There are dozens of books out about how to deal with chronic pain I'm sure, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Carla Cobbs' take on it in her new book, Coping and Thriving with a Chronic Condition.

Carla was born with a chronic condition herself - arthrogryposis and later, high blood pressure, arthritis and chronic pain. You might even call her an expert in the field having lived it firsthand. That's the reason why I wanted to read her book since it was coming from the horse's mouth so to speak. 

The first two chapters are more or less her explaining in detail about these diseases which I didn't find boring in the least. It was written in easy to understand language which I appreciated.

The next chapter, Chapter 3, she explains how to cope with these ailments which I found very informative should I ever be in that position myself - very uplifting.

The rest of the chapters are very uplifting as well. It's like a pep talk but not only that it offers encouragement to those who feel as if their life has come to an end once they have been diagnosed. 

Following his mission to H-E-L-P (Help Everyone Live Peacefully), Reverend Terry Allan Christian compiles Scriptures that reveal the teachings of Jesus. Using the red-letter edition of the New King James Bible, the author has isolated these teachings from the religious and political conflicts of Jesus's time; citing each book, chapter, and verse.

What I think is most unique about this book is that it is meant to be seen as the reader taking a journey with Jesus, walking along the beach, as Jesus reveals His teachings to her.

The book opens with the "Footprints in the Sand" poem by Mary Stevenson that was re-written by the author. Then the author breaks into chapters each of the seven messages, Jesus's teachings on: the Christ, the Father and Son, the Word, Jesus being the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Kingdom of Heaven, the End Times, and the Holy Spirit.

While some authors offer additional commentary when they compile Scripture, there is very little of that here. There is an author's note in the beginning and at the conclusion of the book, but other than that, the reader is allowed to focus solely on the words of Christ.

What Did Jesus Say... by Rev. Terry Allan Christian would make a lovely gift and is a powerful devotional.


Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Divine Publications (October 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0983984816
ISBN-13: 978-0983984818

 - Guest Review by Cheryl Malandrinos. Cheryl is a blogger, book reviewer, children's author and editor. A member of SCWBI, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and three adult children.

Website:

http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

Blog:

http://j-arleneculiner.over-blog.com

All sites: https://linktr.ee/j.arleneculiner

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/jarlene.culiner/

Storytelling Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner

As a romance writer, I adore writing about love—especially when it happens between delightful characters. Mix in hope, humor, much tenderness, and a happy end… that’s what a satisfying romance book brings us. But that’s not all.

I love writing about odd characters and misfits, the sort of people who would never fit into neat houses with tidy gardens. My people are rebels, not by choice, but by character. Sometimes they’re ornery, nosy, or interfering, but I can guarantee they’re the real thing.

For me, a good book is packed with information, and when I’m finish reading it, I have the know more than I did when I began. So it is with the three books in my series, Blake’s Folly Romance. 

In A Room in Blake’s Folly, we follow a town from its silver boom beginning to its dusty present semi-ghost town state. In All About Charming Alice, we learn some Nevada history and a bit about reptiles. In Desert Rose, my hero Jonah Livingstone is a geologist who also plays the baroque cello, and the very secretive Rose Badger has quite a few hidden talents, too.

And, as we follow the ups and downs of the many romances in this trilogy, we also discover that:

1. In the first half of the 1800s, women were scarce in the West, and husband-hunters, whether ugly or good-looking, mean-tempered, sharp-tongued, or sugar sweet easily found partners. By the 1880s, things had changed. Women fleeing domestic service, millwork and factory toil, arrived in abundance, and men could take their pick.

2.  Men looking for wives in the Far West usually went for young, fresh, strong women who would raise children, attend to harvests, garden work, laundry, scrounge for firewood, and cook. Love had little to do with second marriages; many men were looking for women to replace wives who had died during childbirth or from sheer exhaustion.

3. Without experience in the working world, older women, widows, abandoned or divorced women hoped their grown children would take them in. However, not every couple wanted a mother or mother-in-law in residence unless she was still strong enough to help out with the drudgery. The many who found no home with their children were often reduced to begging.

4. Although prohibition effectively cut off Nevada’s much-needed tax revenue, it didn’t reduce social drinking. In one year alone, the 90,000 Nevada residents managed to wangle 10,000 prescriptions for medicinal alcohol.

5.  The names of old railway companies are still familiar: the Philadelphia and Reading, the Erie, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. However all failed during the depression of 1893. Even then, politicians lied, claiming the economy was prospering as 500 banks closed and 16,000 businesses declared bankruptcy.

6. Sassy, confident Lucy Barnes, one of my heroines in A Room in Blake’s Folly, loves photographing spiders. Veterinarian Lance Potter is surprised by her interest, but Lucy is quite clear: “What’s definitely true, is that half of all women but only ten percent of men are afraid of spiders. Now try and work that fact into a discussion about sexual equality.”

