Hey everyone!
A Bookish Mom Has a Facebook page. You'll see the widget to your left. I am really excited to give this a try! Feel free to stop by and add me as a friend... I don't have any frineds yet :(
Women of Faith!!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Giveaways Ending tomorrow!!!
Make sure you enter all the giveaways! I have 3 ending tomorrow night! BTW, Listening to Cemetery Dance on Audio Book! I am into the 6th disc, and It is soooooo Great! You guys have got to enter! I was surprised to find out how expensive they are! from 40 to 50 dollars each...Enter to win so you don't have to buy it!
On a side note. I went to the Doc Friday! I have great results. I have lowered my LdL's from 116 to 109! Woo! I'm beating you bad Cholestrol! *Happy Jig*
On a side note. I went to the Doc Friday! I have great results. I have lowered my LdL's from 116 to 109! Woo! I'm beating you bad Cholestrol! *Happy Jig*
Friday, May 29, 2009
First Look: Who Made You A Princess by Shelly Adina
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
Who Made You A Princess? (All About Us Series, Book 4)
FaithWords (May 13, 2009)
Plus a Tiffany's Bracelet Giveaway! Go to Camy Tang's Blog and leave a comment on her FIRST Wild Card Tour for Be Strong and Curvaceous, and you will be placed into a drawing for a bracelet that looks similar to the picture below.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Award-winning author Shelley Adina wrote her first teen novel when she was 13. It was rejected by the literary publisher to whom she sent it, but he did say she knew how to tell a story. That was enough to keep her going through the rest of her adolescence, a career, a move to another country, a B.A. in Literature, an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction, and countless manuscript pages. Shelley is a world traveler and pop culture junkie with an incurable addiction to designer handbags. She writes books about fun and faith—with a side of glamour. Between books, Shelley loves traveling, playing the piano and Celtic harp, watching movies, and making period costumes.Visit her book site and her website.
It's All About Us is Book One in the All About Us Series. Book Two, The Fruit of my Lipstick came out in August 2008. Book Three, Be Strong & Curvaceous, came out January 2, 2009. And Book Four, Who Made You a Princess?, came out May 13, 2009.
Product Details:
List Price: $9.99
Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: FaithWords (May 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446179620
ISBN-13: 978-0446179621
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
NOTHING SAYS “ALONE” like a wide, sandy beach on the western edge of the continent, with the sun going down in a smear of red and orange. Girlfriends, I am the go-to girl for alone. Or at least, that’s what I used to think. Not anymore, though, because nothing says “alive” like a fire snapping and hissing at your feet, and half a dozen of your BFFs laughing and talking around you.
Like the T-shirt says, life is good.
My name’s Shani Amira Marjorie Hanna, and up until I started going to Spencer Academy in my freshman year, all I wanted to do was get in, scoop as many A’s as I could, and get out. College, yeah. Adulthood. Being the boss of me. Social life? Who cared? I’d treat it the way I’d done in middle school, making my own way and watching people brush by me, all disappearing into good-bye like they were flowing down a river.
Then when I was a junior, I met the girls, and things started to change whether I wanted them to or not. Or maybe it was just me. Doing the changing, I mean.
Now we were all seniors and I was beginning to see that all this “I am an island” stuff was just a bunch of smoke. ’Cuz I was not like the Channel Islands, sitting out there on the hazy horizon. I was so done with all that.
Lissa Mansfield sat on the other side of the fire from me while this adorable Jared Padalecki look-alike named Kaz Griffin sat next to her trying to act like the best friend she thought he was. Lissa needs a smack upside the head, you want my opinion. Either that or someone needs to make a serious play for Kaz to wake her up. But it’s not going to be me. I’ve got cuter fish to fry. Heh. More about that later.
“I can’t believe this is the last weekend of summer vacation,” Carly Aragon moaned for about the fifth time since Kaz lit the fire and we all got comfortable in the sand around it. “It’s gone so fast.”
“That’s because you’ve only been here a week.” I handed her the bag of tortilla chips. “What about me? I’ve been here for a month and I still can’t believe we have to go up to San Francisco on Tuesday.”
“I’m so jealous.” Carly bumped me with her shoulder. “A whole month at Casa Mansfield with your own private beach and everything.” She dipped a handful of chips in a big plastic container of salsa she’d made that morning with fresh tomatoes and cilantro and little bits of—get this—cantaloupe. She made one the other day with carrots in it. I don't know how she comes up with this stuff, but it’s all good. We had a cooler full of food to munch on. No burnt weenies for this crowd. Uh-uh. What we can’t order delivered, Carly can make.
“And to think I could have gone back to Chicago and spent the whole summer throwing parties and trashing the McMansion.” I sighed with regret. “Instead, I had to put up with a month in the Hamptons with the Changs, and then a month out here fighting Lissa for her bathroom.”
“Hey, you could have used one of the other ones,” Lissa protested, trying to keep Kaz from snagging the rest of her turkey-avocado-and-alfalfa-sprouts sandwich.
I grinned at her. Who wanted to walk down the hot sandstone patio to one of the other bathrooms when she, Carly, and I had this beautiful Spanish terrazzo-looking wing of the house to ourselves? Carly and I were in Lissa’s sister’s old room, which looked out on this garden with a fountain and big ferns and grasses and flowering trees. And beyond that was the ocean. It was the kind of place you didn’t want to leave, even to go to the bathroom.
I contrasted it with the freezing wind off Lake Michigan in the winter and the long empty hallways of the seven-million-dollar McMansion on Lake Road, where I always felt like a guest. You know—like you’re welcome but the hosts don’t really know what to do with you. I mean, my mom has told me point-blank, with a kind of embarrassed little laugh, that she can’t imagine what happened. The Pill and her careful preventive measures couldn’t all have failed on the same night.
Organic waste happens. Whatever. The point is, I arrived seventeen years ago and they had to adjust.
I think they love me. My dad always reads my report cards, and he used to take me to blues clubs to listen to the musicians doing sound checks before the doors opened. That was before my mom found out. Then I had to wait until I was twelve, and we went to the early shows, which were never as good as the late ones I snuck into whenever my parents went on one of their trips.
They travel a lot. Dad owns this massive petroleum exploration company, and when she’s not chairing charity boards and organizing fund-raisers, Mom goes with him everywhere, from Alaska to New Zealand. I saw a lot of great shows with whichever member of the staff I could bribe to take me and swear I was sixteen. Keb’ Mo, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Roomful of Blues—I saw them all.
A G-minor chord rippled out over the crackle of the fire, and I smiled a slow smile. My second favorite sound in the world (right after the sound of M&Ms pouring into a dish). On my left, Danyel had pulled out his guitar and tuned it while I was lost in la-la land, listening to the waves come in.
Lissa says there are some things you just know. And somehow, I just knew that I was going to be more to Danyel Johnstone than merely a friend of his friend Kaz’s friend Lissa, if you hear what I’m saying. I was done with being alone, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stand out from the crowd.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like this crowd. Carly especially—she’s like the sister I would have designed my own self. And Lissa, too, though sometimes I wonder if she can be real. I mean, how can you be blond and tall and rich and wear clothes the way she does, and still be so nice? There has to be a flaw in there somewhere, but if she’s got any, she keeps them under wraps.
Gillian, who we’d see in a couple of days, has really grown on me. I couldn’t stand her at first—she’s one of those people you can’t help but notice. I only hung around her because Carly liked her. But somewhere between her going out with this loser brain trust and then her hooking up with Jeremy Clay, who’s a friend of mine, I got to know her. And staying with her family last Christmas, which could have been massively awkward, was actually fun. The last month in the Hamptons with them was a total blast. The only good thing about leaving was knowing I was going to see the rest of the crew here in Santa Barbara.
The one person I still wasn’t sure about was Mac, aka Lady Lindsay MacPhail, who did an exchange term at school in the spring. Getting to know her is like besieging a castle—which is totally appropriate considering she lives in one. She and Carly are tight, and we all e-mailed and IM-ed like fiends all summer, but I’m still not sure. I mean, she has a lot to deal with right now, with her family and everything. And the likelihood of us seeing each other again is kind of low, so maybe I don’t have to make up my mind about her. Maybe I’ll just let her go the way I let the kids in middle school go.
Danyel began to get serious about bending his notes instead of fingerpicking, and I knew he was about to sing. Oh, man, could the night get any more perfect? Even though we’d probably burn the handmade marshmallows from Williams-Sonoma, tonight capped a summer that had been the best time I’d ever had.
The only thing that would make it perfect would be finding some way to be alone with that man. I hadn’t been here more than a day when Danyel and Kaz had come loping down the beach. I’d taken one look at those eyes and those cheekbones and, okay, a very cut set of abs, and decided here was someone I wanted to know a whole lot better. And I did, now, after a couple of weeks. But soon we’d go off to S. F., and he and Kaz would go back to Pacific High. When we pulled out in Gabe Mansfield’s SUV, I wanted there to be something more between us than an air kiss and a handshake, you know what I mean?
I wanted something to be settled. Neither of us had talked about it, but both of us knew it was there. Unspoken longing is all very well in poetry, but I’m the outspoken type. I like things out there where I can touch them.
In a manner of speaking.
Danyel sat between Kaz and me, cross-legged and bare-chested, looking as comfortable in his surf jams as if he lived in them. Come to think of it, he did live in them. His, Kaz’s, and Lissa’s boards were stuck in the sand behind us. They’d spent most of the afternoon out there on the waves. I tried to keep my eyes on the fire. Not that I didn’t appreciate the view next to me, because trust me, it was fine, but I know a man wants to be appreciated for his talents and his mind.
Danyel’s melody sounded familiar—something Gillian played while we waited for our prayer circles at school to start. Which reminded me . . . I nudged Carly. “You guys going to church tomorrow?”
She nodded and lifted her chin at Lissa to get her attention. “Girl wants to know if we’re going to church.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lissa said. “Kaz and his family, too. Last chance of the summer to all go together.”
And where Kaz went, Danyel went. Happy thought.
“You’re not going to bail, are you?” Carly’s brows rose a little.
It’s not like I’m anti-religion or anything. I’m just in the beginning stages of learning about it. Without my friends to tell me stuff, I’d be bumbling around on my own, trying to figure it out. My parents don’t go to church, so I didn’t catch the habit from them. But when she was alive and I was a little girl, my grandma used to take me to the one in her neighborhood across town. I thought it was an adventure, riding the bus instead of being driven in the BMW. And the gospel choir was like nothing I’d ever seen, all waving their arms in the air and singing to raise the roof. I always thought they were trying to deafen God, if they could just get up enough volume.
So I like the music part. Always have. And I’m beginning to see the light on the God part, after what happened last spring. But seeing a glimmer and knowing what to do about it are two different things.
“Of course not.” I gave Carly a look. “We all go together. And we walk, in case no one told you, so plan your shoes carefully.”
“Oh, I will.” She sat back on her hands, an “I so see right through you” smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “And it’s all about the worship, I know.” That smile told me she knew exactly what my motivation was. Part of it, at least. Hey, can you blame me?
The music changed and Danyel’s voice lifted into a lonely blues melody, pouring over Carly’s words like cream. I just melted right there on the spot. Man, could that boy sing.
Blue water, blue sky
Blue day, girl, do you think that I
Don’t see you, yeah I do.
Long sunset, long road,
Long life, girl, but I think you know
What I need, yeah, you do.
I do a little singing my own self, so I know talent when I hear it. And I’d have bet you that month’s allowance that Danyel had composed that one. He segued into the chorus and then the bridge, its rhythms straight out of Mississippi but the tune something new, something that fit the sadness and the hope of the words.
Wait a minute.
Blue day? Long sunset? Long road? As in, a long road to San Francisco?
Whoa. Could Danyel be trying to tell someone something? “You think that I don’t see you”? Well, if that didn’t describe me, I didn’t know what would. Ohmigosh.
Could he be trying to tell me his feelings with a song? Musicians were like that. They couldn’t tell a person something to her face, or they were too shy, or it was just too hard to get out, so they poured it into their music. For them, maybe it was easier to perform something than to get personal with it.
Be cool, girl. Let him finish. Then find a way to tell him you understand—and you want it, too.
The last of the notes blew away on the breeze, and a big comber smashed itself on the sand, making a sound like a kettledrum to finish off the song. I clapped, and the others joined in.
“Did you write that yourself?” Lissa removed a marshmallow from her stick and passed it to him. “It was great.”
Danyel shrugged one shoulder. “Tune’s been bugging me for a while and the words just came to me. You know, like an IM or something.”
Carly laughed, and Kaz’s forehead wrinkled for a second in a frown before he did, too.
I love modesty in a man. With that kind of talent, you couldn’t blame Danyel for thinking he was all that.
Should I say something? The breath backed up in my chest. Say it. You’ll lose the moment. “So who’s it about?” I blurted, then felt myself blush.
“Can’t tell.” His head was bent as he picked a handful of notes and turned them into a little melody. “Some girl, probably.”
“Some girl who’s leaving?” I said, trying for a teasing tone. “Is that a good-bye?”
“Could be.”
I wished I had the guts to come out and ask if he’d written the song for me—for us—but I just couldn’t. Not with everyone sitting there. With one look at Carly, whose eyes held a distinct “What’s up with you?” expression, I lost my nerve and shut up. Which, as any of the girls could tell you, doesn’t happen very often.
