Pondering Life’s Milestones

Summer's winding down. How are you going to spend these last weeks of summer? Vacation plans? Preparation for the new school year?

I'm getting ready to send my baby off to college in less than a month. Hard to imagine that day has arrived.

Milestones. Life is full of them. We can anticipate them, or dread them, or enjoy them as they come.

What milestones are approaching in your life? How do you feel about them?


Laura
Greenville, Texas
I Was Just Thinking . . . 
Legal Blog: Real Estate Law Blog
Twitter: @LauraMcMom
Email me

Book Review: Love in Disguise by Carol Cox – plus FREE book drawing

Be sure to read to the end of this post to find out how you can win
a free copy of
Love in Disguise by Carol Cox
.

Ellie Moore is an aspiring actress in 1880s Chicago. While she waits for her big break, she works as an assistant to a star on the rise. When her promised opportunity fails to materialize, she's left betrayed . . . and unemployed. Desperate for both a job and a chance to prove her acting skills, she finagles her way into a job as an undercover operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The Agency sends her to Arizona to do investigate a series of mysterious thefts at the silver mines there. Disguised sometimes as Lavinia Stewart, a middle-aged widow, and sometimes as Jessie Monroe, Lavinia's dazzling young niece, Ellie goes about trying to solve the mystery of who's stealing the silver shipments. Her task is further complicated, though, by the growing mutual attraction between Jessie and mine owner Steven Pierce. And when the thieves come after Lavinia and Jessie, Ellie finds she might not be safe no matter which character she plays. Soon she faces a true dilemma: if she blows the case, she'll never get another assignment from the Agency, but if she doesn't come clean with Steven, she could miss out on a chance for love.
Carol Cox's Love in Disguise (Bethany House 2012) is a fun read with a great mixture of romance, mystery, and humor. Cox skillfully creates memorable characters you care about in a story that keeps you turning the pages. I especially appreciated how deftly she was able to evoke the era and the setting of an Arizona mining town in the late 19th century. Ellie's escapades, as she switches from one character to another–and tries to keep the townsfolk from discovering her secret–had me chuckling, but the novel also offers some food for thought as Ellie discovers both the freedom and perils of concealing her true identity. Cox hopes that readers also perceive a deeper significance to Ellie’s plight. She explains, “Fear of acceptance is a very real issue for many of us. Much like Ellie, we tend to wear a disguise of some sort rather than letting others see us as we really are.” Cox hopes her readers come away from the novel pondering their own true identity, and that, like Ellie, they can find the courage to let that be the face they show to the world.
I recommend Love in Disguise for readers who enjoy clean, entertaining historical fiction with a touch of romance. Love in Disguise is available at the Bethany House website, on Amazon, and at your local bookstore.

Carol Cox is the author of more than 25 books. A third-generation Arizonan, she's intimately familiar with the setting of Love in Disguise. You can learn more about Carol and her fiction at her website. You can also connect with Carol on Facebook.

Would you like a chance to win a free copy of Love in Disguise? Leave a comment below with your email address and tell me why you'd like to receive a copy. I'll announce the winner by August 15. Be sure to subscribe to my blog (simply put your email address in the subscription box at the upper right corner of the blog) so you don't miss the notification of the winner!

Laura
Greenville, Texas
I Was Just Thinking . . . 
Legal Blog: Real Estate Law Blog
Twitter: @LauraMcMom
Email me



Disclosure: I received my complimentary copy of Love in Disguise from the publisher in exchange for my agreement to publish an honest review of it.

Have They Found the Secret to a Happy Marriage?

empathy: ˈempəTHē
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

According to this article, empathy is one of the characteristics of the happiest marriages. This ability to understand your spouse's feelings, to get outside your own perspective and feel what your partner is feeling, is key to the longevity and happiness of marriage.

It takes a certain level of maturity to empathize with another person, to truly understand someone else's feelings when they are different from your own. It takes self-control to stop yourself when you want to react, and instead to listen behind a person's words to hear the real message, the feelings driving the words.

When I read the article that I've linked to above, I thought, “Yes. That's so true.” How many marital arguments would end differently if each person could pause, rewind, and look at the situation or issue from the other person's perspective, comprehend the other person's feelings?

kindness: ˈkīn(d)nis
noun
the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.

