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Love Notions: New Heart's Haven Holidays novelette!

We are so excited to welcome LOVE NOTIONS to the growing list of Heart's Haven novelettes! It's a Mary Manners title, and if you've ever read a Mary Manners book, you know they are all special. Here's a peek into this latest delight:

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Jami Mitchell has come home to Heart's Haven to open a bookshop with the inheritance Grandma left to her. Nana's Novel Notions is the business of her dreams until she realizes who the tenant next door is: ruthless Riley Hunter. Growing up in the small town together, she's watched him dance through women while she's hidden her feelings with a concrete exterior. How will she cope, when she can't bear being in the same town with him, let alone neighbors?

Riley Hunter has sacrificed everything to shed the poverty of his childhood. While others held Sweet-sixteen parties, he cleaned up after them. But his hard work has paid off, and he's opened an architecture firm in the growing town. He's had a thing for Jami since high school, but she was the privileged girl who never gave him the time of day. Now she's come home with a wad of cash and has set up a book store in the business complex he plans to buy out.

Can the two put the past behind them, or will his dream shatter hers?

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A Special Mother's Day Romance

LEXI'S HEART

by Delia Latham

 

Book one in the Heart's Haven Holidays Collection

Now available

Forty-three-year-old Lexi Carlisle’s abusive marriage ended three years ago. Deeply scarred by the experience, and helplessly watching her beloved mother succumb to Alzheimer's, Lexi is devastated. After selling her fancy home, she rents a cottage in Heart’s Haven, a special place unlike any other. Slowly learning to live again, she despairs of ever delivering the message of love that burns within her heart for her ever-worsening mother. But Mitch Gaynor, a handsome Christian author, reminds Lexi that with God all things are possible, planting within her battered and distrustful heart the seed of hope for a miracle. But can she open her fortressed heart to God? And is Mitch a part of His plans for her future?

Her heart. His faith. Love reborn.

 

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Z is for...

Zilch.

It’s meaning? Nothing. Zero. Absolutely nada.

But writing about nothing didn't sound like a lot of fun - to read or write - so...I'll write about Zilch instead.

Zilch is the name of a dice game our family enjoys playing. Some folks call the same game Farkle. Actually, we call it Farkle most of the time, but I hear the “official” name of the game is Zilch.

Ever played it? It’s a great way to keep a group occupied, but still free to visit and enjoy one another’s company. On those rare visits from relatives who live at a distance, we almost always pull out the dice and enjoy a game of Zilch…or Farkle. (Maybe we should start calling it Zarkle…or Filch…or Farch…) lol

Family game night is a great way to spend an evening. I love the fact that players can actually visit with each other during play, breaking the growing routine of every family member staring at a computer or television screen. In the same room, but not connected. Conversation? Zilch. Interaction? Zilch. True family time? Zilch.

All that ZILCH equals NO FAMILY,

and the Heart's Haven angels

say that's not a good thing.

Not a good thing at all.

Try this Zilch instead, and make it a rule that your family members - everyone living under your roof - participate one night a week. Get to know each other again. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s inexpensive—six dice and you’re all set.

Wouldn't it be nice if your family grew closer because of "nothing"?

Let's talk about it. What does your family do to stay connected? (Please don't say, "Zilch!) :D

Y is for...

If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today.

—Joyce Chapman

 

The thing about yesterday is that it’s gone.

 

Done. Over. Finished.

 

No matter how righteously we lived those twenty-four hours, or how grossly we mismanaged them, no life remains in that day. It is essentially dead…and we all know what happens if dead things are not buried. Yep, that’s right—they raise a doggone obnoxious stink.

 

So we should live each day as we wish, because when tomorrow comes, today is dead. Now, come on…I know you didn’t really say that!

 

Burying a man doesn’t undo all the good he might have done while he lived. Nor does it heal all the hurts or close all the wounds he inflicted. And letting yesterday go doesn’t erase the impressions we made on others, the kindnesses or cruelties we committed, the footprints we left in the sands of time.

 

I loved my Dad. Adored him. He was and will always remain my hero. When he died, I seriously questioned how I could possibly go on without him. And yet, I knew I had to keep living. It would have negated all the wisdom he ever shared with me had I stretched myself across his grave and insisted on dying too. I had to honor his memory by living what remains of my life according to the principles of honesty and integrity that he taught me by example. The physical, flesh-and-bone creature who was “Daddy” is gone…nothing he did in his life, right or wrong, can be changed. But the essence of who he was lives on—in me, in my siblings, and in the lives he touched, for good or bad, while he lived.

 

So yesterday’s gone, but not forgotten.

 

We’ve all made mistakes we wish we could un-make. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of, and wish we could un-do. I certainly have.

 

Regret is a fact of life. And it can be a good thing. Those who commit atrocious acts and experience no sense of shame or sorrow for their actions have problems far more serious than I’m qualified to discuss.

 

But regret that doesn’t result in change—which brings about a measure of peace and self-forgiveness—is counteractive. It gives yesterday the power to ruin today and tomorrow.

 

Let’s bury the past, with all its mistakes and regrets; cover it over with the lessons we learned from living it; and plant within that fertile new soil a thousand seeds of hope and change, of goodness, kindness and love.

 

Grow a better tomorrow from the seeds we plant today on yesterday’s grave.

 

It’s a way to turn yesterday’s ugliness into tomorrow’s beauty—and yesterday’s beauty into a glorious future.

 

X is for...

(OK, people…OK, OK! I know that’s not the proper way to spell extraterrestrial. Tell ya what…YOU come up with a great “X” word to blog about. :D)

According to Wikipedia, the word extraterrestrial “may refer to any object or being beyond (extra-) the planet Earth (terrestrial).” Whoa…wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute, amigo! You mean it doesn’t necessarily have to be little green men and UFOs? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, it sounds to me like even things of a heavenly nature could be called extraterrestrial…they’re certainly “beyond the planet Earth”!

For years on end—decades and centuries and millennia—we Earthlings have been obsessed with the extraterrestrial…at least, as it applies to other planets and solar systems. Stories abound about abductions, visitations, UFO sightings and other odd and unusual occurrences. The movie industry rakes in untold fortunes selling fictional “what-ifs” about what’s “out there.” Publishers continue to print imaginative scenarios involving aliens on Earth and Earthlings in space. It’s become a ridiculously lucrative gimmick.

Why? Because it’s the unknown, and we humans are nothing if not nosy…oh, excuse me, I meant curious, of course.

We Christians could…if we chose…play on that unbridled human curiosity to turn our “extraterrestrial” experiences into spiritual gold. Think about it: Our very real encounters with angels…visitations from God’s own messengers. Those “God moments” when the Maker of the Universe Himself draws near and shows Himself inarguably real. The wonderful miracles that touch and bless our lives.

In a nutshell: our experiences with the “extraterrestrial.”

Human beings crave a bit of knowing about the unknown. What kind of response might we bring about if we manifested true enthusiasm and single-minded purpose in sharing our brand of other-worldly contact? Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. Spend enough time around someone who’s constantly upbeat and bubbly and fun, and you’ll find yourself starting to mirror his or her excitement. It’s like a magnet, drawing a person in whether they want to be drawn or not.

Get excited enough about your extraterrestrial Savior, and your excitement will attach itself to your earthly contacts. Tell your story and make it good—which simply means tell it like it is, because the truth about God is more than breathtaking. That truth, and your enthusiasm about it, will attract people, make them long to know more about your extraterrestrial Savior.

And really, that’s all you need to do. God Himself will do the rest, right from His throne in a place so far beyond this world that even the little green guys on Mars consider it extraterrestrial.

Now that’s something to be excited about!