Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column 07-30-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Today's Guest Column is written by author Julie Kenner. Coincidentally, Julie wrote her column while walking around Disneyland. My grandchildren and my husband and I are visiting Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge today! Julie would love to hear from you, so send her an email. Her address is at the end of her column today.

A reminder to enter the Write a Dear Reader Contest. I'll be reading entries when I return. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

From Julie Kenner...

I'm thrilled to be standing in for Suzanne today, and when I first sat down to write this column, I tried to think back to remember when I first met Suzanne online and got turned on to the thrill of getting a tantalizing tidbit of a new book in my inbox.

Unfortunately, that was several years and many computers ago, so I couldn't pin down the exact date, but as I was plowing through old in-boxes, I ran across emails long forgotten. Notes from editors and other authors, story ideas I emailed to myself, quick emails from fans telling me how much they'd enjoyed one of my books. It was, in short, a trip down memory lane.

It's always fun when something triggers a good memory. I'm writing this column from Disneyland, and walking around the park has been like surfing memories. I'd been to the park in the years B.C. (Before Children), but it's those kid-toting years that really build up the special memories. Like my oldest hugging Pooh when she was 18 months old. Or the youngest pointing to the flowers designed to look like Mickey and saying, "I remember that, Mommy!" from the first time she came three years ago. And of course there are all the silly forgotten memories that come back as you walk. "Mommy! That's where the little boy sat in the car with us," or "Remember the baby ducks that lived under that bench?" Memories that aren't quite on the surface, but come back full force when prodded.

A good book does the same thing--and for significantly less money than a trip to Disneyland! We're also getting ready to move, and I've been packing up my books and trying to catalogue them at the same time. Talk about a hard process! Because every time I pull an old book off the shelf, I experience a rush of memories--either about where I acquired it, where I was when I read it, or bits and pieces about the story itself. I remember carting a copy of Atlas Shrugged around Europe when I did the Eurail thing years ago. Or standing in line at midnight to buy the seventh Harry Potter book. I remember finding a used Le Carre novel (A Murder of Quality) in a ramshackle bookstore in London and reading it on the train, the pages falling out as I turned them as the glue on the spine finally gave way. (I still have it, though--held together now with rubber bands.)

It's like visiting a bunch of old friends, and I suppose when you get down to it, the characters in books really are just that. Heck, even the books themselves are companions, each offering something wonderful. And that's why Dear Reader is such a fabulous program--because who doesn't want to meet a whole bunch of new friends?

So here's wishing you a summer full of sunshine and friends...and lots of good books!

Julie Kenner
Email: juliekenner@gmail.com
www.juliekenner.com

Julie Kenner (aka J. K. Beck) is a bestselling author of somewhere around thirty novels. She's tackled numerous genres including paranormal mommy lit (her demon-hunting soccer mom series--Carpe Demon--currently in development as a feature film). This fall, she takes on paranormal romantic suspense with the Shadow Keepers series beginning with When Blood Calls, When Pleasure Rules and When Wicked Craves under the pen name J. K. Beck. Be sure to visit her online at www.juliekenner.com and www.jkbeck.com

P.S. If you haven't entered the Write a Dear Reader Contest yet, get out your recipe box and enter today. This year's theme is: Share a recipe and the story behind it. Even if your recipe and story aren't chosen as contest winners, your story could end up in my next book. To see the prizes and rules to enter, go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-29-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

If you haven't entered the Write a Dear Reader Contest yet, get out your recipe box and enter today. This year's theme is: Share a recipe and the story behind it. Even if your recipe and story aren't chosen as contest winners, your story could end up in my next book. To see the prizes and rules to enter, go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

I'm on vacation this week. Today author Caroline Leavitt is filling in for me. Caroline is the author of nine novels, most recently the Indie Pick, Girls in Trouble. Her latest novel, Pictures of You, will be published in January, and was already cited by Booklist online as one of the big book club books of 2011. A book critic for People and for The Boston Globe, Caroline teaches writing at UCLA Writers Program online and does freelance book editing. She would love to hear from you. Email her at: carolineleavitt@gmail.com

From Caroline Leavitt...

