#sixSunday Six Sentence Sunday- The Wonderful Wizard of...

Good morning Sixers! Here's a touch of humor from Jasmine while dealing with her friend, Simone, who is also her partner in her interior design business Decor Dreamz.

“See you tomorrow.” Simone’s muffled voice rose from behind some wall hangings like the Great Wizard of Oz. “Don’t forget, nine a.m. His address is on the new folder I made for the appointment binder. It’s laying on the table over there.”

When a disembodied arm appeared and pointed in the proper direction, Jasmine half expected to hear a booming voice warn her to—Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

#Writerly Wednesday- Looking at Handsome Men Gives Me a Headache

My Hero is No Grisly Adams

As I endeavor to find stock images and figure up what I'd need for cover art images that I like or think might suit my purposes, I find that staring at handsome men can give one a headache. There, I said it. It's not so much the men, as the hours of eyestrain spent staring at the computer screen, but still....It's a time intensive search that reminds me why I normally write instead of work with computer graphics and it gives me a deep respect for all those cover artists who do spend many more hours than I have, scouring images across the net to make the perfect book cover for us writers.

I'm also reminded that terms like "sexy" and "handsome" are very subjective. I looked up "sexy cowboy" on one site and it came back with more pictures of women than men. What images of male cowboys I did find were sparse, older than I needed, or much too young, and one guy looked too much like Ricky Martin. Love you Ricky, but totally NOT the image I have in mind for a heterosexual hero who's supposed to favor Tim McGraw with a mustache and cowboy hat.

I have also seen, guys who look no more mature than 15, some "handsome" men are images of little boys in suits, like the ring bearer at a wedding. Some are much much older men- not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not what I'm looking for. One guy looks like Michael T. Weiss who once played Mike on Days of Our Lives when I was a kid and was later the lead on The Pretender. Unfortunately none of my heroes favor him. I saw one guy who looked a LOT like Liam Helmsworth- Chris (a.k.a. Thor) Helmsworth's brother. Another sort of reminded me of Chris Evans, a.k.a. Captain America. Some reminded me of ex-boyfriends, so I have no inclination to use them AT ALL.

Mind you, there are some good looking guys on these stock photo sites, but not all fit the "image" I want and some just don't plain work for me at all. Maybe it's because I originally modeled my characters after actors and actresses, I'm making it harder on myself to pin down "new" images of them, but I have found a few female model images that do fit my leading ladies. The guys are a little harder to fit the mold I'm looking for.

I told my husband that I need one who favors Matthew McConaughey, but you can't search Mr. McConaughey-hey-hey because photos of him actually come up, so I can't even do a "look-alike" search. Later I pointed out a picture of this guy to my husband and said, "See what I mean? Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder."

He laughed and said, "Well, that guy looks a little bit like McConaughey." I scoffed, staring at this pale scrawny guy with a bright orange curly 'fro and said, "No, this guy looks like Carrot Top, before he buffed up." (and I'm still not sure which is scarier.)

It also became increasingly, painfully apparent that husbands don't understand romance novels or their covers, when I grumbled that the guys who could fit my characters had too much facial hair and vice versa. The majority of my heroes don't sport facial hair at all and it's really rare in the business to see heroes on romance novel covers who have facial hair, which led to this discussion between myself and my husband—

"I don't want guys with a lot of facial hair."

Hubby, who has a mustache and goatee asks me, as though he's been offended, "What's wrong with facial hair?"

I said, "Nothing necessarily, it wasn't anything against you or to make you feel inferior, but most book covers don't have men with facial hair."

He asked why, so I told him, "I don't know. Guess most women just don't want a lot of facial hair on their heroes, at least on the cover of romance novels. Maybe a mustache or a 5 o'clock shadow or a pencil line beard, but nothing like those guys on Duck Dynasty."

That elicited a good laugh.

Yeah, hubby's my hero, but in my fictional world- my hero is no Grisly Adams.

