BookingIt

 Happy Saturday!  Just throwing out a blog post about #freebies so that my GoodReads and Amazon readers will have the info.  I've got a book free on Amazon right now until March 02, 2021. Forever Love is the third book in the Women of Manatee Bay series. :-) The cover and blurb are below and you can buy it HERE . I'm also participating in a BookSweeps #giveaway. Contest details can be found HERE and the graphic below showcases the participants (and there are some well known, awesome authors participating!). Sky-diving instructor Maggie McCormick has a reputation in her small town for living on the wild side. What people don't know is how her painful choices have whittled away at her soul. Determined to be done with romantic relationships, she's ready to focus on a deeper relationship with God. She wants to prove she's different and dreams of opening a home for young mothers. When she stumbles across the perfect property, things seem to be going well until she disc...

Wow! This was so long ago that I don't even remember watching this movie with the kiddos. I love rereading this, not just for the characterization perspective, but for the memories. *happy smile* In 2011, I watched Tangled with my kids. As the movie started, my six year old son couldn't help but give me a running dialogue about everything (he's seen it before). The movie introduced the hero, who happened to be stealing.  I asked my son, is the thief the guy Rapunzel falls in love with?  He turned to me, eyes round. "He's not a thief, mom."  "But he's stealing," I pointed out.  "No, no, no, he's not stealing. There are bad guys with him, but he's not stealing at all." My son shook his head and absolutely refused to believe that the good guy was doing a bad thing. I smiled and dropped the subject.  Let him root for the bad guy. I knew that by the end of the story, the thief would be the prince.  Have you ever rooted for someone...

There are a lot of reasons why I love the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Yes, still, even as a forty year old woman.  Those who hate the movie might find this hard to believe, but Napoleon Dynamite is, at heart, about the deep value of relationships and how they  change us. The movie uses Understatement in a major way, which I think makes it slow-paced and boring at the beginning. If you don't finish the movie, it will be hard to like it, imo. At the beginning of the movie, it's as though the major characters are muffled. Their emotions, their expressions, even the tones of their voices contain little emotion. This is where Irony comes into play. Secondary characters at first appear more alive than main ones. But as the story unfolds, as conflicts are introduced and relationships forged, the primary characters become the ones I root for. And by the end of the movie, a very interesting thing happens. The discovered relationship and connection between the main characters has...

This is a repost that really makes me want to watch this movie again! :-) A long time ago, I watched The Book of Eli , a futuristic/post-apocalyptic type movie that really fascinated me. I highly recommend it! The main character, Eli, in particular was intriguing. As I watched, I realized how deeply his characterization was based in subconscious and conscious action. The actor (I think it was Denzel Washington?) pulled off the characterization and hooked the viewer by using the smallest details to portray emotion. The writers or producer or maybe it was the actor himself used subconscious and conscious action to make the character come alive. For example, in the movie Eli is traveling when he hears screams. He hides behind something and mutters to himself over and over, "There's nothing I can do." This is a conscious action not to help. He is choosing to remove himself from the situation. His repetition is subconscious though. He's trying to convince himself...