Daffodils are a sign of Spring by Barbara Edwards

 In fifth grade, the teacher insisted we memorize a poem every week. At the time I thought Mrs. Robinson was very demanding, but she had the right idea. All these years later I remember what became one of my favorite poems.

 “I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD"

          I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

          When all at once I saw a crowd,

          A host, of golden daffodils;

          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine

          And twinkle on the milky way,

          They stretched in never-ending line

          Along the margin of a bay:                                  10

          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they

          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

          A poet could not but be gay,

          In such a jocund company:

          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie

          In vacant or in pensive mood,                               20

          They flash upon that inward eye

          Which is the bliss of solitude;

          And then my heart with pleasure fills,

          And dances with the daffodils.

                                      Wordsworth       1804.

Symbolizing rebirth and new beginnings, the daffodil, or narcissus, as it is also called, is virtually synonymous with spring. It is also the March flower.

Daffodils are popular in New England  and there are naturalized plantings along field-stone walls, in highway buffers, and yards everywhere.

I’ve wanted to plant them for years, but we’re usually still in Florida when they bloom so my husband wasn’t encouraging.

Finally, three years ago, I decided what the heck. We won’t always be traveling and the bulbs will only multiply.

I went to the store and bought four bags of bulbs. There is a weird tool that looks like an apple corer to plant the bulbs.  I found it difficult to use and after three bulbs got a shovel. I had over two hundred bulbs to plant. (I tend to go overboard.) I actually dug a trench fourteen inches wide and six inches deep. It stretched across the garden in front of the porch.

I missed them when we returned in the end of April, but this year we’ll be home in time because of all the snow. I'm taking lots of photos and

I’m looking forward to them.

Please visit www.barbaraedwards.net for buy links, excerpts and free reads.

A Question for Our Readers by Amber Leigh Williams

While pondering my subject for this month’s “possibilities” post, I came across an intriguing question I wanted to ask our readers here at the Roses of Prose. While exploring everything that possibility means to me as a fiction writer, it occurred to me that all roads lead back to the reader. Before I was a writer, I was an avid reader. After I became a writer, reading remained one of my favorite pastimes. Wherever I can find the time nowadays, I still love to lose myself in a good book. When you crack open a new read, the pages breathe possibilities. Anything could happen. And when turning the last page of a truly unforgettable novel, sometimes we feel a bit sad – a sense of longing that the story would continue…or we could keep reliving it word for word again and again. I believe this sense of longing is why we so often go back and re-read our favorites. Whether a book is good or bad, we feel a bit sad at the end of it because all those possibilities we were so thrilled to uncover in the beginning have been revealed to us. Whether we’re disappointed in how it turned out or satisfied that all the plot threads and character arcs were tied up, that sense of longing is usually there.

 

This all meanders back to my question for readers, just as a line from Nathan Fillion in an early episode of the television show Castle. When finding out that a suspect is suffering from amnesia, the lead character, Richard Castle, contemplates one of the few benefits of profound memory loss: reading your favorite books for the first time all over again. Think about it. We can re-read our favorites again and again and achieve some of the thrill and satisfaction we received from their pages to begin with. But we can never go back to that moment we cracked open their spines for the very first time and sensed all those possibilities beckoning us forward. We can never really relive the rush of watching all those plot points unfold before our eyes and in our imaginations. We can never fly into the unknown of these stories again and grasp that knowledge in the end that we’ve discovered something amazing. Just like falling in love for the first time in our lives, we can sadly never get these moments back.

 

This brainstorm leads me to my question for you, readers. If you could go back and read any book for the first time again, what would it be? Think carefully. If I could go back and read the Harry Potter books for the first time all over again, other than reliving my first love, I can’t imagine anything more exciting! How about going back and finding what seemed like the words of a kindred spirit in The Diary of Anne Frank in eighth grade? Or Pride and Prejudice junior year? Or perhaps I would go back to the summer I was fourteen when I went to my mother and complained that I was bored of my own reading material and she handed me my first romance novel – Carnal Innocence by Nora Roberts. That was definitely a game-changer. Or maybe I could go back to that book I read in third grade literature class that made me want to be a writer to begin with….

 

There are others, more guilty pleasures than those pivotal books mentioned above. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. The J.D. Robb books. (Rediscovering Roarke for the first time all over again? Sign me up, please!) Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s Ashes in the Wind. The Black Dagger Brotherhood. The Enchantment by Betina Krahn. Nora’s romantic suspense Honest Illusions, her western romance Lawless, or any of her Irish trilogies. Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon. Jillian Hart’s Homespun Bride.

 

I can’t choose. The possibilities are endless. Now you try! I’m dying to know what book you would choose to read for the first time all over again – and why….