#FFF- Buried in Briny Bay by Bobbye Terry @FictionWitches #TMPress

Click Image to purchase on Kindle

A Briny Bay Mystery, Book One

Roxie Turner finds herself up to her neck in trouble when her lifelong nemesis, Georgia Collins, is discovered buried in the town’s landfill. To make matters worse, with her characteristic Southern sass, Roxie has been saying she’d kill Georgia for more than twenty years. In fact, she listed the ways to do the woman in, constantly reminding prominent citizens of her intent. It was all a joke, or so she thought. But the joke turns on her as, suddenly, other dead bodies begin to pile up, all murdered with a technique from Roxie’s list.

Enlisting the assistance of handsome hunk, Greg Norris, Roxie’s sister, Trixie Frye, comes to her aid, bent on uncovering the killer and the truth. Can they find out both before Roxie goes to the big house?

"Sweet Southern sass and screwball mystery... Nobody does it better than Bobbye Terry." --Maddie James, romance author

Author bio: A native Virginian, Bobbye Terry now resides in the cotton fields of West Texas with a Chocolate Lab that has a sock fetish. Bobbye is a multi-published author of romantic comedy, fantasy and suspense. Now, writing solo, except for a possible collaboration on special projects, she continues to write with extensive humor, even in suspense, where southern charm meets macabre reality.

Fun Feature Friday- Purrfect Voyage by Ruth J. Hartman

(Click link above to purchase for Amazon Kindle)
($3.99)

Kitty Carter is used to getting into strange situations when she chases her cat, Arthur. But this latest escapade is just too much! When Arthur chases a mouse at the marina while she's doing research for her book, she follows him down the dock and onto a yacht. Not entirely her plan, since she falls down some stairs and hits her head, and wakes to find herself out to sea. And she and Arthur aren’t the only ones on board!

Review

“This is a well-written, delightfully charming story with equal time given to Kitty, Arthur and George. It's obvious Ms. Hartman loves cats, and her natural humor makes this sweet romantic story sparkle. Trust me, you'll love the ending.” ~Suzanne Barrett, Romance Author

“Ms. Hartman also has a sense of humor. It makes her story fun to read. ~LASR Reviews

“I loved this book, laughed all the way through it, and look forward to more by this author.”~The Romance Studio

Author Bio: Ruth J. Hartman is a published author and licensed dental hygienist. She lives in rural Indiana with her husband of twenty-eight years and their two extremely spoiled cats. Ruth’s published works include a memoir, romance novels, and short stories.

Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty...

Yeah, you know where I'm going with that.

♫...little ball of fur...Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr...♫

What can I say, I'm a fan of The Big Bang Theory, of Sheldon Cooper's strange antics and his bizarre "mother figure" fascination with Penny, the girl across the hallway, who, when paired with his roommate Leonard Hofstadter, make a strange little mother/father/child family dynamic that's cute in its own obscure little way.

But I digress...the soft kitty I'm speaking of today is not the one of Sheldon's-sick-so-Penny-must-sing-Soft-Kitty song fame. Nope, it is my own soft kitty, Miscellaneous, aka Mizzy, Moo-Moo, or The Miz.


Mizzy is 9 years old, will be 10 later this year. I got her while I was pregnant with my daughter, who will also be 10 this year. My husband was working a lot of really long shifts of overtime and our schedule with my stepson was 4 days on 4 days off, so I spent a majority of my time alone. It was a very lonely time in my life, if I'm truly honest, because I had moved hundreds of miles away from my hometown, I didn't really know anyone here except for my husband and his son and a few of his relatives, but at best, they were still simply acquaintances, but not friends.

I missed my own family and all my friends and we live in the boonies, so that just added to the melancholy. I hadn't yet given much thought to picking up my writing again and pursuing it because I still didn't believe in myself enough and so I found myself isolated and more lonely for companionship than I'd ever been in my entire life. So I asked my husband what he thought of me getting a cat.

