This is a video montage someone sent to me…and I can’t quite decide if I like it or not. I like the photo stills…but I would prefer there was one song throughout. Maybe turn down the sound and put on your favorite love song and see what you think! Hmmm?
Filed under: Favorite Kiss Scenes on June 9th, 2009 | 10 Comments »
AJ! You won this week’s little Just for Fun Contest! AJ was the first to e-mail accurate answers to me (AJ’s answers appear below)! As a little treat, a “Gilbert Blythe” video follows! (PS…if you watch Anne of Avonlea aka Anne of Green Gables the Sequel…when Anne and Diana are out chasing the cow and Anne falls in the mud…there’s a little funny blooper…When Jonathan Crombie walks up behind Megan Follows…he slaps her on the behind and she gives him a “don’t you dare mess up this scene” expression! I love it!)
“The pictures of the guy are definitely Jonathan Crombie who does an awesome awesome job playing
Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables, etc.
In The Time of Aspen Falls, Rake tells everyone he got his name because his mom
tripped over a rake when she was pregnant with him. But really his mom named him
that because she knew he would turn out to be a scoundrel like in a book she was
reading.
And Cinderella sings to a nightingale and asks it to sing–hence the name of the
song–Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale.
Luv,
AJ”
Filed under: Uncategorized on June 6th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Ever since about mid-May, I’ve just been running way behind! Sorry to have been so quite here! However, I should be back on track a little better this week! Still, I’m doing my Just For Fun contest today…just for fun! This time, instead of posting a comment with your answers, just e-mail your responses to me at marcialmcclure@cs.com! The friend who answers all three questions the most thoroughly will win a copy of the book “Watersong” today! So…Just for Fun…
1. From these two tiny mouth images…can you name either the actor, or the most famous role he ever reprised?
2. In The Time of Aspen Falls…how did the hero get his first name?
3. In the Disney cartoon version of “Cinderella,” what bird does Cinderella sing about while scrubbing the floor?
Good luck and see you tomorrow!
Filed under: This and That on June 2nd, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Yes…I HAVE been writing! Thus, I’ve been rotten about posting fun stuff! So…being that I don’t want to interrupt my own groove…here’s just a little old-fashioned, tall, dark and handsome eye candy! (Sigh!)
Filed under: This and That on May 29th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Ooooo! It’s time for another fun little trivia thingy! Be the first to post a comment correctly answering all three of the questions below and win the most random item ever…a Nat King Cole Christmas CD! How fun! (Even if you aren’t the first to post and the winner…do post your answer and I’ll save your name in my “Random Winner” hat for later!)
1. In the book, Jane Eyre, (toward the very end) Mr. Rochester uses a two-word “p” alliteration to describe St. John’s manners, and a wonderful “b” alliteration (several paragraphs down) to describe his own “Vulcan” self. What are these two alliterations? (Two of my favorites in the book!)
2. Whose eyes are in the photo to the right? (Here’s a clue…he’s an actor!)
3. In The Visions of Ransom Lake, what kind of confectionery delight does “someone” leave for Vaden on the doorstep?
Filed under: This and That on May 20th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Okay…sometimes something comes along that just makes you say, “I don’t know why…but I like this!” Do you know what I mean? I’m going to share one of those things with you today…something that has always intrigued me…though, for the life of me, I cannot give a good explanation as to why! It’s a music video from way way way back…involving…okay…let me just say it…mermen! I know! You’re thinking I’m crazy! But there’s just something cool and mesmerizing about this whole idea…the photography…everything! I mean…considering who the singer is…it’s just so…random! But…I like it for some reason! Just ignore the singer and watch the goings on in the ocean (and the little boy is adorable!)! It’s sort of awesome for some reason! See what you think! Just for fun…
Filed under: This and That on May 19th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I’ve been out of town for awhile! Sorry to have been so quiet on here! But…I’m back now! I’ll see you tomorrow!
Filed under: Uncategorized on May 15th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I was shuffling through another pile of old papers today…and came across this…a little thingy I wrote years ago when I had received a ton of e-mails regarding Ransom Lake. I totally need to rework this…it’s too long, sort of corny and outdated. Still, I thought I’d share it with you today…just for some fun insight! I’ve even included a couple of photos…just to make it more fun!
Of all the heroes born of my imagination, the overall popular, the one I am questioned about most often, has to be Ransom Lake. Anytime I’m in a gathering of friends and readers, the majority of them tell me Ransom Lake is their one of their particularly favorite heroes. Truth be told, Ransom Lake is one of mine, too…probably because he is nearly the personification of my husband Kevin in looks, sense of humor and otherwise. When I envision Ransom, I see Kevin in my mind’s eye speaking in a rather Sam Elliott-ish voice. Yes, I would have to admit, Ransom Lake is definitely a kindred spirit with my husband. However, it is true the name, Ransom Lake sprung from a vastly different venue.
