The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow Exercise Plan
Posted by Morgan
Tonight I was sitting here thinking of the many ways reading The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow can be a good thing for you, my readers, and I sorta stumbled upon one I need to practice myself. The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow Exercise Plan.
Icharus is in tippy-top shape, if I do say so myself, so I know the exercise routines he practices actually work for taking off pounds, flab, extra inches…whatever you wanna get rid of, if you do what Icharus Crane does in The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow, you’ll drop it in no time flat.
First off, you can chop down trees with a monstor axe (Jericho Downes’s tree feller is no’ a toy for weaklings!) like Icharus does in the early chapters of The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow. He just had to keep an eye out for the Witch of the Western Woods while swinging the thing. Maybe you won’t have to worry about that, eh?
Or, you could…
Dig graves. All that shoveling is sure to strengthen those biceps and tighten your tenderloins. Especially if you have to dig more than one in a short period of time.
Or maybe you’d rather…
Chase headless folks around through the swamp at night. That’s sure to melt away those extra pounds (or could that warm liquid running down your legs be some yellow substance extracted from humans in the face of extreme fear?) Hmmm. Maybe we’ll skip that.
Ah well, there’s always the heart-starting exercise in Chapter 19 to practice if neither of the ones I’ve mentioned here work for you.
Still, we have no less than four brilliant exercises from The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow for you if you’re willing to put in the effort. <g>
Morgan the Moron
(Please note: This blog is intended to be funny/humorous. If you didn’t laugh, don’t blame me for your failed sense of humor or my warped one, please.)
Sleepy Hollow Romance: Potato Salad Appetizer
Posted by Morgan
Icharus spied her immediately. He caught hold of one of the beams and swung himself out of the framework, hanging for a moment before he dropped to the floor beneath. He walked over to where she stood with Dirck, and dusted his hands against his thighs.
“Dirck, go up and help your father with that beam,” he said before turning his attention to Katherine. He smiled. “Behold your inn, Mistress Van Brunt.”
She grinned. “Well, almost,” she said, and he laughed. Taking hold of her arm, he led her away from the worksite. “We’ll be safer over here.”
She followed him, but when he would have stopped, she gestured toward the tall tree near the brook.”Actually, I thought we might sit over there,” she said. “Are you hungry, Master Crane?”
His gaze practically devoured her on the spot. “Starving.”
She held out the basket Edda had prepared. “Since today is such a beautiful day, I thought we might sit beneath the shade and share what I have in this basket.”
Her voice was so playful, and yet so timid. Icharus arched a brow. “A picnic?”
She nodded, her smile teasing him, and he noticed the bright sparkle in her gaze. Almost regretfully, he looked back toward the inn where the others were still hard at work, and sighed.
Katherine stepped in front of him, peering up at him with those wonderful eyes of hers, and said, “Please. You’ve been working so hard. You deserve a rest.”
Icharus started to protest, to remind her that he hadn’t been the only one working, but the happy twinkle in her gaze stopped him. For the life of him, he couldn’t allow himself to be the one who made that joyful shine disappear from her gaze.
“A picnic you say? Why, I remember as a child, Mum would pack a veritable bounty of pies and puddings and sweetmeats into a basket just like that one. We’d all go off to the meadow and spend the afternoon enjoying the warm sunshine and a meal made more delicious for having eaten it outdoors. Father especially enjoyed such times. He had rather peculiar fondness for eating.”
Katherine smiled. “See? Your father knew that everyone must take time away from toiling to enjoy a good meal. Now, take this basket, if you please, and follow me.”
His lips twitched, but he nodded and took the basket, hefting it onto his shoulder. “Indeed, Mistress Van Brunt. It seems you are correct. Let us away, my dear.” He gestured toward the brook. “After you.”
Icharus found it a bit humorous that she chose a spot beneath the very tree his father had often spoken of…the very place Ichabod had wiled away many an hour spinning fantasies of himself and Katrina Van Tassel. He grinned. “You know, my father used to come here of an evening,” he told her.
