Dear Virginia,I imagine you think that I am a little late with this letter, but I have been so busy that all I have done is eat, sleep, and work. Have been picking apples 7:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M. Working in the mill 3:00 P.M. – 11:00 P.M. How is school going? Getting good marks? You had better. You can tell Lois that I think I have Stanley lined up for her. I told him about her and the first thing he wanted to know was if she was 18 yrs of age. I told him she was, so you had better tell Lois to stick to it. He is…
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Harry Powers July 4, 1920 – June 17, 2008 Harry was born to Harry and Zilpha Powers in Martville, NY. He served his country proudly and sacrificially as a Tech Sgt during WWII in the U.S. Army Air Corps, 1942-1945. His B-17 was shot down over Schweinfurt, Germany on October 14, 1943, and he was taken prisoner by Hitler Youth. After spending 19 months in Stalag 17B in Krems, Austria, and being marched 350 km without food or shelter, he and his fellow POWs were freed by General George Patton’s army. He returned to the U.S. in June of 1945, marrying his sweetheart Virginia Foster on August 4, 1945. Harry…
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Today I’m introducing a new project for this blog. It’s actually an old project, because I had started it a long time ago with another blog but never finished it. But it’s something that’s very near and dear to my heart, and I want to see it through this time. This is the love story of my grandparents, Harry and Ginny Powers, told through the letters he sent to her during and just before WWII. My mother has provided a proper introduction to this project… If you are an adult that has lost both of your parents, you probably can identify with the process of managing the loss and grief.…
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Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale LoftonOut now from Post Hill Press “If you let fear make your decisions, you’ll never be what you are meant to be.” Grandaddy First of all, I would like to thank the folks at Pride Book Tours for not only inviting me on this tour, but also for contacting me again after I had initially passed on this one due to a full schedule. Because if they hadn’t offered me that second chance, I may never have gotten to experience the joy of reading Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale Lofton. OMG this book, y’all. It was simply incredible, a stunning debut. The story,…
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Part Two of Bellflower Park takes place in the present day. Tess is in her mid-forties now, divorced, and is still just as snarky and sassy as she was as a teenager. She has settled into her life as a curmudgeon, and she is officially Over Everybody’s Shit. She’s counting down the years/months/days till she can retire from teaching, and it’s been a good long time since anyone has…ahem…rocked her world. While I have a general story arc in mind for Tess, and I pretty much know how this book ends, I still have a lot of gaps to fill in. If I ever actually finish this, I’ll be sure…
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Bellflower Park is the working title of the novel I started writing for NaNoWriMo 2022. It was my first time ever attempting to write anything longer than a Facebook post since I graduated from college. I always thought there was no way I could write fiction, because I have always had a mental block when it comes to writing. This goes way back to my high school days. I would have ideas in my head of what I wanted to say in essays or research papers, but the process of translating that into the written word was just something I couldn’t master. Over the past couple of years I tried…
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Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias MaddenOut now from Page Street Kids Anything But Fine, Madden’s 2022 debut novel, immediately put him on my radar of authors I would be following closely. I was so enchanted by that book that I was ready to devour anything else he wrote. A year later, he has given us Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell, a story about a teenaged gaymer who gets caught up in a teeny-tiny lie and ends up mopping up the aftermath when it backfires on him. Now, I normally cringe when I read a book that involves a Big Lie and its inevitable consequences. I mean, really cringe.…
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I had something happen to me yesterday that was so nice that it’s still with me today. It was a little thing, really. A brief interaction with someone who had come into my office. I work in local government, at city hall. The office I work in is involved with the issuing of permits. As the account clerk of the department (a fancy word for secretary) I’m usually the one doing the issuing, so I interact with the public quite a bit. Yesterday was a pretty normal day, which means it was hectic and I was trying to do about eleven things at once. At some point in the afternoon…
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Those Danes are missing out on millions OK, hear me out on this. Lego has played a major role in my life ever since my boys were old enough to snap two bricks together. Throughout their childhoods there was a parade of Lego sets of all sizes and fandoms. They were a go-to gift for Christmas, and every year December 26th marked the takeover of the dining room table as the boys, especially my younger one, joyfully assembled their colorful plastic structures. Completed sets were displayed proudly on bookshelves in their bedrooms until they were dismantled for parts and were dumped into the giant Lego tub, ready for the next…
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