Danyel launched into another song—some praise thing that everyone knew but me. And then another, and then a cheesy old John Denver number that at least I knew the words to, and then a bunch of goofy songs half of us had learned at camp when we were kids. And then it was nearly midnight, and Kaz got up and stretched.
He’s a tall guy. He stretches a long way. “I’m running the mixer for the early service tomorrow, so I’ve got to go.”
Danyel got up, and I just stopped my silly self from saying, “No, not yet.” Instead, I watched him sling the guitar over one shoulder and yank his board out of the sand. “Are you going to early service, too?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “I’m in the band, remember?”
Argh! As if I didn’t know. As if I hadn’t sat there three Sundays in a row, watching his hands move on the frets and the light make shadows under his cheekbones.
“I just meant—I see you at the late one when we go. I didn’t know you went to both.” Stutter, bumble. Oh, just stop talking, girl. You’ve been perfectly comfortable talking to him so far. What’s the matter?
“I don’t, usually. But tomorrow they’re doing full band at early service, too. Last one before all the turistas go home. Next week we’ll be back to normal.” He smiled at me. “See you then.”
Was he looking forward to seeing me, or was he just being nice? “I hope so,” I managed.
“Kaz, you coming?”
Kaz bent to the fire and ran a stick through the coals, separating them. “Just let me put this out. Lissa, where’s the bucket?”
“Here.” While I’d been obsessing over Danyel, Lissa had run down to the waterline and filled a gallon pail. You could tell they’d done this about a million times. She poured the water on the fire and it blew a cloud of steam into the air. The orange coals gave it up with a hiss.
I looked up to say something to Danyel about it and saw that he was already fifty feet away, board under his arm like it weighed nothing, heading down the beach to the public lot where he usually parked his Jeep.
I stared down into the coals, wet and dying.
I couldn’t let the night go out like this.
“Danyel, wait!” The sand polished the soles of my bare feet better than the pumice bar at the salon as I ran to catch up with him. A fast glance behind me told me Lissa had stepped up and begun talking to Kaz, giving me a few seconds alone.
I owed her, big time.
“What’s up, ma?” He planted the board and set the guitar case down. “Forget something?”
“Yes,” I blurted. “I forgot to tell you that I think you’re amazing.”
He blinked. “Whoa.” The barest hint of a smile tickled the corners of his lips.
I might not get another chance as good as this one. I rushed on, the words crowding my mouth in their hurry to get out. “I know there’s something going on here and we’re all leaving on Tuesday and I need to know if you—if you feel the same way.”
“About . . . ?”
“About me. As I feel about you.”
He put both hands on his hips and gazed down at the sand. “Oh.”
Cold engulfed me, as if I’d just plunged face-first into the dark waves twenty feet away. “Oh,” I echoed. “Never mind. I guess I got it wrong.” I stepped back. “Forget about it. No harm done.”
“No, Shani, wait—”
But I didn’t want to hear the “we can still be friends” speech. I didn’t want to hear anything except the wind in my ears as I ran back to the safety of my friends.
Like the T-shirt says, life is good.
My name’s Shani Amira Marjorie Hanna, and up until I started going to Spencer Academy in my freshman year, all I wanted to do was get in, scoop as many A’s as I could, and get out. College, yeah. Adulthood. Being the boss of me. Social life? Who cared? I’d treat it the way I’d done in middle school, making my own way and watching people brush by me, all disappearing into good-bye like they were flowing down a river.
Then when I was a junior, I met the girls, and things started to change whether I wanted them to or not. Or maybe it was just me. Doing the changing, I mean.
Now we were all seniors and I was beginning to see that all this “I am an island” stuff was just a bunch of smoke. ’Cuz I was not like the Channel Islands, sitting out there on the hazy horizon. I was so done with all that.
Lissa Mansfield sat on the other side of the fire from me while this adorable Jared Padalecki look-alike named Kaz Griffin sat next to her trying to act like the best friend she thought he was. Lissa needs a smack upside the head, you want my opinion. Either that or someone needs to make a serious play for Kaz to wake her up. But it’s not going to be me. I’ve got cuter fish to fry. Heh. More about that later.
“I can’t believe this is the last weekend of summer vacation,” Carly Aragon moaned for about the fifth time since Kaz lit the fire and we all got comfortable in the sand around it. “It’s gone so fast.”
“That’s because you’ve only been here a week.” I handed her the bag of tortilla chips. “What about me? I’ve been here for a month and I still can’t believe we have to go up to San Francisco on Tuesday.”
“I’m so jealous.” Carly bumped me with her shoulder. “A whole month at Casa Mansfield with your own private beach and everything.” She dipped a handful of chips in a big plastic container of salsa she’d made that morning with fresh tomatoes and cilantro and little bits of—get this—cantaloupe. She made one the other day with carrots in it. I don't know how she comes up with this stuff, but it’s all good. We had a cooler full of food to munch on. No burnt weenies for this crowd. Uh-uh. What we can’t order delivered, Carly can make.
“And to think I could have gone back to Chicago and spent the whole summer throwing parties and trashing the McMansion.” I sighed with regret. “Instead, I had to put up with a month in the Hamptons with the Changs, and then a month out here fighting Lissa for her bathroom.”
“Hey, you could have used one of the other ones,” Lissa protested, trying to keep Kaz from snagging the rest of her turkey-avocado-and-alfalfa-sprouts sandwich.
I grinned at her. Who wanted to walk down the hot sandstone patio to one of the other bathrooms when she, Carly, and I had this beautiful Spanish terrazzo-looking wing of the house to ourselves? Carly and I were in Lissa’s sister’s old room, which looked out on this garden with a fountain and big ferns and grasses and flowering trees. And beyond that was the ocean. It was the kind of place you didn’t want to leave, even to go to the bathroom.
I contrasted it with the freezing wind off Lake Michigan in the winter and the long empty hallways of the seven-million-dollar McMansion on Lake Road, where I always felt like a guest. You know—like you’re welcome but the hosts don’t really know what to do with you. I mean, my mom has told me point-blank, with a kind of embarrassed little laugh, that she can’t imagine what happened. The Pill and her careful preventive measures couldn’t all have failed on the same night.
Organic waste happens. Whatever. The point is, I arrived seventeen years ago and they had to adjust.
I think they love me. My dad always reads my report cards, and he used to take me to blues clubs to listen to the musicians doing sound checks before the doors opened. That was before my mom found out. Then I had to wait until I was twelve, and we went to the early shows, which were never as good as the late ones I snuck into whenever my parents went on one of their trips.
They travel a lot. Dad owns this massive petroleum exploration company, and when she’s not chairing charity boards and organizing fund-raisers, Mom goes with him everywhere, from Alaska to New Zealand. I saw a lot of great shows with whichever member of the staff I could bribe to take me and swear I was sixteen. Keb’ Mo, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Roomful of Blues—I saw them all.
A G-minor chord rippled out over the crackle of the fire, and I smiled a slow smile. My second favorite sound in the world (right after the sound of M&Ms pouring into a dish). On my left, Danyel had pulled out his guitar and tuned it while I was lost in la-la land, listening to the waves come in.
Lissa says there are some things you just know. And somehow, I just knew that I was going to be more to Danyel Johnstone than merely a friend of his friend Kaz’s friend Lissa, if you hear what I’m saying. I was done with being alone, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stand out from the crowd.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like this crowd. Carly especially—she’s like the sister I would have designed my own self. And Lissa, too, though sometimes I wonder if she can be real. I mean, how can you be blond and tall and rich and wear clothes the way she does, and still be so nice? There has to be a flaw in there somewhere, but if she’s got any, she keeps them under wraps.
Gillian, who we’d see in a couple of days, has really grown on me. I couldn’t stand her at first—she’s one of those people you can’t help but notice. I only hung around her because Carly liked her. But somewhere between her going out with this loser brain trust and then her hooking up with Jeremy Clay, who’s a friend of mine, I got to know her. And staying with her family last Christmas, which could have been massively awkward, was actually fun. The last month in the Hamptons with them was a total blast. The only good thing about leaving was knowing I was going to see the rest of the crew here in Santa Barbara.
The one person I still wasn’t sure about was Mac, aka Lady Lindsay MacPhail, who did an exchange term at school in the spring. Getting to know her is like besieging a castle—which is totally appropriate considering she lives in one. She and Carly are tight, and we all e-mailed and IM-ed like fiends all summer, but I’m still not sure. I mean, she has a lot to deal with right now, with her family and everything. And the likelihood of us seeing each other again is kind of low, so maybe I don’t have to make up my mind about her. Maybe I’ll just let her go the way I let the kids in middle school go.
Danyel began to get serious about bending his notes instead of fingerpicking, and I knew he was about to sing. Oh, man, could the night get any more perfect? Even though we’d probably burn the handmade marshmallows from Williams-Sonoma, tonight capped a summer that had been the best time I’d ever had.
The only thing that would make it perfect would be finding some way to be alone with that man. I hadn’t been here more than a day when Danyel and Kaz had come loping down the beach. I’d taken one look at those eyes and those cheekbones and, okay, a very cut set of abs, and decided here was someone I wanted to know a whole lot better. And I did, now, after a couple of weeks. But soon we’d go off to S. F., and he and Kaz would go back to Pacific High. When we pulled out in Gabe Mansfield’s SUV, I wanted there to be something more between us than an air kiss and a handshake, you know what I mean?
I wanted something to be settled. Neither of us had talked about it, but both of us knew it was there. Unspoken longing is all very well in poetry, but I’m the outspoken type. I like things out there where I can touch them.
In a manner of speaking.
Danyel sat between Kaz and me, cross-legged and bare-chested, looking as comfortable in his surf jams as if he lived in them. Come to think of it, he did live in them. His, Kaz’s, and Lissa’s boards were stuck in the sand behind us. They’d spent most of the afternoon out there on the waves. I tried to keep my eyes on the fire. Not that I didn’t appreciate the view next to me, because trust me, it was fine, but I know a man wants to be appreciated for his talents and his mind.
Danyel’s melody sounded familiar—something Gillian played while we waited for our prayer circles at school to start. Which reminded me . . . I nudged Carly. “You guys going to church tomorrow?”
She nodded and lifted her chin at Lissa to get her attention. “Girl wants to know if we’re going to church.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lissa said. “Kaz and his family, too. Last chance of the summer to all go together.”
And where Kaz went, Danyel went. Happy thought.
“You’re not going to bail, are you?” Carly’s brows rose a little.
It’s not like I’m anti-religion or anything. I’m just in the beginning stages of learning about it. Without my friends to tell me stuff, I’d be bumbling around on my own, trying to figure it out. My parents don’t go to church, so I didn’t catch the habit from them. But when she was alive and I was a little girl, my grandma used to take me to the one in her neighborhood across town. I thought it was an adventure, riding the bus instead of being driven in the BMW. And the gospel choir was like nothing I’d ever seen, all waving their arms in the air and singing to raise the roof. I always thought they were trying to deafen God, if they could just get up enough volume.
So I like the music part. Always have. And I’m beginning to see the light on the God part, after what happened last spring. But seeing a glimmer and knowing what to do about it are two different things.
“Of course not.” I gave Carly a look. “We all go together. And we walk, in case no one told you, so plan your shoes carefully.”
“Oh, I will.” She sat back on her hands, an “I so see right through you” smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “And it’s all about the worship, I know.” That smile told me she knew exactly what my motivation was. Part of it, at least. Hey, can you blame me?
The music changed and Danyel’s voice lifted into a lonely blues melody, pouring over Carly’s words like cream. I just melted right there on the spot. Man, could that boy sing.
Blue water, blue sky
Blue day, girl, do you think that I
Don’t see you, yeah I do.
Long sunset, long road,
Long life, girl, but I think you know
What I need, yeah, you do.
I do a little singing my own self, so I know talent when I hear it. And I’d have bet you that month’s allowance that Danyel had composed that one. He segued into the chorus and then the bridge, its rhythms straight out of Mississippi but the tune something new, something that fit the sadness and the hope of the words.
Wait a minute.
Blue day? Long sunset? Long road? As in, a long road to San Francisco?
Whoa. Could Danyel be trying to tell someone something? “You think that I don’t see you”? Well, if that didn’t describe me, I didn’t know what would. Ohmigosh.
Could he be trying to tell me his feelings with a song? Musicians were like that. They couldn’t tell a person something to her face, or they were too shy, or it was just too hard to get out, so they poured it into their music. For them, maybe it was easier to perform something than to get personal with it.
Be cool, girl. Let him finish. Then find a way to tell him you understand—and you want it, too.
The last of the notes blew away on the breeze, and a big comber smashed itself on the sand, making a sound like a kettledrum to finish off the song. I clapped, and the others joined in.
“Did you write that yourself?” Lissa removed a marshmallow from her stick and passed it to him. “It was great.”
Danyel shrugged one shoulder. “Tune’s been bugging me for a while and the words just came to me. You know, like an IM or something.”
Carly laughed, and Kaz’s forehead wrinkled for a second in a frown before he did, too.
I love modesty in a man. With that kind of talent, you couldn’t blame Danyel for thinking he was all that.
Should I say something? The breath backed up in my chest. Say it. You’ll lose the moment. “So who’s it about?” I blurted, then felt myself blush.
