Fall into Danger!

I live a pretty safe life. My neighborhood is located in Suburbia, USA where getting my mail at 4:30 instead of 4:00 is the biggest danger I face. Police sirens are rarely heard, criminals don’t run rampant in the streets, and my super huge German Shepherd has only tiny squirrels to scare away. I can walk said German Shepherd at midnight if I want to and not worry that I’ll be abducted or something equally as heinous.

I work in a safe town in a safe school, surrounded by safe colleagues and safe students.  

Bottom line? My life is basically populated with fuzzy pink bunnies. For the most part I like it that way. I do.

But…

I am a writer, you know. Sometimes I fantasize about danger. It’s kind of my job to do so as a fiction author. I imagine scenarios that are jam-packed with suspense, action, life-and-death decisions, and of course gorgeous men that are at the center of it all. That last part is my favorite. I’ll admit it.

I can be engaged in a mundane task like weeding my yard for example. A truck will drive by and even though I know exactly which neighbor is in that truck and that it drives by at precisely that time every single weekday, I’ll pretend the driver is a 6’4” ex-Marine dressed in all black. He’s wearing dark sunglasses, a scant beard circles his full lips, and he’s got a gun on the passenger seat. A gun he plans to use. He peels around the corner in front of my house, screeches to a stop, and jumps out of his truck. In three long strides, he is standing beside me, the tips of his black boots touching my pile of yanked dandelions.

“Let’s go,” he says.

I look up with a you-talking-to-me expression on my face… and streaks of sweat and dirt no doubt from my toiling in the yard.

“There isn’t much time. They’ll be here any minute. I’m your only chance.” He extends a big, sturdy-looking hand to me.

I gape at it, mesmerized by the size of his fingers and the calluses on his palm. Man hands. Oh, boy, do I love some man hands.

Sliding my soil-covered hand into his, I let him pull me to my feet. I’m wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, but somehow I’m pulling off a cute, girl-next-door look and not the sloppy gardener look I’m usually sporting.

He whisks me into his truck, hops into the driver’s seat, and we’re off.

Away from danger.

Or perhaps into it.

Either way, I’ll be on an adventure—if only in my mind—until my weeding task is done. Then I’ll most likely be attacked by fictional ninjas while I’m folding the laundry.

Danger. It’s nowhere… and everywhere.

For more fictional danger, try my book Firefly Mountain which includes firefighters, a lunatic arsonist, and a paranormal ability capable of really heating things up.

Toodles,

Chris

www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com

Lessons from Scarlett ~ By Leah St. James

I can’t hear the title “Gone with the Wind” without recalling the first time I saw the movie. It was in a theater, a special showing as part of an anniversary celebration. I was a teenager, and I can’t think of that event without recalling the film’s introduction of Captain Rhett Butler, how the camera panned down from the grand staircase of the grand plantation house to capture that knowing, bad-boy grin. I can still hear the collective gasp that echoed throughout the movie theater—the sounds of the women’s hearts stopping, if just for a second.

Once I get past that memory, I think how the story’s theme—a way of life that flourished but slipped from the grasp of its devotees—was so perfectly titled: Gone with the Wind. The people of the Old South (as depicted in the story) were so caught up in the gaiety of their lives, they never saw the danger steamrolling in their direction.

Despite the aspects of life in the antebellum south that were just so wrong, sometimes I think Scarlett and her friends had some things right. Even when she was staring adversity head on and daring it to better her, she lived every moment to its fullest—whether loving or hating, laughing or pouting.

I can learn a lot from Scarlett.

Sometimes I’m so caught up in (and wrung-out by) the every-day busy-ness of my life, I don’t pay attention to the joys in front of me. Before I know it, what I cherish will have fluttered away in the mindless passage of days, and I’ll be left grasping at wisps of memory that I hadn’t taken time to fully appreciate.

As I write this I’m visiting my older son. He is a doctoral student at a college several states away, and I only see him once or twice a year. My husband and I stopped here as part of a longer trip, just to touch base, to be with him.

When I look at him, my eyes see a man in every respect, but my mind’s eye sees the baby toddling to me on those first ecstatic steps, and the sense of time snowballing beyond my control fills me with disbelief.

So after I shut down my laptop, I’m going to plop myself next to him on his couch and watch some awful movie that he and my husband have chosen. And I’m going to metaphorically bottle these very mundane, but very precious, moments so I can pull them out to savor when I want.

What about you? Do you (like me) find yourself carried along on the tides of your day? Or (like Scarlett) have you figured out how to truly live each moment?

_________________

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil, and the enduring power of love. Her novels include romantic suspense Surrender to Sanctuary and Adrienne's Ghost, and women's fiction Christmas Dance. Learn more at leahstjames.com.

Weird Behavior? Moi? I Hide Plants....

By @GlenysOConnell

I hide plants.

There, I've confessed. 

While everyone else is out there nurturing their pretty green garden plants and jewel-toned flowers, I’m hiding houseplants. It's not like this is some dark secret  vice or anything - like talking to dead people or collecting booze bottles or having a mad crush on Justin Bieber  (if I was blah-blah years younger, maybe…)

No, I hide plants for their own good. Ever since a certain young lady came to visit for a while, brought by one of my sons, there hasn't been a safe place for plants anywhere in my house.

Her name's Miss Kitteh and she eats house plants. Now there's a dark secret vice if ever there was one.

It all started when the aforementioned son decided he was changing jobs and couldn’t keep his beloved cat with him until he had got settled in his new apartment. I sighed a bit (we already have two cats) but agreed. Of course, it was only going to be for a week or two.

That was three months ago.

And in that time, Ms. Kitteh has cut a swathe of devastation through my pride-and-joy house plants. Even worse, she's got the other cats chewing on them as well.

So I have plants hidden on a high shelf in the bathroom. And two on the guestroom window sill - a forbidden spot for cats but unfortunately, one where the plants get forgotten at watering time. Then there's in the window behind my desk, and another - one of my favourites - hidden on a filing cabinet behind my office door. And that door is kept tightly shut.

I occasionally wake up in a sweat (yeah, it's an age thing) wondering if I remembered to close that office door. Of course, I then elbow DH awake to ask him if he noticed it was closed. It's a good thing he's pretty patient. Or maybe just too tired to care.

Of course, I've read that some house plants are dangerous to cats if they chew them. That may be so, but nothing seems to upset Miss Kitteh's digestion.

What worries me is how I'm going to retrain the other two to stop chewing, once Miss Kitteh goes back to her rightful slave. I mean, owner.

She's a former stray with sharp claws, sharp fangs and an even sharper temper. But you know something? We'll miss her when she goes to her new home.

Like, really.

Glenys O'Connell, a card carrying member of the Crazy Cat Lady Club, can often be seen waving her arms to stop traffic while she rescues turtles, frogs, snakes, chipmunks and other assorted creatures on busy highways. Friends predict that one day she'll be smucked by a fast moving transport. But until that day, she plans to keep right on writing - right now working on Never Kiss Another Frog - a romance writer's guide to dating for women who no longer believe in fairy tales! Visit her at Romance Can Be Murder! or on Twitter at @GlenysOConnell