I'm shamelessly promoting my friends!

Dellani Oakes

Fran Lewis - host of Red River Writers Book Club

Life is so bizarre sometimes. You never know when or where you will meet someone you know.This happened to me when I spied a name that looked very familiar as a guest on April Robins' Robin Falls Radio Show on Blog Talk Radio - Fran Lewis. Fran taught with me in the NYC Public School where I taught first grade. She was really magic with the kids. It was kind of like the Pied Piper. She'd come into the class since she was the Language Specialist there and she'd captivate the kids with whatever she did. I had no idea that she was an author of several children's picture books too.:) So I listened to the show and sure enough it was the same Fran Lewis. I'm happy to say that we reconnected after nine years and I am very happy we did.:) Fran has a new show on Blog Talk Radio for Red River Writers Radio called, Red River Writers Book Club. It starts tomorrow, Wednesday, March 17th at 12PM Central time, 1PM Eastern time. Each show she will have one author whose book will be discussed and several questioners who have read the book.

So Fran asked me to be on the show and also asked me to be a permanent guest on the show. Tomorrow's author is Dellani Oakes who has written Indian Summer, which is a historical novel set in 1739 in St. Augustine, Florida. If you are interested in what I thought of this book you can read my review here. Tomorrow I will be on Red River Writers Book Club questioning Dellani Oakes about her book, Indian Summer. So here is shameless promotion. Both Dellani and Fran are going to be on the show. There are going to be a few more people besides myself and I am looking forward to meeting them.

I hope you will tune into this first show of Red River Writers Book Club. I know it's going to be fun to hear both Fran and me together. I hope that the other people will get a chance to speak.:)

Now for an update on my life. We are rapidly unpacking most of our things except for the pictures and paintings. The marble table is out of the middle of the living room. Yay!!!! It is still, however, in the apartment waiting for the ServPro people to pick it up and to pay me for it. I got an estimate from this wonderful company Intermarble. Within a few days we had a written estimate from this company and every transaction was done accurately and promptly. It's rare to find such good communication with a company. We were really surprised at the estimate. We had no idea of the value of this table. I gave the estimate to the ServPro guy and I haven't heard back from him since. To be fair, I'm sure he is totally swamped (LOL) with emergency work since the storm. I am not expecting him to answer me for weeks. Also as I unpacked more of my Betty Boop dolls I found one that had cracked it's hand off. Plus I had these antique bisque cherubs and one has lost its leg.:( Added to the antique saucer that got cracked, another antique plate that got cracked and a few other cracked items, there was way too much breakage. I have moved these pieces over ten times and nothing happened to them. What I am very thankful for is that the Hummel figures that I have which come from pre-war Germany and are very rare, did not have a scratch on them!!!

I am ending with a celebration of a wonderful drive up restaurant called Walter's where my daughter and I spend about an hour enjoying their specialty: a hot dog and curly fries. There is even an outdoor eating area where we celebrated the first sunny warmish day in weeks!!! This neighborhood gem has been around since 1919!!! If you live in Mamaroneck, NY you know all about Walter's. Most people in the surrounding area of Rye, PortChester, and White Plains know about it too. But people even in New York City have been made aware of Walter's and are planning day trips up to Walter's. Why do so many people go here? They make probably the best hot dogs I've ever eaten with great sides. The Walter's experience means you get there and stand in line for at least a half hour. We got there at the tail end of lunch time, but you can have a shorter wait time at other times. Walter's is right in the middle of a residential area so parking is always a problem too. The day was so good we even found a parking space! You finally get up to the ordering person and place your order. As you are waiting you can peek through the window at the hot dogs on the grill. Once you pay this guy or woman you move over to the next window to wait for your food. You can see your food being made and your mouth waters. The hot dog is cut down the middle and placed on the bun that is not even toasted. They put the mustard on for you. There is nothing else except ketchup. They wrap up your hot dog or hot dogs, the side you chose, put it all in a brown paper bag and give you a box for the drinks. They serve milk shakes, but we didn't want to get one, because each milk shake has four scoops of ice cream!! I warn you that once you take your first bite of their hot dog you will be hooked and will need to come back as many times as you can. You will find yourself thinking Walter's on the first nice day of spring and making excuses to yourself about why you need to go back at least once a month in the summer. Check out the website and see for yourself what I am talking about and why it is so popular.:) I wish you guys could taste this hot dog.:)

OMG What a Week! Postcard Friendship Friday Too!

Okay, this is definitely not a postcard, but you can download it yourself from the website and have your own Don Draper staring at you from your desktop like I do now. I'm considering it a postcard, because he's definitely saying hello with his eyes. :) This is one picture I could keep looking at every day.:) The only problem is since it's vintage there is a cigarette in his right hand. But that is a mere period detail. As I remember from my childhood and teenage years everyone smoked including myself. I wonder how anyone could breathe.

