Dead Men’s Houses

Hi, all. Suze here. Happy Thursday!

There’s something sad going on in my neighborhood. A house is coming down. Not just any house, though. It is (or was) a classic New England saltbox built in the 1740s. The last owner of the house was an elderly woman whose family had lived and farmed there for generations. She died a few years ago, and the place has been vacant since then, a victim of the economy. Her absentee heirs managed to sell off one parcel of the farm, which fronts on a busy road on one side, and a large medical building went up. The parcel with the house, which fronts on the same busy road as well as my residential road, did not sell, most likely because the heirs were asking an astronomical amount of money.

The old girl’s got good bones!

I’ll be honest. Until the “For Sale” sign went up, I had no idea the house was that old. I thought it was a newer home built to look that way. At some point it had been re-sided with shakes over the clapboards, and the place was in darned good shape. It didn’t have one of those name plates you see all over New England showing the name of the original owner and the date the house was built. I’d never been inside, only knowing the owner to nod and say hello as one or the other of us was taking a morning walk.

Now the house is nearly gone, and it’s bittersweet. On the one hand, my town is losing one of its ancient homes, and my neighborhood is losing a piece of history. On the other hand, the house isn’t actually being destroyed. A post-and-beam company is  dismantling it, tagging each hand-hewn beam and support so that it can be reassembled somewhere else for a person who truly appreciates its significance. I have hope for the old place. Not so much for my neighborhood. I’m sure a subdivision will go into that acreage eventually.

I may lose some of you here, now that I’m about to wax literary. Everytime I go past what’s left of the house, I can’t help but think about a passage in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. Bear with me, okay? Matthew Holgrave, the mysterious daguerreotype artist, is a boarder in the House. He is speaking to young Phoebe Pyncheon, the last descendant of a once-proud family:

I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men’s houses; as, for instance, in this of the seven gables!”

“And why not,” said Phoebe, “so long as we can be comfortable in them?”

“But we shall live to see the day, I trust,” went on the artist, “when no man shall build his house for posterity. Why should he? He might just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,–leather, or gutta percha, or whatever else lasts longest,–so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same figure in the world that he himself does. If each generation were allowed and expected to build its own houses, that single change, comparatively unimportant in itself, would imply almost every reform which society is now suffering for. I doubt whether even our public edifices–our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-halls, and churches–ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin, once in twenty years, or there-abouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.”

The Turner-Ingersoll House in Salem

Now, I’m fairly sure Hawthorne/Holgrave is not actually advocating tearing down every building on the planet every twenty years and building something new in its place. What he is saying is that we should examine our beliefs about who and what we are as individuals. The histories of our families and of our communities should not shape or define us completely. Ultimately, each of us is responsible for creating her own “house” — whether that’s the physical building in which we live, or our own consciousness. Take what you can from the past, but build a new future on it.

Done with the literary criticism here! (You’re lucky. I could go on and on. I absolutely adore The House of the Seven Gables and can talk about it ad nauseum!) Click here for more information about the Turner-Ingersoll house in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne’s real-life inspiration for his novel.  I’m pretty glad this place is still around. It’s one of my favorite places to visit. As for Hawthorne’s other most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve always thought that would make a wonderful musical. Can somebody call Andrew Lloyd Webber for me?

What about you? How much do you allow your history to influence your life? Or if you’re not feeling self-reflective, what book would you most like to see turned into a musical?

I Was A Freelance Manuscript Reader

Thea Devine here, with a true confession:  Long ago in a publishing landscape far away (and over the course of the next twenty-five years),  I read manuscripts for several mass market publishing houses, back before electronic transmissions, back when we were writing 500 pp. books on real paper.

I read historical and contemporary romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, mysteries, sagas, fiction for reprint, and non-fiction, agented and slush.  And I assure you every proposal was looked at, no matter what form it arrived in — single spaced, cursive font, unchaptered, block paragraphs, handwritten, buried in popcorn. strangled in rubber bands.

And there were always manuscripts;  just the number of conferences across the country on a weekly basis assured that.  But after National — the deluge.

During those years, I never had an editor tell me what to look for, what they didn’t want to see.  Nothing was culled before it landed on the reader’s shelf.

But really — it was always about the story.  Those grab and go opening pages still grab editors..  And they really do know it when they see it..

But what the editor told me when she hired me was, don’t be afraid to be wrong.

