Where Wildflowers Bloom by Ann Shorey - a Blog Tour

Today, I am happy to be bringing you a review and blog tour featuring Ann Shorey's volume Where Wildflowers Bloom. I reviewed The Dawn of a Dream by Ann last April and absolutely loved the book, much more than I liked the previous book in that three volume series (At Home in Beldon Grove I believe).

Where Wildflowers Bloom is the start of a new series, Sisters at Heart. It was a great start, because I can guess which two women will be featured in the other two volumes of the trilogy, and I can't wait to read their stories. 

This volume follows Faith Lindberg - a young woman who has to begin to manage the family's general store as her grandfather's health declines. Since her father and brother were killed during the Civil War, Faith has to take on this new responsibility that wouldn't generally belong to a woman. 

As Faith tends the store, she is waiting for Royal Baxter - a man she briefly met and shared a moment with prior to the war - to return to town. He finally does, but when he does Faith has already met another man named Curt Saxon and kind of likes him alright after she gets over her timidness around him. He and his sister Rosemary become fast friends of Faith and her grandfather.

Meeting Blogging Goals

During the A to Z challenge last year, I outlined several goals for myself. When the challenge started in late spring, too much of the year had already went by for my to lay out year long goals.

However, I know that one goal I wanted - perhaps silently - to meet was to surpass the number of posts I had made in the previous two years within 2011. Between 2009 and 2010 I posted on my blog 221 times with 139 posts in 2009 and 82 posts in 2010. In 2011, I ended the year with 191 posts. This isn't quite the number I wanted, but it is very close. AND, it actually is a match when I discount the fact that the first few dozen posts in my blog were shorties dedicated to individual coupons before I really decided what I wanted to do here.

I have a goal now for 2012. I want to average a post a day. I don't need to post every last day of the year, but I want to have 365 posts by December 31, 2012. This is my 7th post in 24 days, so I am a bit behind the times. However, my blog tours and book reviews usually really take off in late spring and then again in the fall. I should also have a lot more to say about life here by spring or early summer.

So You Want to Pick on Young People

I get so perturbed when people pick on young people about their lack of attention span. Why?

I think part of that is that I probably still tend to self-identify as a young person despite the fact that I am now closer to 30 than 20, and I know my attention span is just dandy. I can sit still for hours with absolutely nothing to do except look at a wall and watch dry paint get drier (this is also known as waiting in line at the doctor's office or any other office). I can watch epic movies without a bathroom break. I can read books in one sitting.

Point being?

A Lasting Impression by Tamera Alexander - a Book Review

It took me a while to really get into A Lasting Impression by Tamera Alexander because it looked like a really long book with average size type, and I was thinking that it would take me forever to read at a time when I was only really getting back into books. Fortunately, this was not the case as I was so far gone into the book after about page 120.

Admittedly, before that I felt like the volume was off to a slow start as it took quite a while for the main character,  Claire Laurent to actually end up at the place where we knew the book would take place - Belmont Mansion. After she arrives in Nashville and meets Sutton Monroe, the book truly begins though the beginning portion does let us know the background information on Claire that fuels her plotline in the book. However, I will say that I expected these elements to crop up more conspicuously within the book sooner and longer than they did.

Claire is a really nice character to read as she does not overly "force" her personality on you. Instead, she has a character and the Belmont mansion becomes an extension of her character through the perspectives she offers on the estate through her observations. (Read about the real Belmont estate here) Sutton is also a really grand love interest as he is ALWAYS decent with no real "dark night of the soul" in place to plague his relationship with Claire (technically, there are but they aren't truly serious).

Loving to Read Again: Fear of Losing a Passion

I have read three books to completion in the past couple of weeks and couldn't be happier. I had wondered if I would ever be completely comfortable cuddled up with a good book again. Even now I can still feel muscles in my head pop for the first couple of minutes after I sit down to read, but by and large I am comfortable.

