We Need to Talk…

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We need to talk romance.

I’m all about romance. I love romance. I read romance. I write romance.

I’ve always had a fascination with this genre and it started with my first Danielle Steel book when I was probably about 13 years old. As I grew up, I read everything from New York Times Bestsellers to Austen to Chopin. I love everything from the funny, spunky heroines in Susan Elizabeth Phillips work to the historical heroes and heroines in Outlander and Into the Wilderness. I love to sprinkle my reading with paranormal romance and horror, I’m a big fan of Dracula as well as Anne Rice’s work. So with all these muses I’ve spread my wings and written in several of these genres.

But I think the main reason I write romance is my mom. It was her favorite genre and I don’t think I remember a time when she wasn’t reading a book with an embracing couple on the cover. I don’t know if she devoured romance novels because it was something lacking in her own life and I can’t ask her since she passed when I was only twenty. I can say she inspired my love of words and encouraged me by taking me to the library weekly. So I guess you could say my writing is an ode to my mother and whatever she loved about falling in love!

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This is my mom & I’m the cutie in the carriage!

With all that in mind, I’ve spent the beginning of the year working with my talented graphic artist to create a new website to showcase my work. I hope you’ll stop by and check out the results. Lot’s of wonderful pages for all my series. I can’t believe I’ve got four series going, my goal is to add another book in each series. If you’ve already read my work I’d love to hear your thoughts on where you’d like the characters and the series to go, I’m open to any and all suggestions, so leave me a comment on my contact page. I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting,
XOXOX

Elizabeth Marx Books

Who is your JUST IN CASE?

Everyone should have one person they can always count on, but Scarlett Marbry is parentless, she never knew her father and her mother committed suicide when she was only sixteen. Scarlett doesn’t think she can depend on anyone other than herself, but buried deep in her heart is the dream of Revell Marshall, the boy who’d always been there for her, the boy who’d been older and wiser, the boy she ran away from. Revell was like the chorus of a Sacred Harp song she could never forget and yet she couldn’t allow herself to even hum the tune. He was the dream buried beneath secrets she thought she’d never uncover … until now.
Continue reading “Who is your JUST IN CASE?”

Alex Volkow likes to tease Polly Anna, but he’s learning the pleasure of pleasing her…

 

We’re celebrating the upcoming release of  Just Close Enough by Elizabeth Marx, on December 1st.

A man out for revenge…
When Alexander Volkow raced into Crossroads, Alabama and bought up half of Broad Street, the entire town questioned his motives, but he didn’t care. He did it for one reason and only one reason — to find the man who went AWOL from the military with his brother, Kon. Knowing Kon, something is terribly wrong, and Alex is set on retribution.
But when all roads lead to the town’s favorite daughter, who just happens to be the missing man’s fiancée, Alex can’t help but be mesmerized by her alluring southern charm and sexy little snort.
A woman searching for a way out…

Continue reading “Alex Volkow likes to tease Polly Anna, but he’s learning the pleasure of pleasing her…”

Can he get JUST CLOSE ENOUGH to get his revenge???

 A man out for revenge…
When Alexander Volkow raced into Crossroads, Alabama and bought up half of Broad Street, the entire town questioned his motives, but he didn’t care. He did it for one reason and only one reason—to find the man who went AWOL from the military with his brother, Kon. Knowing Kon, something is terribly wrong, and Alex is set on retribution.
But when all roads lead to the town’s favorite daughter, who just happens to be the missing man’s fiancée, Alex can’t help but be mesmerized by her alluring southern charm and sexy little snort.
A woman searching for a way out…
No amount of bartending, snake charming, or organic cotton growing can stop the fear blooming inside Polly Anna Coots. She knows if her MIA fiancée is found alive, he’ll want to follow through with their marriage plans, but she has had a change of heart—and not just because of the new man she can’t get out of her head. If her fiancée returns and she reneges on their future, she’ll end up DOA.

Continue reading “Can he get JUST CLOSE ENOUGH to get his revenge???”

Holding On & Letting Go

I cradled your hand.
He cradled your head.
We’ll cradle your heart.
FOREVER.
When I laid my head on my pillow Saturday night, for the first time in eighteen years, five months and twelve days I didn’t know exactly where you were. Revisiting the final moments before I left you at college for the first time brought tears to my eyes and the watershed would go on for hours that night and bleed into the next day.
Intellectually I knew there were other short periods of time, times when you went to sleep away camp or leadership camp, when I didn’t know where you were at any given moment. During those short experiments, I knew you were coming back. This time I had to accept that you were on a road of your own making, enveloped in the first phase of your own life journey. An excursion filled with dreams and decisions that are rooted in a story we started long ago but that only you get to write the important chapters too.
I cried some more, feeling as if I’d lost you. I mean, I knew physically where I’d dropped you off. I had the empty boxes, the leftover bedding wrappings, and the dwindling bank account to prove that it really happened, that you were living on your own. It was as if by depositing you in that tiny room the size of a walk in closet that I’d given you to the world.

Continue reading “Holding On & Letting Go”

BEST BOOKSHELF IN THE WORLD

There is one bookshelf, more than any other, that I’d love to see my books on. A shelf at the Chicago Public Library. My love affair with libraries started when I was a child growing up in the Chicago and continues today because every city I visit I try to check out the library. The library was a refuge for me. It was a place where I could go and not only feel safe, but I was surrounded by worlds and dreams that at that time I felt out of my realm of possibility.

