Check out Kate Hill’s Halloween page for some fun Halloween trivia and giveaway contest details. Discover new authors and awesome books.

https://kate-hill.com/halloweenpage

What happens when sh*t hits the fan and plans, hopes, jobs, or relationships get torn apart and scattered? Books by experts outline stages of grief, and maybe some people go through each of the stages and grieve their loss- neat and complete. Maybe they move on in time, unburdened, knowing with high confidence that their loss was a fluke, never to occur again, but for the rest of us….

Low

Failure- The death of a dream, for the meantime

Humiliation- Hell for everyone who’s taken a ride on the loss of pride train

Humility- Heat and flames cut to low, fires hidden. No step taken lightly

Dream- in color. Sift through ashes. Scatter seeds. Simmer. Rise and fall. And again.

A group of fantastic authors has put together an exciting giveaway contest. Enter for your chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card! Contest runs until October 4, 2019. Click the link below for more information.

https://paranormalwire.blogspot.com/2019/09/100-amazon-gift-card-giveaway-amazon_4.html

It’s summer! The sun’s shining and my snow boots and coat have been hidden away in the attic where they belong. The frost is gone. The yellow pollen clouds of misery have eased. Now everything is alive and bright. It’s beach weather, camping weather, not shivering and driving my little car in the ice kind of weather. Summer is my favorite time of year but I don’t have any verses of saccharine prose to offer. I won’t wax poetical about gentle spring flowers finding strength to endure summer or whatever. I would rather eat glass. So here’s a little salt instead of sticky sweetness.

Salt for Sweetness

Life surrounds joy with darkness

Sometimes the good is just a drop of rain in a barrel of fire

and the fire rises

The heat finds me in the shade

as I sit across from eyes that don’t want to see

anything but the good in everything

I’ll take salt over artificial sweetness

The truth brings out the flavor in the fire

by Christina Lynn Lambert

Once upon a time

I forgot all the words

I forgot how to spell

I forgot my own name

I sat down in the kitchen and cried

and forgot why it mattered that I couldn’t remember

all the lessons I’d surely learned  somewhere

so I slept for a while then reinvented myself

with a nice backstory

All the scars I bear

were given simple reasons for being

every day fun reasons

like an ice skating fail

a cooking burn

wrecked my bike sailing down the trail with the wind in my hair

and I dance around the fuzzy memory of fear

The past has teeth

or so I’ve heard

but the teeth of the past

are just for show

to terrify

but that’s the only sharpness they own

Still I hide

Being foolish and being forgetful

they are not the same thing

but the path with that lovely tree

the one with the smooth bark  and silver leaves

I’ve been down this path before

riding fast with the wind in my hair

The sharp teeth tell me so

I pick up one of the silver leaves carpeting the ground

It’s green

The silver I saw in the distance, just a hint

Maybe a promise

The wind blows the leaves into a line

that disappears into the deep dark

and I know

answers are hidden

further along  the trail

Follow the trail to find my name

but this time, I’ll take a weapon

                                                        by Christina Lynn Lambert

In the spirit of National Poetry Month, I checked out a couple books from the library including, I Shall Not Be Moved by Maya Angelou and Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. In addition to the more famous authors, I want to find poems and short stories to read written by currently unknown writers and by people who don’t even consider themselves writers or poets but just felt they had something to say, a message, or an experience they needed to put down on paper because they couldn’t keep the words inside any longer. Really, everybody has a story, but sometimes they’ve forgotten their story is worth telling.

The fresh hell

of new grief and mistakes

rains down heavy

  Water turns to steel

shredding old wounds

Despair digs in

hauling me under

I reach through the muddy current

for one last lifeline

And the sound surrounds me

The drum’s heartbeat pulses through me

Each beat

a new breath

The guitar’s wail

morphs

into a low mellow rail

laying down a path out of hell

Brass notes soar

and I sing and scream along

letting each note

each word

stitch me back together

Until the last chord leaves me

back in the real

encased

in a temporary armor

by Christina Lynn Lambert

My latest poem was inspired by my nearly finished work in progress, Tiger’s Last Chance, a paranormal romance in my Stranger Creatures series. In this story, the main character, Sean, is a recovering alcoholic and music is his lifeline when things get too intense for him to bear. In the beginning of the story, he travels from Texas to the fictional town of Great Oaks, Virginia to help Detective Nikki Jackson with an off-the-official record kind of investigation and ends up falling hard for the detective. But he can go back to Texas and forget about her, right?

Update: Contest has ended. Spring is in the air! Well, it’s still pretty cold in Virginia but hopefully the sun will start shining soon and I can ditch my coat and snow boots. No matter the weather, every day is a good day to read a book.

Discover some fantastic authors and enter the March Madness Romance Ebook Giveaway for your chance to win an exciting romance ebook. Go to

https://www.constancebretes.com/news–things.html and enter for your chance to win!

Update: Contest has ended. The Romance Reviews is celebrating their 8th anniversary this March, 2019 with a month full of fun on their site at https://www.theromancereviews.com/event.php. Check it out to play the fun game and for chances to win books and other exciting prizes! Must register and be logged in on The Romance Reviews’ site before you can play the game. Registration is free and easy. No purchase necessary. Enjoy!

Update: Contest has ended!

A group of authors have put together an exciting giveaway contest. Enter for your chance to win a Kindle Fire! Click the link below for more information.

https://natashalarryworld.com/2019/02/22/instagram-kindle-fire-giveaway-instagram-giveaways-amazon-kindle-kindlefire/

Whether you love conventionally or outside the traditional lines, I hope you all have an amazing Valentine’s Day!

Though Valentine’s Day has become a day to celebrate love by giving romantic gifts and cards (so basically a day to buy stuff), love can be shown in so many different ways: patience, time, encouragement, fixing something that needed fixing, and the list goes on. If you’re lucky enough to have people in your life who love you, whether they are friends, relatives, a sweetheart, whatever, don’t miss the chance to show them you appreciate them!