Speaking of smoking, there was such a cachet about it. Anyway, the first episode of the third season of Mad Men comes on next Sunday and I am so excited. If you haven't seen any of the first two seasons I would definitely buy the DVD and cram it all in before Sunday. This is such a great show that manages to convey the feelings and environment of the early '60s. It is like an Xray into the lives of the people I always thought had a great life.

I'll never forget when I was looking for a summer job after my freshman year in college I went to some of these ad agencies to get a job. The carpet was plush and the walls were wood paneled. The furniture was comfortable. The waiting room was better looking than any living room I'd ever seen.:) If only I could have lied better I might have gotten the job, but I could never say with a straight face that I wasn't going back to school in the fall. I spent a lot of hot days walking the Manhattan pavement in three inch heels and then I had to go home to Queens on a hot subway train filled with sweaty miserable workers. They didn't have air conditioned trains yet and let me tell you it was like being in a moving gym. Yuck. I gave up and took a job in a camp where there was fresh air and I could be out of the city.:)

Anyway, getting back to Mad Men, the guy in the picture, Don Draper, is my idea of a perfect postcard. So I present that to you.:) Sorry to the guys out there who would rather I had put the female character up there. I think you can find the curvy one, Joan, at the website too.:) Enjoy and don't forget to grab your own screen saver at the Mad Men website. Also while you're there you can make an avatar of yourself as you might look as a Mad Men character. Here is mine. Notice that I have a coffee mug instead of a cocktail glass in my hand. That is because I thought the background was going to be an office. It's hard to see what the background is when you're doing it. But I like that, because it makes me look so innocent and that's just what I was around that time. I was a pretty late bloomer.:)

I never had a dress like that and my hair wasn't blonde, but other than that not a bad look don't you think? I really like the pointy eyeglasses and the neat red handbag too.:)

Wasn't this quite a week? I mean So You Think You Can Dance finally had a winner and I did like Jeanine. I voted for Evan, because he's so adorable and he can't help his short legs and arms. Actually my own father had the same kind of body, but he wasn't a dancer.LOL So I'm very happy with the results and thrilled that we are going to be able to see the live show when it comes to our area. My daughter got us tickets and we were so lucky to get them early. By the time she was finished checking out, the tickets had gone up to twice the price. Who knows what they are now.:) We saw the live show last year and it was amazing, but our seats were far away. We're a little closer this year. We saw the show again tonight, because my other daughter had missed it. When we looked at Kayla dancing we all realized she wasn't dancing with the same crispness and we think that ( and this is purely our opinion so don't go spreading it around, PLEASE!!!!) she might have hurt herself. Just our opinion because she seemed to be having problems with her right leg. As I mentioned before, though, it's our opinion. But if it turns out to be true then you can say you read it here first.:)

The other thing that happened this week is John Hughes, filmmaker, died. I just went back to check on which movie came first and I saw that he did "National Lampoon's Vacation" first, which I saw in the movies and loved. He not only wrote the screenplay, but he did the soundtrack for it too! After this he wrote and directed "Sixteen Candles" and then "Mr. Mom" which he wrote but didn't direct. Then he followed this with probably the quintessential movie of the '80s, "Breakfast Club", another Lampoon movie, "Weird Science", "Pretty in Pink", which he wrote and produced but didn't direct, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" he wrote directed and produced, "Some Kind of Wonderful" he wrote and produced, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" which he wrote, produced, directed and wrote the soundtrack for. I could go on and on with the films John Hughes wrote and produced or wrote and directed or pretty much did the whole film, but he made too many films.:)

I always loved John Hughes films because he made his characters so human. They had such problems and they were usually regular people. Also he used actors who were relatively unknown at the time in many of his films. He used Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer (then a complete unknown) and the list goes on and on. Yet he also used well known actors such as Steve Martin and John Candy and comedians like Chevy Chase. Hughes always treated women with the utmost respect even if they were in uncomfortable situations. He also provided a romantic element in almost every film. Who can forget when Judd Nelson put the diamond earring into his ear. Now that's romance.:) Okay, I could probably watch all of these films over and over and not get tired of them. Oh wait, I have.:)

John Hughes has been a part of our lives and we haven't realized it. Many of the expressions that have crept into our vernacular come from John Hughes films. Even the expectations that kids have today were forged from watching John Hughes films. Who wouldn't want a boyfriend like Molly Ringwald's in "Sixteen Candles"? The kiss across the birthday cake is what everyone woman dreams of having with her significant other. Why aren't all men like John Hughes characters? Hughes celebrated the small town and the teens who seemed to disappear into the woodwork. Probably the most isolated character he ever wrote was Ally Sheedy's character in "The Breakfast Club". Yet he treated her with an elegance and understanding that allowed her true personality to come out. I haven't seen any blog posts on John Hughes yet, but I am calling him an American film genius.

