Summertime and the Living Is (Not) Easy!

posted by thap gump

We've reached the end of another GREAT month in the Lair and I'm thrilled to send July out with a BANG (or is that boom?) by welcoming my good friend and Lair favorite Marie Force back for a visit. The third book in Marie's "Fatal" series, Fatal Consequences, was released this month, along with a lot of other stuff. But I'll let Marie tell you all about it:
Greetings to the Banditas! Thank you SO much to my dear friend Aunty Cindy and the gang for having me back again to celebrate the release of my new book, Fatal Consequences. This is book 3 in my Fatal Series, which pairs D.C. homicide detective Lt. Sam Holland with U.S. Senator Nick Cappuano. The Fatal books mix romance with politics and mystery, and book 3 has plenty of all three. Here’s a brief bit about the book:
The murder of two members of the Capitol Cleaning Service might’ve been just another homicide investigation—that is if one of them hadn’t been romantically involved with a married senator from Arizona. Lt. Sam Holland and her team are plunged into another complex case that at first seems open and shut. But as Sam tugs on the threads of the investigation she uncovers a deep, dark Washington secret that threatens the careers of some of the government’s highest-ranking officials. Racing to catch a killer before he can strike again, Sam and her fiancé, U.S. Senator Nick Cappuano, attempt to plan a wedding while her colleague Detective Tommy “Gonzo” Gonzales faces life-changing news.
It’s fitting that I should end what has been one of the most insane months of my life with my friends at the thap gump. I definitely need to celebrate that July 2011 is coming to an end. Let me give you the rundown… keeping in mind that Fatal book 4, Fatal Flaw, was due yesterday.
July began with the final day of the Romance Writers of America conference in New York City. Fatal Flaw was about half done at this point, and not going well for reasons to be discussed later. After sprinting home to spend the Fourth of July holiday with my family, I had to re-pack for a six-day trip to Atlanta for my day job’s annual meeting. Not a word got written on Flaw while my daughter and I were in Atlanta.
Returning home, we celebrated her 16^th birthday and the launch of Fatal Consequences, both on the 18^th. That same day, she started driver’s ed from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for ten straight weekdays. Oh the joy of hauling a sixteen-year-old out of bed at 5:20 a.m., in the summer, for driver’s ed. Around that same time, she got her first real job, working as a hostess in a five-star restaurant in downtown Newport, RI, which is about thirty minutes from where we live. And did I mention my son, soon-to-be 13, is attending sailing camp, also in downtown Newport, but during the day. One kid to Newport in the morning, the other kid to Newport in the afternoon and an 11 p.m. pickup for the working girl. My husband helps, but since I work from home, most of it falls on me.
Did I mention that we are gearing up at work to move our company’s website to a new platform? To save some money, we decided to hand move all 800 pages and 10,000 linked files and images ourselves. And that started this week , the same week my book is due and the same week the quarterly magazine I edit for work is on deadline. Calgon, where are you when I need you? Thankfully, (and I never thought I’d say this), our designer is running late on the magazine, and it got bumped to next week. There is a God.
Back to Fatal Flaw, which hung over my head like a shiny, sharp guillotine this entire month. I finished it at 9 p.m. on July 29, the day before it was due. I wrote 18,000 words in three days, and my hands feel like they’re 80 and arthritic. Thankfully, I have three faithful beta readers who were critiquing as I went, which is how we managed to discover. . .wait for it. . . a fatal flaw in the story.