Can writing heal? When I anxiously sent my last novel, Girls in Trouble, about adoption, to Suzanne, hoping she might include it in DearReader.com, she left a cryptic, upset message on my phone. I was sure she hated the book! But when I called her back, she told me something deep and secret about herself. Like my book's heroine, she had become pregnant when she was young and unmarried. "This is the book that made me not only want to talk about what happened to me, but to claim it," she told me. It meant so much to me to hear that my novel had helped someone!

Over the years I've tried to write about the issues that I myself grapple with, always hoping I'd find answers or healing in the exploration.

Somehow, though, I always avoided the hardest time in my own life, my childhood, and the terrible asthma that plagued me. As a kid, I was always in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms. Gripped with fear and shame about being sickly, I yearned to be just like everyone else. I never told anyone I had asthma, but instead, thanks to the library where I hung out while everyone else was outside playing, I learned to use words like "pleurisy" and "consumption," which sounded somehow better than asthma. I hid my inhalers or deliberately lost them. I told friends I was away on vacation instead of in the hospital, and I would never ever let anyone see me wheeze or take my medicine!

My asthma calmed down after I had my son, but I still didn't want to claim it or write about it. Imagine my surprise when in the midst of writing Pictures of You, about the colliding lives of four people in a mysterious car crash, I began to write about an asthmatic ten-year-old boy with a terrible secret. I don't know where he came from, but he refused to go away. While I was at first tentative about writing some of his story, I found myself revealing all the shame and sorrow of my childhood. I wrote about how it felt to struggle for breath, how terrifying it was to enter a hospital, and how unfair it was to always be at the mercy of the weather, which could make my asthma a thousands times worse. And the funny thing was, the more I wrote about this little boy, the better I began to feel. My asthma, slight as it now was, disappeared! How was this possible? My doctor told me not to get my hopes up, that asthma was tricky and could play hide and seek. I was convinced my writing had healed my asthma, right up until the moment I turned Pictures of You in, and then I got sick enough to have to rush to the ER!

I got better again. And I didn't despair. Maybe writing hadn't healed me of the physical disease, but because I felt such love and understanding for this little boy I had created, I was suddenly healed of all that old shame and terror. I could now look back at my younger self and feel compassion. I could claim my asthma. And to me, what's more healing than that?

Caroline Leavitt
carolineleavitt@gmail.com
http://www.carolineleavitt.com

AUTHORBUZZ: New authors, old favorites--all wonderful books you can win: Debbie Macomber, Orchard Valley Brides; Dori Ostermiller, Outside the Ordinary World; Maria Stewart, Home Again; Kathryn Meyer Griffith, Before the End: A Time of Demons; and John Jodzio, If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

Dear Reader Column 07-28-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

I'm on vacation and author Harriet Evans has graciously offered to fill-in for me today. When I return I'm looking forward to reading the Write a Dear Reader Contest entries. If you haven't entered this year's "Share a recipe and the story behind it" contest, be sure to enter today. Even if your entry isn't one of the Grand Prize winners, your recipe and story could be featured in my next book. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

Enjoy today's column by author Harriet Evans. She would love to hear from you and she answers her mail. You can reach her at: harrietevans@harpercollins.co.uk

From Harriet Evans...

Being a writer has many many perks, but one of the downsides is being at home too much. It gives you too much time to think, and I don't have a lot of time. Take this week, for instance. I'm trying to finish the rewrites on my new book. The plumbing in our kitchen has backed up, so we can't wash dishes or do laundry. It is really hot outside. I live in London. It's never hot! I should be making the most of it, lazing by the canal where I live, watching the swans go by. This will probably be the only sunny day we get.

Instead, I'm standing over a huge suitcase, wondering what to pack. You see, I'm going to New York, as my book is published there. And it's extremely hard to know what to take. It feels very far away, and it makes me think about how I see myself, and how others see me. (Like I said: writers think too much.) Do I take the strappy high, lemon yellow heels that make me walk with confidence through the Rockefeller Plaza, to see my publishers? But I'm 5 foot 11 already, I don't need any more height, I'll just look like a beanpole, and it's so hot there, and sweaty, and I'll get blisters and fall over...

