Beg, Borrow, or Steal by Sarah Adams

 Whenever you have a nemesis, you want to be as far away as possible.  As a responsible adult.  Avoid conflict.

As a second-grade teacher in Rome, Kentucky, Emily Walker pretends to be in control of her animosity to another teacher, Jack Bennett.  They sparred with words since college, right into teaching at the same school. It was a lot easier when he moves away to get married.

A short year later, he appears nearly on her doorstep.  I say nearly because he moves back to town, purchases her neighboring house, and reclaims his teaching job.  And he's alone.  No marriage certificate or wife in hand.

Emily likes to keep her life very controlled and in line with her objectives.  

Jack's arrival throws everything out of whack, which deems her the authority to put it back at her free will.  

And the sparring begins.  

The funny thing is, for some reason, The intensity of their rivalry includes a crumb of humanity.  They begin to notice good qualities in each other, insecurities, and a few humorous scenes.  Granted, the good points are hard to acknowledge.

And that's the problem.  Quit covering emotions and pretending to not need a shoulder for laughs and sorrow.  If Emily and Jack can figure this out, they have a good chance!

Happy reading,

Dawn

Verity by Colleen Hoover

The creepy romance  factor of Verity enticed me to keep this story at hand until I read the last page.
Lowen Ashleigh is a thriller, suspense author who prefers to stay out of the spotlight.  She barely makes enough in sales to stay alive in Manhattan.
Verity Crawford, a best selling author, was in a horrible car accident and is unable to complete her series, so husband, Jeremy, hires Lowen.
Lowen stays at the Crawford home to research where her writing will pick up the series.
The couple days turn into a couple weeks at the Crawford home while Lowen and Jeremy get to know each other. 
I needn't tell you that close quarters can easily spark romance, but let me give you a taste of the creepy issues...
The Crawford's had three children, now they have one.
Verity is in the house disposed with paralysis.
Lowen is staying in the master bedroom.
Locks are installed on the bedroom doors:  safety first.
Verity has a rough draft of an autobiography.  Does everyone tell the truth in an autobiography?
Is Lowen paranoid, or just tired after long work days when she sees what no one else believes?  That's a taste of the thriller and there's plenty of intense sexual action.  Let me just say, Jeremy attracts all kinds.

Happy reading,
Dawn

Where The Heck Is Noah With That Ark?

Hello out there in reader-land!  How the heck are ya?  Good, I hope.  All is well here in Arizona now that the floodwaters have receded.  Huh?  Floodwaters?  I see you scratching your head and wondering, “What the heck is she talking about?  Arizona’s a desert.”  Yes, Arizona is a desert and, yes, there are floodwaters—at least there have been this week.  Plenty of water…more than enough to share.

You see, God (in his infinite wisdom) decided this was a good year to replenish the groundwater for us dry Arizonans.  So he has sent us plenty of much needed rain.  It has been a very wet monsoon season this year…good for some, not so good for others.  The funny thing about a blessing is that it isn’t always a blessing for everyone involved…probably something to do with that old adage about maintaining balance in the world.

One of my favorite sayings is, “You win some, you lose some, some get rained out.”  There’s more to the saying, but when I tried to look it up to get it exactly right and note who said it, things got fuzzy.  So I’m just going to use the version I like and we’ll leave it at that…someone very smart said it at one time.  LOL  Anyway, this week we got rained out.  On Monday, the lovely Valley of the Sun got bucket loads of water.  How many bucket loads?  Glad you asked.  Lots!  Lots and lots of bucket loads!  Arizona typically averages only 7 inches of rain per year.  But on Monday of this week, different parts of the valley got anywhere from 2.5 inches of rain to almost 6.5 inches of rain—and all this happened between midnight and 8am!!!  My particular little piece of paradise got 3.3 inches and, holy cow, am I glad I wasn’t one of those that got over 6 inches!!!  (Hmm…don’t think I’ve ever said that before.)  Oops…sorry…Tina Gerow is a bad influence!  I digress…so here’s what happened at my place.