 

Happy choosing and may spring shower you with many blessings!

Amber Leigh Williams

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Possibilities are Endless by Alison Henderson

Writers are all about the possibilities. After all, what is imagination but seeing possibilities? Whether we’re plotters or pantsers, when we’re working on a story we ask ourselves “what if?” or “what next?” at every turn. Even when writing logical impossibilities (such as fantasy or paranormal), we seek ways to make our imaginings appear possible to our readers.

If writing is about exploring and harnessing possibilities, what about reading? The best books draw the reader into the author’s world immediately, excluding all else. When you read, do you allow yourself to be swept along for the ride, or do you actively consider the possibilities for plot twists ahead? In other words, do you read like a reader or a writer? I much prefer to read as a reader. It’s a relief to be so caught up in someone else’s characters and plot that I shut down my internal writer and editor and simply enjoy the story. For me, that’s the sure mark of quality fiction.

Possibilities can be positive or negative, but romance writers are an inherently optimistic lot. If we weren’t, we’d never devote our writing lives to the pursuit of happily ever after. We deeply believe in the possibility of true love for our characters and, by extension, our readers. That’s why they buy our books, and that’s why we write them. No matter what obstacles we throw in its path, true love will win out. The trope is timeless. Why else would The Princess Bride be such a perennial favorite after so many years?

For romance writers, plot possibilities may be endless, but love remains the ultimate possibility. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Alison

www.alisonhenderson.com

http://alisonhenderson.blogspot.com

Expand Your Knowledge

I've recently decided to expand my knowledge base. Explore some possibilities.

How?

Female Self Defense.

Yeah, that's right. I've been ampin' up my badass factor.

Now I should mention that I'm only 5'6" and about 115 pounds with the most chicken wingy arms you could ever find and a pair of mega giraffe legs, but let's put that aside, shall we? Let's focus instead on the experience of taking a female self defense class.

The first class started with the instructor singling me out (of course) and telling me to react as I normally would when someone tried to attack me. He then proceeded to come at me. What did I do?

Absolutely nothing. Didn't even flinch. Not a single eye blink.

Bewildered, the instructor backed up and said, "THAT'S how you'd react to someone attacking you?"

"It caught you off guard, right?" I replied, shrugging my boney shoulders.

"Well, yeah, but..." He shook his head and carried on with the class, a wary eye on me. He either thought I had the word "PREY" tattooed across my forehead and was destined to be taken down by some thug in a parking garage OR he considered me a brilliant opponent skilled in the arts of mental warfare. I'm going with the latter.

Shut up. I am.

Class Number Two, the instructor again used me as his volunteer (test dummy). "Help me out," he said, "because, you're apparently not afraid of me." Yup, that's me. A brick wall. Calm in all situations. Until he backed me up against a wall in a corner to illustrate how not to let someone get in your personal space. Okay, message received. Keep a protective bubble. Got it. Nothing weirder than having a guy you don't know put his arms on either side of you and trap you...in front of like fifteen other women, all of which are watching intently to learn what to do in this particular situation.

Awkward? Uh, yeah.

Uncomfortable proximity aside, I've learned quite a bit, such as how to take down an attacker with fingers to that little hollow at that base of the throat. You just have to get past the fact that the hollow at the base of the throat is wicked squishy and feels kind of gross when you press your fingers into it. Never underestimate the power of a kick to the groin either. It's all very Trinity from The Matrix. I'll have to buy a long, black coat and some combat boots, which will no doubt keep assailants away on their own, no fancy moves needed.

There are two classes left, and the notion of taking a more in-depth martial class has wormed its way into my brain. Hey, when I was a kid, I watched The Karate Kid every day. No joke. Every day.

I suppose it's never too late to look at the possibilities and learn something new. I'll no doubt use most of this self defense knowledge on a future character.

So wax on, wax off, friends.

What's something new you want to learn?

Toodles,
Chris
www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com  

Hope Springs Eternal!

Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest: The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come. -Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733 The start of spring brings with it hope. After the winter we have endured, I am enjoying the warmth of the sun. It is what spring does...life begins anew, trees come back to life and flowers bloom. Once more the world is open to us. So it goes with life itself. Everyone needs that point to breath in and say let's go at it again. Every year, we deal with what life gives us. Every year, we need to rejuvenate to tackle life's obstacles. I suppose I'm reflecting a tad at the moment. It's the first year that my husband's family is dealing with his mother not being at family events. She has Alzheimer's and is in a nursing home. She wasn't at our family gatherings for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter. We do go to visit her and she's quite happy in the little world she lives in at the moment. It's her family that's hurting. My father-in-law told me that retirement isn't anything like he imagined. My in-laws had planned on enjoying their golden years. My in-laws loved to travel. They had a time-share down in Aruba for twelve years. Every May, they would go down for a couple of weeks. But as we talked, he began to remember. It put a smile on his face. Then the younger grandchildren...the ones that didn't get to know their real grandmother...started asking questions about her. My father-in-law sat with them and relived with them his memories. Sometimes its what we have is the memories. Passing them on means they will live on. And that gives us hope. Hope...we built our country on that belief. If you enjoy reading about spies, traitors, love and betrayal, try Winds of Betrayal Series. The first book in the series, The Cry For Freedom, is now only $.99! THE CRY FOR FREEDOM A rousing family saga for the fight for America's independence. Follow Hannah and Jonathan Corbett's path to Freedom! The winds of change brews over the colonies. Tension against the crown is mounting daily. In Williamsburg, the rebellion burns strong in the hearts of two siblings, Jonathan and Hannah Corbett. Spirited and headstrong, Hannah finds herself thrust in the middle of a conspiracy when her father receives a strange package from Philadelphia. Jonathan, a physician for the Continental Army, is torn between duty and family. With war looming on the horizon, the siblings soon discover there is a high price to be paid for the cry for freedom! The Saga continues.... Embrace of the Enemy, Winds of Betrayal Book Two Kiss of Deceit, Winds of Betrayal Book Three Coming 2014 The Heavens Shall Fall, Winds of Betrayal Book Four

A Haunted House and an Old Murder - the Possibilities are Endless! by Jannine Gallant

Do you believe in ghosts? I've always loved reading about them - my interest in the past showing through, I suppose. When I planned my Secrets of Ravenswood series, book one was easy - solving an old murder. Book two gave me pause - until I decided to try my hand at writing a ghost story. I have to say, it was entertaining and challenging as I fought against dragging out all the old cliches. Okay, so the house is big and creaky and dripping in gingerbread trim, but the spirit haunting it has a unique story... Hopefully, I've piqued your curiosity. She'll Never Rest is available now on Amazon.

She’ll Never Rest

Darby Kincade is a genealogist—not a ghost hunter. But when she’s hired to research the Nash family tree, her job description blurs. Discovering the identity of the spirit who lingers in the ancestral home promises to be both challenging and fun—despite her client’s skeptical grandson.

Logan Nash doesn’t believe in ghosts, but Darby’s wit and tenacity intrigue him. Though his practical side objects, he’s drawn to both her and the old mystery. As their feelings for each other deepen, and they grow closer to uncovering the truth, someone is determined to keep long dead secrets buried.

Will Darby and Logan find love—or will the past come back to haunt them?

I hope you'll enjoy Darby and Logan's story, and if you missed the first book in the trilogy, We'll Never Tell, today is your lucky day. It's FREE on Amazon for a limited time. Can't beat that price!

We’ll Never Tell

Three young girls witness a murder—and make a pact never to tell what they saw. But when the woman’s body is uncovered seventeen years later, the killer’s faith in their promise is shaken. A few deadly reminders may be in order…

Samantha Beaumont knows it’s time to reveal the truth about what happened in the woods all those years ago—until the accidents begin. Fear that the killer will shut them up permanently leads Sam on a quest to protect her friends and expose the murderer’s identity. No one, certainly not the man she spent one memorable night with, will stop her.

Ethan Thorne has no reason to believe Sam is any more interested in a commitment now than when she ran from him five years before. Still, he can’t resist trying one more time… When he realizes her life is in danger, he’ll risk everything for a chance at love.

So, do you believe in ghosts? Or do you at least like reading about them?

Get We'll Never Tell for free here.

Buy She'll Never Rest here.

Visit me at my website and blog for information on all my books. Stay tuned - book three will be coming soon.

Possible Possibilities? Always an Open Door

By Jena Galifany -

How is your year going so far? Mine has been quite busy but it's a good kind of busy. I enjoy the chaos of too much to do. I must because every time I get it under control, I feel like I'm not doing enough and have to add a few more projects. I'm always looking for new possibilities.

While I'm in the midst of editing Day Labor, I'm finishing my 2012 NaNoWriMo project, Rhoades Through a Storm. I've let it sit for almost four months and have two short pieces left to finish it. I'm touching it up in between other things and it is coming along nicely. It's possible I will have another manuscript to submit in the next month or so.

Opus Owl

I've borrowed a T-shirt Press and began applying transfers to shirts for my children's clothing store. It's fun and easy. I get to put Jen's expertise in graphic design into practice. I've added our first creation that was designed by my son's lady friend, Caitlin Thompson. His name is Opus Owl and I love him.
 
