And here’s a little, well, a LOT, of information about Book Two in the Deauville Drive Families series.
Inspired by Cathy Lamb’s childhood, the amusing adventures of the Rossi and O’Brien families continue in Book Two of the Deauville Drive series.
1979. Deauville Drive, Huntington Beach, California. Ten kids, a singing mermaid, hundreds of pies, and a body in the kitchen.
Jesse O’Brien, twelve-years old, announces to her stricken mother, Annie, that the motionless man looks “pregnant” and may not be breathing as he lies corpse-still on the laminate floor. Annie clocked him with her favorite red pie pan which is now, sadly, cracked into tiny pieces.
Jesse knows that her mother will dearly miss the perfect pie pan, but the pregnant looking man, a sneaky friend of Annie’s weasel-face soon to be ex-husband deserved it, as he had angrily thundered through their screen door like a dump truck and Annie had protected them both.
Unfortunately, Annie is frazzled and upset. Clocking a man had not been on her day’s agenda! It had not been on her list of things to do!
Furthermore, there had been no sign of this upcoming calamity. Why, there were freshly baked apple and peach pies on the table, along with a Ball jar full of roses, with hummingbirds whizzing around and birds chirping on a fine blue afternoon.
With five kids, an upcoming divorce, a full-time job waitressing at Robby’s Big Boy, and a growing pie business, Jesse knew that her mother had enough on her plate. Falling in love with Vietnam veteran Tommy Rossi, who lives next door in a sprawling white house on an old orange orchard with his five kids offered up a sweet, if sometimes flustering, complication.
And now this! A body in their pretty yellow kitchen!
As Porky, the talking parrot, declares, “I want a beer!” and “I’m a cat!” Jesse and her close-knit family try to navigate a life that has been recently turned upside down and shaken.
The hilarious cast of Deauville Drive returns with quirky neighbors, a friendly stripper, and Liliana the singing mermaid, the one who brings peace and joy to all – unless she’s scaring the wits out of Annie’s almost-ex-husband with a high-pitched C note blast, right in his ears.
I have a book coming out soon which means I can stress-eat chocolate mudslide ice cream with melted chocolate chips at 9:00 in the morning while sluffing around in my fashionable duck slippers and muttering to myself in fear, wondering if my book is terrible, and getting confirmation from not one, but TWO cats that it is, indeed, terrible, and I am wishing that I could fly to Alaska and disappear like a hermit which I won’t do because with my luck I will be gnawed on by a snaggle-toothed bear with bad breath or hit by a blizzard while I am dining on tea and crumpets outside my tent, which would be uncomfortable so I will eat more nutritional mudslide ice cream, do you see how this carton says “nutritional,” of course I did not write that, it must have been Innocent Husband, that naughty man, and I will hope for the best which is all that I can do because I chose this writing career when I was young and utterly clueless about these types of things, and also, with all this editing I can’t remember when I washed my hair and I think I may resemble a grumpy, delirious witch who has no spell-casting abilities, poor me.
Whew.
“Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle,” will be available SOON, so very soon, to purchase, if you are so inclined.
It is Book Two in the Deauville Drive Series. Book one is already out and titled, “Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid.”
Yes, you definitely need to read book one before book two so there is no confusion or bafflement.
i’ll say this one more time in a whisper voice with no punctuation but it could be that a few of my e books will be on sale very soon for FREE as in sooner than you think as in poof all of the sudden you might see an ebook for free and you will think this is my lucky day and please tell your sisters and friends and mothers and aunties but remember alas do not tell people that you do not like because blah we do not like mean people at all i hope you have a happy reading summer cheers to all of you
i will say this quietly with no punctuation at all for fun and giggles but i might be giving away a couple of e books for free on august 4 to everyone who clicks on the links you can get them for you or tell your sisters or friends or mothers but dont tell your enemies because we dont like them at all now do we
I was recently at a wedding in the Columbia River Gorge. It was gorgeous, the bride and groom were gorgeous, my dancing was not gorgeous, I probably looked like a pelican that was being poked by a stick held by a gigging beaver, but it was fun.
First, though, I had to find a new dress, oh woe is me.
