The Bee's Knees by Bea Tifton

 

For months, I’d been ignoring them.

Just walking past as they hung around a small opening between the brick and the soffit board that makes up the covered porch of my modest mid-century home.  But, I worried about people being attacked and  about the damage they could wreak. So, finally, after I saw an ad in Facebook Marketplace, I contacted someone who could help me. 

I had bees. I walked past them, as I’ve said, for months, and did not ever get stung. They seemed to be most active just before a storm or when I turned the porch lights on for my dogs’ last foray of the evening into my backyard. But, I’d heard they could really damage my house and my lawn guys entered on that side of the yard so I thought I should take care of it. 

When I messaged the apiarist, Phillip, he informed me that it would have to be done within the next couple of weeks or the bees would not be able to settle well enough in their new hive to survive the winter. I know how important bees are to our food chain and I don’t like to kill things, so I agreed to let him come the next day. He was very professional and arrived right on time. I showed him where the bees lived and he used a thermal camera to pinpoint where they were.

There was quite a bit of yellow. Many heat-containing little organisms. Hmmm. Concerning, but seeing the thermal images was neat. Phillip said that with my permission, he’d get right to work. It would probably take hours. 

I agreed, and when he said he needed to go get his shield, I knew it was time for me to beat a hasty retreat as I didn’t have any bee protection gear. I was sorry I wasn’t going to get to see the process, but after avoiding bee stings for so long I was reluctant to break my lucky streak. Over the next few hours, I heard all sorts of odd sounds, wood being pried away (Yikes!), scraping, vacuuming, and one very loud yell followed by an expletive my Mamaw would have made me cut a switch for uttering. Yes, Phillip got stung. It’s an occupational hazard, I guess. He later told me that he’d been stung over 100 times and that it only hurt for about five minutes, with no adverse reactions as his immunity had been built up.

Phillip sent me a couple of progress reports. One message said, “Yup. You’ve got bees. Looks like a big hive. Usually, people don’t notice them until one day, Boom! They see some swarming and realize they’ve got bees.”

The next picture caption read, “From the dark color of the comb, I’d say they’ve been here for a year. I estimate that you have about 30,000 bees.” Wow. I couldn’t even wrap my head around that number. While I walked past them for months, the little buggers had busily been making honey behind my soffit. Luckily, the damage was minimal and Phillip assured me he would fix it.

Phillip did his mysterious things for six hours. It was one in the morning before he said he was finished for the night.  The next day, I peeked over to see how it looked. He had sealed the hive for the most part, but a piece of honeycomb was on the ground and a few bees were frantically flying around it, probably trying to figure out what the heck happened. 

 The next night, earlier this time because he didn’t need to wait until the bees were inactive, Phillip returned and vacuumed out the stragglers, then put everything together again. He gave me a jar of honey as a souvenir. It tastes great, strong and wild. Some people believe that it’s good for one’s allergies to eat local honey. I couldn’t have gotten any more local, but in the future, I’ll be content to get my honey from the farmer’s market. 

 

Book Viewing Preference by Paty Jager

 

I have been publishing ebook, print books, and audio books. I do sell more ebooks than the other two, but I see where a good number of people still prefer print books over the ebook and audio. Then there are those who prefer audio because they can experience more books because they can listen while doing other things.  

For me, there is some convenience in having ebooks. An ereader weighs less than several books, which is nice when traveling, but my ereader always seems to die and I'm left with nothing to read until I can get it charged back up, which makes me wish for a print book.

I love print books. Because, well, they are print. You can hold them and riffle the pages. I always purchase used books for research books. Because I highlight them, bookmark them, and sometimes even scribble in the margins. I like being able to look at a tab I've added to the book and flip the information I want without having to scan or scroll down a screen. 

I like audio books when I walk. Getting caught up in a story, allows me to walk longer without getting bored. Sometimes, I'll listen to an audiobook when I clean house. Again, it makes the boredom of a not fun job, more interesting. 

