Bell Bridge Books

WHY I WANTED A PUBLISHER

By John G. Hartness

“So why did you want a publisher? I thought you were selling a lot of ebooks on your own?” That’s a question I get a lot, and since today is a perfect example of something that I can’t do for myself, and something my publisher has done for me, I thought there was no better time than the present to answer the question.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the Kindle Science Fiction & Fantasy Daily Deal for today, May 27^th, and see who’s featured there – yep, it’s me!

Yes, I was self-published before I signed with Bell Bridge Books. Yes, I was selling quite well, and yes, I think I did a pretty good job promoting my work and making it onto some Amazon lists. I’m no Amanda Hocking or J. R. Rain, but I made it as far as #2 on the Kindle Horror list, and that’s a pretty good deal for a solo act.

But I wanted more. I didn’t just want more sales, although that was certainly a contributing factor. I wanted more support. I wanted a team of people behind me that all had my book’s best interests at heart. And that’s what I found at Bell Bridge – a bunch of people who work just as hard as I do to make my books better. And better-promoted. And better-branded. And better-packaged. Etc, etc, as Yul Bryner would say.

When I talk to folks who are currently self-published about my decision to sign with a publisher, I liken it to going to graduate school. My deal with BBB was for three more books, so it takes about the same length of time as a Creative Writing MFA. I’m signing a deal with a significantly lower royalty structure than I used to get as a self-published author, so there’s me paying my tuition. And at the end of my contract, I will be a much better writer than when I started. And that’s why I consider my work with Bell Bridge to be my Master’s Degree.

The work that we’ve all done on the books in The Black Knight Chronicles has been mind-blowing. The attention to detail that my work has received from the editors here has been extensive, and at times ruthless. And the books are better. I challenge anyone who read Hard Day’s Knight, Back in Black or Knight Moves in their original versions (which I still say were pretty good), then to read the Omnibus edition and tell me the stories aren’t better. The characters are better developed. The world has more details. The plot has consequences and logical outcomes.

And that’s all stuff that I could have done on my own. But I didn’t, because I didn’t know to do them. It’s not just that my editors here have had decades in the industry where I’m still relatively new, it’s that they know how to make an awesome book. And they know how to make awesome partners.

So that’s why I wanted a publisher. Because working with this one is making me a better writer. And if you want proof, go pick up The Black Knight Chronicles Omnibus, on sale today!

Today only, THE BLACK KNIGHT CHRONICLES OMNIBUS EDITION is only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle.

Omnibus includes, HARD DAY’S KNIGHT, BACK IN BLACK, and KNIGHT MOVES.

RESEARCH OBSESSION? ANYONE?

By Patricia McLinn

I’m a research junkie.  Love it. Especially when the research takes me back to Wyoming, as it did last week.

It was a delight to revisit the landscape and people that Elizabeth “E.M.” Danniher discovers in SIGN OFF, Book 1 in the “Caught Dead in Wyoming” series, when she’s dropped from her top-notch TV news job in New York into rustic Sherman, Wyoming. Newly divorced, newly arrived in Wyoming, she’s not sure where she’s going – or wants to go – in her career or her life. But she’s determined to find out. … As well as figuring out whodunit when dead bodies cross her path.

Like Elizabeth, I arrived in Wyoming for the first time with no idea where I was going. A decade and a half ago, I had a free airline ticket that I had paid for dearly in inconvenience. I decided to go somewhere I’d never been before and that was expensive to fly to <eg>. I ended up in Sheridan, Wyo., rented a car and took off around the state.

It was fascinating. New and varied worlds at almost every turn.  I heard a western meadowlark for the first time, saw big horn sheep, buffalo, the Big Horn Mountains, the Rockies, vistas that brought tears to my eyes, Yellowstone Park … and met some people that brought tears to my eyes from laughing at their dry humor.  It was a terrific trip, and the first of many. I was hooked.

