Happy Birthday

To me and to the USA

I thought I would celebrate with some pictures of past fireworks displays that my kids have put on out here at "Grandma's Ranch." There have been some good ones.

 

I will come to announce the winner of my free short stories sometime late in the day. Like my friend, Slim, said yesterday, I will be busy throughout the day with parades and picnics in the real world.

Birthday's, Gifts, and Bargain Books

I know, it's Tuesday and I don't normally post on Tuesday, but there are so many neat things going on this week, and this month, I just had to tell you about them.

First, of course, is my birthday on July Fourth. The other day my friend, Alex J. Cavanaugh suggested we have fireworks to celebrate. What a novel idea. I think I'll try that while my kids are here at "Grandma's Ranch" helping me not to feel too bad about reaching another speed limit number. By the way, it is not the speed limit that is recommended to get the best gas mileage. In fact, one should not even watch his or her gas gauge while driving at this speed. 

It seems that July is the month that lots of publishers and authors have decided to run special sales on their books. I told you last week about the sale Untreed Reads is having on short stories - 4 For the Fourth - in which you can purchase 4 short stories for a dollar.  There's a list of books, as well as all the details on my blog post Special Sale For the Fourth of July.

Tying into the themes of birthdays and gifts, I decided that this year on my birthday, I should give a gift or two, so I am giving one person who comments on any of the blogs from last Wednesday through tomorrow all four of my short stories that are at Untreed Reads. All you have to do is leave a comment, with a contact e-mail please, and I will draw a winner on Thursday morning and arrange the gift. The short stories are; The Visitor, a retelling of the Goldilocks story; Making it Home, a story that was first published in Lady's Circle magazine; The Last Dollar, a holiday story with a message for any time of the year; and SAHM, I Am, a humorous story about a woman and a home computer.

One of my publishers, Books We Love, is taking part in the month-long sale at Smashwords, where many books are priced at 50% off. What a terrific deal, and my short story collection, The Wisdom of Ages, is offered in the sale. As is my YA novel,  Friends Forever. 

Here is the opening of the book:

"Growing up isn’t easy,” Debbie’s mother said as she worked a touch of yellow into the flowers coming to life on a canvas in front of her. “Goodness knows it’s never been easy, but the worst thing I had to worry about when I was your age was whether I’d get a new pimple on the night of my first date. We didn’t have to deal with drugs or wonder if someone was hanging around school with a gun.”

Debbie stood there half-listening, impatient to be off to meet Lauren. She knew her mother meant well, but really. How many times did she have to listen to this same litany?

Her mother’s voice droned on. “I’d never heard of uppers or downers. The only pills I’d ever seen were aspirins. The first time one of those melted in my mouth, I decided I’d never...”

“Mom,” Debbie glanced at the door. “Could we talk about this some other time? I promised to meet Lauren and I’m already late.”

There are lots of great books being offered in these sales, so I hope you find some good books and stories to add to your summer reading list. I have grabbed a few and plan to spend some early mornings on my deck enjoying them.

What do you have on your summer reading list?

Friday's Odds and Ends

I decided to stay away from the news most of this week, therefore I have nothing snarky to say about anything going on in politics or otherwise. Kind of a nice change of pace for me, and certainly better for my blood pressure.

Most of this week was devoted to family. As I said Monday, we all usually gather for the Fourth of July out here in the country, and everyone came, except our middle son and his family. They were in Seattle on the Fourth and built a snowman on Mt. Rainer. How cool is that? I mean really. It was nice and cool for them while the rest of the nation has been sweltering. That family lives in Austin, so it was a real treat for the kids to play in the snow and throw snowballs at Dad and Mom.

Back home on the ranch, the rest of the kids, their spouses, and one grandson were here for the cook-out and fireworks. Some of them came early in the week, and almost everyone stayed until late in the day yesterday. It sure was fun having them all here.

We are in the one small section of East Texas that has had enough rain we are not in a drought zone. I'm sure that could change any time if we don't get rain soon, but we did manage to have a small fireworks show, which is what our son-in-law and one of our sons are usually in charge of. This year our grandson was invited to help them, and his mother said he had been waiting for years to be able to join the uncles in this yearly ritual.

