Jennifer Becton's Blog, page 13

The Kindle editions of Caroline Bingley and Mary Bennet are on sale for $.99 for a limited time!
Click the images below to go to their Amazon pages.

Happy Holidays!

The post Kindle Sale: Caroline Bingley and Mary Bennet appeared first on Becton Literary.

Charlotte Collins and “Maria Lucas” are free on Kindle on Sunday, December 13, and Monday, December 14.

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Click the images below to begin your free download!

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Christmas Vacation: This tops the list for a reason. It’s the first Christmas movie my husband and I watch every year.


Elf: Buddy the Elf has all the childlike Christmas joy I strive for over the holiday season. He looks better in the elf costume than I do though.
White Christmas: When I was a kid, my mother and I watched this either while putting up the tree or baking sugar cookies. However, we always fast-forwarded through “Choreography.” Yikes.


A Christmas Story: I used to hate this movie, but it’s grown on me over the years.

5. The Santa Clause 2: The original was good, but the sequel was better. That’s right. I said it. Santa has to find his Mrs. Claus. (Plus, this gif expresses how much I love cocoa too.)

Honorable mention: While You Were Sleeping is not technically a Christmas movie, but it should be. I watch it every year.

This weekend, I’ll be participating in the Holidays with Jane Movie Fest, and you’re invited to join me. The Holidays with Jane: Christmas Cheer writers are hosting a major holiday movie binge watch all weekend long. Check out all the details here.

Watch The Flight before Christmas with me on Lifetime!

When: Saturday, 10 PM EST

Where: Twitter using the hashtag #HWJMovieFest

Prizes and random nonsense will abound. Plus, I’m sure Ryan McPartlin (Captain Awesome from Chuck) will take his shirt off. BONUS!

And if you’re looking for Christmas reading, please consider the holiday compilations in which I’ve participated:

What holiday movies are on your must-see list?

The post Top Five Favorite Christmas Movies appeared first on Becton Literary.

Free today and tomorrow on Kindle!

Naughty or Nice: a mix of magical, spooky, and romantic tales for the holidays by lots of incredible authors like Barbra Annino, JR Rain, and many more (including me)!

In my first attempt at paranormal suspense, you’ll get to meet a character who you may see (slightly altered) in the future.

The post Naughty or Nice: Free on Kindle appeared first on Becton Literary.

Halloween has fallen into disfavor lately, and many people seem to prefer to celebrate the harvest instead. But Halloween offers many opportunities for positive growth. My friend Darrell provides a great list, including:

5. Reflect on your own mortality. This was a feature of the pre-Christian observance of Samhain that is certainly appropriate for Christians to embrace, especially American Christians who do such a marvelous job of denial of the fact that we will all some day die. You don’t need to be morbid about it, but perhaps this would be a good time to reflect upon passages like Isaiah 40:6-8 or Psalm 90:3-10. If you’re of a practical mind: Do you have a will? Is it up to date?

6. Make resolutions. Why let all that reflection on your mortality go to waste? Consider what you have learned over the past year. What would you like to do differently next year? Since the new Christian year is less than a month after Halloween (on the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2010), now would be a great time to begin pondering the changes you would like to see in your life. To see Darrell’s full list, go here.

To his list, I’d like to add the idea of confronting fears, more than just the fear of our own mortality. After all, I’ve thought a lot about fear: mine and the concept in general. If you want proof, check out the book I co-wrote with Laura Daley. And fear is one of the main aspects of Halloween. So let’s talk about it.

According to Psychology Today, certain universal fear categories exist.

Death: fear of no longer existing, falling
Mutilation: fear of illness, bugs, snakes, etc.
Loss of autonomy:  fear of commitment, claustrophobia, etc
Separation: fear of abandonment or rejection
Ego death: fear of humiliation, failure

Halloween brings each of these categories front and center. Ghosts and zombies show up at our houses to beg for candy. So do ax-wielding monsters. People display decorations that depict snakes and bugs. People threaten to play tricks on us if we don’t cough up the candy. Halloween literally brings our worst fears–death, mutilation, ego death–to our doorsteps. We have to face them with ever cheery “Trick or Treat.”

But the “threats” that show up at the door on Halloween night are actually out there every day. Every day, we face our five universal fears. Halloween realizes these fears in a concrete way. And we can either be upset that depictions of evil come out of the shadows for a night, or we can practice facing these fearsome things in a safe, harmless way. Overnight, our fears have gone from ideas that we can ignore and deny to the manifestations of creatures and monsters on our doorstep. We get to face them.

On Halloween, we can choose to fight these monsters, mock them, or continue to fear them. Some might dress up as fighters, like superheroes who try to overcome the forces of evil. Others might dress up as monsters themselves. Maybe they aren’t thinking consciously about confronting the fears represented by the monsters they choose to embody. But that might be what they’re doing.