“Can’t tell.” His head was bent as he picked a handful of notes and turned them into a little melody. “Some girl, probably.”
“Some girl who’s leaving?” I said, trying for a teasing tone. “Is that a good-bye?”
“Could be.”
I wished I had the guts to come out and ask if he’d written the song for me—for us—but I just couldn’t. Not with everyone sitting there. With one look at Carly, whose eyes held a distinct “What’s up with you?” expression, I lost my nerve and shut up. Which, as any of the girls could tell you, doesn’t happen very often.
Danyel launched into another song—some praise thing that everyone knew but me. And then another, and then a cheesy old John Denver number that at least I knew the words to, and then a bunch of goofy songs half of us had learned at camp when we were kids. And then it was nearly midnight, and Kaz got up and stretched.
He’s a tall guy. He stretches a long way. “I’m running the mixer for the early service tomorrow, so I’ve got to go.”
Danyel got up, and I just stopped my silly self from saying, “No, not yet.” Instead, I watched him sling the guitar over one shoulder and yank his board out of the sand. “Are you going to early service, too?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “I’m in the band, remember?”
Argh! As if I didn’t know. As if I hadn’t sat there three Sundays in a row, watching his hands move on the frets and the light make shadows under his cheekbones.
“I just meant—I see you at the late one when we go. I didn’t know you went to both.” Stutter, bumble. Oh, just stop talking, girl. You’ve been perfectly comfortable talking to him so far. What’s the matter?
“I don’t, usually. But tomorrow they’re doing full band at early service, too. Last one before all the turistas go home. Next week we’ll be back to normal.” He smiled at me. “See you then.”
Was he looking forward to seeing me, or was he just being nice? “I hope so,” I managed.
“Kaz, you coming?”
Kaz bent to the fire and ran a stick through the coals, separating them. “Just let me put this out. Lissa, where’s the bucket?”
“Here.” While I’d been obsessing over Danyel, Lissa had run down to the waterline and filled a gallon pail. You could tell they’d done this about a million times. She poured the water on the fire and it blew a cloud of steam into the air. The orange coals gave it up with a hiss.
I looked up to say something to Danyel about it and saw that he was already fifty feet away, board under his arm like it weighed nothing, heading down the beach to the public lot where he usually parked his Jeep.
I stared down into the coals, wet and dying.
I couldn’t let the night go out like this.
“Danyel, wait!” The sand polished the soles of my bare feet better than the pumice bar at the salon as I ran to catch up with him. A fast glance behind me told me Lissa had stepped up and begun talking to Kaz, giving me a few seconds alone.
I owed her, big time.
“What’s up, ma?” He planted the board and set the guitar case down. “Forget something?”
“Yes,” I blurted. “I forgot to tell you that I think you’re amazing.”
He blinked. “Whoa.” The barest hint of a smile tickled the corners of his lips.
I might not get another chance as good as this one. I rushed on, the words crowding my mouth in their hurry to get out. “I know there’s something going on here and we’re all leaving on Tuesday and I need to know if you—if you feel the same way.”
“About . . . ?”
“About me. As I feel about you.”
He put both hands on his hips and gazed down at the sand. “Oh.”
Cold engulfed me, as if I’d just plunged face-first into the dark waves twenty feet away. “Oh,” I echoed. “Never mind. I guess I got it wrong.” I stepped back. “Forget about it. No harm done.”
“No, Shani, wait—”
But I didn’t want to hear the “we can still be friends” speech. I didn’t want to hear anything except the wind in my ears as I ran back to the safety of my friends.
My Opinion:
I absolutely Love Young Adult books. I do.... Why did nothing like this ever happen to me when I was a kid. I never had a prince want to marry me... and don't say my hubby is my prince.. I am talking about the real deal people. Shani might have a lot of big problems, but she knows who made her a princess. I think sometimes we all forget. This is book four and I can't wait to read the first 3. I hate jumping in in the middle of a series.
This is a great reminder for Adults as well as teens. 4 stars guys!
Review: The New IQ by Dr. David Gruder
Synopsis:
From the White House, to the board room, to the privacy of our own bedrooms, and virtually everywhere in between, integrity deficits are destroying our personal lives, our businesses, our economy, our healthcare, our society, and our planet.Creating sustainable integrity-centered solutions to today's vast array of major challenges requires us, as individuals and as a society, to take a fresh look at what creates life fulfillment. It requires us as citizens to develop a new integrity-centered vision of what we need to require from our leaders in government, business, advocacy groups, community organizations and the media.The New IQ is the world's first road-tested guide to integrity-centered living, working, loving, and serving. Hailed as a "once-in-a-generation book," it provides the first step-by-step road map for restoring the vanishing virtue of integrity... for the sake of our loved ones, our communities, our businesses, our society, and our own personal wellbeing.Going far beyond being a self-help book, this critically acclaimed five-award-winning action plan offers a socially responsible way to attain personal, relationship, and career fulfillment during difficult times, without sacrificing ethics and integrity. Here at last is your complete guide to "personal development that serves us all."
My Opinion:
Integrity... That is a word you never hear anymore. Now, children are brought up to be selfish adults worried about their own advancement and nothing else. That isn't what I want for my children. I dare say that many of us are hoping that we can instill in our children at least the smallest bits of character and integrity.
Dr Gruder Takes on an in depth journey to examine our "Three Core Drives" that connect to from our three dimensional self. He goes in to explain how we can improve ourselves to connect and align all three.
This book encourages us not to live in the past, but to let go, move on, learn from the past, fix our behaviors, and move on to live a happy and fulfilled life. We can't successfully help others if we aren't right (especially our children)
I think this is one of the best self-help books I have read this year. I really enjoyed it. It is cut and dry...no tiptoeing around the truth to sugarcoat it. I am glad that integrity is finally making a comeback. Now maybe my kids won't think I am so old fashioned.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Amish Love!
What’s all the hubbub about Amish fiction? Major media outlets like Time and ABC Nightline are covering it, and authors like Cindy Woodsmall are making the New York Times bestseller list regularly. What makes these books so interesting?
Check out the recent ABC Nightline piece here (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=7676659&page=1) about Cindy and her titles When the Heart Cries, When the Morning Comes, and When the Soul Mends. It’s an intriguing look at Amish culture and the time Cindy has spent with Amish friends.
And don’t forget that Cindy’s new book The Hope of Refuge hits store shelves August 11, and is available for preorder now.
Check out the recent ABC Nightline piece here (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=7676659&page=1) about Cindy and her titles When the Heart Cries, When the Morning Comes, and When the Soul Mends. It’s an intriguing look at Amish culture and the time Cindy has spent with Amish friends.
And don’t forget that Cindy’s new book The Hope of Refuge hits store shelves August 11, and is available for preorder now.
Review: Jesus Calling by Sarah Young
Jesus Calling:Seeking Peace In His Presence
By Sarah Young
Book Description
Uniquely inspired treasures from heaven for every day of the year by missionary Sarah Young.
Jesus Calling is a devotional filled with uniquely inspired treasures from heaven for every day of the year. After many years of writing in her prayer journal, missionary Sarah Young decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever she believed He was saying to her. It was awkward at first, but gradually her journaling changed from monologue to dialogue. She knew her writings were not inspired as Scripture is, but journaling helped her grow closer to God. Others were blessed as she shared her writings, until people all over the world were using her messages. They are written from Jesus’ point of view, thus the title Jesus Calling. It is Sarah’s fervent prayer that our Savior may bless readers with His presence and His peace in ever deeper measure.
Jesus Calling is a devotional filled with uniquely inspired treasures from heaven for every day of the year. After many years of writing in her prayer journal, missionary Sarah Young decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever she believed He was saying to her. It was awkward at first, but gradually her journaling changed from monologue to dialogue. She knew her writings were not inspired as Scripture is, but journaling helped her grow closer to God. Others were blessed as she shared her writings, until people all over the world were using her messages. They are written from Jesus’ point of view, thus the title Jesus Calling. It is Sarah’s fervent prayer that our Savior may bless readers with His presence and His peace in ever deeper measure.
My Opinion:
My Spiritual life has been suffering so much lately.. I won't go into details, but I haven't been to church in well over 6 months. I have been missing and longing for that connection with God. When I cracked open this devotional, from the first page, every verse has been so helpful. Tears ran from my cheek as I read the very first devotional. It is exactly what I needed.
There is a devotional for each day by date. I never can seem to read them that way. I always seem to start with Jan. 1 even though it's almost June. Mrs. Young really speaks from her heart and has done a beautiful job writing this devotional. It reads the way I would personally talk to God. I think it is absolutely wonderful.
5 stars... buy worthy.
Review: The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir
Synopsis
Eleven months ago, Ray Quinn was a tough, quick-witted Orlando homicide detective at the top of his game–until a barrage of bullets ended his career…and his partner’s life.Now medically retired with a painful handicap, Ray battles the haunting guilt for his partner’s death. Numbing the pain with alcohol and attitude, Ray takes a job as a night watchman at a swanky Orlando condo.But when a pastor and an exotic dancer are found dead in one of the condos in an apparent murder-suicide, Ray can no longer linger in the shadows. The pastor’s sister is convinced her brother was framed and begs Ray to take on an impossible case–to challenge the evidence and clear her brother’s name. Ray reluctantly pulls the threads of this supposedly dead-end case only to unravel a murder investigation so deep that it threatens to turn the Orlando political landscape upside down and transform old friends into new enemies. As Ray chases down leads and interrogates suspects, someone is watching his every move, someone determined to keep him from ever finding out the truth–at any cost.
My Opinion:
It's pretty good. I love this book because it is wonderfully written. It is very fast paced and gripping, but still comical in many places. I love the way the gopsel messege is placed in the "exotic Dancers" emails, and it is handled very tactfully. It was one of the ones I like because it drew me in so early in the story. I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for ray and his alcoholism and injury. I kinda felt sorry for his assistant too. He had to do all the gopher work.
Now, if old Ray can figure who is destroying his life things will be great.
I enjoyed it... 3.5 Stars Read it if you can find it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Giveaways Galore!
Hey Everyone!
Look to the Right and you will notice Tons of new Giveaways listed.
These are Audio Books. I love Audio Books! I can listen to them while Sewing and embroidering (which I am way behind on as is)! I can listen to them in the car. If it's not air one it is an audio book. I can listen to them while on vaca without dragging a bunch of bulky books around.
Don't Forget about the giveaways ending on the 31st!
Look to the Right and you will notice Tons of new Giveaways listed.
These are Audio Books. I love Audio Books! I can listen to them while Sewing and embroidering (which I am way behind on as is)! I can listen to them in the car. If it's not air one it is an audio book. I can listen to them while on vaca without dragging a bunch of bulky books around.
Don't Forget about the giveaways ending on the 31st!
Review: Mating Rituals of the North American Wasp by Lauren Lipton
Synopsis. After arguing with her live-in boyfriend about his inability to commit, Peggy Adams flies to a friend's bachelorette party in Las Vegas, and wakes up next to a man she can't remember. Hung-over and miserable, she sneaks out of the sleeping man's hotel room and returns home to New York, where her boyfriend apologizes for the fight and gives her a Tiffany box containing a pre-engagement ring. Not what she expected, but close enough! The next day she receives a phone call from the Las Vegas one-night stand, Luke, claiming she's already married to him¬-and he faxes her the license for proof! Both are ready for an annulment, until Peggy arrives in quaint New Nineveh, CT, where Luke cares for his Great Aunt, and the old woman makes Peggy an offer she can't refuse.
Peggy Adams is comfortable in her New York life, until she makes an unusual agreement with LukeSedgwick, the last scion of an old New England family. The deal: Stay married for a year, and the two will inherit the Sedgwick mansion in New Nineveh, a quaint, preppy Connecticut town.But entering Luke’s world isn’t easy. Peggy must quickly learn how to pass herself off as a proper Connecticut wife and a perfect WASP.(Hint: At parties, nobody actually eats the food.) To make matters worse, she finds herself falling in love with the man she’s married to—despite that he seems to have no feelings for her.
My Opinion:
You've heard it before "what happens in Vegas"...Guess that isn't true in this case! This is a great read! The sexual tension between Peggy and Luke is insane. You just want to push them together and say "YOU BOTH LOVE EACH OTHER DEAL WITH IT!", or at least, I wanted to.
Harlirity ensues as Peggy tries to fit in and avoid loving Luke. It's your basic "oppsites attract" book. It doesn't really have any new twist to the old theme, but is still a lighthearted and fun read. Definetly worth reading this summer. 4 stars! Love it!
Heck, I would stay married to Mr. Hottie Mc Hot Pants if someone gave me a million bucks.
Don't forget to check out Lauren Lipton's website for more info, and Q&A.
The Pyewiz And The Amazing Mobile Phone by H. H. Jones
Synopsis:
Journey to a frozen planet to find a long lost twin. An amazing crystal phone with incredible powers. A cunning old pirate wizard who must be stopped.Schoolboy Terry Mctrain thinks the new tenant in his parent's guesthouse is strange. Stranger still is the reason why she is here. Then Terry learns about a twin brother he never knew he had, kidnapped by a pirate wizard years ago. Baffled by all this, Terry realizes there's a mystery to be solved, and a secret to be uncovered. But when he discovers that the fate of the world is also in his hands, he wonders..Could this turn into the adventure of a lifetime?Perhaps, but unless Terry and his friend Will travel to the other side of the solar system to solve this puzzle, there's a danger that the world would be destroyed, and his twin brother lost forever.