I, like everyone else in the valley, was awakened twice during the early morning hours with severe flood alerts—those obnoxious and loud buzzing alerts that come over your cell phone.  (And while I’m on the subject, why can’t they give me an alarm sound option like that…something that I can’t possibly sleep through no matter how hard I try?)  Anyway, like everyone else in the valley, I didn’t take them very seriously.  Why?  Because the alarm network is not tuned to “my area”…if it’s flooding anywhere in a hundred mile radius, I’m getting woke up…and it never freaking floods here anyway, that’s why.  As long as you stay out of the dry washes and aren’t trying to get your Yugo through four feet of rushing water, you’re usually okay.  Well…unless you’re riding out a microburst in a houseboat on Lake Pleasant…but that’s another type of storm and another story altogether.  Anyway, I’ve lived on my place for over 25 years and it has never once flooded…so when I get this loud, rude buzzing alarm at 2am and then again at 4am, I’m just plain pissed.  I’m sleeping here, people!!!  So I get up both times and shuffle to the back door and look out.  No flood waters up on the patio, dogs not doing the backstroke, horses not water-skiing in the pasture.  We’re good.  I shuffle back to bed mumbling curses to be placed on the people who run the emergency alert system and all their offspring for 20 generations to come.

Then the sun comes up and the world looks a lot different.  My alarm goes off, I shuffle to the coffee pot to make my java salvation, then to the door to see how wet it is outside.  Holy Freaking Floodwaters, Batman!!!  I step out the door and it’s a sea of water as far as my bleary eyes can see…well, at least to the edge of my property line.  What?  What the hell?  Where did all this water come from?  My brain is clawing along in the darkness, trying to drag itself up from the depths of sleep deprivation to make sense of what I’m seeing.  No help.  Then I hear it…rushing water.  Huh?  I don’t live near a river.  What’s rushing?  Where’s it coming from?  Where’s it going?  I step outside and start walking around to see what the heck’s going on and there it is…irrigation.  What?!  Who irrigates in a flood?  Well…me, apparently.

I’ve left my irrigation gate closed from a few days ago when I’d last irrigated and all of my ports are open.  So a deluge of irrigation water is flooding down the ditch and spewing from my irrigation ports.  Both pastures are under 8 inches of water.  I look around and so are the horse pens…and the barn.  The horses are standing in their pens with their floaties on, looking at me like, “You gonna fix this or just stand there gawking?”  OMG!

So I run in and grab my flip-flops…because everyone knows flip-flops are the appropriate footwear for walking through a flood (NOT)…and I run to close my irrigation ports and open the flood gate to allow the water to go on down the road.  On the way, my flip-flops get sucked into the mud and I have to finish the journey barefoot.  I’m outside in my jammies, soaked to the waist, mosquitos are making a meal of me, and I am searching through the mud for my shoes…but my ports are finally closed!

Then I go to survey the damage.  Sheesh, what a mess!  The horses are standing in 4 inches of water, not a dry spot in any of the pens to stand on.  There are three new rivers running from the pasture into the barn and under the storage unit built into the back of the barn.  There are car parts, briquettes, firewood, light fixtures, chairs, and shelves all standing in 4 inches of water in my barn.  Even my neighbor’s horse pen that is used to store firewood and barnyard junk is underwater.  Definitely Stupid Girl at work again.  And you can believe the next time I see her, I’m gonna bitch-slap her into the next county!

So I grab a shovel and go to work (still in my jammies and muddy flip-flops), shoveling mud to dam up the rivers and stem the flow of water into the barn.  A half hour later, the rivers are dammed, I’m covered head to toe in mud, and the horses are still giving me the evil eye.  I look around and wonder, “Where the heck is Noah with that ark?”  Right about now I could use a good ark.  Did I miss the email that said I was supposed to build one?  I hate it when stuff gets lost in internet hell.  Where’s the justice?  I’m awakened twice in one night by useless cell phone alerts but I miss the email about building an ark!  Oh…uh…hmmm…yeah, maybe I should have put on my reading glasses and read those alerts more carefully.  Could there have been some mention of an ark?  So here I am limping back into the house in broken flip-flops that have given up the ghost to the sucking mud, jammies soaked and muddy, but victorious.  I look like a refugee from a war zone.

Well, I guess this is an example of all’s well that ends well…I think.  It’s now the end of the week from hell and all is well…at least for a day or two.  I called in a friend to help muck out the barn, I apologized to my neighbor for flooding her pen, I drained the horse pens enough that they have a few square feet to stand on that are not at the bottom of an ocean.  But now my big dilemma is how the heck to get rid of the millions of tiny baby frogs that came in on the flood waters.  You see, our irrigation network brings water from Lake Pleasant into the valley.  Apparently all the channels between me and Lake Pleasant were open and as the ditches and the lake filled with rain water, it created a tidal wave that traveled to the end of the path, right into my closed irrigation gate and open irrigation portals…apparently bringing with it every newly born baby frog in three counties.  They are very cute and less than a half inch long…but there are thousands of them and they are everywhere.  And if these tiny baby frogs live, a month from now I will have a plague of frogs that could be a new chapter in the Bible.  Argh!  So watch for the newspaper headlines—“Valley author eaten by plague of hungry frogs!”

