Dance With Me Promo Post and Review

 

DANCE WITH ME

by Judith Crow

 

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GENRE:  YA (Fantasy)

 

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BLURB:

Don’t tell anyone, but Kelli spends all her free time listening to folk music. Ok, it’s not what you’d expect from a popular fifteen-year-old, but that’s why she doesn’t want the whole world to know.

When Kelli follows the mysterious Tam Lane, she finds herself in a place where folk songs come to life. As she comes to terms with the world, she makes friends, uses her privilege to help others, and even falls in love.

But Kelli has forgotten the fates which await so many characters in the songs, and she soon finds herself surrounded by heartbreak. Determined to protect the people she has left, can Kelli change a fate which has been sung for centuries?

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Excerpt 

“So, what is Carterhaugh?”

“It’s in the Scottish borders,” he replied. “You must have heard of it before, Kelli.”

Kelli thought about it. The name sounded familiar, but she knew nothing about Scotland to speak of, and certainly nothing beyond the visitor attractions in Edinburgh. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know where.”

“Well, it’s a kind of gateway,” Tam explained. “There are beautiful gardens, and the land is very fertile so it is said that any seed to touch the earth will grow into the greatest of its kind. It was the birthplace of the ancient kings.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Kelli asked. “Or with Jehovah’s Witnesses for that matter?”

“Nothing at all,” Tam replied. “But you must have asked about it for a reason.”

“Yes, I did,” Kelli said, thrusting the magazine back into Tam’s hands with her thumb marking the last page. It fell open as Tam took it from her, and a picture of smiling children covered most of the back page, with the title ‘Bible Questions Answered’ and a small amount of text. 

“Yes?”

“It was there!” Kelli said, a shiver running down her spine. She flicked through the magazine, but the page was nowhere to be seen. “It was there. There was a picture of a wood and a river.”

“That is Carterhaugh,” Tam said. “The birthplace of kings. You should go there. You’d like it.”

“How would you know?”

Review

Dance With Me is a well-written story with a fascinating premise. A mysterious young man named Tam Lane shows up at the home of Kelli, a disenchanted teenager who has just broken up with her boyfriend and feels disconnected from her family. When Kelli agrees to dance with Tam, he whisks her into the past.

There is no strong profanity in the book and the romantic interactions are described more in terms of emotion than action. There are no explicit descriptions of violence, however, several characters die in unpleasant ways.

I enjoyed the way that the lines from various folk ballads tied in with each chapter and the view into what it would be like to live in the Middle Ages in Scotland. I don't recommend it. Life was very difficult and had a tendency to be short. The descriptions of the places and scenarios that Kelli encounters are realistic and rather bleak rather than being romantic and glamorous. Women are seen as the property of men and are expected to be quiet and obedient.

I give Dance With Me four out of five stars. The story is compelling and competently written, but I dislike it enough when stories written for adult women obsess on weight and dieting. This narrative is even more damaging when stories with adolescent girls as the target audience do so. Eating disorders are a serious problem, and passages such as this normalize and reinforce diet culture.

"Kelli had not taken part in any exercise and was becoming aware that, even during the week, she had been forced to loosen some of the laces on the dresses Ailric had gifted her. She wondered what Marcus would say if he could see how she had put on weight. Probably something like ‘I don’t believe a perfect ten can be a twelve, chunky-monkey’. She vowed she would lose the weight again within the next week."

As someone who tried to hate herself thin for 33 years, I would love it if authors would rethink including this sort of narrative in their stories. I would have loved it if Kelli had thought something like "but Marcus was an idiot, and she was glad that she had broken up with him. She couldn't be bothered to dwell on such nonsense now."

I would have given the book five stars if it had not included this unwanted helping of size shaming and diet talk.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Judith was born in Orkney, grew up in Lincolnshire, and now lives in the far north of Scotland. Her writing is inspired by the experiences of her life so far and she loves picking up on quirks and immortalising them in fiction.

Judith’s new book, Dance With Me, combines her love of folk music and creative writing, and finds her main character in a world where folk songs come to life. Her debut book, The Backwater, was a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2019.

When she isn’t writing, Judith is a primary school teacher who enjoys crafting and music, as well as being a generally doting spaniel owner.