This is my 19^th book, so I have somewhat of a routine by now, but nothing was working, and I didn’t have the luxury of time to blame it on the stress and chaos of my life. The writing was like pulling teeth, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then, when I was 70,000 words into the book, my betas helped me identify a major problem (aka the fatal flaw) in the story. Once I fixed that by writing five new opening chapters—something I have never done before—the writing flowed the way it normally does, giving me an ‘ah-ha’ moment: If the writing is like pulling teeth, something is wrong. Figure out what’s wrong and fix it. My editor and I have chatted about watching out what we name future books so as not to bring the bad karma to the writing.
To say I am THRILLED that July 2011 is behind me is putting it mildly. I plan to spend August working on that website migration at work and in my free time, catching up on my TBR, lolling about on the beach and my dad’s boat, hanging with my kids and having a bunch of family and friends visit. I am sooooo ready for a break from the pressure cooker. Later in August, I plan to get to work on my fourth McCarthy book and hopefully a Christmas novella for that series. In addition, I have four other books I am preparing for publication, starting later this year: Georgia on My Mind as well as my beloved Treading Water trilogy: Treading Water, Marking Time and Starting Over, so be on the lookout for all of them soon!
Summertime and the living is easy—or not. Which is it for you? Thanks for coming by and helping me to celebrate the end of the month from hell! I’ll give a copy of Fatal Consequences to one commenter today.

Keep an eye out for the Sept. 5 launch of the FREE Fatal wedding novella, Fatal Destiny, in which Sam and Nick tie the knot. Until then, I’ll be at the beach!

Enjoy the beach, Marie! Sounds like you could use a rest!
Marie Force is the bestselling, award-winning author of the Fatal Series from Harlequin’s Carina Press. The series includes FATAL AFFAIR, FATAL JUSTICE, FATAL CONSEQUENCES and FATAL DESTINY, which is out Sept. 5. FATAL FLAW is coming in February 2012.

Earlier this year, Marie published her popular, bestselling McCarthys of Gansett Island Series: MAID FOR LOVE, FOOL FOR LOVE and READY FOR LOVE, with more books coming soon in the series. Find out more about Marie and her books at her website: www.mariesullivanforce.com, on her blog at http://mariesullivanforce.blogspot.com, where she runs the weekly Romance & Oreos Book Club, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Marie-Force/248130827909, and on Twitter @marieforce.Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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Small Town Summer

by Cassondra Murray

I grew up in a small town.


Okay, that’s not entirely true. I grew up way out in the country, on a farm, but the town closest to us was the one we considered “our town.” It’s where we went to shop at the Houchen’s Grocery store, and do laundry at the Wishy Washy on Saturdays. When people ask me where I’m from—you know, when the conversation is not the kind where you say, “I grew up on a farm about 8 miles out of town, in a community called Glens Fork, in Adair County…”—when the conversation is brief and you’re just making nice, that town is what I say.

It had a big red brick courthouse in the middle of the town square. The kind with double doors on opposite sides of the building, so you could enter from either direction. The courthouse had a tower with a clock at the top. That clock never was right.

When I was a little girl, there were benches outside the courthouse doors, and old men would sit on those benches and tell lies and whittle.

There was a pool room down a side street. Y’all know about that pool room because I’ve blogged about it before, in the blog about ice cream. The town also had a little café tucked into a corner of the square, and a Ben Franklin store.



Ben Franklin was every kid’s dream before Toys R Us came along. There was also a Western Auto, with gardening tools, wheelbarrows, rocking horses, and a little red wagon in the front window. That’s where my dad bought some of my best Christmas presents ever. My Play Family garage. My electric train. That’s where he bought my first guitar. And that changed who I was forever.

I know I talk about my town a lot. I guess it’s because it’s such a part of who I am, and it’s a part of who I am not.
Nowadays I live half way between two towns. It’s ten miles north to the bigger city, which has a university, gobs and gobs of restaurants, and is building a new performing arts center. If you turn right out of my driveway, you go to that big town.

But if you turn left out of my driveway, ten miles the other direction is…..a small town. One with a courthouse and a square a lot like “mine.” If I have a choice, I always turn left.

And last night I did turn left, and drove to the small town to get something I needed. I noticed as I drove through, that there was a big crowd at the Frosty Freeze. My husband, Steve, wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to pick up something to eat.

