Normally, we’re a three-animal family: two cats and a dog. Yesterday, we went up to four for a while, then down to two and finally settled in at five furry heads resting in our home. It was an interesting day to say the least.
The morning began with a simple request from a neighborhood friend to watch her dog at night for a few days. The young lady was in the middle of a move and needed someplace for her new puppy to stay. She knows us well enough to know we are suckers for big brown dog eyes and enthusiastic wags. Although we hesitated and asked to meet her “baby” to make sure it wouldn’t eat our cats, she knew we’d eventually say yes, and we asked her to swing by that night for a meet and greet.
A couple hours later, another young lady and neighborhood friend called and asked if we had a spare leash. She and a friend had been shopping in Target when they noticed a commotion. A little beagle with—that’s right, folks—big brown dog eyes, had been wandering in and out of the big swooshing automatic doors all morning with no owner in site and Target was about to call animal control. The two young girls became the heroes of the commotion when they agreed to take the dog so that no one had to call the pound. Then they swung by our house and we all agreed it made sense to keep the darling at our home until we could put up fliers in the neighborhood and try to find the owner.
Kelly Girl
Our dog Laney had a playmate for the day and her enthusiasm was contagious. She stuck by that little dog’s side long enough for both of them to frolic and play and enjoy the nice weather, then escape through a gate that somehow got opened. Of course, the minute freedom presented itself, Laney abandoned her new playmate and took off for the woods. Since this was her 25th time of escaping our clutches, we shrugged our shoulders and said a prayer she would somehow miraculously find her way back. We knew pursuit was not an option because this dog is FAST and when she wants to be gone, she’s gone and our hearts are broken once again.
Her fellow escapee, however, is an older dog with a few extra pounds, and she got as far as five houses down before my husband caught up with her and brought her back. We were back to one dog, two cats and the deep-seated fear we live with that our Laney will run out in front of a car—we love our dog, but let’s just say she’s one putt short of a par.
While my husband and I pretended very hard that it didn’t bother us Laney was gone, we got to know our little houseguest, who we nicknamed Kelly Girl for her temporary status. Our daughter gave her a bath, which was a hilarious adventure in itself because she didn’t seem to understand what was going on and squiggled and wormed on the carpet, feet flailing in the air, trying to get the dang water off her back.
Our own escape artist Laney
We put fliers up all over the neighborhood and awaited the puppy who was originally scheduled to be our guest. She arrived about 7:30 p.m. and we fell in love all over again, this time with a beautiful mixture of lab and pit bull with a black mane, a whip for a tail and a child’s delight-filled heart. Our two house guests got along beautifully. Our two cats acted like they normally do with canine guests: one hid and one hissed until he was hoarse.
At about 8:45, the phone rang. My husband, my daughter, the pitbull/lab owner, her friend and I were all watching the dogs interact and deep in discussion about how different animals were so when the phone rang, we started.
Kelly Girl’s owner was ringing to thank us for being heroes?
Nope. It was another set of heroes. They’d “found” Laney in their yard, so exhausted from hours of running free and wild that she didn’t even want to get up when they approached her. Laney had returned once again, bringing her beautiful brown dog eyes home.
Does anyone happen to know who Kelly Girl is?
—Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: bringing dogs home, dog day afternoon, dog heroes, dog personalities, dog rescue, dog rescue stories, dog stories, escaping dogs, finding dogs homes, Kelly Girl stories, love of dogs, runaway dogs, taking care of dogs, temporary house guests, unexpected house guests
Sometimes these vendor events that mom and I attend are entertaining for reasons other than selling our books. Here’s a sample:
We had the opportunity recently to be analyzed by a lipologist. One of “only six in the U.S. and one on the east coast,” this individual had piqued my interest as she walked by, adorned in a flowing skirt and blouse decorated with kisses. Early into the event, she had the opportunity to announce to attendees that, for just $10, they could press their lips to a piece of paper and she would ‘read’ the print and tell them about themselves.
We sat next to a booth table where a woman had only a stack of construction paper preprinted with giant paw prints. She began to apply glue, then gold glitter to each print, then was joined by two high school students. The three of them sat there for three hours putting glitter on the prints until they were joined by another two high school students and the four of them packed up to find a bigger spot where they sat for another two hours applying glitter. I had to admire the fortitude of all five of those women for “sticking” with it for five hours.
