Tailgating - Road to the Superbowl - Day 1

Whether your having a Superbowl party or fortunate enough to tailgate at the game the easiest and most appreciated dish to serve is sweet and sour meatballs.

In a Crockpot mix together
jar of chili sauce
cup of grape jelly
cup of brown sugar
then throw in a package of frozen meatballs
set in on High for 3 hours or 6 hours on low

These go fast so you might want to double the recipe.

Here's a excerpt from Playing For Keeps by Liz Matis - my football meets romance romp. Available on all your eBook devices and in paperback.

     Pulling on his pants, he left the top button open because they were a little tight. He knew he’d pay for eating that burger. The socks came next and he bent forward slowly to reach his feet. Burner was right; Ryan was getting old. At this rate he’d need someone to put his socks on for him. He breathed in deeply and sucked up the pain. Football players stored hurts like a bear stored fat for the winter. Once the season was over, he’d hibernate and heal, just to do it all over again. Except each year it took a little longer to recover.

During the week I'l share another recipe or two or three along with an excerpt.

I Knew I Loved You - Savage Garden

Part 4 of My Favorite Love Songs.

I'm a sucker for a good love song. I guess most people are but as a writer of romantic fiction they are a source of inspiration. I Knew I Loved by Savage Garden is one of those. A beautiful melody and lyrics to sigh over. Here are the lyrics to my favorite part of the song...

There's just no rhyme or reason
Only this sense of completion
And in your eyes
I see the missing pieces
I'm searching for
I think I've found my way home


Click to hear the song. 

Who said "An artist cannot do anything slovenly."?

Jane Austen did! Gee, I hope that doesn't mean I can't write in my pajamas!


From Wikipedia: Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. 


A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. Jane Austen


A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. - Jane Austen



Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love. - Jane Austen


Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. - Jane Austen


The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. - Jane Austen

Love these quotes! Which is your favorite? Favorite Jane Austen novel? Or favorite movie versions of Pride and Prejudice?  1940 with Laurence Olivier  1995 Colin Firth or 2005 with Matthew Macfadyen as Mr Darcy?  I have to go with 1995 though it's been a long time since I've seen the 1940 movie.

Baby doll and other terms of endearment....

An endearment can be a loving word, sweet talk, term of affection, etc.

In Playing For Keeps Ryan called Samantha darling from time to time and in Love By Design Russ refers to Victoria as cupcake.

These terms of endearments came naturally out my hero's mouths with no thought at all on my part.

So I'm about 4,000 words into my work in progress, Going For It, which is Hannah and Jake's story, the secondary characters from Playing For Keeps. My celebrity inspiration for Jake Miller is Vin Diesel which I've talked about in an earlier post here http://www.taoofliz.blogspot.com/2011/12/transvestite-spends-her-entire-life.html

Anyway, I'm in the middle of this sexy dialogue and Jake comes out with, 
"Baby doll, if you don't stop staring at me like I'm your next meal I won't be responsible for another torn gown."

Baby doll? Where the heck did that come? From Vin Diesel. Now has he ever called a girlfriend baby doll? I don't know, but there you have it.
I debated about changing it. Would some women find it offensive? Or would they find it charming and cute? I did - especially if Vin Diesel whispered it to me - which in a way he did. Sigh...

On one level I do find it an odd endearment. But on another level I kind of like it. I remember when I was 19 or so (gulp, almost 30 years ago) a hunky male who was over 6'5" said to me (I'm 5'10") "Baby doll - (okay I really forget the rest of what he said to me but I do remember the endearment). And okay I was wearing a T-shirt dress, high heels with yes, ruffled baby doll type socks - HEY - it was the earlier 80's people! So for a girl who was called the Jolly Green Giant for most of her formative years the term of endearment really stuck with me.

So I'm keeping it.  

Do you have a favorite term of endearment or pet name?

"Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense." Amelia Earhart

(from Wikipedia) Amelia Mary Earhart (July 24, 1897–disappeared 1937) was a noted American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first woman to receive the U.S.Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.