A link within that article takes you to yet another article, in which the author describes ten things that happy couples do well. One action that caught my attention: kindness. Happy couples, the article says, treat each other like best friends, even when they disagree.

Empathy. Simple kindness.

Isn't that what we all really need from each other?

If we each could master those two skills–or at least intentionally work on developing them–how much happier our marriages would be!

If you're married, or might be someday, I encourage you to click on the links above (or below) and read these two short articles.

What do you think? How often do you purposely try to understand your spouse's feelings about an issue or situation in which you disagree? Does it help?

Laura
Greenville, Texas
I Was Just Thinking . . . 
Legal Blog: Real Estate Law Blog
Twitter: @LauraMcMom
Email me

Raising Daughters? Brilliant Words from Gypsy Mama — A Link

I encourage all my friends who have daughters to read this: Raising a girl: 100 things I want to teach my daughter

And then come back and tell me . . . what are the most important lessons you want to teach your daughters? What do you wish you had learned when you were a little girl?

Laura
Greenville, Texas
I Was Just Thinking . . . 
Legal Blog: Real Estate Law Blog
Twitter: @LauraMcMom

Email me

Money and Blogging

BLOG IDEAS
BLOG IDEAS (Photo credit: owenwbrown)

I recently read a guest post on a well known blog hosted by a blogger who's often cited as an expert in the “business” of blogging. The guest writer was talking about the steps to turning a blog into a profitable business, and one of the steps he talked about was “monetizing” the blog.

He mentioned that some bloggers he knows resist the idea of monetizing their blogs for fear of driving readers away. In response, he said the following:

Who says selling chases readers away? Monetizing a blog is as important as setting up and updating the blog. Without this, people won’t take you seriously. You’ll be regarded as a newbie at worst, and an amateur at best.

Am I reading that correctly? Is he saying that monetizing your blog is necessary to be legitimate as a blogger?

As far as I can tell, the sentences I quote above refer specifically to running ads on your blog. I assume this, because the paragraph about “monetizing” was part of a larger section about profiting from your blog, and “monetizing” was only one way to profit (along with using your blog to get a job or to sell products).

There is a whole industry made up of people (apparently mostly in their early 20s) whose sole job is blogging. They make their living by blogging–mostly about how to make money by blogging. And I've seen lots of blog posts and ebooks that recommend monetizing your blog as a source of income. Some of those recommendations come from writers that I respect, whose primary business is writing and speaking on substantive topics and for whom their blogs are a secondary outlet and a means for interacting with their fans. A lot of those recommending monetization, though, are these young “professional bloggers.”

In all cases, they seem to think that it's a good idea to sell ad space on your blog and/or to join affiliate programs for which you get a percentage of any sales resulting from links on your blog.

On my own blog, I have experimented with the Amazon Affiliate program–with some reservations. Frankly, I'm not comfortable with selling stuff, and I don't blog to make money. I blog with the hope of communicating, connecting, and interacting with other people. (Which is not to say that I think people who sell things on their blogs are wrong!) I signed up for the program because so many of the pros recommend doing it, but I've only used it a couple of times, and then only to create links for books that I was reviewing or recommending anyway.

But as for selling ad space or posting affiliate ads . . . I personally am just not comfortable with it. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but honestly, I find it hard to believe that it would be worthwhile. Apparently lots of people read these ads and buy the stuff they promote. (At least, I assume that's the case, because if it's not profitable, people wouldn't be doing it, right?)

But I personally never (never) read the ads on any of the many blogs that I read.

Never.

And contrary to the opinion quoted at the beginning of this post, the existence or absence of ads on a blog has virtually nothing to do with whether I view the blog as authoritative or worthwhile, or how much I respect the blogger.

I say “virtually nothing” because if anything, the more ads a blog features the less likely I am to take the blog seriously, and the less credibility I'm likely to give the blog's author. If I like a blogger's content over time, I might buy that blogger's book from a link on her site, but I simply never even look at any of the sidebar ads on even my favorite bloggers' sites.

What about you? Have you ever bought something that was advertised on a blog's sidebar? How do you feel about ads on blogs? And if you're a blogger yourself, what's your position on monetizing your blog?


Laura
Greenville, Texas
I Was Just Thinking . . . 
Legal Blog: Real Estate Law Blog
Twitter: @LauraMcMom
Email me

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