What gets us through….A few fave quotes… Share yours!

I flew to Milwaukee recently and heard a wonderful new quote, so I thought it was time to share our favorite quotes.  Quotes inspire us, amuse us, and make us think.  Here I go….

“Flying is like kindergarten.  You take off your shoes, get a snack and some juice then take a nap.”  –  Nice young man flying from Cincinnati to Milwaukee

“If Dorothy can click her heels together and get back to Kansas, then why can’t I click my flip-flops and get to the beach?”  –  Facebook

“Life is all about finding people who are your kind of crazy.”  — Facebook

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”  — C.S. Lewis

“People will stare.  Make it worth their while.”  — Harry Winston

“Don’t let anyone ever dull your sparkle.”  –  Anonymous

“Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts.”  — E. Hubbard

Happy Thursday!  Please share one or more of your fave quotes!

xo,

Leanne

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It’s a New Day For an Old Favorite

What the Heart Knows - screen I’m celebrating!

What the Heart Knows, newly edited and dressed in a new cover, is officially on sale in e-format as well as trade paperback.  I love a good “secret baby” story, which this is, but it’s so much more.  It’s the story of a man who reached for the sky and grabbed a piece of it before tumbling back to earth.  Unlike the mythical Icarus, Reese Blue Sky survived his untimely retirement from contemporary hero status as an NBA player, but can he go home again, even briefly for his father’s funeral?  And when he runs into the woman he left behind, will he be tempted to stay, just a little bit longer?

Helen Ketterling has struggled since the summer she fell in love with Reese.  She had plenty of reasons not to tell him about his son, but her feelings for him were not among them.  She’s pulled herself out of the hole she dug for herself using gambling as a shovel, and she’s made a good life for herself and her son.  But now that she’s working to help uncover corruption that threatens the casino business on the reservation Reese once called home, how will she handle the reunion she’s carefully avoided for so long?

We writers have all been told by at least one editor that unless your name is Susan Elizabeth Phillips (one of my personal favorites) you can’t write a romance with a pro any sport player as a hero.  Romance readers won’t buy it.  Okay, rodeo might be the exception, but that’s because the “player” is a cowboy, and who doesn’t love a cowboy?  It’s one man, one beast, the ride only lasts eight seconds, and the rules are simple.  Ride ‘em, cowboy.  But football?  Basketball?  Up and down the field, up and down the court for hours and hours fighting over a ball, and the season is interminable.

Ah, but a retired player.  One who has issues, regrets, dreams yet to fulfill and a heart in need of tender loving care, now that’s a hero we can fall in love with.  Basketball is the sport in Indian Country.  As a high school teacher I was a big fan.  I was a loyal fan when I was in high school myself, a Celtics fan from way back, and now I support my Timberwolves through thick and thin.  (Lots of thin, but hope springs eternal for the romantic.)  But while it can be a metaphor, the sport itself doesn’t make much of a backdrop for my kind of a novel.  It’s merely a part of what makes a character who he is, of where he’s been and what’s brought him to the crossroads where the story begins, the intersection of relationships, the push and pull of human emotion.  No matter what the genre, a good story is all about character.

What do you look for when you check out a cover or a blub or a review for something to read?  What “sells” you?  What turns you off?  I’ll be giving away an Amazon download of This Time Forever to one of today’s commenters.

This Time Forever - screen

Posted in book giveaway, free book, Kathleen Eagle, new book | 14 Comments

My cheekbones are made of plastic.

Post by Lois Greiman

Those were the first words out of the woman’s mouth as she handed me a book to be signed. This was many years ago at a B. Dalton’s Bookstore in Ames Iowa…when there were still bookstores to be found. I had never met this woman before in my life, but she opened up to me the moment we met, telling me how her first husband had damaged her face so badly that she had to have the bones replaced.

I was struck dumb only to be introduced to a woman in Des Moines the very next day whose story was, arguably, even more horrific. She had been declared a missing person when an unknown man from a nearby army post had shoved her into his trunk and abducted her for nearly a week. For obvious reasons, those stories have stayed with me for decades. And perhaps, for equally obvious reasons, I began doing fewer and fewer signings.

 However, I recently spent three days at the State Fairgrounds at an event called the Minnesota Horse Expo. Since my Hope Springs series is based on a cattle ranch in South Dakota I thought it might be a good venue to hawk my wares. It was, but once again, I was made privy to some gut-wrenching stories. One woman told me that she didn’t read but she was trying to write a book so that she could tell the story of how her daughter was sexually abused by both her husbands and how that daughter now blamed that abuse on her. I had scarcely gotten over that shock when a wheelchair-bound lady informed me that she had just been recovering from arsenic poisoning (intentionally caused by her ex-husband) when she was run over by a truck.

