AND NOW THE MADNESS BEGINS - OR DOES IT???

Some of you understand what it's like to be a romance writer during the holidays. Those family get-togethers turn bizarre in a heartbeat, don't they? I know as a child, the weirder and weirder it got, the better I liked it.

My Grandma Fox had trouble swallowing, due to a series of strokes she'd suffered that left half of her body paralyzed. It never failed that for each big family meal, she'd start choking on something, and there were more than a few moments of tension when she'd remove her false teeth, leave them on the side of the plate on the beautiful table my mother always set, with all the finest crystal and china. Grandfather would stand up, and slap her back while she leaned over her dish and expelled whatever had gotten stuck.

She was beet red afterwards, sincerely ashamed for the spectacle. My grandfather never swore, but he could be heard saying something like, "Ah, Shaw," and we filled in the blanks. We were used to her drooling, and she wore a little purse affixed to her wrist with a strap, lovingly made by one of the ladies in the church, which contained a couple pretty hankies she used all day long. In fact, she was always with a hankie in her hand.

My other grandfather would go off on some political tangent, sure that the whole country was going to Hell quickly, and often we'd wake up Christmas morning to find that he'd had such a difficult time sleeping, they'd packed up in the middle of the night and drive the long way home to Fresno, California. Yes. I was born in Fresno. A good place to be from.

The stories were exaggerated, as family stories go. I'd heard them every year. Every year they'd get more and more fantastic, and I didn't care if they came from morphing, or told by people who always instructed me to take the moral high ground and never lie. They were family stories, and as such, were exempt from the normal constraints of reality. It was a kind of better than the truth: it was fiction. Was there something wrong with me for preferring the morphing stories of our family history? And does it really matter anyway?

By candlelight, those tales were told, passed down from the mouths of people now long gone. And I think I must do some of the same.

We always enjoyed visiting my aunt and uncle in San Francisco. My uncle could have made it as a comedian, he was so good with his jokes. Especially during the years when he was drinking. Afterward, he was just as funny, by the way. As an insurance salesman, he had stories of all the creative ways he got past the secretaries who tried to screen him from seeing the execs he wanted to sell to. He called it his Zippo Success Institute.

Between my uncle and my grandfather, the preacher, I learned what it was like to sell. In one case, it was a safety net to cheat death's impact on a family, in the other, redemption and a life everlasting. But trust me, it required a good salesman to do either. I knew long before I married and started having kids that life is one sales job after another. Raising children or being long time married, it's still the same thing to me today.

So I guess the madness of the season isn't really that for me, is it? I can get behind the crowds, though I don't participate in it. I don't mind people selling things, even things I don't need. I get caught up in it just like I did as a child. The stories, the pitch given to inspire change, the way to figure out problems and not get stuck by them, how to alter another's opinion with a smile or the right choice of words. Life is sales.

If it weren't so, we wouldn't take this most sacred of holidays, and turn it into one huge gift giving bonanza in this country. The idea of giving a gift is doing the unexpected. To show to someone what the inside of our heart looks like, to make the act one of love.

I don't remember the gifts, but I remember the love. Yes, sometimes I remember the pain too. I don't remember the words, but I remember the story. I remember what it felt like and how it feels now.

That gift is one I shall cherish forever.

My SEALs Have A Winery!

Greetings from Frog Haven Winery!

I'm Amy Chambers, your hostess for this Thanksgiving event. Zak and I are so happy you've decided to join us. We've set a table up outside on the porch, so we all have a place to sit together. Zak found some timbers he and Marco Zapparelli salvaged from the winery construction next door. These huge timbers used to hold up part of the tower that fell during the bombing at Zapparelli Winery, and is now being restored. Since they are nearly twenty feet long, we can serve all of our best friends!


Things here are much simpler than over at Marco's winery (and he says hi, by the way). The crush is fermenting and we've had a decent harvest. We've interviewed and are hiring our first real winemaker shortly. Up to now, we've had nothing but research going on and instead of a lab, we have our kitchen. We are getting ready to make our first batch of beer. Zak has been experimenting with fermentations, but without the hops we've grown. I've attached a picture of our harvest.

