Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column 01-31-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
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Dear Reader,

What would happen if I decided to be happy with who I was and where I am in life, this very minute? Perhaps if I just concentrated on being the best that I can be right now, in whatever place or situation I find myself, that in the end, I'd get to where I wanted to be all along...happy.

Every once in a while, especially if I'm tired or feeling kicked around by the world, I have a bad habit of comparing myself to other people and you know, I can't think of one single time that it's done me any good. I think those evil little "how-do-I-measure-up" thoughts tend to hit me when I'm tired or I've just gotten some unpleasant news.

Those comparisons are little dirty secrets in my mind. I don't speak of them out loud--after all, what would people think? If I confessed that sometimes I feel like a loser, compared to so-and-so, that wouldn't be a flattering impression for me to leave with someone. Or, if I openly admitted that now and then I find joy in shamelessly trying to convince myself that I'm farther along in life than someone else--well, it's almost too embarrassing to admit here today. It's a cheap thrill, a waste of my time and it belittles me in the process.

But then again, since I'm human, I guess it's a given that I'm going to wrestle with thoughts like these. The questions, the true test of character is what I do with them.

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

Get ready...it's gonna be a party!
The Online Book Club is celebrating 20 years!
The party starts February 25th.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these titles deserve your attention:

(Thriller)
ONCE A LIAR by A.F. Brady

(Fiction)
TEMPTING BROOKE by Kristen Proby

Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-30-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

I'm wearing myself out today. Every thought I entertain kicks off with a "Yeah, but..." It's very tiring and unproductive.

Even a simple thing like deciding whether or not to go for a walk is stopped short, because I "yeah, but" it to death: "Yeah, but it's really cold outside today. Yeah, but company's coming and if I go for a walk, I probably won't have time to shower. Yeah, but I should vacuum the floors before they get here."

Well yeah, but, Suzanne--you could have gone for a walk, showered, vacuumed the entire house, and had a tummy tuck in the time you've wasted cycling through your "Yeah, but" list. Round and round, the yeah buts cycle thought my brain...

Yeah...but--maybe tomorrow will be better.

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

Celebrating 20 years at the Online Book Club!
Yes, we've been reading together for 20 years.
Get ready to party, starting the week of February 25th!

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-29-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, sharp skills she developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain--how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. No Mercy her second novel features the adventures of police officer Ellery Hathaway and FBI agent Reed Markham. The two characters met years ago when Reed rescued Ellery from a serial killer's closet, and they were reunited by a grisly case in Joanna's first book, The Vanishing Season.

Please welcome this week's guest author Joanna Schaffhausen to the book club.

I'm a firm believer in doing research for my books, but I have a confession to make: I wrote a basset hound without much real-life experience with the breed. I knew they were short, dopey-looking dogs that seemed like prime candidates for the role of "comic relief." But last fall, our family adopted a basset puppy named Winston, and now I see all the important details I've been missing from my stories.

They trip on their ears. Those long, velvety ears were bred to sweep scents in front of their considerable noses while tracking, but when not in the wild, they are hilariously out of place. Ours likes to dangle his ears in the water bowl and leave trails all over the kitchen floor.

They are supreme sleepers. I knew the basset hound loves a good nap, but I did not appreciate the sheer depth of his skills. Winston can go from running around in circles to falling over snoring in the time it takes to turn out the light.

They are short dogs, but boy, are they long. The bassets were bred with the gene for dwarfism and are essentially midget blood hounds. They were meant to be the "poor man's hunting dog" and so were deliberately designed to be slow, enabling the humans to keep up on foot. However, they are looooong animals who can rear up and reach a kitchen table, should they deem it necessary (Hint: it's always necessary if there is food out.)

They are strong on charisma. When Winston and I go walking, it takes us forever to get anywhere because he is friendly to all he meets. Basset hounds are uncommon in our area, so many people want to pet him and take his picture. I feel like I am his press agent. People yell from passing cars, "Hi, Winston! How are you today?" However, as he is a short, gangly dog, I am the one who must wave back.