Here are a few shots from this year.

This was one of those accidental shots that actually turned out pretty nice.

 

This was one of those close to the ground fireworks. The center got too bright to catch the detail

I liked this shot best. Looks like feathers.

This looks a little like confetti.

On Monday the annual Youth Drama Camp starts and runs for two weeks. I may not be posting much or even visiting the blog very often until after it is finished. The camp is all day, every day, with performances the final weekend. There is always a lot to do during the hours the kids are there, as well as later in the day and evening preparing for the performances, so that keeps me very busy.

On another note, my romantic suspense novel, One Small Victory, is one of  four finalists for Book of the Month at iBookBuzz.com. It was chosen by the book club membership out of all the submissions, and I was quite thrilled to be selected as a finalist. I am also very excited to see that the book is staying at the top in the number of votes. Voting is not restricted to members of the club, so if you would like to help me stay at the top, here is a link to vote.  Voting runs through July 17th.

Happy Fourth of July

Just making a brief appearance today to wish all my American friends a Happy Fourth of July. Hope you are having a wonderful holiday weekend with lots of friends, family, and good times. 

My long-time followers may recall that I also celebrate my birthday on the Fourth, although I am not nearly as old as the U.S.A. So I am partying all weekend with my husband and our son and our new daughter-in-law. Tomorrow, some of the other kids will be out and we will have a Texas BBQ. (That's barbecue for all you non-Texans.) So I will not have my regular posts today or tomorrow.

The kids like to come out to Grandma's Ranch for the Fourth because we can usually do our own fireworks show in my front pasture, but not this year. We are under a burn ban and fireworks are limited to a few places where the volunteer fire departments are set up to handle any flare ups that may occur. Some of the kids joked that if we couldn't do fireworks there was no reason to come for my birthday, but they were just giving me a hard time. They really like to do that.

Anyway, we are going to have to be satisfied with looking at pictures of fireworks from last year and the year before.

Awards and other stuff

I love having company. When our whole family gets together we have a great time. We eat lots of delicious food that everyone pitches in to prepare. We play lots of games. If weather permits we go to the lake and play in the water. We eat more delicious food....

That was pretty much the scenario at Grandma's Ranch the past five days. Most of our kids and grandkids came to celebrate the Fourth and my birthday.

We had our own fireworks show and I had fun taking pictures. I love my camera that has a setting just for fireworks.

Since I was so busy with family, I was not online much and didn't notice right away that Helen Ginger, who writes a great blog Straight From Hel gave me an award. She passed on the "You Are My Sunshine Award to five bloggers who brighten my day with their posts, their blogs, and their comments."

First I want to thank Helen for giving me the award. It is quite an honor, and now I will now pass it on to a few bloggers who brighten my day...

Mary at Giggles and Guns

Mason at Thoughts In Progress

Tracy at I'm Just a Guy

Elizabeth at Mystery Writing is Murder

Ginger at Dishin' It Out

I hope you enjoy my friends as much as I do.

The Party's Over

The last of my company left today, so now I have no more excuses for not working. Darn. I sure was enjoying myself. I guess that is one reason that I like having my birthday on the Fourth of July.

I was playing the "It's my birthday" card all weekend until one of our sons reminded us that it was America's birthday, too. And since he is American, he could play that birthday card. Double Darn. .

In addition to lots of company and lots of good food, I got lots of neat presents. New books to read. An exercise mat so I can work off all this good food. Some lotions to make me all soft and pretty, and a new camera.

This is a Nikon Coolpiix P90, so I can no longer blame the quality of the pictures I take for WinnsboroToday.com on the old camera I was using.

One of the neat features this camera has is a setting for taking pictures of fireworks automatically. My daughter has that feature on her camera, too, so Saturday night we shot a whole bunch of pictures as the guys set off the fireworks.

Here are a couple of the better shots I managed.



My husband gave me the camera, and as I was shooting the pictures that night, I realized that he had given me a 35mm camera about 40 years ago, and one of the first things I did with that one was take pictures of fireworks.

I still have those prints in an album, and it was really neat to make that connection from so long ago to the present.