Frosty Freeze is a little glass and concrete box in the middle of a parking lot. There are two big trees out front, and several picnic tables arranged under the orange-ish street lights. I angled into a space at the side and got out. I walked up to the window and got in line. When it was my turn, the girl took my order. Two barbecue sandwiches, a small vanilla malt with extra malt, and a small pineapple shake with extra pineapple. Oh, and a funnel cake.



I paid, then I sat down on the curb to wait. All the tables were full. School is out here, and high school kids moved back and forth, hovering between parked cars and around the beds of pickup trucks. A couple of farm boys climbed out of one truck and came around the front to place orders. But more high school kids hung out at the tables and around by the bug zapper, and they weren’t ordering anything. They were just hanging out.

I watched the dance of awkward wanting, and was swept away—back to my teenage years, cruising through the streets of the place where I grew up. I was swept back to the essence of all that is small town.

My town—the one where I grew up-- had the carcass of an old movie theater on one corner of the square,with a neon marquis out front that read Columbian theater in big vertical letters that reached almost three stories high.

But that marquis never lit up when I lived there. I got to see one movie in that theater when I was a small child. It closed down later that fall. The drive-in, further out on the edge of the city, was closed long before I was born. There was no roller rink, no professional or semi-pro sports team, no wave pool or museum.

There was absolutely. Nothing. To. Do.

So on Friday and Saturday nights, the kids from the farms and the suburbs, such as they were, drove into town and cruised. They circled the square, went down the big hill on Jamestown street, out toward the parkway, made a big circle around Sonic, then went back toward the courthouse, where they'd circle the square and repeat. All at about 15 miles per hour, so they could stick their heads out the windows and talk to the cars they were meeting. Sometimes they'd take breaks and hang at Sonic or Dairy Queen, or in the Pizza Hut parking lot.

This town where I sat at the Frosty Freeze is a little better off. They have an actual working drive in (refurbished) that shows first run movies. And they’re only 20 miles from the bigger city, so they can get to the mall, the arcade, and the minor league baseball games the larger town offers.


And yet it was the same. The smell of barbecue and deep fried yummy goodness. The sound of the shake mixer. The ziiiiip-pop of the bug zapper in the back, and the low rumble of big pipes on a farm boy’s pickup truck.

Parents murmuring to their children as they helped little fingers with ice cream cones, just the way they did at Sonic and Dairy Queen when I was a young girl. Bright colored bows in pony tails. Softball uniforms. Bare feet, brown with dirt from playing outside in the yard all day. Swimsuits under t-shirts. High school rings wrapped with rubber bands. A pretty girl's long hair blowing in the warm evening breeze. Tan skin and young love. The banker’s daughter and the poor farm boy. It’s the stuff romance is made of, for me.

I determined, last night, that some things time cannot change because the reasons for them don’t change. My evidence was standing right there at that window, ordering barbecue and a small chocolate shake. Even though there is more to do in this small town, there they are, just the same as we were, cruising up and down Main Street on a perfect summer night. Hanging at the Frosty Freeze.

The girl came to the window with my order, and I walked away with my white sacks of un-politically-correct food. But I also walked away reminded of who I was, to a degree. Reminded that although I love certain things about big cities, I will always be a small-town girl at heart. An artsy girl who still gets a thrill from the growl of a diesel pickup truck engine, broad shoulders and a farmer tan. All just three blocks down from a big red brick courthouse with a tower and a clock on the front.


The only real differences are that I’m a lot older, on the outside looking in now, and those farm boys stroll right by without a sideways glance.

Oh, and their courthouse clock is right.

So, Bandits and Buddies, tell me about the place where you grew up, and what said "summer" to you when you were young.



Were your summers in a small town, or a big city?


Where did the kids hang out on those long, hot evenings? Was there a movie theater? Any chance there was a drive in?

Did you ever cruise main street on Friday and Saturday nights?

Have you ever ridden in the back of a pickup truck?

