#Karen Witemeyer

[searchingwardrobes]

A Western Re-telling of Snow White

@snowbellewells you will love it!

[danielleurbansblog]

Review: If the Boot Fits

Synopsis: Determined to prove that cattle king Eli Dearing has no justification for evicting his stepmother and half brothers, Asher Ellis uses the cover of a fancy ball to break into the Three Cedars ranch house to search for proof of wrongdoing. On the verge of discovery, he flees, but a boy’s cry compels him to make a daring rescue. Spunky and independent, Samantha Dearing balks when she…

[underasettingsun]

Book 16/50

This one was really cute and reminded me of when I was super into fairytales as a teen 😊

The plot is snow white but as a western, in place of a wicked queen we have an actress, a Texas ranger for a prince, and retired cowboys for the dwarves

I used to really like Karen Witemeyer years ago and it's nice to see she's still making good books 🩷

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cameracourt]

Mini Book Reviews, edition 5 (all the genres + Christmas novellas)

Mini Book Reviews, edition 5 (all the genres + Christmas novellas)

[readingwithwrin]

Blogmas Day 10 | The Christmas Heirloom by Karen Witemeyer | Book Review

Blogmas Day 10 | The Christmas Heirloom by Karen Witemeyer | Book Review

Title: The Christmas Heirloom Author: Karen Witemeyer Publisher: Bethany House Publishers Published Date: October 1st, 2018 Genre: Christmas, Historical Fiction, Adult fiction Source: Library Rating: ★ ★ ★.5 Goodreads Summary: In stories ranging from 1820s Regency England to present-day Washington state, readers will be treated to Christmas tales of an heirloom brooch passed from mother…

[feliciawriter]

I have fallen in love with Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (specifically Phryne and Jack) and I love seeing a picture of a country and a time that is very unfamiliar to this American--it is truly a study in sociology and anthropology. For instance, I had no clue communism and socialism were so popular in Australia after the First World War. 

But of course, the writer in me is drawn first and foremost to the dialogue. Sparkling and dynamic--a success attributed to the writers and the actors delivering the lines--it is a true tour de force! I'm sad I hadn't heard about this show earlier. 

To celebrate such delicious dialogue and striking ripostes, I've created a top ten list of my favorites!

But my number one favorite riposte from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries? "If a tree falls in the forest...." "You are very likely somewhere close by wielding the axe!" 😂 Its delivery is so delicious, but the words in the exchange are what truly delight my writer soul. 

Why? It links back to a presentation by Karen Witemeyer to my ACFW chapter on writing deep point of view. She encouraged us to circumvent clichés by personalizing them for the character rather than writing them as they're known. EX: "It was hot enough to melt butter." became for my latest character (an Army CID officer) something like "... to melt an MRE in a Humvee on the streets of Basra". 

This tweaking of the forest-falling tree adage follows exactly that directive. Twisting the old saying into something new, snappy, and completely reflecting each character's personality (both the speaker's and the hearer's). 

Bravo to the writers for the masterclass example! And yes, I geek out on writing craft. 😂🤓

[arrthurpendragon]

Since I’ve been hyoerfixated on listening to audiobooks instead of writing, I’ll share what I’ve listened to so far this year:

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

The Girl with the Make Believe Husband by Julia Quinn

The Other Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Highlander’s Sinful Desire by Maddie Mackenna

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare

When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare

Tying the Scot by Jennifer Trethewey

The Highlander’s Stolen Bride by Eliza Knight

Never Kiss a Scot by Lauren Smith

The Short Straw Bride by Karen Witemeyer

Never Tempt a Scot by Lauren Smith

How to Seduce a Scot by Christy English

The Scot is Hers by Eliza Knight

The Highlander’s Accidental Marriage by Callie Hutton

The Highlander’s Choice by Callie Hutton

A Laird’s Promise by Aileen Adams

A Rebel’s Desire by Aileen Adams

The Dukes Marriage of Convenience by Fiona Miers

An Unconventional Bridge by Fiona Miers

Marrying Her Best Friend by Fiona Miers

…me? Have a type? Never. Lol.

