New Release The Wanderer by Robyn Carr Q&A plus giveaway

I'm so pleased to welcome back one of my favorite authors Robyn Carr who's releasing her brand new series today with The Wanderer. Her publicist Little Bird has graciously offered a giveaway copy of the novel to one lucky commenter.
See below for details

Here's what people are saying about it-

Susan Wurman from Fresh Fiction says "Have doubts about Carr's genius you won't after this absolute gem. Here's my suggestion run don't walk and get THE WANDERER."

Liza Dawson from Publishers Weekly -"Carr takes a detour from her bestselling Virgin River books with this solid contemporary series start. Henry “Coop” Cooper Jr. heads from Virgin River, Calif.Carr neatly weaves in the lives of other town residents, laying the groundwork for future books."

Robyn's QandA

Q: What would you tell someone who is coming to Thunder Point for the first time? What do you want them to know about the town as they jump into The Wanderer?

A:  My husband and I have moved around a lot, thanks to his years in the Air Force and commercial aviation.  Have you ever had the experience of living somewhere that just didn’t feel like your town?  Or, conversely, landing somewhere that made you think you were meant to be there?  When we drove from Texas to Sacramento and crossed over the Sierras into the Sacramento Valley, I remember thinking, Ahhhh, I’m a Californian!  I never realized!  I was instantly comfortable with the landscape, the people, the climate. 

Hank Cooper has always been a wanderer.  He’d lived and worked in a lot of beautiful and interesting places, but there’s something about this small coastal town and the people there that just hook him and make him think for the first time in his adult life, Maybe I’m home. 

Q: You’ve always been known for your strong female characters. The women in Thunder Point are no strangers to struggle, and we can already tell there are going to be some great stories coming from them! Why do you feel strong women are so important in your books?

A:  Well, they’re role models.  They’re admirable, which doesn’t mean perfect, it only means they’re indomitable and courageous and hopeful.  They’re basically good, intelligent, optimistic people.  They’re the kind of people I personally want to read about—I’m not real big on weak, weary, insipid characters who are older than five.  None of us can escape struggle—it’s part of life.  But whether we face it with determination and optimism or cringing weakness and fear makes all the difference in the outcome. 

Q: Readers fall in love with your male characters. Hank Cooper, aka Cooper, (from Robyn's bestselling Virgin River series) is especially dreamy… Is there an actor who you would like to see play his role if the series was ever turned into a movie?

A:  I don’t know the names of the younger actors very well, but James Denton seems to fit the profile. 

Q: The Wanderer has an element of mystery with the death of Cooper’s friend. (Don’t worry—we won’t give any spoilers!) Do you like writing suspense? Do you think we’ll see more suspense with the other books in the series?

A:  I don’t actually think of that as suspense.  Suspense is when you imagine you’re being chased by a guy with a bloody knife.  Nor do I think of it as mystery even though there is a mysterious element.  I think of it more as unanswered questions and a very obvious element of surprise coming.  It’s also suspenseful, in a way, waiting for the results of a biopsy or worrying about how the new kid at school will be received—with rejection or welcome?  But I think of those issues, the dramatic problems of daily life, and they’re quite mainstream, which means the average person will relate on some level—it either happened in their family, their neighborhood or their town.  That’s the grist of a small-town drama.  Whether the problems are large or small, there are conflicts to resolve and in doing so, the characters become more defined.  I hope this mirrors life —as we live and learn, come to terms with our personal issues and life in general, we are a compilation of stories to be told. 

Visit Robyn's website here

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March 25th, thought for the day, a little history for your Monday and a few snowy Spring pics from Missouri

These are some photos taken this morning from my back yard. You know just enjoying an early Spring Monday morning.

Here's our thought for the day brought to us by the memorable Mr. Rogers

[Peace means far more than...]  ”Peace means far more
 than the opposite of war!”

~ Fred Rogers

* Fred Rogers

[Fred Rogers]Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, author, and television host. Rogers was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001), which featured his gentle, soft-spoken personality and directness to his audiences.

*Source 

Our history facts are brought to you courtesy of Wikipedia

421 – Venice is founded at twelve o'clock noon, according to legend.
708 – Pope Constantine succeeds Pope Sisinnius as the 88th pope.
1199 – Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
1306 – Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
1409 – The Council of Pisa opens.
1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
1634 – The first settlers arrive in Maryland.
1655 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
1802 – The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the United Kingdom.
1807 – The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world.1811 – Per
cy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1865 – American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.1894 – Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
1911 – In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
1931 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
1941 – The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
1947 – An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
1948 – The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
1949 – The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
1957 – United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on the grounds of obscenity.
1957 – The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol inMontgomery, Alabama.
1969 – During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
1971  – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
1990 – The Happy Land fire was an arson fire that kills 87 people trapped inside an illegal nightclub in the New York City borough of The Bronx.
1992 – Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.
1995 – WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
1996 – An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.
1996 – The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
2006 – Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.


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Thought for the Day for Friday March 22, 2013, some history and some pictures of Spring around the US

To improve all of our dispositions I've decided to add a few Spring pics to the thought today.
Enjoy!!

 Boston, Massachusetts March 19, 2013

A couple walk through Central Park after a snowstorm

Hudson Valley Community College on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 

March 5, 2013 in Chicago

Overland Park, Kansas, February 21, 2013













Here's the map for Sunday 3-24-2013

Justice is being served-here's the latest headlines out of Channel 7 in Boston

Punxsutawney Phil 'indicted' over spring forecast-

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/northeast/10010166180315/punxsutawney-phil-indicted-over-spring-forecast/

He'll look great in stripes!!

Here's our Friday March 22, thought for the day

“Some people forget to plant in the spring,

idle away the summer hours
and then expect to reap in the fall.”

Author Unknown

Some interesting history for this day courtesy of Wikipedia

1508 – Ferdinand II of Aragon commissions Amerigo Vespucci chief navigator of the Spanish Empire.

1621 – The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.

1622 – Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians kill 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony's population.

1630 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.

1765 – The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.

1829 – The three protecting powers (United Kingdom, France and Russia) establish the borders ofGreece.

1871 – In North Carolina, William Woods Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment.

1873 – A law is approved by the Spanish National Assembly in Puerto Rico to abolish slavery.

1894 – The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts.

1943 – World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.

1963 – The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, is released in the United Kingdom.

1978 – Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1982 – NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, 

STS-3.

1984 – Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.

1997 – Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest champion women's World Figure Skating Champion.

2006 – Three Christian Peacemaker Team hostages are freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days of captivity and the murder of their colleague, American Tom Fox.

Enjoy your day and your weekend wherever you may be

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