My Opinion:
I was a little wary when I first saw the book. It's huge and over 500 pages long. I was so afraid it would take forever to read. Then I opened to the First Chapter. It was great. The first chapter is so intriguing that it just drew me in. There weren't any places I felt bored or where my mind wondered. I am currently reading it to my children, and even they love it. I think it is a great book. I couldn't put it down.
There are some wars and violence, but that didn't bother me all that much. The characters are so strong and the plot so entrancing that you just melt into it. H.H. Jones does such a great job of telling the story that you don't realize that someone is telling it. Does that makes sense? It's like watching a movie...the Narration comes from an invisible source. Over all I think it is great book, and I LOVE it! Hmmmm I'd say 4.5 stars. I wish I had a copy to giveaway, but I am selfish and you can't have mine. I will be rereading it for years to come.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Giveaway! Audiobook LOSING MUM AND PUP (Unabridged)
In twelve months between 2007 and 2008, Christopher Buckley coped with the passing of his parents. He was their only child and their relationship was close and complicated. As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes listeners on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."
This is a giveaway for An Audiobook of LOSING MUM AND PUP (Unabridged)
By Christopher Buckley . Open to USA and Canada residents only. No PO boxes sorry :( This Giveaway will run from May 27, 2009 until June 8Th, 2009 11:59 p.m. c.s.t. 3 winners will be chosen by random.org and posted the next day. I will email the winner and they will have 3 days to contact me. If they don't contact me I will choose another winner.
Main entry: Just comment. Please leave an email address. I reserve the right to choose a new winner if I can't find an email address or way to contact you.
Want extra entries? (leave extra comment for each)
Subscribe in rss or by email.
Follow and tweet this on twitter @abookishmom
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That's it you guys. This is a great book. I can't wait to see who wins. Good Luck!
~jen
Giveaway! Audiobook THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith
Leo Demidov moved on from his career as a member of the state security force and was granted the authority to establish and run a homicide department in Moscow. Now, he strives to see justice done on behalf of murder victims in the Soviet capital, while at the same time working to build a life with his wife and adopted daughters, Zoya and Elena, but the legacy of his former career--the friends and families of those he had arrested as a state security officer--continues to hound him. Now, a new string of murders in the capital threaten to bring Leo's past crashing into the present, shattering the fragile foundations of his new life in Moscow, and putting his daughter Zoya's life at risk.
This is a giveaway for An Audiobook of THE SECRET SPEECH By Tom Rob Smith . Open to USA and Canada residents only. No PO boxes sorry :( This Giveaway will run from May 27, 2009 until June 8Th, 2009 11:59 p.m. c.s.t. 3 winners will be chosen by random.org and posted the next day. I will email the winner and they will have 3 days to contact me. If they don't contact me I will choose another winner.
Main entry: Just comment. Please leave an email address. I reserve the right to choose a new winner if I can't find an email address or way to contact you.
Want extra entries? (leave extra comment for each)
Subscribe in rss or by email.
Follow and tweet this on twitter @abookishmom
Grab my button
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That's it you guys. This is a great book. I can't wait to see w ho wins. Good Luck!
~jen
Giveaway! Audiobook CEMETERY DANCE By Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Pendergast-the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent-returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult.
William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. As Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived.
This is a giveaway for An Audiobook of CEMETERY DANCE By Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child. Open to USA and Canada residents only. No PO boxes sorry :( This Giveaway will run from May 27, 2009 until June 8Th, 2009 11:59 p.m. c.s.t. 3 winners will be chosen by random.org and posted the next day. I will email the winner and they will have 3 days to contact me. If they don't contact me I will choose another winner.
Main entry:
Just comment. Please leave an email address. I reserve the right to choose a new winner if I can't find an email address or way to contact you.
Want extra entries? (leave extra comment for each)
Subscribe in rss or by email.
Follow and tweet this on twitter @abookishmom
Grab my buttonBlog it and leave a link
That's it you guys. This is a great book. I can't wait to see who wins. Good Luck!
~jen
Giveaway:AudioBook The Scarecrow by Michael Connely
What would we do without the Hachette Girls!? Anna is the best. She is offering 3 copies of The Scarecrow for giveaway! Want to win it?
SYNOPSIS:
For Jack McEvoy, the killer named The Poet was the last word in evil.
Think again, Jack.
Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he's got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang — a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor — a Pulitzer prize.
Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer.
But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path years before. He reunites with FBI Agent Rachel Walling to go after a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar—and with perfect knowledge of any move against him.
What Jack doesn't know is that his investigation has inadvertently set off a digital tripwire. The killer knows Jack is coming—and he's ready.
The Scarecrow is available now in hardcover in the USA, Canada, the UK and Ireland. It will be released in Australia and New Zealand on May 27, 2009. The audiobook, Kindle, eBook, and large-print editions of The Scarecrow will be released simultaneously with the hardcover.
My Opinion: This Looks awesome and I can't wait to get my review copy! Then I shall give you my review. I love audiobooks. I can listen to them while embrodering and such...
So the rules: This is a giveaway for An Audiobook of The Scarecrow by Michael Connely. Open to USA and Canada residents only. No PO boxes sorry :( This Giveaway will run from May 27, 2009 until June 8Th, 2009 11:59 p.m. c.s.t. 3 winners will be chosen by random.org and posted the next day. I will email the winner and they will have 3 days to contact me. If they don't contact me I will choose another winner.
Main entry:
Just comment. Please leave an email address. I reserve the right to choose a new winner if I can't find an email address or way to contact you.
Want extra entries? (leave extra comment for each)
Subscribe in rss or by email.
Follow and tweet this on twitter @abookishmom
Grab my button
Blog it and leave a link
That's it you guys. This is a great book. I can't wait to see who wins. Good Luck!
~jen
First Look: City of the Dead by T.L. Higley
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
City of the Dead (Seven Wonders Series)
B&H Books (March 1, 2009)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
From her earliest childhood, there was nothing Tracy loved better than stepping into another world between the pages of a book. From dragons and knights, to the wonders of Narnia, that passion has never abated, and to Tracy, opening any novel is like stepping again through the wardrobe, into the thrilling unknown. With every book she writes, she wants to open a door like that, and invite readers to be transported with her into a place that captivates. She has traveled through Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Jordan to research her novels, and looks forward to more travel as the Seven Wonders series continues. It’s her hope that in escaping to the past with her, readers will feel they’ve walked through desert sands, explored ancient ruins, and met with the Redeeming God who is sovereign over the entire drama of human history. Visit the author's website.
Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: B&H Books (March 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805447318
ISBN-13: 978-0805447316
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Prologue
In my dreams, it is often I who kills Amunet. Other nights it is Khufu, in one of his mad rages. And at other times it is a great mystery, destined to remain unknown long after the ka of each of us has crossed to the west.
Tonight, as I lay abed, my dreams reveal all the truth that I know.
Merit is there, like a beautiful lotus flower among the papyrus reeds.
“Hemi,” she whispers, using the shortened form of my name in the familiar way I long for. “We should join the others.”
The tufts of reeds that spring from the marsh’s edge wave around us, higher than our heads, our private thicket.
“They are occupied with the hunt,” I say.
A cloud of birds rises from the marsh in that moment, squawking their protest at being disturbed. Merit turns her head to the noise and I study the line of her jaw, the long curls that wave across her ear. I pull her close, my arms around her waist.
Her body is stiff at first, then melts against mine.
“Hemi, you must let me go.”
Some nights in my dreams I am a better man.
“Merit.” I bury my face in her hair, breathe in the spicy scent of her. “I cannot.”
I pull her into my kiss.
She resists. She pushes me away and her eyes flash accusation, but something else as well. Sorrow. Longing.
I reach for her again, wrapping my fingers around her wrist. She twists away from my grasp. I do not know what I might have done, but there is fear in her eyes. By the gods, I wish I could forget that fear.
She runs. What else could she do?
She runs along the old river bed, not yet swollen with the year’s Inundation, stagnant and marshy. She disappears among the papyrus. The sky is low and gray, an evil portent.
My anger roots me to the ground for several moments, but then the potential danger propels me to follow.
“Merit,” I call. “Come back. I am sorry!”
I weave slowly among the reeds, searching for the white flash of her dress, the bronze of her skin.
“Merit, it is not safe!”
Anger dissolves into concern. I cannot find her.
In the way of dreams, my feet are unnaturally heavy, as though I fight through alluvial mud to reach her. The first weighted drops fall from an unearthly sky.
And then she is there, at the base of the reeds. White dress dirtied, head turned unnaturally. Face in the water. My heart clutches in my chest. I lurch forward. Drop to my knees in the marsh mud. Push away the reeds. Reach for her.
It is not Merit.
It is Amunet.
“Amunet!” I wipe the mud and water from her face and shake her. Her eyes are open yet unfocused.
I am less of a man because, in that moment, I feel relief.
Relief that it is not Merit.
But what has happened to Amunet? Khufu insisted that our royal hunting party split apart to raise the birds, but we all knew that he wanted to be with Amunet. Now she is alone, and she has crossed to the west.
As I hold her lifeless body in my arms, I feel the great weight of choice fall upon my shoulders. The rain pours through an evil gash in the clouds.
Khufu is my friend. He is my cousin. He will soon wear the Double Crown of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. And when Khufu is Pharaoh, I will be his grand vizier.
But it would seem that I hold our future in my hands now, as surely as I hold this girl’s body.
I lower Amunet to the mud again and awake, panting and sweating, in my bed. I roll from the mat, scramble for a pot, and retch. It is not the first time.
The sunlight is already burning through the high window in my bedchamber.
The past is gone. There is only the future.
And I have a pyramid to build.
1
In the fifth year of Khufu, the Golden Horus, Great in Victories, Chosen of Ra, as the pyramid rose in the desert like a burning torch to the sun god himself, I realized my mistake and knew that I had brought disorder.
“Foolishness!” Khons slapped a stone-roughened hand on the papyri unrolled on the basalt-black slab before us, and turned his back on the well-ordered charts to study the workforce on the plateau.
I refused to follow his gaze. Behind me, I knew, eight thousand men toiled, dragging quarry stones up ramps that snaked around my half-finished pyramid, and levering them into beautiful precision. Below them, intersecting lines of men advanced with the rhythm of drumbeats. They worked quickly but never fast enough.
My voice took on a hard edge. “Perhaps, Khons, if you spent more time listening and less blustering—”
“You speak to me of time?” The Overseer of Quarries whirled to face me, and the muscles in his jaw twitched like a donkey’s flank when a fly irritates. “Do you have any idea what these changes mean?” He waved a hand over my plans. “You were a naked baboon at Neferma’at’s knee when he and I were building the pyramids at Saqqara!”
This insult was well-worn, and I was sick of it. I stepped up to him, close enough to map every vein in his forehead. The desert air between us stilled with the tension. “You forget yourself, Khons. I may not be your elder, but I am grand vizier.”
“My good men,” Ded’e interrupted, his voice dripping honey as he smoothed long fingers over the soft papyrus. “Let us not quarrel like harem women over a simple change of design.”
“Simple!” Khons snorted. “Perhaps for you. Your farmers and bakers care not where Pharaoh’s burial chamber is located. But I will need to rework all the numbers for the Giza quarry. The timeline for the Aswan granite will be in chaos.” Khons turned on me. “The plans for the queen’s pyramid are later than grain in a drought year. A project of this magnitude must run like marble over the rollers. A change like this—you’re hurling a chunk of limestone into the Nile, and there will be ripples. Other deadlines will be missed—”
I held up a hand and waited to respond. I preferred to handle Khons and his fits of metaphor by giving us both time to cool. The sun hammered down on upon the building site, and I looked away, past the sands of death, toward the life-giving harbor and the fertile plain beyond. This year’s Inundation had not yet crested, but already the Nile’s green waters had swelled to the border of last year’s floodplain. When the waters receded in three months, leaving behind their rich silt deposits, the land would be black and fertile and planting would commence.
“Three months,” I said. In three months, most of my workforce would return to their farms to plant and till, leaving my pyramid unfinished, dependent on me to make it whole.
Khons grunted. “Exactly. No time for changes.”
Ded’e scanned the plateau, his fingers skimming his forehead to block the glare, though he had applied a careful line of kohl beneath his eyes today. “Where is Mentu? Did you not send a message, Hemiunu?”
I looked toward the workmen’s village, too far to make out anyone approaching by the road. Mentu-hotep also served as one of my chief overseers. These three answered directly to me, and under them commanded fifty supervisors, who in turn organized the twelve-thousand-man force. Nothing of this scale had ever been undertaken in the history of the Two Lands. In the history of man. We were building the Great Pyramid, the Horizon of the Pharaoh Khufu. A thousand years, nay, ten thousand years from now, my pyramid would still stand. And though a tomb for Pharaoh, it would also bear my name. A legacy in stone.
“Perhaps he thinks he can do as he wishes,” Khons said.
