Bell Bridge Books

Check out the Bell Bridge Books and ImaJinn Books covers that are finalist in the EPIC’s Ariana eBook Cover Art Competition this year! 

The Cipher by Diana Pharaoh Francis (Book 1 of The Crosspointe Novels)

Lucy Trenton’s ability to sense majick is one of her most dangerous secrets. But only one.

A blackmailer knows the other.

Suddenly, Lucy is caught in a treasonous plot to destroy the crown, and she’s trapped in the tentacles of a desperate, destructive majick. Her only hope is ship captain Marten Thorpe, who—by every account—cannot be trusted. With time running out, Lucy must find a way to win a dangerous game or lose everything she holds dear.

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Last Bigfoot in Dixie by Wally Avett

Killer bear, Appalachian psycho, Yankee gold . . .

He’s on the trail of something big . . .

Deep in the Great Smokies, a huge black bear kills a child at a campground, and a hunt begins in a quiet mountain community where such threats are rare. Wade, an outdoorsman and backwoods columnist, is quickly deputized to find and slay the massive beast terrorizing tourists and locals alike.

While on the trail, he is wounded by a pot-grower’s booby trap and stalked by Junior, an authentic Appalachian psychopath. Two fellow deputies are gunned down, and rumors of buried Civil War gold surface. Wade gets unexpected assistance from a wannabe writer whose gifts prove helpful even after mushroom trances and spiritual quests—enhanced by a Minnesota Vikings horn-helmet.

The discovery of a mysterious doll ties into grisly murders from the past, and Wade meets a tough, old Marine with a puzzling treasure map. All the while, the looming threat of Junior’s lethal lunacy stalks Wade and his colorful allies.

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Prince of Magic by Anne Stuart

Caught dancing barefoot in the moonlit woods, dressed only in her shift, Elizabeth Penshurst is considered by decent folk to be notorious and disgraced. Sent by her father, a reverend, to serve penance with a cousin in Hernewood, Lizzie sets her thoughts on becoming the perfectly demure and reserved young woman any suitor would want.

But evil haunts the woods of Hernewood Abbey. As the Druid festival of Beltane approaches, a sinister cult seeks a virgin sacrifice. Their intended victim: Lizzie. Her only defender—and the man likely to relieve her of her dangerous maidenhood—is the mysterious Gabriel, the Dark Man, a fellow outcast and scholar of Druidism. The forest calls to them both.

Their irresistible attraction, both mystical and bawdy, may be the only force more powerful than the cult’s dark purpose.

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The Quick and the Undead by Kimberly Raye (Tombstone, Texas: Book 1)

Welcome to Tombstone, Texas, where anything is possible, even your wildest fantasy. Once a haven to outlaws, Tombstone is now a tourist town that gives travelers a taste of the old West. What visitors don’t realize, however, is that the super-hot cowboys, gunslingers, and lawmen walking the streets aren’t actors—they’re originals. These ancient vampires claimed Tombstone two centuries ago.

So step right up, folks, and book your trip today! The outlaws of Tombstone will be waiting . . .

Travel blogger Riley Davenport loves her job, travelling to the most exotic places in the world. Even better, it keeps her one step ahead of her stalking ex. The last thing she wants in her life is a strong alpha male. But that’s exactly what she gets when she comes face-to-face with Sheriff Boone Jarrett, a hero right out of her most erotic fantasies.

Boone isn’t just the law in Tombstone, Texas. He’s also an ancient vampire and the target of a crazed killer. He certainly doesn’t have time for romance. But a temporary fling? Now that he can handle.

Unfortunately, their first night together ends in disaster when Riley witnesses a murder. And to protect her, Boone forces her into hiding. Only her “captivity” ends up becoming the realization of her wildest, most carnal fantasies. Still, Riley’s not going to fall for him, at least that’s what she tells herself.

But as she gets to know him—the man and the vampire—she starts to wonder if she can hold out . . .

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Phi Beta Bimbo by Trish Jensen 

Big blond wig. Do-me shoes. A bra that could serve as a floatation device. She’s about to take her genius IQ for a walk on the bimbo side.