We received an education on what a “cropping” is. Mom and I had no idea that scrapbooking had taken off and sprung wings to include painting, card making and other crafts. Women get together and spend a whole day working at their art and sharing conversation, methods and table space. They come laden with huge canvas bags full of strange-looking cutting and pasting tools, pots of paint, mounds of stickers, bows and intriguing paraphernalia. What we found out from meeting a few cropping attendees was that, the most common reason they give for being there is: “to get away from the husband and kids.”
We found out that in some European countries where health care isn’t as prevalent as in the U.S., people use natural ingredients to create herbal oils, which they then spread on the bottom of their husbands’ feet to prevent colds, on their children’s pillows to stop snoring or on their own feet to relieve the stress of taking care of sick husbands and snoring children.
Valery Li and helper
The most remarkable aspect of these four examples, however, is that all occurred at one event last weekend. Since we had no traffic at all at our table, we were happy to be entertained, though we felt like we were in the Twilight Zone (we never did figure out where the occasional strains of flute music were coming from). We also had the very best food ever at an event (rich lasagna, creamy chicken penne and mouth-watering breakfast sweets as opposed to the usual overdone hotdogs, pizza and donuts). And despite the fact that most of the vendors that were there were selling branded products, we met an artist that wowed us. Her company is appropriately called “Valery’s Wonderland Treats” (www.valeryswonderland.blogspot.com) and I’ve never seen anything like it: little cookies and pastries that are so hard to describe, I’ll just call them, “beautiful” and show you pictures.
We won’t be making a reappearance at this particular event. But we thank the hardworking women who scrapbook, the student volunteers who persevere and the friendly vendors and croppers who stopped by our table and made up for a total lack of public visitors for keeping us entertained. And we thank Valerie Li for simply wowing us.
–Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: beautiful cookies, beautiful sweets, being a vendor, being a writer, bizarre arts and crafts events, bizarre book events, book events, book marketing, cropping, cropping events, lipology, lipsology, not selling books, persistence, scrapbooking, trials of selling books, Twilight Zone, unattended events, unusual arts and crafts events, unusual book events, Valery's Wonderland, vendor fairs, ways not to sell books, ways to sell books
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Some people say an artist is a person able to create beauty that many others can see, feel or experience. Does that mean you have to have an appreciative audience to be considered an artist? Does art itself have to be beautiful and who gets to say it is?
Others would define an artist as someone who is doing exactly what he or she wants to do in ways people never thought of before. But that takes the audience factor out of the picture, and some might say it also removes the beautiful. Are the serial killers in Criminal Minds that come up with creative new ways to murder someone “artists” as their often-sick minds think they are?
That brings me to this question: is an artist someone who can make a living creating something unique or beautiful instead of standing behind a machine or sitting at a desk? I’m afraid many starving artists would greatly object. In fact, most of us doing something creative would starve if art was all we did.
This is my definition of an artist and it’s based on what I see every day. Most of us spend our spare moments—those times when we’re not at work—playing games on our tablets or phones, watching movies or television, texting, connecting on social media. When it’s time to relax, we need an avenue that takes us away. If the vehicle that provides that escape is performing or making music, polishing words or putting a brush to paper, you’re an artist. You choose to give some of your leisure time to your chosen art form. You also have enough faith in what you’re doing to enjoy the act of doing it and you have enough passion to push yourself to do it.
If you’re extremely lucky, you can find a way to do this during the working day. Only a few fortunate souls among millions can do that, however.
The rest of us plod along, spending most of our hours on everyday realities and trying to find time to continue doing this thing that gives us so much pleasure.
How would you define it?
–Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: being paid for creative endeavors, creative endeavors, defining artist, definition of artist, devotion to art, how you spend your leisure time, leisure time activities, making a living being an artist, making a living writing books, making it as an artist, producing art, spending leisure time, writer as artist, writing books
The loudest lament among authors today is: wouldn’t it be nice to write? Who has time when you spend hours trying to navigate the world of publishing and marketing. Yet unless you’ve been “discovered” by a large, traditional publishing house or clever agent, most of your effort goes into getting the word out about your book. And even those authors with traditional contracts spend huge chunks of time fulfilling the marketing requirements of their contracts.
The reality is you’re at the mercy of a new world of book publishing that’s so convoluted and complex these days that you spend a lot of time wearing a blind-fold and whacking at moles.
For those readers asking: what’s got your panties in a bunch this week, Genilee, the answer is: Amazon. The print version of our books under our own publishing name gradually started to show up on Amazon over the course of the last month, but I’ve been trying to ensure that the hundreds of people I know that use their Kindles could get our books, too.
