Author: Lynn

My husband and I live in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada, and now that we are empty nesting I again began pursuing my dream of writing for children. I am privileged to have met and/or corresponded with Canadian and US authors,; among those are internationally known Canadian author Budge Wilson who wrote many MG and other books, Laura Best, Darlene Foster; US author Drew Lamm (originally from Canada); US author/novelist Sue Harrison - all whose books I've reviewed on my blog, Amazon and other sites. It's my joy to be in contact with other writers and professionals of all stages of the process. Life brings change, and for me that meant the opportunity to pursue a decades old dream - to learn to paint. I now join other painters weekly and we paint and learn together. You can check out my paintings at https://www.instagram.com/lynn.a.davidson2019

Are you a spoiler?

Today the question on my mind is … are you a spoiler?

By that I mean, when you pick up a book to read it, do you go to the last page and read the ending of the story before reading the beginning and middle?

If so …

why do you do that?! Why do you spoil it for yourself?

Are you impatient? Can you not wait to know how it ends? Does it bug you too much to have to read through from the beginning?

Okay, I admit to having done that a few times. I have skipped ahead to know if it’s worth the build-up of anticipation and suspense, or if I will be disappointed. Or I’ve quickly flipped through if I simply couldn’t stand the too-many-words-in-between until I could find out what I was waiting to know. I have occasionally found a book that became too wordy or slow resulting in the story losing its magic for me, making it very hard to wade through all the blah blah blah’s without skipping a few pages to move ahead.

On the most part, though, I make myself resist the urge to peek. The times I have read the last page out of turn were usually when I was almost there anyway.

Are you one of those people who just has to start at the end of almost anything you are reading? Do you read magazines or the newspaper or brochures from the back to the front, too?

Would or does reading the last page first spoil your appetite for the main part of the book? Do you ever not read the rest after doing that?

Speaking of appetite, do you eat dessert before the main course? Some people do, you know. I knew a family whose daughter always wanted to do that. It didn’t spoil her appetite for the rest of the meal so they let her.

Oh dear, that’s making me hungry. Back to the main point …

When I am looking for information on a book before I buy it, I don’t like reading spoilers. I like some info but not too much. But, it seems I am almost the opposite with movies. I like a certain amount of information, especially to know if it gets overly violent or vulgar or stupid. I consider those to be a waste of my time and I usually choose to not watch something that will really bother me. But, on the other hand, spoilers of movies that interest me tend to draw me in and I accept knowing more ahead than if it is a book. I’m not sure why that is, unless because when reading one’s own visuals are formulated and if it’s out of order that gets all messed up. (Does that make any sense?)

It’s funny how we form habits. I wonder why do we have to rush ahead, and why do we find it so hard to take things in order?

Maybe there is another very simple explanation for this, and not just impatience or having to know it all first. If so, please clue me in to what it is.

I know, I asked loads of questions this time, (which I hope you will think about and tell me what your habits are, because I find it very interesting) but they all boil down to the main one.

Are you a spoiler? Why or why not?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Book Review: How My Savior Leads Me – by Terri M. Stellrecht

Book: How My Savior Leads Me

Author: Terri M. Stellrecht

Publisher: WestBow Press – a division of Thomas Nelson; another publisher for upcoming revised edition

Date: October 21, 2011

Genre: Inspirational non-fiction

Pages: 192

Price: $13.95, paperback; less on Kindle

My rating: hard story to read, yet a sincere sharing of pain and hope.

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

How My Savior Leads Me is the true story of a family’s loss, the sudden and unexpected death of one of its children in February 2011. The author writes from a place of pain, all the while trying to trust God in her grief.

Trent Stellrecht is a twelve-year-old boy who loves life as a young boy does, being adventurous, fun-loving, and outgoing. We are not told what exactly happened that tragic day, except that he died in a skiing accident while on a day trip with the youth group.

Terri Stellrecht, Trent’s mother, tells about the shock, the grief, the steps the family went through in preparing to let him go. She tells about how the family ministered to the many who came to express their sympathy and own personal loss. She shares Scripture and asks the challenging question, “If it had been you, do you know where you would be now?”

But Terri is a woman who is still working through her own mourning, and has yet to find that place where life is still good. Having experienced loss in my own life, I know how hard it is to keep on when it seems the world should stop and take notice .. but it doesn’t. My other children needed me, perhaps even more, and I had to be there for them because life continued on. In How My Savior Leads Me, Terri Stellrecht shares while still in that place, so it is a read like no other you will come across.

While I do not agree with all of the author’s theology, the age-old question people come up against has been raised and she has found some answers that work for her. As I read this book, it seemed the writing and sharing of her son’s death is serving as a way to work through a mother’s grief, that the shock has not completely left, and there is much healing yet to come.

Terri Stellrecht uses her own photography throughout the book as she tells the story of Trent’s life. Also, if you are interested in listening to an interview with her please click on this link: radio interview Once there click on blogtalkradio on the right of that page.

NOTE: For those of you who would like to read her book, How My Savior Leads Me, Terri Stellrecht has generously offered an extra copy for me to give away to one of my readers. If you want a chance to win this copy, please leave a comment and answer one of the following tough questions: ‘In your life tragedies, to whom do you turn?’ OR ‘If you were to die tonight, do you know where you will be?’

