Sherri Caldwell

101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes – FREE eBook (until 2/15/15)!

On the occasion of Valentine’s Day 2015 and the launch of a new ebook series:
The Rebel Housewife: Survival Guides (Surviving Happily Ever After!) with
101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes:
Romantic Tips & Tricks to FIRE UP the Passion & Romance in Your Relationship!

* * * Available FREE on Amazon Kindle, beginning Tue, Feb 10th – Sat, Feb 14th * * *

Well, with all THAT going on, it has given me pause to reflect on love and romance and relationships… and marriage. It seems incredible and weird and unbelievable that I can say: Prince Charming and I have been married for TWENTY-SIX years — wow — and still going strong!

Yes, we started off very, very young: I was just 20 and he was 22. It doesn’t even seem like that could be possible, then or now — we’re still way too young to be married that long, unruly silver hair (mine) and the accumulation of love and good food (about 20lbs for both of us), notwithstanding.

I have been married now for longer than I was not.

In the beginning, I was the Other Girl and he was the Wrong Boy — according to my mother, anyway. I liked the motorcycle and his ‘Bohemian’ lifestyle (living on ramen and mac & cheese on his buddies’ laundry porch — one guy lived on the pool table). We quickly disentangled ourselves from other relationships in the face of destiny and enjoyed our very own Summer of Love after my high school graduation in 1985. I was very young, at 17, and it took me a year or two to settle down and commit to monogamy long-term, with enough first-year-college experience and variety to know he was The One. I never expected it to happen so early, but we both just knew (and we were right!).

We married on August 6, 1988, in a garden courtyard on a threatening-to-be-rainy day at our beloved Manor Farm Inn in Poulsbo, Washington, and the Adventure(s) began…

More than a quarter-century and three nearly-grown children later, it still seems so new, to my constant amazement. We still love each other, more every day, and we still like each other, too. I keep thinking, twenty-five-plus years into this, I should have some wisdom, the benefit of happily-ever-after experience, advice to share; besides, you know, marry young and basically Imprint on each other.

People ask us the secret to a long and happy relationship?

For us, it’s all about new Adventures and the appreciation of Magical Moments; to create a life in which there are many of each. It keeps us together, always wondering (in a good way): What’s next?!

As for advice, back to basics, the foundation:
The Rebel Housewife: Survival Guides (Surviving Happily Ever After!)
101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes:
Romantic Tips & Tricks to FIRE UP the Passion & Romance in Your Relationship.

* * * Available FREE on Amazon Kindle, beginning Tue, Feb 10th – Sat, Feb 14th * * *

“The 101 Love Notes in this ebook are ‘quickie’ ideas — fun, easy, realistic, and, in most cases, FREE!!! — a starting place to spark your sexy, tickle your imagination and creativity, rev up your sense of fun and adventure, and help you develop, with your lover, a lifestyle of romance and passion.”

Whether you’ve been together two years, or twenty, or just starting out, 101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes has something for everyone.

Please take advantage of the Valentine’s Day Launch Promotion and download the ebook FREE on Amazon Kindle, February 10th – 14th. (If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a FREE Kindle Reader App for your computer, tablet, or smartphone on Amazon — a link to do that is at the top of the 101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes page on Amazon.)

Read, enjoy, have fun — freely share this article, or the Facebook posts and Tweets that will be coming out over the next few days, for Valentine’s Day — and, if you would, please take the time to rate the ebook and write a little review on Amazon.com. That would be AWESOME.

Live, Love, Laugh & LIGHT IT UP — HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!


For more fun & behind-the-scenes, connect with The Rebel Housewife on Social Media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheRebelHousewife
Twitter: @rebelupdate

Big Data Week – Atlanta – 2014 Keynote Panel: The Road Map to Implementing Big Data

 

Escape From Suburbia

ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA
by Sherri Caldwell – The Rebel Housewife®
https://rebelhousewife.com

The suburbs offered one form of happily-ever-after; but, at a certain point, we had to get out.

As far as suburbs go, “Stepford of the South” was very nice: big houses, two-and-even-three-car garages, enormous lawns. It was like having your own private park, front and back. Of course, the front yard was for show, purely ornamental. The back yard was for living.

Not that anyone wanted or needed privacy. Stepford was a community, a haven for People Like Us, with families and neighbors destined to become Friends For Life. It was written into the sales contract, and the neighborhood bylaws.

After all, we paid extra for upscale family storage. The corporate bosses of our hard-working commuter dads paid well to keep the family far enough away, with a large enough mortgage and household expenses, to ensure job dedication and healthy separation.

Every Monday, the husbands went to work. The children went to school. The wives kept house, shopped, socialized and maintained a busy schedule of community and school-related commitments, basically running the world from their designated PTA regiments.