Now, you might think this obsession with Wyoming is strange for an Illinois native, but I swear I have mountains somewhere back in my blood, because I have this strong affinity with the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, as well as the Big Horns and Rockies of Wyoming. It feels like I can breathe deeper there.

(But Wyoming’s mountains have another advantage: They’re dry.  Plus, it’s windy, so it’s like living in one of those shampoo commercials where your hair is never frizzing and forever streaming behind you … except, of course, for when it blows in your face. If I’d known Wyoming could do that for my hair, I would have run away to the Big Horns as a teenager for sure!)

On this latest trip, I spent lots of time on a friend’s ranch, seeing newly born calves and their mommas. On my second trip (to see older calves and heifers moved to grazing land using pickup, horse and dogs to track them as they moved along) I was grateful for improved cell coverage … receiving a phone call from my friend, who said, “Just saw your car drive past the turnoff.”  Oops.

I’ve done that a few times in Wyoming, including one memorable occasion when I was tracking wagon ruts of a trail from the 1860s and ended up in a rancher’s pasture. Fortunately, he was unperturbed. Did I mention it was nearly dark and I was low on gas? Hmm, I wonder if Elizabeth could have a similar adventure … This trip included a few times when I wasn’t sure where I was, but with the mountains to my west I could figure I was heading in the right general direction and I didn’t even make any accidental pasture visits.

For sure, Elizabeth will be visiting King’s Saddlery/King Ropes [[http://www.kingropes.com/index.htm]]  in Sheridan, as I did this trip. And she’s going to receive an education on ropes as I did from Dan Morales, who generously shared just a bit of his vast knowledge of ropes and ropemaking with me. But I can’t tell you any more about that until you read LEFT HANGING, the second book in the “Caught Dead in Wyoming” series, which will be out at the end of June.

I also visited the wonderful Bradford Brinton Museum [[http://www.bbmandm.org]]  having a wonderful times wandering the grounds – I want this house! – as well as talking with an intern who gave me some great ideas and contacts I need for the third book in the series (no title yet) that I’m working on now.

So, now it’s time to unpack the rope I bought at King’s, the bowl I got at Piney Creek Pottery, the wildflower seeds from Brinton Museum and all the memories, while I get busy revisiting Wyoming through Elizabeth’s eyes in “Caught Dead in Wyoming” – hope you’ll come along with Elizabeth and me to see this fascinating place.

 Through tomorrow, SIGN OFF, Book 1 in the Caught Dead in Wyoming Series is ONLY $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

AN AUTHOR’S MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

by Brenda Hiatt

More often than not, one of the first questions I hear when someone finds out I’m a writer is, “Where do you get your ideas?” All writers get this question, of course. Frequently. So frequently that some writers have come up with pat, tongue-in-cheek answers, like Harlan Ellison’s famous post office box in Schenectady. “You send in two dollars and a self-addressed stamped envelope and they send you back an idea.” The thing is, people really do want to know the answer to that question, even though for most writers that answer is simply, “Everywhere.” Certainly, that’s my answer, if I’m honest. To illustrate, I’d like to share two very different examples.

The second example occurred more recently, during a family Spring Break vacation to Aruba. My husband and I and our two daughters had all recently become certified scuba divers (during a previous Spring Break trip to the Florida panhandle), so of course we worked in a couple of dives while on that island paradise. It was during a dive to the wreck of the Debbie II that my younger daughter found a wedding ring on the ocean floor, sixty feet below the surface. Cool, huh? There was no way to trace it, but that didn’t stop my writer brain from speculating on all the various ways it might have ended up down there. Maybe a spat, during which a wife dramatically tossed her wedding ring overboard? Maybe somethng more sinister? Once that writer brain grabs onto something, it’s hard to make it let go. In fact, I ended up spinning a whole convoluted plot that eventually became Out Of Her Depth—a book that turned out to enormously fun to write.

So, while I can obviously tell you where a few of my writing ideas came from, there’s no way on Earth I can predict when or where the next one will strike. I just try to stay alert at all times, so I can pounce on it when it does!

