Bell Bridge Books | Author Archives

TRADITION

#Tradition

By Lindi Peterson

One of my favorite aspects of the Christmas season is the memories it evokes. The memories of Christmas when I was a child, a teenager, a young mom. I have always had a huge family, so when I say memories, I have a lot of them. Memories of many people, much laughter and a whole slew of fun.

My Christmas Eve memories involve my Grandmu—my mom’s mom. It was a known fact that she spent $10 dollars on each grandkid. I’ll never forget the year my brother opened his gift and said, “This doesn’t look like ten-dollars worth.”

My other brother and I laughed until we cried while my mom cringed in embarrassment. Oh well, life went on, Grandmu kept her $10 budget for each grandkid and no one ever commented on it again.

Christmas day memories consist of a full day at Grandma and Grandpa Aebi’s house with the whole family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, people who weren’t blood related, but somehow they garnered the aunt or uncle title as well, were frequent visitors. My little girl eyes remember the table with tons of food, my total lack of understanding when my teenaged-cousins were thrilled when they opened a package that held a slip, and how I stood on a chair drying dishes as my grandma washed them and my aunt put them back in the cabinets. And all so we could do it all over again about the time we finished, because by then it was suppertime and there were amazingly somehow leftovers to be eaten.

I reminisce about those days this time of the year. I think about how our world has changed. Some things have changed a lot. Some things haven’t changed at all.

The way we communicate seems to me to be the biggest change. My Grandma Aebi had a party line. If you know what that is, great. If you don’t, think party. Enough said. Now we have phones that can do almost anything. Computers that make our life easier. (For the most part!) We also have communication mediators, as I call them. Facebook, texting, Twitter. Ah, Twitter, which has brought new meaning to the term hash tag. No longer only used to divide scenes in our manuscripts and in front of numerically ordered items, it now has brought the world into categorically organizing what we say. #itistrue

But family hasn’t changed. I still look forward to Christmas Eve with my mom. I love Christmas Day spent with our children and our grand children. We have a ton of food, I’m now the one who is thrilled when I receive a slip, and although the dishwasher has replaced the standing on a chair drying job, there is still the clearing of the table, and all the great conversation that takes place during that time.

Enjoy your Christmas Season. Eat well, laugh hard, love all those around you.

Do you have any Christmas memories you would like to share?

#MerryChristmas

CHRISTMAS LISTS: THEN AND NOW ( ARE WE THINKING OF THE GIVER?)

Christmas Lists: Then and Now(—Are we thinking of the giver?)

By Kathryn Magendie

At various stages of Kid-dom, my Christmas list would read something like this:

Real Candy, with chocolate – not that hard stuff, or fruit

Baby Doll with a Stroller

Pretend, but really works, Spinning Wheel with Yarn

Barbie

Bike – a new one would be nice, but used is fine, too

Pack of Old Maid Playing Cards

Parcheesi

Checkers

Horse – not a pony, but a Real Horse, preferably a black stallion that rears up and paws the air

Books – connect the dot, puzzle books, Black Beauty, Black Stallion books, Call of the Wild – any book about dogs or horses or wolves

A pair of black and a pair of white shiny vinyl knee-high boots

Blacklight and Poster

And, with the exception of the horse (dang), at one time or another, I received those gifts. Thing is, all of those gifts are tangible. One can go out to the store and purchase the item, wrap it up, and put it under the tree—again, with the exception of the horse, but that didn’t stop me from racing to the window every Christmas and checking to see if a horse was tied up in our suburban front yard. Yeah. Hope springs and all that. But the list is simple enough, although at various times in my life we were pretty danged poor, so those items weren’t easy to come by. Somehow, though, my mom always found a way to have presents under the tree for us. And the magical wonderful thing about that is this: whether we had asked for a certain item or knew it was best not to ask because times were hard, it didn’t matter, because once we dived under the tree and began unwrapping, we thought how everything we received was just what we wanted no matter what our list, spoken, written, or just dreamt, was—we were happy, even with the sack of fruit and hard danged ole candy.

Fast forward to my Older-dom, the post-published author phase of my life, and the list reads something like this:

New York Times Best-seller

Win a Literary Award

Number 1 (again please!) on Kindle

People to love me and love my books and think I am AWESOME!