That’s my story, frightening and froggy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce

So, whose story is this, anyway?

Okay, so Kayce got caught again with nothing to blog about and she cast about for something…anything that might be fun to talk about—maybe something writing-related this time?  Now there’s a new concept for a writer.  DUH!  Then she got distracted with the Awkward Family Photos site and wasted a bunch of time looking at…well, awkward photos.  If you’ve never cruised that site, you should some time…it will make your family look normal.  Didn’t do it for mine…but it might for yours.  LOL

That got me to thinking about writing and about stories and about how many stories there are out there.  How many stories are there, anyway?  Is there a limit?  When will we run out?  Is there only one way to tell a story?  And if there is only one right story for any situation, who’s the right person to tell the story?  These are all things that writers wonder about, things that keep us awake at night, things that make our lunch sit like a rock on our stomachs when we hit that proverbial wall.  So…what is the right answer?

That got me to thinking about my very first attempt at writing seriously (i.e., not a school assignment).  I’d picked up a library book…and don’t ask me which one…I’ve long since forgotten.  But the subject of the book was something along the lines of learning how to write and it had a very interesting experiment in it that I thought you all might be interested in.

So after an hour or so of head shaking and chuckling over the unfortunate pictures other families are still trying to live down, I decided to borrow a couple of those photos and try a new twist.  I call this the “What’s Really Happening Here?” game.  So I ran a few of my favorite awkward photos by my grandsons to see what they thought might really be happening in the picture.  What I got were some pretty good captions for these pics—captions that showed me there could be many different perspectives on the same picture.  As you read these captions, think about what kinds of things run through your head…what would your caption be?

·         What baby?  I didn’t see no baby.     

·         No one saw nuthin and I didn't do it.
·         You mean that's not a potted plant?
·         For Christmas I want…to be an only child.
·         The stork left it; now he won’t take it back.
·         I think it’s a Jack in the Box.
·         I think it’s Santa's fault.
·         Santa looked a lot like daddy.
·         Now I’m the favorite.

 

 

·         101…102 uses for duct tape.

·         I can’t hold the baby AND take the picture.
·         Single parenthood requires creativity.
·         How to avoid pictures of falling babies.
·         Honey, I had to; he kept blurring the picture.
·         Don't worry, there's no sound on this camera.
·         Honey, get the baling wire.

 

Can you see how any one of those would work?  How one picture can have many different meanings?  Did you come up with some new ones?  Of course you did…I know your twisted little minds!

So, after capturing those little gems, I decided to take the experiment another step further and see if a picture could provide not only multiple captions or situations, but different unrelated stories…entire stories. 

Remember that little exercise I mentioned above that was my first attempt at writing?  Well, the assignment was to watch five minutes of a television show with the sound turned off.  Then you write the scene, complete with whatever dialogue, action, and description you imagined was happening in that segment of the show.  It was my first attempt at writing a love scene which, by the way, will never see the light of day.  But it was a great way for me to learn how to develop a scene and I figure if it works with a TV show, it should work with a picture too.  Why not?

So…queue the next awkward photo and let’s see what kind of story lines we get.

Option one:  This woman is a serial murderer.  She kills brides and keeps the wedding dresses hidden in a secret compartment in the false wall of her walk-in closet.  But now she’s found the man she wants.  He’s a smokin’ hot game show host and with the money he makes doing television, she’s sure she’s finally found the man who can keep her in the style to which she’s become accustomed.  After all, it’s not every household that can afford a console TV and blue carpet.  What?  You don’t think you’d buy that book?  Really?  Well, I guess every book isn’t for everyone.  Maybe there’s another story (and another book) in this picture that works for you. 

Option Two:  Perhaps this woman has a dreaded disease but these two love each other madly so the wedding has to take place long distance because her house is enclosed in a bubble.  If she goes outside, she dies.  No?  Yeah, you’re right…can’t put any sex in that story…well, not the hands-on kind anyway.  : - )  And that's a whole different story.