Get Brenda Hiatt’s OUT OF HER DEPTH for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle Today!

DO PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS READ BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OTHER PRESSES?

By Danielle Childers

Do publishers and editors read books they didn’t publish?  You betcha!  After all, we’re in this industry because we love good books. We’re such reading harlots. So I have no shame in presenting you with A Library Trollop’s Reading Recommendations!

I’m absolutely obsessed with retro fiction right now.  The stunning covers. The world events. The vintage feel. When I pick up these books it’s like they whisper “I’ve lived.  Read my wisdom. Experience my days.” And lately I’ve been reading new books about old summers.

I am super late to the party to read Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (Harper Perennial). But I was so excited that I purchased it in hardback. A luxury when you have to fund my reading habit.  A story within a story. A movie within a novel. The azure coast of Itlay. The 1960s.  An actress. An innkeeper. The filming of Cleopatra.  “The only thing we have is the story we tell.”

Yes.  It was beautiful. The writing. The imagery. The book.  Yes, this is literary fiction of a sort, but as a former librarian, I am bone tired of the limited genres we have to describe books that are just…more.  It’s vintage fiction. It’s retro-glam fiction.  It’s geographic fiction. It’s gently epic and strangely modern. It’s amazing. Read it. But don’t read it as a guilty pleasure. Read it like the clever and cultured book that it is. Read it with a touch of awe and leave your critique behind. Just…enjoy it.

Still on a high from Beautiful Ruins, I discovered (because books simply happen to me, for me.) Palisades Park by Alan Brennert (St. Martin’s Press). An Amusement Park. The 1930s.  It’s like The Great Gatsby gone wild but brighter, and the grit is not hidden by the glitz.  A book full of dreams from back when safety nets did not exist. Complete with frozen lemonades and the warmth of day that lingers in the asphalt.  It’s something you only notice as a child, I think. But it’s magic. I read it on my Kindle with a fan blowing in my face and the sun shining. Yes. Read it. Now. Read it and reflect on the happiest summers that were magical because you lived and breathed thirty years of summer at an amusement park. You didn’t? Well sometimes I can’t separate books from my life.

Now, when I’m feeling really sentimental or have found a book I know I’m going to love so much, I always turn to some old, faithful book friends. I like to read them and introduce them to their new book friends. They won’t sit beside each other on my shelves unless they have the good luck to be written by authors who are alphabetically compatible, but when I glance over their spines, I’ll know they’re related.

So, it felt completely natural after these thoughtful, retro books, to pull out The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (Harper Perennial). Don’t judge me. I feel very protective about this book, and I can’t explain it. I have a soft spot for Rebecca Wells because she can tell a great southern story spanning decades that will have you tasting pecans, dissolving in the summer heat with your friends, and sounding just like my Great Aunt Sherry. And it’s a great, mostly light hearted finale to this summer reading list.

There you have it. Three absolutely perfect summer retro reads. Where the time is just as much of a character as the beaches as the roller coasters, as the people.  Read Palisades Park and make lemonade. Beautiful Ruins should be read after watching Cleopatra.  And the Ya-Ya’s?  Just make a shoofly pie and drink the lemonade mentioned above. Sugar is sugar, and there’s just enough salt in the pie to enhance the tartness of the lemons.

Happy reading.

Bell Bridge Books presents these fabulous summer reading titles for only $1.99 on Amazon Kindle Today! 

TODAY ONLY! LIA ROMEO’S DATING THE DEVIL IS ONLY $1.99 AT AMAZON KINDLE!

WHY I LOVE CHICK LIT

BY LIA ROMEO

I love chick lit.  I’m a smart girl – I’ve got my degree in comparative lit from Princeton and I’ve read my Derrida – but I’ll take Jennifer Weiner (also a Princeton alum!) any day.  Here’s why:

1.  It’s relevant.

I’m a young woman living in and writing about the 21^st century.  As such, while I absolutely think it’s important to use fiction to experience the lives and concerns of people who are completely different from me, I’m also going to devote a portion of my (all too limited) reading time to reading about people who are in a similar position, and thinking about the ways that their experience of the world might inform my own – and my writing.