 As a human being and a novelist, a million questions immediately pop into my mind when these kinds of stories are voiced: How can these things happen? Is there no justice? Where were the people who love them…who were supposed to protect them? Is every word they speak the absolute truth? And why would anyone spill these tales in the midst of a hundred milling people? Do they so desperately need to share the experience that they’ll talk to anyone? Or is there something about meeting a writer that brings the tale bubbling to the surface.

 I don’t have any answers. Just more questions. But how about you? Have you ever been the recipient of this kind of tale from an absolute stranger? If so, how did you handle it? Or have you been on the other end of the spectrum and found yourself sharing details that you would normally keep to yourself?

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Traveling….

P1040653We got back from the Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico late Saturday evening, and I’m experiencing a bit of withdrawal today.  Laundry?  Dishes?  And someone had to make supper last night, too.  Me!

It’s nice to get away from everything for a while, float around in a pool, and wait for  handsome young waiters to stroll by offering mudslides and strawberry margaritas. P1040706  And it was great having time to finish reading three books on the trip…though one cancelled flight and an unexpected stop in Guadalahara  helped with reading time.  It was fascinating to see the level of security at the airport….including a lot of serious young men in army uniforms with very serious looking weapons.

But honestly, though I enjoyed the trip, I’m glad to be home again.   It’s such a beautiful time of year here in the Midwest!  It’s hard to beat these sunny, 70 degree days, the cool nights, the wonderful scent of grass growing, and the budding trees. It’s also great to be home and back at the computer, because I’m exciting about the making progress on several different writing projects.

Thought I’d share a few photos, here… the bottom one is of the beach in the town of Puerto Vallarta, outside The Blue Shrimp, and the one above  is of a young man in the most amazing headdress I’ve ever seen.  Click on the photo to see it larger.

He played the drums while another fellow performed a fast, wild dance on the beach just outside our open air restaurant in full regalia….though I didn’t quite hear P1040631the P1040620introduction and I’m not sure what culture they were portraying.  Mayan, maybe?

The next evening, a larger group performed a fire dance on the beach outside our hotel, and it was wonderful.  None of my photos turned out, though–the lighting was dim and those guys were moving fast!

We had a few glitches in our travel plans this trip, but everything worked out fine.

What unexpected adventures have you had while traveling–whether by land, sea or air?

Roxanne Rustand

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In the Eye Of the Beholder

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We’re getting ready for another birthday party, and you know what that means.  Go big or…oh, that’s right.  We are home.  So that settles it.  Big fuss, mostly homemade, which means Nana starts making stuff weeks ahead of time.  This time we’re going all Harry Potter, and there’s no end to the details you can recreate while you’re half watching something that’s half interesting on TV.  Something like “Project Runway.”  Stitching up a litter of “Pygmy puffs” was the perfect handwork to go along with tonight’s finale.  I like finales.  Let me skip the bickering, cut to the chase, and let me pick a winner.

No, no, not this one!  Yep, this is the one.  Fully half the dresses in this collection featured the big weird front pleat.  During the deliberations I waited to hear one of the judges say the obvious.  (Come one, you know what it looks like.)  No one mentioned it, so maybe it’s just me.  Okay, I liked the wolf sweater, but the designer hired a textile artist for that fabric.  Most of the collection was way too warrior woman for me.  No, what the winner had to offer—her esthetic, as they say on Runway—was not my style.

This was more my style:

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Well, you had to be there.  The designer is from Taos, and her collection was fluid and flowing, replete with exquisite, handmade textiles that spoke of painted skies, warm sun, soft adobe lines.  (The headpiece?  Strictly for the runway.  It’s reminiscent of a dancer’s roach.)

Our choices are matters of taste and timing and mood and necessity, maybe more, but we do develop a style over time.  What’s yours like?  And where in your world do you think it came from?  Just wondering.  Not only do we have ourselves to dress, but some of us have these characters to shop for.

Posted in Project Runway, clothing design, reality TV | 7 Comments

How Much of Your Story is True?

Hope St Simons5 Welcome C. Hope Clark, author of the fabulous “Carolina Slade” mysteries!

When an author takes the advice of the writing sages and uses a bit of what you know in her stories, people love to ask, “How much of this is true?” On one hand, it’s a huge compliment. The tale is plausible, realistic, and factual enough for readers to wonder if it really took place. The author has baited them, reeled them in, and convinced them to stay and partake of what she’s serving. That feeling never gets old.