Although I have mentioned in a previous newsletter what, or rather who, inspired the name…I’ve been so bombarded with questions about how I came up with it, I thought it might be time to tell the tale, however, anti-climatic it might be. Yes, there was an actual person in my life who I often referred to as, “Handsome Ransom”…my own personal endearment to him. And yes, there was one delightful moment in time when we shared a kiss. Actually, ‘shared’ might not be the right word, for as I remember the moment…I was freaked out when it happened!
We begin in 1977 (This kiss was a loooong time coming). I was a shy, rather self-conscious adolescent, with the worst excuse for a Farrah Fawcett, knockoff hairstyle you could’ve ever imagined! Likewise I was a comic, sometimes intentionally so, sometimes unintentionally so, and I was just starting the big “middle” school scene as a seventh grader. Ah, yes! Good ol’ Taft Middle School in Albuquerque. This is where it all began, my infamous relationship with the (at the time) adorably cute, shall we call him, for anonymity’s sake, “Jake” Ransom. The only blonde boy I ever truly cared for, Jake Ransom shared my sense of humor and more often than not, my row in class. Yes, Marcia R. and Jake Ransom…fellow class clowns almost always seated together in classes due to the alphabetical sameness of their last names. And let me tell you, we were quite a duo! We caused quite the mischief in our day, specifically in typing class and Language Arts. To put it simply, we were kindred spirits, two peas in a pod, two inelegant seventh grade stand-up comedians, who became fast friends. I dubbed him, “Handsome Ransom,” and we stayed good friends all through the seventh grade and the entirety of the eighth.
Still, teenagers are so often the victims of peer pressure, social circles and acne. Jake and I left the eighth grade in May of 1979 as good friends, but when Valley High School became my future alma mater the next August…some things had changed.
Age fourteen and the onset of the ninth grade found me having to make some difficult decisions. Not only had all the boys I’d known the year before grown six inches to a foot over the summer, many of the kids I’d counted as friends and hung out with in middle school, were now the “party” people. Leaping into sports, adolescent arrogance and the “party” mentality, I found my old friends on the other side of the fence. My side of the fence was the green growing pasture where crazy fun, music, friends who attended other high schools and no drugs or drinking was the grass for grazing. Many of my middle school friends, however, friends now grazed in brown fields of rebellion, drugs, drinking, etc.
Back in Albuquerque in the early 1980’s you couldn’t sit the fence…you were on one side or the other. Not that you couldn’t be casual friends with everyone, but as far as good, solid relationships went…well, I was more than just sad to see my relationships with what had been such a good group of friends changed to a more awkward, less comfortable type of existence.
Jake Ransom, though not the partier most of my friends had become, was still all “jock,” a rebel, and a cliché bad boy (the rather heroic kind we girls all dream about…not the truly bad ones). He quickly became one of the most popular and handsome boys in school, the kind all the girls clamor for attention from. Still, even though his side of the fence had become different than mine…somehow we both managed to straddle it enough to have a good time together in classes. Another “R” name had been added to the list of kids slated to graduate in 1983, and that sort of busted up mine and Jake’s capability of sitting right in front or in back of each other. Still, we managed, awkwardly talking over the new “R” kid’s head, or around her. Once in a while we got lucky and the seating arrangements would sit us parallel to one another, only an aisle separating us. This turned out to be the best seating arrangement, conducive to note passing, test questions and candy sharing and now that we were full-fledged teenagers, profuse flirtation! Yep, somewhere along the line, Jake and I had begun to mature into more than just fellow comedians…we were shameless flirts with each other! I blush to think of it now!
On we paddled, through the first two years of high school and into the third always passing notes, cutting up, and flirting like idiots. I remember how Jake used to suck on these round, flat lollipops in English and then reach over and stick them on my face. Inevitably I’d break out with a rash of tiny little pimples, which formed a perfectly round sucker-shape on my cheek each time. Fortunately, I had good skin and was able to recover fairly quickly from these incidents.
Through it all, Jake and I stayed close in a manner. Oh, we didn’t hang out outside of school or anything, but at school and in any classes we shared…we always had a great time.
