WAHOO! BOOK TWO!

Thank you, Lia Brown, editor at Avalon!  Love Under a Dark Sky by Shellie Foltz to be published in early to mid-2011!!!!  See the trailer above for a few hints of what's coming your way!  

For Lucas and Jennifer

Lucas and Jennifer
Lucas and Jennifer:  This is for you - with love.  Mom

Two Harbors 2010

Our favorite summer destination. Breakwater House was built in the early part of last century. What a great place to stay! Natalie handled it all like a champ. She loved walking by Lake Superior and sniffing some sort of weed along the paths that we must not have in Missouri. It was sure different having little four paws along, but well worth the extra efforts to accommodate her. Year four and many happy returns to Two Harbors! Two Harbors 2010

Having a Good Clear Out

The Cast of As Time Goes By

As Time Goes By became a fast favorite for me when I discovered it on PBS one Saturday night years ago.  Back in the days of VCRs.  I got hooked from the moment I caught Jean and Lionel, Judy, Alistair, and Sandy; not to mention Rocky and Madge and the indomitable Mrs. Bale.  The last time I loved a British sitcom was in college - a vulgar show in the '80s called The Young Ones.  I should be ashamed to admit it, but I do own the boxed set and do get it out every now and then to watch.  Only when Bruce isn't home, though.  He hates it.  BUT, he does enjoy As Time Goes By and even encouraged me to replace our worn out video tapes of it a few years ago with the complete dvd set.  A bargain at any price as many times as we've watched the series all the way through.  In fact, recently Bruce suggested we watch it from beginning to end again this summer.  I think it's a wonderful plan!

In one of the episodes, Jean is having a clear out.  If I hadn't been watching I wouldn't have realized it just meant cleaning out the closet (or cupboard, or whatever).  Lionel took this to mean that something was wrong - in his experience women had clear outs when something was bothering them.  I do find a good clear out to be therapeutic, but I also find it to be fun - in the right frame of mind.  My clear outs tend to come at the end of Christmas vacation from school after the tree is down and before the new year.  Last winter my kitchen got cleared out and, amazingly, the cupboards still look nice and "rationalized".  

Usually, I plan for my clear outs.  You know, build up to them.  Last week, however, I had one sort of sneak up on me.  After staying at Breakwater House in Two Harbors for a week, I decided our house could have some of the features about that one that I really enjoyed.  Namely, a more open and airy feel to it.  So, I transformed my library into a breakfast room and the dining room became a little sitting area which my mother says is called a "morning room".  I had fun choosing the cushions and deciding which pictures would hang in which rooms once the change was made and did it all for relatively little money.  But, when it came time to sort through all those books in the library and decide which ones to leave out and which to store, when it came time to figure out how we were going to keep compact discs that had been stacked inside little peach crate tables that were going for other uses now organized and accessible, when it came time to deal with the years and years of magazines I'd accumulated . . . well, let's just say a lesser man would have said, "This was your idea, not mine" (or something profane) and walked away.  Instead, Bruce helped me.

I like that he takes an interest in our home.  I like that he's pleased with how it looks and feels.  I like that he doesn't complain when I want to change something.  He's not an eager project-taker-oner and there are certain things he'd just as soon not do, like painting.  But, I've never known him to be a brute about anything I wanted to do.  He may drag his feet a little sometimes, but when it comes down to it, even if I can't, for whatever reason, do the things it takes to make an idea work, he helps me get it done.  In the past twelve years, he has endeavored to hang checked wallpaper for me, paint a whole lot of kitchen cupboards a rich orange maple, carry cinder blocks to the second floor to build a desk tall enough that I could see out the dormer window while sitting at it (then move them from the second floor to the basement some years later when I grew tired of the desk), maneuver innumerable heavy pieces of furniture up or down a narrow staircase that curves at the top, and transform the room that was Lucas' dark dungeon bedroom into a beach room complete with new ceiling fan blades and pulls while I was away at a conference.  He has hauled at least a hundred bulging bags of clothes and shoes from my closet to the car trunk to the Salvation Army donation box, drilled holes in the top of an old table on our porch to anchor down a pretty little Christmas tree that kept blowing over in the wind, and hosted dozens of open houses without a complaint.  

