Tag: Romance

Haiku in Chocolate

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 7 Comments

I’ve just checked out The Haiku Foundation’s Troutswirl and read the submissions for the monthly KUKAI. The theme is chocolate and I can see it’s not the easiest subject on which to write a short, proper haiku. Still, an amazing variety have been submitted and readers are invited to vote on which they like best. Some are humorous, some romantic, some are almost risqué. Others deal on the child-labour aspect of harvesting cocoa pods. If you’re interested, you can READ THEM HERE.

Inspired by the various thoughts, here’s a hodge-podge of verses I’ve written on the theme. I trust some will give you a smile.

chocolate bunny
the hesitant child
nibbles the tail
mom’s chocolate chippers
still warm on memory lane
abiding comfort
children’s party
a stack of Oreo wafers
all licked clean
shopping Plus Sizes
the chocolates I’ve eaten lately
come along
eying the curves
of her chocolate cake
his heart races
her longing gaze
wanders once more to his
plate of brownies

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning: RISQUÉ

Morning Pastiche

~ Christine Goodnough ~ Leave a comment

This post will be a mix of various thoughts and events and, since I love unusual words, I’ve chosen PASTICHE for my title. A pastiche is a collection of sorts, bits from here and there. One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions is: a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works. Synonyms: alphabet soup, assortment, collage, crazy quilt, hodgepodge, patchwork, potpourri, etc.

Activities

I cooked a few meals at the senior’s residence in October. The funeral here three weeks ago, the deceased was the husband of one of the regular Villa cooks, so I filled in a few times for her. And will again this month. Yesterday I got the schedule, with fourteen “open” meals I could choose from.
Last Sunday our congregation was small, with many locals attending a wedding in Alberta. The bride being a teacher here for several years, a number of families with school children attended. This coming Sunday there is to be a wedding in our church – and by all reports it will be huge. The bride was also one of our Villa cooks this fall – until the groom offered her other employment.

Wildlife Chez Nous

I’m still setting out water for the wild things. My basins, full at night, are licked right dry almost every morning. I’ve mentioned seeing deer; early one morning two days ago I even saw a very shaggy coyote around my basins.
Sunday morning I looked out about 9:30 and saw a flock of at least a dozen grouse poking around close to the house, between here and the garage, with some nearer the water basins. These ones headed for the back yard. Looking out the front window a few minutes later I saw another, separate, flock of 8-10 out by the road. When we drove out of the lane to go to church one of these was perched in a tree west of the lane. Of course the magpies and sparrows come for the spread-out seed treats. The lame one is still among us.

Weather

Rained in Saskatoon while we were in the city yesterday. We got just a sprinkle overnight here — sigh! No frost though; our fall weather is holding. Christmas is coming up too fast. Stores have been setting out displays since Sept and Michael’s already has their Christmas trees and decorations for sale at half price!

Books & Writing

NaNoWriMo has started! Writers and wanna-be writers around the world are working hard every day to come up with the 1200 words (the average needed) every day to complete 50k in 30 days. I didn’t plan to do it this year, seeing too many other things on my plate right now.

I haven’t been writing, but I’ve been reading — just finished FOREIGN to FAMILIAR by Sarah A Lanier. This is a book everyone should read! Contains vital info for those interacting with folks of a different culture. She shares personal experiences of living in different parts of the world and observing how cultures relate to each other. Her conclusions about relationship-based cultures versus the (primarily northern) take-oriented cultures are very insightful and would help someone avoid the serious faux pas made because mind-sets are so different.

Last week I finished The Aberdyll Onion by Victor Canning. This is a book of short stories, all with unique twists that send a downhill slide back to an upbeat ending. So if you’re one who enjoys a happy-ever-after ending, you may want to read this one. I once read another of his books, Mr Finchley Discovers His England, and found it rather delightful. More like “escape” reading than realistic historical fiction, but it was enjoyable watching him meeting hoboes and rogues as he adventures his way across part of England.

I’ve just finished Sweet Danger, the action adventure-treasure hunt by Margery Allingham. One reader calls it wildly improbably and melodramatic. Yes, you have to suspend belief at times. The villains are ruthless – yet they politely tie the good folks up and never assault the lovely ladies. (Mind you, the death penalty was hanging in those days, so maybe murders were rare.) Albert is so clever that he manages to switch himself with a good friend without his captor ever noticing. Still, he gets his usual captures, shoot outs and near-drownings.