Why? Because somehow my one “fancy wedding dress” had shrunk, on its own volition, without my permission, in my closet, and now I could hardly get the zipper up. In fact the zipper got stuck a little above my waist. My waist!
I envisioned yelling at Innocent Husband to run upstairs zippity-quick for my clothing emergency. I would suck my stomach in with all my might, ask him to put his foot on my buttocks, then yank the zipper up to my neck. It would be a marital moment.
I then envisioned my waist sucked in tight, like I was in a whale bone corset of olden yore.
I wouldn’t be able to breathe or talk, my lungs flattened in my suffocating dress, and I would have to mime to Innocent Husband to yank the zipper back down lickety split.
He would look at me curiously and say, “Why is your face turning red, honey? Why are you hitting yourself on the back?”
Then he would think – in a panic – that I was choking and he would, intending to be a helper, whack-whack me on the back between my shoulder blades.
When I was a kid, I used to spend all summer playing outside with friends, climbing trees, practicing my cartwheeling, and reading books.
I still sometimes play outside with friends, I don’t climb trees because I will undoubtedly fall off, or break a branch with my buttocks, and if I start cartwheeling, I will throw my back out. But I still read books. And I write them.
These e-books are on sale for $2.99 for a short and sweet amount of time. Have a happy, book-filled summer.
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Sit Down and Read Please. Your Brain Needs a Break.
Greetings!
I thought you might need some summer books, so here’s a few I read fairly recently, that you might like. I am only writing a short description on each because of laziness and I need to edit, AGAIN, my own blasted book and hang out with Innocent Husband.
Innocent Husband and I recently had a romantic, seductive day cleaning out the garage and at the end we were both dusty and sweaty but sheesh. We can actually walk around in there now without crawling over the hood of the car like tipsy crabs or banging our shins on boxes and saying bad words.
But I digress. None of these books are “pretty good,” books, I would not do that to you. They’re ones that I could hardly put down.
Greetings pancake and book lovers. This is my latest newsletter on Substack. Here are the first few paragraphs…
“Years ago, maybe a century, I was eating pancakes with my three kids at Tom’s Pancake House in Beaverton, Oregon.
I’ve been going to Tom’s since I was a kid, and now I bring my kids. I can see myself at 100 years old, cane in hand, hair whiter than snow, wearing bright red boots and shiny red lipstick, ordering pancakes in a screechy, old, but pleasant, voice.
That day I saw two women with white hair eating pancakes alone.
And I started to wonder things that writers wonder. In this case, it was: What secrets are those women hiding?
Yes.
Secrets.
Don’t we all have them?
So what were theirs?
I could hardly eat. I wanted to leap up and ask them about those secrets, but they would think I’d lost my head and my kids would probably be, again, embarrassed by me. I might get myself banned from Tom’s for nosiness.
Stymied, sulking, I dumped more syrup on my pancakes for nutritional reasons and added more butter for luck. I peered surreptitiously at the women. They were both very pretty and elegant.
They looked so innocent, but they weren’t, I told myself, then cackled, a scintillating story already swirling in my slippery brain.
That secret-laden pancake extravaganza launched my book “The Last Time I Was Me.”
The squirrel has decided to claw through a screen in my roof to set up house inside my house, though no invitation was offered. She has also decided it would be best if she rips up my insulation and throws it outside with wild abandon so that it lands on my front porch.
She is a bad guest.
If I’m minding my own business, writing my books or pretending to write a book but instead I am daydreaming, I can hear her pounce onto my ceiling from her new doorway. She’s a little squirrel but she sounds like a an oversized, drunk raccoon doing cartwheels.
I can hardly blame her for making a home in our home. She gave birth to three baby squirrels in my attic as seen here.
Somedays I wake up, read the newspaper, and think my brain must be leaking out of my ears like melted mozzarella cheese, because I cannot believe what I’m reading.
It’s like we’re living in a political horror show with side orders of total destruction and innocent people being killed.
Today, after ascertaining that my brain was still in my head as best as it could be, I put on my red gardening boots, layered with dirt from all my years of gardening, and headed out.
