequin American Romance of mine. Sentimental Journey is one of my all-time favorite writing experiences. It was part of the wonderful Century of American Romances, a truly spectacular group of books that deserved a far wider audience than they received. Sentimental Journey was about the World War II homefront here in the United States and its follow-up book, Stranger in Paradise, continued the story during the McCarthy Era 1950s. Can you imagine my excitement when out of the blue I received an email from Bonnie and discovered that my books had found new readers after all this time? I love the internet!

I'm embarking on a gigantic blog tour on Monday so be prepared for lots of links. You're going to know everything there is to know about me (even things you'd rather not know!) by the time this is over.

Willa, my wonderfully talented web designer and jewelry maker, will be doing a cosmetic overhaul of the blog the next few days so there won't be any new content until Sunday or Monday.

I'll be posting at our other blog Romancing the Yarn so please check there for updates.

Laced With Magic goes on-sale Tuesday August 4th and I'm entering the Crazed Author Zone. As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm not too great at letting go of a manuscript. Given my druthers, I'd still be making revisions in the back of the truck as the books leave the printer.

Did I tell you that Publishers Weekly gave Laced With Magic a coveted starred review? In case you missed it:

Laced with Magic Barbara Bretton. Berkley, $15 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-425-22752-7

Half-sorceress Chloe Hobbs and policeman Luke MacKenzie, the only humans in the sleepy Vermont town of Sugar Maple, face worldly and unearthly challenges in this sweetly charming sequel to 2008's Casting Spells. When Luke's ex-wife, Karen, shows up in town claiming that their dead daughter is trying to ask them for help, Chloe must deal with smalltown gossip and fix her relationship with Luke while she battles her old Fae enemy, Isadora, over the child's spirit and the future of Sugar Maple. Bretton seamlessly blends a playful world of eccentric and meddling supernatural creatures living in the midst of New England with a warm, natural and romantic story and just a hint of mystery. Scenes in Chloe's yarn shop and helpful knitting tips hold extra appeal for yarn aficionados while never distracting from the plot.

And Penguin posted an interview with me on their new paranormal website. You can find it here.

Jeremy Bredeson posted a wonderful review of Laced With Magic on Facing North, a terrific and very magical website I think you'll enjoy.

Oh, and did I tell you that all of our tomatoes are dead or dying thanks to the same blight that destroyed Ireland's potato crop? We finally decide to try our hand again at growing and a blight strikes up and down the east coast. I mean, what are the odds??

More to come. Stay tuned!

Blog Talk Radio at 8:30 pm EDT

2009-07-28T19:52:00.001-04:00

I just realized it's a call-in show! If you have time and the inclination, please drop by!

Follow this link.

Best Wedding Entrance of All Time

2009-07-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

Now this is a wedding to remember! Why be like everyone else when you can be true to yourselves? (It reminds me of the Robert & Amy wedding episode on Everybody Loves Raymond. Their first dance was to a remix of Elvis's A Little Less Conversation (A Little More Action.)

Enjoy! If this doesn't make you smile, nothing will.

Harvest!

2009-07-16T10:01:00.002-04:00

It ain't much but it's all ours! Our first Topsy Turvy tomato is on the left. Plum tomato (a second one has been harvested) is next (like you didn't know, right?) Three container plant tomatoes from two separate containers on our deck.

The (meager) haul almost makes up for the fact that a storm the other night blew all the baby cucumbers off the vine and into oblivion.

Let's just say it's a good thing I'm a writer, not a farmer . . .

It's a book!

2009-07-11T00:10:00.001-04:00

My editor sent me a copy, hot off the press!

Garden Report - July

2009-07-08T22:52:00.003-04:00

If you forget about the dirt, the bugs, and the blazing sun, gardening's a lot of fun. You've probably already guessed that I'm not exactly Nature Girl. I'm not crazy about dirt, am scared witless by bugs, and don't believe in sweat which doesn't make me a great candidate for Gardener of the Year.

Want to know the Topsy Turvy target customer? You're reading her right now. This whole container gardening thing is pure genius and so far it's going pretty well.

Because there's (gardening) life beyond Topsy Turvy, here's a brief report.

1. Orange and yellow marigolds for no other reason than they're beautiful.

2. Crookneck squash, taken a few days ago. It's awash in big yellow flowers today.

3. Globe basil running amok.

4. Green peppers!

5. A tiny salsa pepper

6. Plum tomatoes, taken a few days ago. The tomato is now a deep red and the one next to it is catching up fast. Even better, two new tomatoes popped up.

7. English cucumbers plus very busy ant

8. Three defectors in search of freedom. They leaped off one of the plants and tried to make a run for it but I was too fast for them.

9. Zucchini? I can't remember.

We now have an adorable Japanese eggplant forming and, to my amazement and delight, a few ripening Topsy Turvys.

Not Stephanie Plum's New Jersey

2009-07-08T22:40:00.001-04:00

The truth is I live very close to Stephanie Plum's New Jersey. Trenton isn't all that far away and God knows I've spent more than my share of hours wandering through Quakerbridge Mall on Route 1.

