Gifting Books Giveaway Hop - Win an E-Book

">

A Widow - A Stranger

A depression era farm - they both claim

A story of love and endurance - and a romance to take your breath away.

It's the Christmas season and what better time to have something like the Gifting Books Giveaway Hop?  Ready to take a break from shopping and endless Christmas parties - thinking of maybe settling down with a good book?  Then here's a good place to start.  Just follow the trail of blogs to books, books and more books.  

In the theme of this hop -  the special book I was gifted, and there's been so many in m life that I'd like to mention but one stands out.  It goes back to childhood.  As a child I wanted Heidi in the worst way but Heidi was a few years away from making a repackaged come back.  In fact, the book at that point was pretty much out of print in Canada - hard to believe now, when a multitude of variations and translations are available.  My mother found the book in a local second hand store - red-cloth bound with that dusty delicate feel of a very old book, the pages yellow and worn and tinted with a smell of mildew and dust.  I treasured that book.

So to celebrate the season, I'm giving away another book that's special to me.  One I wrote, an e-copy of my first book  "From the Dust" to one commenter over the course of the hop.  

Drop by and leave a note and I'll enter you for a chance to win.  What book did you receive that was special?

giveaway-hop/">ng books"

src="http://imageshack.us/a/img820/5179/giftingbooks.png" alt="gifting books

giveaway hop" width="305" height="438" />

Folllow the links below to more books.
Let's Hop!!

Underground Culture - Inspiration in the Shadows

It's interesting how changing what appears when you open your back door lifts a floodgate that might be masking your imagination.  My imagination needed a jump start and my backpack needed dusting off.  So if you've been paying attention to my spotty blogging, I took a trip and met a whole new culture and another group of people.  And while much is the same, a lot is different.  The weather for one.  It's averaged mid twenties here.  While at home it's wavering between single digits over zero and -20 - bear in mind that's all Celsius and no I'm not converting it for you, I'm having enough problems of my own with that.

Like - "Why the heck are you driving so fast?"  I believe I asked...before considering conversion possibilities.  "The speed limit is 35."  35 miles an hour that is, not kilometers.  But of course I have my neck cricked at an odd angle looking for the local sheriff anyway.  I've read about him and all his tough guy patrolling of borders (hey, I'm just reporting it as I read it) hunting for smuggling of all kinds.

And then there are the other kinds of stories, those not quite so serious and in some instances, just plain entertaining.  Stories of aliens from another planet and even alien burrows, lost gold and forgotten mines, Elvis sightings and...  Yes, the stories go on, urban legends, fodder for tourists and in some instances, real mysteries. 

Underground culture, the best feeding ground for a writer's imagination.  Don't get me wrong, every place has it, you're just more apt to look for it when you're new to a place.  That's one of the lures of travel - the newness of it all. 

So the notebook is out, the pen is out of ink and there's little time and more stories to be had. 

There's secrets in those shadows.

What makes your day?

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

Work is Interfering with my Golf Game

Is it golf or work that's the problem?  I don't know but a working vacation is really kind of a misnomer.  It worked real well in the beginning - that is the beginning when we'd recently arrived and the days stretched ahead unmapped, uncharted and seemingly never-ending.  Then, in the beginning that is,  I'd get up first thing in the morning, have a couple of hours to myself before a swim in the pool and starting the day.

Now the days are closing in - vacation is slipping away and talk of home is on the horizon.  I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.   The conversation filtering from outside is a discussion with the pool boy who obviously is a native of the warmer south.  He wants to know if anyone works outside in the winter. 

Roll that question back - I'm not sure if anyone stops working outside in the winter.  That's what polar fleece was made for and other scientific technologies that swear your nether parts won't freeze off.  

Too hot - too cold.  There are bragging rights on how hot or how cold a place can get.  Haven't you noticed that?  People love to brag about their temperature extremes.  Me, I'd rather just have a nice consistent high 20's Celsius or even a tad warmer and that would be perfect.

Perfect, that's here, right now - except for the prickles and brambles but that's another story.  Hmmm - best get in my golf games, laps and that shortened work day while there's still time. 

But, you know,  I'm kind of looking forward to my schedule especially with two projects on the go and a release in the immediate future (more on that and all the fun coming up). 

In the meantime - here's a view of Christmas down south.

Any weather getaways or a working vacation on your horizon?

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

How Far Are You Willing To Go?

You know what you want but how far are you willing to go to get it?

While in Mesa our lives brushed briefly with an artist. Painting a mural on a building in Mesa.  The mural was a mirage designed to look like a melting building - melting in the Arizona heat.  It took six months to complete it and he and his girlfriend lived in a, not very large trailer, in the parking lot until it was done.  A glance at the worn, sun-faded trailer sitting on the blacktop made me think of one thing, suffering for one's art. 