What is your favorite type of book? Ebook, Audio, or Print and why? 

I have free audio book codes for either a Shandra Higheagle Mystery or Gabriel Hawke Novel for one of the people to says they like audio books in the comments. 

OR if you pick ebooks as your favorite in the comments, I will pick a person or two to win a free ebook, their choice from my website. 

OR if you pick print book as your favorite in the comments, I will pick a person or two to win a copy of my just published print copy of the first 3 Tumbling Creek Ranch novellas. 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 47 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

 blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest   / Bookbub

GENRE - Where did the word come from?

 Hi and Welcome to Smart Girls Read Romance!

We hear the word genre a lot these days, whether it’s in relation to films, music or literature. Have you ever wondered what “genre” means or from where it originated? I have, so I decided to do some research. There are two main categories within literary genre; fiction and non-fiction, and within these are numerous sub-categories, which we know as genres.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes genre as:

“Genre” - French genre, “kind” or “sort. Latin genus. Greek: any category of literature, music or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.”

So, we know that genres tell us about the nature of something, but where does the word originate?

The word’s roots lie all the way back in ancient Greek, when the now famous Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato devised a system for classifying literature. They felt that as more and more literature was being produced it was essential to divide it into ‘genres’ in order to simplify and keep track of them. Literature originally only had three genres: poetry, drama and prose, which is obviously a whole lot less than the number of genres we have today! As even more literature was produced, with wider themes, more in-depth styles and specific speech and language patterns, there became the need for more genres to be introduced. Today, we have the following list of genres. (If I’ve missed any leave it in the comment section).

Drama, Poetry, Fantasy, Comedy, Fable, Romance, Horror, Fairy, Science Fiction, Short Story, Real Life, Folklore, History, Tall Tale, Legend, Mystery, Mythology, Adventure, Classic, Crime, Magical Realism, Metafiction, Western, Tragedy

These genres can also combine to form sub-genres, for example a comedy may have tragic elements to it and would therefore be categorized with the sub-genre of ‘tragicomedy’.

Now for MY genre of the day, which falls into the Romance and Mystery categories:

Season, Unforgettable

Romance/Mystery (sub-genre Thriller)

(Finalist Independent Author Network Book Award)

Would you forsake your mother to save the woman you loved?

Season Scrimshaw isn't selling the land her parents left her when they died, not even to the gorgeous Rann Brogan who saved her life in the forest. Especially not after she finds out he was in the woods surveying her property.

Rann's mother, Charlotte, owns a large land development company. She wants Season’s property to put up a strip of luxurious, lakefront condos and Charlotte always gets what she wants. She sends Rann on a mission to seal the deal. To say Rann and his mother have had a normal mother/son relationship would be a stretch…a big stretch, but he’s always done her bidding.

This time it’s different. Rann hasn’t been able to get the beautiful Season out of his mind. While on his mission to secure the property, he realizes how much Season loves the land, and…he realizes somewhere along the line, Season has stolen his heart.

He discovers his mother will go to any length to get what she wants…including murder. Lives spiral out of control, secrets and lies take center stage. Rann is forced to choose between his mother and the woman he loves.

And he’s forced to become as dangerous and as lethal as Charlotte.

 Raves for Season, Unforgettable

"I love how the story goes from romance 2 thriller. This book I could not put down & highly recommend 2 anyone!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes romance, thrillers, and books where the bad guy gets what he deserves.” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Oh My!! I Loved this story!!  A Must Read that’s going on my keeper list!” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

DOWNLOAD HERE FOR .99 CENTS 

Thanks so much for stopping by Smart Girls Read Romance. See you next month!

 

My Little Country School ~ Sherri Easley

I grew up in the country in North East Texas and went to school in a small community called Argo. This little school only went to seventh grade. After that, we had to go into “town” to finish.