I spent countless hours waiting, thinking it would work like it did for our first self-published book (Holiday Connections): just show up. Then I spent more hours trying to understand how Ingram Sparks (IS), my huge printing firm, works realizing that it gets distributed by them to Amazon and other retailers so I needed to start there. After several rounds of emails to IS (with absolutely no replies), I finally decided the best and only effective way to “contact us for help” was to pick up a phone. I waited 15 minutes to get through to a real live person. However, the very real, very live and helpful person I spoke with wrote one email to Amazon and our books reappeared in Kindle form on the Amazon site—within minutes of my initial phone call.
I’d celebrate this great victory, except for one reality: almost no one can find our books on the site, and the few that are clever or determined enough to try, find a huge conflict in what’s available.
By searching on Amazon’s site and using one of the book’s names and one of our last names (I used Swope), you get the following results:
For Twist of Fate: 1) A listing where it’s available for $9.99 new and $1.07 used; 2) A listing where it’s available for $30.67 “used & new”; 3) a listing where it is “unavailable.” No listing for the Kindle version. If you scroll down to the bottom of that page you see: Results for “Twist of Fate Swope.” Three things are listed: 1) Wretched Fate, the Kindle version only; 2) Twist of Fate, the printed version only (but wait, didn’t we just take out the first two words and get the same thing as our initial search??); 3) Violet Fate, the Kindle version only.
For a search for Wretched Fate and Swope you get: 1) A listing of an old, out-of-date version available new for $8.99 or for $.01 (really, a penny?); 2) a listing of the older version “used & new” for $83.26 (Would someone really pay that?). No listing for the Kindle version. Scrolling to the bottom to: results for “Wretched Fate Swope” you get: 1) Wretched Fate, the Kindle version only (yea, there it is!! But why does taking out the word “Wretched” get you to the right place?); 2) Twist of Fate, the printed version only; and 3) Violet Fate, the Kindle version only.
For Violet Fate: 1) A listing for the printed version for $8.99, 2) a listing that looks exactly the same except you can get it “used & new” for $28.11. No listing for the Kindle version. At the bottom of that page under: Results for “Violet Fate Swope” you see: Wretched Fate, the Kindle version only (there’s Wretched’s Kindle version again. All you have to do is search under a different name than Wretched Fate, the actual title!!); Twist of Fate, the printed version only; and Violet Fate, the Kindle version (REALLY: in other words, by taking out the word ‘Violet’, the Kindle version pops up. Hmmmmm).
My point in all this is not to paint Amazon or Ingram Sparks as the bad guys. They are just huge and with hugeness comes confusion. I couldn’t have afforded publishing my own books 20 years ago when these two players were emerging and the world of independent publishing was being born. My point is this: if you’re one of us out there trying to get down this great river of being an author through the wild jungle of learning how to get the system to work for you, make sure you have a spare paddle and lots of patience. You’re going to need it.
Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: author frustrations, author stresses, being an independent author, finding books on amazon, finding your book on amazon, frustrations of independent publishing, frustrations of self publishing, frustrations with amazon, frustrations with publishing, getting published, getting published on amazon, how to appear on amazon, independent authors, independent publishing, Ingram Sparks, the confusion of amazon, the new world of publishing, trouble with finding books on amazon
There are two ways to look at a blizzard like the one we had this last weekend: a horrible disruption or an unplanned vacation.
Your view has to do with whatever the snow and ice disrupted: if you were getting married in DC this past weekend, I feel very, very badly for you. And I sincerely thank the public servants who worked so hard to prevent disaster. For many of us, however, this storm leaned more towards holiday. One reason was that we were prepared. An early week unexpected snowfall of a couple inches threw our area into complete mayhem with dozens of accidents, hours of traffic and panic that helped us all prepare for Jonas. By the time Friday’s storm arrived, blizzard watch had turned to blizzard warning and everything closed down (yes, weather forecasters, isn’t it nice when you’re completely correct). Shopping started between the mid-week mini-storm and Snowzilla and the grocers and sidewalk-salt sellers were ready. Schools and work places mostly shut down before the first flake of the big storm hit.
The friends and family members I checked in with over the weekend sounded relaxed and happy they hadn’t lost power, and savoring the quiet of a shut-in weekend. I played scrabble with my daughter Sunday without use of a computer. We watched movies, planned our dinners, admired the resilience and fortitude of tiny birds faced with 40 mph winds (they know which side of the feeder provides protection).