[buckys-estrella]

About Me <3

Thought I should finally introduce myself :)

Name: Sara Age: 21 Pronouns: she/her Timezone: EST Personality: INFP-T Fandoms: Marvel (primary mcu, netflix shows, disney+ shows, deadpool, etc.), Supernatural, Top Gun Maverick, NHL Hockey (Pittsburgh Penguins and Carolina Hurricanes), Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Percy Jackson, Criminal Minds, New Girl, Stranger Things, Peacemaker, Star Wars, etc. Fun facts: - I'm Honduran-American (my parents are Honduran, but I was born in the US) - I'm the youngest of four - I'm bilingual! (English and Spanish) - I'm also learning three languages on Duolingo (Italian, Greek, and Yiddish) - I'm a fourth-year nursing student in uni - I model in my free time. I’ve done four fashion shows, seven photoshoots, print magazine, and an award dinner (and plan on doing more!) Random Favs Movies: Flipped, Pride and Prejudice (2005), A Walk to Remember, 10 Things I Hate About You, Hacksaw Ridge, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days Books: A Worthy Pursuit by Karen Witemeyer, All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, The Nurses by Alexandra Robbins, Touch of Red by Laura Griffin, Not That Bad by Roxane Gay Artists: Atta Boy, Queen, Laufey, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, Myriam Hernández

what I look like spotify // pinterest // goodreads feel free to talk to me about anything! <333

[smithlibrary]

Read More 2023 Accidentally in Love

Fiction The Bodyguard by Katherine Center

Romance The American Roommate Experiment by Elena Armas The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur Faking It by Cora Carmack A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare Well Matched by Jen DeLuca The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron Take a Hint by Dani Brown The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang Always be my Duchess by Amalie Howard For Butter or Worse by Erin La Rosa Roomies by Christina Lauren The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren The Duke and I by Julia Quinn Fake It Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley

Religious The Farmer's Bride by Kathleen Fuller  Honeysuckle Dreams by Denise Hunter  Short-straw Bride by Karen Witemeyer 

Graphic Novels Spy x family 1 by Tatsuya Endō

[sweetfirebird]

omg the situation around the RWA and that genocidal "romance" novel are so much worse than originally thought. jfc. The RWA are fully garbage. "Inspirational" (Christian) romance claims that "redeeming" racist murdering assholes is a requirement of their subgenre, and mainstream romance readers and judges saw no problem with any of that because the romance genre in general has a mile-wide conservative (and white) streak, so thirteen separate people read and judged that book and thought, even after there was public outcry when its nomination was announced, it was so amazing it ought to win an award named after a Black woman romance author pioneer.

.....

If you click the links--tw: genocide, tw: the Wounded Knee Massacre, tw: systemic and institutional racism

[bangbangwhoa]

books i’ve read in 2021 » no. 045

A Tailor-Made Bride by Karen Witemeyer

"You're quite handsome when you're happy."

Jericho trailed one finger under her chin. "I'll make a note of your preference."

[searchingwardrobes]

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a book review on my blog. That’s because I have been spending a lot of time posting them to my professional website. You can find that here along with my TBR list, Currently Reading list, and lists of my favorite books in different genres. ( @xhookswenchx​  I think you’ll like something on my TBR list 😉) Today’s review isn’t so much a review as a trip down my reading memory lane. A trip that circles back around to discovering a new favorite writer.

Tagging: @snowbellewells​​​ @reynoldsreads​​​ @whimsicallyenchantedrose​​​ @ekr032-blog-blog​​​ @superchocovian​​​ @lfh1226-linda​​​ @nikkiemms​​​ @thislassishooked​​​ @branlovestowrite​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​ @xhookswenchx​

When I was a teenager and a baby Christian, I first discovered Christian Romance when I read the classic Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke. I went on to devour that entire series along with everything else Oke wrote. Not only did it satisfy my book-obsessed tendencies in a healthy way, it also became a way for my mom and I to bond. We read the The Love Comes Softly series together over the course of a summer, discussing them as we went. She and I went to the local Christian bookstore together to purchase more books by Oke and others. The common thread? All of them were westerns.

I’m not sure if it’s just that my mom and I loved the western setting or if that was the genre most Christian romances were at that time. The two of us did like to watch western shows together - Little House on the Prairie, Young Riders, Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman - but it also seemed like most of the books on the shelves were westerns. We read books about girls who went west on the orphan train, young women who were mail order brides, and women who fell in love with mounties in the Canadian west (yep, those).

To be honest, by the time college rolled around, I was burned out on Christian westerns and stopped reading them. I also went through my “intellectual phase.” I was an English major, thank you very much, and my tastes were meaningful. I roll my eyes at myself now, realizing that I had lost the point of reading - the love of it. My mom gave me Redeeming Love for Christmas my junior year of college, and it sat on my bookshelf for three years or so before I cracked it open. (Silly me!) Like most people, I was blown away by Francine River’s masterpiece, but the fact that it was set in the west didn’t change my mind about western books in general.

Fast forward many years and three kids later. I was on vacation with my extended family, and as usual my Mom, my sister, and I had all brought books with us. My sister’s was Full Steam Ahead by Karen Witemeyer. You know that saying “don’t judge a book by its cover?” Well, I did, okay. It reminded me of those westerns I read as a teenager, and I kind of rolled my eyes at my sister.

“I know it looks cheesy,” she explained hurriedly, “but it’s really good! I’ve read a lot of books by that author, and she’s great.”

A week later, I was shopping at this deep discount store here in my hometown. It’s one of those places where you never know what you’ll find - a Dyson vacuum for a hundred bucks, Christmas Peeps in July for fifty cents, or rain boots for five dollars. One thing they always have is books - especially Christian books. Every time a local Christian bookstore closes, I swear this store gets their inventory. As you can probably imagine, this store’s book section is my weakness.

What do you think I saw sitting right there on the shelf for only $2.99? A Karen Witemeyer book - The Short Straw Bride to be exact. I picked it up and remembered what my sister had said. For only $2.99, it was worth a try, even though the cover still wasn’t my taste.

I devoured it! Couldn’t put it down! I was totally sucked into the lives of the Archer brothers and their ranch. I loved it so much I took a picture of the book and raved about it on Facebook. I swallowed my pride and borrowed Full Steam Ahead from my sister. I was thrilled to discover that there was either a book or novella on every single one of the Archer brothers. The library had most of Witemeyer’s books, and soon I had read everything she had written. At this point, I am a bonafide fan. There isn’t anything she’s put out that I haven’t read, and currently my Kindle wish list includes her next book that hasn’t come out yet : At Love’s Command.

It’s interesting how things have come full circle. As a baby Christian, Oke’s books were like water in the desert. Now Witemeyer similarly quenches the storytelling thirst of this SAHM mom/amateur writer.

And I guess I’m always a sucker for a western!

[lligkv]

In a scene early in Susan Choi's novel My Education,* two grad students are talking about a protest against an elderly male professor for the racism in his latest book.

"They were chanting 'Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad!' I evoked, splashing beer as I mimed a hand waving a sign. 'Because, you know, of Conrad's Colonialist Agenda. So we're going to have an emergency meeting to decide if we should boycott his class, or stay and try to subvert it somehow from within."

"Can I ask a really idiotic question?" Dutra said, in a tone that suggested his question would reveal that all idiocy lay elsewhere. "With these people, is that name, Joseph Conrad, supposed to be an insult?"

"Well, yes!--obviously... I don't think they're talking about his writing so much as his politics. And the way his discourse perpetuates the status quo. The inequities in power between whites, who control the discourse, and nonwhites, who are controlled by it--"

"Who cares about his politics?" said Dutra, swinging out of the hammock... "Do you like his books or don't you?"

"Whose?"

"Joseph Conrad's."

Here was a question I hadn't expected. "I've only read Heart of Darkness but...I liked it," I acceded at last...

"Do you like the other guy's books?"

"Whose? My professor's?"

"Exactly."

"I've never read them." Strike three.

Dutra burst out hysterically laughing. "No wonder you're confused!" he exclaimed, in the exaggeratedly bemused, tenderly condescending manner I'd already learned was his method of shifting the mood... "You don't have any empirical evidence..."

It reminded me of something I'd read about a recent controversy in the Romance Writers of America over the novel At Love's Command. accused of glorifying a protagonist who participated in the massacre of Sioux people at Wounded Knee. Specifically, comments by the president of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, about proportionality: "When the accountability is driven by a firestorm on social media, the notion of proportionality goes out the window because nothing short of a complete repudiation is going to satisfy an audience from afar that's really not immersed in the facts and can't really assess motives. It can mean a default to the most draconian outcome."

The facts of a situation and the motives of an artist being criticized are key ways to distinguish what harm may have been done and what restitution may be necessary. They're not the sum total of the case--but they do sometimes fall by the wayside in these sorts of controversies, at least in the way they're most often covered by outlets like the New York Times. The primary focus is so often trained on the other relevant aspect of these cases, which is the harm that can be done by representations of atrocity and those who are allied with atrocity--which so often isn't quantified as clearly as it could be. (In the case of At Love's Command, for instance, the harm that could be said to have been done is: 1) the book attempts to empathize with someone who participated in a racist atrocity, and 2) it does this in a cultural context in which authors of color are systemically disadvantaged--not given as many opportunities to publish or considered in equal proportion to White peers as having the merit granted their White peers--with representation for their stories reduced as a result, so 3) it should not be celebrated; it's taking an award that could have gone to an author of color, and perhaps should have, given the fact that the award it received was named for Vivian Stephens, a Black woman who cofounded the Romance Writers of America.) Add to this virality--how easy it is to see these conflicts as they emerge and weigh in--and particular facts of a situation and evaluations of potential motives of the participants become even more distant...

