A Book for Mom by Vickie McDonough

 Mother's Day is bittersweet for me. My mom is gone, but my 100-year-old mother-in-law is still with us. She's had a stroke and can't talk much, but she enjoys our visits. She loves cards and will show us any she has received. It's very hard to understand her when she tries to talk, but there's something she does that never fails to touch me. My sister-in-law always recites the Lord's Prayer with Mom when she is getting ready to leave, and Mom can say it with her almost word for word, very clearly, even though she can't normally talk. It's very heartwarming. I encourage you to cherish your mother if you still have her.

Lois McDonough
mother-in-law

 Margie Robinson
my mom

If you're looking for some books for your mother or for a birthday present for a friend, check out my website: www.VickieMcDonough.com

The Hand-Me-Down Husband is a fun story.

The Hand-Me-Down Husband

Ellen aims to take her sister’s baby back to St. Louis to raise as her own. Tessa’s father isn’t about to let that happen.

Ellen Stewart despises Lance Garrett. If not for him dashing into Isabelle’s life and stealing her heart and filling her head with his dreams, her little sister would still be alive and safe at home. When Ellen receives Lance’s letter requesting help with one-year-old Tessa, she rushes to Silver Springs, intent on taking charge of her young niece. A rugged ranch in the wilds of Texas is no place for a motherless baby.

But when she realizes how distraught Lance is over the loss of his wife and the depth of his love for his daughter, she can’t take Tessa from him—but neither can she leave. Though everything within her wants to flee back to the comfortable big city, something makes her stay. Tessa needs her father, for one—and he needs her. Ellen knows what it’s like to lose all she’d dreamed of.

When local townsfolk make a stink about Ellen living at Lance’s ranch unchaperoned, will they be forced to marry? Ellen doesn’t want a hand-me-down husband who could never love her, but could this marriage be God’s will for them both?

Available on Amazon / Free KU

Vickie McDonough is the CBA, EPCA and Amazon best-selling author of 54 Christian romance books and novellas.

A Bit About Mother's Day by @Donna_Fasano

Mother’s Day is a celebration that commonly involves giving moms cards, flowers, and other gifts. But have you ever wondered how and when the holiday began? Well, here’s a short history of Mother’s Day.

Commemorating motherhood goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times when people gathered in festivals in honor of mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele. The first Christian celebrations to praise moms was called Mothering Sunday in the UK and other parts of Europe. Early Mothering Sundays had religious connotations. Held on the fourth Sunday of Lent, people would return to their “mother church”—the main church in their area—to celebrate a special service.

Over time, Mothering Sunday became more secular, and Mother’s Day was established as a day when children would give small gifts of appreciation to their moms. Even this practice began to fade in Europe until the holiday caught fire in America in the early 1900s. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

The authors of Sweet Romance Reads will celebrate Mother’s Day this coming Thursday, May 6^th, from 6 PM to 9 PM Eastern Time. Come to the Sweet Romance Reads Café on Facebook and join the fun. Two lucky participants will win a $50 Amazon Gift. Plus, the author will also be giving away prizes. Join us, won’t you?

In honor of Mother’s Day, I have put my 2-book “duo” sweet romance boxed set on sale for just 99¢. You can save $6 off the regular price. Click the image of the book cover below to go to the Kindle Store.

~  ~  ~

Happy Mother's Day!

Donna Fasano is a USA Today Bestselling Author of sweet romance, contemporary romance, and women’s fiction. Learn more about her at her website. Sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.

What's in a Password ~ Jean C. Gordon

I think I'm safe in saying that these days we'd all like to feel a little safer. I have a small way you can. When was the last time you changed your passwords? If the answer is "I can't remember" or "never," today is the day to do it. Today is World Password Day.

