As a Kellerman fan, I was a little disappointed with Blindman's Bluff. It wasn't as gripping as some of her previous work, in fact it took me up until page 329 to get into it. There were too many characters and the plot was quite predictable. I guessed who El Patron was early on in the novel. The blindman in the story was more a distraction than anything else, and I felt that his sole role was to give the book it's title. Mind you, he wasn't bluffing so not sure how the title fits. I particularly didn't enjoy the last chapter where all the ends were tied together neatly in a forced unnatural kind of way. Some of her other books had me sitting up all night to finish them, and the fact it took me nearly two and a half weeks to finish this one, says a lot.
If you haven't read her earlier work, you'll probably enjoy this. But there are so many better crime thrillers around these days, and this one doesn't stand out.
It gives me great pleasure to introduce a brilliant motivational speaker, Kim Upstone, as a guest blogger on my blog.
Kim is one of 9 children born to a business entrepreneur father (still living) and a housewife (deceased). She has been married 32 years to her husband, Doug, who is a sports writer. She has I has two children, Melissa who lives in Hawaii, and Brent who is married and lives in Tempe, AZ and his wife. They are expecting their first child, Grace, in August. Kim and her husband care for her sister, Debbie (who is 5 years older than Kim). She has special needs and they have Frank, their 4 year old cocker spaniel! They moved to Arizona seven years ago to get away from the cold.
Kim Upstone is the owner of A New Day A New Vision which is not only the name of her company, but her life philosophy. Kim believes that each new day we can create a new vision for ourselves, home and environment. As an author, motivational speaker and intuitive designer she resides with her family in Scottsdale, Arizona. With a background in interior design and interest into the effects of environment upon individuals, accreditation in staging and feng shui soon followed. In addition, she has studied neuro- architecture. Her first book Step by Step To Sold and Feng Shui to Sell are reflections of those principals. Both books were written as guide for home sellers looking to prepare their home by combining Feng Shui and Staging techniques.
Feng Shui for Special Needs, her second book, is given out as a free ebook for people with life and learning challenges. Based on her own personal experience, the books help those who work with special needs children and adults to make enhancements to their environments all in an effort to allow them to flourish.
Her new book All I Want Is Everything released in December 2009 is drawn from her life’s journey of searching how to find her everything and learning to dance in the storm. All I Want Is Everything is a guide to help women reclaim happiness and peace in the search for their everything. About Kim's Book in her own words:
What do you want from your life? Do you want to discover for yourself what your everything is and then be able to live each day of your life with happiness and joy no matter what the circumstances. Do you want to have each day a realization of the gift you have been given to be here. Do you want to creating for yourself the vision of who you want to be?
I wanted everything too and from the outside, it appeared that I had everything, a loving husband and two beautiful healthy children and strong faith. I have great house and all the things that go along with it. But even with all of those things I still felt something was missing. There was piece to the puzzle I needed to find. If I could locate that missing part I would then be complete and happy.
My search lead me to look in many different directions, mostly outside of myself for the answers. It wasn’t until out of desperation I asked for guidance and received it that I learned all the answers were all within me waiting to be discovered.
All I Want Is Everything, A Guide to Love, Peace and Happiness is my journey to find my everything. What I found was so much more than I could have ever hoped for. They were the questions that lead me to the answers only I could answer. What I have created is a guide for your journey. Questions for you to answer that will lead you to your everything. You too can discover the secrets hidden safely, waiting inside for you to choose to bring them into the light.
Website http://www.anewdayanewvision.com/
Kim's book is also for purchase on her website. Kim will give a donation for each book purchased to Global Orphans Project.
Reviews of Kim's books
I was excited from the beginning when reading Kim Upstone’s “All I Want is Everything” when she took my favorite quote and expanded upon it.
No one can keep your light bright but you, and although a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, you cannot keep another candle burning brightly by dimming yours.
And, I was not disappointed as I continued on reading. Ms Upstone hit close to home with her poignant examples of the ways in which we set ourselves up for failure and unhappiness, keeping our spirits empty by the ways in which we scramble to fill them. She is right when she says that disappointment and unhappiness become the norm. I see it everywhere in many people.
