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Book Review: Between Me and You by Allison Winn Scotch
Ben knows my story, Ben knows my soul. I want him to write for that, to that, to me. Because when he taps into me, and I braid myself to him, we are a galaxy unto and of ourselves. Sometimes she’s like a firework, explosive but still mesmerizing, and it’s not like I don’t want to sit back and watch the show. I like author Allison Winn Scotch for a number of reasons—her books are always fun and fast-paced escapes, often with a touch of the mystical (The One That I Want, Time of My Life) and tackle the popular topics of “What if?” I enjoyed her last novel, In Twenty Years, where…
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An Evening with John and Hank Green
Because I like to write young adult fiction, I also read a lot of it, too. I’m not crazy about dystopian literature or fantasy titles and gravitate more toward contemporary topics. I think this is what drew me to novelist John Green several years ago. I started hearing people talk about how great The Fault in Our Stars was, and then I saw it had been optioned for a movie. It was then that I picked up the book and starting reading the tale of Hazel Grace (cancer patient) and Augustus (cancer survivor). I cried for hours after finishing it and loved the movie just as much. From there I read Looking for…
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What Happened to Kyle Fleischmann?
I moved to the suburbs of Charlotte, N.C. in late 2003, and in 2007 I saw the original news stories when local resident, 24-year-old Kyle Fleischmann went missing. He has never been found and it’s a case that bothers me every time I think about it, mostly because it could have happened to anyone. How many times did I meet friends at bars when I was in my early 20s and walk in the dark to my car, alone? When you’re that age, you think you’re invincible. This case shows us our vulnerability. And also to be wary of walking alone, especially at night. It also inspired a flash-fiction short story I wrote…
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Book Review: 100 Days of Real Food-Fast and Fabulous
Anyone who knows me knows I love to cook. This wasn’t always the case–ask my husband about the slop I used to try and whip up for us when we first got married. There was a LOT of processed food and frozen dinners thrown in there. Then when I was pregnant with our first child and we were both working demanding jobs, there was mostly take-out. Slowly I started cooking more, little by little, but I was still using a lot of processed ingredients (like those yummy condensed soups) because that’s all I knew. Several years ago I came across the 100 Days of Real Food blog and was happy to find recipes…
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Podcast I’m Loving: For the Love by Jen Hatmaker
I’ve been hearing about how fun podcasts are for years, but kept telling myself “eh, those aren’t really my thing. I don’t like to listen to audio books, so it’s similar, right?” I started thinking more and more about podcasts after interviewing a local podcaster last year. She was a former radio announcer who also became a huge advocate for Type 1 diabetes when her son was diagnosed. After leaving her job at a radio station, she started putting together a podcast designed specifically to educate the community about Type 1 diabetes, talk about new medications and technology and that featured experts and some celebrities that have it. Victor Garber was an especially…
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Book Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
I remember running down a road on my way to a nursery of flowers. I remember her smile and her laugh when I was my best self and she looked at me like I could do no wrong and was whole. I remember how she looked at me the same way even when I wasn’t. I remember her hand in mine and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me. -Theodore Finch, All the Bright Places I don’t know any other way to describe this book except that it broke my heart in a million little pieces and left me crying for hours. You may read this and think, “Well,…
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The Name You’re Not Supposed to Call Women
A few months ago, I was watching something on TV when this PSA came on. It stopped me in my tracks, mostly because it brought some old memories to the surface. I’ve been thinking about writing about the topic of emotional abuse for a while, but wasn’t sure how to do it. I have one YA manuscript with a male character who is both physically and emotionally abusive to his girlfriend, but sometimes people don’t even realize they’re in a damaging relationship because they’ve never been hit, punched, slapped or kicked. At least, that’s why I didn’t realize I was in such a relationship when I was 17 years old. I thought…
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What Happened to Maura Murray?
When I first decided to start up my blog again I knew I wanted to designate one day to true crime posts. (Hey—I had to find some way of justifying my addiction to the unsolved/unresolved missing persons and cold cases, right?) For today’s post I had originally planned to talk about Kyle Fleischmann, a young man who disappeared in Charlotte, N.C. in 2007, but after I saw a new program scheduled to run on the Oxygen channel this weekend titled “The Disappearance of Maura Murray,” I changed my plans. For those not familiar with the case, on the night of Feb. 9, 2004, Maura Murray e-mailed her college professors at the University of…
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Book Review: The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand
Digging in with my afternoon cup of coffee! #elinhilderbrand #theidenticals #summerreading A post shared by rlroberson (@rlroberson) on Jun 15, 2017 at 1:21pm PDT “The most underrated force at work in the universe is that of coincidence. And yet who among us hasn’t been at its mercy?” – The Identicals Elin Hilderbrand is one of my favorite authors, and every summer I look forward to meeting a new set of characters in her latest novel. In my favorite book, The Blue Bistro, it was Adrienne, Thatcher, the mysterious chef Fiona, and the whole colorful front and back of the house staff at the restaurant. In The Castaways it was Tess and Greg, Addison…