Books, Movies, and Chinese Food

With a freshly broken heart, Gretchen Hanover swaps her wedding plans for home improvement shows---she's going to flip a house! But when the place turns out to be in worse condition than she realized, her retired contractor father needs help and calls in carpenter Noah Campbell. A whimsical look at building relationships and renovating hearts! If you are a fan of the HGTV channel, you will love this book. I myself have only watched a couple episodes of some of the shows, usually while I'm channel surfing. My mother became a fan of the channel after staying with us one weekend and proceeded to watch over 5 hours straight of shows. This book focuses on the art of house flipping, where a person buys a house usually in disarray, renovates it completely and then goes back and sells it to make a profit. Gretchen seems to make a rash decision to pursue a dream of becoming a house flipper and uses up most of her savings to buy a decrepit house. Unfortunately things don't go as...

In Deadlock , the Zarbo brothers are seasoned outlaws with a reputation for killing. Already wanted in two states, they set their sights on Colorado and a string of bank robberies. They don’t count on running into Chief U.S. Marshal John Brockman. John arrests Lee Zarbo, but his brothers remain in hiding. Lee’s sentence to death by hanging incites them to desperate measures. They’ll do anything to get him out alive. Even kidnap the Chief U.S. Marshal’s daughter. When John learns of his young daughter’s captivity and the conditions for her release, he must turn to the Lord for direction. It takes all the faith he can muster to wait for the answer. Without freeing a dangerous criminal, can John find Ginny before they kill her? Al Lacy is an evangelist and author of more than one hundred historical and Western novels, including the Journeys of the Stranger, Angel of Mercy, and Mail Order Bride series, with more than three million books in print. JoAnna Lacy, Al’s wife and longtime collab...

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA COVER 1 – Go to “Fake Name Generator” or click http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ The name that appears is your author name. 2 – Go to “Random Word Generator” or click http://www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title. 3 – Go to “FlickrCC” or click http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/index.php Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover. 4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik , or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in. 5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

Thanks to Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog , I was able to get sneak preview passes to see this movie. Which was totally awesome since a) movie tickets in the DC Metro area are expensive so I probably wouldn't have seen this movie til it came out on DVD and b) we got to go to a part of DC we hadn't been before yet which was really nice and c) the day before our car had gotten broken into and our GPS unit stolen. Even more fun was that I got to sit next to Jenn from Jenn's Bookshelves as she had gotten passes too. I brought my husband along because he's not one to pass up a free movie. He didn't mind going to see a chick flick, after all he added the Romance Writers of America Literacy signing with me. I'm one of the few people who hav en't read this book yet, so I honestly had no idea what to expect going into to the movie. Other than the trailer, I was pretty clueless about the storyline. I discussed this with my husband on the way home and we ...

After many months, I finally have a clip of the wedding to share with you. I was actually going to post the entire ceremony but it's way too big to upload so I have for you the end of the ceremony and the recessional. Please turn up your speakers before you press play and enjoy! (And in case you were wondering, yes the entire song was played :)

When you're in the trenches, sometimes you're up to your neck in mud. That's the not-so-glamorous life of a pastor's wife. Felicia's family is...complicated. That's putting it nicely. Now they're flying in from LA -- all at once -- to stay with her...just when her brother-in-law, Javier, and Mama aren't even speaking to each other. And the whole church will be there to witness the feud. Mimi has a lot on her mind with her four energetic kids -- especially Milo the screamer, with his Pavarotti voice. Then her live-in alcoholic dad starts to mow their lawn at midnight. Lisa has her hands full with loudmouth Tom Graves and the other troublemakers at Red River Assembly. Then vicious rumors start to fly about the Barton family...and the attacks and threats get increasingly personal. Jennifer is pushing her adopted daughter, Carys, in a stroller, when she notices a black town car -- the same car she's seen several times over the past week. Could someone b...

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book! You never know when I might play a wild card on you! Today's Wild Card author is: Beth Pattillo and the book: Sweetgum Ladies Knit For Love WaterBrook Press (June 2, 2009) ABOUT THE AUTHOR: RITA Award–winning Beth Pattillo combines her love of knitting and books in her engaging Sweetgum series. An ordained minister in the Christian Church, Pattillo served churches in Missouri and Tennessee before founding Faith Leader, a spiritual leadership development program. Pattillo is the married mother of two children. She liv...

