Guest Post: The Jewish Lady, The Black Man and the Road Trip by Carol Sue Gershman

First, I would like to apologize for not having this posted on the 18th as planned but my schedule was insane and I was simply unable to. But it is my immense pleasure to bring to you a blog post by Carol Sue Gershman, who is currently engaged in an online book tour for her novel The Jewish Lady, The Black Man and the Road Trip.

Guest Post 

Amongst girlfriends. I have been blessed with many good friends in my life. When I was in my thirties and forties I had five best girlfriends. I truly loved each of these ladies and they loved me. Each one thought that I was their best friend and to me they were all my best friends. I guess there was one that stood out more than the other and if they should read this, they would automatically say, "That was me." At other times in my life, such as my teenage years, I also had a group of wonderful girlfriends. These girlfriends were the ones I grew up with and I loved them all and they loved me. I am happy to say that two still remain my close friends but the others moved and we lost touch. Then there were the wonderful friends I had raising my kids; we shared our stories about bringing up babies and developed a social life around them. They knew my children and I knew theirs and the bond was strong. So where are all of these girlfriends now? I must admit that the majority of them have disappeared from my life and two, sadly, are deceased. Perhaps I am the cause of why they are no longer in my life. For example, one turned out to have a difficult life and manipulated me into being there for her during these times but excluding me from good times. It became an unpleasant friendship according to her terms. Another friend was the cheapest woman I ever met. She would not even treat herself to a glass of water and she had lots of money. It became discouraging as she sat in front of me with her mouth watering as I ordered dinner. In the beginning I would treat her, and then I realized I was only playing into her neurosis. She liked sitting with me but refused to order. The friendship broke up when she saw the man I was crazy about with another woman and told me. It devastated me at the time and found it not to be necessary for her to tell me. My best high school best friend disappeared as soon as we got married. When she came back it was thrilling, but no sooner did we connect, she would disappear again; and the same disappearance happened with my other best high school friend who I have not seen or heard from since high school. Now I have new friends and at 73 years old which is my age, I am lucky to connect with these terrific ladies. They have come to me in the last two years and each one is divine. One is my last boyfriend's prior lady, and the others I met at Mah Jongg. I stopped playing for thirty five years and now we are have come full circle. We have also connected on a different level and have become friends. We all have our individual lives but when we see each other we thoroughly enjoy one another and have fun. They are also wonderfully supportive of me as an author. So is this the way it is supposed to be? Is it me who has let them go or is it them that have let me go? Is it because we change over the years or is it because I have not been a good friend or accepting of their ways. I often thought how great it would be to bring all of my old friends together. Maybe we can all get in a circle and play what we used to play in grammar school. I don't like you because: But even told the truth, at this late date would we change or should I just be grateful for who I was and who they were at the time. Are relationships meant to last?

For more information about Carol Sue Gershman's blog tour here.

Blog Tour & Guest Post: Football is for Lovers by Robert Brooker & Kathleen O'Dougherty

About Robert Brooker & Kathleen O'Dougherty

Bob Brooker and Kaye O'Dougherty have been adventuring together for a lot of years now. They first met at a recording studio on 42nd Street. Yes, that 42nd Street. They recorded a commercial for E.J. Korvette's, who went out of business soon thereafter. Bob is an old saloon singer who, as Bobby Brookes, recorded for Victor and Capital back in the day. Kaye has trouble carrying a tune in a bucket. Nevertheless, over the years, as Brooker and O'Dougherty, the two have collaborated on a variety of theater projects, performing, writing, directing, managing, and producing. In keeping with the changing times, they have even created a cyber alter-ego named eBobb. Recently, Bob and Kaye both took long-overdue turns at being rather mature college kids. Kaye now holds a Bachelors Degree in the Humanities from St. Peter's College in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Bob was graduated magna cum laude from Montclair State University with a BA in Theater, and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. For more information: Footballforlovers.com, Blog