My son drew a portrait of Jen's favorite zebra, Zag, wearing glasses. I hope to have him ready for the press soon. These little fellows add originality to the clothing. I'm looking for new and unusual transfer subjects to make my shirts stand out. It is possible that we will be increasing our sales by adding these originals.

My answering service is growing and doing well. I am in the process of training to be an operator. I know that sounds crazy. Everyone knows how to answer a phone. That part is easy. It's the computer program that we use to take the messages and send a text, fax, or page to the client that has me intimidated. I know I'll get it after a short time. My hands-on training begins on Tuesday. I believe that since it is my business I really should know how to do the work. Of course, there is the possibility I will tear my hair out in frustration.

I make crochet items for a store that is in the same mini mall as my clothing store and my book store. Did I mention I have a book store across the hall from the clothing store as well? I make purses, blankets, ponchos, and other "specialty" items for her store. I also make children's sized purses, blankets and ponchos for my store. I want to get my sewing machine out and make a few sets of culottes and some skirts for the store. I made them for Jen when she was younger and I think they will do well.

I see possibilities every where I look. I need to be three or four people in order to do everything I'd like to do. I know that is not possible so I hope to get all of these businesses established, hand them off to family members to run and be able to collect a little from each one every month. Then I can sit at home with a steady income in place and spend my time writing! Oh, what a happy day that will be! It will be possible for me to actually finish writing all of the dozen stories that I have waiting in my computer and in my head. It's always possible!

______________________________________

What were the possibilities of a half-blood man being free to love a white woman in 1880s Oregon Territory? Not very good but it didn't stop Cole Jackson from falling for Shyanne Bennett.

Shyanne's Secret

Cole Jackson promised to take care of Shyanne Bennett, to keep her secret. It was a promise he intended to keep—and then her father lynched him. It might take time, but he’d find a way.
Shyanne Bennett loved Cole Jackson, that sassy half-blood. She lost her mind when he died to keep her secret. Cole promised to take care of her but how could he once Harvey Bennett hung him? Maybe her heart might find solace in becoming the wife of his look-alike cousin, Will Marshall. And then again, maybe the heartache will only begin again. 

 ______________________________________ 

 Dex kicked the foreleg of Cole's horse. The wagon lurched as the horse cried out. Cole leapt to the ground, his boots accenting his landing with a plume of dust. He stood face to face with Dex.
    Dex grinned.  "Well, I finally got through to him.  You can take your eyes off the girl.  If anyone gets that one, it'll be me."
"We'll see," Cole challenged, his glare drilled into Dex's eyes.  They stood equal in height but Dex had quite a few pounds over Cole.
    "He can talk.  I didn't think he spoke English."  The cronies laughed.  Dex's grin melted to a smug frown.  "There's nothing to see."
Cole glanced past Dex at the girl.  She stood on the raised sidewalk now, and watched the exchange along with a few other people.  Cole could toss this fool to the ground but it would only get him reprimanded by Sheriff Olsen. That would either impress Shyanne or she'd never speak to him because of it.  Dexter Heims wasn't worth the trouble.
    "Right."  Cole tried to step around Dex with the intent of loading the rest of his supplies.  Dex grabbed a handful of Cole's jacket, and shoved his back against the buckboard.
    "I didn't tell you to go yet." As the fool stepped back, his cronies fanned out beside him. Dex turned his back to Cole for a moment, taking something from one of the others.
    "What ever."  Cole hooked his thumbs in his back pockets, cocked his head in annoyance, eyes on the building across the side street. A few others had gathered behind the idiots. Great.  Cole smirked as he waited.
    Dex turned back to Cole. "You remember General Custer? That run in they had up in Montana territory?"
    Cole glared at Dex.  "Last year. What about it?"
    "Did it look like this?"  In a synchronized attack, all four of the boys pelted Cole with balls of mud.  Cole didn't flinch as the globs thudded against the wagon and the stacked supplies, startling the horse, and splattering him.  He didn't take his eyes from the grin on Dex's face.
    Cole smirked. "If you had half a brain, you'd remember that the other blonde horse's ass lost that battle. The Indians won."  Cole headed toward the supplies, undeterred by the show of stupidity.  "But you're not long on brains, are you."
    Dex puzzled for a moment.  He glanced around and laughed, the others following his lead, as usual. Cole continued his task as Dex and his band moved off down the street.  Cole worked, his head held high as he turned his back to the laughter.  As he hefted another bag of seed, he chanced a glance into Shyanne's kind blue eyes as she strolled past him into the mercantile.  At least she wasn't laughing.  Another memory he could keep.

  ______________________________________ 

Shyanne's Secret is available from Whiskey Creek Press, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
For more from Jena Galifany, visit my WEBSITE.

Life is full of possibilities. Reach out and grab them before they get away!

Cheers!
Jena'