They think they are lap dogs. Winston came to us at 9lbs, but he will eventually clock in at 50-60 pounds. Already he's pushing 30 and doesn't fit on my lap the way he used to when he was a wee pup. This does not stop him from trying repeatedly to wedge every last paw onto my body.

They will make you laugh every day. Winston's current hobby is carrying around the empty mini liquor bottles that the local teenagers toss into the street. Don't judge him--it's hard being the town's most popular puppy.

-- Joanna Schaffhausen

Be sure to drop Joanna a note and welcome her to the book club.

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

** AUTHORBUZZ **

TEMPTING BROOKE (Fiction) by Kristen Proby

I'm so excited for you to read Brooke and Brody's love story. This friends to lovers tale is full of humor, will pull at your heart strings and leave you smiling with contentment. Brooke loves her flourishing flower shop, Brooke's Blooms. She is excited about her place in her community. But when her childhood friend, Brody, inherits her building, and threatens to sell it, Brooke has to convince him to keep the property, and her business, intact. She just doesn't plan on falling in love in the process!

Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on TEMPTING BROOKE to read more and to email author Kristen Proby, you'll get a reply.

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-28-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

I was waiting for my turn at the longest traffic light in Sarasota. The bumper sticker on the car in front of me read, "Live Simply--so that others might simply live."

It caught my eye because making my life less complicated is one of the things that I'm "simply" working on this year. It would be a real accomplishment if the pages in my calendar were blank for one entire week.

Personally I think my daily routine continues to pick up speed because I've internalized the notion that it's not enough to be just me. I feel the need to keep proving my worth.

I'm talented at multi-tasking, but I'm beginning to realize it's not something to brag about. I eat half of my meals sitting at my desk and it's not unusual to see me standing, balancing a plate in one hand and a book in the other. I'm not sure what the answer is to slowing things down. I'm still trying to figure it out. Maybe if I stop trying so hard the answer will "simply" come my way.

* Congratulations to the winners of the January Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway, your cookies are on their way. Susan S., Jason S., Miami Public Library and Justine R., Ralston's Baright Public Library.

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

** AUTHORBUZZ **

ONCE A LIAR (Thriller) by A.F. Brady

Do you believe a person can change? Set in a world of greed and apathy, Peter Caine, a top criminal defense attorney, gains custody of his teenage son and gets the chance to change his sociopathic ways. When his ex-mistress is murdered, can we believe that Peter has reformed and is no longer capable of evil? Or will his nature bring him down?

Go to AUTHORBUZZ click on ONCE A LIAR to read more and to email author A.F. Brady, you'll get a reply.

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-25-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

When the comedian asked, "How many of you out there are black and white people?" I immediately raised my hand. No need to think about it. I grew up thinking it's good or bad; yes or no; they're ok, they're not ok. There just wasn't much room for in-between. Personally I blame it on Crayola--they must have left the gray crayon out of my box of 64.

If you have kids, check their crayon boxes immediately, because growing up without the color gray can cause all kinds of confusion and can severely limit your options. I did realize at some age that other people were frequently using the color gray, but it wasn't until I was married that it really sunk in.

Early on in my marriage, when my husband and I were in the middle of our first real disagreement and our exchange of words didn't seem to immediately offer a solution, I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door. When he asked me what I was doing, I told him that it looked like we weren't going to be able to agree on this issue and obviously the marriage wasn't going to work, so I was going to a hotel.

"What is wrong with you? Don't you know how to have a disagreement and work something out? There's always an in-between, a middle ground to explore where you can find a solution--a gray area."

Ah, there's that missing color again. I explained to my husband that when I grew up I only colored with the black and white crayons and never learned how to mix the two.

Guess what my husband bought me that day?