Option Three:  This was a failed prototype for a TV show that was the forerunner to internet dating.  But the prototype was thrown out because no one could believe anyone would consider dating someone they’d never met.  It’s a hit, right?  No?  Alright…back to the drawing board. 

Option Four:  The groom was a stinking cheapskate and wouldn’t spring for the cost of plane fare to actually be there for the wedding, so he convinced his co-dependent fiancée to do it remote.  Yah, I thought so…that one worked for you, didn’t it?  Don’t lie now!  Okay, then I’m gonna pull out the big guns.  This next one was my 14 year old grandson’s interpretation of what was going on in this picture.  You ready for it?  Huh?   Wait for it…it’s pretty good.  Here it is…

Option Five:  Switch channels for a new husband.  Yep, I knew it…that one did it for all the women reading this article.  : - )  Easy peasy.  He gets lazy, he cheats, he lies, he leaves the toilet seat up…a couple of batteries, a good remote, and life’s good again.  Yeah, baby!

 

Okay, are you getting the point here?  Are you getting that there is no limit to the number of stories out there?  That there are many different ways to tell the same story, even if you think it’s already been told before.  There can be many very different stories coming from different perspectives but all originating from the same picture or core concept.  All it takes is stepping outside the box and looking at the same old picture from a new perspective or through the eyes of someone new.

So…let’s try this one more time…because I just love this next picture and I have to give this one a shot.

Option One:  The FBI is hiring operatives younger these days; easier to train and they work cheap.  But, clearly, some are better than others.  (Notice, it’s the girl that’s still standing.)

Option Two:  Never piss off a woman with pretty new red shoes and a weapon in her hand.  It will NOT end well for you!

Option Three:  She has told him and told him to watch where he’s walking, but he just didn’t see that concrete step.  Well, you can’t protect a man from himself.  Sometimes all you can do is just let him make his own mistakes and then put on a smile and go on.

Option Four:  It was a very late night for the midget in the background.  Wait…is that a banana by his head?  Oh, what we could do with that!  No wonder she clobbered him with the lunchbox.

 

So, what have we learned?  Stories come in all shapes and sizes, from many different sources, or all from one source.  There is no limit, there is no right perspective, there is no right person to tell the story.  Change the perspective, change the storyteller, and you change the story itself.  So if you ever find yourself stuck for a solution or in need of a new story, just step to the side and put on a different hat.  Look at the story through the eyes of a different person or a different character.  I guarantee you a colonoscopy scene looks a whole lot different from the perspective of the person in the gown that opens in the back than it does to the person at the other end of the scope!  Which story do you tell?  Which solution do you choose?  It doesn’t matter.  Because not every story is for everyone, but there is someone for every story.

So go write your story, go tell it however you want, through whatever lens works for you.  I guarantee you that somewhere there is a pretty blonde with cute new red shoes and a fun new weapon that really loves that last picture.   So what if the guy with the banana doesn’t like it?  He’ll have his own story one day…as long as he doesn’t keep pissing off the girl in the red shoes. 

So…your turn to tell the story.  Here’s your challenge…here’s your sign…er, I mean picture.  Now, notice that the little girl has a knife in her hand, a grenade strapped to her waist, what looks like ammunition magazines tucked in her belt, and a bunny clutched in her other hand as she cries. 

What’s the story here?  You got one?  I do…I’m wondering where her big brother is.  : - )

 

That’s my story, crazy and cockeyed, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce

 

 

 

 

 

 

My thanks to the Awkward Family Photos site for sharing these pics with us.  Go check them out!
http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Introducing Kayce Lassiter

Introducing Kayce Lassiter

Not too long ago, I had the honor and privilege of introducing Lexi Post, a dear friend, to all HEAT’s fabulous readers. Well, today, I get to do it again…I have the pleasure of introducing another dear friend…Kayce Lassiter. I’m so glad she’s joining us here on HEAT! She’ll be sharing her thoughts on life, love and laughter. Alexis, Dawn, Lexi and I are thrilled she is joining us – a funnier (she’s made me cry from laughing so hard), more wonderful person you’ll never find and she writes wonderfully, too!

Kayce took part in an anthology with several other writers called Twice Upon a Time to benefit another friend who suffered an AVM incident.She is currently working on Loons of a Feather, a ChickLit in Cowgirl Boots romance involving a wild, motorcycle-riding fairy godmother and the couple she’s trying to help fall in love.

Please join me and wish Kayce a warm welcome!

As always, happy reading!

Marie