We also met more of our neighbors than we’ve even seen in many of the 20 years we’ve lived in this location. We were all out of our homes Sunday, having “lived” through the blizzard part and beginning the long process of digging.
This storm brought back a memory from 38 years ago when I was a reporter in London, Ohio. It snowed for several days, but I lived close enough to the center of town that when the paper asked for a someone to join a “rescue” mission, I volunteered to walk to “disaster center”. A caravan of school buses joined trackers and plows to travel into the surrounding farmlands and extract families left with no heat to bring them to safety. We were told to expect misery and maybe some dead bodies. We came back to town with not one single individual: the farmers were hunkered down and totally prepared, resting by their fireplaces and glad to have a day off from tending to chores. What’s more, they were not about to leave their homes; most had livestock to feed. The storm had disrupted their lives, but given them a grand vacation.
Plows haven’t made it to most side streets this morning. And I know there are many grumbling muscles from hours of shoveling. We have a long waiting period ahead before we can easily go about our business, but many of us don’t even want that to happen yet.
–Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: blizzard 2016, blizzard calm, blizzard disruption, blizzard vacation, blizzards effects, digging out after Snowzilla, jonas, jonas slows us down, massive snowfall, slowing down, Snowzilla, Snowzilla and DC, Snowzilla effects, Snowzilla vacation, storm effects, what happening during Snowzilla
I woke up this morning and realized I hadn’t written in my blog since well before Christmas, and only once between Thanksgiving and the Holidays. I’m an introspective person with too many best friends (and now a daughter) studying psychology, so I immediately began to question why I would neglect this author duty.
Do I secretly hate this type of writing? That answer came quickly: I took on a new client recently writing columns for their web postings because I enjoy tackling blogs. It’s a refreshing way to use words, and it seems to be a natural fit for me.
So it must be that I’ve been so extremely busy and stressed out this holiday season? That thought emitted a belly laugh, which triggered startled looks from my two cats. They sprinted from their restful perches to hide beneath my still-lit and decorated Christmas tree. I have taken this season very slowly and savored each minute. I’m still enjoying it.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Is it because I’ve been concentrating so heavily on learning how to republish our three original books? Our publishing firm hung up its hat at the end of 2015. Because of my success self publishing Holiday Connections, I’m trying to do the same with our original books—Twist of Fate, Wretched Fate and Violet Fate. I don’t know if I’ll get there; it’s horribly complex and I’m not good at detail work. But I’m stubborn and I’m tackling each little complication as it hits me in the face. Still, I can’t use this as an excuse because I tackle NO complexities first thing in the morning, which is my designated book time. I’m too sleepy and dreamy. I use that state to write creatively.
Then it has got to be because I’ve made so much progress on the fourth book of the Fate Series, right? It’s called Treasured Fate, and I’ve had a professional editor go through it and present me with her findings and suggestions. She gave them to me right before Thanksgiving.
Okay, that one is partially true. On the hours when I badly needed a creative outlet, I’ve been chipping away at the next stage of the writing process, which I expect to go on for many weeks. That’s never stopped me from my obligation to spend a day each week (or so) writing something for our blog, though.
I finally realized it’s for the same reason I had to hit my late 50s before I found a way to write a book: routine.
That’s a really yawn-inducing answer to this yawn-inducing blog entry, but it’s the truth. And most of my fellow writers and creative friends will understand what I mean. You can have genius-level ideas floating around in your head, but unless you find a practical way to get them out, they’ll stay in your head. For me, it was getting up that extra hour in morning and working on fiction. I had let “getting up” slip and was too often sleeping in. When I did get up, I allowed myself to work my paying job because I wanted or needed more time late in the day for seasonal activities.
But I’m back on track now, the holidays behind me and anxious to see where the track leads next. It must be working: It’s 7:15 and I’ve been up an hour, and lo and behold: a blog entry was born.
Come to think of it: I don’t walk the dog until 8 a.m. so I have 45 minutes to do what I love a whole lot more than blogs: working on my books!
Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: creative outlet, finding time for creative outlet, finding time to be an author, finding time to write, finetuning the writing process, frustrations with self publishing, getting published, getting up to write, passion for writing, procrastination, routine of writing, the writing process, Treasured Fate, Twist of Fate, Violet Fate, wretched fate
The older we get, the more we realize that life is lived in the simple moments, not the earth-moving upheavals that motivate us towards change. Change is necessary, and it often leads to improvements in our lives. But major movement forward doesn’t do us much good if we can’t stop on the journey long enough to enjoy the ride. Christmas is a great example.
Mark and Sax in the City getting ready to spread some cheer.