Don't know if I'm willing to go there but how far are most of us willing to go for whatever our dream might be.  Are we just paying lip service to a dream or are we out there hauling ass trying to make it happen.  I read a blog today that said the only one we can control is ourselves and that's true. 

In the meantime watch out for the brambles and thorns in life - I heard some of them can make you veer just a tad.

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

I'm So Alone...We All Are

Travel takes us out of our norm and into the norm of other people and places.  Usually, as tourists, we're looking through the telescope of distance and can only assume what another person's reality might be.  But some days we make contact.

Today, was one of those days.  While feeling our way around our new stomping grounds, we headed into Mesa.  And it was there where our lives knocked up against the life of an older woman on the precipice of change.  She'd just lost her husband and in the throes of fresh grief she was uprooting herself and selling her house and belongings.

The story came out in a few questions that were innocent enough - strangers getting to know each other.  But soon it was clear that we were entering shaky ground.  But grief is a strange beast.  Some of us curl up and shutdown and others of us just want to talk.  We listened as she spoke of a man we would never meet and recounted stories that began with we when it was clear there was now, only an I. 

Reality.  It was in the tears that were so close to the surface and that sad but resigned half-smile on her face.  It was as if the smile was a shadow of a personality in happier times and the house, a reminder of what she no longer had.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

Sometimes storms come out of no where.

Her fear echoed in that sad statement.

Real life - maybe that's why many of us love romances where we're guaranteed the happy ending.  We all know love comes with strings, long sticky, often sorrowful ones.  If you love you may some day grieve.  

It's those feelings that slap us around and knock us to the ground that in the end, and this isn't like it sounds but - are a writer's feeding ground.  I know I was close to tears myself.  It felt like I had been widowed by the death of a man I had never met.  But it is those emotions that I'll remember a year, two or even ten from now.  And while I probably will never forget her, it won't be that woman or her circumstance I'll write about, but the emotion I briefly touched, somehow - somewhere it will be there.
 

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

Where in the world am I...?

Where in the world am I...

I know it's a strange question, I should know, shouldn't I?  It seems in the last week or so I've been many places.  It's been a rush of craft/flea market sales, contests and packing, not to mention travel.  And even though I know where I am, I'm feeling slightly disorientated.  I've been offline for awhile, skidding across country borders in search of some nicer weather.

Instead I've ran from warmish-cool fall temperatures and no snow in Canada only to discover the further south we went, the colder it got.  In fact, the snow that we hadn't seen up north was hundreds of miles south courtesy of Blizzard Brutus that was moving in across some of the northern states.  We drove a step ahead of that storm for most of the way, getting caught on icy highways only in New Mexico.  But that's another story and you'll have to bear with me as I backtrack here, there and everywhere.

Somewhere in New Mexico

But weather is what it is and often there's no second-guessing it, unless of course you own a pig spleen or two.  A strange prairies' lore for weather forecasting.

So we're here in Arizona, in one piece, the weather has turned again, for the better, and I'm just trying to catch my breath
It's strange typing this by a pool that I was recently swimming in with temperatures only now dipping enough for a light sweater.  I've been told that home was hit by the long arm of Eh Tu Brutus - read Brutus the Blizzard and a foot of snow landed as temperatures plummeted since we left.  I glance over at the pool and think I'll be glad to just make a straight trade, one pool for a snow shovel.  Somehow I think no one is buying.

Tonto National Forest

Last week internet was spotty because of travel and this week began with no internet.  Finally in a stationary place I set up shop and vacation or not, meant to spend a couple of hours a day at work.  And it was then that I learned how stealthy the internet is as it creeps in and sucks up time.  I won't say much about it as that subject has been written to death but if you want to try an experiment - turn off your internet.  It's amazing how often you just click here or there, checking the weather, the news, your mail.  Short blips of time that are almost automatic.  I didn't realize how many there were until I couldn't connect at all.  After I got over the panic of not connecting, I enjoyed long stretches just focused on one thing, my latest story.

So now that I've wrapped the story up and discovered my synopsis needs a bit of tweaking.  Yes, any story I've ever written makes it a few chapters in before veering ever so slightly from the synopsis. 

I may mull that over some day but in right now I have a new cover to look at.  It seems that although the world outside my window has changed, my laptop still reminds me that other worlds and promised vacations aside - right now there's still work to do.

Ryshia

If you're interested in a bargain read - The e-copy of Ring of Desire is on sale for 99 cents at Amazon.com.  And the e-book of From the Dust is on sale for $2.99.  Both are great deals that may not last much longer. 

Illusion of Calm (soon to be released) - the Borneo jungle trembles with life and shimmers with the threat of death as Garrett and her scientific team flee to safety dragging their headless guide behind them.  But in a land rife with predators can she trust the one man who claims to be their rescuer?