It's Ketch-Up Day

 AND I'm catching up on January birthdays. Belated wishes to:

Did I miss anyone? If so, let me know.

Have a great week, Blogger Buds.

Weekend Wishes

 

Did You Know

 Did you know, Leonardo da Vinci was a lefty?

 

Writerly Wednesday

 What's your synonym for:

Ketch-up Day

 Greetings Blogger Buds,

How was your weekend and Monday?

I had a birthday last week. Chocolate was the gift of choice by my husband, son and daughter. Great minds, etc. etc.😀 

Note my cake: A brownie with peanut butter cup icing and just the right size for me:)

 

 

Frank, the gift inspector.

 Well the daffies are blooming. As our bud Elizabeth Seckman would say, "Eager little things." Ignore the weeds. I am. Ha.

And one of the Christmas Roses is blooming.

 

The ferals are still very distrustful.  I think Andrew had the right of it when he said it takes months to tame feral cats.

 

And last but not least our granddaughter painted us a picture and my son-in-law framed. Didn't both do a wonderful job?

 

 

What about you blogger buds? Got chocolate? Blooming daffies? Wild kitties? Paintings?

Weekend Wishes

 

 

Today I'm at Cowboy Kisses posting about Comanche. The horse that survived the massacre at the Little Bighorn.

Did You Know

 Did you know, instead of entering a retirement community, some seniors buy permanent residences on cruise ships?

Is this something you think you'd like to do? 

 

 

Writerly Wednesday

 What's your synonym for:

It's Ketchup Day

Greetings Blogger Buds,

How was your weekend and Monday?

The HH has been having back issues so I have been working on the leaves...forever.  Next year I'm hiring it done. 

 My little daffies are so confused. January is way too early to be trying to bloom.

My daughter recommended making stock from cheese rind for my bean soup.  She also suggested tossing in some carrots and rosemary.  I followed her instructions. The results were yum.😊

 It's baby steps with the kittens. They will come out when I'm around now, if I don't make any sudden moves. I still can't touch them, which they need. Hopefully soon.

This is the Christmas gift we got from my sister. She made one for each of the sibs. Pretty cool, huh?

  

This was taken in CO on one of my SIL's walks.

What about you, blogger buds. Got leaves(Cough. Cough. Choke. Choke.) ? Daffies that are blooming too early? Wild child kittens? A purrfect Christmas gift? A great spot to walk?

Your Weekend Read: THE CLOCK IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE by Annalisa Crawford

 

The lovely Sandra has invited me onto her blog today to help me celebrate the release of my new short story collection The Clock in My Mother’s House.

Thanks, Annalisa. I'm thrilled to have you. I'm very intrigued with your latest collection of shorts.

I started writing short stories when I was a teenager – they are my first love. Later I moved towards novels, but there’s something so satisfying about writing something small and complete and yet so encompassing.

A quick look at book charts – and a quick search for agents and publishers – will tell you that although people are coming around to the idea of short story collections, they’re still not as established as novels.

So, here are five really good reasons to read short stories and buy collections.

1.       They’re quick to read – you can easily fit them into a coffee break

2.       In a collection, you meet a variety of characters. A novel with an unlikeable protagonist can be tiring, but in a short story you can revel in their meanness

3.       If you really don’t like a story, there’s another one right after it

4.       There’s a quick pay-off – a brilliant twist, a moment of clarity, a lightning bolt of emotion

5.       If the collection happens to be an anthology of different authors, you might discover a new favourite genre/series/writer

 

 

Oh, I almost forgot: as Sandra likes to ask her quests about food, here are three things that are great to eat while you’re reading because you only need one hand:

1.       Cookies (from a tin – packets are hard to open single-handedly)

2.       Pizza (ones you heat up yourself because the base tends to be smaller and more solid, at least in the UK)

3.       A really large and luxurious box of chocolates – because chocolate is a daily requirement for me!

 

 

 

The Clock in My Mother’s House

Life can change in an instant, but that’s not always a bad thing.

A hotel explodes leaving staff and guests in peril; a woman retrieves an old clock from the attic with disturbing consequences; one man leaves heart break behind him, and another arrives to bring adventure.

In this haunting collection, Annalisa Crawford creates characters who will charm, captivate and intrigue you.