Yeah, yeah: Love and peace and health and all that jazz, etc etc etc.

Write a book that goes viral

Oprah saying “and a Magendie book for YOU, and a Magendie book for YOU, and a Magendie book for YOUUUUUUUUU!”

Book to movie

Do you see the difference in those two lists? Other than the obvious, of course. In the second list, the items aren’t tangible; one can’t go to the store and buy them; someone can’t place these things under the tree where I’ll rip them open, happy-shiny paper flying willy-nilly, the givers grinning their fool heads off because they’ve made someone joyful. The gift wishes in the second list are Hah-Uge and for all but a few, could be almost unattainable. With a list like that, one could be forever unhappy at Christmas, forever feeling slighted, forever just a little bit sad. One could sit there among the twinkly lights feeling sorry for oneself while all the others are ripping open their packages with glee.

So this Christmas, I think I’ll alter my thinking. I think I’ll make me up another list. One that makes someone else happy in the giving. One that GMR, or my friends, or family members can happily and sneakily purchase, wrap up, and place under the tree, anticipating my reaction. For when year after year I say, “Oh, all I want is (above list),” I take away something magical and wonderful from Christmas. I take away someone else’s joy of giving.

And you? What about you? What is on your Christmas List this year? And is it similar to my second list? And if so, want to join me in hoping for something tangible, something wrap-able, something we can tear into on Christmas morning with joy and abandon? All the rest is dreams—and dreams can be dreamt any old other time. Christmas is for plain old greedy want of material thangs—just say’n! Yeah!

Merry Christmas, all y’allses!

Kat Magendie, author, Publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn, is the author of The Graces Trilogy (Tender Graces, Secret Graces, Family Graces), Sweetie, and of the novella Petey in The Firefly Dance. Her next novel, The Lightning Charmer, will be released fall 2013.

COPING WITH CHRISTMAS CHAOS

Coping with Christmas Chaos

By Cindi Myers

The writer’s life is such that most of us don’t have “normal” 9 to 5 schedules. We work weekends, nights, holidays and whatever the deadline or the muse demand. And most of us are fine with this. But overlay that schedule on top of the demands of a busy holiday season and well, something’s got to give.

I love Christmas. I love the decorations and the carols and the cookies and the gifts. (I love Christmas so much I got married on December 22 — our flowers were poinsettias and we took wedding pictures in front of the Christmas tree.) I want to celebrate all month long and I want to do everything.

But I’ve also got books to write and other work to take care of. What’s this Holly Jolly to do?

Because this season is important to me, I give myself permission to slack off a little for the weeks leading up to Christmas. I still work, but I take time each week (or even each day) to do the holiday things I enjoy. If I feel like baking cookies, I bake cookies. I watch holiday movies. I listen to holiday music and wrap presents. I take a drive around the neighborhood and look at lights.

To make room for all this and my writing, I had to give up some things. I decided to give up the holiday hassles I don’t enjoy. (Remember I said something has to give.) If it’s a Christmas activity that doesn’t make me feel good about the season, I don’t do it.

This means that some years I send lovely Christmas cards with handwritten notes, that I compose while sitting by the Christmas tree, music playing softly in the background, sipping hot cider.

And other years I say “the heck with that” and only send a handful of cards to people (like my mother-in-law) whom I know are counting on a card.

Some years I bake dozens of Christmas cookies.

Other years I buy any cookies we eat — or we just don’t eat cookies.

Some years I decorate indoors and out, having a blast stringing lights and wrapping garland. Other years — well, let’s just say that last year we never did put up a Christmas tree — and the holiday was great anyway.

On the other hand, decorations are a terrific excuse to forgo most housework during December. How can I dust around all that garland? And candlelight hides a lot of flaws, believe me.

I do 95 percent of my shopping online, and have gifts wrapped and sent directly to the recipients when possible. Staying away from stores and traffic reduces a lot of the stress of the holidays for me.

By focusing on what’s really important to me — the things that I enjoy most — I indulge in the good things about the season and I still manage to get a little work done, without feeling deprived or guilty.

One of my favorite things to do during the holidays? Curl up in front of the fire with a hot drink and a good book!

Cindi Myers is the author of The Woman Who Loved Jesse James.

WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THE HOLIDAYS

While most people think New Year’s Day is the end of the holiday season, we can’t get enough of the holidays. Join us for a continuation of holiday blogs from BBB authors.

A CHRISTMAS WISH

A Christmas Wish

by Katherine Scott Crawford

Christmas magic.

It’s something—a feeling, a spirit, a hope—that I’ve searched for, and inevitably found, every December since I was a child.

When I was very young, my parents made the magic. They filled our house with Christmas cheer: Johnny Mathis, John Denver and Bing Crosby on the record player and then the stereo; a house festooned with garland, candles and poinsettias; the everyday china exchanged for plates and mugs and bowls of Spode Christmas china; the lighting of the Advent calendar; the mistletoe hanging from the light fixture in the foyer; and the enormous Virginia pine Christmas tree. Today, that tree is a Fraser Fir, but it’s still brilliantly lit with bubble lights and adorned with mine and my sister’s hand-made ornaments, along with a precious few that have been in my father’s family since the turn of the century. It stands next to an enormous real-wood fireplace, red, crocheted stockings hung at the fat wooden mantel, just waiting for Santa Claus. To this day, my sister’s and my stockings are stretched inches longer than any of the others from years of being stuffed to the brim with goodies.

On Christmas Eve we’d head to church for the United Methodist celebration of the Moravian Love Feast. We’d sing Christmas carols, convene with friends, and hold our candles aloft as the entire sanctuary sang “Silent Night.” I loved standing on the pew bench with my family, holding my candle high and watching the glow on the faces around me. After, we’d head home for Christmas Eve supper with my aunt’s family and our best family friends: a tradition we still keep to this day. That very night, Santa would call the house, and all the kids would line up to hear just where his sleigh was at that very moment (usually over the Atlantic Ocean, Rudolph lighting the way through the fog).

Sheer magic.

Now, as an adult with a writing and teaching career, a family (including a husband, a dog, a three year-old daughter and a baby on the way), it takes a concerted effort to create that Christmas magic. I have to look for it—to make it happen, because I want my daughter to grow up as I was so lucky to: feeling that every day of December holds promise and magic.

I want her to be able—as I did as a child, a teenager, and still do—to stand outside in the dark of a cold Christmas Eve, and to look up at that mysterious sky with wonder and hope. I want her to feel in her bones a peace like no other. That is my most fervent Christmas wish, this year of all years. I wish it for all of us—for the community of Newtown, Connecticut, for all the world, for my family and for yours.

Tonight and every night, may we sleep in heavenly peace.

THE YEAR THE DOG ATE CHRISTMAS

The Year the Dog Ate Christmas

By Marilee Brothers

A turkey ready for the oven, an open back door and a smiling dog with issues morphed into the perfect storm that resulted in a Christmas I’ll never forget. I was eight years old. A light snow was falling. Up and down the street, Christmas lights were aglow.

The family dog, Katie, was a svelte Chesapeake Bay Retriever who, when nervous or embarrassed would curl her upper lip back in a fearful grimace, revealing razor-sharp teeth. My dad always said, “Look, Katie’s smiling.” Dad, a fervent dog lover, had rescued Katie from a farmer who kept her chained up, fed her very little and occasionally kicked her in the ribs. Hence, her issues. Even well fed and loved, Katie always worried her next meal wouldn’t arrive on schedule.

A plump turkey, crammed to its neck hole with bread stuffing sat on the counter while the oven pre-heated. Mom left the turkey unattended and went to the basement to fetch potatoes. Our family kept fresh vegetables and canned goods in a dark, dank cubicle euphemistically dubbed The Fruit Room. A word about The Fruit Room. It scared me to death. It was full of creepy spider webs and, where there are creepy spider webs, there had to be vicious, girl-eating spiders just waiting for an opportunity to chomp down on my exposed flesh. So relieved was I that my mother hadn’t made me go to The Fruit Room, I threw the back door open to see if the snow was still falling. Katie bounded through the open door, reared up on her hind legs, snagged the turkey off the counter and dashed outside.

