Tidbits and Updates!

BAT CRAZY

Book Two of the Denton and Alex Davies mystery series

if off to my publisher's desk.

Within days, I should have a PDF 

for my endorsersto read! 

Yeah.

* * *

Just wanted to give a huge SHOUT OUT

to my hero, best friend, lover, sweetheart, 

my favorite person in the world, father of my children

greatest grandfather in the world--my hubby!

August 6th is our anniversary.

I love him more deeply than I did years ago when we married!

Love you, Danny!

Here's a few pictures of him:

Hubby on the right, right before the marriage ceremony of Son #2

Setting up the tent -- camping with grandson Jonathan in N.C.

Hubby with his last birthday cake I made him.

Can you tell he loves M & Ms? 

Danny a month or so after grandson Jonathan was born

And finally, Danny and me on our big day! 

What kids we were! Lol

* * *

You might want to check out the fantastic 
Grace Awards Summer Book Bash 
Going on RIGHT NOW! 

Lots of great books 
including mine (of course!)

Here are the links:

GA Summer Book Bash ~ Day One  https://graceawardsdotorg.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/grace-awards-summer-book-bash-day-one/

GA Summer Book Bash ~ Day Two  https://graceawardsdotorg.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/grace-awards-summer-book-bash-day-two/

GA Summer Book Bash ~ Day Three  https://graceawardsdotorg.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/grace-awards-summer-book-bash-day-three/

GA Summer Book Bash ~ Day Four  https://graceawardsdotorg.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/grace-awards-summer-book-bash-day-four/

What's up next in my book work?
Smiling . . .

Possibles:

• a very light romantic suspense series about THREE friends.
• hopefully the second book in my WWII series called: A Flute in the Willows! Watch for it!
• Tons of others on the list. :)

Heaps of blessings for all of you. Have a wonderful rest-of-the-summer. 

Saved by an Apple

This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman
Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75.
August 1942
Piotrkow, Poland.

The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men,
women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a
square.

Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only
recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded
ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

"Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen."

I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.

An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age.

"Sixteen," I said.

He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.
I whispered to Isidore, “Why?”

He didn't answer.

I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.

“No,” she said sternly. “Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.”

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was
protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.

“Don't call me Herman anymore.” I said to my brothers. “Call me 94983.”

I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a
hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's
sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. “Son,” she said softly but clearly, “I am going to send you an angel.”

Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.

I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly
in German. “Do you have something to eat?”


She didn't understand.

I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish.


She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.

I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, “I'll see you tomorrow.”

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.

We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us
both.

I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that
she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of
the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia .

“Don't return,” I told the girl that day. “We're leaving.” I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.


We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down
and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death
seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents.. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A .M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people
running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.

Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been
the key to my survival.

In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had
saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years.

By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was
starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. “I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.”

A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me.

But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the
Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.

I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with
swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor.

We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the back seat.

As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much
had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, “Where were you,” she asked softly, “during the war?”

“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.

She nodded. “My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from
Berlin,” she told me. “My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.”

I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.

“There was a camp next to the farm.” Roma continued. “I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.”

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked.

“He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.”

My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. “Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?”

Roma looked at me in amazement. “Yes!”

“That was me!” I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel. “I'm not letting you go.” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.

“You're crazy!” she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.

There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the
most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For
many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of
marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.


--Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida

(This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.)

Guest Blog by my Friend, Kathryn Page Camp

It's June, the official month of marriage! Awhile back I read Kathryn's post on her blog about meeting and marrying her husband. I thought it would be a great article for the month of June and give you a chance to meet Kathryn, if you don't already know her.

Kathryn's blog address so you check out all her great posts:
http://kathrynpagecamp.blogspot.com/

Now for her post. Enjoy:

Searching for Mr. Right

Roland and I celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on Thursday. Actually, we celebrated apart, because I was at a writers' conference in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. But our marriage survived the ill-timed separation.

A marriage that almost didn't happen. Although I wanted a husband, I wasn't actively seeking. Part of it was that I didn't know how or where to look. But I also trusted that God would make it happen when the time was right even if I did nothing.

A simple sermon eliminated both excuses.

Have you heard the saying, "God helps them that help themselves"? If you think it comes from the Bible, you're wrong. The proverb dates back to only the 15th or 16th century. But even though it isn't in the Bible, there is some Christian truth in it. In 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul says: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." And how many of us think God wants us to sit back and wait for a job without even sending out resumes?

Still, I would rephrase the proverb this way: God wants us to be active participants in His plans for us.

That was the message in the sermon, and the minister used finding a mate as an example. He was a counselor for a computer dating service that catered to Christians and Jews, but many people failed to make use of the service because they expected God to handle everything.

That sermon was my wake-up call. I signed up for the computer dating service and met Roland. He was my second match, and I was his second match. But there is nothing second-class about our marriage.

Thirty-two years of wedded bliss (and a few bumps) that almost didn't happen.

So if you are searching for Mr. or Ms. Right, don't just sit back and wait. Be an active participant in God's plans for you.

Even if His plans turn out to be different from yours.


Thank you, Kathryn!
Blessings!

Tidbits on a Happy Marriage

• Even the smallest things your mate does for you should never be taken for granted


• A successful marriage calls for two career diplomats


• In courtship you look over appealing attributes; in marriage you overlook minor faults


• Marriage is a reciprocal agreement

Quote:

Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections



Blessings!