Do I take the adorable city shorts that I bought last year and never wear? They're so stylish...

But I'm thirty-six! City shorts are for twenty-one year olds, just pack a pair of nice jeans!

Do I take East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which I took off my bookshelf in March, meaning to read, after yet another person told me how much they loved it? I really ought to, and it'd be great to read a great American novel while I'm out there.

But I do love People and US Weekly, and you can't get them in the UK so easily...

I'll have to take my laptop with me, to continue doing my rewrites when I'm there. But I want to do some New York stuff that's fun too. Should I take my notebook and just head off for an adventure, get on a subway and see where it takes me, or should I be a good girl and work every spare minute I get? I wish someone could tell me.

Back to the suitcase. Do I really need a sparkly top, covered with sequins? But it's New York, who knows what might happen and when I might need a sparkly top! I might end up going to the opera, or having cocktails at the Algonquin, or getting lost in Central Park and meeting a handsome prince...anything could happen.

But no, it won't. The suitcase needs to be filled with shampoo and manuscript, contact lenses and underwear. I should finish up, sit down and do some work now. I need to call a plumber, and remind my boyfriend to let them in while I'm away. (I'm not sure how he'd feel about the handsome prince, either!) Real life will continue, even when I'm in New York. It's just nice, sometimes, to escape the real world and imagine what might happen. Even if it gives you blisters. And magazines last for a week, and then they're out of date. I'm taking East of Eden. I'm looking forward to it.

Happy reading,
Harriet xx

Harriet Evans is the internationally bestselling author of I Remember You and three previous novels,Going Home, A Hopeless Romantic and The Love of Her Life. Prior to her writing career, Harriet worked at Penguin for seven years, progressing from secretary to editorial director, publishing mainly women's fiction. In 2003 she went on to another publisher, Headline. Harriet is now a full-time writer living in London. Visit www.harriet-evans.com

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-27-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

My husband and I are on vacation this week with three of our grandchildren. To make it a real vacation for me, (since I write a daily column) some author friends of mine have graciously offered to fill-in.

Today's author is Carolyn Hart. Carolyn loves cat, old mysteries, the verdant South Carolina Lowcountry, hot and dusty Oklahoma, and dark chocolate. She's written 44 books. GHOST IN TROUBLE will be debuting this coming October. Carolyn would love to hear from you and she's giving away 10 signed copies of LAUGHED 'TIL HE DIED. Email her at: chart@carolynhart.com

Thank you Carolyn...

FOR LOVE OF CATS

One of my earliest memories is of Baby Face, a gray tabby with a round face and huge green eyes. She was the first of many cats I have known and loved through the years.

Little Cat, another gray tabby, was a skilled huntress. She developed diabetes when older and patiently permitted me to give her injections twice daily. As an aged cat, she tottered slowly into the front yard, enticing blue jays to attack. Pretending to cower, she dropped to the ground. When a blue jay dived, she turned on her back and reached up to grab her tormentor.

Blackie, with all black, silky fur, was an engineer. In winter, she watched as I turned on a space heater. When the heater was off, she touched the control knob with her paw. I'm sure she was puzzled to see the coils light when I turned the knob and must have wondered why it didn't work for her.

Dainty black-furred Sophie with four white paws was small, almost fragile, but she dominated her world. She was my cherished companion for seventeen years. Now we have brown tabby brother and sister, Bro and Sis, and new this past year an abandoned huge orange tabby, Rockingham. Bro is reclusive, our professorial cat. Sis is eager, interested, and communicative. Rockingham needed reassurance that he was loved and has slowly lost his defensive, don't-hurt-me wariness.

We have loved them all. They are intelligent, interesting, and affectionate. Cats are sometimes described as aloof, cold, and remote. In fact, the cats we have known are loving and keenly attuned to us. Admittedly, they are not dogs, who look to humans as leaders. Instead, cats lead and their humans follow. But they are always looking over their shoulders to be sure we are with them.