Think about that.   Don’t be afraid to be wrong.  Because what if you passed up another Gone With The Wind or DaVInci Code?  What if the manuscript you loved was shot down and rejected by the editor and then became a best-seller for another publisher? (It happened).  What  if … in the fragile world of publishing as it was then, and is now, so dependent on the subjective opinion of reader and editor.

Don’t be afraid of rejection.  Because the editor could be wrong.  And if the editor could be wrong, then a rejection doesn’t t mean you wrote the worst book ever.  It just means this book didn’t move the editor or it didn’t fit into a particular marketing slot.

That still holds true.  The market itself will judge a book, in this new publishing milieu, if not an editor in a publishing house.   All you can do is write.

Some writing secrets from the reader:

It’s the story. It’s always been the story.  It’s how you get into the story.  Get your characters moving.  Make sure the inciting incident is critical, grabs the reader, and requires your characters to do something.

Conflict.   Your protagonists can’t want the same things (his family stole her family’s business;  she wants to get it back; he wants to give it back), even though they can want the same thing (an object of desire — like the Grail in Indy 3).

Pile it on.  The more obstructions, obstacles and problems you present your protagonists, the harder it will be for an editor — or reader — to put your manuscript down.

Grammar counts.  Sorry.  No dangling participles.  Subject and verb must agree.  A line edit takes forever on a manuscript that needs a lot of work.

Motivation.  Why exactly did your heroine go into the burning mine when everyone specifically cautioned her not to?  There are always reasons why your characters do what they do. Make sure your reader buys into it.

Make sure the ending holds up after all the build up.

Have you ever been rejected?  How did you handle it?  Do you think a publisher using readers is a good thing or bad?

FREE FALLING

Tuesday’s Child, PJ Sharon, coming to you from the lovely Hills of Western MA. I trust you all had a memorable and relaxing Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to everyone who helped me spread the word about my Heaven Is for Heroes FREE book offering over the weekend. I was able to gift dozens of e-books to military families and meet some new readers. I LOVE giving books away! But I’m a little concerned about the consequences of all this giving away of free books. How much is too much?

Ooops! Never too much! Ya’ll awake now?

Sigh…you can never get too much of my beau Alex, here…when digression is a good thing. Back to business. As I was saying…

When I published my first book last September, I was rightfully focused on recouping my investment, managing a budget, and making enough money to produce the next book three months later. By being diligent (that included making my family and friends buy my book) I was able to break even by January and start loosening the reins on my militent book selling. Fortunately, the third book, which came out in March, cost me much less to produce, allowing me to break even on my investment within the first month of it’s release.

It wasn’t until I entered Savage Cinderella into the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program that I saw the opportunity to make my book available for FREE. With KDP Select, a ninety day agreement to offer the book only through Amazon, I could put the book up for free for up to five days within that three months. I had been watching my Indie Romance Ink pals do very well with their free promotions. (I have to say here, I feel incredibly fortunate to belong to such supportive writing loops. I would not be able to do any of this without them. I’ve learned so much about the inner workings of publishing, marketing and promoting that would have taken years  to learn on my own.)

Several YA and Children’s authors in the group organized an event in April that ran for three days (see my experiment here). During those three days I had 28,000 downloads of SC in five countries. I was blown away by these results and noticed a consistent boost in sales of all three books for about the next three weeks.

Just when the numbers started to decline, I was approached to join another group of authors. This time with the WG2E (Writers Guide To E-publishing) in another give away. I still had two more FREE days to use up, so I jumped on board with the WG2E Street Team.  Sixteen authors worked together to promote an amazing Beach Book Blast event. There was a Twitter party, crazy cross-promotion through FB, a deluge of tweeting and retweeting, a Kindle Fire giveaway, and a constant sense that everyone was working in sync to move mountains.

 It was an awesome experience. During my two FREE days with the BBB promo, I had over 11,000 downloads and have sold 120 books in the past four days. I also reached the Amazon Top 100 Kindle Free book list, gaining the exposure that every author hopes for. My best ranking during that time was #30 in the Kindle Free Store, #3 in Love and Romance category, and #4 in Children’s e-books. Woohoo! I was thrilled, and I’m only sharing so you’ll know what’s possible.

 I love that I am reaching so many new readers who might potentially want to read other books I write. Every writer writes, if only in part, for the joy of stirring an emotional response from an audience. It’s an amazing feeling when someone tells you that they loved your story or that you touched their heart in some way. But there are also those who think your book is “unbelievable and stupid.”  I appease my bruised ego by counting my sales and waiting for those royalty checksJ A few negative reviews are well worth the pain for those short bursts of increased sales after a FREE promotion, and the momentum that gets generated in sales of your other books. If timed right, it can give you a pretty good payout over a few months.