Do any of y'all remember Ben Franklin or Western Auto stores?

And do you like to read small town love stories?
Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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Cheap & Easy

by Susan Sey

Okay, it's late summer. It's too hot to think hard. School won't start again for a month but I've already trotted out all the kid-distracting tricks I know. The excitement of summer travel wore off about six weeks ago but there's still at least one road trip on the old calendar. The novelty of the grill wore off a month ago but there are still dinners to be fixed.

At this point, I'll do just barely enough to get by. I'll continue to feed the family but it'll be absolutely without ambition or pizazz. That grilled pizza thing I was so into a while back? Yeah, that was June. That smoothy jag? July.

It's August now, & I'm all about cheap & easy.

Last night I fed the family a big bowl of baby spinach covered with chopped up garden burger, cottage cheese & salsa. I called it a salad. They ate it but were dubious. I don't blame them.

Here are a few of my shortcuts this month that are going to save my sanity:

1) No More Mommy Martyr. Our roles in the family go something like this: My husband suggests outlandish things we can't afford--anything from a big screen TV to eating out seven nights a week--and I say, "What?? No way!" He gets to dream big & I get to be a control freak. It works for us. These days, however, at the merest suggestion of eating out, I say, "Absolutely! What a great idea!" I generally produce a coupon, or insist on someplace cheap, but I'm all about not cooking dinner.

2) Playground Group. I'm a stay at home mom, & I resent paying for childcare. I *am* childcare. That's why we don't pay for it. But I'm on page 74 of the first draft of my most recent masterpiece & I'm aiming to have it done by December. I need to get a move on. Therefore, in spite of my moral objections, I paid for the kids to go to an organized playground thing a couple hours a day, a couple days a week this month. I drop them off, take my computer to my beloved Bruegger's & work without interruption. It's bliss. I totally get why lots of women view work as a cherished respite rather than a hassle. I never had a job I liked that much before, but I like writing enough to finally understand.

3) Precut veggies. Okay, I'm embarrassed about this one but hell, I'm among friends. I'll admit it. I'm a big fan of natural foods, foods in their rawest format. The less processed the better. I'm one of those shop-around-the-perimeter-of-the-grocery store freaks. Even under duress, I'm not going to buy my kids those Trix yogurt tubes that have as much sugar as a can of pop. But I recently discovered that my beloved Sam's Club carries a ginormous bag of pre-cut, pre-washed broccoli florets. I can grab a handful & shove them in the steamer five minutes before dinner & voila! Fresh veggies for the family. And all I had to do was pay like twice as much for it as I do a regular old head of broccoli.

But desperate times & all that.

So how about you? Are you cutting any corners here in the dog days of August? Confess them here & make me feel better. If they're particularly good, I'll probably use them myself. So thanks in advance. Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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Only One Scoop?!

by Anna Sugden

Summer has arrived here in England (for this week, at least!). Temperatures are hovering pleasantly in the high 70's, cricket is being played on the village greens and the best sign of summer of all ... the tinny notes of 'O Sole Mio' (better know to us over here as the music from the ice cream ad - Just One Cornetto) ringing across the neighbourhood as the ice cream van plies its trade.

The first ice cream van aka Mr Whippy (though, these days they aren't all the real deal!) appeared last weekend and all the neighbourhood kids (young and old) lined up for their favourite summer treat ... the 99. (see pic left). No idea why it's called a 99, but up and down the country everyone loves them.

The real 99 is a whipped ice cream with a Cadbury's chocolate Flake stuck in it. For special treats, you can have sauce on it - strawberry is my fave, though the kids like the blue one! You can also have an extra Flake!


The ice cream vans of my childhood also had a wonderful array of ice lollies - who wanted boring vanilla ice cream (even with the added extras) when you could have a Lolly Gobble Choc Bomb or a Zoom or a Fab?!