In the afternoon, the children came home, briefly, and were then carpooled to their various activities. Dinner was inevitably a la drive-thru. The husbands came home late and scrounged for leftovers. Exhausted from the daily round, bedtime came early, after homework and school projects. Repeat through Friday.

The weekends were sacrificed to the Gods of Lawn Care– Olympics-worthy competition amongst the men, all weekend, every weekend.

My Prince Charming became a commuting, work-in-the-city, weekend-lawn-warrior stranger. When I realized I was spending far more quality time with my crazy neighbor, a doctor’s wife, than my own husband, the suburban fairytale started to break down.

The big, roomy house with lots of space became too much to maintain, to clean, to keep track of young people and family pets. I realized I hadn’t seen my middle child for five years in this mausoleum.

As for the lawn… You know, the city offers and maintains municipal parks. They are generally bigger and better-equipped. And you don’t have to feed every random child who wanders through.

Friends For Life and People Like Us had been selling points, but who can stand their own company interminably, without any variety? We began to plot our escape. From Soccer Moms and Minivans, to the diversity of the city, where we belonged.

The stranger we called Daddy transformed from an exhausted commuter/weekend warrior to a healthy, happy and involved father who walks to work and is home every night for dinner. All of a sudden, he’s always there, where and when he hadn’t been before. While it takes some getting used to, we got out just in time.

—
Sherri Caldwell, The Rebel Housewife®, is an author, columnist and reviewer at www.RebelHousewife.com. After many years as a PTA Mom in the suburbs, she now lives happily-ever-after with her husband, three teenagers, and Mocha-the-Dog, in a midtown high-rise in Atlanta, Georgia.

BOOKS: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment

“Stunning and Tragic…”

THE GODS OF HEAVENLY PUNISHMENT
by Jennifer Cody Epstein
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2013)

[Kindle & Trade Paperback, 400 pages, $15.95 U.S. – buy for less on Amazon.com]

Wow. Stunning and tragic, indeed.

I knew this book was not going to be a romance novel — quite suddenly — at the end of Chapter 3. (No spoilers: not a romance.) There are very few happy endings, but I guess that is to be expected, from a story set mostly in Japan, 1935 – 1945.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is historical fiction, another WWII novel, but very different: WWII through the glass, darkly, from the perspective of characters, both American and Japanese, in Japan. It is a unique perspective on Japanese-American relations and interaction before, during and after The Day That Will Live In Infamy (December 7, 1941) and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945.

In a novel you can’t put down, we follow the deeply interwoven stories of a young Japanese girl, Yoshi Kobayashi, and Billy Reynolds, an American young man born in Japan — their two families connected by the fathers’ construction projects in 1930s Tokyo — and a brave Army Air Force pilot who participates in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.

At times gut-wrenching, Jennifer Cody Epstein masterfully includes authentic details from painstaking research, and offers fascinating glimpses of historic figures and events. WWII, again, but with so many facets we never learned about in high school.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is, in many ways, horrible, but brilliant. Epstein casts a haunting spell, this book will stay with you.

ALSO SEE the Rebel Review of Jennifer Cody Epstein’s captivating earlier novel:
THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI (2008)
And a feature interview from 2008 on RebelHousewife.com:
Focus on the Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein

GA SB167 – Anti-Common Core in GA – GA State House Educ Committee Meeting

 

GA House Education Committee Hearing for SB 167 (Anti-Common Core)

I am not sure what I am getting myself into today, or how/if this will go, with CoverItLive Live Blogging, but we’ll see…

Join me later this afternoon for the highly-controversial Georgia House Education Committee Hearing for SB 167 (Anti-Common Core):

Wednesday, March 5, 2014 at 3:00pm – 5:00pm
Room 606 of the Coverdell Legislative Office Building (across from State Capitol)

It has been an interesting couple of days, regarding this bill, which has been passed by the GA Senate and will go to a vote in the GA House next Wednesday, March 12.

One place to start is with the actual reading of the now-18-page bill:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/display/20132014/SB/167

Unfortunately, it is not as easy or clear as a regular public citizen might hope, in trying to understand all the ins and outs.

Interesting analysis and coverage of the issue, with which I tend to agree, for the most part, can be found on the AJC Get Schooled Blog by Maureen Downey:
The anti-standards bill: A backwards state stepping further back as rest of world moves forward

If nothing else, these two sources alone will provide several hours’ worth of thought-provoking reading material before the hearing this afternoon. I’ll be there. The Live Blog will be here:

 

New on Rebel Reviews: THE GOLDFINCH

Happy New Year!!! If you have not heard about the latest novel by best-selling author Donna Tartt, you might have been living under a rock?! Probably not, and completely understandable, in the rush and clamor of the holidays and the start of a new year, but you won’t be able to avoid news of this literary sensation for long, which is such a rare and wonderful event in the world of books these days!

Although The Goldfinch was officially released on October 23rd, by Christmas 2013, it was already heralded on many reputable lists as the #1 Book of 2013.
It is extraordinary.

