Camp NaNoWriMo

I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that we are halfway through 2018 and I remembered that I signed up to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo! I can't believe that I forgot but I did! At least I have an idea of what I want to write. While we have a lot going on this coming month - family visiting, friends' birthday parties and tap dance performances - I do feel confident that I can participate and meet my writing goals for July's Camp NaNoWriMo. Is anyone else going to camp in July?

Newsies cast on Dancing With the Stars

We recently saw a rendition of Newsies at a local theatre. It was amazing! This combines two of our favorites. 

Wordless Wednesday: Patriotic

Teaser Tuesday: The Hangman's Companion by Joseph Flynn

Teaser Tuesday is newly hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker. To play along, just do the following:

- Grab your current read 

- Open to a random page 

- Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page 

- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) 

- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR list if they like your teaser. 

My teaser this week is from The Hangman's Companion by Joseph Flynn:

A good match called for complimentary qualities. Strengths and weaknesses that meshed like finely machined gears. That was why Patti had been happy with Andy Grant, why she was happy with him. They hadn't duplicated, didn't duplicate, each other. They filled in each other's gaps. Completed each other, if you wanted to get sappy about it. 

Enjoying a series

I am a huge fan of book series. I have recently discovered The Jim McGill series by Joseph Flynn. There are ten books in this series and I am a little more than 3/4 through the second book. Jim McGill is the husband of the first female president of the United States. The first book is called The President's Henchman and the following is the blurb1 of 5 stars:

As we've just seen, it's only a matter of time--and not that long a time--before the United States elects its first female president. Which will make her husband--what?

Well, if he's the ex-cop who solved the murder of the president's first husband and brought the killers to justice...and if he's not the kind of guy to stand on formality...and if he doesn't want to be the head of the FBI...and if he takes out a license and becomes the first private eye to live in the White House...

That would make him The President's Henchman.

Jim McGill's first case is to find out who is stalking a member of the White House press corps, before that stalker turns the tables on McGill and maybe even threatens the president herself. He also has to be a shadow adviser to a young Air Force investigator who is looking into a he-said-she-said charge of adultery leveled against a female colonel working at the Pentagon, a case with the potential to derail the new president's administration before it has a chance to begin.

The second book in the series is called The Hangman's Companion and here is the blurb:

Always a good sport, Jim McGill, the first private-eye to live in the White House, agrees to accompany his wife, the president, to London to be her escort at a dinner given by the queen—yes, the one who lives in Buckingham Palace. Problem is, he’ll have a week in England beforehand, while the president attends a G8 meeting, with nothing to do.

Then a client comes to McGill, the daughter of a former Chicago cop McGill knew but didn't like when he was a captain on the CPD. McGill’s former colleague went to Paris to scatter the ashes of his late, French-born wife in the Seine. While tending to that solemn obligation, the former cop managed to get into a brawl with and kill France’s national sports hero. The guy from Chicago claims he was only saving a blonde woman from being beaten by the Frenchman, as French law actually required him to do. Only problem is, the blonde has disappeared.

The former cop’s daughter asks McGill to find the woman and save her father.

Beats glad-handing the locals in nearby London, he decides. He just has to wrap up the case in time to get to dinner with the president and the queen. 

I am thoroughly enjoying this series so far and am so glad a friend recommended the first book to me.

Wordless Wednesday: Jacaranda tree

Review: The President's Henchman by Joseph Flynn

I posted this review on GoodReads also.

I LOVED this book! It was recommended to me by a friend and I'm so glad I read it! It's the first in a series and I've already got the second book ready to go.

Jim McGill is the husband to the first female president of the United States. As a retired Chief of Police he isn't interested in being idle during his wife's years as president. He goes to work as a Private Investigator in Washington D.C. - much to the annoyance of the head of the Secret Service.

This book is full of twists and turns - both politically and personally - but it is thoroughly entertaining. McGill and Patti (his wife and the president) have their plates full adjusting to their new lives but they handle it with class, intelligence and a smidge of under-handedness but done for all the right reasons.

There is a large cast of characters in this book but Flynn does a good job making all of them believable and fleshed out. The story lines were tied up in a satisfactory way by the end of the book. And there was a cliffhanger that made me want to immediately buy the second book in the series. I look forward to continuing on this fictional journey of McGill's and Patti's.

Wordless Wednesday: Sunflower

Teaser Tuesday: The President's Henchman by Joseph Flynn

Teaser Tuesday is newly hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker. To play along, just do the following:

- Grab your current read 

- Open to a random page 

- Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page 

- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) 

- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR list if they like your teaser. 

My teaser this week is from The President's Henchman by Joseph Flynn:

Each of the protesters carried the same sign: FREE ERNA.

Erna Godfrey; current resident of the Federal Death Penalty Facility in Tere Haute, Indiana. Wife of Reverend Burke Godfrey, pastor of the Salvation's Path Church. The woman who'd killed Patti's beloved first husband, Andy Grant.

Review: Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

I LOVE this book! This is an instant favorite for me. This is a seriously intense book in parts because it deals with a shooting and all sorts of aftermath related to the shooting. I admit that I had some reluctance about reading this book for that very fact. However, I feel Nora Roberts did an outstanding job in the way she wrote about such a sensitive - and unfortunately, an all-too-real - topic. I admire that she addressed not only the victims of the shooting but how those who lived through it lived their lives afterward. 

This is a romantic suspense so the main male and female protagonists obviously meet and fall in love but in my opinion that was a somewhat secondary story line. I wasn't bothered by this because I felt it was so important to see how Reed and Simone grew after the shooting - and how they dealt with it.

I did cry while reading this book, more than once. I got angry while reading it, also more than once. However, I laughed, cheered, sighed a lot and overall believed in the power of good over evil. Oh, and I adore CiCi! She is Simone's grandma and their relationship is AMAZING! Truthfully, I think it's worth it to read this book for their relationship alone!

I posted this review on my GoodReads page, as well.

Wordless Wednesday: Pink rose

Teaser Tuesday: Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

Teaser Tuesday is newly hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker. To play along, just do the following:

- Grab your current read 

- Open to a random page 

- Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page 

- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) 

- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR list if they like your teaser. 

My teaser this week is from Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts:

She came back, slid over the arm of the chair into his lap. "There's more than one kind of shelter. You're another for me. I'm going to be the same for you."

"I looked a long time for my place, and for you. It's damn good luck I found them both."

Musing Mondays: Currently reading

 Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by The Purple Booker that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…
• Up next I think I’ll read…
• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I can’t wait to get a copy of…
• I wish I could read ___, but…
• I blogged about ____ this past week…

I am currently reading Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts and it is fantastic! I belong to a Nora Roberts group on GoodReads and as I said there, I started this book last night with the intention of reading a few pages and going to sleep. Go ahead and laugh because you know I didn't read only a few pages! Nope, I read NINE chapters before literally forcing myself to close the book and get some sleep! This book is character driven in Roberts' trademark style. The story starts with a shooting in a mall and part one of the book has dealt with the characters who live trying to actually live their lives after the atrocity. Needless to say, I have cried a few times. It's a fantastic book so far and I highly recommend it!

Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

I am starting this book tonight and really looking forward to it. Here is the blurb from GoodReads:

Sometimes, there is nowhere safe to hide.

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video-game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived.

The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career. Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies' room, hopelessly clutching her cell phone--until she finally found a way to pour her emotions into her art.

But one person wasn't satisfied with the shockingly high death toll at the DownEast Mall. And as the survivors slowly heal, find shelter, and rebuild, they will discover that another conspirator is lying in wait--and this time, there might be nowhere safe to hide.