The new year has found me without the ability to write. I’ve been so busy and so worn out that I’ve not had pen to paper time. It also has seen me without time for blogging as well, so my apologies for the radio silence here.
It has found me, though, with better inter-personal relationships, even though the days seem to be going by like seconds and I’ve barely got time for myself.
Image via Wikipedia
So, this is the year that everything is supposed to go to hell, right?
I’m hoping not, I rather hope to have a good year. 2011 was full of highs and epic lows, and I’d rather not relive it. This year, the only resolutions I have are to be me but better – to be healthy and happy. To not pull any stupid shit like I did last year and to just be a better version of myself.
Happy New Year friends. Let this be the year you take the steps you’ve always wanted to but were afraid to, let this year be the year YOU shine.
Every little girl dreams that their Dad is larger than life, bigger than who they are, but for Lynne, whose father is your work-a-day geek who wants to be more than what he is, the department store mannequin (nicknamed “Ken” 
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becomes her dream Dad until a certain musician makes an appearance and drives home that it’s not always the clothes that make the man, it’s who he is on the inside that makes him.
Lynne, who goes with her father to shop for clothes at Elite Threads, spends her time there daydreaming about the mannequin in the window being her father – and being everything he isn’t while he’s trying to earn a living for her and her family.
Trying on one hideous combination that should stay on the mannequin, her reverie is interrupted by a charismatic stranger and his purple shirt. A purple shirt that changes everything.
Mannequin really stirs the heart in bringing you into Lynne’s world. Susan does a wonderful job of intelligently bringing across that spark of childhood that most of us have left behind, and the dreams that maybe our Dads were what we dreamed that they were. Mannequin was a story that came into my life at the right point – I was very down when I nabbed it during @westofmars’ sale, and a few minutes later I was smiling. Any story that can do that, well, is magic.
Grab it now at Smashwords!