“Oh, no!” I wailed. Despite my bare feet, I gave chase, following the trail of bread stuffing to the doghouse. The loud chomping sounds emanating from within confirmed what I already suspected. I was too late. Katie must have heard me approach because her head popped through the opening, the half-eaten turkey clenched in her jaws.

“Bad dog, Katie,” I scolded, hopping up and down on my semi-frozen feet. Looking ashamed, she dropped the carcass and gave me a big toothy smile.

No turkey dinner for us that Christmas. Back in the day (yes, I’m old) every store was locked and shuttered on Christmas day. No 7-11’s. No Quickie Marts. No fast food opportunities. So, it was hot dogs and canned peaches for dinner. Katie was forgiven and invited inside.

By the way, I still have nightmares about The Fruit Room.

Do you have any favorite memories of a special Christmas? Please share!

JUDITH ARNOLD’S HOLIDAY SURVIVAL LIST

Judith Arnold’s Holiday Survival List:

1. If it’s chocolate, eat it.

2. Buy a gift for yourself. This way you’ll guarantee that at least one of your presents is something you want.

3. Don’t be too rigid about avoiding violent toys. If your kids want violent toys, they will turn any toys you give them into advanced weapons systems. One year when my sons were young, we gave them waffle blocks, little plastic dinosaurs and Legos. Within a half hour, they’d constructed a village with the waffle blocks, had the dinosaurs attack the village and then bombarded the dinosaurs with missiles constructed out of Legos. Another year, we gave the boys remote control cars. The controls had retractable antennas. It didn’t take long for the boys to extend the antennas and start fencing with them. These boys are the sons of two confirmed pacifists, and they’re both pacifists, too. But…boys will be boys. And toys will be weapons.

4. Avoid any store playing Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride on its sound system. Sleigh Ride is a pernicious ear worm. Once it’s lodged inside your skull, it will remain there until Memorial Day.

5. Forget all your grudges for a few weeks. When January arrives, you can resume resenting your parents/siblings/children/coworkers. You can reignite your feuds with your neighbors over their refusal to secure the lid on their trash can or their cat’s habit of using your rhododendrons as a toilet. You can once again remind your grandmother that she always showed favoritism toward your cousins. All that satisfying indignation will be waiting for you in the new year. You can set it aside until then.

6. Eat, drink and be merry. Exercise moderation in the eating and drinking, but do not restrain yourself when it comes to being merry. You can not gain weight or get drunk by indulging merriness to the max. Go for it.

7. Get some exercise. Walking through Macy’s or Best Buy does not count. Walking around the block does.

8. Don’t feel guilty about reusing old gift boxes, wrapping paper or bows. It’s called recycling. You’re saving the planet.

9. Hug your loved ones, every chance you get.

10. When all the holiday hoopla becomes overwhelming, grab a good book, curl up in a chair and lose yourself in the glorious world of fiction. Read, read, read! (And munch on a piece of chocolate while you’re at it.)

Have a wonderful holiday!