But here's the New Jersey I love, right in my own backyard:

Topsy Turvy Update

2009-07-08T14:28:00.001-04:00

Make of this what you will.

Evian Roller Babies

2009-07-06T22:54:00.000-04:00

You really need to watch this. Trust me!

Enchanted nursery

2009-06-12T22:47:00.003-04:00

Ambleside, central NJ. Okay, so maybe I don't get out enough but I felt like I was in an enchanted forest.

Seriously.

Laced With Magic - sneak peek

2009-06-10T23:11:00.002-04:00

Chapter 2 is up and waiting for you. Enjoy!

Our wildlife preserve

2009-06-10T22:20:00.003-04:00

See that little guy over there? We spotted him hanging out under the Topsy Turvy tomatoes in the far corner of the back yard. His mother put up a major fuss when we got within ten feet of her baby so we backed off and used the zoom to take the photo.

He's tinier than my thumb. Thank God R spotted him; I'm not sure I would have noticed him in the grass. Looks like there will be no lawn mowing until all the fledglings are established.

Two sparrow fledges popped up on the top step of the deck, all fluttery and open-mouthed as their mother (or maybe father; birds can be egalitarian) swooped down to feed them. I got all mushy inside as the baby birds filled their crops. It reminded me of when we hand-fed Grouch and Squirt years ago. (Insert big sigh here.) There's something about baby birds that's irresistible. Same with puppies and kittens and the little groundhog who trotted across the deck the other day, struggling to keep up with his mother.

And what about the bunny twins (no, not the Hefner kind) who camp out under the bird feeders, sprawled on their bellies, back legs extended, munching seed, talking trash, not a worry in the world.

I love it here. I really do.

Nostalgia

2009-06-08T00:17:00.004-04:00

Memory Lane can be a dangerous place to visit. I was going through old journals and photo albums today and pretty much feel like someone ripped my heart from my chest.

I found this photo of my dad and me, taken around the summer of 1951 "between the houses." That's what we called the little private alleyway that ran between the two-family house where we lived and the two-family house next door. It was maybe six or eight feet wide and sometimes we'd set up beach chairs and sit there. A ground level version of the city dweller's Tar Beach.

That's my dad. And that's me. But I'll bet you figured that out for yourself.

And yes I was a daddy's girl. How did you guess?

Mrs. Mike, my rite of passage

2009-06-05T23:33:00.008-04:00

Photo: Marko Metzinger/Studio D

That's pretty much how my first copy of Mrs. Mike looked when I married and moved to Omaha many years ago as a teenage newlywed. The badly worn blue cover, the line drawing of the young bride and her handsome Mountie, the pages all creased and bent, stained with hot cocoa and endless tears. Suddenly I was Mrs. Mike on my way to my own adventure far from home. My new husband wasn't a Mountie but he was a man in uniform and the trip from New York City to the plains of Nebraska seemed every bit as exciting.

Someone once told me that the books we read as children are the books that stay with us for a lifetime, the books that most influence the men and women we become, and I agree. Okay, so maybe Nancy Drew (girl sleuth), Cherry Ames (apple-cheeked nurse), and Vicki Barr (post-war stewardess) weren't exactly what she had in mine but there's no denying that inside this 58 year old writer lives all three of those characters.

And, of course, there's Mrs. Mike. I was ten years old the first time I read Benedict and Nancy Freedman's book. A day-dreaming, book-loving only child who liked nothing more than to disappear into a great story. Some kids dreamed of growing up and moving to NYC. I dreamed of getting out. (The truth? I would have kicked the Big Apple to the curb for the chance to live in suburbia.) And you couldn't get much farther away than the Great North. You can keep those sun-swept beaches; give me the Canadian wilderness in the dead of winter with a gorgeous Mountie to push back the blizzards and keep you warm at night.

I'll admit it. I fell head-over-heels in love with Mike Flannigan. The way I remembered the book, he was the perfect romantic hero. In my memory, Mrs. Mike was the love story to end all love stories, the one that swept me off my feet and kept me that way for over forty years. I write romance for a living and I read it for pleasure and nothing I'd encountered, no matter how wonderful the book, came close to the dazzling tale of Kathy and Mike.

And the best part? It was true!

Or at least I thought it was right up until an issue of O Magazine (12/07) hit my mailbox and I devoured Peggy Orenstein's wonderful article Mrs. Mike Changed My Life and discovered that not only was there no Santa Claus, my beloved Mrs. Mike was fiction.

Yes. FICTION. Like Orenstein, I'd paid no attention to that very telling word on the spine of my paperback. I'd swallowed the book whole and made it my own. I believed every word like it was the Bible handed down from the Mount. Mike and Kathy Flannigan were real. They lived and breathed and loved.

Except they weren't. Mrs. Mike was based on Kathy Flannigan's real story but it was still a novel. My heart was broken. Silly, isn't it, to be so invested for so long in a book and feel so betrayed to discover that the Freedmans had plied the novelist's trade in telling it.

So I did what you would probably have done too: I sat down and re-read Mrs. Mike. I expected to be swept up again into the romance of it all same as I had been as a child. I expected to empathize with Kathy, fall madly in love with Mike, make lots of happy friends in my frontier town.