For me, just her name conjures up images of adventure, guts, and glory. Here are some great quotes from Amelia...


"Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done." Amelia Earhart


"The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune." Amelia Earhart


"Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others." Amelia Earhart

"There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls." Amelia Earhart

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it." Amelia Earhart

Which is your favorite?

Love on the Bookshelf reviews Love By Design!

Love by Design was reviewed by Love on the Bookshelf! They rated it a 'Totally worth it' Re-read. See more below and visit the site to see other reviews.

http://loveonthebookshelf.wordpress.com/


Review: Love by Design
Posted on January 11, 2012 by Scarlett Stevens

Love by Design by Liz Matis
In Love by Design, Liz Matis tells the story of former party-girl turned successful interior designer Victoria Bryce. As the co-host of a design show (think Trading Spaces), she’s in need of a new partner… apparently on camera and off. Enter “saucy Aussie” Russ Rowland and the sparks are flying. But Victoria and Russ have both their egos and their pasts to get past in order for something like this to work. Before you know it, this sizzling pair have a laundry list of reasons not to be together.

Although you may find yourself rolling your eyes at their transparent resistance from time to time, Matis’s characterizations never fail to be realistic. Don’t we all make excuses for ourselves not to do something we know is good for us from time to time? And given how much is at stake for these two, especially the stripper scandal (you’ll see), it’s no small wonder that they’ve got to think twice.

But with all that chemistry Matis flawlessly cooks up between them, yikes! There are some truly spicy scenes in here that won’t leave you doubting the perfect pairing of these troubled characters.

The Three R’s

Rating: XX. There’s a LOT of reference to a certain, ahem, member of sizable length. Not that this is a problem, it just makes this book unsuitable for young’uns. Oh, and there’s the smokin’ hot sex, too. Don’t hold this book too tight–you’ll burn your fingers.

Recommendation: Read this one if you need some warming up this winter. No joke. It’s also the perfect just-before-bedtime reading, if you’d like some nice, sultry dreams. If you’ve got some friends who like a good down-and-dirty love story, share it. Or, at least, recommend they buy their own copy.

Re-Read: Totally worth it.

Whoo-hoo!

Six Sentence Sunday 1/8/12

Six from Love By Design - the Sex and the City meets HGTV romp. A reader said it was so hot she might start ovulating again!

Russ turned his head to see a tall, thin man, with a shock of silver hair that had to come from a bottle race to Victoria. Dressed in white leather pants even though it was eighty-five degrees out, a bright yellow t-shirt, his squeal of ‘Victoria’ nearly shattered Russ’ eardrums. So this was the famous Neil come to reclaim his co-hosting job. Sure he’d seen clips but none of them had Victoria wrapping herself around him in a big hug.
He shouldn’t be jealous—Neil was gay but he was Victoria’s best friend, and while he knew how to win over a female’s BFF’s opinion, he never had to win the approval of a male friend of a woman. Russ didn’t know if the same charm tactics would work — hell, he wasn’t about to try.

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." Virginia Woolf

Been a long time since I blogged in my Famous Women Quotes series.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (pronounced /ˈwʊlf/; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

Here are some of my favorites..

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Virginia Woolf

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. Virginia Woolf

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. Virginia Woolf

Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women? Virginia Woolf

...Ring out the false, ring in the true - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Happy 2012!

I'm not one for New Years resolutions but I'm all for goal setting. Here is an interesting study from Harvard Business School... (from lifemastery.com)
- Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. -

Amazing right?

So here are my goals for the coming year:

Complete and publish the novella: Going For It
Complete: Real Men Don't Drink Appletinis for the Martini Madness anthology I've been invited to be a part of
Complete: 470 Bodies ( a short story in the Horror genre - I know so out of my ballpark - but it must be written )
Complete and publish the novella: Eight Ball Lover

So there it is: Ready, Get Set, Go!

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."
Edith Lovejoy Pierce