2.It’s escapist.

Sometimes we just need to read something fun – and for me, it’s chick lit.  In chick lit novels, bad dates aren’t a pointless waste of time, they’re a way for the heroine to realize what she really wants.  Jobs aren’t tedious and boring, they’re full of fun anecdotes and entertaining coworkers.  And everything usually turns out okay in the end.  When I first decided to write a novel, I’d just gone through a bad breakup and moved out of the place I’d shared with my boyfriend, and I was living in a dirty apartment with two strangers, one of whom turned out to (literally) be a psychopath.  I needed a way to “get away,” and writing chick lit turned out to be perfect.

3.It’s conventional.

Okay, so this sounds more like it ought to be a criticism … but I find that working within conventions – or reading something that does – can actually spark creativity instead of stifling it.  I’ve always been fascinated by variations on a theme – it’s why I love the architecture of churches – they’re all created for the same basic purpose, and have certain similarities, but each one also executes that purpose in such a unique way.  I feel the same way about books within a particular genre – like chick lit.  When they’re badly done, it can feel like they’re just telling the same old tired stories over and over, but when they’re well done, I love seeing the unique spin that different authors put on the same conventions.  When I decided to try writing a chick lit novel, the first thing I thought about was how I could take the conventions of the genre and work with them in an original way.

Today only, NO FOOLIN’ by Lisa Scott is $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

MATCHMAKER

BY LISA SCOTT

The setup.  The Matchmaker.  Playing cupid.  Why is it so appealing?  Why do we like trying to get people together?  Why do we think we know the perfect guy for our neighbor’s best friend’s daughter’s cousin?  Why do we tell our vet about our newly single cousin? (Or maybe it’s just the romance writer in me trying to find love for everyone I know.) Because the truth is, there is only a very miniscule chance that things are going to work out in our fantasy happily-ever-after scenario.  Instead, things are most likely to be awkward at best when that blind date gets as ugly as a muddy puppy on a white carpet—it’s gonna leave a mark.  And you might find yourself avoiding your neighbor’s best friend’s daughter’s cousin in the future so you don’t have to face her after the bum date.

I’m guilty of it myself.  I introduced my brother to a girl when they were in high school, and they went out for years—until she cheated on him and they broke up.  “I wish you’d never introduced me to her,” he wailed to me.  And seeing the pain it caused him, I agreed.  Never again! I thought.

Maybe that’s why in my early twenties, when my neighbor joined me for drinks with a co-worker—who ended up being quite interested in my lovely neighbor—I discouraged his advances.  She didn’t seem interested, I gently told him.  Well, I moved shortly after that, and learned years later that she had been interested.  They bumped into each other again and ended up getting married.  They’re considering naming their first daughter Lisa because I introduced them.  (Yet, nearly kept them apart!)

Clearly my setup instincts are not good.  But that didn’t deter me from trying to find the perfect guy for my beautiful friend who just hasn’t found Mr. Right.  “I’m going to find a different guy for you to go out with every month until you find the one,” I told her.  And she agreed.  The very next day I met a hottie I thought would be perfect for her.  They never went out.  The second proposed setup fizzled, too.

I gave up on that quest, but it got me thinking about a great book idea: a girl who sets her friend up on hilariously bad dates every month.  Then I realized that wasn’t so compelling.  But what if you were in love with the person you were setting up?  And that’s how Man of the Month was born, book #2 in the Willowdale Romance series.

Jeanne and Brad are best friends and business partners and would make a perfect couple if not for one small thing—a baby.  She wants one and he’s decided he won’t ever be a father.  But that doesn’t mean they still don’t secretly long for each other.  So Brad proposes a crazy New Year’s resolution to get Jeanne out of his system:  The Man of the Month.  He’ll arrange a blind date each month for a year until she finds love.  At least that was the plan.  What unfolds could jeopardize everything between them.