I ignored his petty implication that I played favorites among my staff. “Perhaps he is slow in getting started today.” I jabbed a finger at the plans again. “Look, Khons, the burial chamber’s relocation will mean that the inner core will require less stone, not more. I’ve redesigned the plans to show the king’s chamber beginning on Course Fifty. Between the corbelled ascending corridor, the burial chamber, five courses high, and the five relieving chambers that will be necessary above it, we will save 8,242 blocks.”
“Exactly 8,242? Are you certain?” De’de snorted. “I think you must stay up all night solving equations, eh, Hemi?”
I inclined my head to the pyramid, now one-fourth its finished height. “Look at it, De’de. See the way the sides angle at a setback of exactly 11:14. Look at the platform, level to an error less than the span of your little finger.” I turned on him. “Do you think such beauty happens by chance? No, it requires constant attention from one who would rather lose sleep than see it falter.”
“It’s blasphemy.” Khons’s voice was low. It was unwise to speak thus of the Favored One.
I exhaled and we hung over the plans, heads together. Khons smelled of sweat and dust, and sand caked the outer rim of his ear.
“It is for the best, Khons. You will see.”
If blasphemy were involved it was my doing and not Khufu’s? I had engineered the raising of the burial chamber above ground and, along with it, Khufu’s role as the earthly incarnation of the god Ra. It was for the good of Egypt, and now it must be carried forward. Hesitation, indecision—these were for weak men.
“Let the priests argue about religious matters,” I said. “I am a builder.”
Ded’e laughed. “Yes, you are like the pyramid, Hemi. All sharp angles and unforgiving measurements.”
I blinked at the observation, then smiled as though it pleased me.
Khons opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, but a shout from the worksite stopped him. We three turned to the pyramid, and I ground my teeth to see the workgangs falter in their measured march up the ramps. Some disorder near the top drew the attention of all. I squinted against the bright blue sky but saw only the brown figures of the workforce covering the stone.
“Cursed Mentu. Where is he?” Khons asked the question this time.
As Overseer for Operations, Mentu took charge of problems on the line. In his absence, I now stalked toward the site.
The Green Sea Gang had halted on the east-face ramp, their draglines still braced over their bare shoulders. Even from thirty cubits below I could see the ropy muscles stand out on the backs of a hundred men as they strained to hold the thirty-thousand-deben-weight block attached to the line. Their white skirts of this morning had long since tanned with dust, and their skin shone with afternoon sweat.
“Sokkwi! Get your men moving forward!” I shouted to the Green Sea Gang supervisor who should have been at the top.
There was no reply, so I strode up the ramp myself, multiplying in my mind the minutes of delay by the stones not raised. The workday might need extending.
Halfway up the rubble ramp, a scream like that of an antelope skewered by a hunter’s arrow ripped the air. I paused only a moment, the men’s eyes on me, then took to the rope-lashed ladder that leaned against the pyramid’s side. I felt the acacia wood strain under the pounding of my feet, and slowed only enough for safety. The ladder stretched to the next circuit of the ramp, and I scrambled from it, chest heaving, and sprinted through the double-line of laborers that snaked around the final ramp. Here the pyramid came to its end. Still so much to build.
Sokkwi, the gang supervisor, had his back to me when I reached the top. Several others clustered around him, bent to something on the stone. Chisels and drills lay scattered about.
“What is it? What’s happened?” The dry heat had stolen my breath, and the words panted out.
They broke apart to reveal a laborer, no more than eighteen years, on the ground, one leg pinned by a block half set in place. The boy’s eyes locked onto mine, as if to beg for mercy. “Move the stone!” I shouted to Sokkwi.
He scratched his chin. “It’s no good. The stone’s been dropped. We have nothing to—”
I jumped into the space open for the next stone, gripped the rising joint of the block that pinned the boy and yelled to a worker, larger than most. “You there! Help me slide this stone!”
He bent to thrust a shoulder against the stone. We strained against it like locusts pushing against a mountain. Sokkwi laid a hand upon my shoulder.
I rested a moment, and he inclined his head to the boy’s leg. Flesh had been torn down to muscle and bone. I reached for something to steady myself, but there was nothing at this height. The sight of blood, a weakness I had known since my youth, threatened to overcome me. I felt a warmth in my face and neck. I breathed slowly through my nose. No good for the men to see you swoon.
I knelt and placed a hand on the boy’s head, then spoke to Sokkwi. “How did this happen?”
He shrugged. “First time on the line.” He worked at something in his teeth with his tongue. “Doesn’t know the angles, I suppose.” Another shrug.
“What was he doing at the top then?” I searched the work area and the ramp below me again for Mentu. Anger churned my stomach.
The supervisor sighed and picked at his teeth with a fingernail. “Don’t ask me. I make sure the blocks climb those ramps and settle into place. That is all I do.”
How had Mentu had allowed this disaster? Justice, truth, and divine order—the ma’at—made Egypt great and made a man great. I did not like to see ma’at disturbed.
On the ramp, a woman pushed past the workers, shoving them aside in her haste to reach the top. She gained the flat area where we stood and paused, her breath huffing out in dry gasps. In her hands she held two jars, brimming with enough barley beer to allow the boy to feel fierce anger rather than beg for his own death. The surgeon came behind, readying his saw. The boy had a chance at life if the leg ended in a stump. Allowed to fester, the injury would surely kill him.
I masked my faintness with my anger and spun away.
“Mentu!” My yell carried past the lines below me, down into the desert below, perhaps to the quarry beyond. He should never have allowed so inexperienced a boy to place stones. Where had he been this morning when the gangs formed teams?
The men nearby were silent, but the work down on the plateau continued, heedless of the boy’s pain. The rhythmic ring of chisel on quarry stone punctuated the collective grunts of the quarry men, their chorus drifting across the desert, but Mentu did not answer the call.
Was he still in his bed? Mentu and I had spent last evening pouring wine and reminiscing late into the night about the days of our youth. Some of them anyway. Always one story never retold.
Another scream behind me. That woman had best get to pouring the barley beer. I could do nothing more here. I moved through the line of men, noting their nods of approval for the effort I’d made on behalf of one of their own.
When I reached the base and turned back toward the flat-topped black basalt stone where I conferred with Khons and Ded’e, I saw that another had joined them. My brother.
I slowed my steps, to allow that part of my heart to harden like mudbricks in the sun, then pushed forward.
They laughed together as I approached, the easy laugh of men comfortable with one another. My older brother leaned against the stone, his arms crossed in front of him. He stood upright when he saw me.
“Ahmose,” I said with a slight nod. “What brings you to the site?”
His smile turned to a smirk. “Just wanted to see how the project proceeds.”
“Hmm.” I focused my attention once more on the plans. The wind grabbed at the edges of the papyrus, and I used a stone cubit rod, thicker than my thumb, to weight it. “The three of us must recalculate stone transfer rates—”
“Khons seems to believe your changes are going to sink the project,” Ahmose said. He smiled, his perfect teeth gleaming against his dark skin.
The gods had favored Ahmose with beauty, charm, and a pleasing manner that made him well loved among the court. But I had been blessed with a strong mind and a stronger will. And I was grand vizier.
I lifted my eyes once more to the pyramid rising in perfect symmetry against the blue sky, and the thousands of men at my command. “The Horizon of Khufu will look down upon your children’s grandchildren, Ahmose,” I said. I leaned over my charts and braced my fingertips on the stone. “When you have long since sailed to the west, still it will stand.”
He bent beside me, his breath in my ear. “You always did believe you could do anything. Get away with anything.”
The animosity in his voice stiffened my shoulders.
“Khons, Ded’e, if you will.” I gestured to the charts. Khons snorted and clomped to my side. And Ded’e draped his forearms across the papyrus.
“It must be gratifying,” Ahmose whispered, “to command men so much more experienced than yourself.”
I turned on him, my smile tight. “And it must be disheartening to see your younger brother excel while you languish in a job bestowed only out of pity—”
A boy appeared, sparing me the indignity of exchanging blows with my brother. His sidelock identified him as a young prince, and I recognized him as the youngest of Henutsen, one of Khufu’s lesser wives.
“His Majesty Khufu, the king, Horus,” the boy said, “the strong bull, beloved by the goddess of truth—”
“Yes, yes. Life, Health, Strength!” I barked. “What does Khufu want?” I was in no mood for the string of titles.
The boy’s eyes widened and he dragged a foot through the sand. “My father commands the immediate presence of Grand Vizier Hemiunu before the throne.”
“Did he give a reason?”
The prince pulled on his lower lip. “He is very angry today.”
“Very well.” I waved him off and turned to Khons and Ded’e, rubbing the tension from my forehead. “We will continue later.”
The two overseers made their escape before Ahmose and I had a chance to go at it again. I flicked a glance in his direction, then rolled up my charts, keeping my breathing even.
Behind me Ahmose said, “Perhaps Khufu has finally seen his error in appointing you vizier.” Like a sharp poke in the kidneys when our mother wasn’t watching.
“Excuse me, Ahmose.” I pushed past him, my hands full of charts. “I have an important meeting.”
In my dreams, it is often I who kills Amunet. Other nights it is Khufu, in one of his mad rages. And at other times it is a great mystery, destined to remain unknown long after the ka of each of us has crossed to the west.
Tonight, as I lay abed, my dreams reveal all the truth that I know.
Merit is there, like a beautiful lotus flower among the papyrus reeds.
“Hemi,” she whispers, using the shortened form of my name in the familiar way I long for. “We should join the others.”
The tufts of reeds that spring from the marsh’s edge wave around us, higher than our heads, our private thicket.
“They are occupied with the hunt,” I say.
A cloud of birds rises from the marsh in that moment, squawking their protest at being disturbed. Merit turns her head to the noise and I study the line of her jaw, the long curls that wave across her ear. I pull her close, my arms around her waist.
Her body is stiff at first, then melts against mine.
“Hemi, you must let me go.”
Some nights in my dreams I am a better man.
“Merit.” I bury my face in her hair, breathe in the spicy scent of her. “I cannot.”
I pull her into my kiss.
She resists. She pushes me away and her eyes flash accusation, but something else as well. Sorrow. Longing.
I reach for her again, wrapping my fingers around her wrist. She twists away from my grasp. I do not know what I might have done, but there is fear in her eyes. By the gods, I wish I could forget that fear.
She runs. What else could she do?
She runs along the old river bed, not yet swollen with the year’s Inundation, stagnant and marshy. She disappears among the papyrus. The sky is low and gray, an evil portent.
My anger roots me to the ground for several moments, but then the potential danger propels me to follow.
“Merit,” I call. “Come back. I am sorry!”
I weave slowly among the reeds, searching for the white flash of her dress, the bronze of her skin.
“Merit, it is not safe!”
Anger dissolves into concern. I cannot find her.
In the way of dreams, my feet are unnaturally heavy, as though I fight through alluvial mud to reach her. The first weighted drops fall from an unearthly sky.
And then she is there, at the base of the reeds. White dress dirtied, head turned unnaturally. Face in the water. My heart clutches in my chest. I lurch forward. Drop to my knees in the marsh mud. Push away the reeds. Reach for her.
It is not Merit.
It is Amunet.
“Amunet!” I wipe the mud and water from her face and shake her. Her eyes are open yet unfocused.
I am less of a man because, in that moment, I feel relief.
Relief that it is not Merit.
But what has happened to Amunet? Khufu insisted that our royal hunting party split apart to raise the birds, but we all knew that he wanted to be with Amunet. Now she is alone, and she has crossed to the west.
As I hold her lifeless body in my arms, I feel the great weight of choice fall upon my shoulders. The rain pours through an evil gash in the clouds.
Khufu is my friend. He is my cousin. He will soon wear the Double Crown of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. And when Khufu is Pharaoh, I will be his grand vizier.
But it would seem that I hold our future in my hands now, as surely as I hold this girl’s body.
I lower Amunet to the mud again and awake, panting and sweating, in my bed. I roll from the mat, scramble for a pot, and retch. It is not the first time.
The sunlight is already burning through the high window in my bedchamber.
The past is gone. There is only the future.
And I have a pyramid to build.
1
In the fifth year of Khufu, the Golden Horus, Great in Victories, Chosen of Ra, as the pyramid rose in the desert like a burning torch to the sun god himself, I realized my mistake and knew that I had brought disorder.
“Foolishness!” Khons slapped a stone-roughened hand on the papyri unrolled on the basalt-black slab before us, and turned his back on the well-ordered charts to study the workforce on the plateau.
I refused to follow his gaze. Behind me, I knew, eight thousand men toiled, dragging quarry stones up ramps that snaked around my half-finished pyramid, and levering them into beautiful precision. Below them, intersecting lines of men advanced with the rhythm of drumbeats. They worked quickly but never fast enough.
My voice took on a hard edge. “Perhaps, Khons, if you spent more time listening and less blustering—”
“You speak to me of time?” The Overseer of Quarries whirled to face me, and the muscles in his jaw twitched like a donkey’s flank when a fly irritates. “Do you have any idea what these changes mean?” He waved a hand over my plans. “You were a naked baboon at Neferma’at’s knee when he and I were building the pyramids at Saqqara!”
This insult was well-worn, and I was sick of it. I stepped up to him, close enough to map every vein in his forehead. The desert air between us stilled with the tension. “You forget yourself, Khons. I may not be your elder, but I am grand vizier.”