7. Alice Treemont, the heroine of All About Charming Alice, is a herpetologist. She studies snakes, photographs them, writes about them for nature magazines, and protects them. She certainly isn’t afraid of them, and she knows all about the important role snakes play in our environment. As she tells writer Jace Constant: “If most people are instinctively afraid of snakes, snakes aren’t instinctively afraid of people, so they sometimes slide into backyards, innocently passing through on their way to somewhere else. They should be left alone, of course, but people kill them as soon as they notice them.”

8. Running alongside the tiny community of Blake’s Folly, Nevada is the faint trace of what was once one of the great pioneer roads to California. When summer temperatures rise to a hundred and ten, pools of water turns into toxic shimmering scum before vanishing, and rivers evaporate. One hundred and fifty years ago, the way pioneers kept to the trail, was by following the abandoned sacks of putrid bacon, the skeletons of animals, and the graves. Out here, place names like Endurance, Desolation, or Last Gap were never more than a stick in the ground where someone was buried.

9. As geologist Jonah Livingstone tells the lovely Rose Badger: “Both eastern and southern Nevada were once covered by a warm shallow sea filled with reefs, mollusks, and ammonites. Around 250 million years ago, there were also large marine lizards, ichthyosaurs. They had evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles who had returned to the sea, like the ancestors of dolphins and whales.”

10. What sort of characters do I like to write—and read—about in a romance? For me, intelligence leads to good chemistry. I need people with ideas, who have stimulating conversations. How can you fall in love when you have nothing to learn from the other?

11.  Another essential for good chemistry is a sense of humor. Being able to laugh together creates a strong and wonderful magic—perhaps one that is stronger and more wonderful than great sex.

 

Title: Blake’s Folly Romance Trilogy
Author: J. Arlene Culiner
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Pages: App. 214 pp. each
Genre: Historical / Contemporary Romance

By 2023, the silver boomtown of Blake’s Folly, once notorious for saloons, brothels, speakeasies, and divorce ranches, has become a semi-ghost town of abandoned shacks and weedy dirt roads. But unusual settings attract unusual people, those forced to adapt to new circumstances in order to survive, and those who have never really fit into mainstream society. But none are humdrum. All have dreams and a chance to fall in love.

A Room In Blake’s Folly

In 1889, when Blake’s Folly boasted silver mines, saloons, and brothels, the adventurer, Westley Cranston, fell in love with Sookie Lacey a former prostitute. Their romance was doomed but never forgotten, and these six stories tell the tale.

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/BlakesFollyRomance 

Website: https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/a-room-in-blake-s-folly

All About Charming Alice

Alice Treemont cooks vegetarian meals, rescues unwanted dogs, and protects the most unloved creatures on earth: snakes. What man would share those interests?

Jace Constant is in Nevada, doing research, but he won’t be staying long. He hates desert dust, dog hair and snakes terrify him. Even if the air sizzles each time Alice and Jace meet, any romance seems doomed.

Purchase Link : https://books2read.com/Charming-Alice

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l2VyHtsY7A

Website: https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/all-about-charming-alice

Desert Rose

Rose Badger is the local flirt, and settling down is the last thing she intends to do. Geologist Jonah Livingstone is intriguing, but with his complicated life, he’s off limits for anything other than friendship.

Jonah Livingstone is fascinated by the sparkling and lovely Rose Badger, but she doesn’t seem inclined to choose a favorite, so why fret? Jonah’s secret life keeps him busy.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/tHPrIciT0XU
Web:  https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/desert-rose
Purchase links: https://books2read.com/RosesDesert
https://mybook.to/RosesDesert

 It May Surprise You That...is Literarily Speaking's latest feature. Here we have authors give us 10 things that would surprise us about themselves and/or their book. Today we have James Blakley, author of The K-Frost Caper.

1. Insurance fraud investigation can be very dangerous and exciting.

“A claims man is a doctor and a bloodhound and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor all in one.”—Barton Keyes, Double Indemnity (the movie)

• When Luna Nightcrow and “The K-Frost Caper” were first envisioned, there were several high-profile cases of insurance investigators being murdered in the line of duty (per the following):

• Louisiana insurance fraud investigators should carry guns, commissioner says 

Ed Anderson, The Times-Picayune

Aug 13, 2011

https://www.nola.com/news/politics/louisiana-insurance-fraud-investigators-should-carry-guns-commissioner-says/article_193680c6-4233-56cd-9463-efc02d554b38.html

• Sallie Rohrbach Murder: Where is Michael Howell Now?

Sounak Sengupta 

September 22, 2022

https://thecinemaholic.com/sallie-rohrbach-murder-where-is-michael-howell-now/

• ‘Nub City,’ and Other Stories Of an Insurance Investigator

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/12/archives/-nub-city-and-other-stories-of-an-insurance-investigator-insurance-.html

• The Story Of Florida’s “Nub City,” Where Residents Cut Off Their Own Appendages For Insurance Money

By Gabe Paoletti

Published November 2, 2017

Updated June 12, 2019

https://allthatsinteresting.com/nub-city-vernon-florida

2. The main character, Luna Nightcrow, is a female Cherokee Native American.

• In an attempt to make the book memorable, the main character is of a race that hasn’t much broad representation in pop fiction as others.