Some Basic Tips

Choosing a password that's both strong and easy to remember may seem tricky, but it doesn't have to be. Here are some basic tips from Boston University for setting passwords:

• Use a mix of alphabetical and numeric characters.
• Use a mixture of upper- and lowercase; passwords are case sensitive.
• Use symbols if allowed
• Choose a phrase, but use use only the consonants. For example: "So Many Books. So Little Time," becomes SmbSlt. Add a couple numbers, maybe your pet's birth year, and you have SmbSlt2016
• Make the letter part of your password a combination of two unrelated words, such as shoeweaving, if you love shoes and know how to weave. 
• Replace a letter with another letter, symbol or combination, but don’t be too obvious about it, such as replacing o with 0 or b with 2 or i with 1. 
• Makeup an easily phonetically pronounceable nonsense word, such as, Son-SetYell-0.
• Use Two words separated by a non-alphabetic, non-numeric, or punctuation character, such as Moms@%LapTop9.

Combine as many of these techniques as possible to come up with something you can remember that's a minimum of eight characters long.

What Not To Use

Here are some words and combinations not to use.

• Your name in any form:  first, middle, last, maiden, spelled backwards, nickname or initials.
• Part of your userid or name.
• Any common name, such as, Sue, Joe.
• Passwords of fewer than eight characters.
• The name of a close relative, friend, or pet.
• Your phone or office number, address, birthday, or anniversary.
• Any all-numeral passwords, such as, your license-plate number, social-security number.
• Names from popular culture
• A single word either preceded or followed by a digit, a punctuation mark, up arrow, or space.
• Words or phrases that do not mix upper and lower case, or do not mix letters or numbers, or do not mix letters and punctuation.
• Any word that exactly matches a word in a dictionary, forward, reversed, or pluralized, with just some or all of the letters capitalized

Do I have your thoughts whirling? Have fun and surf safe.

And Don't Forget to . . .

Along with inviting you to review and change your passwords, I'm also inviting you to the Sweet Romance Reads Author's Annual Mother's Day Party. All you need to do to take part in all the fun, games, and prizes is be a member of the Sweet Romance Reads Cafe on Facebook. Sign up HERE.

I'll be hosting 6:15 to 6:30 pm. See you there.

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Say It with Flowers by Jean C. Gordon

Does your area have an annual event to celebrate Mother's Day? Here it's the Albany Tulip Festival, which takes place in Washington Park near the state capitol on Mother's Day weekend. This year it features 150 different kinds of tulips.

According to the Albany Institute of History and Art, the city of Albany started the festival to celebrate its Dutch heritage. In 1940, Mayor John Boyd Thacher II proclaimed the week of May 18 to 26 “Albany Tulip Week,” with festivities centered around the tulips planted in Washington Park. World War II interrupted celebrations. After the war, Albany adopted the Dutch city of Nijmegen as a sister city and sent supplies to help the residents rebuild their war-ravaged city. In return, they sent Albany thousands of tulip bulbs. Mayor Erastus Corning, who took a leave of absence from his mayoral position to serve in the armed forces during the war, proclaimed the tulip Albany’s official flower in 1948. He sent a request to Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands to name a variety of the flower as Albany’s tulip. The Queen selected Orange Wonder, a bronze-orange and shaded-scarlet variety. The first official Tulip Festival took place May 14 to 22, 1949.

Today's three-day event still begins with the traditional scrubbing of State Street by young women wearing costumes inspired by traditional
Dutch dress. The tradition of cleaning the street is based on the perception associated with the cleanliness of Dutch housewives. The rest of the festivities and the crowning of the Tulip Queen take place in Washington Park where more than 100,000 tulips radiate a rainbow of color.

As a personal aside, for many years, my daughter's mother-in-law was the Albany city gardener in charge of designing and supervising the planting of all the city park tulips. She traveled to the Netherlands several times to buy bulbs for the yearly planting.

But the Tulip Festival isn't the only thing going on here this week. I also have a new sweet romance out for pre-order practically everywhere. Both the ebook and the print book will release June 11.

Is three the charm?

Lauren Cooper is on her way to her life’s dream. She’s financed and finished college and law school all on her own. And she’s up for partner at the largest law firm in Indigo Bay. There’s nothing to stop her from concentrating everything on achieving that goal. Until Jesse Brewster, the man who broke her heart twice, shows up sleeping off the night before on the beach, and she’s called in to serve as his public defender.

Looking to make a new start after the racing accident that ended his lucrative motocross career and sent him spiraling into darkness, the former champion had envisioned an entirely different scenario if he ever saw Lauren again. That vision was more along the lines of the successful businessman he’d be once he rehabbed the seaside mansion he’s inherited from his uncle and sold it to open a custom bike shop.

