Book Launch - Following His Heart by Donna Fasano

Instead of my usual Friday fare on the blog, today I'm pleased once again to help a fellow author celebrate the launch of a new book. I've known Donna Fasano via social media for some time, and read several of her books. She does tell a good story, and here is her latest, which is the first in a new series. Once I am past the hectic pace of December, I will post a review.

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Following His Heart

by Donna Fasano

Series: Ocean City Boardwalk, #1

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: TODAY!!!

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Sara Carson is a 30-something widow with a busy life. Two fun-loving best friends, a caring mom who needs her, and a thriving sweet shop. What more could a woman want? But when the ancient plumbing in her shop springs a leak and a gorgeous, dark-eyed stranger rushes to her rescue, hilarity unfolds—and Sara quickly sees exactly what she’s been missing.

Something most peculiar draws Landon Richards to Ocean City, Maryland—and to the lovely Sara. This woman touches his heart like no other, and the two of them explore the heady attraction that pulses between them. But haunting dreams have a way of encroaching on reality, and the strange phenomenon that brings these two together will also threaten to tear them apart.

This is the first book in the Ocean City Boardwalk Series, where life for three enterprising women, Sara, Heather, and Cathy, isn't just fun in the sun—love is waiting on those sandy shores!

USA Today Bestselling Author Donna Fasano has written over 30 romance and women's fiction books that have sold 4 million copies worldwide. Her books have won numerous awards and have been published in nearly 2 dozen languages.
 

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Monday Morning Musings- To Cool or Not to Cool

First I just want to say what a great time we had at the launch party for the Winnsboro History Book published by Arcadia Publishing. This was the first time for my co-author, Bill Jones, to experience a book signing event, and he was so surprised that so many people were interested in him and his book. Not me. As the official Winnsboro Historian and an all-around great guy, he  is a real treasure in our community and it was my honor to work with him on this book.

A recent column in the Dallas Morning News was quite interesting, and had some information that I'll admit was a huge surprise. Did you know that air conditioning in the United States has a global-warming impact equivalent to every U.S. household driving an extra 10,000 miles a year?

That is a statistic Leon Neyfakh, a staff writer for the Boston Globe cited in his article A/C Alternatives, where he said, "Refrigerating ourselves isn't the coolest way to live."

I also learned that A/C technology was developed in 1902, and the first window unit was marketed in 1939. Just a bit of trivia should you ever get this question in a game.

Neyfakh is strongly encouraging us to consider adapting to a life without air conditioning, giving lots of examples of ways we can adapt to the heat. He asks why we spend so much money on air conditioning office building just so men and women can go to work in business suits. Good question. Maybe we should take the same approach as our southern neighbors who start the workday early in the morning, stop at noon for a meal and a siesta, then resume work late in the afternoon, followed by an evening meal and time spent outdoors with neighbors.

The article is well worth the read for suggestions on how to minimize our dependence on air conditioning that would also bring other benefits, such as being active outdoors in the community in the evenings. I have fond memories of my childhood summer evenings gathered with neighborhood kids to play games. Adults would sit on porches and visit, and if it was really hot, we'd invite friends to come and sit in the basement and have some iced tea. Basements were always a cool refuge on a sweltering summer day.

Since my internal thermostat no longer works, I cannot imagine living without A/C, but I do believe in limiting it as much as possible. We keep our house thermostat at 78 most of the time and use fans. I wish that more stores and restaurants would keep their thermostats set higher. I've walked into some that are so cold it was like stepping into an arctic blast, and I have learned to take a sweater to some of those places.

What do you think? Could you live without A/C? Do you try to conserve energy while using A/C?

Now something to think about from Mallard Fillmore:

Mallard is holding a news conference: U.S. Foreign-Policy-Issue Brief #32. He reads from a prepared statement, "Obviously, we must determine whether to support the regimes now in power...so they can continue to hate us at current levels... or the rebel forces... so that once they are in power... they can hate us. Alternatively we can back groups that, to keep popular support, pretend to hate us... while behind the scenes... they really hate us, too.

Then from off camera comes, "It's all our fault that they hate us!!"

Mallard says, "I was wondering when the media were gonna show up."

Friday's Odds and Ends

First off, I just have to say a few words about the launch of the Winnsboro pictorial history book that I wrote with our local historian, Bill Jones. The official title is Images of America - Winnsboro, and it was published by Aradia publishing. Regular visitors to my blog have probably figured out that I live near this small town in East Texas, and I have loved it since we moved here almost 12 years ago. Not only is it a beautiful setting with lots of trees and gentle rolling hills, the town is a mecca of creative energy. We have lots of artists, musicians, actors, and writers who live in and around town, and it is a wonderful place to nurture creativity of any kind.

I am thrilled to have this book out to showcase the town and the people, and doubly thrilled to have the launch party this Sunday at the Winnsboro Center for the Arts, which is also dear to my heart as I get to play there on stage a lot. 

NSA chief Army General Keith Alexander recently spoke at a cybersecurity convention and told the attendees, "You're the greatest tech talent anywhere in the world. Help us."

I'm not sure I want the NSA to have any more help in gathering data on what people are doing on the Internet. Yesterday I joked on Facebook about doing research about drugs and drug trafficking for the next book in the Seasons Series. I said I might have to worry about the NSA and then maybe a DEA agent showing up on my doorstep. While that was a joke yesterday, today I wonder. 

Courtland Milloy, a columnist for the Washington Post recently wrote about innovation in schools, or rather the lack of it. In his piece, Let's Teach Innovation Like Amazon, he wrote,

"Have backbone, disagree and commit," Amazon encourages. In all but the very best high schools, that kind of attitude is often quashed.

And once quashed, it's hard to get back. Obedience to the point of subservience, rote learning -- that's what passes for success at many public schools.

After mentioning the fact that Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos likes to find solutions to complex problems in ways that appear messy and encourages teams to tolerate approaches that appear chaotic, Milloy followed with:

In many public schools, students never get a chance to experiment with such styles of problem solving. Many schools no longer offer art. No instrumental music, no choir, no theater and no debate. There's no money, or no room in the standardized curriculum.

After 12 years of that kind of creative repression, a student is hardly prepared for more than servitude on the bottom rungs of the American economic ladder.

Yet still our education systems continue to push for rote, standardization, and very little that encourages critical thinking and creative problem solving. And the arts continue to disappear. I saw the importance of the arts during the drama camp we had recently at our local theatre. Those kids did some amazing creative problem solving as they came up with set designs, props, light designs, story elements, and music. Don't tell me that does not help them academically.

Now for just a bit of fun from Baby Blues:

There are several pictures of Wanda and Darryl at a restaurant. In each picture one of them is holding the baby, Wren, while trying to eat, or take a drink. They are doing all the usual things to quiet a fussy baby, patting her, bouncing her, and swinging her back and forth. In the last panel when the family is walking out the door, Darryl says, "Do you ever wonder what it would be like to sit down for a whole meal?"

Wanda says, "People do that?"

I could really relate to that one. How about you? What do you think about the arts - or lack thereof - in education?