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-24-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

Company's coming. A friend is visiting for four days. This is the first time my friend has stayed in my home when she's come to visit and I'm a bit nervous because I want everything to be "just right". I like to make people feel pampered. That's what I loved about the restaurant business. (I used to own one.) Making my customers feel that their comfort was my most important mission always brought me joy.

I live in a historical home. My guest room is small, but it has a private bathroom, television, and an antique reading light on the bed. Even the mattress is comfy. It's brand new--not an old recycled one from my own bed.

The weather is supposed to behave, temps should be around 78 degrees while she's here. (When you live in Florida and company visits, you feel personally responsible to provide sunny days.) I bought an extra, oversized pink towel, yellow flip-flops and two low sitting chairs, so we're beach-ready. And heaven knows I can provide reading material.

As the Florida vacation postcards all say, "Wish You Were Here!"

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these titles deserve your attention:

(Fiction)
ELSEY COME HOME by Susan Conley

(Fiction)
WE HOPE FOR BETTER THINGS by Erin Bartels

Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-23-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

Pilgrimage: a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it’s a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs.

The word pilgrimage popped into my mind the other day and it stayed with me throughout the day. So I decided to set out on my own writing pilgrimage and put my thoughts down on paper...

I’d rather live a life where I feel a little uncertain and things are a bit clumsy along the way. Orderliness commands too much energy for the return. Do what you can with what you’ve got. When you set out on the journey Suzanne, even though you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably learn a lot along the way.

There doesn’t always have to be a purpose. You can just begin, put one foot in front of the other and see what happens. Confusion can be a peaceful state of mind--for a while. Sometimes I find myself in the middle of a thing, I’m certain I don’t have a clue about why I signed up for the experience, but then later I realize that I really do know the reason, I’m just not ready to face it yet.

Perhaps it’s time to take a little walk? Perhaps it’s time to set out on a pilgrimage?

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

Suzanne Beecher

[email protected]

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-22-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

Stephanie Barron is today's guest author at the book club. Her newest book is That Churchill Woman, a novel about Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill's American mother. Other titles include historical suspense novels A Flaw in the Blood and The White Garden, as well as the nationally bestselling Jane Austen Mystery series. A former intelligence analyst for the CIA, Stephanie also writes under the name Francine Mathews, drawing on her experience in espionage for such novels as Jack 1939.

Please do welcome her to the book club. Say hello, click here.

January is the Greatest Month

Years ago, when I had small boys underfoot, my sister sent me a slim book entitled A Round of Applause for Mrs. Claus. It suggests that without women and their holiday genius, humanity would wander through the soulless winter howling and alone. In my household, this is indisputable. I alone string lights and stuff stockings and roast pancetta-wrapped beef. It's a tad tiring.

Which is why I am usually down for the count with a noxious disease by midnight, December 31st. One year it was double pinkeye, which my elder son brought home from college. It made me look like Voldemort. Some years it's the flu. But I toddle into the cold embrace of January with as much relief as if I'm sighting the White Cliffs of Dover after four years at The Somme.

January is my favorite time of year.

If April is the cruelest month, January is the best. If it did not exist, if it had somehow been left out of the calendar because it was too busy organizing its off-season getaway to Dubrovnik or Puerto Vallarta, we would have to invent January.

It's a time of fresh starts, regardless of whether we keep our resolutions. It's a caesura between the cynicism of a played-out year and the hope of one yet to begin. I wake up on New Year's Day ready to strip the house of greens and red ribbons and toss everything in the trash. I strip beds. I strip my closet. I strip the dogs.

'I clean out my refrigerator.'

And then I walk downstairs and enter my office.

It has been quiet and dark for weeks. But January--time of lung-stopping cold, of drifting flakes, of landscapes sunk in monochrome, of the soft swish of tires on icy streets, of the silence of a single bird call against the frigid morning branches of a bare tree--January is waiting. It offers a clean, spare, bracing road forward. It offers lowering skies that deny any impulse to fritter away time by wandering out of doors. It offers hair pulled back and monkish discipline. January is the Marine Corps of months.