Sparks fly between them, and Jesse vows to fan those sparks once he’s got the project successfully underway. But someone starts sabotaging it, putting Jesse behind on the deadline he has to meet to get the property off the Indigo Bay Planning Board’s condemned property list. And Lauren has a sick suspicion that her bosses are somehow involved.

Jesse and Lauren had once promised they’d wait for each other while they pursued their career dreams. Despite that broken promise, neither can deny the love that’s still between them. But now that they are on the cusp of reaching those dreams, are they willing to risk everything to renew that love?

Team Macachek: Fall in love with the strong women and fearless men of the motocross circuit.

This is the 12th novel in the Indigo Bay Sweet Romance Series, but all books can be read as standalones.

PRE-ORDER eBOOK

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In Celebration of Mothers by Kristin Wallace

So I have the happy coincidence of my designated blog day on Sweet Romance Reads also being on Mother’s Day this year. I don’t have children myself, but I have the best mother in the world (and I am totally unbiased in that feeling). I’d call her a super mom because she really was. She cooked, she sewed, and she was the Ms. Fix-It in the house. She could be tough but sweet. I got my love of reading from her, so my life as a writer can be laid right on her door. She single-handedly got me through math classes my entire school career. Mostly, she loves and believes in my, even though I’m sure my weird journey as a writer is not always something she understands.

I gathered up some great quotes about moms and I wanted to share them…

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”

-Rudyard Kipling

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

-Abraham Lincoln

“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”

-Robert Browning

“Men are what their mothers made them.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.”

-Tina Fey

“My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart—a heart so large that everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.”

-Mark Twain

“When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.”

-Erma Bombeck

Now it's your turn! Tell me what made your mother so special...share a favorite story or memory or just something she taught you that you've never forgotten.

If you want to read a great book about mothers and daughters, please check out my latest release COMING HOME TO PARADISE, part of my Shellwater Key Tales series. It’s the story of one woman’s journey to connect with the legendary mother she was never able to please…and earn the forgiveness of the daughter who has every reason to hate her. You can buy it now on Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and Google.

Kristin Wallace is the USA Today Best Selling Author of inspirational and contemporary romance, and women’s fiction filled with “Love, Laughter and a Leap of Faith”. For more info visit Kristin Wallace Author

Perseverance

With the elections debates, rallies, interviews, I bet you have been watching the news more than usual. I know I did.

Surprisingly, the political candidates demonstrated that they share several qualities. The lessons I learned as an author can be implemented in various professions.

Lesson One: Political candidates never take a break. They are so much on the go, we wonder if they ever find time to sit for a dinner or talk to their families.

Keep writing. Book after book.

Lesson Two: They are incredibly perseverant. Even if there is no hope, they keep going. Criticism, insults or negative ads by an opponent don’t seem to affect them. They never let a loss or a low percentage in the polls stop them from campaigning.

Don’t let low sales, bad rating or negative reviews affect your creativity.

Lesson Three: They are all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and various social media to publicize their message and be visible.

A daily post on Facebook, Twitter are a must.

Lesson Four: Since they can’t be everywhere, they keep a campaign staff to help spread their message.

Network and belong to a group that can re-tweet, share your posts on Facebook; and a street team to post reviews.

I am writing this post as an advice to you, the authors, writers, editors,... as much as I am writing it for myself, as a reminder to always persevere.

Since we will celebrate Mother’s Day in a few days, I will share with you my MOTHER’S DAY BABIES.

Available for 99 cents at Amazon.com,  http://tinyurl.com/cz3v5a8

This book is dedicated to the mothers we celebrate and those we remember with love on Mother's Day.

Blurb: A widow for seven years, Barbara Ramsay lives for her five daughters and their babies. Powerful TV News Director, Lou Roland, is certainly not marriage material, yet he has suddenly decided he wants Barbara in his arms. Not an easy task when his pretty confidante from Kentucky proves so difficult to date, unless he follows her rules.

Can the over-fifty confirmed bachelor and the widow loyal to her husband's

memory find true love and share a future?

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