Sheila's Guests and Reviews

They tell me Christmas is coming and they must be right as my Mum always brings it with her from England and she's just arrived. However, most people seem to feel Santa's the one bringing Christmas, so I'm delighted to welcome author Monty J McClaine to my blog with his Christmas Book, Santa's Rescue Dog. It's book 5 of a rather cool series (of course it's cool - there's a dog in it!) Ebook, paperback and Audio book available from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CO0OOL4 ’ Ebook, paperback and Audio book available from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ECP5UXA Ebook, paperback and Audio book available from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HP2IAHU Ebook, paperback and Audio book available from: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KUAYOXS  Ebook paperback and audio book available fro...

Can books be delayed by snow? Can book reviews? Snow wasn't the only delay of course - there was an internet provider who unexpectedly closed our account for us, another one that found their cable had been cut, snow that meant no one could dig to lay a new cable, Christmas that meant no one could be assigned to laying a new cable, more snow, new cable, new internet, then power outages so the new internet went out, then... Somewhere in there I meant to post this, but it landed in drafts. Enjoy. Someone expressed surprise recently on learning that I like to draw as well as to write. In high school I insisted on studying art at the same as all my "academic" subjects. I couldn't imagine not having at least some time in the week scheduled for enjoying myself (and I'd given up English by then--life was all math and physics--all fun enough, but never done just for me). I sketched with multiple pencils of different thickness and types of lead. I painted in water-color...

When Shelfari closed and Goodreads absorbed its reviews, I found myself landed with tons of new shelves on my Goodreads page. Every tag was now a permanent link between (some of the) books I'd read. And the books I'd so carefully shelved before were now scattered among the morass. One tag I'd used on Shelfari but not Goodreads was "literary," which got me wondering, what did I mean when labeled a book that way. Is all writing literature? Do the books I labeled literary somehow have more literary merit? Or maybe it's lit if it's character driven and just fiction otherwise? Which then begs the other question, what is "just fiction"? I remember when I was growing up, I graduated from the children's to the adult library, aged around 10, and delighted in those yellow backed Golancz science fiction novels. My granddad read James Bond adventures and Westerns, so of course I read all of those too. Mum and Dad had library books hidden under the be...

I want to catch up on book reviews. I want to catch up on reading, writing, editing, and just being me. I want to catch up! But can I really help myself--can you or anyone else really help yourself--just say "I want, I need" and somehow do it? Doesn't time keep slipping through your hands, just like mine, as the urgent takes over from the necessary, and the committed slips and slides to another date. I'll have to edit the deadlines on that review list again... Of course, it's snowing and icy outside so those unwritten reviews might slide like those cars swerving when the wheel is turned and heading the wrong way. My promises might be hid under dark gray clouds or blowing in the wind. And my urgent needs have been book sales and getting the bedroom ready for my mum to visit. Plus it's way too near to Christmas! Help! But can I really help myself? This month I've read various books that offer tidbits of help, tidbits (and larger) of faith to help, and ...