I couldn’t handle any more news headlines, or my soul might self-ignite. I needed flowers.
I needed the gentle peace of my garden, chirping birds, and buzzing hummingbirds, to calm me down.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way about their garden, but my garden often feels…emotional to me. It’s very personal. There are a lot of memories winding between the purple butterfly bushes and winter camellia.
I am very attached to all of my plants. Each spring when they pop up I say, “Hello there! Welcome back!”
Innocent Husband and I moved into this house in 2004 when Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, and Darling Laughing Son were young. They loved playing in the front and back yards with their friends, who were all blessed with incredibly loud voices.
They loved running through the sprinklers like leaping leprechauns and chasing the cats. They loved reading outside on the lawn and eating pizza on the back patio…
See you over at Substack!
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33 years ago, my mother forgot my bra. It was the day I was marrying Innocent Husband.
I can’t remember why the white, lacy padded bra that would perch beneath my wedding dress was at my mother’s, but she promised to bring it when she and my father picked me up to haul me to the church.
An hour later, gathering up my cake-like wedding dress, worn by my mother, my white heels, and my near-hysterical nerves, we tumbled to the van. “You have my bra Mom, right?”
“Yes, of course I do, Cathy.”
She was breathless.
I was breathless.
“I would not forget your bra.” Her tone was a little snappy, but I let it go and clambered into our orange and white hippy van. I was snappy, too. As in: snappy-panicked.
Was I really getting married? It appeared that I was, given that my very Catholic, rule-abiding, gentle father was driving, almost on two wheels, around corners to get to the church on time, my mother and I clutching the door handles as if we might fly out.
Click on the link to see the rest on my Substack 🙂
FREE EBOOK. Friends, hopefully Julia’s Chocolates will make you laugh. We need laughter right now, so I put Julia’s Chocolates, E-Book only, on sale for FREE until tomorrow. That’s zero dollars. Tell your mom, your friends, your sisters, your daughters.
Here ya go. Hang in there.
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I have promised myself I will write 2,000 words today for Book Three of “Ten Kids” in the Deauville Street series. Book Two is at the editor’s, so I am feeling mighty virtuous and deserving of lemon cake and perhaps one chocolate.
I am distracted by many things, so let’s see if writing today will work. I doubt it. Concentrating sounds difficult. Very trying. My brain feels tired already at the thought of writing that many words. So do my eyeballs.
I may give up right now. Perhaps that’s best…one must not tax oneself too much.
Off I go! I shall valiantly try to write again another time. Have a lovely day!
On another note, I have NO IDEA why I can’t shrink this photo. This program is not letting me, so it’s huge…
MY LATEST NEWSLETTER on Substack about running and a goblin…
When I woke up about 13 weeks ago, it was clear that a goblin had snuck into my bed while I slept and drilled a spike into my knee. How do I know this? Because my knee felt like it had been crushed. It had to be a goblin. They do this type of thing.
The day before Innocent Husband and I had driven to downtown Portland, Oregon – not Portland, Maine. He trudged his handsome-self down to work in his office, a boring and mind-numbing time, and I skipped down to the waterfront for a run along the Willamette River, wishing my buttocks would quit growing.
Part of the reason I went for a run is because The Pathological One said that Portland was “war ravaged,” and “burning.”
Surprise: NO WARS. Nothing was burning.
It was a pleasant and calm day in Portland with people participating in the usual. For example, I saw a woman wearing butterfly wings while biking. People laughed on jet skis and drank apple juice on boats, while others skateboarded while singing. This is typical Portland. Bring your rainbow hair, your tutu, and your dogs in strollers and you’ll fit right in.
Greetings, all. I think we need a little break. My E-book, “No Place I’d Rather Be” is FREE until Friday. This is my little gift to you.
As you know, books can take our minds away from life and head-banging stress. They can magically drop us into another world with new people and events. Given the horrible headlines, you might need another world right now.
Go to Amazon, or open my Substack post for the link.
Wishing you all the best during these difficult times.
The problem with writing is that you have to market and sell books.
Ugh.
I have known this since 2005 when I first sold “Julia’s Chocolates.”