Website

www.judithcrow.co.uk

www.crowvus.com

 

Twitter

@jayzed_kay

 

Buy link:

 https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Me-Judith-Crow-ebook/dp/B08GC86MG7

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

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Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

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Ornery Literary Services

Sly and Snarky

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Tackle It NEWsday (On Wednesday) With the Ornery Old Lady: Make Your Own Hot Cocoa Mix and More with Living On a Dime

Created in Pixlr using one of their stock images

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Greetings to all our readers! I generally do not make New Years Resolutions because those have become inexorably tied to dreadful diet culture ideals and that gods-awful mantra "NEW YOU IN 52!" Yes, unless I die, my body will have all-new cells in 52 weeks. I believe we generally have all new cells every three months. So there will also be a "new me" in 12, at least on a cellular level. And if I do die, my body will be turned into ashes, thus giving it a completely new form, and I will become a free-floating full-torso apparition. Just sayin'.

As Grover says, we don't do none of that New Years Resolution nonsense 'round here.

Grover has a pretty big aversion to Resolutions. Last time he thought a Resolution was a good idea, he ended up getting run over by a train. However, he did meet his best friend, Cactus Clem, so it wasn't entirely bad.

Cactus Clem has never bothered with New Years Resolutions because he's a happy-go-lucky feller. 

However, I made a discovery recently which changed all of our minds.

This year, we resolve to make more recipes from the Dining on a Dime cookbook! And you should too.

At this point, you may be saying to yourself:

"Now, hold on just a gol-dang minute there, Ornery! Jest what in the flamin' heck is this Dinin' on a Dime Cookbook? That sounds fishy to me!"

Well, that's what Grover said anyway, but you have to keep in mind that he was a miner during the Gold Rush, and he's used to people trying to grift him.

Now, you may wonder why Cactus Clem has an opinion about this, considering that he is a mutant cactus man who drinks his nourishment.

Well...

Let me introduce you to the best gol-durn hot chocolate mix you will ever drink. It doesn't come in a box of little envelopes or even an economy-size cylinder. You make it yourself! Before you tell me I must have been nipping at Cuzzin Hildy-Bob and Virgil-Joe's moonshine, let me tell you that it will take you less than ten minutes to make this stuff, and you will save a lot of money compared to even the economy-size cylinders of hot cocoa mix.

Here is what you will need:

10 + 2/3 cups dry milk

6 ounces powdered non-dairy creamer

16 ounces Nesquick powder

1/3 cup powdered sugar

Mix all ingredients in a big bowl. I recommend either a flexible plastic bowl or a plastic bowl with a spout on the side for pouring into your storage container. I store mine in a big covered plastic pitcher. 

This recipe makes a big batch of very delicious cocoa, which should last for a long time. I can vouch for the deliciousness. I can't vouch for how long it will last if Cactus Clem drops by your house for a visit.

To drink the cocoa, heat one cup (8 ounces) of water. Pour in half a cup (4 ounces) of the cocoa mix. Stir it up and drink it down! I recommend using a big mug. You can top it with whipped cream, Cool Whip, or mini marshmallows if you like. 

This is just one of the many fantastic, money-saving recipes you will find in the Dining on a Dime cookbook. Since it's an e-book, I believe you can order it wherever in the world you may be. If I'm wrong about that, please kindly inform me of the error of my mistake.

The Dining on a Dime cookbook is only $19.99 for a wealth of recipes. But if you're not convinced that you want to spend that much, why not give their FREE e-book of 22 recipes a try? You'll find it in the sidebar on their main page. It contains a nice sampling of the sorts of recipes you can expect in the cookbook.

For those who prefer a physical cookbook, there is one in the works, which is due to be released this month. This link will allow you to read a description and pre-order the book. I'm honestly not sure about international shipping. The books are printed in the United States.

To sum things up, I recommend the Dining on a Dime cookbook. It is full of awesome recipes! Click the link to order it. 

If you love instant hot cocoa but hate the high prices, try the hot cocoa recipe in this post! You can find the fixins in Grover's General Store at the end of this post! Note that you might be able to get some of the ingredients cheaper at your local grocery store, so check the prices. But you probably can't beat the cost of the 2-quart plastic pitcher. I paid $7.99 for the Rubbermaid 2-quart pitcher at the grocery store. The very same one is just $2.99 in the search grid below.

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

Ornery Reviews Books and Stuff

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover sez: "This here cookbook is one of them scientific miracles! I can't believe you kin make good food so cheap. Ornery dang near fainted when she seen this here list of what things costed in a minin' camp back in the day. Yes sir, that's why I try to make sure the stuff in my General Store is affordable to regular folks, not jest the rich."

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem Sez: "I'll drink durn near anything, but I love me some hot chocolate in the winter an' lemonade in the summer. Y'all kin add in some moonshine iffen ya wanna give it a little extra kick!"