Maybe writing about all of Jeanne’s dates will get the matchmaking bug out of my system.  Although my daughter’s wonderful, sweet teacher is single…

Today only STRANDED is $1.99 on Amazon Kindle!

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS

BY ANTHONY FRANCIS

One of the great things about being a writer is working with other writers—well, really, working with other people in the writing field: beta readers, writers, and especially editors. For example, my editor, Debra Dixon, invited me to contribute a story to STRANDED, a science fiction anthology about young people making their own way in space, and though I didn’t know it at the time, Debra was setting me up to work indirectly with writer Anne Bishop.

Years ago, Anne wrote a story, “A Strand in the Web,” about a young woman taking responsibility for herself and the environment in the far future. Unfortunately, the story didn’t reach as many people as Anne wanted, and ultimately Debra gave it a new home, seeking other writers to write other stories on the same theme. James Alan Gardner’s “A Host of Leeches” strands a young girl off a planet, facing her with difficult choices among warring factions. My own “Stranded” trashes the plans of a young centauress trying to claim a planet, forcing her to aid a shipload of children who’ve crashlanded on the world she wanted for herself. Three stories, but with one theme; so even though James and I wrote our stories independently, through Debra, we got to work with Anne.

Debra is more than Anne’s editor; she’s also been Anne’s “beta reader,” one of those treasured people in an author’s inner circle who reads a story before it’s done. The community of beta readers I’m a part of read stories not with an editor’s eye, or a critical eye, but with a reader’s eye. Editors have to think about theme, and length, and marketability—all valid concerns, but beyond the scope of the story in the author’s hands. Critics have to think about how to explain a story, or whether to recommend it, and criticism itself is its own art form, with its own audience; also valid concerns, but —also valid concerns, but again not the concerns of the author. The author ultimately is not trying to please an editor, or a critic, but the reader—and so, when you find readers who are like the readers you want and who are also willing to read your stories before they go to the editor, hang onto them.

One of my longest term beta readers is Gordon Shippey, who has been reading my stories since, well, since before I ever got anything published. He’s read everything I’ve ever written in the universe of “Stranded,” and knows it almost as well as I do; he’s also someone who reads almost all of the same science fiction that I do, who reads the same philosophy that I do, and who even studied at the same artificial intelligence department that I did. So when he read an early version of “Stranded,” he understood not only the civilization my protagonist Serendipity came from, but the thought process by which I’d created it—and pointed out that a truly advanced civilization’s morals should be as advanced as its technology, a key insight that helped me bring clarity to “Stranded’s” central conflict.

Many more beta readers in the Write to the End group also read the story, helping me beat “Stranded” into shape before I gave it to Debra: I never give an editor a story that’s less than what I think is my best effort—something else that I learned during my time in Georgia Tech’s artificial intelligence program. But even after I was happy, my beta readers were happy, and my editor was happy, that wasn’t the end of the road for “Stranded.” After the writer, and the beta readers, and the editor, there’s still the staff of the publisher.

At Bell Bridge Books, for example, Deb Smith manages the publishing end to make sure our books do well, and Danielle helps coordinate events with all the writers—such as inviting me to write this blog post, which gave me the chance to talk about the relationships that writers have with all of you—the readers.

Because that’s one of the great things about being a writer: getting to work with a great publisher who helps your book reach as many readers as possible.

So, thank you, Bell Bridge: and for the rest of you, I hope you enjoy STRANDED.

Anthony Francis is the author of The Skindancer Series.  Sometimes tattoo magic is the strongest magic of them all.

Writing as a Mom

by Katherine Scott Crawford 

This month, everything is starting to bloom in my tiny town in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Heck, the trees began budding in February—early for us—and the daffodils are just beginning to show their sunny heads. Even the chickens in my neighbor’s chicken coop seem to be clucking more frequently, and with a bit of sass.

Yep, everything is blooming. Including my belly.

Well, that’s putting it kindly. I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy, and I currently resemble your basic ocean liner. From the front, from far away, if I’m wearing all black and you squint when you look at me, I still appear pretty normal. But then I turn sideways—slowly, very slowly—and the fog horns blow. I need one of those beepers moving vans have, to warn folks when I’m backing up. 

When I was pregnant with my first child, now three and a half years old, I couldn’t count the number of people who told me, “Oh, you’ll be so inspired by pregnancy and motherhood. Think of all you’ll have to write about!”

And while I’m certain this will, at some point, be the case, for the most part it’s been hogwash.

For some reason, when I’m “with child,” my body blooms and my brain power wilts. That baby just sucks up all my creative juices (and my reason) like one of those expensive and super-powered Dyson vacuum cleaners. You know, the kind that can take down dog hair. 

I’m quickly discovering why many of my favorite writers, especially women, published their first novels in their mid-forties and beyond: their kids were grown.

Just as no one really tells you when you become pregnant about how your backside will start to look like—as Olympia Dukakis so eloquently put it in Steel Magnolias—“two pigs fightin’ under a blanket,” no one tells you that pregnancy and new motherhood can zap your creative juices. That you’ll be so exhausted you’ll fall asleep by 9 p.m.

That when you’re sitting in the rocking chair in your child’s bedroom, and you bend over to pick up a book off the floor, you’ll topple over like a felled tree. Oh, wait. Maybe that’s just me.

They joys of motherhood, and yes—even sometimes pregnancy—are at times too many to count. My lips are beautifully full these days. If the rest of me didn’t look like a beach ball, they’d be pretty hot. And that baby movement across the belly, the roll and tumble of a sweet new life, is beyond cool.

As for my writing mojo? That powerful magic that appears when all my creative cylinders are firing? Well, heck. It’s taking a 9 month siesta. And if this new baby is anything like my first child, that siesta might stretch into a whole year. But I’m okay with this. Or at least I’m learning to deal with it.

Why? Because I know the mojo will be back, and will appear at the oddest of times. Kind of like all those lovely blooms popping up in my town … evidence of an early Spring.  

Keowee Valley is $1.99 today at Amazon and Apple.

Katherine Scott Crawford was born and raised in the blue hills of the South Carolina Upcountry, the history and setting of which inspired Keowee Valley. Winner of a North Carolina Arts Award, she is a former newspaper reporter and outdoor educator, a college English teacher, and an avid hiker. She lives with her family in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she tries to resist the siren call of her passport as she works on her next novel. Visit her at: www.katherinescottcrawford.com.

Love
By Jenny McKnatt

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck

We couldn’t have been more different, my love and I. We met at, of all places, my brother’s wedding. My brother and I were not very close; he’s eight years older than me. But, that didn’t stop him from letting all the boys know that his sisters (the three of us) were absolutely off limits.

Don’t ever tell a teenager that he can’t because he can. And he will.

I was a city girl, a good girl. I was an Honors student at the best public school in the city. I never got in trouble and always did things the right way. I liked to read, draw, and watch movies. Indoor stuff. My childhood was very sheltered and safe. He was a good ole boy from a small town in Arkansas. A one-stoplight-town. He spent all his time outside. He had one of everything with a motor and wheels and even learned how to drive before he was ten. He was also a rebel. He always dressed real nice, put gel in his hair, and didn’t care what people thought of him. He wasn’t much for rule-following.

Everyone has a weakness. Mine was for bad boys. It was something about how they always did what they wanted, when they wanted, and where they wanted. No one could understand how such a good girl could possibly be with such a rebellious boy. But, no one knew him like I did. No one knew that he’d catch me when I fell, that he’d lift me up and push me to be better, stronger. He opened up the world for me.

The first time he takes me to his childhood home was also my first out-of-the-city experience. About an hour into the ride, I feel the car slowing down. I look up and realize that we have pulled over in the middle of nowhere. Well, it looked like the middle of nowhere. All I see are miles and miles of nothing. My first thought is that something has gone wrong with the car, and so, I panic. What’s wrong? Are we broken down? Who’s going to come help us? Are we going to be stuck on the side of a dirt road FOREVER??? No. As it turns out, he had pulled over to show me something. When I step out, I realize that we are at the edge of a field, but not just any field, a cotton field. I get out of the car and all I can see are rows and rows of pure, dainty-white cotton. As we walk up to the first row of plants, he pulls out his pocket knife and cuts me off a limb. Isn’t this illegal or something?? He tells me they won’t miss it and hands the limb over to me. It was stunning. I think about all of the things made with cotton. My t-shirt is made of this. How crazy is that? What would we do without cotton?

At some point before the trip, I mentioned to him that I had never seen a cotton plant before, in real life. Have you? This may seem silly and juvenile, but how could I possibly consider myself a true Southerner without ever having seen a cotton plant? I had never seen cotton on the stalk, never held a cotton boll in my hand. It was the first day I started living. The first day my eyes were opened. Many years later, I am still learning from that good ole country boy, and I like to think that I’ve taught him a few things, too!

Marrying James Bond

By Hope Clark

Lowcountry Bribe, the first in The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, opens with the protagonist being offered a bribe from a client she least suspects—a hog farmer. She calls the Inspector General’s office, and within 48 hours, they have a federal agent on the ground checking the situation. The investigation goes awry, trust is lost on so many levels, and lives are threatened.

At conferences and readings, I love talking about the opening chapter to that book . . . because it comes so close to reality. I was once a federal employee who was offered a bribe. And my husband was the agent who showed up on the case. We rigged hidden recorders and pin-hole cameras, rehearsed a script to pull off the “sting,” and dealt with threats against me. We didn’t catch the culprit, but we married 18 months later.

At that point in the presentation, the room goes abuzz. Many people then ask me how much of the book is fact and which part fiction. It’s fun, because that means the story reads that realistically. And while I have to tell them the rest of the story is fiction, I can’t help but put myself in those fictional scenes.

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself where reality stopped and fantasy started. And when I do take that pause, I smile. Because I can get lost in my head with my characters and have a grand time, especially knowing that I get to actually sleep with the good guy. In this case, fantasizing in bed about a character is a very good thing, because I’m married to him.

I’ve actually pondered what would happen if, God forbid, I developed dementia in my older years, and fact gradually muddied into my fiction, blending Slade and Wayne into my own history until I could not remember the difference. After all, writers get very close to their stories and the players that make those tales come to life. I did minor investigations in my prior career with the federal government, and my husband was indeed an agent with many war stories under his belt. As I juggle the possibility of make-believe and my past entangling in my gray-headed mind downstream, I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad predicament.

To make matters worse, my husband is my sounding board for subsequent stories. He keeps my technical details accurate, my gun references true, and laughs at the predicaments Slade gets into, chuckling that he’d never let that happen on his watch. At my speaking engagements, he’s often asked if he was my model for Wayne, and he answers, “Nah, Wayne’s a wuss.” Everybody laughs, and I crack a smile. I know he’s serious.

What better life can I ask for than to secretly write about my husband, pretending I’m the girl in the story, carousing through escapades, playing dare-devil, and solving crime.

We may not look like Daniel Craig and his charming Bond-girl with our middle-aged appearances, but we love to think like we are . . . because one time we did some of that, and now we live happily ever after.

BIO

C. Hope Clark lives on the banks of Lake Murray, South Carolina, writing her mysteries, and often reading aloud to her federal agent with his lit cigar, neat bourbon, and deep opinions about how Wayne still isn’t close to the “real deal.” Tidewater Murder, the second in the Carolina Slade Mystery Series, arrives on book shelves in April 2013. www.chopeclark.com