I've often thought of the controversies around representation in, say, romance or young adult literature as live looks at a cultural pendulum as it swings--which is something we ought to be patient with. A landscape of what we're willing to endorse and permit is changing, in tectonic ways. We ought to give the new earth some time to settle before we begin to walk it. And many of the onlookers who deride "cancel culture" don't seem to have the patience to understand in good faith why the people who are upset at a book like At Love's Command receiving awards or honors are reacting this way. But the arguable over-the-topness that the complaints can take on when the nature of the harm that's alleged isn't spelled out--and the facts of a situation aren't widely known by all who amplify the complaint, and the motives of an artist aren't always done justice in the complaint--isn't any more helpful... To represent the interiority of a person who commits an atrocity isn't to endorse what that person does; a character's actions or opinions aren't an author's: these are truisms basic to the creation and appreciation of art. And the seeming refusal to acknowledge them in cases like the At Love's Command--so that we can focus on the practical argument about representation and artistic honors and who's getting them that, to my mind, has the most merit--gives the hostile and the ignorant all the ammunition they need to shoot all such complaints down, as "hysteria," before they've even had any impact.

In the meantime, I appreciate the measured response of the author of At Love's Command, Karen Witemeyer, who "said in an email that she did not agree with the group’s decision to rescind the award but said, 'I understand why they felt compelled to take such action, and I harbor no resentment toward them.'" The statement's a bit crisp, and you could read some passive aggression in it. But taking it charitably, Witemeyer seems to grasp what so often falls by the wayside for people injured by accusations they've caused harm, which they cannot understand or bring themselves to agree with: there is a gap between the artist's intention and the art's effect; no artist can be in perfect control of the ways their work will be received, and no artist is immune from the social spirit of the times in which they're producing their work. Sometimes you've just got to accept what happens to that work. All the paratextual stuff--how it's received, how you're thought of as a result--is secondary to it, and much of it is beyond your control.

This is all pretty "basic." But the way these conversations happen online, it's hard to approach anything resembling a first principle. Every so often I want to sit down and figure out something that might interrupt the endless cycle of this same conflict bubbling up and fizzing out before we move to its next instantiation.

A little bit of patience is called for, from everyone involved, and a little bit of grace. And an expansion of the landscape of literature, where outcry over a book like At Love's Command seems to me to encode a belief that this landscape is zero sum--that any depiction of a participant in a racist system will take away literary territory that ought to belong to the victims of that system. Those who participate in atrocious systems, even gleefully, are also part of the human fabric, and it's not always glorifying them to depict their consciousnesses at work, or to celebrate such a depiction for what it reveals about our collective condition. What's more, how much does an award matter anyway? Granted awards say something about what the culture values--but they're snapshots of the values of a moment; for every celebrated text that stays in a "canon," there are tens or more that are discarded... And there are other ways to make a case for literary value than protesting a particular moment it isn't given. Just find more ways to talk about the books you love. As someone who works in publishing, I can say publishers are listening. (Though, you know, grain of salt here: publishing's desires to capitalize on trends are (obviously) cynical; if you want to be taken up by that establishment, you'll likely find it's not what you wanted it to be.) And beyond what publishers or literary establishments do or don't do, the love you have for a book in its moment is really all you've got. No future's guaranteed for any text.

I also think, there has to be some better way of adjudicating this than "give an award" -> "experience outcry by constituents" -> "rescind the honor given." The mechanics of popularity or brand management are at work there, rather than an organization's sincere engagement with the complaint being made, the elaboration of a principled stance for its response and the taking of action according to that stance, or the desire for true resolution or restitution on either side.

*It's somewhat ironic that I'm using My Education as my decorative lead-in for this little post about ethics in artistic representation. The stories of both the male protagonists in that novel--including Dutra--involve unproven allegations of sexual harassment, in a way that probably wouldn't fly in a novel published today as opposed to 2013. I'll admit I was expecting Choi to do more with the accusations than treat them, essentially, as ways to give those characters a bit of spice, a frisson of danger. And a barrier to loving them that only a woman like her protagonist, Regina, is brave enough to surmount.

[cameracourt]

Mini Book Reviews, edition 4

Mini Book Reviews, edition 4

[danielleurbansblog]

Review: At Love's Command

Review: At Love’s Command

Synopsis:

Haunted by the horrors of war, ex-cavalry officer Matthew Hanger leads a band of mercenaries known as Hanger’s Horsemen who have become legends in 1890s Texas. They defend the innocent and obtain justice for the oppressed. But when a rustler’s bullet leaves one of them at death’s door, they’re the ones in need of saving.

Dr. Josephine Burkett is used to men taking one look at…

[doodlesink]

Review--More Than Words Can Say by Karen Witemeyer

Happy Sunday!  More Than Words Can Say by Karen Witemeyer is a witty historical novel.  Take a moment to read my review of the second A Patchwork Family series.  Happy Reading!

https://bibliophileandavidreader.blogspot.com/2019/07/more-than-words-can-say-by-karen.html