On the downside—and yes, there is always a downside—for all of those downloads, a certain percentage of readers will never read the book because they have downloaded more FREE books than they will ever have time to read in this lifetime. It’s also a heck of a lot of work being a part of or running one of these promotional events and you are super lucky if you can hook up with some indiustrious people willing to collaborate. Otherwise, it’s tough to get these kind of results all on your own. 

Another possible side benefit of doing a FREE promo is that you can pretty much plan on getting a bunch of reviews, something that is generally a challenge for new authors. Great! Right? Um, no…Quantity seems to win over quality in this respect. I had 10 new reviews, some of which were very nice, others, not so much. With 25 reviews, SC has an average rating of four stars, for which I am very grateful, but there are some unhappy readers out there and that is always hard to take.

 I think many of the negative reviews come out of the fact that a cross section of people who download anything that is FREE may not be your target audience and may not be a fan of your genre. Don’t be surprised to see some returns. That’s right, for every ten books I sell or give away, there are at least one or two returns. That means that for every fifty books I sell, five to ten are returned. No idea why, but I hear other indie-authors say the same thing so I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about negative reviews either. The majority of comments are wonderful, and I’m pretty comfy here in my thick skin.

But the biggest downside of going FREE is that the glut of free books on the e-book market are making things very tough for authors who need to charge $7, $8, or even $9 for their books to ensure that publishers, agents, and distributors get their cut. Being an indie, I can set my price, and most indie authors are fine with selling a 75,000 word novel for under $3.99. Why would anyone want to pay for books if they can get so many inexpensive or FREE books? Is it devaluing the work of authors? Will readers come to expect books to be free? Will people with e-readers fill them up with so many free books that they will just stop buying them? I’m sad to say I have more books on my Kindle than I will ever have time to read. This is a definite deterrent for me buying anything new or even downloading more free books.

 Don’t get me wrong. I’m very pleased and satisfied with my results, and I don’t think that people will ever stop buying books, I’m just pondering the future and wondering what’s next?

So how do you feel about FREE books? For, against, or neutral, and why?

What a Difference a Year Makes…

A year ago today I sat down to write my very first blog post. Wow that year has gone by fast. This year I celebrated my fifth year as a teacher. My fifth year being out on my own. My fifth year out of college. And I’m inching one year closer to my thirtieth birthday. (Yikes)

As for my family ,this year one of my brothers turned twenty -one, while another is sneaking up on the big one-eight and college is looming in his near future. This year will mark my parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. The loss of my first childhood pet and arrival of a new puppy to take her place.

And my Scribes family has had a big year too. Katy and Casey have seen their babies published. REAL VIRTUE and MYSTIC INK are out and getting rave reviews from fans.

PJ is selling books all over the place, even appearing on the Amazon Bestseller list.

Susannah is polishing up her books and getting requests from editors and agents at conferences.

J Monkeys is churning out chapter and picture books alike to the delight of children of all ages.

As for me I finally got an agent and the other day my first phone call from an editor. No, I did not get a contract but I got valuable advice of how to make my book shine. Onward!

A year ago none of us were in the same place we were before and that’s a good thing because it means we are growing and hopefully one day we will all be in the place we only thought was possible in our dreams.

So what does this all mean for us? We’ve just got to work harder. Make new goals and do our best to become better writers.

For those of you who are new to us or just a little curious about where my mind was a year ago. This was my very first blog post…

Coming Out of the Writer’s Closet.

Okay, if this was my closet I might never come out of it.

