Bell Bridge Books

COFFEE BEAN COOKIES

by Foodie Wednesday

It’s Foodie Wednesday, and we’re inspired by chocolate covered espresso beans!

The entire staff just returned from an enormous romance writer’s convention (RWA), and we had leftover goodies from our author swag bags, so these coffee bean cookies were a must!
There were a few glitches, though.  A lack of shortening had our team debating bacon grease at one point. Don’t worry, someone made a Crisco run!

Enjoy these cookies just like you would a giant cup of coffee with your favorite sweet romance. Speaking of . . . have you heard that Lindi Peterson’s RICH IN LOVE was featured in USA Today? Also Elizabeth Sinclair’s SUMMER ROSE is a finalist for this year’s Maggie Awards!  AND Jill Barnett’s BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS is only .99¢ at Amazon! Get your coffee on while you read! (Recipe Below)

Click for samples!

Coffee Bean Cookies

1/2 c butter

1/2 c shortening

3/4 sugar

2 1/2 c flour

1t baking soda

1 t salt

1/2 t cinnamon

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

1c chocolate covered coffee beans

1c english toffee bits

Instructions: Cream butter, shortening, and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla.  Combine dry ingredients, then beat into butter mixture. Stir in coffee beans and toffee. Drop in heaping mounds onto baking sheet. 350° for 10-11 minutes.  Savor.

DOWN WITH NARNIA. UP WITH GLOME.

By Ricardo Bare

“Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.” 

Every writer can probably point to a short list of authors or books that are their favorite influences. The stories that left deep impact craters on their souls and set their imaginations on fire. The authors that seemed to speak right into their hearts and spurred them on to want to be writers themselves.

For me, one of those authors is C.S. Lewis. Most of you are probably thinking about Narnia right about now, maybe picturing a golden lion, or Tilda Swinton affecting a coldly wicked glare. But let me stop that train before it leaves the station. Narnia is not why I name C.S. Lewis. Not by a longshot.

Instead, picture a woman with a face so ugly she hides it behind a mask. Her name is Orual, and she’s queen of a country called Glome, a land vaguely north of Greece, lost somewhere in the mists of time. Queen Orual hates the gods for taking everything she loves. These are her opening words, in C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece, Till We Have Faces:

“I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods. I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please.”

My experience is probably inverted from what I imagine is typical. I didn’t read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when I was a kid, and I didn’t watch that BBC show with the giant flying puppet of Aslan. The first book of his I ever read was something called Out of the Silent Planet, a strange little science fiction book about a man who travels to mars and meets all kinds of interesting creatures. I read a bunch of other works by Lewis after that, including Till We Have Faces.

It wasn’t until many years later that I finally read the Narnia tales, probably out of some sense of duty. Honestly, I don’t think I even realized he wrote them until I was looking at the cover of one of the books (I’m kind of clueless sometimes about popular culture).

I’m going to make a bold, maybe snobbish, statement. If you’re a fan of Aslan, brace yourself. Narnia is a weak and thin broth compared to the nourishment you will find in Till We Have Faces. The Chronicles of Narnia is Turkish Delight, Till We Have Faces is meat, red and juicy on the bone.

On the surface it’s a wonderful re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, but you don’t have to know anything about that to enjoy it. The story is really about love. Real transformative love, and all the other things we call love but are really vanity, or selfish possessiveness. It’s incredibly wise about human nature. It is beautiful and it is moving, and it’s why when I think about authors and stories that have inspired me, I think about Lewis.

This is my recommendation. If you like Lewis, you owe it to yourself to read the best story he ever wrote, Till We Have Faces.

In fact, I’d read it twice.

TODAY ONLY Jack of Hearts by Ricardo Bare is only $1.99 on Amazon Kindle!

WHAT IF

by Susan Kearney

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? Is the question I’m asked most frequently.

OK, I’m going to admit a secret. I don’t think of myself as a writer.  Writing was that hard boring stuff with commas and grammar that I was supposed to learn in school. But story telling?  Ah, that’s where the fun is.

My process for creating a story always seems to start with a “What if.”  For example, when I read the headline in my newspaper, Woman To Direct Secret Service, I started playing What if?  What if a woman took a bullet to save the President?

What if aliens saved the secret service agent?

And what if the alien who saved her was a sexy warrior from another world?  Now ever since I first saw Star Trek  I’ve always had a thing for sexy men in sleek space ships.  So I thought what if the man had to train the woman for an alien challenge?

OK.  So my imagination tends to go where others may not have gone before.  However, once I put my hero and heroines in space, I get to create entire new worlds.  But as a lazy writer, I tend to avoid the parts I don’t enjoy—like describing clothing. Hence, I made suits for my characters to wear that they can alter with a mere thought.

See, all this is fun.  And think about all the things one can do if the suits nullify gravity.  TheKamaSutra would need re-writing.  At least need more pictures, right?

That’s kind of how my mind works, one idea leads to another

Okay, so now I have built a world from playing What If.  What if the alien and the earthling fall in love?  Conflict is good, without it life is boring.  So mix in a common enemy—just to complicate my characters lives.  And then what if my hero can either save his home world or the woman he loves?

So my process to write a story is to play “What if.”  I don’t censor my thoughts.  I don’t say -–oh that’s too strange—-I leave that to reviewers. J

And I adore readers who leave reviews of my books all over the Internet. It’s especially fun to hear how excited readers are about the re-release of The Rystani Warrior series in e-books and print.

Coming late June 2013

THE CHALLENGE is out now. THE DARE, THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST will be out soon.  These stories can each stand alone, but I think they are best when read from first to last. Yes, the stories are hot and sexy.  Yes, there are moral and ethical dilemmas.  But the stories are about how my characters react to all the problems I throw at them. It just comes down to telling a story. And the first person I have to entertain is myself.

All right.  You get the idea.  It would be even better if you get the books.

Susan Kearney is the USA Today Bestselling Author of The Rystani Warrior Series. Get THE CHALLENGE (Book 1) today at Amazon Kindle for ONLY $4.79! Look for THE DARE in late June 2013. THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST (Books 3 and 4) to follow.

DESK DEFINITION

By Lisa Turner

It’s been said that our friends define us. What about our desks?

Five things I found scattered on my desktop:

1. A prediction from a fortune cookie that reads: “There’s a big change ahead of you.” Depending on my mood, I can either be elated about that or wildly depressed.
2. A set of DVDs entitled “Building Great Sentences” that instruct you on the correct way to write sentences that go on for a page and a half without taking a breath. I renamed the course: “Addicted to Parenthetical Phrases.”
3. A coffee mug bought at Square Books in Oxford, MS., home of William Faulkner. (Please note the parenthetical phrase at the end of that sentence.)On the mug is this quote from Flannery O’Connor. “Whenever I ask why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”  The mug is my totem. I can’t write unless it’s in my line of sight.
4. Sticky notes of useful words and people’s names. There’s Preston Teagarden. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake. Zook Rebus. Ding Paulie. The word “idjit” is a favorite of mine. “Don’t hold me responsible; I’m an idjit.” I also like “rabid.” You never hear it anymore. I once used “rabid” to describe a friend who does needlepoint. She took it to heart. We’re no longer speaking.
5. A grocery receipt for $110 worth of groceries that fit into two small bags. Here’s a question: In the grocery store check out line, do you watch what the person in front of you buys so you can figure out what their life is like? If I checked groceries, I’d be totally entertained. I enjoy Pinterest for the same reason. Pretty pictures, deep psychological profiles.

I spend more time with my desk than with my friends. This exercise has been a revelation.

Today only get Lisa Turner’s A LITTLE DEATH IN DIXIE for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!