But then there are moments where people wonder a bit too hard.

I write The Carolina Slade Mystery Series (Bell Bridge Books) set in rural South Carolina. My protagonist has two children and investigates agricultural irregularities as a Federal employee. She’s involved with a Federal agent with an obscure law enforcement agency called the Office of the Inspector General. Every government branch has an OIG that’s used in lieu of the FBI, which has different duties and operates under a larger umbrella approach to the government. This particular agent in Slade’s life is forever asking her to back away from perilous situations. Of course she doesn’t.

The first book in the series, Lowcountry Bribe, opens with Slade being offered a bribe. She calls it in to the authorities. They arrive on the scene for a sting operation to catch the guy. It all goes terribly wrong. Her world gets crazy insane and dangerous, and she’s forced to operate outside the rules, the laws, even common sense. She develops feelings for the agent but pushes them aside.

Lowcountry Bribe - screen

I was with the Federal government. I was offered a bribe. The bribe went sour. I married the agent, and I have two children. At first blush it sounds autobiographical, but in reality, the real-life situation wasn’t nearly as traumatic as painted in the story. But when readers and attendees learn that my life served as catalyst for fiction, they start interpreting all my fiction as reality.

“Did you have an ex-husband like Slade who was that horrible?”

Of course not.

“Were your children put in danger?”

Nope.

“Is Slade going to marry the agent like you did?”

Who knows?

“How did you know all these details…these emotions?”

I tapped what I knew, observed other people, and made up the rest. But as I study the room, as my answers settle in, they never look convinced.

As authors, we fight to nail the details. If we don’t know the answers to problems, we find someone who does. Or we read successful authors who traveled before us. We watch a movie like a writer or read a book like it’s a movie, seeking the moves, wording, and action beats.

A mystery author sees life as adventure and observes her surroundings as if they auditioned for pages in her books. So anything dramatic in her life becomes the perfect fodder for a story.

Family and friends, however, aren’t sure how to take me. My mother has banned me from writing about her. My sister-in-law has begged me to design a character around her, and my husband joked that I might write her in as a crack addict. She said that would be fine. So I did.

My newest daughter-in-law says she can’t read my stories because Slade sounds like me in her head. Her mother secretly asked how much she really knew about her new mother-in-law, because so much of the story might be true.

My neighbors greet me in a new light, as if I hold deep, dark secrets.

My parents are afraid to read the book.

I continue to marvel at how easily people spin fiction into fact. After my first nervous appearance where readers felt the need to make me accountable for clear delineation between what’s real and what’s not, I learned to roll with the experience. I enjoy the mystique now. Because the harder I try to explain the difference, and the louder I profess my normalcy, the more they seem to doubt. As one of my critique partners said one night, after she’d had two wines and peppered me with questions about one scene after another, “Thou dost protect too much.”

“Fine,” I said. “You decide what you think is real.”

She tipped her wine glass at me and said, “I thought so.”

Tidewater Murder - screen-1

C. Hope Clark is editor of the award-winning FundsforWriters.com, and her newsletters reach 35,000 readers each week. Hope’s manuscript for Lowcountry Bribe made the finals for several awards before finding its place with Bell Bridge Books where it made a grand debut. The second book in The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, Tidewater Murder, is an April 2013 release, and Hope assures readers that none of it is true.

Posted in Bell Bridge Books, Funds For Writers, mystery, mystery series, writing books, writing process | 16 Comments

What an interesting week!

In America, we started off with the Boston Marathon Bombing.  I was obsessed with every bit of news we were given about this event.  Horrified by the deaths and injuries, I prayed for the health and safety of the victims.  I also prayed for resolution.  Who could have dreamed the bombing suspects would have been found and apprehended in less than a week?

If the bombing weren’t bad enough, then the explosion at the fertilizer plant in Texas made it even worse.  An earthquake in China.  In Syria, hundreds are feared dead in Damascus fighting.  Floods in the midwest.  Snow in the northwest.  And then on a highly superficial note, what’s up with our fave girl Reese Witherspoon, who was arrested with her husband in Atlanta.

All of this is terribly distracting to an author.  In general, authors work best in boring conditions.  This week, I’ve struggled to make incremental progress.  It’s just been dang hard to focus!  Still working on it.

To offer a little much-needed levity, here’s a photo from facebook that cheered me up today.  Sheesh!  I needed it!Smile

dogsong

What about you?  How has the news from the last week affected you?

Hugs,

Leanne

www.leannebanks.com

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments