Celebrating Reading

 

I'm a little late to the blog hop this week, but good fortune has been happening to my writing friends, and I'm celebrating their accomplishments.

First, JaNay Brown-Wood's new picture book, Grandma's Tiny House, will be released August, 2017, but you can pre-order it here:  JaNay is front and center in this photograph. And here is her charming book.

Second, Rosi Hollinbeck's poem, "Sky Zoo," has been purchased by Highlights Magazine, although they haven't announced the publication date yet.  Rosi is to JaNay's left. Both of them are in one of my awesome writing groups. (The other members are Paddy Lawton (behind Rosi) and Marsha Sylvester (to JaNays right.) I am the one peeking into the selfie camera in the lower righthand corner. We have all been together for several years, now, and what a great group this is!

Third, I belong to, Sisters in Crime, an organization of writers of adult mystery fiction, and the local chapter, Capitol Crimes, has just published a collection of mystery stories by some of the members. I bought my copy and am enjoying it. Here is a picture of the flyer.

If you are in the Sacramento area, you can attend the book signing on December 17, at 4:00 p.m. at Avid Reader, at 16th and Broadway in Sacramento.

You can get a copy of the 2017 anthology here:






Celebrate the Small Things  is a blog hop co-hosted by Lexa Cain at: Lexa Cain,  L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge , and Tonja Drecker @ Tidbits Blog. (You can go to any of these sites to add your name to the links, if you want to participate. I recommend it, because it's always fun to see news that others are celebrating, and to share your own as well. )

How about you? What are you celebrating this week? Do you belong to a writing group? More than one? Are you interested in poetry? Picture books? Mysteries? What is a favorite read in one of those categories?

Poetry and Guests

                                

Happy Post-Thanksgiving Day, everyone. I hope you all had a lovely day. 

Today (well yesterday and last week as well) I'm celebrating three things. 

But first: Celebrate the Small Things  is a blog hop co-hosted by Lexa Cain at: Lexa Cain,  L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge , and Tonja Drecker @ Tidbits Blog. (You can go to any of these sites to add your name to the links, if you want to participate. I recommend it, because it's always fun to see positive news that others are celebrating, and to share your own as well. )



What am I celebrating? 
1. Friends from Spain — David & Terri — are visiting us until the 1st of December. They are originally from England but live in Spain, and we met them several years ago on one of our trips and the friendship has continued. It's been great fun taking them to see various sites.

2. We had a great Thanksgiving with them and a wonderful "pre" Thanksgiving with my god-family. Lots of good eating and good company. 

3. One of my writing friends — Rosi Hollinbeck, a super writer and beta reader — has had one of her poems anthologized in a The Best of Today's Little Ditty, available HERE. Check it out.

What are you celebrating this week? How was your Thanksgiving? Do you normally have Turkey, or have you started different traditions? Are you a poetry fan? If so, what is your favorite kind of poem, humorous or reflective? 

Red Roses and the Victorians

This is what's going on in our back yard today. Yes, I know it's mid-November, but the day is bright and sunny with fluffy white clouds, and the roses seem to be on their own calendar.

There are some different colors of roses opening up, but I was reminded that in the Victorian era flowers had meanings associated with them, and the associations with red roses are especially heartwarming: Love. Respect. Beauty.

In the wake of the election results, we need to be mindful of all of those who feel vulnerable to the the bigotry that is finding ever freer expression.  Let's pray that those who have mean spirits and hatred in their hearts, those who too easily dismiss or ignore the hardship of others, can open up their hearts to love, respect, and beauty.

And while standing up for others, let's offer love, respect, and beauty at every turn of the road. Our culture is in dire need of these right now.


   

Celebrate Early Voting!

Celebrate the Small Things  is a blog hop co-hosted by Lexa Cain at: Lexa Cain,  L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge , and Tonja Drecker @ Tidbits Blog. (You can go to any of these sites to add your name to the links, if you want to participate. I recommend it, because it's always fun to see news that others are celebrating, and to share your own as well. )


What am I celebrating? Well, actually it's big, not small.

It's been a tumultuous year following the election campaigns, and as Election Tuesday draws near, I'm celebrating the fact that I and my husband already voted yesterday. It feels good to have avoided long lines and the big hubbub of what will surely be a huge turnout on November 8th.

How about you? Have you voted yet? Are you a bit stressed out from following the campaigns?