Write a book, market a book. That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the literary deal.
Side Note Here for a Sec: When Innocent Husband read “Julia’s Chocolates” he was supremely, silly-shocked. As in, “WHO ARE YOU, CATHY?”
There were some crazy scenes in there with women engaging in some slightly unhinged, though healing, moonlight-induced “activities,” which probably brought on his unbridled feelings of mystification and bafflement.
It was like he didn’t know who he was sleeping with anymore.
In fact, one time he put down Julia’s Chocolates and said, his voice constricted, “You thought of, uh, all of this?” He paused. “By yourself?”
Oh yeah, Innocent Husband, dear. I did. Perhaps I’m not who you thought. Surprise!
He blinked in confusion at me through his glasses, like an owl. I tried to look svelte and mysterious, like a sexy spy. (That was hard.)
But I digress. I, personally, would rather write books, talk to myself, chase ostriches, dress up like a caterpillar for a week, or loudly and authoritatively announce in a crowded elevator, “We will now be leaving for Planet Uto. Please hold on and prepare for light speed force,” than market my books.
Alas, not marketing is not a possibility in our rockin’ and rollin’ (read: brutal) publishing world.
Marketing your own books, to me, is almost embarrassing. You have to get off your bottom, waddle on over to your computer, wrestle with the social media dragons, and say, “BUY MY BOOK.”
Click on the link to read the rest and have a lovely day.
SIGN UP FOR MY SUBSTACK! (PLEASE) I’m writing, now and then, when the moon is full, the hummingbirds humming, the birds chirping, for Substack. I write about life, laughing, Innocent Husband, books, marriage, my bad cats, writing, and funny stuff.
It’s a break from life and y’all know we need a break right now.
Please come and sign up and we’ll chat. Yes, you can read for free.
It’s raining here in Oregon, I’m on my fourth edit of Ten Kids BOOK TWO, and I’m trying to get myself to go on a slow and easy run.
Apparently my body does not want to do this AT ALL, no matter how slow, my muscles cringing, and my brain is telling me to watch a home decorating show to get my mind off of everything else going on. The worst thing that can happen on a home decor show?
The Property Brothers find, gasp, mold, which they will immediately fix without getting a hair out of place. Editing not going so well today.
I thought this photo offered a little hope during a very grim and scary time in this country.
I thought you all would appreciate my annual Christmas slippers from Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter and Darling Laughing son. This tradition has been going on for decades: Mom gets new slippers.
This year, you guessed it, I received Lambs. Yes, I will be VERY comfortable, lazing around on my couch and reading and writing books in my Lambs.
Current books for this book-loving Lamb: an Erma Bombeck for laughs. The Quiet Damage (audio) and The Correspondent.
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Book ideas come to me in pieces. Random thoughts. Ridiculous imaginings. Inane thinking.
When I wrote Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show, a character named Bellini popped into my mind like a reindeer falling through my roof. Boom. I frowned at myself in bafflement.
What just happened?
Why would she have a name like Bellini? That’s an alcoholic drink. It’s apparently quite tasty with peach puree and prosecco. I would not know, I’ve never had one because I don’t drink.
Why do I not drink?
Let’s just say I went through a wild and rebellious and giggly time starting when I was 13. My equally rather wild, but quite fun friends, decided it would be best if we raided a few of the parents’ liquor cabinets. Yes, at 13.
We did not raid MY parents’ liquor cabinet, because there was no liquor in our home. My parents, delightful, always there, kind, smart, totally dedicated to their family, did not drink.
UNLESS it was the wine at Catholic mass, which my mother refused to do, smartly, because everyone in the whole church was drinking out of the SAME holy goblet of wine at that altar, by God.
I mean, speaking from someone who is not afraid of germs at all, and will eat a cookie off the floor in a heartbeat, YUCK.
My father, who DID drink the wine had, at one time, seriously thought about becoming a Catholic priest, hence, he upturned the holy goblet and probably prayed that he would not get tuberculosis or typhus.
Thankfully, as I would not be here, my father decided he wanted a wife and a bunch of kids more than the priesthood and daily goblets of wine.