“My good men,” Ded’e interrupted, his voice dripping honey as he smoothed long fingers over the soft papyrus. “Let us not quarrel like harem women over a simple change of design.”
“Simple!” Khons snorted. “Perhaps for you. Your farmers and bakers care not where Pharaoh’s burial chamber is located. But I will need to rework all the numbers for the Giza quarry. The timeline for the Aswan granite will be in chaos.” Khons turned on me. “The plans for the queen’s pyramid are later than grain in a drought year. A project of this magnitude must run like marble over the rollers. A change like this—you’re hurling a chunk of limestone into the Nile, and there will be ripples. Other deadlines will be missed—”
I held up a hand and waited to respond. I preferred to handle Khons and his fits of metaphor by giving us both time to cool. The sun hammered down on upon the building site, and I looked away, past the sands of death, toward the life-giving harbor and the fertile plain beyond. This year’s Inundation had not yet crested, but already the Nile’s green waters had swelled to the border of last year’s floodplain. When the waters receded in three months, leaving behind their rich silt deposits, the land would be black and fertile and planting would commence.
“Three months,” I said. In three months, most of my workforce would return to their farms to plant and till, leaving my pyramid unfinished, dependent on me to make it whole.
Khons grunted. “Exactly. No time for changes.”
Ded’e scanned the plateau, his fingers skimming his forehead to block the glare, though he had applied a careful line of kohl beneath his eyes today. “Where is Mentu? Did you not send a message, Hemiunu?”
I looked toward the workmen’s village, too far to make out anyone approaching by the road. Mentu-hotep also served as one of my chief overseers. These three answered directly to me, and under them commanded fifty supervisors, who in turn organized the twelve-thousand-man force. Nothing of this scale had ever been undertaken in the history of the Two Lands. In the history of man. We were building the Great Pyramid, the Horizon of the Pharaoh Khufu. A thousand years, nay, ten thousand years from now, my pyramid would still stand. And though a tomb for Pharaoh, it would also bear my name. A legacy in stone.
“Perhaps he thinks he can do as he wishes,” Khons said.
I ignored his petty implication that I played favorites among my staff. “Perhaps he is slow in getting started today.” I jabbed a finger at the plans again. “Look, Khons, the burial chamber’s relocation will mean that the inner core will require less stone, not more. I’ve redesigned the plans to show the king’s chamber beginning on Course Fifty. Between the corbelled ascending corridor, the burial chamber, five courses high, and the five relieving chambers that will be necessary above it, we will save 8,242 blocks.”
“Exactly 8,242? Are you certain?” De’de snorted. “I think you must stay up all night solving equations, eh, Hemi?”
I inclined my head to the pyramid, now one-fourth its finished height. “Look at it, De’de. See the way the sides angle at a setback of exactly 11:14. Look at the platform, level to an error less than the span of your little finger.” I turned on him. “Do you think such beauty happens by chance? No, it requires constant attention from one who would rather lose sleep than see it falter.”
“It’s blasphemy.” Khons’s voice was low. It was unwise to speak thus of the Favored One.
I exhaled and we hung over the plans, heads together. Khons smelled of sweat and dust, and sand caked the outer rim of his ear.
“It is for the best, Khons. You will see.”
If blasphemy were involved it was my doing and not Khufu’s? I had engineered the raising of the burial chamber above ground and, along with it, Khufu’s role as the earthly incarnation of the god Ra. It was for the good of Egypt, and now it must be carried forward. Hesitation, indecision—these were for weak men.
“Let the priests argue about religious matters,” I said. “I am a builder.”
Ded’e laughed. “Yes, you are like the pyramid, Hemi. All sharp angles and unforgiving measurements.”
I blinked at the observation, then smiled as though it pleased me.
Khons opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, but a shout from the worksite stopped him. We three turned to the pyramid, and I ground my teeth to see the workgangs falter in their measured march up the ramps. Some disorder near the top drew the attention of all. I squinted against the bright blue sky but saw only the brown figures of the workforce covering the stone.
“Cursed Mentu. Where is he?” Khons asked the question this time.
As Overseer for Operations, Mentu took charge of problems on the line. In his absence, I now stalked toward the site.
The Green Sea Gang had halted on the east-face ramp, their draglines still braced over their bare shoulders. Even from thirty cubits below I could see the ropy muscles stand out on the backs of a hundred men as they strained to hold the thirty-thousand-deben-weight block attached to the line. Their white skirts of this morning had long since tanned with dust, and their skin shone with afternoon sweat.
“Sokkwi! Get your men moving forward!” I shouted to the Green Sea Gang supervisor who should have been at the top.
There was no reply, so I strode up the ramp myself, multiplying in my mind the minutes of delay by the stones not raised. The workday might need extending.
Halfway up the rubble ramp, a scream like that of an antelope skewered by a hunter’s arrow ripped the air. I paused only a moment, the men’s eyes on me, then took to the rope-lashed ladder that leaned against the pyramid’s side. I felt the acacia wood strain under the pounding of my feet, and slowed only enough for safety. The ladder stretched to the next circuit of the ramp, and I scrambled from it, chest heaving, and sprinted through the double-line of laborers that snaked around the final ramp. Here the pyramid came to its end. Still so much to build.
Sokkwi, the gang supervisor, had his back to me when I reached the top. Several others clustered around him, bent to something on the stone. Chisels and drills lay scattered about.
“What is it? What’s happened?” The dry heat had stolen my breath, and the words panted out.
They broke apart to reveal a laborer, no more than eighteen years, on the ground, one leg pinned by a block half set in place. The boy’s eyes locked onto mine, as if to beg for mercy. “Move the stone!” I shouted to Sokkwi.
He scratched his chin. “It’s no good. The stone’s been dropped. We have nothing to—”
I jumped into the space open for the next stone, gripped the rising joint of the block that pinned the boy and yelled to a worker, larger than most. “You there! Help me slide this stone!”
He bent to thrust a shoulder against the stone. We strained against it like locusts pushing against a mountain. Sokkwi laid a hand upon my shoulder.
I rested a moment, and he inclined his head to the boy’s leg. Flesh had been torn down to muscle and bone. I reached for something to steady myself, but there was nothing at this height. The sight of blood, a weakness I had known since my youth, threatened to overcome me. I felt a warmth in my face and neck. I breathed slowly through my nose. No good for the men to see you swoon.
I knelt and placed a hand on the boy’s head, then spoke to Sokkwi. “How did this happen?”
He shrugged. “First time on the line.” He worked at something in his teeth with his tongue. “Doesn’t know the angles, I suppose.” Another shrug.
“What was he doing at the top then?” I searched the work area and the ramp below me again for Mentu. Anger churned my stomach.
The supervisor sighed and picked at his teeth with a fingernail. “Don’t ask me. I make sure the blocks climb those ramps and settle into place. That is all I do.”
How had Mentu had allowed this disaster? Justice, truth, and divine order—the ma’at—made Egypt great and made a man great. I did not like to see ma’at disturbed.
On the ramp, a woman pushed past the workers, shoving them aside in her haste to reach the top. She gained the flat area where we stood and paused, her breath huffing out in dry gasps. In her hands she held two jars, brimming with enough barley beer to allow the boy to feel fierce anger rather than beg for his own death. The surgeon came behind, readying his saw. The boy had a chance at life if the leg ended in a stump. Allowed to fester, the injury would surely kill him.
I masked my faintness with my anger and spun away.
“Mentu!” My yell carried past the lines below me, down into the desert below, perhaps to the quarry beyond. He should never have allowed so inexperienced a boy to place stones. Where had he been this morning when the gangs formed teams?
The men nearby were silent, but the work down on the plateau continued, heedless of the boy’s pain. The rhythmic ring of chisel on quarry stone punctuated the collective grunts of the quarry men, their chorus drifting across the desert, but Mentu did not answer the call.
Was he still in his bed? Mentu and I had spent last evening pouring wine and reminiscing late into the night about the days of our youth. Some of them anyway. Always one story never retold.
Another scream behind me. That woman had best get to pouring the barley beer. I could do nothing more here. I moved through the line of men, noting their nods of approval for the effort I’d made on behalf of one of their own.
When I reached the base and turned back toward the flat-topped black basalt stone where I conferred with Khons and Ded’e, I saw that another had joined them. My brother.
I slowed my steps, to allow that part of my heart to harden like mudbricks in the sun, then pushed forward.
They laughed together as I approached, the easy laugh of men comfortable with one another. My older brother leaned against the stone, his arms crossed in front of him. He stood upright when he saw me.
“Ahmose,” I said with a slight nod. “What brings you to the site?”
His smile turned to a smirk. “Just wanted to see how the project proceeds.”
“Hmm.” I focused my attention once more on the plans. The wind grabbed at the edges of the papyrus, and I used a stone cubit rod, thicker than my thumb, to weight it. “The three of us must recalculate stone transfer rates—”
“Khons seems to believe your changes are going to sink the project,” Ahmose said. He smiled, his perfect teeth gleaming against his dark skin.
The gods had favored Ahmose with beauty, charm, and a pleasing manner that made him well loved among the court. But I had been blessed with a strong mind and a stronger will. And I was grand vizier.
I lifted my eyes once more to the pyramid rising in perfect symmetry against the blue sky, and the thousands of men at my command. “The Horizon of Khufu will look down upon your children’s grandchildren, Ahmose,” I said. I leaned over my charts and braced my fingertips on the stone. “When you have long since sailed to the west, still it will stand.”
He bent beside me, his breath in my ear. “You always did believe you could do anything. Get away with anything.”
The animosity in his voice stiffened my shoulders.
“Khons, Ded’e, if you will.” I gestured to the charts. Khons snorted and clomped to my side. And Ded’e draped his forearms across the papyrus.
“It must be gratifying,” Ahmose whispered, “to command men so much more experienced than yourself.”
I turned on him, my smile tight. “And it must be disheartening to see your younger brother excel while you languish in a job bestowed only out of pity—”
A boy appeared, sparing me the indignity of exchanging blows with my brother. His sidelock identified him as a young prince, and I recognized him as the youngest of Henutsen, one of Khufu’s lesser wives.
“His Majesty Khufu, the king, Horus,” the boy said, “the strong bull, beloved by the goddess of truth—”
“Yes, yes. Life, Health, Strength!” I barked. “What does Khufu want?” I was in no mood for the string of titles.
The boy’s eyes widened and he dragged a foot through the sand. “My father commands the immediate presence of Grand Vizier Hemiunu before the throne.”
“Did he give a reason?”
The prince pulled on his lower lip. “He is very angry today.”
“Very well.” I waved him off and turned to Khons and Ded’e, rubbing the tension from my forehead. “We will continue later.”
The two overseers made their escape before Ahmose and I had a chance to go at it again. I flicked a glance in his direction, then rolled up my charts, keeping my breathing even.
Behind me Ahmose said, “Perhaps Khufu has finally seen his error in appointing you vizier.” Like a sharp poke in the kidneys when our mother wasn’t watching.
“Excuse me, Ahmose.” I pushed past him, my hands full of charts. “I have an important meeting.”
Guest Post: Herbert Howard Jones: Pyewiz and the Amazing Mobile Phone
Good Morning all. We are lucky enough today, to have a guest post from the AMAZING Herbert Howard Jones. Please read a little about him, his book, and see what he has to say!