Someone’s pilfering company secrets at Just Peachy, a giant cosmetics firm owned by hunky Steve Smith. When he decides to do some undercover security in disguise as “Stephanie” Smith, his sister Leah, a sociologist working on her doctorate, grabs her own undercover opportunity to prove her theory that nerds stand no chance in the world. She interviews for a low-level security job first as “Leah the super-nerd” then as “Candi Devereaux,” a stereotypical out-to-there bimbo. To her shock, security specialist Mark Colson hires both of her.

Mark isn’t fooled—Leah/Candi are obviously the same woman, a suspicious character, and quite likely the corporate thief. He’ll stay very close to her.

As for Leah, the highly unsettling and extremely irresistible Mr. Colson begins to rattle all her assumptions about what a man wants from a woman. It’s about honesty . . . unfortunately.

In the meantime, “Stephanie” has met his match in corporate rival Kate Bloom, who is determined to best the smart new woman in the company. And yet, Kate feels flustered by Stephanie’s strangely masculine appeal . . . .

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Lord of the Storm by Justine Davis (Book 1 of The Coalition Rebellion Novels)

Her every wish is his command. He lives only to serve her desires.

A warrior. A sex slave from a conquered world.

What will he do to her if she sets him free?

Shaylah Graymist, ace fighter pilot for a brutal intergalactic Coalition, is given a slave as a reward for heroism in battle. The incredibly virile slave named Wolf wears a collar which controls him completely, allowing her to make him do anything she wants. Yet Shaylah has an old-fashioned belief in love and refuses to take advantage of him. A tense friendship grows between her and Wolf, along with deep desires he refuses to admit. The Coalition destroyed his people. He won’t betray their memory.

When Shaylah returns to battle, Wolf rebels and is sold to a prison colony. She frees him, and together they journey to his home planet. As she learns more about Wolf, she begins to question her loyalty to the Coalition, and the passions between them burn out of control.

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Murder on Edisto by C. Hope Clark (Book 1 of The Edisto Island Mysteries)

A big city detective. A lowcountry murder.

Peace, safety, a place to grieve and heal. After her husband is murdered by the Russian mob, Boston detective Callie Jean Morgan comes home to her family’s cottage in South Carolina. There, she can keep their teenage son, Jeb, away from further threats.

But the day they arrive in Edisto Beach, Callie finds her childhood mentor and elderly neighbor murdered. Taunted by the killer, who repeatedly violates her home and threatens others in the community, Callie finds her new sanctuary has become her old nightmare. Despite warnings from the town’s handsome police chief, Callie plunges back into detective work, pursuing a sinister stranger who may have ties to her past. He’s turning a quiet paradise into a paranoid patch of sand where nobody’s safe. She’ll do whatever it takes to stop him.

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The Nightingale Bones by Ariel Swan 

Someone has been waiting a long time for Alice Towne to arrive in Hawthorne.

Two hundred years, in fact.

Trying to accept her mother’s belief that the women of the Towne family are blessed, not cursed, with supernatural abilities, twenty-seven-year old Alice leaves a disapproving Boston husband to housesit for the summer in tiny Hawthorne, a historic village famous in the 1800s for its peppermint farms and the large, herbal-essence distilleries that flourished around the Massachusetts township.

She settles into a beautiful old home with a tragic reputation. There are said to be sightings and sounds from the spirit of a young woman who hanged herself after all her children died there of illnesses in the 1900s.

But soon, Alice experiences firsthand encounters that convince her the spirit is not who people think. The truth is shocking, steeped in the town’s distillery history and its legends of a local wizard and witchcraft. As she falls in love with a local farmer whose family legacy is as tangled in the magick and the mystery as her own, Alice’s fear becomes not whether the past can be resolved . . . but whether it’s waiting to claim new victims.

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THANKSGIVING TRADITIONS

BY EVE GADDY

One of my favorite traditions has to do with food.  Well, food and family. I usually make a big traditional southern-Texas Thanksgiving dinner.  (We also make the same meal at Christmas.  What can I say?  We like it.) I started making the dinner myself years ago when my family lived in Salt Lake City and couldn’t make it home to Texas.