I see men who are ugly about their wives' little projects; who sometimes are flat mean about having to be involved in some kind of home project.  If Bruce gets bored (and I'm sure he does) with my myriad and only sometimes ludicrous suggestions of how to improve our home, he never shows it.  He's learned the art of letting me talk it through.  Probably he's hoping I'll talk myself out of it, but if I don't, he's right there to help and encourage.  And always to praise the efforts when we're through.

As time goes by, I find out more and more things to love about the man I love.  As time goes by my heart becomes more and more satisfied with our life together.  As time goes by, I learn how beautiful love can be and how precious it is to trust your husband with your thoughts, your hopes, your fears - even if they are silly ones like, "But what if we move the table down the hall and I hate it?"  His answer is, "Live with it a year and if you still don't like it, we'll move it back."  But, I know he'd do it that same night to just please me.  

So, all this to say:  having a clear out is a great way to spend time together.  You find things long forgotten, you problem-solve together giving each other a chance to shine and be the hero, you get to stand back when you're done and experience that satisfaction of working together for a common goal, and you get to crash in each others arms that night too exhausted to do anything but watch a favorite something together.  Who knew clear outs could be so romantic?

Announcing a New Blog

For those of you who are fairly regular readers of Life as a Great Romance and who are Christian, you might be interested in a new blog I've launched:  Live Quietly http://livequiet.blogspot.com (okay, the web address is livequiet, not livequietly, but that url was already taken; however, I couldn't bear to have a grammatically incorrect title on my blog).  While Life as a Great Romance is designed to inspire the feelings of romance and beauty, to make suggestions for how you can experience romantic living whoever you are, Live Quietly is specifically geared toward a Christian audience and is meant to help readers cultivate the quiet life we're admonished to live in I Thessalonians 4:11-12.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I've posted twice and hope to every day.  Please join me there and be sure to leave your comments!

Correction and Apologies

I wrongly attributed the Christian Chick Lit post to Sarah Pulliam Bailey.  The author of the post is Ruth Moon and Ms. Bailey edited it.  Thanks for letting me know!

Shellie

Christian Chick Lit

I just read this outstanding post on Her.meneutics (a blog I wish I remembered to read more often than I do, because it features the writings of some of the most outstanding Christian thinkers of our time).  The question posed by Sarah Pulliam Bailey is one I've grappled with as a writer.  My novel, No Penalty for Love, and the subsequent work now under consideration, are what is termed wholesome romance.  In fact, in the editing stages I was asked to remove some of the pointedly Christian scenes in the novel because this is not what the secular publishing company did.  As Bailey says, it was a matter of subtraction.

Funny that just this morning I was praying about writing.  I feel pressured, from the outside sometimes and from within at other times, to write Christian fiction.  It shouldn't be a problem.  I loved writing the plays for Stained Glass Theatre.  As a Christian, the work should just be an extension of who I am - just like when I read something I bring a Christian worldview to it, when I write I do the same thing.  The trouble is that predominate formula Bailey speaks of that treats faith in God as something of a "golden key" or "get out of jail free card".  It absolutely is not!

Ah, Audrey

Do you and your loved one have a song?  Ours is The Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady.  It's the show Bruce took me to see on the night he first kissed me.  Ahhh.

We laugh at the line in Sleepless in Seattle:  "You don't want to be in love.  You want to be in love in a movie."  Well, who doesn't?  Swelling music.  Carefully crafted words.  Beautiful scenery.  Gorgeous costumes.  And people who look like Audrey Hepburn.  Ah, Audrey.  If I could look like anyone at all besides myself it would be Audrey.

Last night we went to see My Fair Lady at the Gillioz.  I was a little concerned because during the overture the man down the row from me was whistling along and humming and going "bomp, bomp, bomp" along with the tunes.  But, as Audrey always does, she worked her magic from the screen and he hushed, swallowed up by beauty.

I think that perhaps my favorite Audrey movie is Roman Holiday.  She even looks terrific with short short hair.  Then, there's Breakfast at Tiffany's which, I have to admit, I did not like at all the first time I saw it.  But, I tried it again and also saw it at an outdoor theater in Eureka Springs where they had an Audrey lookalike contest (okay, the entrants were mostly men, but when you're trying to be Audrey you can carry it off - maybe).

