Poppen's Thoughts on Writing and Stuff: Meet Angie Dobson - Holly Jolly Blog Tour

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Meet Angie Dobson - Holly Jolly Blog Tour - Week 4

Welcome to week four of our Holly Jolly Blog Tour. My guest today is Angie Dobson. It’s very exciting to have a book reviewer as a guest on my blog this week! So, let's turn this right over to Angie and let her tell you a little about herself and her thoughts on handling her reading/reviewing, traveling and absent family member during the holiday season. Sooo, here’s Angie ….

I am Angie Dobson, reviewer for LoveRomancesandmore. I spend most of my time being a mom to a 9-month-old girl, who is getting ready for her first Christmas and her first international trip to spend the holidays with our family in England! I also work full time in the office of a gift shop manufacturer - can we say chaos this time of year? I am also a rep for a direct sales company called Lindt Chocolates - but enough about my day-to-day life; let's talk about my favorite things for this post!

How do you manage your writing/reading schedule with all the other activities around the holidays?

I don't! Once December 1^st, hits, my life revolves around the holidays. I do everything I can to put everything else aside until January 2^nd each year. I work full time for a high end gift shop manufacturer – we make robes, bath wraps, and baby products. We do more business in the first 3 weeks of December than we do all year around. My whole life becomes on big chaotic blur. I also travel for Christmas each year – anyone have any advice on traveling from the States to Europe with an infant – and all her gifts in tow?

How about traveling during the holidays: do you go visiting or have you in the past? What has that been like? Have there been any absent family members during the holidays ? How has it effected your writing; have you used any of that in your stories?

I would not know what life was like without traveling during the holidays. Since I got married 13 years ago, I have never spent Christmas Eve in my own bed. My husband's parents are in England, most of my family are in West Virginia…And we live in Eastern Pennsylvania. We try to alternate years with them, so we can still get in a summer vacation without feeling guilty! Most often someone is missing from our families, and of course we have loved one who have passed that each year we stop and remember. I think our experiences shape who we are, and even though I don't think I have referenced our holidays in anything I have written, it certainly shapes my mindset and feelings as I read and review a novel – making me feel more deeply, remember and smile at different things that others might just gloss over, or feel even stonger.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Angie. Now, Angie and I would like for those of you who have visited my blog to share your comments on Angie’s thoughts. Also, please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on these questions. Every comment will give you a chance to win a fifty dollar Amazon gift certificate to be awarded at the end of our six week blog tour.

My thoughts on the above questions can be found on Regan Taylor’s blog this week - http://regantaylorsworld.blogspot.com . Also, you can visit all our wonderful blog hop authors and leave comments there to increase your chances to win the gift certificate. They can be found as follows:

Ann Tracy Marr - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ann-Tracy-Marr/114711658247?ref=ts

Christine London - http://www.christinelondon.com

Kelley Heckart - http://www.kelleysrealm.blogspot.com/

Angie Dobson – http://loveromancesandmore.com

Regina Andrews - http://worldofgood-gina.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

joye said...: Enjoyed reading the comments. I usually spend a week in San Diego after the holidays. We celebrate a belated Christmas. it is just as meaningful to us.
MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL

JWIsley(at)aol(dot)com; 10:02 AM
Gina said...: Hi Sharon and Hi Angie! Your post was great, I loved reading about how you completely put your writing aside and focus on the holidays - me, too. Your travel schedule is quite packed, though! That's a lot of traveleing but I'm sure it's loads of fun. Thanks for sharing. Hugs and Merry Christmas :-); 9:14 AM
Unknown said...: Angie, So much traveling! But, there is nothing like being with family, so enjoy. I liked your take on your priorities during the holiday season. Your daughter has a great mom. Thanks for sharing your holiday thoughts.; 9:55 AM

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Questions of the Week - WIN A $15 Amazon.Com Gift Certificate

In Sharon Poppen's latest release, Mama Played for the King, when Phillip is forced into the French orphanage system, he is farmed out to work in what industry?

- or -

In Poppen's best seller, Hannah, what is the name of the man Hannah spends her every waking moment trying to bring to justice.

The first correct answer to either question wins a $15 gift certificate at Amazon.com.' Send your answer as a comment to the most recent post for this blog.