My love affair with cats has permeated both my life and my work. In my view, there is nothing lonelier than a house without a cat or dog. In one series, the protagonists have two cats, an imperious black bookstore cat and a fluffy white homebody cat. This tells readers that Annie and Max Darling are settled members of a community. They may travel, but they will be coming home.

Several years ago, I bought a number of cat books, thinking I might start another series with cats in a major role. I have enjoyed the books, and the knowledge gained from them afforded a fun exercise in a book which will be out next spring. The protagonist's mother-in-law, who approaches life with a flair, creates Cat Truth posters with captions beneath photographs of various exotic breeds. I am especially fond of one Cat Truth poster: An American Short Hair Snow Shoe with intent blue eyes and the tell-tale four white feet was perched on a brick wall, oblivious to pelting rain, fur plastered down, drenched to the skin. He peered at a svelte Siberian Forest Cat, elegant and unattainable behind a window pane. The caption reads: Hey, Babe, come on out, the weather's fine and I'm a heckuva a guy.

And yes, one long ago winter night, a tom cat came calling at our house despite the sleet and inside was a gorgeous black cat...

I've learned a lot from cats: Enjoy the moment. Move fast or don't move at all. Love and be loved.

Carolyn Hart
You can email Carolyn at chart@carolynhart.com
Visit Carolyn on the web at www.CarolynHart.com

P.S. If you haven't entered the Write a Dear Reader Contest yet, get out your recipe box and enter today. This year's theme is: Share a recipe and the story behind it. Even if your recipe and story aren't chosen as contest winners, your story could end up in my next book. To see the prizes and rules to enter, go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-26-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

My husband and I are on vacation this week with three of our grandchildren: Seth and Bailey, who flew-in from Wisconsin (13 and 15 years old) and Paul (3-1/2 years old) who lives 15 minutes away from us here in Sarasota. Today we're driving to Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, an African lodge-style resort amidst a 43-acre wildlife preserve. You can sit outside on your balcony and almost touch a giraffe. Swimming, movies on the beach, tickets to Blue Man, and two connecting rooms--grandchildren in one and grandparents in the other--the secret to everyone having a delightful, restful, vacation.

To make it a real vacation for this daily columnist, some author friends of mine have graciously offered to fill-in while I'm on hiatus. Today's Dear Reader column is written by Deborah Raney who is hard at work on her 20th novel! (I can't imagine. I'm struggling starting to write my second.)

Deborah reads at the book clubs with us. What an honor to have her join us today. Take it away, Deborah...

Five years ago, my family moved to a new home. It's a nicer, bigger house than I ever dared to dream of owning. Because, you see, I chose to spend the first twenty years of my adult life as a stay-at-home mom. That meant many sacrifices, most of them financial.

I've never had one regret about those years spent living in a small rental. I found it a fun challenge to make it a cozy home for my husband and our children. But I'll tell you the truth: four kids in a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath duplex with a shared yard wasn't always a picnic.

As the kids went off to college, we were able to spread out a little, and eventually our little duplex started feeling quite adequate. Until our kids started bringing friends home. One friend was extra special and one day our daughter married him. Suddenly that duplex felt like a shoebox when everybody was home.

Five years later, with a new daughter-in-law, two grandbabies and another on the way, we feel extra blessed to have this house. Most of the possessions we treasured moved with us from the rental. But one thing we couldn't bring: the wall where we measured our children's growth. All four of our kids were basketball players, so height was a thing to be prized and recorded often by their coach dad.

That narrow wall showed clearly the date when our oldest son shot past Mom's five-foot-eight mark, and then Dad's five-foot-ten. Our wall bragged about the summer our youngest son grew three inches. There were hashmarks three feet from the floor where the tip-top of our tagalong baby's head reached--marks lovingly recorded by her proud big sister. There were marks near the floor for our cat, Frosty. (Do you measure a cat from foot to shoulder, or foot to head?) All those rough pencil lines told a happy story. But stories are history, and they can't always be brought with us to the future. Not tangibly anyway.

