My daughter gave me a gift today, a gift guaranteed to make me dissolve into a puddle of tears – Love You Forever, written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sheila McGraw.  I don’t even need to open the book.  One glance at the cover and I’m a goner.  It’s like reading Charlotte’s Web or listening to Joni Mitchell sing The Circle Game or watching the movie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

I may be tough, but I’m not that tough. When it comes to those I love, I love them with all my heart.

Life is fragile and fleeting.  As my father says– We are less than a speck of dust  on a speck of dust on a speck of dust, ad infinitum, in the wake of God’s footsteps.

People come and people go, but like the book says, Love You Forever.  Okay, I’m going to start crying all over again.

I wanted one thing out of life, one single thing, to be a mother.  I’m a mother times three.  And for that great gift, I’m humbled.  

On a lighter note – Ya’ll remember the movie, Parenthood, with Steve Martin?  I was raising three little kids when that movie came out and it was amazing how much the movie resembled our life.  My kids were a little younger, but…

Even this scene was straight out of our life– it happened a number of years later, except picture my husband in Steve Martin’s place and the game was basketball.  My husband coached our daughter’s underdog basketball team and they beat the undefeated previous year’s city champs in the championship game.  My kids still talk about how my husband did this:

We parents are a bit meshuggeh.

Happy Mother’s Day! Love, Julia

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We’ve been apart for 18 days, which is the longest we’ve been separated since the kids were little.

Here’s what he’ll come home to….

The aroma of his favorite fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.

Homemade egg pasta with a pesto I made from wild leeks, spinach, roasted garlic, toasted pine nuts and Parmesan cheese.

A salad of our own just-picked garden greens and my own pickled asparagus.

A batch of salmon candy (it’s marinating as we speak).

I’ve trimmed the yard, planted the flowers, herbs and potatoes, pulled every tick from the dog, swept the basketball court free of debris after our wind storm, filled the house with roses (stolen from the neighbor’s yard but they’ll never miss them as they live in Europe and the house, although maintained, is empty 99.99% of the time), washed the sheets– again– shaved my legs, and treated myself to a spa day for a pedicure and a waxing of parts heretofore unmentionable.

(I first took a picture of my right foot but then I realized you would see my hideously deformed broken little toe… I mean, it’s bad enough that my toes are so long I can pick things up, monkey-style.)

I’m ready.

I’m such a feminist and a little wifey all at the same time.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  One is based on highfalutin principles, the other is based on love.

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My work of romantic suspense, which I plan to re-release after July 5th, won an award.  The cute trophy was waiting for me when I got home from Boston.

My Everything won a Lorie for Best Romantic Suspense.  Click on the link to check out the other winners.

It was kind of exciting to receive the award when I’d never received notification that I’d won.  A fan happened to mention to me months ago that she’d seen my name, but I didn’t hear anything until now.

So, here’s the award.  I stuck it next to my Booksellers Best First Book Award for Captured.   They can be BFFs!

Here’s the new cover!  Thanks, Lories!

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With a side of grits?  Hashbrowns?  Bacon?  Ham?  On whole wheat toast?

The subject came up between hubby and myself when I read a post about why men should read romance and women, thrillers.  I read both, duh, in addition to books in most genres, provided they are well-written.  You can read the post for yourself at The Red Pen of Doom.

My husband reads the occasional romance.  Shocking, I know.  It all began back when I worked my way through Karen Marie Monings’ Highlander romances.  He and I were on vacation and I handed him each book as I finished.  Some he thought were just plain dumb, but the one book he truly enjoyed was The Immortal Highlander, Adam’s book.  He liked this book because not only is Adam a complex character, a perfect chimera of good and bad… kind of a trickster figure, Gabrielle is an intelligent heroine.  I’ve noticed that once a story is finished, KMM’s heroines (when they reappear in later installments) tend toward TSTL.  Gabrielle seemed to be the type to remain in character throughout.  In addition, my husband felt she had a damn good reason for remaining a virgin into her twenties.   She was a Sidhe Seer and she was attracted to the fae males, not human males.  There ya go.

He got the concept all right – women who were virgins for whatever reason/excuse/prevarication/rationalization…. mostly because at the heart of each of Monings’ stories lies this theme – the virgin heroines are waiting, like Sleeping Beauty, for true love’s kiss, whether they realize it or not.  Hubby just didn’t believe it.  It didn’t fit with his world view – which is this– women enjoy sex as much as men.

Maybe it takes the right man, a strong, secure man, to read romance.  Who knows?

I think I’m lucky.  This will make my husband blush, but every one of my heroes is he.  Or is it him?  Each hero possesses one or more of his attributes.  (Hey, get your nasty minds out of the gutter!)

I have my own personal hero to model my characters after.  And he likes to read a few romance books.  He reads all my books!  I’ll tell you the romance hero he personally identifies with the most – because my husband is very into seduction - and this is one of my favorite books - he loves Marc Chastain from Kill and Tell.  For that matter, he’s also a big fan of Gray Rouillard from After the Night.  So macho, so alpha, so protective and so big hearted.

Men really should read romance.  It would be good for them.  They might just get the emotional connection we women crave.  I know thrillers, provided they are not gratuitous gore-filled slash-fests, are good for me!  I mean, look at all the existential angsty pleasure I derive from The Walking Dead and the time paradox I get to think about while watching The Terminator…

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My birthday weekend is over.  There was some good, some better, some best.  I’m both gratified and grateful that readers seem to be reading Beauty and the Feast.  This is a story I loved telling, a book I worked night and day to get just right.  So did Jaye Manus, my editor-producer/director, and Lex at Winterheart Design who put up with my cover-fussing.

This contemporary romantic comedy is free for two more days.

A Game of Thrones was much better this week.  The show works when the focus remains on a few characters at a time, rather than trying to somehow integrate all the primary characters at once.  I was prepared to bail if this episode was nothing more than gratuitous nudity and feigned sex.  I mean, that’s all well and good, but I need more substance.  Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark rock big time.

This promises to be a hectic week as I’m heading to Boston and then onto Maine on Friday.  But, I will be right here tomorrow.

Thanks, all, for the birthday wishes and poems and jokes and pictures.  You are the best.

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