This is also the week I am getting feedback on my latest chapter for my WIP from my critique group. So far I've only gotten one person's comments and I'm hoping by the end of the weekend that everyone will have commented. It took me such a long time to write this chapter so I'm really waiting for the comments. I don't usually feel that anxious about my chapters, but when you've been working on a chapter for over a month and then finally you get it written and you sub it you expect to see your critique. Our group usually gets around to posting our comments, but I wish everyone would be a little faster about it. :) We've discussed this problem and have no solution. We have a reminder for the group and it goes out in the middle of the week and at the end. Sometimes we have to wait for over two weeks to get comments and then it overlaps. But I love my group so I can wait to see all of their reactions. It's just such a let down when you were hoping for their thoughts.

Speaking of writing, how many of you have dropped by the blog post about Jennifer Banash? If you leave a comment or a question you can win a free book. I know some of you come and read and don't comment. This time you can win a great book just by commenting. What are you waiting for? It doesn't have to be long to be in the drawing. Just jot down something and your name will be in the hat when I do the drawing for Jennifer Banash's new book, Simply Irresistible. I will be reviewing it on Monday for anyone who couldn't get a copy. Thank you to the three people so far who are in the drawing because they wrote a comment. You are the lucky ones so far.

New things you should know about me are that I have an interview by RD Larson on her blog. Also, I am now discussing being a host on a Blog Talk Radio show with another author. More about this when we are ready to go on the air.:) I'm excited, because I love to talk as well as write and I'll be talking with authors of all kinds. I'm looking for people who have short stories and poetry published as well as authors who have published books. I am also going to be interviewing writers who are looking to be published. I might be letting people give their three sentence pitch on the air. This is all in the planning stage so stay tuned to see what's happening. This is all due to April Robins and Red River Writers without which I would not have been on the radio twice.

There's so much to talk about from the few days I've been away. I find that it's difficult for me to post on weekends. So I hope everyone had a great weekend. Yes, this is Tuesday, but if you've had a good weekend it should spill over into Monday, don't you think?:)

I am going to have the Guest Author, Cynthia Polansky here on Thursday. We had a little mix up last week, but that's all straight now and she has graciously answered my questions and will be here to answer yours too. Learn more about Cynthia and her writing here. She is the author of two novels and several non-fiction books about dogs. She has also written a column and is currently in the process of a new fiction book. Please come back on Thursday to meet Cynthia Polansky. In the meantime, I will post part of my review of her book, Far Above Rubies. You can find the whole review on amazon.com under Reader Reviews.

Far Above Rubies: A Novel is a thin book, but starting in pre-war Holland it tells a powerful story. Imagine you married late in your life to a widower who has six daughters. The heroine in this novel,lovingly called "Tante Soof", overcomes the natural antagonism that her new stepdaughters have for her and she and the daughters form a bond that is almost stronger than with a natural mother. When the joy of an engagement lights up the family they never dream that the next moment everything will change forever for this loving Dutch family. Read more...

Cynthia is giving away a free copy of her novel, Remote Control to the lucky winner of the drawing we will hold after her visit. You need to post a question or a comment to be in the drawing. So for all of you who visit and don't comment, please try to write something so you will be in the drawing.:) You will have until Monday to make your comment or ask a question.

Tomorrow I will be telling your more about Betty Butler, who has sent me more of her writing that I will post here. I also have more pictures of her. Until the next time, welcome to my new readers and for all the people who have friended me on Blog Catalogue. I am enjoying m

eeting all of you. To the people who have been readers for awhile, thank you for continuing to read and enjoy my crazy thoughts and meanderings.

One more thing before I go. I am going to be on BlogTalkRadio on June 24th to read and discuss my story, "The Trouble with Follow the Leader." If any of you are interested you can go read it on Story Station Archives. It is based on a true story that I will discuss here after the interview. If you click on the link you can sign up to hear the broadcast. It is being held by Red River Writers for Robin Falls Kids. I hope many of you will be able to hear it. But if you can't I will try to find a way for you to hear it too.:)

We visit Shirley's Luxury Haven

The Sentosa resort

Today I promised that I was going to highlight a new blog. It is very difficult, because there are so many fabulous blogs. As I mentioned I am a member of the women's blogger directory.

The blog I am highlighting today is Welcome to Shirley'sLuxury Haven. Shirley lives in Singapore and she updates us constantly on new and exciting things to do in that area. I wish I lived there, because she makes everything look so good!!! Today's post is about a new resort there, Sentosa. The photo shows a picture of this resort! Don't you want to get on a plane and go

there?

