Let Us Not Forget

"Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To Those That Serve....Thank you

Angels Among Us

"It is not known precisely where angels dwell--whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode. " Voltaire

Do you believe in angels? Do you believe they walk among us? That they watch over us?

We've all had moments when we are certain something or someone has interceded on our behalf, stepped between us and tragedy...

Something tells you not to take the flight you're scheduled for. You feel silly but at the last minute cancel your reservations. You find out later the plane you would have been on crashed.

You're running ten minutes late because you can't find your cell phone. Then you get caught in a traffic jam where you find out ten minutes ago a car ran a red light and hit another driver head on.

Your loved one is dying. He/she looks at a blank wall and gives a blinding smile of recognition and moments later passes in peace.

You turn down a group of your peers that have invited you to a concert out of town. The carload is killed in an accident on the way back home. If you'd gone with them, you would have been killed as well.

You're coming home alone late at night. Your car stalls out in front of your house. If it would have happened earlier, you would have been stranded.

Has something similiar happened to you? Do you feel someone or something interceded at some point on your behalf, and if so how? And do you think the intercession was an angel that walks among us?

~*~

And speaking of angels, I'd like to include some sites of folks that make a difference.


If you know of other organizations that lend a helping hand, please leave a comment with their web address or drop me an email at sandracox1@gmail.com and I'll add it to the list.



US based foundations:


Cleaning for a reason

For women who are going through chemotherapy for breast cancer, a cleaning agency will come in once a month for four months to clean at no charge.
http://www.cleaningforareason.org/


The Biscuit Foundation
Finds homes for pets whose owners have passed away or had to go into a nursing home.
http://www.biscuitfoundation.org/index.htm
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Biscuit-Foundation/201426785134

Blind Cat Rescue
http://blindcatrescue.org/

Pets in Foreclosure

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ForeclosurePetRescue

Fatal Attraction

What would you do if you were eighteen and on the brink of falling in love for the first time in your life, knowing if you did you would be signing your own death warrant?

Gillian Stone lives in a world that most of us only read about. A world where genies exist and wish-spells are real. Where when a first born daughter falls in love, as soon as she has her first daughter she dies.

Ah, but what about birth control, an intelligent woman would ask. Maybe its something to do with the wish spell but birth control doesn't have much affect on the Stone women.

Gillian is an intelligent woman, who wants to live a long and happy life. Yes, she sometimes gets lonely, but she has her two close friends, and her cat, who is also a product of the spell. She is determined to steer clear of relationships and men in general. Then she meets Darth Hunter and her well thought out plan goes right out the window. Her head tells her any involvement with this man could be her death, but her heart just won't listen.

What a dilemma. If you were in Gillian's place what would you do. Break off the relationship? Or maybe start looking for a genie to break the wish spell.

~*~

And the winner of the creative writer's award is.....drum roll.....Molly Daniels. Congrats, Molly!

For those of you who chose three, you were right. I really did have a parakeet come hopping down the road, jump up on my shoe and begin nibbling the laces.

QUEST FOR FREEDOM

Award winning author, and good bud, Dana Davis has released another great teen sci fi read. She has graciously given us an opportunity to view her trailer. Before you watch the trailer here's a blurb:

Kidnapped. Enslaved. Trapped on an unforgiving world far from home. Fifteen-year-old Janai of Kritine risks her life to lead others to freedom.


Intrigued? I know I am. Lets watch the trailer.....

CONTEST

For an opportunity to win PDF of GROUNDED just leave a comment here. The winner will be announced: May 23rd.

On the surface, Gillian Stone has it all: wealth, beauty, and the freedom to come and go as she pleases…at least from sunset to dawn. From dawn to dusk, she’s grounded in several hundred pounds of marble. And if that’s not bad enough, her life expectancy is preordained to be short…unless, she can find a certain genie and reverse the wish-spell.

Year of the Bird...Or Picking Up Chicks

Year of the Bird.
Regardless of what the calendar says, its gotta be.
Remember the adventures of Fred the Parakeet? Well my son called a little while ago to tell me there were two little baby chickens hopping around his apartment complex near the road and a storm was coming.
"Kittens?" I said intelligently.
"Chickens," he responded.
"Chickens with a C?"
"Chickens," he says again.
So after I'm in the loop on what type of critter needs rescued, he hangs up and gets a box to put them in. But instead of hopping toward him as Fred did me, they took one look at my 6'4" offspring and took off in the opposite direction just as fast as their scrawny little legs would carry them. He managed to round them up, then called the local rescue who referred him to the animal wild life rehabilitator. The woman who answered the phone said, "I've got chickens. I'll take them." Whew.
Parakeets. Chickens. What's next? Turkeys? Buzzards? I'm a fiction writer but even I couldn't makeup this stuff.
Do you have any crazy fowl stories? I'd love to hear them.

Makita Contest

Alan please contact me.

Mother's Day

This blog is in memory of my mom.

Ruth Marie was born August 19, 1929 and passed April 28, 2010. She grew up in the depression and had one brother that, to my grandmother's despair, she squabbled with endlessly. Then they hit their teens and realized they could get away with alot more if they covered each other's back. From that point on, they were inseparable.

They grew up poor. My grandparents could only afford one pair of roller skates so they split them. Each one had one roller skate. I remember my grandmother telling me the only shoes they could afford for my uncle was a pair of girl's shoes so they threw the box away so he wouldn't realize he was wearing sissy shoes:)

My mom was extremely tenacious, translate: stubborn. She only had one spanking in her life and even then refused to do what she'd been told.

Though she didn't grow up with money she grew up in a wonderful family and was wealthy in all the matters that count.

She had two goals in life. One was to have four children and the other was to become a nurse. She had me and was unable to have any more for many years then my three sibs came rapidly one after another. At fifty-one, with three school age children at home, she went back to school to become a nurse. For many years she worked on the psychiatric floor at St. Johns in Springfield, IL. I teased her endlessly, telling her it was a perfect fit.

For her sixty-seventh birthday, she went skydiving for the first time in her life.

She had severe diabetes most of her adult life and Alzheimer's at the end of it. Life was not always easy but she bore it with grace and dignity and maintained a sense of humor.

I have no doubts that when her spirit passed into the next cycle of life her parents, my dad and Neon her favorite cat were waiting.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

And a wonderful Happy Mother's Day to all the great moms out there.

Creative Blogger Award

Kerri Nelson of the Book Boost Blog nominated me for this prestigious blog award. Cough. Cough. Choke. Choke. Thanks, Kerri:) The award comes with strings...I have to nominate seven other creative bloggers and list either six outrageous lies about myself and one truth....or vicey versey.

So can you tell truth from fiction? Here's my true lies. Leave a comment, telling me what you think is true and I'll put you in a drawing for a PDF of GROUNDED.

The drawing will be held next Saturday (May 15th).

So here's my true lies:

1. Ever since a vampire bit me on the neck, I've had trouble being out in the sun.

2. I've been on the New York Times bestsellers list for seven weeks now.

3. A parakeet came hopping down the road, jumped on my shoe and began nibbling my laces.

4. I won three million in the state lotto and just kept my day job because I love working.

5. I hate chocolate.

6. My favorite food is meat lovers pizza.

7. I'm a virgo.

And the blogging victims, err, winners are:

1. Carrie Hinkel Gill of Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem YA Blog

2. Dana Davis, YA Author

3. Amarinda Jones, Erotica Romance Author

4. Mona Risk, Romance Author

5. Julia Barrett, Erotica Romance Author

6. Molly Daniels, Romance Author

7. Aubrie Dionne, Sci-Fi Romance Author