Hello. My name is Jamie Pope and I write… Get ready for it…. Ready? I write romance novels. Phew! There I said. Step one. Check. What a load off my back. Almost no one knows that I write. It is-was- my well kept little secret, the thing I did alone in my room under the cover of night. And the reason that I kept it a secret  for so long was fear of one little question: What do you write? I love romance novels, they are somewhat of an obession for me. I discovered them when I was sixteen and looking for a way to escape my mundane teenage life.  Since then I have read hundreds upon hundreds of them. I can tell a good one from a bad one. I can tell when a writer loves their work or is just phoning it in. I can recite the format blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back and plugs in my ears. So with all of that ,why should I be afraid of a single little question? Here’s the answer: Inside all of us is a self conscious thirteen year old little girl. Remember her? The girl who thinks everybody is looking at her. The one who is having a miserable day because she can’t get her hair right . The one who thinks everybody is judging her. That’s me. I feared that by telling the world I wrote romance novels no one would take me seriously as a writer. I even imagined some jaded people rolling their eyes, immediately dismissing what I do because they think only Harper Lee or John Steinbeck can write a great novel. Taking that into account,I thought I might say that I wrote Women’s fiction. I am a woman.(Hear me roar!) Half the world is made up of women. Besides, women’s fiction sounded so serious and I am serious, very much so, about my writing. But then that label didn’t work for me either. My writing is funny or at least I hope it is, so I thought maybe Chick Lit would fit. But I immediately disregarded that because something about that phrase annoys me. Nobody calls any form of writing Dude Lit. So back to romance it is because I write about strong women, and hot men. Because I write happily ever afters. Because I write steamy love scenes. Because I write about the kind of love lives most women wished they had. Because I belong to the RWA and CTRWA. Because I am in great company with Nora Roberts and Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Rachel Gibson and thousands of other unpublished hopefuls. Phew! There I said it. My name is Jamie Pope and I proudly write romance novels.

Your turn to share! How has your life changed in the past year?

Set Sail with Jennifer Fromke on A Familiar Shore

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Katy Lee here with Jennifer Fromke. She’s here to share  about A Familiar Shore, her latest book that just happens to take place around Memorial Day. Did we plan that just right, or what?! I’m excited to hear how Jennifer did her research for this exciting story, so take it away, Jennifer!

Thank you, Katy, for having me on the Scribes! A long time ago, back when I was only thinking about writing, I decided contemporary fiction would be the easier route because there would be no research. Remember, I said it was a long time ago…I was fairly naïve.

Obviously, all writing requires research. This quickly became a stark reality for me. Now I think writing a contemporary story may even require more research, because every reader is living in the same time period and everything must ring true.

So I began the process of researching as I began writing my debut novel. Thank goodness for the internet! My story takes place on and around several boats and the biggest blessing for me as I wrote A Familiar Shore turned out to be my best source of information about boats: my dad.

Growing up in Michigan, it seems like we were always on the water. Most fair weather weekends were spent either boating on the Great Lakes, or water skiing and sailing on one of the smaller lakes. Dad recently even spent one winter living on a boat in Florida. Boating is his hobby and he taught me a lot about them as I grew up. For example, I have an immovable sense about which side is Port and which is Starboard.

One of the main characters in my novel is an octogenarian who lives on an old yacht, travelling along the southeastern seaboard. So I wrote several scenes taking place on the yacht. I can’t count the number of times I emailed Dad asking something like this: “What do you call that thing in the pilot house that the captain uses for . . .” He was so patient with me! He always knew where to send me for further research, photos, etc . . .

Then I wrote an action scene in the novel, which takes place in the middle of a lake on a Hobie Cat. I needed Dad’s help to see what the boat would do in my scenario and how an inexperienced sailor might react. And again, there were several questions about what you call that “thing-y . . .”

While I like to talk to my dad fairly frequently, having this extra excuse was truly a blessing for me. Sometimes my questions would trigger a memory he recounted to me. Sometimes his answer would remind me just how wise and full of knowledge he is. I became extra grateful for a childhood largely punctuated by time on the water and I think this comes out in the novel.

As I write the next novel, which is strangely devoid of boats, I’m missing my “go-to” guy for research. It’s way more fun to talk with somebody I love about what I’m doing than it is to read from the internet all by myself. But I’m plugging away at it. With joy.

Question: Have you written about a topic in which your family or friends are experts?

Jennifer Fromke is a native Michigander, but writes from North Carolina these days. She is a Wheaton College graduate and loves nothing better than a few solitary hours with a great book and a latte.

In her debut novel, A Familiar Shore, we meet Meg Marks, a young lawyer raised off the coast of the Carolinas. An anonymous client hires her to arrange his will, and sends her to meet his estranged family at their lake home in northern Michigan. After a shocking discovery, she finds herself caught between his suspicious family and a deathbed promise her conscience demands that she keep. Will she sacrifice her own dreams for revenge, or will she choose something more?

A Familiar Shore is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Great to have you, Jennifer, on the Scribes! I hope you will come back again.

Readers: A Familiar Shore is an exciting story! And what better way to spend Memorial day on the lake in a boat! Ahhhhh! It’s just one click away, and you can be there, too!

Serendipity

Hi!  Happy Memorial Day Weekend!  J Monkeys here.  Does this ever happen to you? 

You walk into a random second-hand book sale at a crazy place (like your office) saying, “Gosh, I’d really like to find a copy of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, even though it was published 20 years ago and this is a charity sale of random books people donated,” and there it is, one copy of Outlander, waiting just for you on a table.