A note from Deborah: Last year I reviewed the book A Job to Kill For here on my blog. I really enjoyed it and I was interested in how the author came up with the series and the characters. Well, my wish was granted and I'm pleased to welcome author Janice Kaplan to my blog. People come to my website all the time to ask me decorating questions. And here’s the problem: I never know how to answer. I’m a writer, an editor and a TV producer. But Lacy Fields, the heroine of my mystery series, is an interior decorator with an excellent eye for antiques. She can recognize an Aubusson carpet or a Rothko painting from across the room. Early in the first book, “Looks To Die For,” her husband, a famous LA plastic surgeon, is accused of murder. When the police come into the house to arrest him, Lacy worries about their shoes on the Italian marble staircase. At the start of the latest, “A Job To Kill For,” Lacy has decorated a penthouse apartment top-to-bottom in three weeks—with a fifteen-tho...

In The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper , the future is clearly mapped out for New York socialite Eugenia “Gennie” Cooper, but she secretly longs to slip into the boots of her favorite dime-novel heroine and experience just one adventure before settling down. When the opportunity arises, Gennie jumps at the chance to experience the Wild West, but her plans go awry when she is drawn into the lives of silver baron Daniel Beck and his daughter and finds herself caring for them more than is prudent–especially as she’s supposed to go back to New York and marry another man. As Gennie adapts to the rough-and-tumble world of 1880s Colorado, she must decide whether her future lies with the enigmatic Daniel Beck or back home with the life planned for her since birth. The question is whether Daniel’s past–and disgruntled miners bent on revenge–will take that choice away from her. Kathleen Y’Barbo is the best-selling, award-winning author of more than thirty novels, novellas, and young adult b...

Several weeks before her mysterious death, Ben Buckley's wife met a woman who "turned her on to religion"---radically interrupting their happy marriage. Angry for how he treated her, Ben now hides behind walls of grief, broken relationships, and rigid routine. But when two unlikely people enter his narrow world, will he let down his guard? This is a book about family. It's a story that you can't read fast, you have to let it sink in slowly. For readers familiar with Turner's previous works, the setting returns to Derby, South Carolina where folks in the town like to take things slow and easy. This time we're introduced to Ben, a widower who's never gotten over the unsolved murder of his wife. Due to his unresolved feelings, his relationships with his children have severely declined over the years. It's sad to see how a simple act can change the course of a person's personality and communication for the rest of their lives. I thought it wa...

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing The Frontiersman’s Daughter Revell (September 1, 2009) by Laura Frantz ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I was born and raised in Kentucky and my love of history goes deep - way back to the 18th-century when my family first came into the Bluegrass State. It will always be home to me, even though I now live with my husband, Randy, and my sons, Wyatt and Paul, in the misty woods of northwest Washington. I go back as often as I can to visit family and all the old haunts that I love. I grew up playing on the original site of Fort Boonesborough and swimming in the Kentucky River and climbing the Pinnacle near Berea and watching the great outdoor dramas of the early settlers. Often my cousins and brother and I would play in my Granny's attic and dress up in the pioneer costumes she made us and pretend to be Daniel Boone, Rebecca, Jemima, or the Shawnee. As I grew up I began to write stories and they were always historical, filled with the lor...

A small-town summer... The days are long and lazy, the corn is high, the sunflowers are in bloom, and everyone in Bedford is gearing up for the biggest event of the summer: the annual county fair. But when a Nashville music producer approaches Bob about using Heather Creek Farm to film a country star's new music video, he and Charlotte are faced with a dilemma. Will they allow the glamour and enticements of big-city life to encroach upon their peaceful home? Will the excitement of celebrity drown out the simple joys of summer? As you've probably seen on this blog, I'm a huge fan of the Home to Heather Creek series. Why is that? It's because of it's down to earth, good natured, comfort style reading. When I read one of these books, I'm able to escape to a simple life, down on the farm, with folks that love each other even while they're still getting in all sorts of scrapes and bangs. I also really enjoy how even though this series is written by several dif...

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book! You never know when I might play a wild card on you! Today's Wild Card author is: Gilbert Morris and the book: Honor in the Dust Howard Books (August 25, 2009) ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gilbert Morris is the bestselling author of more than 200 novels, several of which won Christy and Silver Angel Awards. He is a retired English professor, who lives in Gulf Shores, AL, with his family. Visit the author's website . AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER: May 1497 Sussex County, England- Claiborn Winslow leaned forward and patted hi...