The Neighbors: The Complete First Season
Starring: Jami Gertz, Lenny Venito, Simon Templeman, Toks Olagundoye, Clara Mamet
Studio: ABC Studios
Release Date: September 24, 2013
Retail: $34.99
ASIN: B00DF3EY06
Running Time: 506 minutes
Rating: TV-PG

Review:

Aliens are in our neighborhood! Well, at least they arrived on DVD back in September with the release of ABC's The Neighbors: The Complete First Season, featuring a gag reel and deleted scenes as the bonus features.

The Neighbors stars Lenny Ventio and Jami Gertz as Mary and Debby Weaver, who, along with their three children (Max, Abby and Amber) move from the big city to a gated community called "Hidden Hills" in New Jersey. Upon arriving they instantly notice the odd behavior of all the neighbors, especially Larry Bird, his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and their two kids, Reggie Jackson and Dick Butkus. At first the Weavers think their new neighbors are crazy, but it turns out they are aliens from another planet.
The episodes on the three-disc set are:

Turbo
Director: David Soren
Voice Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Maya Rudolph, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Peña
Studio: DreamWorks
Release Date: November 12, 2013
Retail: $38.99
ASIN: B00E00P5JC
Running Time: 96 minutes
Rating: PG

Review:

Fast & Furious 6 wasn't the only auto-driven summer blockbuster this year, as there was a computer animation film called Turbo, which arrived on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD this past Tuesday, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The Blu-Ray features are: Turbo in High Definition, Champion's Corner, Smooth Move's Music Maker, Team Turbo: Tricked Out, Meet The Deleted Scene, The Race Storyboard Sequence, Be An Artist!, Shell Creator Game and World of DreamWorks Animation.

Set in Venice, California, Theo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) is a garden snail with big dreams. He dreams of being a NASCAR racer, but he is stuck working in a boring tomato garden with his protective brother, Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti), who considers Theo to be a big embarrassment to the snail community.

Theo finds himself wondering on the highway at night. A bizarre accident happens where Theo is sucked into the supercharger of a car, fusing nitrous oxide into his DNA. He wakes up the next day with the ability to race as fast as a NASCAR racer.

I know people are busy getting ready for Thanksgiving dinners and shopping for Christmas, but this is the perfect time to plan next summer's dream vacation. Prices for plane tickets, cruise tickets and hotel room change in prices on a regular basis, so you can save time and money by booking your trip months ahead of time.

If you're like me, you either don't have the money to spend on any kind of a vacation or something always comes up and you can't go on a vacation at all, but there is nothing wrong with dreaming; therefore I came up with my top 5 dream vacations.

1. Walt Disney Word Resort & Universal Studios Resort - Even though I'm an adult, I would love to go on the rides at Disney World and Universal Studios in Florida. I've never been to the state, not even on a business trip, but besides visiting the resorts, I would like to walk on the beach and visit other attractions. I know a person can book tickets and hotels near the resort, but the attractions I want to visit are scattered about, so it would better for me to stay at a Miami airport motel, which would probably be cheaper.

Trouble In Store
By Carol Cox
Publisher: Bethany House
Pub. Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0764209567
Pages: 352

Review:

I've read a few other titles by the author, Carol Cox, so I was eager to sign up to review Trouble In Store during the summer, but this is one of several books that got pushed aside and collected a bit of dust until I picked it up last month.

Trouble in Store starts out with Melanie Ross being fired from her governess job. She doesn't know what do with her life until she inherits an Arizona mercantile from a cousin. Everything seems to be going well until Caleb Nelson claims he is the one who inherited the mercantile and won't let her step into the store that really belongs to her.

It seems neither one can have full ownership of the store without the other one, so he attempts to distract her by setting her up with potential husbands, in the hope that she would hand over the store and leave, but this becomes a bit of a problem, as Caleb is starting to like her.

It seems that almost anybody has self-published some sort of book on Amazon or on some other retail site. I have reviewed several books by independent authors writing in different genres, children books, romance novels, how-to-books, etc… I even have a few books I have bought on my Kindle that are in the how-to genre. One in practically was about freelance writing and how the author wrote best-selling how-to-books. The book was horrible and I consider the author more of a con artist than an actual writer.

There are some how-to and self-help authors (non-self-published) that are truly professional businessman (and women) and  they give great advice in their books. One of these authors is an entrepreneur Michael Masterson, who has written The Pledge, Seven Years to Seven Figures, Ready Fire Aim, Automatic Wealth, Automatic Wealth For Grads, Power and Persuasion and Confessions of a Self-Made Multimillionaire, where he has been giving business advice to many readers. He's not just a how-to-book writer, as he is currently working on a poetry book, a screenplay and a collection of short stories.

Her Eternal Rogue
By Gina Danna
Publisher: To The Better End Publishing
Pub. Date: June 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615836348
Pages: 284
Buy Links: Amazon, B&N

Review:

At first glance Her Eternal Rogue looks like a Harlequin Regency romance novel at sea, but author Gina Danna puts a twist on the genre by adding a paranormal theme.
The heroine is Lady Lavina Sinclair who has been kidnapped by French pirates, whom plan on selling her into the prostitution trade, but luckily for her, a handsome stranger happens to rescue her.

His name is Captain Alexander Sword (Barrington), who had escaped his controlling uncle in exchange to living on the high seas, but now finds himself known as a ruthless pirate. He was to be hanged for his crimes, but he accepted a deal to rescue Lady Lavina from the French pirates and return her to her betrothed (Nicholas) in England.

The rescue mission seemed to be easy thing to get done, but Alexander didn't plan on falling for the Lady Lavina, who returns his affections. Little does she know that he has cursed - he is actually a vampire.

Most people are thinking about Thanksgiving dinners, Black Friday shopping and Christmas gatherings. I'm not big on Thanksgiving, mostly due to my dislike of turkey and anything with pumpkin (though I do like pumpkin seeds) and most of my Christmas present shopping is finished.

I've been thinking ahead to after the holidays are wrapped and what my New Year's Resolution will be.

Almost everybody's resolution is to lose those extra holiday pounds, but mine for next year is to brush on my writing skills.

What does this mean?