Irregular Lives: The Untold Story of Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars

Once again, I'm hooked on a new Sherlock Holmes novel, this one by Kim Krisco. I always enjoy it when the “Baker Street Irregulars” show up in a Sherlock Holmes story, and this tale is a particularly touching one. For readers not familiar with the canon, the Irregulars were a group of street urchins in three of the original adventures written by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and “The Adventure of the Crooked Man,” one of the stories in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.) Basically a street gang, they are led by a boy named Wiggins, and Sherlock employs them as street spies.

Irregular Lives jumps forward to the year 1919. WWI is over, but future threats to world peace loom. In Ireland, the Irish Republican Army is fighting British forces. Against this backdrop, Holmes, who has retired to his farm in Sussex Downs, receives an invitation by a mysterious S. P. Fields to a photography exhibit on Russell Square in London. Naturally, he attends, and finds the photographs are pictures of the “Irregulars” when they were children. Each photograph brings a memory of a particular case, and each case stirs emotions in Holmes, a man famous for keeping his life cerebral.

Then a second invitation to a special dinner at a posh home in Belgravia comes for both Holmes and Watson. They arrive and find all of the adult Irregulars in the photographs are there to honor the impact Holmes had on their lives. All but two, that is—Wiggins and Ruck. Those present have struggled up from their former Spitalfields lives, though, to Holmes’s dismay, the host works for an armament company. Then Wiggins shows up in a dreadful state and Ruck enters, packing a gun. What began as an inspiring evening evolves into a case that involves blackmail, murder, kidnapping, armaments dealing, a secret new weapon, the IRA, and Holmes’s personal enemy, the daughter of Moriarty.

The story is told in multiple points of view, and the author gives us a more rounded out Sherlock without changing his basic nature. The first part of the book sets the reader up nicely for the personalities of the adult Irregulars and Holmes’s reluctant awakening to an almost “parental” concern for them. The author has also made the London of George V palpable. The reader can walk the streets of that era in all the neighborhoods mentioned and almost see them and feel them firsthand. This is historical fiction at its best, as well as a deeply engrossing adventure that draws the reader in until the last page.

                 

Kim Krisco writes both fiction and nonfiction. You can learn more about him on his Amazon author page HERE (and pre-order his book as well. It will be released November 16, 2016.)

You can connect with him on Facebook HERE

Sherlock Has a New Helper!

Author, Brenda Seabrooke

Meet Digby!

Since I have a fascination with Sherlock Holmes, I'm always delighted to find a new story that involves him and his reliable Boswell, Dr. Watson. So when I had the chance to read Scones and Bones on Baker Street, Sherlock's Dog (Maybe) and the Dirt Dilemma, by award-winning Brenda Seabrooke,  I grabbed it.

The hero of this tale is a street dog named Digby whose motto in life is “Never daunted, never fazed,” a motto that befits him. The story opens with Digby prowling the streets of London, hoping for a scrap of food, some water, and a safe place to sleep. When he endangers himself to rescue a cat from a horse-drawn hackney, a foot sends him flying out of harm’s way then disappears into the crowd. Digby goes on a sniffing search to find that foot and thank its owner, who, as it turns out, is Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock may have gotten Digby’s attention with a kick, but Digby wins his attention by accidentally foiling a bomb plot (no spoilers here as to how and where). He follows Holmes and Watson to 221B Baker Street, where he now has a new goal in life—to become Sherlock Holmes’s right paw dog and help him solve cases. But winning Sherlock’s attention isn’t the same thing as winning his affection. The detective doesn’t particularly want a dog, and it’s up to Digby to change his mind. The misadventures that follow are hilarious as Digby shadows Holmes and Watson and becomes embroiled in their new case—a case familiar to Sherlockians, but now seen through the point of view of this lovable mutt.

Seabrooke has created a believable character in Digby, who reads the world through his sense of smell and his loyal doggy heart. One hopes more cases will follow. Brian Belanger’s illustrations capture Digby’s quirky personality. “Fun Facts” at the bottom of each page introduce a young reader to both historical details of Victorian London and the concept of footnotes.

You can get a copy of this delightful book HERE:

You can learn more about the author and her many books HERE

A question for you: Do you enjoy stories for children told through the eyes of an animal? Why or why not? Have you come across any tales for adults told from an animal's point of view?

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