The school consisted of a white elongated building in the front with bathrooms in back. I still remember the huge tin building that served as the gym with the wooden flooring for the basketball court and a tall stage toward the end. The older kids carried on the tradition of telling the dark tales about the horrors of the dressing rooms and the void beneath the stage, where presumably monsters lurked.   

The Argo School today

The School house building was divided into three sections, first through third grade in one room, fourth through sixth the opposite and in the center was the cafeteria. There was a small stage and a huge heavy maroon curtain separating it from the kitchen area. This is where the seventh graders sat.

Behind the buildings was a field otherwise known as the playground and a baseball diamond. It was dotted with huge old oak trees and the acorns were perfect for making acorn people. Being an introverted child, I spent much of my time sitting near the trunk of one of those trees, entertaining myself while others played.

It was relatively wild and rugged and one year, my brother was bitten by a non-venomous snake while playing under one of the oak trees.

We were barefoot country kids. The grounds closest to the school had asphalt, so most of us had skinned knees from running around the building and crashing into someone else or falling.

When the seventh-grade girls were done with their work, they went behind the curtain into the cafeteria to help clean the kitchen, washing down the tables, washing dishes and sweeping.

It wasn’t uncommon to have to have squirrel stew for lunch, if the cook, Miss Niobe’s husband had killed a batch. In addition to cook, she was also our basketball coach and bus driver.

Everyone played basketball, baseball and track, starting in fifth grade. The fifth and sixth grade girls were in the pep squad and the seventh-grade girls were cheerleaders. Our colors were maroon and gold and we were the Rebels. 

 Me as Chee

My last year at the school, there were only 52 kids in attendance, first through seventh grade. The school didn’t offer kindergarten. That year, I was in a big class of nine. I always tease and tell people I graduated first in my class. I just leave out the part about my class only having nine students. Three grades above me, there were only three kids and there was at least one year with only one. I can’t imagine the trauma of being the only person my age going through a grade.

A few years after I left Argo, all the country schools were shut down and the children were bussed into the larger city. They called it consolidation. I have so many fond memories of attending this little country school and learned some of life’s greatest lessons here.

WHAT'S IT WORTH?

By Caroline Clemmons

Don’t you love great photos? I used to take tons of photos but somewhere along the way I stopped. Oh, I still love them, I just forget to snap them. Probably it’s because I’m not lugging my camera around. I forget my phone takes excellent pictures.

I also love old photos. I have great photos going back way over a hundred years. The oldest is of an ancestor of my father’s and is a woman wearing a Civil War era dress. There’s no date given on the photo. Maybe it was several years after the war and she simply didn’t have anything new to wear. 

Above, Hero and I on trip to Tennessee

I’ve become the family caretaker of old photos because I’ve written several family books. I didn’t start out to write several. My dad asked me to write one about how his family came to be in Texas. I collected information on that for decades. Probably I still would be if Ancestry.com hadn’t gone digital and without the internet and email. Research is much easier now days.

Old Tin Type

In the meantime, my mother-in-law asked me to put together a book about her life for her grandchildren. A couple of books were done by someone on her father’s ancestry so she just wanted her ten grandchildren to know about her life (and her siblings and nieces and nephews). Ah, but then I had to do one for my mom to keep things even. Both mothers were in the same church Sunday School class—there might have been a teensy tiny bit of competiveness there. I’m so glad I did both books and they saw them years before they passed. My dad didn’t get to see the longer book my brother and I did on his family.

1885 Nancy and William Johnson

Anyway, I have a lot of family photos and stories. Some of the stories I couldn’t use because the story is “a secret” and the people involved are/were still alive. You simply can’t divulge things told to you in confidence. Too bad, because the secrets are usually the most interesting. But I digress.

My point is that photos add a lot to our lives. Seeing photos of places we’ve traveled reminds me of the pleasure of the trip. Photos of our flowers or pets are fun to see. I enjoy knowing how my ancestors looked as well as facts about them. Someday future generations may want to know about us.

Document the many parts of your life with photos. I’ve heard each one is worth a thousand words.