3. Luna Nightcrow was originally inspired by a TV insurance fraud investigator, instead of a real-life one.

• When I was growing up, there was an NBC TV show called “Banacek” that featured actor George Peppard in the title role: A refined and clever Boston-based insurance investigator named Thomas Banaceck. Unlike most insurance investigators, who are tied to a company, Banacek was self-employed; he chose his own clients and charged them whatever he wanted. Banacek often travelled cross-country to foil the oddest insurance frauds. Banacek was also ethnically Polish and proudly included “old Polish proverbs” when chatting with friend and foe. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068044/

4. According to this article: Today, women make up 60 percent of insurance company employees. 

• Insurance is a great industry for women, but imbalances linger

Insurance News

By Bethan Moorcraft

Mar 11, 2022

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/insurance-is-a-great-industry-for-women-but-imbalances-linger-398324.aspx

• And at the time “The K-Frost Caper” was first written, 63.3 percent of insurance investigators were also women (per the following):

   https://www.iii.org/table-archive/23055

5. “The K-Frost Caper” has many diverse and significant female characters.

6. “The K-Frost Caper” also has a variety of ethnicities and races that play critical roles in the story.

7. These true “missing persons” cases were researched while writing “The K-Frost Caper” (to show the plot is plausible):  

• Living, breathing man will remain dead in the eyes of Ohio law

Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley, CNN

Updated 4:05 AM EDT, Thu October 10, 2013

https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/09/us/ohio-legally-dead-man/index.html

• Is Olivia Newton-John's boyfriend alive?

Baja California locals say they've spotted the man supposedly missing at sea. Keith Morrison reports.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15520212

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4850886/has-olivia-newton-johns-ex-lover-been-found-in-mexico-12-years-after-he-vanished-on-fishing-trip-and-faked-his-own-death/

8. Luna Nightcrow’s odd choice of self-defense is a real-life weapon.

• After several murders of insurance investigators, many in the field decided to arm themselves.  As a nod to that, Luna Nightcrow carries a .38 caliber revolver when necessary, but always has a discreet stun gun that is built into her smartphone protector.  Yes, it’s an actual device (though perhaps not quite as powerful as depicted in “The K-Frost Caper”). 

https://www.amazon.com/Only-High-Powered-Protects-Recharges-iPhone/dp/B07528MH6D/ref=sr_1_5?crid=IT1D6EWW9FX2&keywords=yellow%2Bjacket%2Bstun%2Bgun%2Bcase&qid=1681698547&s=sporting-goods&sprefix=yellow%2Bjacket%2Bstun%2Csporting%2C115&sr=1-5&th=1

• And the settings for the story (Oklahoma and Florida) seem to have little or no restrictions on stun gun use.

https://www.stungunbuyersguide.com/stun-gun-laws/

Oklahoma Stun Gun & Taser Laws / Statutes:

No restrictions in Oklahoma State law concerning stun guns or tasers.

Florida Stun Gun & Taser Laws / Statutes:

Stun Guns/Electric Weapons: Section 790.001 (4)(b)

Definitions. A nonlethal stun gun or dart-firing stun gun or other nonlethal electric weapon or device that is designed solely for defensive purposes. (Note: Non Lethal is the word that makes this law)

790.53 Open Carrying of Weapons

A person may openly carry, for purposes of lawful self-defense:

A nonlethal stun gun or dart-firing stun gun or other nonlethal electric weapon or device that is designed solely for defensive purposes.

Concealed Carry on any college or university facility unless the licensee is a registered student, employee, or faculty member of such college or university and the weapon is a stun gun or non-lethal electric weapon or device designed solely for defensive purposes and the weapon does not fire a dart or projectile.

9. Despite drawing from the dangers of being an insurance investigator, “The K-Frost Caper” isn’t a dark and gritty thriller.

• There is some humor and romantic tension similar to the style of Hitchcock suspensers like “North by Northwest” and “To Catch a Thief.”

10. “The K-Frost Caper” is critically acclaimed.

• It’s ranked 15th best mystery featuring a Native American detective per the following:

https://mysterytribune.com/24-best-mystery-novels-featuring-native-american-detectives/

 

 

A cold case heats up when Kelvin Frost, believed to have drowned in Alabama, returns from the dead to apply for more life insurance. Or has he? When a body-a dead body-identified as Kelvin Frost, turns up in Miami, murder complicates matters. Enter Luna Nightcrow, the insurance fraud investigator whose “smartphone never sleeps.” After recovering a valuable Cherokee relic, Nightcrow accepts Charmed Life Mutual Insurance’s offer of $50,000 to sniff out and close down the K-Frost Caper. But it won’t be easy with so few leads or clues. Paired with cosmopolitan cop Tiago Toussaint, the two match wits and wiles, in attempt to find out when is the last time anyone saw Frost … in Miami?

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zru92q 

B&N: https://bit.ly/3KrkJdx 

Books-a-Million: https://bit.ly/3MssXnl 

Walmart: https://bit.ly/3MazR0j 

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3nFV8Vp 

BookBub: https://bit.ly/3GePsIf