All the kids came home one weekend shortly after we moved. Our oldest son flew in from Seattle. His brother drove from Iowa, and his sister (carrying our first grandbaby-to-be) and her husband made the long drive from Missouri. It was the first time our older kids had seen the new place and we had fun showing it off.

I relished sitting in church with my family that Sunday. We took up an entire row! That afternoon, one-by-one, they all left to travel back to the homes they've established. I was sad to see them go, but happy they've each made a good life and have their own special homes and loved ones to go to.

I've learned that it's not walls or windows or heirlooms that make a home. It's the people who live within...and those who come back "home" for a visit. It doesn't matter if we're together in a cardboard box or mansion on a hill, as long as we're together.

Now when I wake up each morning, our house seems more like home because the people I cherish have graced it with new memories. God willing, there are plenty more to come.

Deborah Raney
You can email Deborah at: debraney@mac.com
Visit Deb on the Web at www.deborahraney.com

Almost Forever, first in her new Hanover Falls Novels series, released in May. Deb and her husband, Ken Raney, enjoy small-town life in Kansas where she starts her mornings reading DearReader. They are new empty nesters with four grown children and two precious grandsons, who all live much too far away.

** If you haven't entered this year's Write a Dear Reader Contest, there's still time. 15 days and counting. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

AUTHORBUZZ: New authors, old favorites--all wonderful books you can win: Debbie Macomber, Orchard Valley Brides; Dori Ostermiller, Outside the Ordinary World; Maria Stewart, Home Again; Kathryn Meyer Griffith, Before the End: A Time of Demons, and John Jodzio, If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-23-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Thumb through your recipe box, dust off your notebook and enter the annual Write a Dear Reader Contest. This year's theme: "Behind every recipe there's a story!" makes it easy for everyone to enter.

You don't have to be a writer. Simply share one of your favorite recipes and then tell us the story behind it. Is the recipe a family favorite that's been handed down through the generations? Did your grandmother teach you how to make it? Tell us the story. Maybe your chicken salad recipe was your mother's favorite, and now every time you make it you think about Mom. The story doesn't even have to be about the recipe, it could be about what happened when you made the recipe. Make us laugh and cry, don't leave anything out. Open up and share your feelings. Let the story come from your heart.

Two Grand Prize winners and four Runner-Ups will be chosen. If you've read my book, Muffins and Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life, you'll already be in the groove to enter the contest.

To see the prizes, guidelines and rules, and to read a sample recipe and story, go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

* BookReport: What a thrill to read the review of Muffins and Mayhem from About.com Go to: http://tinyurl.com/27ow4mn

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com

KIDSBUZZ: This week, books for kids and teens on middle school, pirates, adventure, fitting in and a ghost mystery, from Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas, Karma Bites; Kathy Krull, Lives of the Pirates; Gregory Mone, Fish; and Katie Alender, Bad Girls Don't Die. For a chance to win free books and more, see http://www.authorbuzz.com/kidsbuzz

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

Dear Reader Column 07-22-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

This afternoon I'll be at the airport welcoming Seth and Bailey, our two grandchildren from Wisconsin. They're spending 10 days with my husband and me. Tomorrow we'll let them get acclimated to the Florida sun, and then early Saturday morning we're off to Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge in Orlando. Paul, our three year old grandson, who lives here in Sarasota is going along too. He went to Sea World with us when Bailey visited last year, too. We take a lot of pictures when Bailey comes to visit, so when it's time for her to go home, she takes along a photo album filled with reminders of her vacation with Grandma and Grandpa. Last year I made a smaller photo album for Paul too, and my daughter-in-law says that boy looks at those pictures almost every night before he goes to bed--and now Bailey's here again. Paul is so excited!

While I'm on vacation I've invited some guest authors to fill in for me. Everyone was thrilled with the invitation to write a column, so don't be shy--be sure to drop them a line. My guest columnists are ready to answer your emails.

I'll be on vacation from writing, but hopefully you'll be busy writing and entering this year's Write a Dear Reader Contest while I'm gone. It's easy for anyone to enter, because this year's theme is: Submit a recipe and the story behind it.