Reader Lena Casper knew the name of Michael's home planet was Maurac in Poppen's novel, Regardless. Ms. Casper received a $15 Amazon gift certificate for posting that answer.

Story of the Week

The Band
By Sharon Poppen

When Buddy rounded the corner, he saw two of his band members pacing and stamping their feet to stay warm.

“Hey,” he announced his arrival. “Sorry, I’m so late. My mom was baking cookies until after eleven.
Couldn’t sneak out until I was sure she was asleep.”

“Dang, we’re freezing. You know old Jack won’t let us in until we’re all here,” said Glen.

Buddy hurried past them and rapped loudly on the service entrance to their local high school building.
Almost immediately, Jack, the black janitor, opened the door and hurried the young white boys inside.

“You’re late,” he reprimanded.

“Sorry,” said Buddy as he followed Jack through the hall and down into the boiler room in the cellar.

Jack’s son, Dwayne, was already set up and tuning his
guitar. Greetings were exchanged as the boys got their instruments ready. Buddy sang lead and played lead guitar. Dwayne played rhythm, Glen played bass, Ronnie was their drummer and all three did back-up singing.

Buddy glanced at his watch.

“Shoot! It’s already past midnight.” He looked over at Jack. “We still have to be out of here by two?”

“Pa,” begged Dwayne, “another half hour. Please?”

“Two-thirty, then you boys gotta get outta here.”

The boys gave Jack a thumbs-up as he closed the door to the almost soundproof boiler room. Jack listened for a bit as the boys began playing their version of “That’s All Right, Mama.” He smiled. Big Boy Crudup would be proud, but Elvis had nothing to worry about. Still, the boys were in tune and their voices rang with enthusiasm.

Jack went about his janitorial duties. He needed this job desperately and despite all the preaching and marching by Dr. King, even a janitor’s job was hard to
come by for a black man in Georgia in the late fifties.
\His wife was against him allowing the boys these secret practices. She just knew they’d be found out and Jack would be fired.

But Jack saw the want in his boy’s eyes and unlike most of the town, he didn’t think the new rock and roll was Satan’s music. In fact, he liked the way
gospel, blues and country music were being inter-woven to create this new fad that all the kids
were excited about. So, he let the boys sneak in every Sunday night for a couple hours of jamming. And who knows, new singers were being discovered every day. Jack felt the boys deserved their chance.

At two-thirty, Jack ushered the boys out and told them to be careful going home. And so it went for
a couple of years.

When the boys graduated, they loaded up Buddy’s old station wagon, said good-bye to their disappointed folks who hadn’t given up hope that their boys would get serious and go on to college, and headed for
Philadelphia. It seemed all the ‘discoveries’ were being made there.

Jack hugged his son, then spoke to all four boys. “Just remember, I want you boys to follow your dreams, but make sure that while you’re chasing them down, you don’t lose the real you along the way. Every morning, look in the mirror and be proud of the face staring back at you. You hear me?”

“I hear ya, Pa. I’ll do like you said,” said Dwayne while the others nodded.

Jack wished them well and waved good-bye. For a few years, he listened to all the news about rock and roll on their small black and white TV in the parlor and on the big red plastic radio in the kitchen.
He listened, but his boy and his mates were never mentioned.

*******

Thirty years later, the boys, now men, gathered for a final ‘thank you’ session with Jack. Dwayne greeted them at the side door to Rayne’s Funeral Home. He ushered them into the visiting room containing his father’s coffin.

Each man paid private respects to Jack, then Dwayne directed them to the musical instruments he had set up next to the coffin.

“Thanks for coming,” said Dwayne. “Pa was always our best and biggest supporter. Somehow, I know he’ll hear our efforts to say good-bye with the music he, and only he, allowed us to play all those years
ago.”

Buddy, now Dr. Bud Phillips, spoke for the others. “It’s our honor to get together for this special gig. Jack believed in us from the beginning. Always said we’d all do well, only we thought he meant with the band. What he really saw in us was a determination that would serve us in any field we chose.”

And so it was that Jack’s memorial service was highlighted by a band consisting of a doctor on lead guitar, high school teachers on rhythm and bass and a U.S. army major on drums.

The End

Poppen's Thoughts on Writing and Stuff

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Meet Angie Dobson - Holly Jolly Blog Tour - Week 4

3 comments:

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