I love when these books give you exercises, as I feel like they are involving me in my healing process – a doing instead of telling – a practical application of the lessons. And, Ms. Upstone’s book is like chemistry for the real (social) world. I was so excited to see different exercises instead of the same old tried and true ones. In fact, the first exercise alone, even though I struggled to do it, led me to a profound discovery in my own personal life. She took something I have always known, have read over and over in various books and yet was still unable to do, and she put it into words that I could finally understand. It made sense, and is going to become my new mantra!
Now, shocking me, rather than just giving me a bunch of fancy worded vague advice ( I have read a lot of self-help books), she gave me not only practical advice of what to consider, and what not to consider…but also practical applications like suggestions of how to respond. Amazing. Actual words with which to respond so that those I encounter cannot steal my spirit, my light. I have written it down and I am going to carry it around with me until I learn to react that way instinctively! I mean so many times I have read to not surround yourself with people who are dark spirits, and Ms. Upstone does say this to, but also gives us ways to deal with them when we have to. It is really impossible to avoid them completely, I mean what about all the people you encounter just going to school events for your kids?
Well, now all this was written just after reading the first chapter! To my delight, Ms. Upstone kept up this pace throughout the book. In every self-help book there are things that touch each one if us depending on where we are at in our lives. And, this one touched me where I am out right now. Maybe not every word of it, but it was about the best I have read. I am putting her up there with my favorite, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in effecting my life over-all. I have pages in my notebook of notes, exercise and now practical advice. Thanks, Kim Upstone!
was excited from the beginning when reading Kim Upstone’s “All I Want is Everything” when she took my favorite quote and expanded upon it.
No one can keep your light bright but you, and although a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle, you cannot keep another candle burning brightly by dimming yours.
And, I was not disappointed as I continued on reading. Ms Upstone hit close to home with her poignant examples of the ways in which we set ourselves up for failure and unhappiness, keeping our spirits empty by the ways in which we scramble to fill them. She is right when she says that disappointment and unhappiness become the norm. I see it everywhere in many people.
The days already seem to be flying past faster and faster. I guess when you are busy, the minutes go by so quickly they almost pick up a speed wobble. When I was in Cape Town recently, I was eating a chocolate bar, one of those nice ones with toffee and biscuit in the centre, and my filling came out. I thought I'd get it seen to when I returned to Tanzania, dentists being much cheaper here. Every week I say to myself, this week I'll make an appointment with the dentist, but that never seems to happen. The time just flies, the week is over, and I still haven't made a dentist appointment. Yesterday, while eating some chocolate I suffered from serious toothache. The moral is, don't eat chocolate until you've made the time to fix the hole in your tooth. But life is a bit like that. We make time for hanging out with friends, watching our team win a rugby match, but we don't make the time for essential things like dentist appointments. Learning to prioritise is a skill, and I can't wait until I learn it. However, as I'm getting old now I'm beginning to realise that it might be one skill I might never learn. Time is running out.
This weekend though, I did make the time to write two new hubs and make a video of Part One of The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari - the down trip. The hubs are completely different from each other - one is about a Thyroidectomy and Weight Gain and the other is Part One of my Mountain to Mountain Safari, with excerpts from the book I'm currently working on. So, I guess I should feel as if I accomplished something, worked on Sunday, went to TWO BBQ's on Saturday, but still no dentist. I seriously must make the time to make that appointment. It's that or no more chocolate.
Sometimes we just have to take time out of our busy lives and relax a little, socialise with good friends. I often find it difficult to go out, I think I'm a closet agoraphobic, but when I'm home and settled into doing something, I find it really hard to stop what I'm doing and go out. Maybe, it's something to do with my shoes. When I take my shoes off the minute I walk through my door, I'm loathe to put them back on again except when I have to leave for work in the morning. So, I blame my agoraphobia on my shoes.
Anyway, yesterday evening, after standing making sausages for about four hours, I ventured out to a friend's BBQ. I had to make a conscious effort to go out, but I'm pleased I did. Because once I was there, I enjoyed the company of my friends. Alistair and his wife Kate put on a splendid BBQ, I took them some of my freshly made sausages, there was heaps of good bottles of South african wine, great conversation. I had a ball.