I’m using my finely aged wisdom this year to do something I say I’ll do every holiday and rarely accomplish: I’m taking each day and appreciating the wonder of what we do as humans to celebrate this season. I’m turning on the tree and lighting up my Santas, my village and my manger scene first thing in the morning. Why should I limit myself to night-time savoring of Christmas glitter when the reality of this time of year is that it’s dark when you get up?
Then there are days when savoring is not hard at all. On Sunday, that meant filling my soul with music. Last Christmas, there was no concert in my family for the first time in years. My daughter’s no longer in high school band; my dad was too sick to sing in one of the choirs he always loved with a passion; my brother was taking a much needed break from his non-paying job: providing the world with musical talent. But this year, I was back in the church where I’ve heard so many of my brother’s concerts. And I could not stop my foot from tapping, my head from swaying and my heart from simply expanding with each note. I’ve always been so proud of my family’s musical talent. I’ve always loved the seasons that were filled with the result of that talent. Thanks to Mark for an early birthday/Christmas present.
As long as I’m expressing my gratitude, Saturday was also filled with simple moments of pleasure, and I have the community of Woodbridge and surrounding areas to thank. Mom and I had our last holiday book event; a craft fair at Garfield High School. We sold more books than we have since the major event Applebee’s hosted for us. But that’s not what made the day so wonderful. It was the conversations we had with people who stopped by our table and who exhibited their wares. From the woman who was thrilled enough with what we do to buy three sets of our books to give to her best friends to the vendor across from us who made wooden reindeer and knew how to make children smile, the day was filled with moments of pleasure and celebration.
I have to confess, it’s easier to savor the simple things when life doesn’t give you major bumps during the season, and my heart goes out to anyone who is going through those bumps. But for those just having a regular year, take a few extra minutes to make your loved one’s package spectacular; stop feeling guilty for sampling the fudge early; crank up the radio in your car and sing along; drive slowly through your neighborhood and appreciate the efforts people put into their homes; say “happy holidays” to as many random people as you can. These are the moments that make the season sparkle.
Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: appreciating simple moments, appreciating the holidays, celebrating 2015 holiday season, Christmas concerts, Christmas tunes, enjoying Christmas, enjoying the holiday, holiday appreciation, Holiday Connections, holiday music, living life to the fullest, moments of appreciation, Savoring Christmas, savoring life, Sax in the City, simple moments, simple moments of life, turning on the Christmas lights
What makes this time of year so special? We shiver in the cold; we sweat from overexertion. We stress over everything; we relax like we don’t do any other time of the year. We worship with passion; we party with the same passion. We love our family; we hate our family. No wonder we’re all crazy.
I think the fact we do all of this at the same time is the key to why the holidays mean so much. They give us a purpose we don’t have the rest of the year. That purpose may find us facing hoards at the mall even though too many people in too little space is one of our worst nightmares. But we’re there for the bigger picture: to get a gift that will bring a smile to someone we know. We hate standing in line at the post office only to find out it will cost more to mail the package than we paid for its contents; but how can you put a price on a piece of love tied with a bow? We drive in weather conditions that might usually keep us home; but the concert or Christmas show that got us out of our living room lounger creates a spark inside of us that keeps us warm all season.
What makes this time of year special? We do. We get outside our normal routines and build a new us for a few weeks. We open little pockets in our heart that weren’t open before or that stay closed the rest of the year. When we’re not with the crowd lamenting about how much everything cost and how little time there is, we are raising our heads above the clamor to look around and seek the good. We do this because one thing past holidays have taught us is that the good is always there: we’ve seen it in a hundred small ways during this season over the years. We experienced the magic as far back as Santa. We’ve listened to the tale of the very first Christmas and felt the awe and wonder. We’ve reached into our pockets and found a spare dollar for the Salvation Army bucket. We’ve had a total stranger tell us “Merry Christmas,” just because they felt like spreading a little cheer.
Christmas and holidays in general are a conscious effort on our part to seek out happiness—even if it’s only for a few hours. We put on rose-colored glasses long enough to gain a different perspective.
Christmas brings us crazy; but it also brings us hope.
–Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: best books for christmas, Christmas craziness, christmas crazy, christmas hope, christmas joy, christmas miracles, christmas perspective, christmas stress, Holiday Connections, holiday craziness, holiday crazy, holiday hope, holiday stress, relief from holiday stress, rose-colored glasses, why we love christmas
I needed a distraction from my editorial work this week so I decided to google our new Holiday Connections book. Imagine my shock when I found all four of our books available in the UK, France, Estonia, Denmark, Holland, South Asia, South Africa, Spain, Japan and many places in Canada. And that was just the first five pages of results. Some of the sites, I had to hit the “translate this page” just to understand what I was seeing.