I sit down at my desk. I open a file I haven't touched in thirty days. It is the book half-gestated, almost stillborn, I left unfinished in December. January gives us this power: the cold, clear, commitment to hard work and good dreams.

This month, I wish you discipline and focus. I wish you dedication to a task and the vital things that come from it. A lifetime of Mrs. Claus, in fact--followed by her gift of January.

-- Stephanie Barron
Email Stephanie

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

** AUTHORBUZZ **

WE HOPE FOR BETTER THINGS (Fiction) by Erin Bartels

When Detroit Free Press journalist Elizabeth Balsam meets a great-aunt she didn't know she had, what she learns about her family's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and the Underground Railroad during the Civil War will forever change her perception of her own place in history.

Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on WE HOPE FOR BETTER THINGS to read more and to email author Erin Bartels, you'll get a reply.

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-21-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

I can go on a ride with my husband and not even leave the station, because when he's sitting, his leg vibrates. Up and down, up and down, a perpetual flight that a hummingbird would be envious of. And soon, everything within close proximity picks up the beat and starts vibrating right along with him.

Whenever I've pointed out to my husband, that his leg motion is taking the entire row in the movie theater along for his jog, he's always defended himself saying it's his weight control mechanism. If he quilt jiggling his leg, he'd probably gain an extra 20 pounds. "Now you don't want that to happen, do you Suzanne?"

But I never believed a word of it until my husband had me listen to a report on the news. Apparently researchers at the Mayo Clinic are siding with my husband. They've determined that it's not only trips to the gym, but the everyday pacing and fidgeting that might help determine whether someone's fat or thin. If you fidget, sway, or pace back and forth enough during the year, you could trim off an extra 33 pounds. Or in my husband's case--he was grinning ear-to-ear, "I could trim off an extra 20 pounds!"

I hate it when he's right. I guess I better just learn how to sit back and enjoy the ride.

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

* Be sure to enter my Chocolate Chip Cookie giveaway. I bake and deliver 'em--all you have to do is "dunk and munch." To enter the Chocolate Chip Cookie drawing, click here.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.

Dear Reader Column 01-18-19

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books,
"meet" the authors and enter to win.

Dear Reader,

Just-because and no special occasion are two of the best reasons for inviting people over for dinner. And if someone's coming to dinner, why not make it party? I don't need a holiday date on the calendar to inspire me to decorate my dining room with a Dr. Seuss theme, leis and grass skirted tables for a luau (even in the midst of winter), lions and tigers and bears ("oh my") it's a safari, or a carnival motif complete with games and prizes. Thinking about it now, I just might have a leftover party one of these days combining leftover Christmas, Easter, birthday, Star Wars and unicorn decorations. I suppose I could make all the food two days ahead of time and serve "leftovers", too. Adults and kids alike, when you create something unexpected it translates into fun.

Nancy, another party "girl" and a reader at the book club, offers some of her ideas for fun. She writes...

"Dear Suzanne,

I love that you do theme parties. So do I. Is your Valentine's Day party [going to be] a dinner party, or one with lots of people? I do a dinner party and I have prizes--they all come from Dollar Tree, which has great prizes and decorations for all the holidays. People always offer to bring things and for Valentine's Day I assign appetizers, salad, dessert and a Valentine's Day drink concoction, with the stipulation that they all have to fit the holiday theme, even if it means just throwing red strawberries or cranberries into the salad.

Prizes for best-dressed--most Valentine-y, too, but the best is during dinner, guests have to tell their worst and funniest Valentine story about a date, a present, etc. We always get some hysterical confessions." -- Nancy B.

It's party time at the book club, be sure to enter my Chocolate Chip Cookie giveaway. I bake and deliver 'em--all you have to do is "dunk and munch." To enter the Chocolate Chip Cookie drawing, click here.

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

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]

* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE PROPHET, by Kahlil Gibran. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.