I WONDER AS I WANDER

I Wonder As I Wander

By Kimberly Brock

I don’t feel like writing this blog. I want to cuddle up with my kids. I want to hibernate for winter. I want to make cookies and memories and watch sweet movies and tell stories under the covers. I want to stay home. I want to listen to my husband snore beside me in the wee hours. I want to be safe. I want to know they are safe. I don’t want to take any chances. That’s what this week did to me. Probably to almost everyone. It’s a shame because I’d already started tinkering with the beginnings of a post with a kind of reflective tone about the season. It was pretty smart, actually, a few days ago. Now, it’s a bunch of bologna. It’s shallow and naïve. And I just can’t seem to get back to that line of thinking. I can’t cough up any nostalgia or humor or even a Bah Humbug. I’m almost forty-one years old and I just lost a little more of my innocence. I mean, we are lucky to live where we live in America, aren’t we? That we have any innocence left to lose is an absolute miracle, right? But terrifying, too.
But none of that changes the fact that I have to post something because I agreed to the job weeks ago. I said I would do it and I sit here pondering my inability to wax poetic or even work up something of a little Christmas sermon. Usually, I’m good for at least a paragraph or two on such things. Not this time. But I’ll tell you, my brain has fixated on this one question since Friday afternoon when I was sitting at my laptop, trying to write this blog and was interrupted by the reminder of madness and sorrow in the world. And I don’t have a good answer. I just keep wondering about it and maybe I feel like I’d rather not wonder about it all alone, so I’m going to stick this question in your brain, too.
I wonder, if I’d seen that star, would I have had the courage to follow it? That Christmas star. Say there were angels, or maybe say we just had a flask we’d been passing around, me and you other stinky shepherds, and we THOUGHT we heard somebody or something. Maybe we just wanted an excuse to get off the hill. Whatever. The point is, would I have done it? Or would I have only told all you other dare-devil shepherds to settle down and gone back to counting sheep?
Would I have stayed put, hanging out on hilltops, farting and telling bad jokes, out of fear? Would I have convinced you all to ignore the whole heavenly host thing because really, what would a bunch of shepherds know about what’s over the river and through the woods? There is evil out there and I don’t just mean wolves. And everybody knows that visions and messages and signs and journeys are a very dangerous business. In a world like this, who would ever risk it? Because seriously, this weekend, that’s how I’m feeling. Like hiding out.
The thing is, I know there are miracles. One of them is that I haven’t lost all my metaphorical sheep by now. I have taken some chances, gone down roads unknown and seen there’s more to the world than sheep. Good things. Wonderful things. I’ve seen what can happen when I come down off the hill, for good or bad, and I know that after some journeys, the truth is that for good or bad, you’ll never be the same. After this week, I’ll never be the same. No one will. But does that mean I never leave the hill again?
Maybe the only way those shepherds ever had the courage to face that star – everything it meant or could mean and everything that it demanded of them – was simply because they did it all together. They trembled together and stood there knowing life is a marvelous, fragile thing, but perhaps there’s more to know than we can comprehend. I need that to be true this Christmas. Because what we find when we follow a star is light. And in light, we are made wise. The brightest gifts of the human race are illuminated: love, faith, forgiveness. Hope.
So what I want to know is this: Do we lose the star if we dare stop looking for it? Or can we still see it, even now, a constant? A miracle? I’m looking for it. And I’m searching for the courage to follow it. I hope you are, too. There’s room on the hillside. You can stand by me.

THANKSGIVING WITH THE IN-LAWS!

BY ELIZABETH SINCLAIR

Back when my husband and I were first married, I thought what fun it would be to throw Thanksgiving dinner for his entire family (about 28 people). Back then Marge (my real name) was spelled S-T-U-P-I-D. Thank goodness, my sisters-in-law, my mother-in-law and my husband’s aunt all volunteered to take on part of the dinner preparations. I took the turkey, dressing and the eight pies (four apple and four pumpkin). My mother-in-law, who lived next door, did the veggies and the potatoes. My sisters-in-law split up what was left and his aunt, who lived a long way away from us, brought wine and fresh-squeezed cider. One magnanimous volunteer supplied the nuts as her part of the preparations.

It took days of work, but I was so proud of how everything turned out. The turkey was golden brown, my husband’s grandmother’s sausage and apple dressing seasoned to perfection, the pies looked and smelled heavenly, and my table was set elegantly with his grandmother’s collection of cut glass goblets, snowy white linens and my milk glass dinnerware and gleaming sterling silver. In the center of the table was a fall arrangement of fresh flowers. I was going to make the impression of all impressions on my new in-laws. Or that was the plan.

In the middle of a very solemn dinner, I asked my husband, who was at the head of the table opposite me, to pass me a roll. He picked up a roll from the linen napkin lined basket, raised it over his head and threw it to me like he was Eli Paton throwing a forward pass at the Super Bowl. It came up short and landed in my goblet of cider, splashing cider all over me, the table and my full dinner plate.

Needless to say, that broke the ice. For a moment, I was mortified, but as everyone around me burst into laughter, I had to join in. It’s a Thanksgiving I will never forget.

Deals at the Nook Store

Hawks Mountain- Free

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hawks-mountain-elizabeth-sinclair/1100398882?ean=9781611940220

Summer Rose- $1.99

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/summer-rose-elizabeth-elizabeth-sinclair/1108168045?ean=9781611941043

Forever Fall- $2.99

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forever-fall-elizabeth-sinclair/1113115310?ean=9781611941982