I guess, it's all about leaving your comfort zone. Many of us are too scared to leave our comfort zone and try something different. Once we remove our shoes and settle down on the sofa, that is it for us. But once we make the effort, put on our shoes and leave that zone, we often have a pleasant surprise and are shocked with ourselves that we even contemplated not leaving the house.
So my message to all of you out there, is make a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary this week. Take the plunge, leave your comfort zone. Do something different. Otherwise, you might regret missing out on a good evening with good wine, good food and good friends!
Have a great week!
Love
Cindy
xxx
It’s hard to believe that it was only just over a fortnight ago that we were still travelling back from Cape Town! The past two weeks have flown by, with there hardly being time to catch a breath. It seems like nothing can top our arrest in Zimbabwe, but there always has to be one kind of drama or other, or just some small thing to liven up a day.
In Malawi my ATM card packed up, leaving us stranded without money, but luckily with help from some kind folks we made our way back home. We stayed at a sugar plantation in Dwangwa in Malawi and then drove to Nkatha Bay where we'd initially wanted to stay. What an amazing place right on Lake Malawi! Absolutely magical and I think we'll return to holiday on the lake during the Easter holidays. We had a rest day in Mbeya holed up in a hotel while we waited for the school to send money with the cellphone. Amazing how they do that. You get a text message saying go to Vodacom to collect your cash. It's a big problem when the magnetic strip on your ATM card gives up the ghost. The money from the school should have been enough to get home, but by the time I had travelled 20km from Mbeya, I had already picked up 2 spot speeding fines, so we crawled the rest of the way knowing we couldn't afford to pay out more money to corrupt policemen. But still, we were about 200km from Moshi when the car hit empty. Amazingly enough, we managed to drive 100km with my fuel light on. I had to leave my camera as security at Same, 100km from Moshi so that I could get enough petrol to get home, but that just makes life a lot fuller, and our adventures more interesting.
Once again we travelled through Mikumi National Park, and this time had to stop while a lion crossed the road. Of course I couldn't get the camera aimed in time and with Siobhan swearing in my ear as the lion was on my side of the road, tracked it through the grass while snapping away merrily. Some other travellers stopped and started shouting at the lion so that it would look at them while they hang out of the window with their camera phone. Crazy people!
One has to look on these little adventures as good material for my book. Driving the 100km to Same a couple of days later to pay our debt and retrieve my camera was a bit of a pain as just between you and me, I was a little tired of driving! The whole trip from Kilimanjaro to Table Mountain and back again was a whopping 11980km! But I have to say, I have caught the bug and I want to do more driving trips in the future! I quite fancy driving to Lake Victoria and the southern coast of Tanzania. There are some interesting ruins on the Mafia islands I’d like to see.
I didn’t have much time to reflect on the trip before I was back into the swing of things at school, meeting the new teachers, helping with their orientation and getting everything sorted for the first week of school. So far I am absolutely loving my new role in management, even though one of the kids asked me, “Miss Cindy, have you dyed your hair grey?” I ask you, would anybody intentionally do that? I decided over the holiday to stop fighting the grey hairs that sporadically appear, as when you colour your hair they quickly reappear at the temples making me look like a poor imitation of a Siberian hamster. But now, my daughter has instructed me to colour my hair as the salt and pepper grey look ‘doesn’t suit’ me. Of course, easier said than done as my dark blonde dye is not so easily available in Moshi! I could go red I guess. Our English teacher let his daughters colour his grey hair red and it came out shocking pink! Poor blighter even let them colour his beard. Luckily for him, it was virtually all washed out in time for the start of school on Monday.