She tells us also about concerts and gives great recipes for asian food. I love the animated slide show she has of all the dishes she features. All you need to do is click on the food and you get a larger picture of the dish on her other webpage. There you can subscribe and make your own slides to show on the website using the slide show she has there. Very cool!!!

But the main reason I like this blog is that she talks about fashion as well and in one of her posts she concentrated on how to tell a fake handbag from a real one. This is a serious problem when there are so many counterfeit bags out there. I was impressed by the detail she went into to show us the real thing!

I also love the background color of her blog - pink, and I look forward to reading each post. She describes herself as someone who is: Passionate about food, crazy over shopping, eccentric about travel, is in a frenzy over Hello Kitty! and Cooking's my passion. You can see her profile picture on top says it all.:)

So Shirley, from Welcome to Shirley's Luxury Haven, I am highlighting your blog and look forward to reading more interesting and unusual posts.:)

Tomorrow's guest author is Tim Hooker who is the author of three books and

who is also the editor of his blog Sushi Tuesday. During the last couple of days I have gotten to know a little bit about Tim and I think you will enjoy this interview very much!

Tim is giving away a copy of his book, Rocket Man as a thank you to one lucky person who either comments or asks a question. The winner will be announced as soon as all comments are in to the post. We will be taking comments on this post through Friday night. So please stop by and leave a comment. You could be the winner!!!! In the meantime go and see Tim's blog, Sushi Tuesday and read his bio.

Until next time, I'm really looking forward to our second guest author blogger, Tim Hooker. Please join us and maybe you will win the book give away contest!! Thank you to all my readers. Your comments warm my heart!!:)

A Tuesday Quikie

Interview with Tim Hooker on Thursday, March 26th
It's time to gear up again for a new guest author interview. As I promised I will be interviewing a new guest author every Thursday. Please remember the author is here all day and possibly the next day to answer any questions you may have.

Here is a little bit about Tim Hooker and you can

find out more about his life at his website. He is the editor of a multi-author blog and has three published books, the latest being Duncan Hambeth, Furniture King of the South. I am looking forward to interviewing Tim and hearing all about why he titled his book as he did.:)

Also coming, in two weeks I will be interviewing Katie Hines, whose book, Guardian, a middle grade urban fantasy, is coming out June, 2009. If you want to be interviewed next week let me know and I'll arrange it. Tim and Katie are part of the Red River Writers Blog Tour 2, which is happening through April.

Meanwhile, a quick review for The Heretic's Tomb by Simon Rose. I had hoped to be able to read one of Simon's books before the interview, but it arrived too late. Set in both fourteenth century England and present day London,The Heretic's Tomb combines history with adventure and suspense.

Imagine you were suddenly thrown into fourteenth century England during the outbreak of The Black Plague. This is what happens to Annie as she finds a part of an amulet in the ruins of an old abbey. The author gives a very thorough explanation of what life is like for people in that time period and shows the devastation that the plague has wrought for almost everyone. Lady Isabella has lost her family during the early plague outbreak, but she is spared and tends to the sick with her home remedies. She lives in the abbey after her tragedy and is revered by the folk she tends. Much happens to her as she attempts to cure the sick and she must also suffer the wrath of the lord of the manor who searches for a way to stop her. In the course of his story, Simon Rose describes the world of the fourteenth century in explicit detail. He really throws you into the muddy streets of a typical town. If I were teaching this time period to a middle grade class I would be sure to have this book on hand! Also, it is a very quick and exciting read for anyone. If you want to read this go to amazon.com.

As far as my own writing is going, I am waiting to sub my chapter for this month to my critique group. I was finally able to start writing the party scene and I did it when I was sitting in the car waiting for my daughter. I had nothing to do and my other daughter, the one who had driven on the way over was playing on her IPod Touch. If you need to wait for someone an IPod Touch with games loaded on it is the best way to do it. They have all kinds of games. The ones I like best are where you have customers and you have to wait on them and either do their hair or give them chocolates. You can spend almost an hour playing these games. Of course there is Scrabble and Word Twist, but those require too much thinking.:) Also, you move up in levels in the hair salon and chocolate games. So I didn't have anything to do and took out a piece of paper and a pencil and began Chapter 23. I only have a page, but that will be enough to write the whole chapter. For me all I need is a sentence and I can usually write the whole chapter.

Welcome to my new readers and thank you to the readers who continue to follow my crazy ravings.:) Please leave a comment if you stop by. I always check to see if there are any new comments and answer them as soon as possible. Just a quick ad for both of the networks on which I'm listed: Blog Catalog and Facebook Networked Blogs. Also look for my name on the women's blogger network. I'm meeting a lot of new friends all over the world and finding so many blogs to read that I can't keep up. I will be highlighting a new blog tomorrow. Could it be yours? Until the next time have a great day!!!