Or weeks before the event, you say to your spouse, “Whilst I’m working at that Scholastic warehouse sale hosted in a restaurant rather than an actual warehouse thereby limiting the selection, I’m going to get a hard-cover edition of Eldest since we have the rest of that series in hard cover and the paperback Eldest is throwing off the bookshelf’s karma.”  only to find that there is one, lone, slightly beat-up hard cover copy of Eldest waiting in the Fill-A-Box-for-$25 section.

Both of these things happened to me, one of them happened today.  This is serendipity: finding just what you want/need at exactly the time you want/need it.

Occasionally, these serendipitous moments will happen when I’m writing, too.  I might be struggling with an idea or a character and I come across exactly what I’m looking for, right when I’m looking.  If I had come across it two weeks earlier, I probably wouldn’t have recognized it and jumped on it because I hadn’t been ready for it yet.  When this happens, I try not to over think the whole thing.  I just like to take it as a gift from the universe, or a karmic payment for something or another.

How have you encountered serendipity?

R.C. Bonitz – A Blanket for Her Heart

Happy Friday everyone! Casey Wyatt here. Please welcome our guest today, romance author R.C. Bonitz! To see R.C.’s response to our interview questions – click here. RC is here to tell us about his new novel and free giveway. Stay tuned until the end for more details!

Take it away, R.C.!

Thank you for hosting me today Casey. It’s a pleasure to be on Seven Scribes.  This post is mostly about a free giveaway, but you might find my comments on other author’s books interesting.

I took a walk recently on a very bright and sunny day. Global warming has been filling the skies with clouds lately, but the sun looked really good. And since we had rain not too long before that everything was a brilliant Springtime green. Wonderful. But, enough about the beautiful day. I’ve got a bit of news about my books and a few others.

I’ve been very busy editing my new book (number three — A Little Bit of Baby) and writing a new one and promoting the two that are out there already, so taking a break for the sunshine was really great. Despite all that I’ve had the time to read three books on my Kindle. Some of you may know the work of Kristan Higgins? Laura Moore? Natale Stanzel?

I’ve read most of Kristan Higgins books and loved them all. But I think she’s outdone herself with the latest — Somebody To Love. Parker Wells stuck with me from an earlier book even though she was a minor character in that one. This time she’s the star of the show, and a very humble one at that. Kristan’s humor cracks me up, but in the end this is a book that pulls at your heartstrings. Can’t wait for the next one.

Another writer I’m hooked on now is Laura Moore, author of the Rosewood series. Her book, Believe In Me, the second in the series, was the first of hers I’ve read, but I’ll be back for more. The Radcliffe sisters and their clan are the kind of cozy family you just wish you were a part of. And when Jordan meets Owen her world warms up considerably. (After it falls apart a bit.) Like Kristan’s book, Believe In Me warms your heart as well.

My third recent read was Pandora’s Box by Natale Stenzel. I had never heard of Natale until we connected on Linkedin. Liking romantic comedy, I thought I’d try her book, then discovered I was reading paranormal romantic comedy. Now there’s an interesting genre combination- and Natale pulls it off very well. Once I started reading I couldn’t put it down. Mina was a great heroine and I was ready to pop the Puca upside the head a few times, especially when it looked like Teague was in trouble, but with a few surprise twists the end was very satisfying.

Okay, I said I had some news about my own books. Here you go. I will be doing a free giveaway of A Blanket for Her Heart. It’s about Anne Hoskins, who is suddenly faced with a decision that can change her life completely. Choose to hide, or give wings to her life? Which way will she go? Check out Amazon May 24 and 25 to get yourself a FREE read. I haven’t gotten any formal reviews yet, but folks are going out of their way to tell me they enjoyed it. Take a look at the excerpt below and have fun. I hope you like it too. Cheers RC

A BLANKET FOR HER HEART- EXCERPT

~ ONE ~

 First light formed leaf shadows on the cabinets as she entered the kitchen. Those big trees had been there for years, but they were old now, tall and thinned out, blocking less of the early morning sun. Winter sometimes seemed better, on sunny days when bright rays slid through barren branches to flood the breakfast table. Not always though. Not when winter’s cold was dark and penetrating.

Bright and sunny, just comfortable, the day was starting well. She’d been up since three, reading and pacing, waiting for the light so she could start her day outside. Early was a pattern lately, into bed and out of it, bored to numbness when sleep was so elusive.