The menu: Smoked Turkey, Cornbread Sage Dressing, Giblet Gravy, Potatoes (cooking method varies), Southern style Green Beans, Parkerhouse dinner rolls, Bing Cherry Jello salad, Cranberry sauce (Ocean Spray), pies (store bought, different varieties)

Over the years the menu has changed some, mostly to make life easier for me.  For instance, instead of cooking the turkey myself, which I did for a long time, we order a smoked turkey from Greenberg’s Turkeys in Tyler, Texas.  (If you’ve never had one you’re missing out.  They were named one of Oprah’s favorite things.) Talk about saving time and being much less trouble!  Not to mention, they’re really good. I also used to make a home-made apple pie but now we get them from the store.  The potatoes change.  In the past I made some form of really tasty, fattening potatoes but since I’m chronically dieting I now make my own version of mashed potatoes with skim milk and low-fat margarine.

All the homemade recipes came from my late mother-in-law.  She was a wonderful cook and taught me how to cook many things.  I could never have made Thanksgiving dinner without her instruction and encouragement.  I still miss being able to call and ask her questions about the process.  My gravy will never hold a candle to hers.

The centerpiece of the meal is the cornbread dressing.  First, I make two pans of buttermilk cornbread from scratch several days ahead.  You have to dry out the cornbread for days.  Don’t ask me why.  I do it because that’s the way my mother-in-law did it.  One reason I make two pans is because while drying out the cornbread seems to mysteriously disappear.

Putting all the ingredients of the dressing together prior to cooking is the fun, family part.  You see, you can’t make it without tasting to make sure there’s enough sage in it.  Although I have a general idea of how much sage to add, it’s not exact.  I, like my mother-in-law, grandmother, and mother, am the type of cook who says add a dash or pinch or a good bit, until it tastes right, or cook it until it looks done.  So we all gather around with spoons and taste and comment.  (Before you add raw eggs, of course.) Once we’re all satisfied that we have the perfect combination of salt, pepper and sage we transfer it to pans and bake it.

Yum.  All this writing about food has made me hungry!  Can’t wait until Thanksgiving.

Eve’s Cornbread Dressing

1 pan buttermilk cornbread, dried out for a couple of days

1 Cup Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing

2 Cups chopped onion

2 Cups chopped celery

3 raw eggs, beaten, added in last, after tasting

Rubbed sage, 5-6 T or to taste

Salt and Pepper to taste

Broth (from turkey if you roast it) or strong home-made chicken broth, broth from cooking giblets, canned chicken broth–always use low sodium.  I found out the hard way the regular is too salty.  I use a mix of the three, about 4 cups total.  To taste.  You want it pretty soupy but don’t forget you’ll be adding the eggs.  Finally, if it doesn’t taste quite rich enough, add some melted butter or margarine.

Put in pans, don’t pack down.  I use two pans, because I don’t like it really thick.  Bake at 325-350 for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Home-made Buttermilk Cornbread

1/2 Cup flour

1 1/2 Cup Cornmeal

1 1/2 Cup buttermilk

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/4 Cup liquid corn oil or vegetable oil

Mix together.  Pour into sprayed pan and bake at 450 for 20-25 minutes.

Coming this winter: a sprawling story of romance, mystery and danger. An isolated North Carolina community is haunted by the massacre of ten prominent families in 1930. Were they vicious bootleggers or the victims of one man’s vengeful greed? A brilliant textile engineer and a disgraced ex-NFL football player must pick up the pieces of a dramatic legacy and defend it against a new generation of revenge.