About Football is for Lovers

Can learning about football be sexy? According to Football is for Lovers, when it comes to your love life, football can be better than oysters. The good news is that Football is for Lovers makes the basics so . . . well, so basic that learning the game is easy as eating an ice cream cone. And just as much fun. With anecdotes, illustrations, and a lot of laughs, Football is for Lovers not only makes it easy to understand the game, but also shows you how to put an end to the TV clicker wars, improve your relationship, and spice up your love life. It just takes looking at the game of football a little bit differently. Then again, since Football is for Lovers contains references to football great Jerry Rice in a pink tutu, images of paintings by French artist Jean Dubuffet, an alert about the dangers of speaking Northeastern Mandarin, an explanation of the value of M & M's in a relationship, and a Burma Shave sign, to say it looks at football "a little bit differently" may be something of an understatement. But if your football-obsessed partner has been making you a 'football widow' from August NFL pre-season through the February Super-Bowl, thus convincing you that you hate football, this little book may be just the 'different look' you need to discover that, after all, Football really is for Lovers!

Guest Post by Robert Brooker & Kathleen O'Dougherty

When you hear that a shared cause can keep a relationship flourishing, more than likely what springs to mind is sharing Grand Things like stamping out global hunger, or achieving world peace. Sharing football is likely not to have made it into your top ten. But maybe football deserves a recount. And no: we're not just saying that because we wrote Football is for Lovers. Actually, it's more why we wrote Football is for Lovers. It occurred to us that many of you may not have made the connection between the condition of your relationship and the condition of the planet. Which brings us back to what we see as the key to a truly electric relationship: sharing. Sadly, we appear to be to the ill-manner born. From the time we're mere babes, we're pretty much gimme sort of guys. Ever see the frown on the face of a toddler when she's told she has to share her Tommy the Talking Truck with her playmate? Ah, but then we fall in love. And we realize "amazingly!" that we are actually seeing someone else as being at least as important to us as we are to ourselves!!! Wow!!! Better than that: it doesn't just feel good. It feels positively EUPHORIC!!! Egos melt. Suddenly, we want to give our dearly beloved the world!! Hey, he can have our Tommy the Talking Truck if he wants it. Because now we see – no, make that now we feel – how wonderful sharing can be. But we're willing to bet that you still don't see the connection between Tommy, football, and World Peace. Well, there is one. And since we're also betting that you're feeling just a bit skeptical along about now, we're bringing in the Big Guns: Vladimir Solovyov. Hey, with a name like that, you just gotta take him seriously, yes? Well, you should. He's considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century. Vladimir said, ". . . sexual love is the highest flowering of individual life." Oh, that Vladimir! But more than that, he said that love is "the beginning of the embodiment of true ideal humanity." That is, Vladimir sees this human physical love of ours as the doorway to that true ideal humanity that really would feed the hungry and end all war. Didn't know you had it in you, did you?! Okay. So love is a heck of a lot more heavyweight than you thought it was. But still: why football? We say, why not? Isn't it a grand way to ease yourself into the bigger stuff? It can rev up all that sharing energy you'll need for those anti-war protests and collecting canned goods to send to Wall Street. Don't understand the game? If you're a little shaky on the fundamentals, Football is for Lovers will teach you all you need to know. Quick and easy. So let yourself go! Cheer! Hug! Roll around on the rug a little. The world is counting on you!

Blog Tour & Book Review: The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

About Elin Hilderbrand

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.

Author's Homepage Plum

Nantucket Video

About The Castaways

Greg and Tess MacAvoy are one of four prominent Nantucket couples who count each other as best friends. As pillars of their close-knit community, the MacAvoys, Kapenashes, Drakes, and Wheelers are important to their friends and neighbors, and especially to each other. But just before the beginning of another idyllic summer, Greg and Tess are killed when their boat capsizes during an anniversary sail. As the warm weather approaches and the island mourn their loss, nothing can prepare the MacAvoy's closest friends for what will be revealed.Once again, Hilderbrand masterfully weaves an intense tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of endless summer island life.