Marco has brought over his favorite Cabernet Franc blend. Nick and Devon and their little one are coming and they're bringing some of their wines that placed at the LA County Fair as well as the Sonoma County Harvest Fair. Sophie's Choice winery has beautiful lavender tee shirts for everyone. Do you like the lavender logo she designed? She's promised to bring some samples of her lavender-infused soaps and salt scrubs, and should have a whole line of bath products available next year.

Next year, some of our first Frog Piss and Punish Yourself Beer will be available in the tasting room, and soon to be in your local store. So, here's the menu:

Main Course & Soup

Willie Bird Turkey (we have three: 1 brined and baked, one stuffed and baked and one deep fried).

Mashed potatoes from Nick and Devon's garden

Giblets Gravy (Amy's specialty)

Sweet potato mash with sugared sour cherries garnish

Zucchini torte with cranberry garnish

String Beans with bacon (Zak's mother's recipe)

Fresh Acorn Squash Soup

Stuffed red, yellow and orange bell peppers with wild rice and cheese

Amy's famous whole wheat biscuits

Grandma Chamber's cranberry sauce

Pineapple/kiwi/tangelo and apple fruit salad with nutmeg and Cointreau garnish

Romaine lettuce salad with Caesar dressing

Marco Zapparelli's homemade linguini pasta with Mama Zapparelli's famous 100-year old meat ball sauce

Dessert

Lime Meringue Pie

Marco Zappareli's tiramisu

Hand cranked Coconut ice cream

Raspberry and blueberry sorbet

Pumpkin Pie and whipped cream

Hope you come with a big appetite. And come to our table with a thankful heart. Each of us will tell our table what we are most thankful for this year.

Many blessings.

Share this blog post with someone else, or on your FB page, share the link in the comments, and one commenter will win all 4 labels (yes, these are real labels). They are suitable for putting on your own bottle of wine or beer!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Unbeatable

I recently ran across an article on Stephenie Meyer and her new book, The Chemist, which comes out shortly. I'd not been following her career and haven't read any of her work except the Twilight series, and did not follow her to the alternative POVs on the saga she wrote afterwards. Now she's tackling more the thriller genre, while still keeping a love story prominent in the work. I cheer for her (that's the sound me me clapping).

In searching her books, I also saw a book I won't even mention, with a title disparaging her name and her writing. And this was allowed on Amazon, in fact, shows up on her Amazon search page as an "also buy."

I've about had it with some of the things allowed under the guise of free speech. The great Zon in the sky allows a title like that with a four-letter word front and center, demeaning an author, but has a problem with a naked man's chest (or God forbid, nipples showing under his shirt), in their advertising. None of my book covers, for instance, are allowed to be advertised in paid ads. They either contain a man's torso, or a couple looking lustily at each other, or a feather with a little dangerous blood on it in my angel series, starting with Heavenly Lover.

I certainly approve of controls to protect young children from reading or seeing adult content or themes. But children see far worse on the television and in movies every day. They hear rap music with disgusting lyrics and somehow we are taught that this is "mainstream" while writing about sex or a couple enjoying sex, that's a bad thing.

So is degrading an author for being successful supposed to be okay too? So are phony reviews and hurtful things said and done by small-minded people intent on wielding their two seconds of fame on the internet. We are so PC about some things, and not on others. Being a romance writer, or someone who writes happily ever after tales, we develop a thick skin, and endure all sorts of things most people have no idea actually happen to writers.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation - Wayne Dyer. I once got to spend an afternoon with a small group gathered to hear Mr. Dyer speak to us, and got to speak to him over lunch. I found his message hopeful, and uplifting. He had detractors in his career. Horrible things said about him and his writing or his speeches. And he didn't participate in any of that.

I have things all around me that remind me of the good things in my life, not to fool myself, but to remind myself that I've decided to participate in a different game. I've decided to follow my heart's desire and passion for the things I do with meaning. I've also had to make tough choices to protect that creative and willful streak in my being. Sometimes saying No is better than saying Yes. Just like sometimes being kind is better than mouthing off under the guise of "being free."

Because being unbeatable means remembering that when life is full of passion and hope, all things are possible, no matter what anybody else says or does. We write, edit, put it out there, be awesome and then do it all over again. That's the game I want to play.