So far I have posted reviews of The Keeper by Suzanne Woods Fisher and 7 Money Rules for Life by Mary Hunt and am going to begin typing up a review of a really good volume by Tamera Alexander, A Lasting Impression. This last volume was quite thick and a wonderful testament to my reemergence as a reader.

My weeks of reading exile really...I almost hesitate to say scared me, but worried me. Reading is my hobby...so much more so than the other things I do in my spare time such as cross-stitching, painting, and design. I would feel like a part of me were lost forever if I couldn't read my books, write my thoughts. When I think back on my happiest memories, so many of them revolve around reading a certain book.

The summer between junior and senior year: The Count of Monte Cristo
The few days I had off between getting out of school and actually attending my graduation ceremony in high school: Jane Eyre
Christmases for forever: The Little House of the Prairie books
The spring and summer of seventh grade: The Anne of Green Gables series
My childhood: Cinderella, Snow White, Arthur's Honey Bear, and The Biggest Most Beautiful Christmas Tree in the World
The fall of third grade: The Middle School Gets Married (Sweet Valley)
The months I spent in a back brace: so many other Sweet Valley Junior High books
A week I played hookie from school junior year: Ben-Hur

And on and on

I love my books, and I'm glad that we have found away to work around each other and be best friends again.

7 Money Rules for Life by Mary Hunt - a Blog Tour

For the most part I liked 7 Money Rules for Life by Mary Hunt. It was well-written in a very engaging tone that I tend to find in non-fiction volumes written by people familiar with writing for online and magazine markets. Mary never drones on for too long and actually manages to impart a lot of the knowledge found in more mouthy manuscripts in a lot fewer words.

Many of Mary's points are tried and true principles such as saving, avoiding revolving credit, establishing emergency funds, etc. However, she tweaks a lot of these messages to fit the main budget concerns of the average family. I really liked the plan she lays out for paying off credit card debt as it ties in with the way I have always thought would be best for paying off bills.

However, I will say that my only problem with this book was a somewhat big one to my way of thinking. Mary Hunt repeatedly mentions "entitlement" and people feeling like they are entitled to things and charging up cards then wanting to lay their responsibility off on parents and family members by "borrowing from the bank of Mom and Dad." Then, a few pages later when she is espousing the joys of saving in addition to paying your bills every month (spending less than your earn), she recommends taking extreme austerity measures including moving in with a family member (which may or may not save you money - i.e. if I live in a cheap apartment and then move back in with mom and dad on the high end side of town and pay them rent/share expenses I may not get off any cheaper and sacrifice a lot of independence).

So I Fibbed Two Posts Ago

When I said I was all done with recuperation, I thought I was. But I wasn't 100% yet. Either that or I pulled a neck/shoulder muscle when exercising one night while watching The Golden Girls. Yeow!

I found it somewhat uncomfortable to sit at my desk for about a week and am still babying myself somewhat. I elevated my computer monitor at my desktop unit to accommodate myself and now use my netbook elevated on a dinner table tray so I can maintain better posture until everything settles down.

Since my wisdom tooth extraction I have had another tooth filled and have two more to have filled at a dentist appointment on Monday (or perhaps one Monday and one on the 20th). It was actually kind of neat because the dentist I went to now gave me white fillings versus the metal ones my old dentist did because he said my mouth was too saliva filled for the white ones to be dry long enough to set.

The Keeper by Suzanne Woods Fisher - a Blog Tour

I don't think I have ever read a Suzanne Woods Fisher book I didn't like, but much like my favorite Animal Farm quote "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," some of Suzanne's books are good and some of her books are "more good" than others. The Keeper was one of the "more good" ones.

It took approximately two paragraphs about him for me to become yet another woman who fell victim to the charms of The Bee Man, Roman Troyer. He was an absolutely wonderful character. Despite the fact that Suzanne attempted to paint him as a roamer, it was evident from the start that he possessed an outstanding moral fiber despite his ability to flirt.

