A Merry Little Christmas
By Anita Higman
Publisher: Summerside Press
ISBN: 978-1609366889
ASIN: B009CCG1F0
Pub Date: October 1, 2012
Pages: 256
Buy Link: http://ow.ly/eyLJH
Blog Tour: http://litfusegroup.com/author/AHigman

Review: 

Franny Martin has been taking care of her family's two-hundred-and-fifty acres Oklahoma farmland ever since her parents died during a thunderstorm fifteen years ago. She is now thirty-three, single, having financial trouble, and facing the fact that she will once again spend the holidays by herself. That is until a handsome stranger, Charlie Landau shows up at her doorstep.

Charlie is from the big city, single and is just looking for something more meaningful in his life, in which he wants to buy Franny's farm even though he knows nothing about farming. He has always been a disappointment to his father and he is hoping that he can be successful at farming so his father can finally be proud of him.

Franny is more than eager to sell the farm as she had put it on the market twelve years ago! Before her parents' untimely deaths, she had dreamed of moving to the big city to follow her passion for music. Now, maybe her dreams can finally come true, but before that can happen, she decides to stay at the farm to help Charlie learn the farm life ways. Despite their different backgrounds and differences, there is a deep connection between the two.

Broken Build
By Rachelle Ayala
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 978-1480010512
ASIN: B0099MLND8
Pub. Date: October 5, 2012
Pages: 330

Review: 

From the author of Michal's Window comes a new suspenseful thriller titled Broken Build, set in the high-tech world with backstabbing and deception around every corner. The author, Rachelle Ayala, had sent me a free copy to review after I had previously reviewed her biblical romantic tale, Michal's Window. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect since this book is set in modern times.

The main character, or should I saw heroine, is Jennifer Cruz, a woman with a rocky criminal past, who has now gone to great manners (plastic surgery, etc) to disguise herself into a new identity, Jen Jones. She takes a job as a computer techno whiz for David Jewell, a software CEO, a man she deeply hurt six years ago in her past life. Of course he doesn't recognize her now. As she spends time with David, their old romantic feelings start to resurface, but she can never erase her past.

4 Movie Collection: Universal Solider: The Return/ Knock Off/ The Hard Corps/ Second Command
Directors: Mic Rodgers,
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme
Studio: Mill Creek Entertainment
ASIN: B008XAT1HM
Release Date: October 9, 2012
Running Time: 367 minutes
Rated: R

I grew up watching countless action flicks during my childhood, some off of basic cable and others my parents rented. Since the first Expendables came out, I have been buying a few of the action movies that I watched as a kid, such as Cyborg, Cobra, Commando, Raw Deal, Kickboxer, etc. So naturally I was excited to review this four movie Jean-Claude Van Damme collection, courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment and Tower PR in exchange for an honest review.

Universal Soldier: The Return is set several years after the events that occurred in the first film. Luc Devereaux (played by Jean-Claude Van Damme) is no longer a Universal Soldier, but he does run the new advanced program for the government. The new soldiers are stronger and faster. They are controlled by an advanced computer program called S.E.T.H. When the government wants to shutdown the program, S.E.T.H. takes control of building and the soldiers. Luc Devereaux is the only one that can shut down the program, but S.E.T.H. is one step ahead of Luc, as the UniSol Romeo (played by Bill Goldberg) kidnaps Luc's 13-year-old daughter Hillary.

The Universal Solider franchise is hard to follow as The Return ignores the two previous made-for-TV sequels and The Return is ignored by the two newest sequels, Regeneration and Day of Reckoning. The Return's plot is really thin. I'm not for sure why the producers wanted to change the tone and ignore a few facts from the first movie. The acting and dialogue is B-movie quality, but the movie does have some great action scenes, starting with the boat chase in the opening and ending with Van Dame fighting Goldberg. In the end, the movie isn't great, but the action is fun to watch.

 "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.