Today's guest: Georgia Bockoven
Why we love her: We love the way she writes. Her novels pull you in and hold you tight!
Her latest: Carly's Gift
(Out September 17th!)
The scoop: What's in the past is over and done with . . . or is it?
Sixteen years ago Carly Hargrove made a decision that would irrevocably alter her life. With little comprehension of the life-long consequences of her actions, she trades her own future happiness to protect the man she's loved since kindergarten, David Montgomery.
With an ocean separating them, Carly builds a life for herself without David. She's the mother of three, lives in a beautiful house, and is married to a man who comes home every night—even if most of those nights he drinks too much. What more could she want?
Her answer arrives on a cold fall day when David shows up at her door. In town for his father's funeral, he has come to see Carly one last time, hoping to rid himself of the anger that still consumes him.
Instead, he is drawn into a web of secrets that rekindles the fierce need he once felt to protect Carly. He becomes caught up in her life in a way he never could have imagined—a way that will bind him to her forever.
Our thoughts: A beautiful story!
Giveaway: ONE copy. Just leave a comment to be entered. We'll select the winner on Sunday, September 15th after 12pm PST.
Where you can read more about Georgia: Her website and Facebook.
LIZ & LISA PRESENT...GEORGIA BOCKOVEN'S 5 DO'S AND A DO-OVER
Do's
DO--hug a tree. I don’t mean this as flippantly as it sounds. If you do it right, you’ll be there long enough to hear a songbird calling, or a breeze rustling the leaves. You’ll feel the texture of the bark against your cheek and smell a woodsy fragrance that, for a moment, sends you back to a childhood where climbing trees made perfect sense. If you’re a writer, and the day ever comes that you write about a young woman fighting to keep the city from cutting down the tree her father planted the day she was born, you can draw on the feelings you had the day you hugged your own tree.
DO--avoid reflective surfaces on a bad hair day. Why would you want to be reminded of something negative that you already know and ruin a perfectly good day? This can be adapted to fit a lot of situations--like deleting from your address book all those crazy-making people who drag you down. Where is it written that you have to spend time with the crazies when you hardly have time for the friends who brighten your day?
DO--expose yourself . . . to new things. (With your clothes on, preferably.) I thought I didn’t like country music until I wrote a book about a country music singer and spent almost an entire year in that world. I was convinced I hated brussel sprouts without ever having tasted one. Come on--a vegetable that looks like a mini cabbage and makes the house smell like dirty socks when it’s cooking? How could this be a good thing? It was, and is.
DO--buy the orchid you saw in the grocery store. If you’re having trouble rationalizing the indulgence, run the numbers. Fifteen dollars over three months works out to sixteen cents a day. A bargain! This works with other purchases, too, like shoes, and jewelry, and for me, cameras.
DO--venture out of your comfort zone. While there’s no way I’m going to take up tight-rope walking--I was born with a really poor sense of balance--I will never forget sitting in the middle of a herd of forty wild elephants, some of them less than ten feet away. Gift yourself with an adventure. Explore. Make a new friend. Live, don’t just exist.
DO-OVER
I think Maya Angelou has this one down pat. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Thanks, Georgia!