I’m playing today at Wild & Wicked Cowboys! Come join me. I’ve posted a sexy picture of a cowboy and need your help dreaming up a scene in a story to go along with it!

The contest winners are listed at the bottom of this post!

Another of our stops (this one planned because the Red-Headed Hellion knows I love dinosaurs) was Powell Garden in Missouri. It’s a lovely outdoor botannical garden which I might have stopped for anyway, but this summer they’re featuring the “Jurassic Exhibit”.

Plenty of pretty flowers and trees. Love them. Took pics of them.

We walked the couple-mile trail to find the dinosaurs lurking in the bushes. Rawr!

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I was away for a week on a trip that I wanted to be purposely spontaneous. Does that make sense? We had a destination—my brother’s house in Des Moines—but we wanted to be able to stop and explore whatever struck our interest.

The first day out, we drove north from Arkansas and were barely into Missouri when the sign off the Interstate read “Joplin”. We’d watched the newscasts of the aftermath of the powerful tornado that hit there and wondered just how bad it really was.

It was worse than we’d imagined.

Pigs flew. Don’t know why this struck me as wrong, but the only sign of damage at this restaurant was to…well…the sign!

Home Depot had their act together. Their entire store had been flattened, but they’d already had the wreckage pushed to one side of their huge lot and erected this large tent to provide building supplies for the area.

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First, thanks to everyone who posted a “Happy Birthday” wish yesterday, both here and on my FB wall! I was overwhelmed. Really. Humor aside, I really appreciated the thoughts.

Next. Sorry, y’all. I’m still trying to dig through all the work that piled up while I was gone. Give me another day and I’ll be back with pics and a bright shiny attitude. I’m a bit grumpy this morning because I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon until 2 AM trying to get the After Midnight Authors newsletter out the door, but the stupid program (it can’t be me!) kept hosing at the last moment when I was getting ready to send a test message. If there hadn’t been people sleeping in the house I would have screamed and kicked something really, really hard!

Anyway, I’ll just post a saying. Something I hope will inspire me to keep a positive attitude today. Perhaps it will help you too.

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except
what you’re going to do now and do it.
~William Durant

I’m back from my road trip, but pretty buried now.

It’s my birthday, and my family seems to have settled on a THOR theme. My parents gave me a Thor statuette for my bookshelves. My daughter gave me a special framed, limited edition snippet of film from the movie that’s accompanied by a Marvel comic picture. I’m thrilled with both! And lord, I’m afraid to start answering all the B-day messages waiting for me on Facebook—but thank you, EVERYONE, who left a note!

Yes, the two contests have ended. But I have a good 3000 emails to get through to see whether I missed any entries. So give me a day or two to catch up.

I still have to unpack and get my laundry done, but that has to wait. When I checked my telephone messages this morning, I discovered I missed a summons for jury duty, so I’m trying to get that sorted out so I don’t get arrested! AND I am working with friends of mine today to get a website up for a special contest that will benefit the fund for L.A. Banks’s medical bills.

Give me a day or two to catch up and I’ll announce winners and post pics of my trip. In the meantime, I can’t wait to catch up with you all! Thanks to my guests and to everyone who sent me their good wishes!

Just a quick note. I’m heading this morning for home. Last leg of the trip. Yesterday, we spent the night at one of the most haunted places in America—and I do have a couple of stories to tell—but that will wait until I’m home.

In the meantime, answer a question.

Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever had a spooky, unexplainable experience?

Remember, the Promo Ho and Cabbage Rose Fairy contests continue!

Reader Gold – Series/Serials

I’ve been reading a lot lately and I love series/serials so I have been rereading my favs. I’ve written on my own blog about my love of series and serials. What they are and how I feel about them. Almost monthly there are so many books coming that are part of a series/serial.

First here are my definitions of them both:

Series ~ Taige Crenshaw Definition:
Novels that has a related story theme but each one is complete in and of itself.

Serial ~ Taige Crenshaw Definition:
Novels that feature/follows the same main character/s yet are still a fresh story each time.

No matter which way you slice it I find whether it is a serial or series I enjoy writing stories like this. It gives me room to stretch my mind, push my characters to give me more and wallow in there adventure even more. Although I enjoy these stories I don’t usually start writing with the intention of it being a series/serial sometimes it just happens to evolve that way.

I write what I love to read and I’m one of those readers that wondered what is next for such and such main character. Or what happened to this sub – character that I liked in this or that novel. I go hunting to find more and when I find it I feel like I’ve struck READER’S GOLD. I jump up and down and shout in glee. LOL.
I’ve been known to search for years to get that book to complete a series/serial I was reading. Hey I’m a dedicated reader and I want the complete set of my series/serial.

That is what I want my novels to be to my current and future readers ~ Reader’s Gold. No I don’t want you the reader to wait a long time for my books but I want you to be so drawn into the worlds that I create you can’t wait to see what happens next.

This is what Reader’s Gold is all about. As my thoughts of Reader’s Gold evolved I thought of all the author’s who have some wonderful series/serials that I feel are Reader’s Gold. They line my bookshelf’s (online and print) and I go looking for them when they are released.

I’m sure most of you have a little Reader’s Gold on your bookshelf so come on and share. Give me some new Reader’s Gold to find.

Taige Crenshaw is a multi-published author with books available at Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Liquid Silver Books, Loose Id, Total-E-Bound and Summerhouse Publishing. Taige has been enthralled with the written word from time she picked up her first book. It wasn’t long before she started to make up her own tales of romance. With novels set in today, in alternate dimensions, or in the future she writes with adventure, fun sassy heroine’s, and sexy hero’s.

Always hard at work creating new and exciting places Taige can be found curled up with a hot novel with exciting characters when she is not creating her own. Join her in the fun, frolic, interesting people and far reaches of the world in her novels. You can find out more about Taige at her website: https://www.taigecrenshaw.com or blog: https://www.taigecrenshaw.com/blog.

Silken Inferno – When the past comes calling it brings unexpected revelations that must be faced. Buy Here at Summerhouse Publishing.