Excerpt

Caillin Anna MacBride and Sean Liam Gallagher
Eire County, North Carolina
February 1930
The terrible fate about to befall my family and the others of Eire County was woven from a skein of pride as fragile as the mountain skies but as strong as steel chain. For nearly two centuries the ten founding families of our Appalachian paradise had worked, died, loved and lost, celebrated and mourned and, most of all, prospered. Eire County Scots-Irish fought and died as heroes in the Revolutionary War. They built a town, a community, and a proud way of life based on sheep and whiskey.
They were dirt poor when they walked off a ship in Philadelphia in 1735, bringing with them little besides their Presbyterian stubbornness and their heirloom skills from the old country: herding, weaving, needlework, and the making of fine liquor. They journeyed south, into the Southern highlands. They fell in love with the mountains of the colony that would become North Carolina. They established a county and named it Eire, for Ireland.
By the mid-eighteen hundreds Eire County was known for two things: the Little Finn River Whiskey Distillery and fine woven goods from our imported Irish sheep. The distillery sold our libations all over the Southern states. The bottles were beautiful, made of amber glass and stoppered with hand-carved corks. The labels were gloriously ornate, and the names poetic: Old Irish, Ram’s Head, Proud Chief.
Our women supervised vast herds of sheep, ran two wool mills to prepare the fleeces, and imported Peruvian cotton and Asian silk. They employed a network of mountain women who knitted, crocheted and wove Eire County fiber into everything from linens and lace to rugs to socks.
We carried on ancient celtic traditions through their woven patterns—the symbols handed down for generations. Birds, deer, sheep, celtic circles, celtic crosses; each family had its motif. Among our next-door neighbors, the Gallaghers, the heirloom symbol was a bound sheaf of grains; the ribbon around them swirled into itself, unbroken and eternal.
Among my family, the MacBrides, the favorite symbol was the dair, the oak, grand and sheltering, a stylized tree whose pattern took enormous skill to create. Oaks were not just sentimental choices; in the life of a whiskey clan the handmade oak barrels, usually charred just-so on the inside, meant the difference between harsh grain alcohol and bourbon whiskey. The oaks’ charred essence seeped into the new-born liquor and transformed it. A smooth drink needs two years in the oak, our elders said.
We drank from the soul of the oaks. Yes, we timbered them, and harvested their bountiful acorns to feed our sheep and pigs, but we also planted groves of new trees.
In the valley of the Little Finn, where the cold, sweet water flowed across our front pastures like a moat, broad fields of corn grew higher than a man’s head every summer. The corn was milled into flour and grits, but also for stewing as sour mash. On the banks of that pretty mountain river, the Little Finn Distillery spired a handsome bell tower into the sky; it was a grand brick-and-stone structure. When the mash was cooking in the big copper pot stills, a delicious roasted-corn aroma sifted through the valley along with the river’s silver mists.
But now the distillery was empty and shuttered. Our stand against Prohibition had edged us toward a horrifying label as lawbreakers. We hid our handsome stills in the sheep barns and the deep creek hollows. We found lucrative markets for our liquor in the gangsters’ speakeasys—many of them owned by our kin, since we often sent our young men and women to the cities for college, and they often came home with husbands and wives as well as degrees. We partnered with the Spanish mob in Florida to export our whiskey and import their rum. We married into it to seal the deal. My aunt, Maureen MacBride, was now Maureen Esperanza, married to Emil Esperanza, a kingpin of bootlegging in Tampa.
We prospered mightily. Under the houses of the ten founding families of Eire County were buried enough gold coins to run a small country. My grandfather had a personal showpiece collection begun by his great-grandfather in the seventeen hundreds. Even in nineteen thirty there were rare coins in it worth a small fortune each.
Prohibition did not ruin us. In fact, it turned us from modestly rich to very rich. We concluded that doing business with corrupt men was an act of civic rebellion, and would bear no permanent consequences, and that the smooth liquor of ambition was a righteous balm for righteous people. We continued to make liquor, and to weave wool, as if nothing would change.
We forgot that wool does not weep for injustices and bourbon does not mourn for lost souls.

AN INDECENT AMOUNT OF FUN…

BY JEAN BRASHEAR

“Eudora Welty meets Sue Monk Kidd and they lunch with Fannie Flagg“…yes, indeedy, folks, a reviewer with serious college-professor-level expertise in Southern lit actually wrote those words about The Goddess of Fried Okra—totally swoon-worthy sentiments, and don’t you think I didn’t see nice little dots swirling before my eyes just before my body hit the fainting couch. 😉

Given that this book is truly The Book of My Heart, being on the receiving end of such a review was (still is!) just Too. Much. Fun.