Julia Lapp took a bit more to like. She irritated me a bit with her "I know all" attitude in the first few chapters, but she straightened up admirably after a few. I particularly liked the way she took care of her brother and sisters and doted over Menno, the other boy I love, love, loved in this book. I can't reflect too much on Menno cause I don't wan to give away the book, but know that he is sunshine personified.

Little sister MK also provides an interesting tone to the book as does Sadie Lapp. I see that Sadie is going to be the main character in the next Stoney Ridge book and will presume that MK (the third sister) will star in the third and last volume in the set. I just read the teaser for Sadie's book, and I can't wait for it as I always felt like I wanted to understand Sadie's head more.

A bit about the book (in my own words):

Julia Lapp has basically been in charge of the family farm and orchards while her father deals with a weaking heart. Her mother had passed away some years before. Julia also watches over sisters Sadie and MK and a "special" brother, Menno as well as an eccentric uncle. She thought she was all set to marry a boy named Paul when he breaks it off after talking with The Bee Man. Julia sets out to make the Bee Man sorry after she feels like he must have talked her fiancee out of marriage because he had intentions of his own. Through it all her family deals with their father's health problems and a heartwarming and terrifying new maid.

Available January 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this volume. 

All Done with Recuperation

So, I had my wisdom teeth out on Monday, December 5 in an oral surgery that lasted about an hour. I went with full IV sedation, thank you very much! I went back to the dentist on the 16th to have a tooth filed a bit that was bothering me in my new cross bite alignment.

My bite still feels off, but I think this may be a problem that will not correct until I can eat real food again in a week and a half (I got double the time on soft foods because of a bone condition I have) and build my jaw muscles back up a bit. Either that or I am looking at more orthodontia in my future in 2012.

No matter what, I am back in business. I have one paper to upload for school, and I am done with that until mid January as well, which will free me up for more conversational posts than I have done since the A to Z challenge. During the down time I hope to post on all of my sites at least once a day so that it becomes a habit I can maintain.

My next courses are a history class and a management class. I am preordering my books now to try and get ahead in terms of the readings and maybe some assignments. At least a rough outline of some assignments.

We are also kind of hoping to accelerate our moving to the first part of 2012 versus late spring/early summer. We have some nibbles!

Life is so busy, but I'm hoping for some really positive changes soon...and after we move we really will have our lives in place which will make everything a bit smoother around here (both at home and on the blog).

I can't wait to spend more time with all of you!

Many Small Business Owners Lack Internet Security

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Norton Small Business by Symantec for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Recent surveys have shown that 28 percent of small business owners believe that technology needs or one of their top three business priorities. Ironically, given this stat, 6 out of 10 of those owners (or 59 percent) have had malware (malicious software) appear on their business computers in the past three years and 51 percent of those businesses had to pay an expert to correct the problem.

I don't know about you, but for me, that doesn't computer. This is particularly disturbing when products such as Norton Small Business by Symantec are widely available, affordable, and can be written off as an income tax deduction when installed on a computer used solely for small business efforts. The cost of a preventative product is surely not a worse pill than paying for technical assistance!

Right now, Norton is making it even easier for small business to buy their products through a promotion that allows owners to get 30% off Norton Small Business Products now. 

This security is so important! If the past couple of years have shown us anything, it is that the internet makes all computers, servers, and sites vulnerable. When trusted companies can have their servers overrun and email lists hacked, a lot of your digital security leaves your hands. However, it is important for the small business owner to stay on top of the things he or she can control and fix. This will help protect your tax records, customer transactions, customer email lists and so much other important, private data.

As of September of 2011, North 360 and Norton 2012 have both hit stores and the Norton website! Either of these two programs will help you and your family achieve the same level of computer protection your business enjoys.

So far, we have never had a problem with identity theft, viruses, or bad web-sites. However, we always use internet security - a pound of prevention and all that. If you aren't already a Norton customer, check out their website and see the options available to keep you, your family, and your business safe.

Leave a comment letting me know the Norton product that would most help you and your family and why it would?