Either way, we remind ourselves that if we give fear power over us, then we will not truly be leading a full, meaningful life.

The post Living Fear Free on Halloween appeared first on Becton Literary.

Sometimes I wonder whether being a writer can make an impact on people. While I love providing entertainment and distraction from the problems of real life, I hope to make a positive impact on people in other ways. I want my characters to touch something deeper.

But sometimes, I wonder if I’m the only person who cares about fictional characters as if they were real.

Then there’s last night’s Walking Dead.

I know that millions of people went to bed worried about Glenn.

Characters–fake people–can touch something real inside us. I am a writer because I want to do that.

See the video here. Warning: major spoilers.

The post Random Thoughts: On Glenn Rhee appeared first on Becton Literary.

Before we get started, I should let you all know that I don’t generally love the horror genre. I don’t see many traditional horror movies (Jason, Freddy, etc.) or read Stephen King, so don’t expect to see much of that here. I like my Halloween entertainment to include suspense, humor, and just a little horror.

Books

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. This is a parody of the Gothic novels that were popular in Jane Austen’s time. Not only does it have a hint of romance, but it is hilarious. I also enjoyed this free audio version read by Elizabeth Klett.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz (Scary Stories Box Set: Scary Stories, More Scary Stories, and Scary Stories 3): What kid of my generation (Hand me my cane, son.) didn’t love these growing up? Makes me want to go find my copy right now! This leads me to think of….
I Know What You Did Last Summer : This is probably more suspense than horror, but I wanted to throw it in anyway.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Okay, so this is not technically a Halloween book, but the monster theme certainly translates.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: Same deal as Frankenstein.
Holidays with Jane: Trick or Sweet Of course, I’m going to pimp this collection. I wrote a fun Halloween mashup of Mansfield Park and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Movies

Date Movie : A parody of every movie genre ever, including the Scream franchise.
Dead Again : Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson do suspense. And the score is fantastic. Need I say more? Oh, it’s on Amazon Prime at the moment.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein : More Kenneth Branagh. This movie is true to the original.

TV Shows

Back in the day, I wasn’t into the fantasy genre at all. Well, those days are over. These three TV shows are now in my Top 10 Favorite TV Shows, and they are all fantasy with a hint or horror.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Granted, this show has a lot of brooding teenagers and a really broody vampire, but there’s also Spike. #TeamSpike!
Supernatural : Travel through a world of monsters, mythology, and totally bastardized biblical stories with Sam and Dean. #TeamFreeWill!
The Walking Dead: #TeamCarol! Carol is my favorite character ever! I need to do a character study post on her. I love her, but little Daryl never hurts. Also, never root for the horses. It never ends well for them.

TV Episodes

While these shows aren’t exactly in the fantasy or horror genres, they have some fun Halloween-themed episodes.

Psych

“Scary Sherry: Bianca’s Toast“

South Park:

“Pinkeye”: See Wendy in her Chewbacca Costume and an homage to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video by Chef.
“Spookyfish”: the second Halloween special
“Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery”: Enjoy an homage to Scooby-Doo
“Hell on Earth”: Two words: Biggie Smalls.
“A Nightmare on Facetime”
Etc.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

“Halloween“
“Fear, Itself“: Theme-wise, this is my favorite Halloween episode ever. It says a lot about the nature of fear and how to overcome it.
Etc.

The Office: The employees of Dunder Mifflin dress up every year. Watch them for the costumes.

“Halloween”: Season 2, episode 5
“Employee Transfer”: Season 5, episode 6
Season 6, episode 8
“Costume Contest”: Season 7, episode 6
“Spooked”: Season 8, episode 5
“Here Comes Treble”: Season 9

The Big Bang Theory

“The Middle Earth Paradigm”: Sheldon dresses as the Doppler Effect. Nuff said.
“The Good Guy Fluctuation”: “Bazinga, punk. Now we’re even.”

The post Best Halloween Books, Movies, and TV appeared first on Becton Literary.

To celebrate the launch of Shock Loss, the rest of the series is on sale for $0.99. In fact, Absolute Liability is free.

The post Southern Fraud Sale appeared first on Becton Literary.

The go button has been hit!
Shock Loss will be available on Kindle and Nook in the next 12 hours!

The post Shock Loss Update: The Go Button Has Been Hit appeared first on Becton Literary.

Celebrate the release of Shock Loss (Southern Fraud Thriller 5) at a Facebook Launch Party.
Giveaways, Trivia, Swag, and more!

Date: October 14, 2015

Time: Noon EST until ?

Click here to Join!

You’ll have the chance to win one a tote bag based on Mark Vincent’s “Hold Fast” tattoo.

The post Shock Loss Launch Giveaway: Totes appeared first on Becton Literary.