 

 

 

Annalisa Crawford lives in Cornwall, UK, with a good supply of moorland and beaches to keep her inspired. She lives with her husband, and canine writing partner, Artoo. She is the author of four short story collections, and two novels.

Website: https://www.annalisacrawford.com/

Buy Links: https://books2read.com/clock-in-mothers-house

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annalisacrawford.author

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnalisaCrawf

 

 

Did You Know

 Did you know, coffee beans aren't beans at all but seeds found in coffee cherries that grow on coffee trees?

 

Writerly Wednesday

 What's your synonym for:

It's Ketch-up Day

 

 Greetings, Blogger Buds,

Did you have wondrous holidays?

Ours was great with one notable hitch. The daughter and SIL arrived the 24th as planned. Our son and family came in the 25th for a few hours. My bro and SIL arrived the 26th AND my sister had tickets through Southwest.  No more needs to be said. At least for those of you in the states.  If you live outside the states Southwest had mass cancellations over the holidays because of weather and their scheduling software. It was a mess of major proportions.

 

 

AND

We are fostering.  Meet Shrek (tabby) and Fiona  (the black and white). They're ferals. Our job is to get them socialized so they can get their forever homes. So far, they're still in hiding.

AND

Besides my wonderful calendar from Denise.

The HH got me a coffee calendar, which always makes me grin.

AND

A card from CJ with the envelope done in her amazing calligraphy. 

What about you blogger buds? Tell us about your holidays.

Your Weekend Read: THE BLUE BAR

 

BLURB:  

 

On the dark streets of Mumbai, the paths of a missing dancer, a serial killer, and an inspector with a haunted past converge in an evocative thriller about lost love and murderous obsession. 

 

After years of dancing in Mumbai’s bars, Tara Mondal was desperate for a new start. So when a client offered her a life-changing payout to indulge a harmless, if odd, fantasy, she accepted. The setup was simple: wear a blue-sequined saree, enter a crowded railway station, and escape from view in less than three minutes. It was the last time anyone saw Tara. 

 

Thirteen years later, Tara’s lover, Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput, is still grappling with her disappearance as he faces a horrifying new crisis: on the city’s outskirts, women’s dismembered bodies are being unearthed from shallow graves. Very little links the murders, except a scattering of blue sequins and a decade’s worth of missing persons reports that correspond with major festivals. 

 

Past and present blur as Arnav realizes he’s on the trail of a serial killer and that someone wants his investigation buried at any cost. Could the key to finding Tara and solving these murders be hidden in one of his cold cases? Or will the next body they recover be hers? 

 

EXCERPT:

TARA

2002, Borivali Station

Endings are overrated. There’s only one true, certain end—everything else a load of bullshit, or how you call it, bakwaas. Beginnings, though. Beginnings are everywhere. It all began with that midnight-colored saree, thick with dark-blue sequins, its endless sea of shimmering dots stitched by hands that must have cracked and bled over the months of needle in and out of taut cloth in some dingy, godforsaken hole in one of Mumbai’s stinking alleyways.

The saree, draped well below Tara’s navel, scratched against her skin. The low-necked silver blouse scraped her shoulders, but she tried not to think about any of this, or the sweat trickling down her back while she maneuvered through the crush of bodies.

It had rained that afternoon, cooling the air, but not enough for the wide, dark shawl Tara had worn as per instructions. It was never cold enough in Mumbai for shawls. Especially not on a platform at Borivali Station during rush hour, which swarmed thicker than ants on a dead beetle. The voices of hundreds of men and women rose around her, red-uniformed porters yelling at everyone to stand back, squalling children, announcements of all the trains departing from or arriving in India’s city of dreams.

 

 

The Blue Bar is narrated by various characters. Here’s what each character does when they are stressed:  

1. Tara: She takes to obsessive cleaning: cleaning the room she is in, the adjoining toilet, or taking repeated baths. 

2. 
   

   
   

3. Arnav: He heads to the dojo, where he tries to center himself by practicing karate stances. 

4. 
   

   
   

5. Villain: He cuts himself with a razor, while seated in his empty bathtub. 

    

Buy link: https://linktr.ee/damyantibiswas

 

BIO: Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is coeditor of the Forge Literary Magazine.  

 

Apart from being a novelist, she is an avid reader of true crime, a blogger, and an animal lover. Her ambition has always been to live in a home with more books than any other item, and she continues to work toward that.