Dede Sophie

CONGRATS TO LUCKY WINNERS – DARCY & DAVID!   Readers, please join me in once again welcoming Donna VanLiere, author of The Christmas Secret who’s guest blogging here today! You can read a previous Q&A with Donna here. The Christmas Secret (304p, St.Martins Press) , introduces readers to Christine Eisley, a hard-working single mother of two young children. With a difficult ex-husband, a stressful waitressing job and an ever growing mound of bills to pay, Christine is at her wit’s end. After saving the life of an elderly employee of Wilson’s department store, she sets into motion a series of events that will test her strength, loyalty and determination — all the while setting her on the path to finding true love…. I have three children (8, 6 and 3) but I am not a single mother. I have a husband who helps me juggle the busyness. During that week here or there when he goes out of town and I’m left to make breakfast, pack lunches, drive the kid...

Have you ever picked up a book by an author you’ve never heard of, written in a genre that’s not your usual cup of tea and with a title that reminds you of a cheesy sci-fi movie…and then ended up loving it? That’s how it was with me and ‘The Martian’. The story is pretty straightforward. A manned mission to Mars goes wrong and the crew have to flee the surface in haste when a storm threatens to destroy their take-off vehicle. In the chaos, botanist/mechanical engineer Mark Watney is injured. Believing him to be dead, the crew takes off. However, Watney is still alive. And he has every intention of “staying alive” (a song our hero adopts as his theme song – yes, Watney is funny that way). Mark Watney becomes the first Martian – a good humored, resourceful and the one and only resident of Mars. How he survives on a freezing cold planet with no help in sight and no way to communicate with Earth makes for a terrifically compelling...