These two, my mother a well-loved English teacher, somehow produced a kid who wanted to push some alcoholic boundaries.
Who knows why I wanted to break rules? I don’t. I was 13. I could barely think at that time. It was like my brain had not been switched to “ON,” yet, but hopefully would in future.
One time I went to the ice skating rink with previously mentioned rule-breaking teenage friends and we got all tipsy / drunk. Rule for Life: Do not ice skate while tipsy drunk. You will spend most of the time on your butt on the ice and get wet and maybe bash your noggin in.
This silly debauchery continued for several years, and then at 20 I had a very bad night with tequila in college.
I was at a barn dance with a nice date named Jeff. We went to a pre-party where tequila was served. I didn’t know that tequila could sneak up on you like a thief in the night. I didn’t know what a cursed and devious liquor it was, woe is me, oh woe is me.
Jeff was friendly and kind and we danced in the barn but the tequila DID sneak up on me, chased me around, and got its talons into my suspicious stomach, angry circulatory system and innocent liver.
After that barn dance I felt sick for a week. A WEEK.
Like I’d been run over by a frightened gazelle, say, and then sickened by the broth from a wicked warlock’s cauldron, then dropped into a pond filled with algae from an eagle’s talons.
And that was it.
I stopped drinking.
Now, in the last 30+ years there were two kahluas and cream in two different vacation spots, both about 15 years ago. AND, when I had a fun, mobbed party at my house for my high school reunion a few months ago, one of my classmates brought in two boxes of her acclaimed wine. I did have a sip and now I know that she knows how to crush grapes perfectly deliciously.
(You might ask if some of my ice skating friends / fellow rebels from school were at my reunion party and I will tell you yes, many of them were! They all turned out amazing and would probably ground their own children for months or maybe eternally and forevemore if they did what we did as they would not tolerate such coyote-like sneaky antics.)
My own kids, Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, and Darling Laughing Son, older, smarter, preparing to take care of their easily-confused and dottering mother in upcoming years have, upon occasion, pushed me to try whatever alcoholic drink they’re dallying in for jolly entertainment.
For their amusement I have taken a teeny tiny sip on that rare dare and I will tell you this: I feel like I’m drinking poison.
It’s like all of my taste buds wake up and start screaming for their lives. It’s as if fire has just been poured into my mouth. I can only describe it as imbibing horror. Or terror. I would not drink a shot of vodka if you paid me. I would not be able to swallow tequila without feeling like my brain was being bombed.
I truly cannot stand the taste of alcohol. I would give up my stove before I drank a beer.
Does it bother me when other people drink? Oh, hell-o no. Drink away. Have a lovely time. Bring wine or scotch to my house and guzzle it. I don’t care. You should have seen the stash and the keg my still incredibly cool high school friends rolled into my house.
My tastebuds, however, are the enemies of alcohol.
So, it makes sense that when I was planning my Christmas book, I would ALSO think of a woman named Whiskey, right?
(No.)
And I would ask myself why she was named Whiskey, which led to my knowing that Whiskey started a bar in Montana, one of my favorite places on Earth, when she was young, and a single mother, which led me to know that Whiskey, a take-life-by-the-bullhorns and shake ‘em, glittery kind of woman would name her daughter Bellini.
And then I had to make Bellini an introverted children’s book writer and illustrator because I have written a children’s chapter book, that’s been rejected a ton, and wouldn’t that be a delight if it were ever published? So I dreamed of success through Bellini.
And I gave Bellini a broken heart, and the hero was a real man, and his heart was broken, too, and of course I had to put Bellini back in charge of the raucous, rowdy Montana bar she’d grown up in, AND she had to put together a Christmas show, which her effervescent mother named “Lady Whiskey’s T and A Christmas Burlesque Show.”
The “T and A” part was not what you think, it was T for ‘tinsel’ and A for ‘All I want for Christmas is Santa.’
NOT the other phrase, you naughty-thinker, you.
I hope you like this happy ending, funny love story and yes, of course, do drink wine or a Bellini or whiskey or a margarita or strawberry daiquiri while reading. The book will taste better for you then.