Enjoy the Rebel Review:

BOOK GROUP REVIEWS: THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt

BOOK GROUP REVIEWS: THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt

Starting the new year with a Book Group Review for one of the undisputed, and much-celebrated, Best Books of 2013:

“A Brilliant Kaleidoscope of a Novel…”

The Goldfinch: A Novel
by Donna Tartt

(Little, Brown and Company – October 22, 2013)

[Hardcover, 784 pgs, $30.00 U.S. – Buy for less on Amazon.com.]

I had the great pleasure of a sneak peek at The Goldfinch in September, before the official release in late October, thanks to my good friend at Little, Brown and Company, who offered galley copies to the Midtown Atlanta Book Group for preview. Because of its heft, at 700+ pages, we split the reading into two parts and extended the discussion over November and December, typically light months in book group participation.

The overwhelming enthusiasm for this book drove record attendance two months in a row, during the busy holiday season. The Goldfinch was so good, most of our book group members devoured it completely before the November meeting, and we still had plenty to talk about in December.

Midtown Book Group rated The Goldfinch 4.5 out of 5, which is an extremely high rating (Outstanding!) from this diverse, very literate, often highly critical club.

The Goldfinch gets off to an explosive start, literally, with a terrorist bombing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Out of the chaos, a young boy stumbles away with a priceless work of art, and begins a life adventure he could never have anticipated. We follow this young man, as he struggles to overcome tragic loss, dysfunction and deception, from New York to Las Vegas to New York to Amsterdam.

The Goldfinch is a brilliant kaleidoscope of a novel, where everything gets broken — smashed beyond repair at the beginning — and comes out irreparably skewed, patched back together in a dozen different ways. Donna Tartt offers many threads, masterfully woven, with a cast of characters both dazzling and desperate, from our unreliable narrator and his underworld friends to the denizens of New York society, high art, and the world of fine antiques.

Although it is a tragedy, start to finish, The Goldfinch is every genre rolled into one: mystery, romance, suspense, comedy, young adult, and international intrigue. At a time when readers are snacking on fluffy, low-cal supermarket bestsellers, Donna Tartt puts out a literary feast — a five-part meal, so varied, so delicious and satisfying, you’ll be exhausted, but you won’t be able to stop until the end.

New on Rebel Reviews: THE SALINGER CONTRACT

I’ve said I am giving up book reviews, other than blurbs and mentions on social media, which seem to generate more buzz these days, anyway. I have been working on other projects for actual money! revenue! consideration! More than just a free book, anyway. Rebel Reviews are time-consuming. But here’s one more, you just never know when I’m going to enjoy something enough to…

Check out the latest Rebel Review:
THE SALINGER CONTRACT by Adam Langer!

BOOKS: The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer

I’ve said I am giving up book reviews, other than blurbs and mentions on social media, which seem to generate more buzz these days, anyway. I have been working on other projects for actual money! revenue! consideration! More than just a free book, anyway. Rebel Reviews are time-consuming. But here’s one more, you just never know–
Disclosure: I did receive a free galley copy of The Salinger Contract from the publisher, for Kindle, via NetGalley.com.

“Bringing Sexy Back to Book Publishing?”

THE SALINGER CONTRACT: A Novel
by Adam Langer
(Open Road Media – September 17, 2013)

[Review based on Kindle version – buy for less on Amazon.com]

The Salinger Contract is a surprising, modern-day literary thriller, full of twists and turns involving a hapless, out-of-work, one-book author and former journalist (boy, can I relate!), a best-selling crime writer whose career is on the wane, and a shadowy criminal mastermind in possession of a priceless manuscript collection, written by some of the most famous and reclusive authors of all-time, including J.D. Salinger.

Although this is not normally my kind of book, not being a mystery or thriller girl, I was drawn in by the literary milieu, and, as we say from time to time: I couldn’t put the book down (or close the Kindle). I thoroughly enjoyed The Salinger Contract, and, reading the reviews and blurbs for Adam Langer’s work, I am looking forward to reading his other books, as well. Langer has considerable talent and craft as a writer, funny and fast-paced. He was able to seamlessly transition narrative voice between his main character (the hapless one-book author) and the best-selling crime writer’s outlandish adventure, and tie it all together in the end.

Langer writes about the new age in publishing, as it is now: the challenging current realities of writing, publishing and often-lackadaisical promotion and book signing events at dying bookstores. Things, they are definitely changing– a brave, new world, indeed.

The Salinger Contract is multi-layered and fast-paced, with interesting plots and colorful characters, several switchbacks and reversals toward the end. I am not giving away any of the several mysteries of the book to say:

The Salinger Contract is an ambitious, engaging attempt to bring sexy back to authors, writing and the publishing business– it is a suspenseful, thrilling adventure, and time well-spent in a dark and forboding alternate literary reality. Enjoy!