A winner will be selected in a week, the evening of June 12.

You can find How My Savior Leads Me listed on my BUY THE BOOK! page.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

More Writers’ Helps

This is another quick post to let you know that if you visit my Writers’ Helps page you will find a few more links to check out. They are interesting and fun, I am sure you will agree.

I also made a change on my About Me page which is now About Me/Contact Page. After you scroll down past the me blurb you’ll find a contact form. This is just in case you want to contact me about writing or reviewing or something else valid – without knowing my email address – but you don’t want to leave a comment the usual way. This form puts your message through to me after checking it for spam. (Thanks WordPress!)

I’m glad you visit my blog, and I hope you enjoy what you find here.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

What’s the secret in your nest?

I have a story to tell you.

About two weeks ago I bought a beautiful, new, red camera. A couple of days later I was outside enjoying the sunny, warm weather with my daughter when she discovered a little nest in a nearby tree. Even by holding her camera/phone above it to take a photo, she wasn’t sure what was in it, maybe a dead bird? We hoped not.

My new digital camera has the handy feature of an adjustable monitor so that I could see my intended subject by angling the monitor down while holding the camera above the nest. This let me see that I had in frame what I wanted, but it wasn’t until we looked at the captured image that we could see what was there.

What do you think we found? Take a look.

Can you see it?

Take a closer look.

Yes, that’s a peanut shell!

Although I would get a kick out of telling you that we found a new and unique way to grow peanuts, I’m sure you wouldn’t believe me anyway. The truth is my dad has a peanut holder hanging on another tree and filled it with roasted peanuts in the shell. Obviously, either a bird – or maybe a squirrel – took its prize to a more private place and released the peanut for his own satisfying snack.

That’s got the be the ultimate in take-out, don’t you think? 🙂

And, those of you who are allergic, please note it is an empty shell.

The way my brain works, I began thinking about this peanut shell hidden in a bird’s nest. But I didn’t just think about how funny that is, but also the uniqueness of it.

Nests … homes … privacy … secrets … keeping ourselves from the world …

Just allow me this far-reaching musing, follow me awhile …

How often do we keep to ourselves the thing we most would like to do for fear of people thinking we are crazy for considering such a thing? Such as .. oh, I don’t know .. skydiving, for example. Or running a marathon, or writing a book, or teaching what we know to people who really want to learn. Why are we so afraid of living our lives to the fullest? Why do we practice singing when no one is there to hear us? Why do we dance but only when we are alone? Why do we write in secret? Why do we hide our stash of peanuts (our talents and giftedness) and enjoy them privately instead of sharing them?

I think it’s fear of rejection, or ridicule, or .. ‘not good enough” mentality.

I believe in order to overcome the fear of what others will think of us, we must first accept ourselves and the way God has gifted us. We must see ourselves honestly and then take that first step. Take a class, or join a club, or offer our abilities where there is a need. Do whatever is necessary to learn, and discover and grow. Now that we are in the age of Internet communities we have tremendous advantages and opportunities to connect in areas once not accessible. We have no excuse anymore.

So, why do we hide? I know that once we step out we’ll find many others who feel the same way, and through our efforts to grow they will be encouraged to crawl out of the nest, too. How do I know? Because I was afraid, someone encouraged me .. and still does .. and I am crawling out of my nest. It’s not so scary after all!

What’s in your nest? What unique gift do you have that you are not letting the world know about yet?

Or, what have you done to take that step and change your life?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Book Review: Secret Daughter – by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Book: Secret Daughter (A Novel)

Author: Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers

Date: March 9, 2011; paperback April 5, 2012

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Pages: 356, paperback

Price: $13.99; less on Kindle

My rating: An extraordinary read, very convincing, with an ending that is both satisfying and disturbing.

I won this book, probably on Twitter, and promptly added it to my huge TBR (to be read) pile. Had I known what I was in for I would not have waited so long to read Secret Daughter. Oh my!

Canadian first-time author Shilpi Somaya Gowda has written a compelling story that had me from the beginning. Born in Toronto, Canada, to parents from Bombay, India, she had insight and good understanding of both cultures. She mostly told the story from the perspective of three women – the adopted daughter, the adoptive mother and the birth mother. It was involved and interesting and hard to put down once I started reading.

I don’t want to give away too much and spoil it for you, but for anyone who has adopted from another country, or is thinking about it, this book gives a different view of some of the things to take into consideration.

The characters are well-developed, their life situations are convincing and detailed, and the reader gets to share in the story of their lives over a span of twenty-five years. It was easy to care about them. In fact, I experienced a range of emotions as I read this international bestseller.

I liked how the author headed her chapters with not only the title, but also the location, date, and name of the person the reader was visiting in that chapter. Each chapter is only a few pages long which made it easy to read when having only a few minutes. It also helped the reader get oriented right from the start and occasionally helped the author step over a span of several years to move along in the story. It was well done.

