denise Leora madre

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I hope the day brought you warmth, laughter, and tangible reminders of the beauty in your life. (And if not, here's a hug from my heart to yours.) Our day was full of exquisite cuisine--special shout out to my Dude for making a grilled BBQ turkey breast that made my mother slap me!--and new memories with old friends and family. It was a miracle, a literal answer to prayer, and I was so blessed to see it happen under our roof. But after everyone left, I was alone with the kitchen (point of fact: my Dude was taking people home; otherwise he would have been there with me.) You can imagine how it looked: slightly crumpled foil pans, half-full cups of juice, huge pots that wouldn't fit in the refrigerator, and a white kitchen floor tattooed with food and footprints. As I formed a plan of attack, I remembered those FB posts and Instagram pics of proud chefs with their culinary creations and wondered how many people are just as excited to fa...

"This was my heart. Hate could squeeze me, choke me, pierce me…but it could not choke the love from me…it would not. Love had to win." [Munier, Diane (2015-03-28). Finding My Thunder (Kindle Locations 3053-3054). Kindle Edition.] This is the battle cry of Hilly Grunier, narrator and heroine of  Diane Munier's sophomore novel,  Finding My Thunder . As we meet Hilly, dangerous secrets swirl around her, accusations lurking in every hello and how-de-do. B ut Hilly doesn't fear small-town scandal or the speculation about her relationship with the Negro woman living behind her house. She doesn't fear her father's temper or her mother's babbling. Opinions of the faceless town or rudeness at school...none of these trifles make the short list. Hilly Grunier fears one thing and one thing alone: never having a chance with Danny Boyd, the eternal, undisputed champion of her heart. It doesn’t matter that Danny hasn’t spoken to her in years,...

For most of my life, the word “passion” solely evoked glossy romance novel covers, soap opera super-couples, and an innocent 1990  Fred Savage commercial . The line? “My passion for you will never be quenched.”  (So random. So adorable.)     Then in 2004, The Passion of the Christ  forever changed my understanding. Christ’s Passion aptly translated the Greek word “to suffer.” Bookended by triumph and seeming defeat, the six-day journey carries Jesus from palms under a donkey to nails on a cross, all leading to Sunday where Passion becomes redeeming power.   We see in Christ a perfect picture of how one passion informs the other: he suffered because he loved us so much: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) But how does that look for us? What is the connection between our Passion and our passion? And how does it relate to Christ’s Passion, to his re...

AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW!    Synopsis Coming of age 1960’s. Hilly keeps her mother’s secrets. But she has some of her own, a love from childhood for the golden boy Danny, the one who no longer sees her. Soon they are tied by more than childhood history. It’s a long dark road toward finding her thunder.   It was Danny Boyd. Mary was no less surprised when the Angel Gabriel appeared to announce the pregnancy that changed everything. My heart took off under the hand I’d splayed on my chest. I couldn’t have my senses more assaulted. It wasn’t possible. He stood there, a head taller, his black hair long, longer than I’d ever seen it, and long sideburns. His eyes, green in that tanned face. He had a thin moustache that met these carefully sculpted patches around his beautiful mouth. Rock and roll star. But muscular…I felt faint. Faint from his nearness. My shoulder where he’d tapped me, it throbbed. God, he was a man.    All of Diane's av...

When recently asked what she thinks of the [ Twilight fanfiction] world, author Diane Munier said, “What [ Twilight author] SM achieved in my opinion was the ability to make women feel first love….That woman took us into the ache.” I hope Ms. Munier will pardon me for appropriating her words, but that statement perfectly encapsulates the magic of her own writing: this woman takes us into ourselves, moving us with a deeply satisfying story in the process. Through the eyes of her beautifully flawed characters, Munier takes us to the bottom of our souls, revealing everything we are and everything we wish we weren’t. We confront our pasts, unearthing treasures we never knew were there, and baby-step our way toward a future we didn’t know we could have. Munier has been doing it for years under the apt pseudonym “Counselor” in the Twilight fanfiction world, and she does it this time for the masses with her first fanfic-turned-novel, Me and Mom Fall for Spencer. In this p...

One of my favorite writers, Diane Munier, just published her first novel, and I could not be more excited for her!! Check out the links below and grab your copy today. You're welcome!   The house next door to Sarah and her mother Marie has been vacant since the murder that happened there when Sarah was ten. Their neighbor, Frieda, was like a second mother to Sarah and she died brutally and the neighborhood never recovered. No one has lived in Frieda’s house for seventeen years. Imagine Sarah’s surprise when it finally sells to an on-line buyer. She looks through the thick growth separating her house from the other and a wild man looks back. He’s not exactly wild. He’s thirty-seven year old Spencer Gundry. Once he shaves the beard and gets a haircut, he’s not hard to look at. Well Sarah’s mom doesn’t think so, and neither does she. Problem is, Spencer has a few secrets of his own. Things don’t sell quickly in this town, that’s for sure. But with the murder, no one...