This is my stop during the book blitz for Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks by Amy Gettinger. This book blitz is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The book blitz runs from 7 till 20 December. See the tour schedule here: http://www.lolasblogtours.net/book-blitz-deck-the-malls-with-purple-peacocks-by-amy-gettinger

Get this book for free!
From 9 till 10 December and from 15 till 17 December the book will be free on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Malls-Purple-Peacocks-Alice-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0778999M9/

​Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks (Alice Chronicles #2)
By Amy Gettinger
Genre: Chick-lit/ Women’s Fiction/ Sweet Romance
Age category: Adult
Release Date: November 18, 2017

​Blurb:
It’s Christmas in Orange County, California, and the mall is full of purple peacock decorations, large and small. Department store employee Aracely Martinez has a goofy Cuban friend, Quito (who’s awfully cute in his mall Santa suit), distracting her from her night-shift restocking job. But Aracely has a long-held secret, which her supervisor at the store, Jacob Thinnes, is holding over her head to make her do his bidding.
 
Which is too much bidding.
 
Enter Aracely’s oldest friends: Alice Chalmers, Georgette Jones and Julie Bowers. The group’s “Venus Warrior” bond from the 2003 production of The Venus Monologues at Garden Beach Community College is still very strong, and these women are ready, willing, and able to kick some butt to help Aracely out of her difficult bind. Join Aracely’s “Three Wise Women” plus her ever-present trickster hunk, Quito, in one adventure after another as they work against the odds to give Aracely a fabulous, nearly impossible Christmas gift: the life of her dreams.
 
You can find Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36559083-deck-the-malls-with-purple-peacocks
 
You can buy Deck The Malls with Purple Peacocks here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Malls-Purple-Peacocks-Alice-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0778999M9/
From 9 till 10 December and from 15 till 17 December the book will be free!

Amy Gettinger, once a community college ESL instructor, now writes novels and reader’s theater plays and coaches Reader’s Theater for Seniors. She’s a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective. She lives in Orange County, California underneath a eucalyptus windrow full of parrots and crows. For fun, she walks the local beach cliff path with her husband and dogs--and thinks up perfectly ridiculous characters and crimes to write about.
 
You can find and contact Amy Gettinger here:
- Blog: https://amygettinger.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Amy-Gettinger-1412625005719904/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmyGettinger
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7793380.Amy_Gettinger
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Amy-Gettinger/e/B00S9Y99II

​There is a tour wide giveaway for the book blitz of Deck The Malls in Purple Peacocks. These are the prizes you can win:
- a peacock Christmas tree ornament (US Only)
- an e-copy of Roll with the Punches by Amy Gettinger (International)
- an e-copy of Alice in Monologue Land by Amy Gettinger (International)
- an e-copy of Pranks and Poodles by Amy Gettinger (International)
 
For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:

First of all, I remember in the early to late-1990s how my parents fit their three daughters and a fat tabby in the backseat of a 1992 Mitsubishi Galant. They would take us every summer across the southern states, from California to Florida and as far north as Niagara Falls, Canada. Ours was an "educational" and "historical" tour of the United States. I now wish I could go on an eating adventure like these two! Oh to have the luxury of mouth watering feasts and driving cross country....with two cats in the backseat instead of bickering children! 
My family had a lot of fun memories and adventures during my childhood and I could picture each stop that Pat and Alice took. Parts of this book reads like a tour guidebook that lists interesting facts but with more gusto. Pat weaves his tale, needing to tell you some facts about the background, architecture, the people in each stop, the smells and how the cats behaved or didn't. This book is funny and charming and, did I already say, mouth watering. The way he describes the way the food tastes - oh my, please take me with you! But the way you can tell his love for his Alice is also pretty lovely and puts this book into a sweet, tasty romance. 
If you're still needing to getaway this summer, then I suggest Dining and Driving with Cats - Alice Unplugged and be prepared to laugh, sigh and salivate the whole way through! 

​*I received this book in exchange for an honest review. However, these thoughts and opinions are my own. I'm not required to write a positive review.***

I was Raised in the South by a pack of wolves - good wolves with a pack leader and lifetime mate that protected the young and taught the three male pups how to survive in a chaotic world without losing the gift of kindness and love for fellow wolves. My love for writing started with a gift from my father. Entering high school he gave me a Norman Mailer war story titled "The Naked and the Dead". For the first time I realized the writer could own the true world and the fictional world in the same story. From that time on writing came easy for me. In high school I wrote a weekly humor column for our newspaper. In college at Chapel Hill my freshman short story about a talking horse who gave advice to world leaders (my version of Mr. Ed)  got me an invite to the Thomas Wolfe Creative Writing program. Two years in this program taught me the value of reading other people’s works and developing a critical eye. If you can criticize someone else’s writing you have a good start on improving your own efforts. Upon graduation from University I was invited to join the US Army where I spent three years and served as a Lieutenant in the Field Artillery on the DMZ in Korea during the Vietnam War. After release from service I proceeded to Graduate School for my MBA and fell headlong into the computer trap. My years in the computer industry span the lengthy period from the day Jobs introduced the Lisa computer until Zuckerberg announced his IPO for Facebook. Along the way I was honored as co-creator of the “fuzzy search algorithms” in use as the de facto standard by all of today’s major search engines. I am best known as one of the pioneers of DRM (Digital Rights Management). My innovative Digital Rights Management product for delivering music, photos and video won my company “Best New Start-Up” at the 1998 Internet World Conference. My company was the first to release Julian Lennon’s No. 1 Hit “Day after Day” for Internet only distribution. Six of my patents are currently in relicense to a diverse group of hi-tech companies including, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Valve, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Zynga, Audible, Intuit, Symantec and MacroVision. My "541" patent is industry famous as the iTunes Patent that was licensed by Steve Jobs to provide digital rights management for all the artists and musicians on the iTunes platform. During my career years I never stopped writing. An early cold-war espionage thriller composed on a Remington electric typewriter picked up a dozen rejects from New York publishers before an Editor at a Harcourt imprint called me for a visit. This was my introduction to book editors. Circumstances of course have changed but at that time the Editor ran the show. After two lengthy consultations it was clear that the only way I would be published was to basically re-write the entire 325 pages. You see the Editor  loved my writing but hated my story. That changed me for good. I decided the only way that I could write and keep my story as my story was if I could afford to be independent. I was very good with computers. During the following years I continued to write for my own pleasure while I built an enviable career in the computer software industry. I wrote daily for business of course. In fact I have over 600 pages of published patents covering my inventions and literally thousands of pages of professionally written marketing, sales and technical documents still in circulation with my fingerprints on them. This paid for my passion - creative writing. My favorite unpublished work is titled "Stealing Blake"  which I spent the better part of twenty-four years composing and rewriting. It gave me the chance to create a historical fiction about one of my favorite creatives - William Blake. Maybe I will revisit that one after I finish Alice’s story. At last we have today. It started with a love letter. I wanted to tell Alice how much her devotion to me had  meant through the years. She was my rock - my confidant and she never found me wanting. We took a trip. We took cats. There were a lot of surprises. I decided our trip called for a love letter. After fifteen pages I realized I couldn’t stop without telling it all to Alice. Now two years later Alice can read the first installment in "Dining and Driving with Cats - Alice Unplugged".  ​

This story begins with Emma Lee Baker's letter to her daughter, Honour Blue Baker, during her final few minutes on Earth. It then goes back to a few days from an event that changed both of their paths. 

Marian L. Thomas breaks down this story by giving us each woman's point of view. We get to see what each woman was thinking about, their view of each of their own heartache, and how they all fit together in the end.

The whole book was littered with little wisdoms and tiny gems that we, as a generation of millennial women, often forget about. We understand that our past can hurt, but we forget it's all behind us, and we get to decide if we want to live anchored to the chains of our past, or choose to only remember the good and wonderful parts of our memories. We know that there is wisdom in old age, but we forget that life needs to be lived, and often with consequences for the youth to understand. This book had the soul of our grandmother's stories, and you can recognize the wistfulness of wanting to change back time, to get back some years....to not have life be full of regrets. Thomas took me on a journey that these three women take, and I believe I am all the wiser for it. I could read the insecurities of my youth through Lorraine. In Honour's words, I could see a life full of regrets. And in Emma Lee's wisdom and brashness, I saw a mama who wanted to protect her child from the world.

She took me on a bittersweet journey of faith, hope, and love that endures in spite of all the barriers we put in its way. There are some encouraging words here about truly believing in yourself, and to look for opportunities where and when you can. 

After reading this book, I hope you, dear reader,  find some wisdom, and courage about needing to live life without fear, and to chase your dreams. I know I did....but then again, I believe in butterflies. 

*I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I am not required to write a positive one. These thoughts and opinions are my own.