To see Paul's favorite photo from last year's vacation with Bailey, to view the Write a Dear Reader guidelines, a sample entry, and the prizes (even if your entry isn't chosen as a winner--it could still be featured in my next book) go to: http://www.muffinsandmayhem.com/node/470

I'll be back next Monday.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Your friend (just like at Summer camp),
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these are five that deserve your attention: Laura Frantz, Courting Morrow Little; Julie Carobini, A Shore Thing; Catherine Delors, For the King; Avery Aames, The Long Quiche Goodbye; and Rick Field, Rebecca Courchesne, Lisa Atwood, The Art of Preserving. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

Dear Reader Column 07-21-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Do peaches float? More specific, do Georgia peaches float? Next week when my grandchildren from Wisconsin will be visiting, my husband and I are going to have a birthday party for 13 year-old Seth. His birthday was in June, but we wrote a note on his card that we'd celebrate--gifts and a party--when he visited us in July. I realize teenagers tend to pooh-pooh "kid-stuff" but never-the-less, in addition to bubble machines, a barbeque, a huge blow-up house (we're borrowing from a friend) and showing movies outdoors on our carriage house, we'll be bobbing for apples or peaches. In vacant lots around Sarasota, where I live, there are makeshift Georgia Peach stands--it's that time of year. So instead of apples, I was thinking peaches, but will they float? I'll let you know.

Paul and James (our three and almost two year-old grandsons) will be at the party, too, and it's a good thing. Little kids can still easily access the "magic" inside, and it gives big kids and adults permission to be silly. Bobbing for peaches? Pin the tail on Grandma? Surrounded by bubbles and imagination, who knows what fun and crazy games we'll be playing?

Speaking of the magic of bubbles, and creativity, I couldn't resist sharing this email I received yesterday:

"Dear Suzanne, my dear friend lives in a senior community that also has a nursing home. The priest who leads mass there once a week was retiring, and she sent me a picture of him from the newspaper giving mass at the nursing home. To my delight he was shown with a bubble wand blowing bubbles at each resident. The bubbles were made with Holy Water and the bubble mix! What a delight and how innovative of him. Of course, I immediately thought of you--that is probably something you would come up with. Just thought you would like to know that others believe in the magic of bubbles."--Mary Lee Muntz

** If you haven't already entered this year's Write a Dear Reader Contest, thumb through your recipe box, pick out one of your favorites and tell me the story behind the recipe. Or write about your memories associated with the recipe. "A Recipe and the Story" is the theme of this year's contest. I'd love to read your recipe and story, and even if your entry isn't a winner, it could still become part of my next book. To find out contest guidelines, read a sample entry, and to see the great prizes, including an 80-book library, go to: http://tinyurl.com/writedr

Don't miss my interview with host John Busbee on the radio program, "The Culture Buzz," airing this morning at 11:01 AM Central Time, streaming at http://www.kfmg991.org/

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Almost on vacation,
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com

KIDSBUZZ: This week, books for kids and teens on middle school, pirates, adventure, fitting in and a ghost mystery, from Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas, Karma Bites; Kathy Krull, Lives of the Pirates; Gregory Mone, Fish; and Katie Alender, Bad Girls Don't Die. For a chance to win free books and more, see http://www.authorbuzz.com/kidsbuzz

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-20-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

One of the ingredients for my personal happiness is spending time with my grandchildren, so later this week I'm gonna be one excited and deliriously happy grandmother. Bailey and Seth, two grandchildren from Wisconsin, are coming to visit for ten days. This ten day summer vacation has been a ritual for Bailey for the past three years, but this will be Seth's first visit. The kids tell me they're counting the days, but I'm embarrassed to say I think I'm more excited than they are. I'm not expecting miracles, everything doesn't need to go smoothly, and I'm not looking for the perfect vacation, just the opportunity to create memories with grandchildren I rarely get to see.