Junior year arrived and Jake and I had only one class together…a Zoology class taught by my very favorite teacher, Mr. Gruner. Zoology was great! We dissected sharks that year (our hands stunk for days). It was great! But the best part about that class were the people. I was a junior and already moving on in my mind, past senior year, onto college and life. While most others at my high school in 1982 seemed to pause, uncertain of what direction to take, I had become confident, seasoned and ready to move on. I’d leapt over the fences, all of them, and was sprinting headlong to whatever life held for me. This newfound confidence gave me wings to rise above feeling nervous or uncomfortable in the presences of those who had been good friends and no longer were. I found fear was vanquished in favor of determination and self-assurance. I had also been through a very dramatic romantic relationship and knew for certain what I did and did not want in that venue as well. Thus, I was able to completely be myself in Zoology.
Yep, for five years I had known old “Handsome Ransom.” For five years I’d secreted a sort of odd crush on him…sighing over him one moment and thinking he was far to skinny the next. Still, I knew I’d always adore him, knew likewise I’d always feel rather cheated at not having had any sort of romantic interlude with him. No romantic interlude? Now there’s naiveté for you! Looking back it’s so very obvious we spent our entire four years at high school waltzing around in our own kind of interlude of romance! Neither one of us ever got anything done in the classes we had together! Both of us were constantly being reprimanded for talking or cutting up. As I was drowning in the romantic waltz…I didn’t see it for the water. That is…until one memorable day in Mr. Gruner’s Zoology class.
Let me set the scene of romance for you… Valley High School , one hot, Albuquerque day. Having recently finished up our work on molds and spores, Mr. Gruner was preparing our class for our “fish” test, as he liked to call it. Thus the room was lined with jars filled with formaldehyde and every kind of fish a person could imagine! (Mr. Gruner’s room always smelled weird, by the way.) Anywho, I walked into the classroom one day and another boy named, Kyle Hastings, began slathering me with his rather unwanted flirtations. (At one point, I had actually sort of liked this other boy…until he turned out to be a…a lecherous jerk. But that’s another story.) Mr. Gruner was in the back working on something for our “fish” test (most certainly a dead fish of some sort), and everyone was just sort of milling around out of their seats and goofing off. Irritated with the uncomfortable attentions of “lecherous jerk Kyle,” I wandered toward the front of the room, out of his reach, to sharpen a pencil.
Now, in the interest of making this story as interesting as I can…I’ve chosen to write the following scene just as it happened. If it sounds like something you’ve read in one of my books…it may very well be that you have.
Marcia inhaled deeply, attempting to calm her rather rattled nerves. “I can’t believe I ever thought that guy was cute!” she whispered to herself, relieved Kyle Hastings had given up his advances toward her…for the time being. “What a jerk.”
Turning the handle of the pencil sharpener, Marcia ground the writing utensil down much closer to its end than she needed to. She wanted to buy a few more moments, time enough for Kyle Hastings to find another victim. With a heavy sigh, she turned around and headed back to her desk.
“Hi,” he said, stepping in her path. It was Jake Ransom now standing before her…his brilliantly white teeth flashing a dazzling smile.
“Hi, Jake,” Marcia greeted, relieved and rather delighted to find Handsome Ransom in her path. Jake Ransom, “Handsome Ransom,” as she’d always called him, was such a way good-looking guy! Oh, sure…he was a bit on the skinny side, but what high school varsity basketball player wasn’t? And anyway, he was way handsome, with his feathery blonde hair, dark brown eyes and perfect smile. Yep! The boy had an awesome orthodontist.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
“Sharpening,” Marcia responded. However, a puzzled frown puckered her brow when the handsome Jake Ransom stepped closer to her, rather than moving out of her way.
“Oh,” he said. Marcia took several steps back, but he only continued to advance upon her, like some lean, determined lion progressing on his prey.
“Well…you know, Marcia,” Jake began. Marcia’s retreat was stopped cold, the wall behind her meeting abruptly with her back. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Really?” Marcia managed in a whisper.
“Yeah,” Jake whispered, his voice quiet and low…a rather seductive quality in its intonation.
“What’s…what’s that?” Marcia asked. She couldn’t believe what was happening! Surely she wasn’t misreading the expression on his face, his rather intimate body language. But as he placed his hands against the wall at either side of her head, pressing his body firmly against her own, Marcia was further assured of his intention.
“Oh, my heck!” she thought. “He’s going to kiss me!”
Jake grinned, the famous, “Handsome Ransom,” roguish grin which Marcia had come to know so well. It was the same grin he grinned each time before he’d stuck his suckers to her face in English class the year before. The same grin he grinned whenever he was flirting with her.
