Oh my goodness, will you look at the tumbleweeds on this blog! I’ve neglected this poor little blog since July, but it seems like I’ve only turned around twice while three months somehow zipped by. My summer was a blur. I stayed extremely busy with my freelance writing endeavors — good busy, but busy nonetheless.
Our garden did fabulously. It was the best yet. You wouldn’t believe all the green beans, and we had huge, red tomatoes. We grew cabbage, green and banana peppers, onions, potatoes, and squash out the yin yang. We love squash, and this year, we planted the yellow variety as well as zucchini and butternut squash (YUMMY). We ate stir fry until we almost popped.
I’ve been hiking as time permits, but that has slowed way down. Still, I take opportunities as I can to get up on what I think of as the Magic Mountain. It’s a wonderful place to get perspective, and I don’t mean just visually. Fall is in full swing on the mountain, and the autumn colors are gorgeous. Here are pictures from a (fairly) recent hike.
Autumn Leaves and Blue Sky
Sunlit Mountain Trail
Fall Comes to the Forest
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Last but not least, I’ve decided to get my fiction out there as an independent author. Soon, I’ll publish four books to Smashwords, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Amazon Kindle (all digital formats, but at some point, I might decide to make print editions available). By soon, I mean very soon. I’m in the process of finalizing the formatting on my mss, revising my website, and soon, I’ll add links on this blog and upload my revised website.
Without further ado, here are the books I’ll be offering:
Heart’s Chalice (novel, dark edgy women’s fiction)
Destiny rarely gives a woman a second chance at love, especially not with a man who died twenty years ago.
As a young woman, Laurel misinterpreted a psychic vision, causing the death of her first and only love. She has lived with the guilt ever since. Two decades later, struggling to free herself from a toxic marriage, she’s pulled to an alternate reality where her beloved still lives. There, she’s the dead one, and he and their children are grieving for her. When she tries to contact them, they think she’s a ghost or a product of their wishful thinking.
She desperately wants to remain in her family’s reality and connect with them. By enjoying a long, happy life with the man she loves, she can rectify her mistake and free herself from her guilt. But she’s running out of time. Every shift between realities damages her body further. And her soon-to-be-ex will stop at nothing to shackle her to a life she despises.
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Ripples (short stories, magical realism)
If Heart’s Chalice, the novel, is a waterfall, then these short stories are its ripples.
The short stories in Ripples can serve either as the reader’s introduction to the characters who populate my novel Heart’s Chalice, or as a supplement for readers who have already read the novel.
Most of the stories in Ripples take place before the main action of Heart’s Chalice, when Laurel and Nate are teenagers, growing up in their famlies of origin. Some of the stories, however, are woven into the novel’s in-between spaces.
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Patchwork Stained Glass (Novel — Book Club Fiction)
An atheist falls for a country preacher. Can love triumph over two conflicting ideologies?
Romilly Shepard spent her childhood with abusive parents, and as a college student, she finds comfort in the hard facts of science. She lives with her friend Martha, also an atheist, and they see each other as like-minded rationalists who stand elbow-to-elbow against a hopelessly irrational world. Intent on debunking, Romilly and Martha sign up for a comparative religion class, but the instructor, a graduate student and preacher named Ernest, challenges Romilly’s assumptions. His open-mindedness and tolerance broaden Romilly’s mind and win her heart.
Martha feels betrayed by Romilly’s love for a preacher, and Ernest’s congregation thinks Romilly is a heathen in need of salvation. Friction mounts between Romilly and Ernest, and she fears she’s nothing more than his Convert-an-Atheist Project. But when a chronic disease threatens Ernest’s life, labels given by other people no longer seem so important. Romilly takes a crash course in faith and hope — faith in Ernest’s love, hope for his healing. In doing so, she learns to embrace their differences and not fear them, but has her awakening come too late?
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Thy Eternal Summer (novella, contemporary romance)
Can an older couple overcome the memories of their deceased spouses and enjoy a spicy Golden Years romance?
(This novel was previously published in 2006 by Chippewa Publishing, which went out of business in 2007. The rights reverted back to me, so now, I’m re-releasing it.)
Sarah Harrison is a housewife and the mother of two grown children, but her marriage is tainted by alcoholism and emotional abuse. When her husband Ed drowns in a river at an RV park in Tennessee, she’s on her own for the first time in her life. She can’t drive the Winnebago to return to their home in North Carolina.
Max McCloud, newly retired from NASA, is parked next to Ed and Sarah’s Winnebago. He designs aircraft components online with his friends and misses his late wife, Adela, who died the previous year. He befriends the newly widowed Sarah and offers to drive her home in her Winnebago.
Can their new friendship and potential romantic attachment overcome the memories of their deceased spouses and provide them with the kind of Golden Years they both desire?
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Why am I going indie, you might ask. My answer: Why not? These days, opportunities made possible by the internet have created many intriguing paths an author can take, and one size never fits all. Of course, writers — especially new writers — need to do their research so they’ll know what they’re getting into. But I’ve been doing this fiction-writing thing for quite a while now. I’ve learned a lot, and I feel good about the path I’m preparing to walk.
Trade publishing — whether with big New York houses or smaller houses — is great for some, but for others, especially us do-it-yourself types, self-publishing holds considerable promise. I’m excited about this new venture, and I hope you will be, too.
So watch this space (and this blog)! More information is on its way, as well as more frequent blog posts. 