Every year as my husband and I were driving to the airport to pick up Bailey, I'd worry just a little bit that I wouldn't recognize her. Kids change, especially teenagers. They grow so fast. I wonder if Bailey worries she won't recognize me--grandma's getting older, too. And I'm a little bit strange--especially for a grandmother--blowing bubbles, hula-hooping in the front yard, cranking up the music and dancing around the living room. Sometimes I wonder how Bailey describes me to her friends when she gets back home. They must ask, "What's your grandmother like?"

I loved visiting my Grandma and Grandpa Hale when I was a kid, but I remember thinking some of the things my grandparents did were boring at the time. Walking through the woods picking up walnuts, my grandfather could do that for hours. Me, just a kid, I got bored with it after a while. But you know, today when I think of my grandfather one of the first things I remember are those darn walnuts, the long walks in the woods, and the lessons about squirrels my Grandfather tried to impress upon me. Grandpa hunted squirrels in season, but he also made sure the city squirrels that lived in the trees in his yard, were well fed. He even built platforms for them. Grandpa told me it was okay to take from the earth, "but Suzanne, you need to do your part to give back. It's the circle of life," and he'd give me a big hug.

A simple "boring" day. Yet I can still feel the hug, and when I close my eyes Grandpa and I are walking through the woods. Boring? Strange? Maybe I'm worried for nothing. Maybe this "strange" grandmother is one of the perfect ingredients for creating lasting, loving memories. I sure hope so.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics

 

Dear Reader Column 07-19-10

Now on sale . . . Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if Disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher, and when you purchase it, request a free autographed bookplate, by visiting:
http://tinyurl.com/Muffins-MayhemPO

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Paul, my grandson (who's 3-1/2 years old) loves to fish, but he never catches anything because there's not a hook on the end of his line. Just a red and white bobber. Casting without a hook means we never bring home any fish, but that's okay, because we always bring home a fish story.

The park underneath the John Ringling Bridge here in Sarasota, is one of our favorite fishing spots. We get to watch serious fishermen and women (folks with actual hooks on the end of their lines), Great Blue Herons are literally walking around on the sidewalk waiting for the opportunity to steal a fish out of someone's pail, sailboats cruise by and the other day there was a steady, gusty wind--perfect for blowing bubbles. I'd brought along a long bubble wand and it was so windy that all I had to do was hold the wand up in the air, and instantly hundreds of bubbles were floating through the park and out over the water.

A boy that looked to be three or four years older than Paul was fishing next to us with his mom and dad, and even though they were catching fish, the bubbles were winning his attention. Pretty soon the boy put down his fishing pole and walked over by us. I asked if he wanted to blow bubbles with us, but he shook his head and hurried back near his parents. Yet he kept watching the bubbles. So when it was time for Paul and I to leave, as we were walking towards our car, I suggested to Paul that we give the boy our bubble wand. Paul was hesitant at first and I couldn't blame him. After all we'd just bought the wand before we came to the park, but he took it over to the boy and offered it to him anyway. The boy was too shy to take the bubble wand, but his mother was eyeing it with delight. So Paul gave it to her.

As we were driving away, Paul saw the mother and son blowing bubbles.

"It's fun to share Grandma."

"Yes, it is Paul."

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

* Book Report: I can't meet everyone in person to sign their copy of Muffins and Mayhem, but I can send you an autographed bookplate. Be sure to request a signed bookplate if you're giving my book to a friend and don't be shy about asking for yourself, too. MaryEllen Pidhirny recently emailed: "Can I admit the bookplate is just for my own copy of your book, because I like to cook and read with you?" Yes you can, MaryEllen. Your bookplate is on the way. To request a signed bookplate, go to: http://www.muffinsandmayhem.com/content/special-offers

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these are five that deserve your attention: Laura Frantz, Courting Morrow Little; Julie Carobini, A Shore Thing; Catherine Delors, For the King; Avery Aames, The Long Quiche Goodbye; and Rick Field, Rebecca Courchesne, Lisa Atwood, The Art of Preserving. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. To start reading and enter for your chance to win a Penguin totebag go to: http://tinyurl.com/July10Classics