“I’ve always wanted to kiss you,” he whispered. And in the next moment, Marcia thought her knees might give way beneath her, for the instant delirium which washed over her as handsome Ransom’s lips met her own was dizzying! His kiss, though lingering, was not too roughly forced, but wonderful in its consummating, blissful application. He meant to kiss her, not because he was a teenage boy with hormones raging out of control, nor because he was teasing. Marcia knew this kiss was sincere, taken and given for fulfillment’s sake. She’d known all along, ever since she’d first met him in typing class five long years before…she’d always known that the tender crush she’d secreted for Jake Ransom was reciprocated. Oh, perhaps circumstance, differing social circles had caused that their mutual crush should forever remain secreted, but in that moment, in that blissful, satisfying moment when their lips were meet in one deliciously consummate kiss…in that moment all secrets were communicated.
As their sweet, lingering kiss ended, Jake smiled at Marcia a moment before his head descended toward hers again.
“Ransom! Get to back to your seat,” Mr. Gruner bellowed as he lumbered toward the front of the room, a large jar housing an ugly fish clutched in his hands. “What are you doing up there?”
Pulling away from Marcia and straightening his posture, Jake Ransom winked at Marcia as he turned and walked to his seat. On weakened knees, every nerve ending in her body jumping with excitement, Marcia walked to her seat as well. And as class began, Mr. Gruner threatening F’s to anyone who didn’t get the name of the ‘surprise’ in the back, Jake Ransom took a sucker from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. Sighing contentedly, he winked at Marcia when she looked at him, flashing another dazzling grin in her direction.
“Rainbow trout,” Mr. Gruner began holding aloft the smelly jar filled with chemicals and a dead fish. “Can you tell me why?”
Yep. That’s it. Too anti-climactic? I hope not for it was an epoch in my high school experience, the culmination of five long years of mutual attraction. Yes, one kiss. That’s all there ever was…and yet, it was enough to satisfy me. Something like longing for the first daffodil of the year to bloom, cutting it from your garden and enjoying it in a vase on your windowsill until it withers and you are at last forced to give it back to the soil. Yet, did you treasure it while it was there? Did you appreciate it forever? Of course you did.
Jake Ransom was definitely not for me and I was never sad about that fact. I enjoyed him so much as a friend and fellow class disrupter that I am never regretful at only having the one legendary romantic moment with him. After all, what a great moment it was!
My senior year found Jake Ransom voted in as Class Clown, of course! I was voted (I shudder to think) Class Mouth…having never had trouble projecting my singing voice, silly jokes or laughter, you see. I went on to find the perfect man (sooooooo much more handsome than Ransom), and a wonderful life with countless fond memories of many people. I haven’t seen ol’ Handsome Ransom since graduation, but did receive an e-mail from him a year or so ago. It was fun to find out he had married a girl who was my best little friend when we were both three years old and playing in kiddie pools in our backyards. They had a baby and Jake?…well, he’s a big real estate mogul in Albuquerque. Kind of fun, huh?
Jake Ransom earned a place in my memory, maybe for no giant, life-altering reason, but just because he was who he was. And because he owns a piece of my heart, his last name always stuck with me. It popped in and out of my brain over and over through the years until I found the perfect use for it…a hero named Ransom Lake.
Get your copy of Marcia Lynn McClure favorite, The Visions of Ransom Lake today!
Filed under: Real Life Inspiration, Romantic Music on May 5th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Sorry that I’ve been so quiet these past few days! I’ve just been buried in writing and stuff! I did want to give you a little update on A Crimson Frost…the initial pre-order will begin Friday! The publisher is anticipating…as they put it to me…”a feeding frenzy!”…how fun!
I do have to tell you that A Crimson Frost is one of my personal favorites! I do sooooooooo hope you enjoy it, too! There’s a little something else in the works in regard to it…but you’ll have to wait until the book is out to find out what it is! Let’s just say this…I’m totally excited about it!
Meanwhile, I want to thank you for your patience where A Crimson Frost is concerned! I know it’s late and I appreciate your understanding of the crazy publishing business AND your incredible support! For now…I’ll just leave you with this…And poets yet put ink to page…of A Crimson Frost upon him…
Filed under: New Story Tidbits on May 4th, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Okay! Today’s romantic movie couple…Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, of course! It truth…the three movies I’ve seen them together in are NOT typical Marcia favorites! However…something about them together…I just love them! There are two clips here…one is a photos/lovely music montage…I love it because it’s so beautiful and they look so wonderful together. The other clip is our “kissing scene” this week. I do love the kiss!
Filed under: Favorite Kiss Scenes on April 30th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