The Chicago Public Library is the public library system serving the City of Chicago. It consists of 79 branches, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the city.

The American Library Association reports the library holding 5,721,334 volumes, making it the 30th largest library system in the United Statesby volumes held. The library is the second largest public library system in the Midwest, after the Detroit Public Library.
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I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ________???

I think everyone should have…

…one person you can always count on. The person you can turn too in a time of trouble or loss. The person you know will always be there for you. This isn’t a ‘just in case’ in the sense of a back up plan, but JUST IN CASE as in the real deal. A person who’ll do anything for you no questions asked. It’s the kind of just in case that’s a daunting responsibility and requires the person to be solely committed to another person’s happiness.

But the question isn’t more complicated than that, the question is who can you always depend on? Who is the one person in the world who’ll always be there for you?

Who is your JUST IN CASE? Continue reading “I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ________???”

THE BEACH, BEACH READS & A GIVEAWAY!

Sandy toes and salty kisses….
You might think a Windy City writer doesn’t know much about the beach, but you’d be wrong. Chicago is on the Great Lakes and we have wonderful beaches along both the north and south shores of Lake Michigan. I grew up in the city and the place everyone wanted to be was at North Avenue Beach. Now I live about a mile from Sunrise Beach and Park on the North Shore.
The beautiful thing about Sunrise Beach is that it’s very quiet and peaceful. There is a huge bluff that overlooks the beach and traffic and cars remain above and you have to walk about two stories down to the beach. It’s nestled into this lovely little cove.

Continue reading “THE BEACH, BEACH READS & A GIVEAWAY!”

??? Friggatriskaidekaphobia ???

 

 

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

 

Ever suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia? Me neither, but friggatriskaidekaphobia is a fear of Friday the 13th.  Frigga is the name of the Norse goddess for whom “Friday” is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen.

Records of the superstition are rarely found before the 20th century, when it became common. So why do people think Friday the 13th is a fateful day? It’s probably the combination of two older superstitions: thirteen is an unlucky number and Friday is an unlucky day.

In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve Apostles, etc. Whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, breaking this rule of completeness. Another superstition, thought by some to derive from a Norse myth is that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
Continue reading “??? Friggatriskaidekaphobia ???”

WELCOME WITCHES

When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
’tis near Halloween.
~Author Unknown
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I wanted to do something a little different for my front stoop this Halloween. I’ve done more traditional fall pumpkin topiaries in past years but this year it’s witches. The directions for building a standard topiary is located below.
SUPPLIES: You’ll need 3 pumpkins in large, medium, & small sizes, wooden/bamboo kebab skewers, mallet & decorative accents, i.e. fall leaves, beads or garland.
Make sure the bottom pumpkin, or the largest one is large enough to fit into the bottom of your urn tightly, at least part of its weight should rest in the soil. Place this base pumpkin in the urn, you do not have to cut or gut this pumpkin and do no remove its stem or it will mold.
Select your middle pumpkin, make sure you have one with a nice stem, cut a circle in the BOTTOM of the pumpkin large enough that it can fit over the stem of the base pumpkin, remove all the seeds and guts from the pumpkin. Now place this second pumpkin on top of the base pumpkin and hammer the long kebab skewers into the second pumpkin until the skewer reaches the base pumpkin. Take your time and hammer the skewer all the way in, it will secure the second pumpkin to the base pumpkin. I usually use about six skewers around the perimeter.
Now repeat the same process to secure the top pumpkin as you did for the middle one, cutting out the BOTTOM and gutting it before securing this top pumpkin to the middle one with skewers. Now you can decorate for fall, Halloween or Thanksgiving. Use plastic leaves, cattails, branches, candy corn swags, fall colored garland or Halloween tinsel around the base and for the in between layers.
Instructions to complete the witch topiary.
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Once you have the topiary built you can decorate it. The first step was to add the witches hair I used the purple/glitter spray with spiral ends from the floral department. The spray comes about 3 feet long so I had to trim them down to about 10-12 inches.

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I used these greening pins to attach the hair to the pumpkin. You can find greening pins in the floral department of any craft store. It was easy to press the greening pins into the pumpkin most of the way and then you can use a hammer to secure them all the way into the pumpkin.

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Next, I attached the Witch’s hat that I found at Michaels using the same  pins. Then I added the spiders with webs for the witch’s eyes and another spider for the mouth.

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I added this wire enforced garland in between the pumpkins layers to dress the pumpkin topiary. Adding a witches broom with a holiday message for the final touch.

I used 21″ wide mesh ribbon to make the swag for the base of the pumpkins.  I gathered the fabric in my hand, twisting the pipe cleaner around the gathered fabric to make the swags. I used the same greening pins to attach the swag to the base of the bottom pumpkin.

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I hope you enjoyed this DIY project.

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If you love Halloween take a trip to Salem and check out the Celtic witches who’ve hidden there for hundreds of years. Once upon a time witchcraft was safe, but now something dark and sinister from the OtherWorld is crossing over and it’s up to Locke, Keleigh, and the Seer to find a long lost artifact before they plunge our world into chaos. If you’d like to learn more about the real witches I created please check out the Deadly Fairy Tales Series.

Thanks for stopping by!