"FREE STAR WATCHERS EBOOK, EDGAR ALLAN POE INSPIRED, 2 DAYS ONLY 11/18-11/19/2012: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Watchers-Inspirational-Romantic-ebook/dp/B008251NVU/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1351914049 particularly, the series of poems also entitled, Star Watchers.

Star Watchers uses fantasy, horror, and inspirational elements to provoke new ways of seeing the human condition. The poetry depicts unhappy, nervous, bitter and clever individuals; they found themselves in both triumphs and defeats. Unfortunately, these characters often met with the fate of tragedy and unexpected

The Memory Jar
By Tricia Goyer
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 978-0310335108
Pub. Date: October 23, 2012
Pages: 352
Buy Link: http://ow.ly/esMtx
Blog Tour Link: http://litfusegroup.com/author/TGoyer

Review:

Two years ago, Sarah Shelter watched her English best friend, Patty, drown in a nearby lake. She has been haunted by her friend's death ever since that dreadful day and has withdrawn herself from her family and friends that live in the mountain town of West Kootenai, Montana.

Every spring, many single young Amish men from other communities stay in Kootenai for six months for the hunting season that fall. Jathan Schrock arrives to town looking to earn some money to send back home to his folks. He is also there to enjoy some hunting and reflect on what the future may hold for him.

While Sarah Shelter isn't baking goodies for the hunters, she is storing her most precious memories in mason jars or what she calls 'memory jars'. Everyone she knows is either married or about to get married. She believes that the older she gets, the less chance that she will have in finding a husband that is until she meets the handsome Jathan!

Do you know that there are only 45 days until Christmas Day?

This means the holiday shopping madness is about to begin! I like to avoid the holiday shopping as much as I can due to the crowded department stores by doing most of my gift shopping months before, but there are always a few people that I have trouble finding a gift for, like my mother, grandmother, etc.

I know that I'm not the only male that has trouble finding the perfect gift for the women in his family, as men tend to wait to the last minute to buy a gift and typically the store shelves are empty by then.

I thought it would be nice of me to put together a nifty gift guide to help out other men who are looking for a great gift for their wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, girlfriend, aunt, etc.

Gilmore Girls: The Complete Sixth Season
Starring: Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Melissa McCarthy, Scott Patterson, Keiko Agena
Studio: Warner Bros. 
ASIN: B000G1R4SY
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Running Time: 945 minutes
Unrated
Buy Link: Mommy Bear Media

Review: 

A while back I entered into a giveaway on a blog and I won one of the prizes which was a $20 gift card from Walmart. I had completely forgotten about it until I received it several months later. I wasn't for sure what I was going to use the card for. Late one night, I surfed Walmart.com and found the sixth season of Gilmore Girls for fewer than twenty dollars. Of course I had to order it. I have been watching Gilmore Girls ever since I stumbled upon it on the late Soap.net channel earlier this year, but I watch it every weekday morning (if there isn't some kind of marathon) on ABC Family, which had just started airing the sixth season. I received the DVD set very quickly and just like season one and two (that I own on DVD); I flew right through each episode, taking in every bit of the Gilmore Wisdom.

The episodes on season six are:

Disc One:

Episode 1: New and Improved Lorelai (9/13/05)
Episode 2: Fight Face (09/20/05)
Episode 3: The UnGraduate (09/27/05)
Episode 4: Always a Godmother, Never a God (10/4/05)

Disc Two:

Episode 5: We've Got Magic to Do (10/11/05)
Episode 6: Welcome to the Dollhouse (10/18/05)
Episode 7: Twenty-One Is the Loneliest Number (10/25/05)
Episode 8: Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out (11/8/05)

When my kids were younger, we used to play the "Gas, Liquid, or Solid?" game. We also used to play "Man-made or God-made?" (which works no matter what your beliefs are because there are lots of things in our world that aren't made by man; those things have to come from somewhere). What I love about "Fire" is that it isn't easily categorized in these games. I suppose fire is mostly a gas, but it's a burning gas (or gasses). It's as much a state of being as it is a thing. And yet you can see it and feel it. Likewise, it's made by man all the time. And yet we speak of its discovery. Man did not initially create fire. It existed prior to us.

 Fire has fascinated us for millennia. Alchemists and astrologists consider it one of the four elements, along with earth, water, and air. Even if you're not into alchemy or astrology, you have to admit that there's something fairly, ahem, well... elemental about those four concepts. It's not difficult to see why people have been categorizing the nature of things based on those elements from time immemorial. And out of those four basic elements, none has a more contradictory, fascinating nature than fire.

Fire helps to feed us, by cooking our food, and it protects us by keeping us warm and keeping predators away. In modern times, some of fire's more basic benefits have become obscured. But we still have bull roasts and bonfires. We still roast marshmallows and put candles inside jack-o-lanterns on All Hallows Eve to scare evil spirits away. So fire helps us survive – but it is also incredibly deadly. Not to put too fine a point on it, but fire can kill. That's why arson is a serious crime, often a felony, in all 50 states.

A Short History of the Short Story
by Glunaz Fatma, MA, MBA
Publisher: Modern History Press
ISBN: 978-1615991662
Pub. Date: September 5, 2012
Pages: 46

Review: 

In fewer than fifty pages, author Glunaz Fatma successfully gives us the basic history of short fiction stories from Western and Asian Traditions. Being an author of short stories myself, I was very eager to review this book courtesy of Modern History Press.

Many famous writers, such as H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Alphonse Daudet, Miguel de Cervantes, Shirley Jackson, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rabindranath Tagore, and many others, have written numerous short stories as it gives them more freedom to express their creativeness without being classified by a genre.

Just like a novel, a short story must has a well-written plot that leads to a conclusion. A short story is between 1,000 to 20,000 words. Anything over is either a novella or a novel, and anything under is considered as short stories or flash fiction.