I also found Holiday Connections mentioned on sites such as the British Columbia Booksellers Association as one of the new Christmas releases. I spotted the book in several Christian bookstores; it was listed among the new releases for a small independent bookstore in San Antonio, TX; and I found it for sale at quite a few Canadian independent bookstores. I even found it listed on a general gift site in the UK that also sold jewelry, toys, music and health products.
The feeling was so wonderful, I immediately called mom and shared my search results with her. We both agreed that it brought a whole new dimension to being authors: to know our names and our works are all over the world brings us both much joy.
I don’t know if that will ever translate into sales, and I’m not sure I really care. But the thought that someone across the ocean in Europe, Africa or Asia might be sitting curled up by a fire getting lost in one of our holiday tales or falling in love with Sam Osborne of The Fate Series is thrilling.
It also showed me how much I don’t understand about the big wide world of distribution and global commerce. We went with the same printing/distributing giant that our former publisher—Spectacle Publishing Media Group used: Ingram Sparks. I’d read that they have the widest spread around the world—even wider than amazon’s publishing arm. But how fast this all came about and how very broad that reach is, was jaw dropping
Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel like a small fish in a huge ocean as you might imagine. It made me feel connected—part of the school of fish that loves books.
Readers: Don’t forget the holiday special for our newest book is available through November. Contact us at swopeparente@gmail.com if you want to order an autographed book at the discounted rate.
And thank you for being part of that school of fish!
Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: best holiday book, best holiday tales, distributing books, distribution of books, Fate Series, global commerce, global community, global holiday books, Holiday Connections, holiday tales, Ingram Sparks, Ingram Sparks books, international readers, joys of reading, joys of writing, school of fish, selling books worldwide, selling through Ingram Sparks, selling worldwide, selling your books
When Mom and I were trying to push Holiday Connections at publishers, the only consistent reply we received back was that the stories weren’t hard-edged enough for commercial appeal. I’m afraid it’s true, folks; F. Sharon and Genilee created feel-good stories so I’m afraid you’ll need to go elsewhere for your blood and guts this holiday season.
But that’s okay with us. We intend for these books to be sentimental. When mom created her first drafts, she had in mind the stories you used to get out of Good Housekeeping and Redbook. It’s not that those stories didn’t address issues. They were often poignant tales of a simple person addressing a hard reality such as a kid growing up, a relationship falling apart or a major life challenge. They made you stop and lose yourself in someone else’s problems for a while. And yes, some of them ended happily ever after, but part of the beauty was that it wasn’t always. Kind of like life is: some happy endings and many slaps in the face.
Mom and I have readily admitted we have no hopes of being branded literary geniuses—we entered the game too late. We are creators of tales we think people will want to read. That is their sole purpose: to get people to READ. The Fate Series was an evolution, and we think each book is better than the last for different reasons—we think the characters in Wretched Fate are more rounded than those in Twisted Fate. We were already falling in love with our protagonist Sam Osborne by Violet Fate, which is why it’s appropriate he fell in love in the third book. With Holiday Connections, we just let go and allowed ourselves to be saps about a lot of things.
We offer no apologies because we think reading should be a pleasure, and if you get pleasure out of short stories that end on a good note, you’ll like our newest book. We also understand that books can be an escape and for some people, escape works best as darkness, despair and deeper dilemmas than the characters in Holiday Connections face. We’ll leave the zombies, serial killers and graphic details up to television and movies, which do an excellent job.
Come to our books for a different reason: to get a brief respite from hum drum, but one that leaves you feeling positive and ready to read what happens next.
November is going by quickly folks. We’re offering the book at discount from what you’ll get on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com so that we can afford to send them out at a better price for gifts. Write swopeparente@gmail.com for details on how to get a signed copy. And don’t forget yourself when you’re making out that gift list!
For kindle lovers, the book is now available in ebook form on amazon.com.
Genilee Swope Parente
Tags: best christmas books, best holiday books, best holiday stories, christmas short stories, encouraging reading, feel-good books, feel-good books for christmas, feel-good stories, getting people to read, Holiday Connections, holiday stories, Parente, people connections, sentimental stories, short stories for christmas, stories for christmas, swope, Swope Parente, The Fate Series, why we write
swopeparente 