An article this morning on REEDSY, caught my eye. The subject this morning on this site for writers was the popularity of romance novels. Apparently these are Amazon’s best-sellers. The article explains how to choose a situation, or trope, that will interest readers, create sympathetic characters the reader can identify with, how to publish, etc. If you’re interested, you can read more here.

A Great Book Free This Weekend

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 5 Comments

Today I’m sharing the love for a good book. If you enjoy historical fiction, especially World War II stories with a touch of romance, you’ll want to read Dan Walsh’s books. He’s done a lot of research on WW II, especially about the US involvement and German activity in the US. Dan has written several books with this setting as a back drop to an amazing tale.

This story starts out in the present, as a budding writer inherits his grandfather’s home and discovers a manuscript his grandfather left for him to find. As he reads his grandfather’s own history, he’s taken back to the early days of WWII and a subversive plot carried out by the Germans in the US.

Free today and tomorrow at your Amazon store.

Book: Ever Green Romances

~ Christine Goodnough ~ Leave a comment
To Have, To Hold (Ever Green Series Book 1) by [Darlene Polachic]

TO HAVE, TO HOLD
© 2017 by Darlene Polachic
This is the first in the Ever Green Christian romance series and is a free book on Kindle Unlimited for those who are subscribers.

When Janet O’Grady’s wheeler-dealer husband Marty dies in a car crash, she learns that he’s put everything they own under ownership of the company he and his brother own. Hoping to find a bank account with funds she can access, she discovers evidence that he’s been shifting company funds into an offshore account. Marty’s brother soon learns that millions of dollars are missing from the company’s account and he’s sure she’s been party to this deception. He wants his money and she must know where it is.

Leaving almost everything behind, Janet sneaks away in the wee hours with her six-year-old twin boys, running scared, headed for her parents’ home in Washington. She’s hoping they’ll forgive the past, take her in and give her shelter until she can get on her feet again. En route she needs help from a kind stranger.

Her parents think she must be a rich widow now — and she doesn’t tell them the truth, fearing her father’s health is too precarious for such a shock. Her sister Christa”s busy planning her wedding to banker Grant Brooks — who turns out to be the kind stranger who paid for Janet’s gas a few hours before.

Grant, a generous man with an inkling about Janet’s true financial state, offers to let her live in his grandfather’s house in exchange for cleaning it out — his grandparent saved EVERYTHING — so he can sell it. Janet appreciates working with Grant to clean up the place and Janet’s boys, starved for a father’s attention, just love him. She’d like to, too — but Grant’s taken. She’s not about to snitch her sister’s beau.

There are so many things I like about this book! It’s a clean story and well written. The main characters are mostly mature, considerate people; the ones who profess to be Christians do try to practice patience and kindness. The plot is interesting, believable, dramatic in places but not a high suspense. The only thing I couldn’t quite see was Grant as a banker — or a successful banker with Grant’s easy-going nature. He’s personable and conscientious but would a thirty-four-year-old professional money manager let himself drift into an engagement with a woman who loved to spend his money?

That aside, overall, this is an upbeat, enjoyable read — and written by one of the ladies in our writers friendship circle. 🙂

While this is The Evergreen Series, named for the town, each of the six novels is a stand-alone. Here are #2 and #3, which I haven’t read yet:

Hand in Hand

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 3 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is SERENITY

My firs thought was about the Prayer of Serenity we often see on wall mottos and such. It’s a terse but profound statement: if we could just accept some things that can’t be changed, then get with it and change thing we know we could change — how much better this old world would be! And then the crowning touch: the WISDOM to know the difference!

But my response will be this homey little verse by Edgar Guest. For those of us who’ve crossed the bridge into ‘Seniors’, I think this illustrates serenity very nicely:

Hand in Hand

All the way to age we'll go
hand in hand together;
all the way to brows of snow
through every sort of weather.
Rain or shine, blue sky or gray,
joy and sorrow sharing
hand in hand along the way
we'll go bravely faring.

All the way to sunset land
we'll walk down together
side by side and hand in hand
held by Cupid's tether.
Once we danced in early May
steps we'll long remember;
so we'll trip the miles away
even to December.

Let the years go fleeting by!
Gray old age shall find us
still recalling smile and sigh
long since left behind us.
And though feeble we may grow,
worn by wind and weather,
all the way to Age we'll go
hand in hand together.

From his book, Collected Verse of Edgar A Guest
© 1934 by The Reilly & Lee Company