J. Timothy King Stories that Expand Your Life™

I’ve had migraines on and off all week this week— That’s not the fun part. On Wednesday, my Beloved put in a loaf of bread to bake in the bread machine, and it reminded me of the following bit in From the Ashes of Courage:

“G’d m’rning,” she mumbled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who sleeps in?” She had always awoken at the break of dawn, while he had always overslept. And here she was, the morning half gone already. It had been a long time since she had slept in, and the experience refreshed and relaxed her. She assumed that everyone one else was out, maybe walking along the beach, maybe boating, or maybe even at church.

The strong, succulent aroma of clams blended with a different, fluffier, yeastier smell, like that of a bakery. She turned to see a loaf of piping hot bread cooling on a rack on the counter.

“Fresh bread!” she shouted, jarring Eddie nearly out of his sandals.

“Careful,” he warned playfully. “Man with hot skillet here.”

She sidled up to him and said, “Where did you get fresh baked bread from?”

“I made that.”

“Since when?” she said. George had never been much the cook. There were a few dishes he had learned to make, like the clams, but he would never have braved something like bread, that required measuring and mixing and kneading and rising and baking.

“Hey, I know how to do stuff.”

“Like bake bread?”

“Like use a bread machine,” he said.  Click to continue »

I’m sitting here in my virtual living room with Sandra, of one of my favorite blogs Add Humor and Faith…mix well. I absolutely love her stories, especially the ones about her and her Hubby. And I actually wanted to have her over (virtually) for Valentine’s Day, to talk about love and marriage. But because of things happening on my end, I couldn’t pull it together. But I’m happy she’s able to spend some time with us today.

Hi, Sandy.

Hi, Tim!

As I understand it, you and Hubby will be married 45 years this coming June—the day, in fact, just before I turn “only 42.” A city girl and a country boy. And you’ve been in love with him since you were 15. How did you and Hubby first meet?

On New Year’s Eve when I was 15, I was staying overnight with my friend, Robyn. Her boyfriend, Wayne, called from a party he was at to tell her that he would like to stop over for a little while at midnight to see in the new year with her. But, she explained that I was there. No problem. He said he had a friend that he had wanted me to meet anyway, and that friend just happened to be right there at the party too! Okay, Robyn told him they could both stop over for just a little while.  Click to continue »

Remember this in the Gilmore Girls episode “Rory’s Dance”? Lorelai had hurt her back, and there was only one position on the couch in which she could get any relief, lying upside-down, with her head hanging over the edge and her feet propped up on the back of the couch.

That’s how it’s been for me this week, except that instead of back pain, I’ve had migraines. I hope that explains why I haven’t posted regularly. It always starts with a poor night’s sleep and always ends with me sprawled in a strange position on the couch, pressing my head up against the armrest, because that the only way I can get the pounding in my head to stop hurting.

“Rory’s Dance” is also the Rory : Dean :: girlfriend : boyfriend episode.

Ah. I remember my first real girlfriend. (That’s a different story.)

I particularly like this line Lorelai says: “I just don’t want you to miss out on any experience because you’re too afraid.”

Sometimes we avoid experiences that could enrich our lives, because we’re afraid of them. But sometimes, as for Rory, when you step out on that limb, things work out beautifully and romantically, and you end up with a wonderful memory.

And sometimes, as for Rory, they don’t.

You might leave your miserable job in order to take your career (or your life) in a new direction. And you might become rich and famous, or you might end up broke and homeless. Or maybe you start up a conversation with that cute guy in the elevator at work. You might find out he’s your soulmate. Or you might find out that he’s already married.  Click to continue »

I just finished Taxed to Death, which actually did get better near the end. I’ll post a better review later. For now, I need to pick a next book to read. Now, I did download a number of ebooks from Smashwords, where numerous authors (including yours truly) are offering their titles at 25% off, 50% off, or even 100% off, for Read-an-eBook Week. (Which is probably why the site is often down this week, because it’s getting hammered by voracious eBook readers.)

However, I think that for now, I’d like to read one of the out-of-print Holly Lisle titles I picked up recently. I plotted and schemed for a long time to get my hands on those… OK, that’s not exactly true. But it is true that I’ve wanted to collect more of Holly’s books for a long time. And I See You would really hit the spot right about now. This is one of Holly’s romantic suspense titles, the story of paramedic Dia Courvant, who rescued the sole survivor of a terrible car accident, to find her own husband dead in the wreckage. Now, four years later, a series of deadly car crashes has brought handsome detective Brig Hafferty into Dia’s life. She’s drawn to Brig, but can she trust him enough to tell him of the terror that stalks her? Because Dia has received a message warning her of danger and death, a message that seems to have been sent to her from beyond the grave.  Click to continue »

Everyone who has children reaches a point where she must decide whether to try to be a parent to her kids or a buddy to them. As my own daughters grow through their teen years, I face the same choice. And in the Gilmore Girls episode “Kiss and Tell,” this is exactly the situation Lorelai encounters.

As a kid grows, she keeps more and more secrets. Eventually, she’s living her own life, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. I’m actually a little surprised that Rory waited as long as she did. She’s 16, for crying out loud! Are you telling me that she and Lorelai have never talked about boys before?

So if Lorelai can’t be a girlfriend to Rory where Dean is concerned, the flip-side is that Rory looks to her mother for advice and experience, and for a pattern to emulate.

Dean seems to know this, as he makes it clear to Lorelai that he needs her support. “But I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

I like Dean. He would ultimately have been so good for Rory, but she’s her mother’s daughter. Ironic, that.

-TimK

P.S. There are apples on the kitchen table during the movie scene! What are APPLES doing in Lorelai’s house?!  Click to continue »

Photo © 2009 Trevin Chow CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Authors and publishers, in my opinion, spend way too much time sucking up to literary critics, which is why I decided to become a book reviewer.

Of course, no critic actually deserves the respect he gets (myself included), not for his opinion in any case. And I dare say, publishers wouldn’t give critics the time of day, were it not for the fact that bad reviews can severely hurt sales of a good book, and that good reviews can severely boost sales of a mediocre one. That’s why it’s more important to pander to the tastes and whims of the critics, than to publish books that would actually please ordinary readers.

Authors are not much better, because most authors believe, on some level, that literary critics actually know what they’re talking about. So when a critic doesn’t like the book she wrote, she believes that there’s something wrong with her, because the critic said so. Fortunately, there’s a simple antidote to this line of thinking: the 5 rules of book reviews, which I’ll get to in a moment.  Click to continue »

I’m sitting here in my virtual living room, talking to indie author Jess C Scott, who wrote EyeLeash: A Blog Novel, which I just reviewed a couple weeks ago.

Hi, Jess.

Hello there!

Now, EyeLeash is your first book.

It’s my first published book. I have another two or three that literally “see the light of day” on an annual basis, on average.

Excellent! I’m looking forward to reading a lot more from you in the future.

What inspired you to write EyeLeash?

A series of weird, synchronized events, combined with my active imagination, inspired the first draft. Which I thought was pretentious and lacked meat once I’d finished it, so I went back and added all the potentially offensive material that I had deliberately excluded.

<chuckles> I’ve heard that the title is a partial anagram of someone’s name. Is that right?

Indeed — though I only figured later that I had accidentally left one letter of the person’s name out. However, I was still really delighted having the word “EyeLeash” staring back at me.

Why did the title “EyeLeash” catch… er… your eye?  Click to continue »

The episode “Cinnamon’s Wake” could have been called “Goodbye, Lorelai Gilmore,” because both Dean and Max use that phrase to their respective Lorelais.

What I find more interesting, though, is something Lorelai says: “The timing has never been right.”

She’s talking about when to tell Rory that she and Max had scheduled a date. I get why this is a sensitive conversation, because she’s had precious few men (if any) in her life, because this one is Rory’s teacher, because she has always put Rory first, which gives Rory effective veto power over even her romantic relationships.

None of these things are ever going to change. The timing will never be “right.” You just have to know what words you’re going to use, and then you have to just say it. If you wait for the “perfect” time, you’ll never find it.

And so Lorelai never does tell Rory, until after it’s too late.

This foreshadows an ongoing pattern in Lorelai’s life, and in Rory’s, too. It seems they and so many of the people in their lives wait until the “right” time, which never comes. And it’s interesting to note the exceptions.

(Dean and Max I believe are two of those exceptions.)

-TimK

P.S. “You are mourning a cat?” Hey, Michel! You’re eventually gonna have a funeral for a dog!

P.P.S. Hey, it’s Kirk! For real, for the first time, just meeting Miss Patty, who we later learn has known him since he was little.

P.P.P.S. Sookie’s eating in the diner! What’s she even doing there?  Click to continue »

Photo © 2007 Tony Unruh CC BY-ND 2.0

I really needed a quick and easy post for today (because I had spent so much time and so many words getting carried away Monday). And I had no idea what I was going to write about. But you know what we always say: The Lord will provide.

And provide He did.

First of all, I want to state, for the record, that ever since George Orwell, the term “big brother” has gotten a bad rap. Big brothers are older, wiser, and in this case, more promiscuous. That is, they’re like pride-blinded parents, fawning over their little ones’ performance and gushing about how good it was, even though we all know that it sucked. But before you get the wrong idea, maybe I should explain…

I hadn’t heard from my little brother in quite some time, and I was wondering what he was up to. As time has passed, he and his Beloved have established their own routine and their own life, and I and my family have done the same, and that means we don’t really get to hang out anymore. We get to catch up only at family get-togethers— and on Facebook. So I flipped over to his Facebook page, to see what I had missed of his recent ongoings, and I discovered this delightfully entertaining YouTube video. Apparently, he and Mario and Dan and Chris all got together with two iPhones and a web-cam, and recorded this indie video of a song so silly and meaningless, it’s destined to be a hit.

Seriously:  Click to continue »

Last night, I watched the first episode of Lauren Graham’s new show, Parenthood, in which Lauren plays a single mom named Sarah—the similarity with Gilmore Girls ends there—and…

Déjà vu! I think I may have seen this show before, back when it was called Brothers and Sisters. Uh… No, not quite, because Brothers and Sisters was actually worth watching.

Parenthood, on the other hand, is the kind of show that Lorelai and Rory would watch together. (To make fun of, in case you missed my meaning.) Lots of activity, with trite, shallow, unsympathetic, psychological disturbed characters who constantly prance round and round in circles without going anywhere. Of course, that probably means it’ll be wildly successful! (Like the new Battlestar Galactica, which is also full of trite, shallow, unsympathetic, psychological disturbed characters who constantly prance round and round in circles without going anywhere.)

If you missed last night’s episode, there are apparently repeats scheduled throughout the week. You can also watch it online at NBC.com.

Or if you can’t see it, because—for example—maybe you’re in a geographical region of the world which NBC has deemed to be unworthy of viewing the show, do not fret. Instead, get yourself down to your local video rental place, and see if you can pick up a copy of the first season of Brothers and Sisters, which is a CBS show and actually funnier, more dramatic, and does the whole-family-arguing thing way better, with deep characters that you actually care about, facing compelling conflicts… and even a better “Sarah” (played by Rachel Griffiths).  Click to continue »