Other fond memories of the pre-Baskin Robbins, Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry's days are the ice cream desserts ... the Arctic Roll, the Neapolitan and (for the posh folks) the Vienetta!

And then, the really special treats ... the banana split and the knickebocker glory.



When I was a teenager, we lived in Virginia and there was a Farrells Ice Cream Parlour nearby. One of my favourite birthdays was at Farrells - complete with a Pikes Peak for the whole table. I couldn't find a pic of it, but the thing was HUGE!

Don't get me wrong, I love favour varieties too. My best friend growing up and I bonded over our love for mint chocolate chip ice cream.

But, you can't limit me to one scoop!

How can I choose between mint choc chip and strawberry cheesecake, Chunky Monkey, Cookie Dough, banana split, Cherry Garcia and the late lamented Uncanny Cashew and Wavy Gravy?!

Mmm ... time for the yummy boys of the ice to delve into the Lair's freezer and serve up some ice cream. So, grab a hockey hunk and give him your order *g*. [For P226 and any other BB males - we have some ice girls on hand too! But you'll have to be quick, those gals can really skate!] Triple scoops all round!

Do you have any fun ice cream memories - favourite desserts, ice lollies or other chiller delights?Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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It's That Time Again

by Beth

It's that time again! Time for Summer Movies! Some blockbusters are already playing but there are plenty more to be released in the next three months. Since we rarely go to the movie theater and only hit the Drive-In about once a summer, my goal this summer is to watch at least a few new movies in the theater. Here (in no particular order *g*) is a quick list of the ones I'm willing to pay good money to see:


Up. I'm a huge pixar fan and I've already been cracking up at the trailer, especially the dog with the talking collar *g*


The Proposal. I love both Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds and this romantic comedy looks like a lot of fun!


The Ugly Truth. Another Rom Com, this one with Katherine Heigl and the super yummy Gerald Butler *sigh* (What can I say? I'm a romance writer. I love romantic comedies *g*)


Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Yes! The next HP film will be out in July! My kids and I (and millions of others) can't wait :-)










Funny People. I recently saw the trailer for this and it looks really good and Seth Rogan cracks me up *ggg*


Here are some I'm willing to wait to watch when they come out on DVD:



X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Don't get me wrong, I love Hugh Jackman and enjoyed the first two X-Men movies (especially the first one) but since it's been out for a few weeks I know I probably won't get a chance to see it.





Star Trek. I've never been a Star Trek fan but this movie looks so good, it may just change my mind :-)


Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Looks really cute and I adore Jennifer Gardner.


Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I realize some movies are better seen on the big screen and I'm guessing this is one of them but if it's as long as the first one, I'd rather be home where I can pause the movie for snack breaks *g*


What movies will you try to see at the theater? Anyone else enjoy the Drive-In? Have any of you ever walked out of a movie theater because you thought the movie was so bad? What's your favorite snack to splurge on at the theater? If you could take the Golden Rooster to a movie this summer, what would you see?


If you want to check out the movies I've mentioned, click on their titles. I've included links to their official websites. Just don't forget to come back ;-)Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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VaCaTiOn FeVeR!

It's getting to be that time of the year when everyone starts itching to go some place warm. One of our bosses and one of our Ticket Queen's (Nicole) are both going to Mexico this week! Actually Nicole is there right now and Brian leaves tomorrow. They both swear that this wasn't planned but coincedently they're both going to the same city in Mexico! How weird would that be.. You plan to go on vacation and you end up going to the same place as your boss, the same week as him. Haha I guess Mexico is the place to be! I know I'm starting to get really anxious for this summer. I am addicted to music festivals. I went to my first one 3 years ago and am totally hooked! I can't wait for the 10,000 Lakes Festival this year! It's at the same place that We-Fest is at, if any of you have been there. But I'd say 10k is more for the hippy crowd. I would DEFINITELY recommend going to one if you're into music and camping! Get your 10,000 Lakes Festival tickets!Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/Summer
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