Read an excerpt

The Castaways book club

The Castaways cocktail recipe

My Review of The Castaways

Genre: Fiction - Drama

Finished: July 8, 2009

Andrea and Ed (The Chief), Delilah and Jeffery, Addison and Phoebe, and Tess and Greg are four couples that make up a group of friends who called themselves The Castaways. Living together in Nantucket, the group is as close as any group can be until a boating accident shakes claims two of their lives and shakes the rest of them up. While sailing on a boat for their anniversary, Tess and Greg have an accident and both are killed. What they leave behind is a lot of grief, a lot of questions, and some secrets that slowly start to come apart as people unravel. Most of the secrets center around Tess and Greg: what happened the night they died, why did Tess have opiates in her blood, had she been about to tell Greg about the affair she was having, and was Greg going to admit to the affair he was having and leave her? With the two of them dead, their friends can only try to make sense of the events without them and it tears them apart. The story is not really about Tess and Greg, but about the friends that are left behind. This is a book about emotion. Some turn to alcohol, some dream of escaping, some retreat inward and seem about to self-destruct, and some flourish. Phoebe, the pill addict, seems to blossom from the tragedy while Andrea, the den mother type who is logical and hard backed, seems to dissolve. Addison, rich beyond anyone's dreams, starts to drink and neglect life because he was in love with Tess. And Delilah, in love with Greg, can't find solace in the same places she once did and longs to run away like she did as a teenager. It is the full spectrum of grief and how different people react to loss. Every character of The Castaways is rich and full of life. Each one is complex and realistic, and you can imagine people like this living down the street. Again and again, though, I was taken aback by the selfishness of each person in the story. One of the greatest things that friends provide each other is a support group, yet none of the friends-- for how tight they claimed to be-- felt comforted by each other. The tragedy does not bring them close together. Instead, it almost tears them apart. Nearly everyone became consumed in their own grief, or in their own memories. But there is a lot happening to tear them apart. It is a little shocking that so many of them are betraying each other. In a way, though, this is good because people aren't perfect. Hilderbrand doesn't try to make ideal characters, but creates them with flaws and does not nurse their grief with excuses. Stark reality is really that hard and people don't always behave the way we'd expect or want, even the best of people. I was absolutely addicted to this book while I read it. I couldn't put it down, and I mean that with complete honesty. For a while when I started the book, I had to refer back to the front to get the characters and their relationships straight. It took a while for me to remember offhand who was married to who, who were best friends, and who was secretly in love with who. If you like complex relationships, this book will definitely appeal to you. There is also so much emotion in this book, and you want to keep reading because you want to see everyone start to pick up the pieces of their lives and heal. You want to know what the truth is. You want to see if good things can happen out of a series of bad.

Participating Sites:

For June 10th- 

http://www.myspace.com/darbyscloset 

http://kayespenguinposts.blogspot.com/ 

http://imbookingit.wordpress.com/ 

http://booksoulmates.blogspot.com/ 

http://nisefunpages.blogspot.com/ 

http://tvandbookaddict.blogspot.com/ 

http://allisonsatticblog.blogspot.com/ 

http://wrightysreads.blogspot.com/ 

http://frugalplus.com/ 

http://www.mgpblog.com/

Book Review: Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Mysteries, #1) by Charlaine Harris

Title: Dead Until Dark

Series: Southern Vampire Mysteries

Book Number: 1

Author: Charlaine Harris

Genre: Fiction-Supernatural

Finished: October 30, 2008

It's been a long time since I've read a good vampire story. In fact, I don't read many vampire stories at all. I have high expectations... to high, I guess. But, I really enjoyed this one. And joy, none of the characters pissed me off or annoyed me. Dead Until Dark was funny, sexy, and interesting. I enjoyed the plot and really liked some of the characters. I overlooked my expectations for vampires to read this book and I found it worth my while. Though the Southern Vampires sort of defied some of what I think vampire should be, I liked the books enough to get past that superficial issue. I thought that the dialogue was especially good. Nothing can turn me off of a book faster than dialogue that seems forced or insincere... or just NOT the way that people talk. I am utterly charmed with the Southern Vampire Mysteries now. I finally found a series about vampires worth reading since Anne Rice. You want exciting and sexy? Read this series. In ways, it's even better than anything Anne Rice created since hers remain shrouded in mystery and lore. The Southern Vampire Mysteries make vampires part of this world; it rips from them a preternatural sense of otherness and puts them directly in the human world shamelessly. Simply wonderful.