The only thing I did not like is the way the author chose to end this novel, although it is quite believable the way it happened. Obviously the ending did not interfere with the book’s success. Even so, if you are one who likes to read the end of a book first … in this case DON’T! Please, do yourself the favour of not peeking. It is well worth the wait.

There has been criticism that the author ignored or changed some things about the culture of India to fit her story, but I don’t agree. In a couple of places I had questions, too, but since I have never studied their culture nor have I visited that country, I accepted that perhaps it was something that is changing there with the times. I believed the author would know that, so I didn’t let my lack of information get in the way of a great read.

Originally, this is not a book I planned to review, but having experienced it I wanted to introduce it to you to add to your TBR list. You won’t be disappointed.

You can find Secret Daughter listed on my BUY THE BOOK! page.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Book Review: On the Bright Side: The Starling series, Book 1 – by S.R. Johannes

Book: On the Bright Side

Author: S. R. Johannes

Publisher: Coleman & Stott

Date: February 15, 2012

Genre: tween paranormal (directed at ages 9-12)

Pages: 256 paperback

Price: $8.99; less on Kindle

My rating: an interesting, unusual paranormal with humour for young readers

From the author I received an electronic copy of On the Bright Side to read on my pc kindle in exchange for an honest review.

I began reading this book as I usually do, with a serious take-it-all-in attitude. It didn’t take me long to discover that, for one thing, there are few, if any, similarities to the real Heaven.

But, let me back up a little.

This story is about a teenage girl who dies suddenly and is transported to Haven (that’s not a misspell), otherwise known as Cirrus. So begins her afterlife as a ‘Bright” and her training to be a guardian angel. Knowing that people do not become angels (since angels are angels and people are people), at that point I began reading this story with a different attitude, one of simply enjoying the author’s amazing imagination and the world she created based on good and evil. It was quite interesting, entertaining, and captivating.

The main character, Gabby, is now a BIT (Bright in Training) and being prepared to protect a former friend she would rather ignore. To add insult to injury, that friend is strongly interested in Gabby’s still living almost-boyfriend. ~~The added frustration is that the angel she befriends in Cirrus is assigned to~~ … ahh, but I must be careful to not spoil the read for you. I will just say that Ms. Johannes has written a story that young readers are sure to enjoy as they follow Gabby defiantly – and not without serious mishap – set out to earn her wings.

A few things of note:

There may be young readers who will take parts of this book seriously, therefore misunderstanding what Heaven is really like.
There are many puns and plays on words, such as Skyfone, and there is much technology used in Cirrus (amusingly, there is not a perfect cell phone connection there either), and skyolations for when rules were broken (violations).
The outcome of the battle between good and evil is dependent upon the actions and abilities of the Brights.
The characters’ personalities are very flawed (meaning jealous, temperamental, scheming) as they live in death with much the same human attitudes and problems as they did in life.

I did find S.R. Johannes’ imagination to be intriguing as she came up with ingenious inventions, humourous situations, and surprising plot twists. It became obvious that she was not trying to use Cirrus as an actual perfect setting but a fictional, imaginary, outlandish one which made for quite a different easy-to-read story.

If you want your young reader to enjoy a fantastical fictional experience, this could be a good book to pick up. It had me pulled along as I kept wanting to find out what’s going to happen next.

On the Bright Side by S.R. Johannes is the first book in a planned series called The Starlings, so start with this one.

You can find On the Bright Side listed on my BUY THE BOOK! page.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

I received the Beautiful Blogger award!

On May 10 I received a lovely surprise from fellow blogger Ruth Schiffmann, the blessing of the Beautiful Blogger award!

That’s really encouraging since I feel that I’m not keeping up my blog very well between going back and forth (if you are following my blog you’ll understand what I’m talking about) and trying to catch up on the books I have here to read and review on my blog and elsewhere, along with .. just keeping up.

Have you ever wondered, as I have … when do I get back to my life? Then I realize .. oh yeah! This IS my life!

Enough whining.

THANK YOU to Ruth for this cyber hug. Please pay her a visit at her blog, Out on a Limb.

I don’t know if I can fulfill the rules for this one, share 7 random things about myself, and then pass the award on to 15 other bloggers – that’s the hard part so I am awarding it to 10 instead.

7 random things about me:

A friend recently called me an internet junkie. I think he may be right. And I see nothing wrong with that as long as I am careful about where I go on the Net, get food and exercise, and don’t totally neglect my responsibilities in ‘real life.’
Blessing others is such a joy (blessing) to me. It’s fun to do things secretly, too.
I’m 5’4.5″ (that’s 5 feet 4 1/2 inches) tall. (never forget that half inch!)
When I was a child my eyes were definitely brown, now they are more hazel.
I would love to have a dog like my beautiful Shasta who died three years ago this month. She was German Shepherd/Husky/Wolf and had such personality. I still miss her so much. But I also would like to adopt a Greyhound. Anyone have one?
I enjoy movies, but not horror or gore or ones that are overly sappy or loaded in swearing. I like movies that do not insult one’s intelligence, although some comedies seem to have that as a requirement.
I am starting a list of my favourite words … for no particular reason, I just like them.

I am sending this award on to the following beautiful bloggers: