Super Review for Somewhere the Bells Ring

From Romancing the Book:

For the full review please visit their site.

 

“Ms. Trissel captivates her reader from the moment you start reading the first page. She has written a compelling love story that spans some fifty plus years and keeps you entertained every step of the way with the story within a story…

I fell in love with Ms. Trissel’s characters and look forward to the next delightful story ready with Kleenex box in hand. A must read for every romance fan.”

~Reviewed by Robin

 

Hark the Harry Angels Sing

Back when my all grown up with children of his own son was ‘wee little,’ as the country folk around here say, he thought we were singing about ‘Harry’ angels.      Another child assumed the angel’s name was Harold.  Perfectly understandable.   The lyrics are rather unfathomable to children.  Even for some adults. I’ve also heard of a child who mistook ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ for ‘sleep in heavenly peas,’  which makes sense with the emphasis on eating your vegetables.

Last Christmas, my then three-yr-old grandson Colin  freaked out and was hiding his toys because he was afraid Santa Claus snuck into your house on Christmas Eve and took all of your stuff.  We think this misapprehension came about as a result of watching the cartoon version of ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas.’    Colin also didn’t like the idea of some strange dude who ‘sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake’ watching him.  Like Santa was a creepy stalker.  His weary parents in their efforts to reassure him (and get any sleep) said they would  post a note on the mailbox advising Santa to leave the goods in the driveway.   Colin accepted this but was still rather leery.

He was also really put out when told that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday and insisted ‘that’s not fair!’  When asked why, he said because Jesus gets the best birthday of all.   I’ve never heard  this take before.  But Colin is the same kid who tried to boost his one-yr-old baby sister up onto the picnic table on their deck with the ultimate aim of giving her an even higher boost onto the roof of the house so she could retrieve the action figure toy he’d flung up there.  After all, the baby couldn’t boost him up there, and his mother had warned him if he threw the toy on the roof, it was gone.  So he schemed a way but was intercepted.  Drats, foiled again.

Recently Colin was overhead singing Away in the Mangerto himself with an alteration.  Instead of ‘The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay’ he subbed in ‘batman asleep in the hay.’  He loves action heroes, but this version may come as a surprise during the Children’s Christmas Program next week at church.

Also, at the top of his Christmas list is a ‘real Spiderman’ action figure who shoots out ‘real webs.’  None of that fake silly string stuff like last year.   And his little four-yr-old cousin, my granddaughter Emma, asked me some time ago for a ‘real’ baby dinosaur.   I hate to squash dreams, but pointed out the possible difficulty I foresaw in locating one.  In a dramatic gesture, she threw her hands up and said I had all the way ’til Christmas to find one–that she wasn’t expecting it right away.

Well, Christmas is almost upon us and I’m still short one newly hatched dinosaur and a Spiderman who shoots out real webs.  I suspect this request of Colin’s stems from his desire to swing from them and ‘fwy’ as he pronounces it.  An impossibility for small boys that we’ve failed to persuade him of.  He suggested his mother make him some wings so he could soar off the deck.   I think Santa needs to bring him a large net.

If you know of any real baby dinosaurs, let me know.  I haven’t given up.

Christmas is Coming

Some cherished holiday traditions are upheld, some fall by the wayside. Others are added. One that continues from my childhood is making sugar cook­ies.  Ages ago, when my kids were small, I began this each year, young, fresh, my mind filled with visions of lovely cookies and sweet children’s faces bent over them with pleasure, then reality hit. My two oldest punched each other and fought over turns at rolling out dough that never rolled as it should and stuck to the cookie cutters.  Tempers flared as once again the angel wouldn’t let go and fell apart.

Finally we had sheets filled with an assortment of Christmas figures lavishly cov­ered with a blizzard of cookie sprinkles that rained all over the floor and crunched under foot. Few actually adhered to the cookies, and those that did had to be pressed on with sticky little hands. When the cookies were removed from the oven, parts of them had billowed up in the baking process, while those that had been pressed almost flat by fingers mashing in the sprinkles were crispy brown. There was no resemblance whatsoever between our cre­ations and those perfect replicas in the magazines. Our baking sessions invariably ended with a tired old hag, two grinches, and cookies that only a very undiscerning individual would eat, say a child or a dog. The idea of sharing them with neighbors was dropped, but we loved doing it and rushed at it every year with a happy cry.

Nowadays,  my art major daughter heads up this tradition.  She’s adept at it and has taken a fancy to the old time ginger cut outs from my favorite colonial American recipe. No more brawls in the kitchen over cookie making until the grandchildren take part.  If I’m smart I’ll let their mom’s bake the cookies with them, or the other grandmas.

A brief word about my new Christmas romance, Somewhere the Bells Ring:

‘Caught with pot in her dorm room, Bailey Randolph is exiled to a relative's ancestral home in Virginia to straighten herself out. Spending Christmas 1968 at Maple Hill is a dismal prospect until a ghost appears requesting her help, and her girlhood crush, Eric Burke, returns from Vietnam.’

So, if you enjoy an intriguing mystery with Gothic overtones and heart-tugging romance set in vintage America then Somewhere the Bells Ring is for you.  And did I mention the ghost?

~ Available in various ebook formats at The Wild Rose Press,  Amazon Kindle, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nookbook & other online booksellers.

For more on me, my wordpress blog is the happening place: http://bethtrissel.wordpress.com/