So, we went looking for kittens. I was about 7 months pregnant and we went to a pet store. They had expensive Himalayan kittens and Siamese, but the ones we could afford were all yellow striped or solid, but they had smooshed faces. You know the kind of cats I'm talking about, it looks like someone punched their noses into their face. An overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety came over me and I told my husband I didn't want one of them. We left the building and before I could open my door and get in our, at the time, Safari van, I burst into tears, squalling. My husband asked me what was wrong and I told him,

"If I don't want ones of those kittens because they're ugly, what's going to happen if our baby's ugly? I'M GOING TO BE A HORRIBLE MOTHER!"

He tried to soothe my worries, but I still felt so guilty for leaving behind one of those kittens. A few days later, a guy my husband worked with called and said his neighbors had some kittens that were about 7-8 weeks old and weaned and asked if we'd want to come out and see them. So we went, way out in the country, further out past where we live.

The family's children had tentatively named her Jelly because at the time the cartoon PB & J Otter was very popular. I took one look at her and I KNEW she was MY cat. She had the same marble markings as a cat my family had when I was growing up-

We had named him Marblehead because of his markings, but somehow he became known as Poo Poo Kitty.

(see image below)

He was a good tom cat who showed up one day after Thanksgiving, got treated to leftover turkey and was with our family for about 7-9 years after that, I've honestly lost track. He went outside to take care of his business, but he loved staying in the house and he even had a favorite chair, the yellow floral wingback chair my mom has in the living room. He was smart too, would come looking for you and meow when he needed to go outside. Sometimes he'd disappear for a while, off tomcatting, but he'd come home, until one day he just didn't. We figure he either found a new home or he died.

So, when I laid eyes on "Jelly" I knew she was my cat. I held her in my lap the entire way home and named her Miscellaneous—Mizzy for short. I got the idea for the name from a favorite writer, Bonnie McCafferty. She had a book out in the early 1990s called Smiling through the Apocalypse, which was a compilation of articles she wrote for newspapers, I believe. It's a hard to find book, even used copies on Amazon don't have a single image of the cover, though I do have the book. She had a cat named Miscellaneous who passed away, but her articles about her cats, being single, life, her guru, etc, were poignant and moved me and so I was moved to name my cat that.

Mizzy is a puzzle at times. She still loves to play on occasion, loves the laser pointer we got her. She scoops her cat food from her bowl onto the floor as though her paw is a ladle. In fact, her food and water bowls are divided by my photo shelf in the kitchen for that very reason. When she was little, she would scoop it over into her water bowl, just to leave soggy cat food floating in it and then she wouldn't drink her water at all.

She tries to meow the word "water" when she needs more and also pulls her bowl out into the kitchen floor in my path so I will see it. She loves scrambled eggs and chicken and gets VERY talkative if she smells it. She stretches out on the couch in front of me, belly-to-belly when I'm relaxing watching TV and touches my face with her paw. I swear her purr has gotten louder as she's aged and there are many Saturday mornings after my husband has left for work that the cat nudges open the bedroom door and gets up on the bed to lay with me, purring loudly, pawing and kneading my arm like a kitten at the momma cat's teat. Sometimes I swear she's more like a baby than a cat. She sometimes acts as though she knows what I say to her and I love her for that unspoken sense of understanding that passes between us when she makes eye contact with me.

She's not a great mouser by any means, but I have to admit- she surprised me today. We've had mice issues in the past couple of weeks and I've caught 4 on sticky traps. I hate mice. They're just so nasty. Blech! The thing that got me? I was talking to my mom yesterday and told her that I caught 4 and that Mizzy tried to meow and take wide-eyed credit for the first one, though she had nothing to do with it. I then said, she's not been doing her job as cat of the house.

This morning she proved me wrong- in the living room beside the recliner was a dead mouse- right next to MY socks I kicked off yesterday evening. If that's not telling, I don't know what is. She had a point to prove either way- Yes, I take back what I said about her not being a good mouser and, it's my understanding that when a cat brings you a present, it's not so much a gift as a "note" about the fact that you, as the human, don't know how to hunt properly.

Yeah, well, I still caught 4 to her 1.