AUTHOR BIO:
Herbert Howard Jones was born in London in 1955, and went to Eccles Hall, a boarding school in Norfolk. He left after a couple of years and attended IIford County High School in Barkingside where he where he met Bram Tovey, now conductor of the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, and pianist Derek Smith who later played with the Johhny Dankworth ensemble. They inspired Jones to take up music, which he still practices today.Jones attended Lisburn college in Ireland and then worked in a wide variety of occupations. These included in law, as a porter at the BBC, in jewellery manufacture, publishing, and commercial art. As a BBC porter he was required to hump equipment between studios and could be spotted riding shotgun around London in the old green BBC vans of that time. He was eventually sacked for lateness!He then found a job in a Hatton Garden jewellery firm in London. As an apprentice jeweller he was required to assemble twenty-two 14 carat gold gate bracelets a day. In the two years he spent in the business he had personally made nearly 12000 bracelets, which was quite a feat, but was mind numbing work, and not something he wanted to do with the rest of his life. At this stage he didn’t know what avenue to go down next.But the clue lay in his early life. As a young boy, he showed an early interest in the arts, particularly writing, musical composition and painting, and has pursued them as interests ever since. At this time he met the daughter of the captain of the Titanic, which sank in 1912, and consequently became obsessed with the myth which surrounded the subject. Jones remembers handling Titantic artifacts in the lady’s cottage country, and thinking that they made beautiful art ornaments! They inspired Jones to start creating collages using old bric-a brac, attaching small objects to canvas and applying paint to them.In his teens, Jones lived with the family of author Julian Branston, whose mother was a close confidant of British comic Kenneth Williams. They introduced Jones to writer and poet John Pudney, famed as the author of wartime poem ‘For Johnny’. As busy as he was, Pudney would give kindly critiques of Jones’ earlier writings, urging Jones to say ‘more with less’. Jones described his writing efforts at this time as pretentious and undisciplined, and was frankly lucky, that ‘Pudney gave him the time of day,’Jones found John Pudney fascinating as, among other things, he knew Pablo Picasso personally, having met him as a reporter during the war. To the aspiring and awe struck Jones, this was all glamorous grist for this artistic mill. At this time he became fascinated by celebrity, which was hardly surprising considering that his benefactors frequently had prominent people down to dinner, including the Bishop of Liverpool and others.When Jones worked for a firm of ‘showbiz’ solicitors in London, he ran errands for screen star John Mills, and composer Tony Hatch, but felt that life as a London commuter just wasn’t for him, and so he ‘dropped’ out and went to live in Deptford. Jones justified this to himself by saying this was his ‘down and out in Paris and London period’.Jones moved around South London and finally settled in some lodgings in Lewisham which were also being occupied by the now international artist David Mabb, presently Head of Masters at Goldsmith’s college, from whom he acquired wonderful discarded art pieces. Mabb’s charismatic and confident personality had an inspiring effect on Jones who began to look at art in a new light. In Jones’ eyes, David Mabb was ‘one of the solid group of British artists who are exponents of a new kind of socially responsible art, which is dynamic and very much at the cutting edge.’ In Jones’ view, Mabb’s art not only succeeds powerfully as a room decoration, but it invokes a strong visceral response in the viewer. If Jones was going to paint, he wanted his art to be as eloquent as Mabb’s! At the time of writing, Jones is still struggling to achieve this goal. Jones cites US artist Ron English, as his other influence.Meeting well known people and those active in the arts and entertainment industries had the effect of shaping Jones’ view of the world, and he vowed that one day, he too would make a contribution. It was only in his fifties thatJones has seriously sought publication. The Pyewiz and The Amazing Mobile Phone is his first book.At the present time Jones is busily writing his second book and is painting. He hopes to have his first exhibition of art in London in the near future.Jones’ most thrilling life moment: ‘being six feet away from Frank Sinatra when he came to the London Palladium!’You can visit his website at http://www.science-fiction-fantasy.com/.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Journey to a frozen planet to find a long lost twin. An amazing crystal phone with incredible powers. A cunning old pirate wizard who must be stopped.Schoolboy Terry Mctrain thinks the new tenant in his parent's guesthouse is strange. Stranger still is the reason why she is here. Then Terry learns about a twin brother he never knew he had, kidnapped by a pirate wizard years ago. Baffled by all this, Terry realizes there's a mystery to be solved, and a secret to be uncovered. But when he discovers that the fate of the world is also in his hands, he wonders..Could this turn into the adventure of a lifetime?Perhaps, but unless Terry and his friend Will travel to the other side of the solar system to solve this puzzle, there's a danger that the world would be destroyed, and his twin brother lost forever.
GUEST POST:
Women are the readers to go for
I have always felt instinctively that women are the most loyal of readers, and actually have better reading habits than men. This has been borne out by a recent survey of 2000 adults, which showed, that not only do men take longer to read books, but 26% less actually manage to finish them, overall, reading fewer than women.
But men being men, (and I should know being one of them), are guilty of telling untruths about their reading habits, and this may have confused some statistics. If a women were to ask a man what he is currently reading, he will try and rise to the question at all costs, even if he hasn't open the cover of a book for over a decade.
Any vague answer, along the lines of, 'Erm yes, I'm reading a really good book at the moment about a...er murder," is a sure sign that he is trying to palm you off with the latest episode LA PD, which he just happened to see on cable the night before. Press him for a title, and he will stare vacantly at the herb green hairband on your head and immediately try and draw your attention to the shop window display that you are just driving by.
I've done this myself, only, I've had the nouse to come up with some pretty convincing titles. "Er yes," I've said, "a fascinating read that book. Title? Oh you mean the title of the book I'm reading? The..er botfly and the bobbysoxer, by...er Aldous Ruxley." Fortunately, this reply fell on deaf eyes because at that moment my date's mobile phone just happened to ring. (By the way, a botfly is a large insect which likes to associate itself with horses.)
But sadly, despite, a man's claims to being well read, or boasts that he manages to get through at least 'four good titles' a year, it's likely that his book shelves will be full of unopened books. Doubtless the odd salacious and well illustrated 'funny' book would have been thumbed through, more than once, but as for that beautifully illustrated leatherbound book of Chaucerian Tales bought by his 13 year old daughter for Christmas, forget it. (But surely the publishers of these erudite tomes know this, so why do they bother?)
But all is not lost, there is one habit possessed by women readers which is precisely mirrored by men - both sexes will switch between two or more books which they currently have on the go! Only, it is foregone conclusion that it is the women who will see their books to the bitter end. And as saintly as I am painting women, actually, another survey revealed what terrible fibbers they can be too! At least a third of women have lied about what books they have read to impress their friends.
Tch Tch Tch. But, I don't mind if you lie about reading my book, because as far as I'm concerned, any publicity is good publicity! However, speaking personally, I would have failed on at least one of the book reading criteria women apparently hold as important. I have not read Nelson Mandela's biography. So shoot me, I'm a philistine!
Further, and I'm not trying to stir up trouble here, but another study has revealed that men will only read books (when they do read) by other men, (can you credit that?). Whereas women are far far more flexible and will read books by all three sexes! Even when a man is made aware of a great book by a women, and an example of one is Andrea Levy's 'Small Island', the odds are that if he buys it, he either won't read it or if he starts it, he won't finish it. However, we are to thank Monica Ali for writing 'Brick Lane', because this is one book written by a women that a high proportion of men have heard of, and are able to mention when taking part in surveys. Monica, the reputation and reading aspirations of men everywhere, owes you a huge debt of thanks.
Herbert Howard Jones was born in London in 1955, and went to Eccles Hall, a boarding school in Norfolk. He left after a couple of years and attended IIford County High School in Barkingside where he where he met Bram Tovey, now conductor of the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, and pianist Derek Smith who later played with the Johhny Dankworth ensemble. They inspired Jones to take up music, which he still practices today.Jones attended Lisburn college in Ireland and then worked in a wide variety of occupations. These included in law, as a porter at the BBC, in jewellery manufacture, publishing, and commercial art. As a BBC porter he was required to hump equipment between studios and could be spotted riding shotgun around London in the old green BBC vans of that time. He was eventually sacked for lateness!He then found a job in a Hatton Garden jewellery firm in London. As an apprentice jeweller he was required to assemble twenty-two 14 carat gold gate bracelets a day. In the two years he spent in the business he had personally made nearly 12000 bracelets, which was quite a feat, but was mind numbing work, and not something he wanted to do with the rest of his life. At this stage he didn’t know what avenue to go down next.But the clue lay in his early life. As a young boy, he showed an early interest in the arts, particularly writing, musical composition and painting, and has pursued them as interests ever since. At this time he met the daughter of the captain of the Titanic, which sank in 1912, and consequently became obsessed with the myth which surrounded the subject. Jones remembers handling Titantic artifacts in the lady’s cottage country, and thinking that they made beautiful art ornaments! They inspired Jones to start creating collages using old bric-a brac, attaching small objects to canvas and applying paint to them.In his teens, Jones lived with the family of author Julian Branston, whose mother was a close confidant of British comic Kenneth Williams. They introduced Jones to writer and poet John Pudney, famed as the author of wartime poem ‘For Johnny’. As busy as he was, Pudney would give kindly critiques of Jones’ earlier writings, urging Jones to say ‘more with less’. Jones described his writing efforts at this time as pretentious and undisciplined, and was frankly lucky, that ‘Pudney gave him the time of day,’Jones found John Pudney fascinating as, among other things, he knew Pablo Picasso personally, having met him as a reporter during the war. To the aspiring and awe struck Jones, this was all glamorous grist for this artistic mill. At this time he became fascinated by celebrity, which was hardly surprising considering that his benefactors frequently had prominent people down to dinner, including the Bishop of Liverpool and others.When Jones worked for a firm of ‘showbiz’ solicitors in London, he ran errands for screen star John Mills, and composer Tony Hatch, but felt that life as a London commuter just wasn’t for him, and so he ‘dropped’ out and went to live in Deptford. Jones justified this to himself by saying this was his ‘down and out in Paris and London period’.Jones moved around South London and finally settled in some lodgings in Lewisham which were also being occupied by the now international artist David Mabb, presently Head of Masters at Goldsmith’s college, from whom he acquired wonderful discarded art pieces. Mabb’s charismatic and confident personality had an inspiring effect on Jones who began to look at art in a new light. In Jones’ eyes, David Mabb was ‘one of the solid group of British artists who are exponents of a new kind of socially responsible art, which is dynamic and very much at the cutting edge.’ In Jones’ view, Mabb’s art not only succeeds powerfully as a room decoration, but it invokes a strong visceral response in the viewer. If Jones was going to paint, he wanted his art to be as eloquent as Mabb’s! At the time of writing, Jones is still struggling to achieve this goal. Jones cites US artist Ron English, as his other influence.Meeting well known people and those active in the arts and entertainment industries had the effect of shaping Jones’ view of the world, and he vowed that one day, he too would make a contribution. It was only in his fifties thatJones has seriously sought publication. The Pyewiz and The Amazing Mobile Phone is his first book.At the present time Jones is busily writing his second book and is painting. He hopes to have his first exhibition of art in London in the near future.Jones’ most thrilling life moment: ‘being six feet away from Frank Sinatra when he came to the London Palladium!’You can visit his website at http://www.science-fiction-fantasy.com/.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Journey to a frozen planet to find a long lost twin. An amazing crystal phone with incredible powers. A cunning old pirate wizard who must be stopped.Schoolboy Terry Mctrain thinks the new tenant in his parent's guesthouse is strange. Stranger still is the reason why she is here. Then Terry learns about a twin brother he never knew he had, kidnapped by a pirate wizard years ago. Baffled by all this, Terry realizes there's a mystery to be solved, and a secret to be uncovered. But when he discovers that the fate of the world is also in his hands, he wonders..Could this turn into the adventure of a lifetime?Perhaps, but unless Terry and his friend Will travel to the other side of the solar system to solve this puzzle, there's a danger that the world would be destroyed, and his twin brother lost forever.
GUEST POST:
Women are the readers to go for
I have always felt instinctively that women are the most loyal of readers, and actually have better reading habits than men. This has been borne out by a recent survey of 2000 adults, which showed, that not only do men take longer to read books, but 26% less actually manage to finish them, overall, reading fewer than women.
But men being men, (and I should know being one of them), are guilty of telling untruths about their reading habits, and this may have confused some statistics. If a women were to ask a man what he is currently reading, he will try and rise to the question at all costs, even if he hasn't open the cover of a book for over a decade.
Any vague answer, along the lines of, 'Erm yes, I'm reading a really good book at the moment about a...er murder," is a sure sign that he is trying to palm you off with the latest episode LA PD, which he just happened to see on cable the night before. Press him for a title, and he will stare vacantly at the herb green hairband on your head and immediately try and draw your attention to the shop window display that you are just driving by.
I've done this myself, only, I've had the nouse to come up with some pretty convincing titles. "Er yes," I've said, "a fascinating read that book. Title? Oh you mean the title of the book I'm reading? The..er botfly and the bobbysoxer, by...er Aldous Ruxley." Fortunately, this reply fell on deaf eyes because at that moment my date's mobile phone just happened to ring. (By the way, a botfly is a large insect which likes to associate itself with horses.)
But sadly, despite, a man's claims to being well read, or boasts that he manages to get through at least 'four good titles' a year, it's likely that his book shelves will be full of unopened books. Doubtless the odd salacious and well illustrated 'funny' book would have been thumbed through, more than once, but as for that beautifully illustrated leatherbound book of Chaucerian Tales bought by his 13 year old daughter for Christmas, forget it. (But surely the publishers of these erudite tomes know this, so why do they bother?)
But all is not lost, there is one habit possessed by women readers which is precisely mirrored by men - both sexes will switch between two or more books which they currently have on the go! Only, it is foregone conclusion that it is the women who will see their books to the bitter end. And as saintly as I am painting women, actually, another survey revealed what terrible fibbers they can be too! At least a third of women have lied about what books they have read to impress their friends.
Tch Tch Tch. But, I don't mind if you lie about reading my book, because as far as I'm concerned, any publicity is good publicity! However, speaking personally, I would have failed on at least one of the book reading criteria women apparently hold as important. I have not read Nelson Mandela's biography. So shoot me, I'm a philistine!