Her friend Molly thought it was time to see a doctor, but there was nothing a professional could say she didn’t know already. Physically her health was perfect.

“I need a new bed, that’s all,” she told her friend. “Besides, I’m always thinking of what I’m going to do in the morning.”

“What’s so important?” Molly asked, and she offered the usual list of things.

That was what she did, things. This thing, that thing, nothing. Tend her garden, read Jane Austen or some travel book; wash the dishes, paint, or whatever. Granted, her paintings were beautiful and she did so many one always sat unfinished on the easel, but she hadn’t sold any. Furniture restorations brought in some income, but she usually didn’t do that many pieces.

Fifty-four years old and not counting, she lived like a hermit with few friends. She did know one neighbor, but she’d never married, and had always lived alone. Molly often told her she’d be happier if she did more with her life and she struggled with such thoughts these days.

She turned on the TV, hoping the movie channel might have something good.

Sly Stallone in his first Rambo. So stimulating. Thought provoking. Annoyed but too bored to care, she settled back in the sofa and within minutes the images barely touched her mind. By seven-thirty, she’d had enough and punched the off button with the remains of her wrist. Dry cereal and milk, half an orange, and coffee for breakfast; she dumped the dirty dishes in the sink twenty minutes later and abandoned the kitchen.

The patio garden looked like an impressionist’s palette. Her one green thumb coaxed flowers to brilliant life year round. Indoors in winter of course, but she had plants ready to bloom as spring temperatures began. Each morning she spent two hours weeding and pruning, winding her fingers through the dirt to carefully arrange it to her whim. The stump of her left arm served as well as her right hand, caressing dirt and flowers with the same gentle touch. It was a touch returned by the earth, giving her the best hours of each day in quiet occupation of her mind. She put a dozen pansies in a juice glass and remembered she hadn’t thanked Molly for picking up the flats this year.

After gardening, she returned rake and hoe to the garage and cleaned up at the slop sink in the corner. She wiped black dirt from her knees and delivered a good scrubbing to the right hand. A brush screwed to the wall just above the sink did the job. Small stitch scars in her stump got an easy wipe. The skin was smooth and quite soft for all the abuse it got. Both hand and stump got a dose of hand cream, spread liberally, but only lightly rubbed. A wipe with the old towel she kept handy finished the job.

Lunch was the usual. Peanut butter and grape jam on white, red wine, and a handful of Lorna Doones. Sometimes it was cream cheese instead of peanut butter, chocolate chips instead of Lorna Doones, but that was about it as far as variety went. She took two glasses of merlot this time instead of one. That was not unusual lately.

Afterwards, she wrapped a dishtowel around the left arm and secured it with two rubber bands to wash the dishes.

“You’d be amazed what I can buy through the mail now, Hannah. Rubber bands, seeds, books, clothes, all sorts of things. You’d probably be selling things on a website these days yourself.” She wiped the breakfast bowl with the left arm towel and set it on the drying rack. “Not like me though. I hate that ridiculous computer. Molly talked me into buying one, but I can barely turn it on right.

“I’m having trouble with that painting I’ve been working on too. It looks so bland, not even that maybe, so much as gray and dismal. I should probably trash the thing. You know what? I think I’m going to catch a little sun this afternoon.”

It was one sided, this conversation with her dead grandmother, but quite all right. She knew it was imaginary, though sometimes it almost seemed she got an answer.

Her father got an occasional remark as well, but little more. It was Hannah she talked to, Hannah she often wished were truly at her side. Their chats had served to keep her company, at least until now. There was no one else to talk to most of the time.

Except Molly, or Grace, when one of them came around. Which didn’t seem to be that often lately. The house was still too, her world so very silent these last few months.

Dishes washed, towel removed, she headed for the bathroom, stripping off her pink tee shirt as she went. She dropped it in the hamper, brushed her teeth and hair, and relieved herself quickly. Then it was out to the patio, where she pulled one white lounge chair into place and stretched out to take the sun on her back. She’d heard all the cancer warnings, but never did the sun thing very long. Besides, everyone needed some vices in their life.

Face down on the lounge, wearing only shorts, she was drifting into sleep when something made a sound behind her. She turned. A man smiled weakly, then stared, eyes wide, as she dashed for the house.

“Please. I need help,” he called as she slammed the door in his face.

 Get a copy of A BLANKET FOR HER HEART  free MAY 24 AND 25 at

AMAZON    

Thanks for being our guest today R.C!

What books have you read recently that you really enjoyed? If you have questions, for R.C., don’t be shy – ask away!