Katherine had busied herself with spreading a colorful quilt over the ground and laying out the scrumptious smelling repast Mrs. Porter had packed into the basket for them. She sat down on a corner of the quilt now, and cast him a glance. “Indeed?”
Icharus nodded. “He told me so himself, many a time. He said he would come here to this exact spot and spend hours with his imagination, casting lurid images of himself and your Mother round in his mind. Many a time, he said, his mind would produce an image of the two of them sharing a kiss so vividly he almost thought the deed done in reality.”
She chuckled. “And what of you, Master Crane? Will you spend this hour allowing some lovely female to enchant your thoughts? With whom shall you share a vivid but imaginary kiss?”
Icharus joined her on the blanket and leaned close. “I only indulge in real kisses, dear lady,” he said, his voice husky.
She laughed, and he reached out, cradling her cheek in his palm. “Flights of imagination are for dreamers. I prefer to feel the warmth of real lips beneath mine, to watch as they part just the tiniest bit in breathless anticipation, to taste the sweetness offered… in broad daylight.”
His thumb teased her lower lip, and her eyelids drifted downward. “I prefer real lips, Katherine. Like yours. Now,” he said, leaning ever closer as he spoke.
“Now?” she whispered.
He gave the barest of nods an instant before his lips brushed hers. He teased her lips with his own, brushing them against hers in a featherlike caress. Once. Again. She sighed against his mouth, and he shifted on the quilt, pulling her against him, his fingers sifting through her soft curls.
“Katherine. I want to taste you.” He breathed the words against her parted lips. He slid his tongue over her lower lip, and then his mouth closed over hers, his tongue sliding inside to taste the nectar of her kiss.
The feel of her own tongue timidly sliding against his near destroyed what bit of sanity he had left to claim. Desire, hot and ready, slammed through him. He groaned and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss. He devoured her mouth with his own, his tongue plunging again and again to taste of her sweetness, but he wanted more. His hand slid down, along the gentle curve of her side to her hip, and he cupped her bottom, pulling her as close as he dared.
A moan slid from her throat, and he broke away from her lips to kiss her there, and again at the tender area beneath her ear before he reached up to nibble at her earlobe. Her hands seemed to have taken on a life of their own, one moment sliding through his hair while she held him close, and then gliding across his shoulders and lower before coming back up again to tangle in his hair.
He delighted in the soft sounds coming from her in response to his kiss. How he wanted this woman, he thought, in every possible way. He shifted again. She wiggled closer… and then froze.
“Icharus?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
She shifted away from him, and leaned up on an elbow. “I think we’re lying in the potato salad.”
Oh, and I just LOVE those coolio blockquote tricks, yes? Makes it soooo much easier to read this stuff. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the excerpt…and the food. 
If you wanna read more, check out my website www.morganleshay.com (click on the The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow link, then on the Read an excerpt link) and immerse yourself with Icharus, Balt, Katherine, Brau…the whole gang!
Morgan
Sneak A Peek Inside The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow!
Posted by Morgan
Yes! This afternoon I got the “go ahead” from my EIC at LBF Books to post an excerpt from The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow on my website and I’m so excited about it!
This is the first I’ve been able to give readers a sneak peek between the covers of the book, and I’m dying to know what you think about it so you all go over to www.morganleshay.com/thelegacyofsleepyhollow.html and give it a read-through, please! Then (if you don’t mind) come back over here to the blog and let me know your thoughts. I’m kinda going nuts to hear what other people think about this story, so I’d love to hear from you.
Oh, about the “potato salad” scene…
Um…well…we’ll talk about that in another post I guess. I will say this though…today Jodi (LBF’s EIC) said it’s “priceless!” LOL. I think it is really cool, but I’m debating whether or not to post it too. What do you think? Wanna read the “Potato Salad Teaser”?
Okay, okay, go read the excerpt! We’ll talk potato salad soon.
Morgan
Why Choosing An Excerpt From The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow Sucks - Or The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow Edits Are Done
Posted by Morgan
Except for reading through after the copyeditor has a go at my manuscript, the edits for The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow are done! Yes! And in reflection, I’m wondering why so many authors profess to hate editing. It was fun…and easy. But I think Michelle (my editor) had something to do with that.
Oh wait. After my last rant, you were probably thinking my editor was Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde, right? LOL.
Turns out Michelle was having technical/computer problems from heck, or we’d have had these edits done a lot faster! Bless her heart. When I finally discovered what was going on with her (blowed router, bad line, all sorts of techie stuff that mostly goes right over my head), I felt bad for being in such a rush. Really bad. I’d have been pulling my hair out if I’d had to deal with all that. Sheesh!
But anyway, edits are all done… and now I’m obsessing over the teaser and excerpt.
What should I use?
. . . thinking . . .
. . . still thinking . . .
After I read through The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow three more times, and was still no closer to making a decision on which parts of the story to use for an excerpt and teaser, I called my daughter into my office for help. Since I love every single little bit of the story, I just couldn’t choose.
Bree loves the story too, she does. All of it. But it was still no surprise, really, when she said, “I like the potato salad scene.”
<Groan>
The “potato salad” scene?
It’s good. It’s really good. In fact, I love it! Romance readers will love it, too. But what about all the rest?
What about the other readers, I asked her. The ones who are going to want to see something, some hint, of how The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow ties into the original Washington Irving classic, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow?
So… I go through the manuscript again, to the “potato salad” scene, and thankfully yes, it’s in there. The tie-in to the other Sleepy Hollow that I just know everyone’s going to be looking for. So I decide the “potato salad” scene will be fine for the teaser my publisher asked for (although it’s a little long in word count). Now that decision is made, but…
What about the excerpt?
Obsess, obsess, obsess…
Well I finally did manage to choose. It was a difficult decision, and I may wish a thousand times over that I’d chosen a different one later, but for now, I think the excerpt I decided on is a good one. If you’re an author and you’ve ever had to do this for your own book, I’m sure you can understand.
For those who aren’t authors, choosing only a small portion of your story to let readers sample is like showing off a picture of your baby or grandbaby…but the only thing that shows up in the pic is the eyes. Or the hand. Or… you know what I mean, right? It’s just not the WHOLE picture.
<sigh>
But it’s enough, I hope, to intrigue you.
Anyway, I have to be sure it’s all approved by the publisher first, but as soon as I get word that it is, I’ll post a link to the excerpt so you can read it. Until then, keep wondering…potato salad??? LOL
Morgan
The Story Behind The Story: The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow
Posted by Morgan
Last night I was laying in bed, thinking about my blog and I decided to write something I don’t normally write about…real life. You see, somewhere in my mind I have the idea that no one wants to know the stories behind the stories, but just for today I’m gonna take a chance and write about it anyway.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about “the story” behind how my latest romance novel THE LEGACY OF SLEEPY HOLLOW came into being.
Any of you ever had panic attacks? Nasty little buggers that live in your mind like fiends of the unsure, preying on every little uncertainty you feel, plaguing you when you least expect them to pop up. After my 3rd child was born (that would be Trevvy), I started having them, defeated the suckers once I learned to notice the signs of one coming on, and didn’t have them again for 13 years!
Well, as luck would have it, when those 13 years ran out (around August of last year?) I started having them again…only this time the fiends disguised themselves using the then current uncertainties in my head–breathing. When one would come on, I would feel like I couldn’t breathe. I thought something was wrong with my throat. But there wasn’t a thing wrong, nothing was different…except my thoughts.
See, a few years ago, my youngest daughter (Kat) got a bad case of the croup. I didn’t know it was croup. I thought it was larangytis. She had the whole squeaky voice deal like you have, and I thought it was, well, just larangytis (sp?). Turns out it was CROUP. she woke up coughing in the night, and suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She REALLY couldn’t breathe. I thought we were going to lose her. I was terrified. But she is a fighter, our little Kat, and she pulled through fine in just a few hours. We rushed her to the ER, she had a few breathing treatments, we came home, bought a humidifier, and she’s been fine ever since.
But mommie here was riddled with feelings of guilt. How could I not have known she had croup? Why didn’t I realize it BEFORE it got bad? There were things I knew I could have done if I’d only known, but…if you’re a mom, you know how your thoughts (especially ones of guilt) can plague you.
The truth is, it all happened so fast, over the course of several hours, there was really nothing I could have done, even if my thoughts wanted me to think differently at the time. Still I couldn’t seem to get over it, couldn’t get the terror of it out of my mind…It’s no wonder then that the panic attacks surfaced again (around August of 2007) as they did…by making me think I couldn’t breathe.
Okay, that’s the back story for the back story. Things kinda came to a climax in October 2007. That’s when I made my own trip to the ER…because I couldn’t breathe.
Oh, I could breathe, it just felt like I couldn’t. But I wasn’t having trouble taking in breaths at all. It was just the panic attacks. I’d been having them since August, but one afternoon in October while I was trying to watch Pirates Of The Caribbean 3: At World’s End with the family, I had the mother of all panic attacks. I knew what it was, but my mind held just enough uncertainty on the matter to make me think the worst. I thought I was dying. So I called my mom, and off we went to the ER.
A few hours and a nerve pill later, I could breathe again. But I HATE to take medication, so I was determined I would take as few of the pills as possible (the doc gave me 10, I’ve only taken 3…and I took them in halves, LOL). So I did what I always do when I need someone to talk to (which is pretty much all the time)…I talked to God. Yep. And I prayed. I asked God to give me something to take my mind off the things that were triggering the panic attacks, a project I could sink myself into so deeply I wouldn’t keep concentrating on trying to do for my body what it does for itself without me even thinking about it…breath.
I prayed constantly for something, anything to focus my thoughts on. And in January 2008, God sent me a project that was so exciting, so involving, and so absolutely FUN I forgot about the rest. I felt better. I could breathe. I was happy! And for the first time in more years than I care to admit to, I was enjoying doing what I used to love to do…writing.
Not only was I writing, the big man upstairs had given me a story that was simply amazing! Every night I went to sleep thinking about it. Every morning I woke up ready to write the next scene, the next segment. The characters seemed so real, their lives played out in my thoughts so vividly it was almost as if I had moved into Sleepy Hollow and was living out the story right alongside my characters.
When the story was finished and I had to type “The End”, I cried.
Seriously. I’d enjoyed the journey so much, I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave my “friends”. I didn’t want to leave the past, leave Sleepy Hollow. And I got scared. Now that the story was over, would the panic attacks come back? Well, they tried. But you know what? I “get it” now. I know what was causing them, and now I have the power to defeat them. Now I am concentrating on something else…YOU.
That’s right, I’m concentrating on you, my readers, and I am so excited that you will soon be able to read the story that I wrote, the story that has taken over 100 years to surface…the story of what happened in Sleepy Hollow after Ichabod Crane disappeared, after the Headless Horseman’s last ride, the story of how one man’s nemesis later becomes salvation. And of course, the story of two hearts coming together as one.
So there you have it…the story behind the story, behind the writing of THE LEGACY OF SLEEPY HOLLOW.
Pre-Order The Legacy of Sleepy Hollow!
Posted by Morgan
OMG, I’m so excited!
As of this morning, The Legacy Of Sleepy Hollow is available for Pre-Order through the publisher at: http://www.lbfbooks.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TheLegacyofSleepyHollowPrint
Why should you rush over and pre-order your copy? Here are the Top 3 reasons:
1. You want to be among the first to know what *really* happened the night Ichabod Crane disappeared from Sleepy Hollow (my version of it, anyway)
2. You can’t wait to read more about the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow
and
3. You love reading!
Okay, so those may not be YOUR Top 3 reasons for pre-ordering today, but whatever yours are, just make sure you get over there to that link and reserve your copy today…and you’ll be among the first to get your hands on the story people have been waiting over a hundred years for…the story of what happened in Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow after the Headless Horseman’s famous midnight ride!