I read once that her son said Audrey always took an afternoon nap and when she awoke ate one small piece of chocolate.  How lovely.  How genteel.  How Audrey.

The movie last night got me thinking about how there's not really a clear definition or universally accepted image of feminine anymore.  We're very casual.  I am very casual.  But, when you see those old movies, doesn't something in you just yearn to put on a string of pearls and a dress?  To walk like you're carrying a teacup on top of your head?  To laugh politely and say things like "charming"?  Not that I want to give up all the advances we've earned as women, but once in a while it would be nice to feel like Audrey looks.  Utterly feminine.  Dewey, sweet, romantic.  I think it would be charming.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame - If You Must

Lord Stanley's Cup has been won.  Summer has officially begun.  Now, take me out to the ballgame.

Though sports were never high up my list - in fact, I used to become quite irritated with people who were sports fans - I have come to appreciate them since I got married.  I knew Bruce enjoyed sports and so one of the first things I did when I thought we might be getting serious was to check out a book on the basics of football so I could have at least an understanding of what was going on when we watched.  Translating what was in print to what was on the field, though, was just not happening for me.  It was several years later when I decided it would be nice if I would watch the Superbowl with him that I sat down for parts of some of the Sunday games and asked him to explain some of the plays.  Unlike Bruce's attempt at humor at the first football game we attended together when he told me the players in the odd-numbered jerseys were running backs and they had to run backward in the game (how dumb did he think I was?), he explained as I asked and over the course of the season I learned enough to be able to watch the Superbowl that year and "get it".

One of the first presents I got Bruce after we were married was tickets to a St. Louis Blues game and a Blues jersey.  Extravagant for a first-year teacher with student loans to pay, but I really wanted to please him.  Though it pains me to admit it now, I was not struck with the game.  Our seats were high up and I really couldn't understand what just looked like a bunch of scrambling on the ice.  (If you want to know my real first impressions of the game, read Patricia's impressions in No Penalty for Love - yeah, that's me, sitting there wondering what is going on and why everyone is so enthralled.)  Because I was so unimpressed, I went a little begrudgingly to my first Missouri State University Ice Bears game.  The rest is history on that one - I love hockey now!

But, since the Blackhawks beat the Flyers last night, we've settled into baseball season which is my least favorite sport.  Try as I might, I just can't relax for fear that I'm going to get hit with a foul ball!  But, I realize the odds are against that happening and Bruce enjoys the leisurely pace of summer's greatest pastime (or so it's called - my own greatest summer pastime is reading a Grisham novel on the deck with a glass of iced tea), so I go.  Tonight we're going to watch the Springfield Cardinals play the Tulsa Drillers.  In July we're off to St. Louis to see the Big Birds play.  The new stadium has been open for something like five years now and Bruce has wanted to see it since it opened.  I bought the tickets for his birthday, but couldn't wait that long to give them to him.  If you go on the Cardinals' website and look at a view from the seats, you can see what we'll be seeing:  a gorgeous skyline with the Arch just past the scoreboard.  Pray for no rain!

My point is that romance can be found anywhere.  Even at a sporting event.  Sometimes learning something new because you know it would please your loved one is a nice thing to do.  Sometimes you even discover a new interest yourself (or, in my case a new interest and inspiration to write).  What is your loved one interested in that makes you roll your eyes and wish you were dead?  Learn something about it just to please him.  Comfort in a relationship is great - being at ease with one another is much to be desired!  But, a little stretch now and then can put a spring in your step and a song in your heart:  Take me out to the ballgame!

Be Careful, Little Hands, What You Tweet

I started reading an article in the ALA magazine last night and I'm still thinking about it this morning.  It said that Twitter has given the Library of Congress permission to archive its Tweets.  The claim was that the Tweets provide valuable information into our culture.  So, I started wondering what the 40 or so (?) Tweets I've published over the past year or so (?) say about me.  How much of myself and my cultural values can one glean from reading 140 characters of type composed out of boredom, mainly?