Hey, wait a minute! What's going on? This isn't the sweet love story I remember. This story has hard edges. People get hurt in this story. Children die. Towns burn to the ground. Terrible illnesses sweep across the range. Marriages don't always work out quite the way you expect them to.

It all seemed new to me. Somehow over the years I'd air-brushed the book into a glossy (snowy) love story with the kind of perfect happy ending we all dream about. The kind the fictional Kathy and Mike really didn't get. (Neither did the real life Kathy and Mike, for that matter.)

My memory retained the sparks and the passion and discarded the rest. Yes, I still like the book but do you want to know the truth? Right now I wish I hadn't re-read it. I miss the Mrs. Mike of my dreams.

Squirrel-proof feeder meets feeder-proof squirrel

2009-06-05T08:23:00.002-04:00

Guess who wins?

NINC blog post up

2009-06-04T14:13:00.002-04:00

I have a new blog post up on the Novelists Inc blog. It's titled Fear Factor and it's about writing scared. I hope you'll stop by and check it out if you have a chance. Thanks!

Edith Layton

2009-06-03T10:08:00.004-04:00

Edith Layton and her beloved Georgie Girl

www.edithlayton.com

Superfreaky - a visual definition

2009-06-01T23:43:00.003-04:00

Introducing the Daniel Craig popsicle, a limited edition courtesy Del Monte in the U.K.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'm going out to have my retinas repaired.

You Say To-may-toh . . .

2009-06-01T22:35:00.001-04:00

. . . and I say WOW! Four -- yes, 4!! -- new tomatoes on one of the deck plants!

Is it possible to love produce a little too much?

Slacker

2009-05-31T23:26:00.003-04:00

I didn't do any gardening today. (This turned out to be a cooking day.) I did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time hovering over the tomato plants, whispering encouragement and issuing stern warnings to the strange iridescent winged creatures I saw darting about. I want to do this pesticide-free which is why I'm planting marigolds like a madwoman. (Back in my gardening days on Long Island, marigolds seemed to be the answer to a multitude of buggy problems.)

The basil is growing like crazy. This photo was taken last week and, trust me, the plant has easily doubled in size. I think there's a pesto in our immediate future.

Lost in Lowe's

2009-05-30T22:50:00.003-04:00

Lowe's and Home Depot and Ambleside and Central NJ Nursery, to be specific.

We spent yesterday afternoon going a little nuts in various garden centers. The original plan was to stop by for some chicken wire and a bag of topsoil. Unfortunately the original plan lasted until we climbed out of the truck and encountered a huge display of yellow and orange marigolds begging to be transplanted.

The marigolds were followed by some yellow daisies (I love daisies), Japanese eggplant, globe eggplant, Texas thyme, tarragon, mint, cucumbers, zucchini, and yellow squash. Our restrained, toe-in-the-water gardening plan for 2009 clearly went up in smoke.

"We went crazy," he said as we drove away in our plant/chicken wire/topsoil-laden truck.

Looks like our $45 tomato is going to have company.

My Topsy Turvy Life

2009-05-29T00:20:00.004-04:00

A confession: I'm a sucker for tacky Sold On TV ads. You know the ones I mean: miracle hair replacement regimens, Sham Wow (is that guy scary or what?), super choppers that put sous chefs to shame, and the Topsy Turvy.

I fell in love with Topsy Turvy last year. Unfortunately my love affair began near the end of the growing season so all I could do was pine over that goofy green plastic bag and those upside-down tomatoes spilling out of it. My repressed gardener's heart yearned for my own Topsy Turvy. I wanted it the way I used to want Paul McCartney when I was fourteen years old.

I thought about it all winter and pounced the second the snow melted. It took a little convincing to bring Himself on board but I prevailed and two weeks ago tomorrow we took our first leap into upside-down gardening.

The Topsy Turvys are in the far corner of the back yard, midway between the stand of pine trees and the shade trees Roy planted for my 38th birthday. We bought four shepherd's poles at Cost Cutters (which has since closed its doors; sob), tied them together for strength, et voila!

The planting itself was strange. Our tomatoes had grown a tad larger than optimum size for insertion and I said a few rude things as Roy pretty much shoved them through the opening with all the finesse of a sadistic proctologist. Turns out they're tough little plants and they survived the trauma. Within days they started vining upward in search of the sun.

I'm completely obsessed with these tomatoes. I tell you that freely. All I want to do is dash outside every hour on the hour and stare at the plants. I ran out first thing this rainy morning in PJs and clogs to see what was going on and my shriek probably echoed up and down the street.

We have a tomato! Okay, so it's the size of my thumb nail but it's a real live tomato-in-progress and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

You can see it, right? Follow the stem upward from the bottom of the picture, look slightly to the right under a canopy of leaves. That little round green blob is A TOMATO!

A $45 tomato unless the rest of the plants kick in and start producing . . .

Le Wrath di Khan

2009-05-27T23:33:00.000-04:00

This will make you love opera. I promise!

Laced With Magic

2009-05-10T21:52:00.001-04:00

You're the first to see it! Enjoy.