Further, and I'm not trying to stir up trouble here, but another study has revealed that men will only read books (when they do read) by other men, (can you credit that?). Whereas women are far far more flexible and will read books by all three sexes! Even when a man is made aware of a great book by a women, and an example of one is Andrea Levy's 'Small Island', the odds are that if he buys it, he either won't read it or if he starts it, he won't finish it. However, we are to thank Monica Ali for writing 'Brick Lane', because this is one book written by a women that a high proportion of men have heard of, and are able to mention when taking part in surveys. Monica, the reputation and reading aspirations of men everywhere, owes you a huge debt of thanks.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Guest Post: Dr. David Gruder: The New IQ
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Gruder, PhD, DCEP, is perhaps the world’s only clinical-organizational psychologist specializing in integrity development. Known as "The Integritizer," he is the leader in transpartisan nondenominational strategies for solving the massive integrity deficits that have caused today's vast social, economic, and political challenges. Dr. Gruder founded the "Integritize America Campaign," an integrity stimulus plan for renewing personal, relationship and societal integrity so we can finally co-create sustainable solutions to today's most challenging issues. His latest book, "THE NEW IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and our World," is the world's first step-by-step guide to attaining personal, relationship, and career fulfillment during difficult times without sacrificing ethics and integrity. It has won five book awards in the areas of "social change," (book of the year), "current events in politics and society" (honorable mention), "health & wellness" (book of the year), "self-help" (bronze medal) and "metapsychology" (book of the year). A professional speaker and trainer for almost three decades, Dr. Gruder speaks, trains, consults worldwide on how to "Integritize" citizens, government, communities, businesses, health care, education, religion, journalism, advocacy groups, and leadership. His clients have ranged from family-owned businesses to American Express work teams, from the Sanoviv Medical Institute to the San Diego Office of Education Management Academy, and from local politicians and executives to World Trade Organization ambassadors. His main website is http://www.thenewiq.com/
David Gruder, PhD, DCEP, is perhaps the world’s only clinical-organizational psychologist specializing in integrity development. Known as "The Integritizer," he is the leader in transpartisan nondenominational strategies for solving the massive integrity deficits that have caused today's vast social, economic, and political challenges. Dr. Gruder founded the "Integritize America Campaign," an integrity stimulus plan for renewing personal, relationship and societal integrity so we can finally co-create sustainable solutions to today's most challenging issues. His latest book, "THE NEW IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and our World," is the world's first step-by-step guide to attaining personal, relationship, and career fulfillment during difficult times without sacrificing ethics and integrity. It has won five book awards in the areas of "social change," (book of the year), "current events in politics and society" (honorable mention), "health & wellness" (book of the year), "self-help" (bronze medal) and "metapsychology" (book of the year). A professional speaker and trainer for almost three decades, Dr. Gruder speaks, trains, consults worldwide on how to "Integritize" citizens, government, communities, businesses, health care, education, religion, journalism, advocacy groups, and leadership. His clients have ranged from family-owned businesses to American Express work teams, from the Sanoviv Medical Institute to the San Diego Office of Education Management Academy, and from local politicians and executives to World Trade Organization ambassadors. His main website is http://www.thenewiq.com/
ABOUT THE BOOK:
From the White House, to the board room, to the privacy of our own bedrooms, and virtually everywhere in between, integrity deficits are destroying our personal lives, our businesses, our economy, our healthcare, our society, and our planet.
Creating sustainable integrity-centered solutions to today's vast array of major challenges requires us, as individuals and as a society, to take a fresh look at what creates life fulfillment. It requires us as citizens to develop a new integrity-centered vision of what we need to require from our leaders in government, business, advocacy groups, community organizations and the media.
The New IQ is the world's first road-tested guide to integrity-centered living, working, loving, and serving. Hailed as a "once-in-a-generation book," it provides the first step-by-step road map for restoring the vanishing virtue of integrity... for the sake of our loved ones, our communities, our businesses, our society, and our own personal wellbeing.
Going far beyond being a self-help book, this critically acclaimed five-award-winning action plan offers a socially responsible way to attain personal, relationship, and career fulfillment during difficult times, without sacrificing ethics and integrity. Here at last is your complete guide to "personal development that serves us all."
GUEST POST:
How to Erode or Build Your Child’s Integrity by David Gruder, PhD
Almost everyone has figured out by now that the biggest economic, political and social problems we face today have in large part been caused by integrity deficits. What very few people know is that integrity deficits begin in childhood.
This post introduces parents and educators to the key forms of love that build integrity in children and the forms of disconnection that damage it.
Let’s start with what integrity actually is. We humans come into life with three core motivations. Parents of even the youngest children can easily see them. They are authenticity, connection and impact.
Authenticity is our need to be who we truly are. Most parents hope that the first word their toddler will say is “Mommy” or “Daddy.” More often, and much the parents’ disappointment, a child’s first word is “No!” Any parent can tell you that children focus a lot on figuring out where they end and the world begins. Discovering our inner “no” and “yes” is an important part of how we learn who we are.
Connection is our need to bond with others. Research long ago established that insufficient bonding can cause infant death or severe psychological disorders known as “bonding disorders,” such as borderline personality disorder and narcissism. With very few exceptions, children crave being held and/or being kept company emotionally.
Impact is our need to influence the world around us. Children have an almost insatiable interest in exploring how they can manipulate the things and people around them. In fact, a child’s curiosity can often be a parent’s worst nightmare.
What most people, parents and educators included, don’t realize is that these three core motivations form the foundation of three-dimensional integrity. Authenticity translates into self-integrity. Connection translates into relationship integrity. Impact translates into societal integrity.
Specific forms of love build integrity in children. Validation builds self-integrity. Accountability and synergy build relationship integrity. Modeling social responsibility builds societal integrity.
BUILDING SELF-INTEGRITY: The form of love that helps children build their self-integrity is honest validation. Children need their parents to love them for the essence of who they are, for the strengths they have, and for their ability to effectively deal with their own limitations.
Here are some of the most common ways that self-integrity deficits begin:
Instead of being validated in healthy ways, children are indulged, shamed or validation-deprived. When a child receives false validation (indulgence) s/he learns to feel entitled to have whatever s/he wants without having to work for it. When a child is shamed for who s/he is, for his/her strengths, or for his/her weaknesses, s/he learns to cover up parts of him/herself.
There are three common forms of validation deprivation: ignoring, fixing and stealing the attention. When a child is ignored at a time when s/he is discovering some aspect of his/her authenticity or is appropriately celebrating it, the child starts sacrificing self-integrity. When a child is ignored or “fixed” when s/he is struggling over a shortcoming or difficult life experience, the child learns to distrust his/her ability to handle those issues. Stealing the attention means responding to a child’s triumphs by taking credit for the child’s success, or responding to a child’s struggles by feeling more pain or fear than the child does.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIP INTEGRITY: The forms of love that build relationship integrity are accountability and synergy.
Accountability is helping children make realistic commitments and then holding them responsible for enacting them. Accountability is how children learn that love is an action, not merely an intention. Accountability is the heart of commitment competence. Making excuses for a child being out of integrity with his/her commitments damages relationship integrity as much as shaming a child for commitment deficits does.
In addition to accountability, synergy is the cornerstone of sustainable relationships. Synergy is the art of collaboration. It is the way true win-win solutions are created. It is the superior alternative to watered down compromises in which everyone feels ripped off by the agreement they created, and coercion in which one person gets their way in the short term at the expense of long term resentment and disconnection. Allowing a child to make coercion or compromise his/her primary problem-solving strategy damages a child’s relationship integrity.
BUILDING SOCIETAL INTEGRITY: The form of love that builds societal integrity is role-modeling social responsibility. Children learn social responsibility by watching adults make choices at the intersection of what they want and what serves the highest good of the collectives of which they are a part. When children see adults serving others or the common good at the cost of chronic self-neglect or relationship neglect, social responsibility becomes repulsive. When children see adults indulging their own selfish interests at the expense of the common good, or forcing their own ideology onto others, their societal integrity suffers too.
To summarize: If you want your child to develop self-integrity deficits, indulge your child, shame him/her, fix him/her, or steal the attention. If you want your child to develop relationship integrity deficits, indoctrinate him/her into coercion and compromise. If you want your child to develop societal integrity deficits, serve the common good at the expense of self-neglect or relationship neglect, indulge your own selfish interests, or try to force your ideology onto others.
If you want your child to grow up with high integrity, provide him/her with love in the forms of healthy validation, accountability and synergy, and role-modeling social responsibility.
To learn more about how we sacrifice our integrity as children and the most effective ways to restore our integrity as adults, read the five-award-winning book, “The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World.”
Helping Ezra...
Hi Guys,
Good Morning and Happy Memorial Day. Today is a special day for our family because the Hubs served 10 years in the Army. I am very proud of him and all he has done to protect our freedom. I hope all of you with family in the services know just how grateful I am for their bravery and protection.
That isn't why I am writing... I am writing about Ezra. Ezra is an amazingly handsome boy was just diagnosed with Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Manic mother literally just found out a few days ago. Ezra turned 2 two days after diagnosis. He will have to have Chemo for at least 3 years....
You know, I have 5 beautiful children. I can not imagine, to save my life, what I would ever do if something like this befell them. I can't live without my babies. That is why.. I am so passionate about finding help for Ezra. Manic Mother crying out for help....and we need to ban together to help her.
Please visit her website and see what you can do... All you bloggers and writers reading this do what you do best... Blog it...
Bookin' with Bingo has done a wonderful thing. She has a cool pic and linky thing on her blog, and She wrote a Letter to OPRAH! We can all do that. It might not go anywhere, but imagine if we all wrote letters, emails, or made a phone call to the Oprah show. Oprah has helped so many people...why not Ezra. I know she has over 150 followers , I have over 80, and Manic Mom has over 300! Imagine what the Oprah show would do with so many letters about 1 little Boy.
I am begging you... Please help if you can.... Blog it, email it, link it, then mail Oprah. PLEASE take just 30 minutes to help. I will post about Ezra everyday if I have to.... You can even snatch my post and re post it. Just please link to me and Manic Mother and Bingo. I'm off to write my email to Oprah now. I will post what I wrote so everyone can see or even use themselves.
Good Morning and Happy Memorial Day. Today is a special day for our family because the Hubs served 10 years in the Army. I am very proud of him and all he has done to protect our freedom. I hope all of you with family in the services know just how grateful I am for their bravery and protection.
That isn't why I am writing... I am writing about Ezra. Ezra is an amazingly handsome boy was just diagnosed with Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Manic mother literally just found out a few days ago. Ezra turned 2 two days after diagnosis. He will have to have Chemo for at least 3 years....
You know, I have 5 beautiful children. I can not imagine, to save my life, what I would ever do if something like this befell them. I can't live without my babies. That is why.. I am so passionate about finding help for Ezra. Manic Mother crying out for help....and we need to ban together to help her.
Please visit her website and see what you can do... All you bloggers and writers reading this do what you do best... Blog it...
Bookin' with Bingo has done a wonderful thing. She has a cool pic and linky thing on her blog, and She wrote a Letter to OPRAH! We can all do that. It might not go anywhere, but imagine if we all wrote letters, emails, or made a phone call to the Oprah show. Oprah has helped so many people...why not Ezra. I know she has over 150 followers , I have over 80, and Manic Mom has over 300! Imagine what the Oprah show would do with so many letters about 1 little Boy.
I am begging you... Please help if you can.... Blog it, email it, link it, then mail Oprah. PLEASE take just 30 minutes to help. I will post about Ezra everyday if I have to.... You can even snatch my post and re post it. Just please link to me and Manic Mother and Bingo. I'm off to write my email to Oprah now. I will post what I wrote so everyone can see or even use themselves.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Calling All Bloggers...and Moms
Hey Guys,
I need your Help in a BIG WAY!
One of our own Manic Mother Just found out her baby has CANCER! Yes that Horrible C word! Please, Please, PLease keep her family in your prayers. Visit her site and see if there is anything you can do to help. Leave her some up lifting comments. I just love her blog.
Please blog about her and link to her...and just pray!
I need your Help in a BIG WAY!
One of our own Manic Mother Just found out her baby has CANCER! Yes that Horrible C word! Please, Please, PLease keep her family in your prayers. Visit her site and see if there is anything you can do to help. Leave her some up lifting comments. I just love her blog.
Please blog about her and link to her...and just pray!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Treause Hunt Friday
I don't know if you can call this a meme or not. I don't really know what a meme is. My grandma was my meme. Every friday I am posting Treasure Hunt Friday.
Thanks to a recent guest post on Money Saving Mom, I found out about letterboxing. I had no idea this even exsisted! It's kind of like a treasure hunt, and it is really fun! I read up on letterboxing here: Letterboxing This is a great site that can help you get started with everything you will need and some great fist hunts in your area. I was able to find More letterboxes in my area here: AtlasQuest
The Hubs and I went to Hobby Lobby and got A blank page Journal to record our finds, and we picked out a stamp and ink pad. At the checkout we found a bunch of small blank journals so I got one each for the kids. I also got some rope pens that go around your neck and tied them to the books (so they don't get lost) I will post a pic of our journals next week.
Anyways, you follow direstions to a letterbox, and then dig around to find it. once you open it you will find a stamp and a "book". You stamp your Journal with their stamp and stamp theirs with yours and wite the date and your hometown.
Our First letterbox was in a nearby town. It was the Hoss Microbox. Some of you may remember Dan (Hoss Cartwright) Blocker from the 1960's show Bonanza! You can read up on him here. Well he is buried close to my hometown! Cool huh! We started at his gravesite.
The we followed the directions and the hunt was on.
The Kids searched hard for the microbox......
Until they found it! {Princess K} found it. They were all so excited!
This is what was inside...
We stamped our books, put it back like we found it, and headed home. The kids had a blast, and we went for dollar Ice Creams from the Sonic! This treasure hunt was all the talked about for 3 days! They are so excited to go tomorrow! We will do at least 2 tomorrow, and I will post the pics when I get them back Friday. I have also made the "photo Journals" to keep all the pics in. We told them that if they are good and do their chores sastifactiorly they will each be allowed to pics out their own stamp to leave. Hope that works! The Big man is my Hubs ( I think he looks like an angry Bouncer in a bar).
We had a blast, and I think it is a great way for families to spend their time together.
It's True