Sometimes, you meet interesting people who you immediately know you are going to use as characters in a book. I met one like that, a lawyer whom I had to see to stamp his commissioner of oaths stamp on a document I have to send off. A small man, probably pushing eighty, with a full head of snow white hair, and a booming voice that seemed to come from a far more imposing figure than him. I was solemnly ushered into his office, a dead leopard’s head mounted on the wall behind the chair I was shown to, and was amazed to see him reclining back in a large black leather swivel chair that seemed to swallow his tiny frame up. What was more amazing to me, was that his waistband button and zipper was undone and he didn’t seem concerned about that at all. He looked up at me and smiled, and kept his sunglasses on even though he was inside his office. All very bizarre. He wouldn’t look at the form he had to certify until he’d heard about where I’d come from and my trip down to Cape Town. Then his phone rang, he politely asked my forgiveness while he took the call, and I listened to his booming voice alternating between Swahili and a delightful very upper class English accent when he repeated interesting parts of the conversation in English, obviously for my benefit. So I heard about corrupt politicians who were little more than thieves who were trying to set up a casino with prostitutes flown in, in the central part of Tanzania in a game park somewhere. The way his lips moved as he enunciated his words was quite fascinating, like a cartoon character. In fact, he was like a real life cartoon. I eventually managed to escape from his office with the form duly stamped, about an hour and a half later.
We arrived back home from our trip to find that termites had taken over in Siobhan’s room. Although they were living in the room, they were starting to eat through her ceiling and holes were beginning to form. In fact, if you banged on her wall you could hear them scuttling, and if you stood still you could hear the steady sound of them chomping. It seemed like it would be only a few days before her ceiling collapsed on her. Of course, being terrified of anything with more than four legs, Siobhan moved herself and all her possessions into my bedroom. So began my nights of interrupted sleep, as I desperately clung to the edge of the bed while she spread out like a starfish, and grabbed all my blankets, leaving me shivering in the cold. It’s been quite cold at night since we got back, and on overcast days it’s been decidedly chilly. We’re glad we brought our winter stuff back with us. Anyway, they fumigated her room and roof, removed part of the ceiling, and as is here took ten days to get round to putting in new ceiling panels. They still haven’t painted, so madam is still in my bedroom.
As happens here, simple jobs become more complicated. We were unable to shower, with only one continuous drip coming from the left side of the shower head. Strangely enough I never connected the lack of water in the shower to termites in the ceiling. One puts in the maintenance request and then you have to wait until they find the time. By that time, Siobhan has washed her hair in cold water in the basin and my hair looks like I’ve been working part-time in a grease factory. Five days later and they discovered that when they fumigated, they accidentally disconnected the water pipe in the roof that goes to the shower. At least now we can shower.
I’m setting aside weekends to work on The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari. It is just way too hectic during the week. Hopefully, the initial huge workload will lessen in time, but I have my doubts. The trick is going to be managing to juggle time, so that I can still keep up with my writing. At the moment I get home between 6.30pm and 7.15pm, eat dinner, watch CSI and then am ready for bed at 8.30pm-9pm. Just been feeling so shattered at night. But last night I managed to stay awake until 9.30pm, so I think I’ll start to build up stamina again.
Otherwise, it’s good to be back. I love life here and have good friends. But the way time is flying, before I know it it’ll be time to fly to Cape Town for the Christmas holidays. Yes, we’re flying not driving this time!
I decided to write this post after receiving a text message from one of my friends. She had given an autographed copy of Diamonds in the Rough as a gift to a young lady. According to my friend, she gave the young lady a copy of the book to inspire her to go after her dreams.
After reading the message, I automatically began to think about the numerous amounts of people who have told me that I have inspired them to reach their dreams. Some even have gone on to start working on them. For example, I have a friend who is now a published author as well as a relative who is working on opening up a clothing store. It’s like a domino effect in a way. Since I decided to take a chance with my own dreams and goals, others have automatically done the same. I rest peacefully at night knowing that I have had this impact on people.
It is because of this experience that I ask all of you authors out there, what is the underlying message that you want your readers to get from your books? When I discuss Diamonds in the Rough, I often label it as a story of ambition and determination. Anytime I get feedback on the novel, I try and listen to see if the reader sees this in the storyline.
If you don’t have an answer yet the question, try and remember some of the feedback that you’ve gotten. What did your readers get from your book?
Regardless of what your book is about, there is always a hidden message there that can inspire others. Remember this: Words on paper have the same effect as the words that come out of our mouths!
Blindman's Bluff (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #18) by Faye Kellerman
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