But then, the writing of this book was an adventure all in itself. After having been under continuous deadlines for several years, I carved out three weeks to just let myself play with a story, simply to see if I could remember what it was like to write for the sheer joy of writing, with no thought to commercial appeal or my career or anything but just…you got it: Fun. I ditched my computer and sat on my deck in the cool morning shade with a glass of murderously strong Mexican iced coffee at my side, no idea at all what I’d write, and just let the words come.

Next thing I knew, here arrived this woman who had lost her job, her boyfriend and her place to live, all in the same day…and what does she do? She throws everything she owns (which ain’t much, I’m tellin’ you) into her beat-up car and sets off to find the sister who raised her.

Except, well, her sister’s, um…dead. But Eudora “Pea” O’Brien had consulted her sister’s psychic and was on the trail of the new body her sister now inhabited. Wherever that might be.

I’m sure we’d all make the same choice.

Along the way, Pea stops to read various roadside historical markers, looking for the hand of Fate to lead her (Here’s a Girl Power marker about WWII female pilots) and picks up an odd band of companions—a starving kitten, a pregnant Goth teenager and a sexy con man trying to go straight. They encounter a gun shop owner named Glory (shop name: Guns ‘N’ Glory—natch) who is obsessed with warrior goddesses and is a big fan of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. Glory is fond of wearing pearls with her combat boots and is a master of swordplay, something Pea decides she desperately needs to learn as she seeks to find her own strengths and make her way in the world.

When her car breaks down, Pea also meets the ultimate grandmother, a café owner named Lorena who is Glory’s polar opposite and who teaches Pea the art of perfect fried okra, something any Southerner would agree is both a necessity and manna from heaven.

So okay…this probably sounds like one weird book, huh? And how on earth did Conan the Barbarian ever come into play in my brain?

Beats me.;) Seriously, he’s not exactly my natural cup of tea, but let’s just say that on a road trip,  my husband and I encountered the legacy of Robert E. Howard (who was one weird and possibly seriously disturbed dude) on the back roads of Texas in connection with—yep, the Conan the Barbarian Festival (here’s the sign we encountered) which appears in the book. Ditto the Robert E. Howard homeplace, which we visited.

Sadly, there is no swordplay contest…but there should be.;) Maybe they’d let me organize the next festival?

Ditto, a road trip fleshed out Glory’s gun shop—in a portable building, of all things. Here’s a photo of me at Farley’s Firearms.

At the end of the three weeks I had to get back to work on my paying gig. I continued to write this book off and on over the next couple of years when I could take breaks from my deadlines. I wish I could say the whole process was a Ton O’Fun…but that didn’t happen until I finally ignored my agent’s urgings and the opinions in New York about how to make this woman seem logical (not her strong suit, but we Southerners are proud of our eccentric relatives) and took my book to the place I always felt would be its best home: the wonderful and amazing Belle Books.

The day my personal idol author, Deborah Smith, told me she loved it and wanted to buy it…well, pull out the smelling salts, is all I can say. Working with her and Debra Dixon (who created this FABULOUS cover!) in the early days of the Bell Bridge Books imprint? Folks, that much fun oughta be illegal.

That the book has gotten so many wonderful reviews and letters from readers since it was first published, and that readers keep asking for a sequel (tell me I’m not intimidated by THAT prospect!)…yep, definitely Too. Much. Fun.

A thoroughly indecent amount of fun. For which I am now and forever grateful. Vive les Belles!

The Goddess of Fried Okra by Jean Brashear is today’s Amazon Kindle Daily Deal for only $1.99!

WHAT MATTERS

by Trish Jensen

There isn’t a week that goes by when I’m not asked to give a workshop, do a book signing, send someone in Armenia  a book, write a blog, whatever.

I’m shy, (seriously!)  so I turn down most workshops, no way I’m doing a book  signing, as no one will show up, can’t afford the book to Armenia, but I can write a blog and talk about what matters.

For a few months my mother has been bugging me to come chat with her book club. The problem was, no one was interested in buying my books, they wanted me to donate them, or wanted them from a library. Well, that posed a problem, as I didn’t have enough books to donate to at least twenty women , and I couldn’t afford to buy them all books, either. It was also kind of irritating that they expected me to do those things when I really wasn’t doing cartwheels at the thought of going to this chat in the first place.

But, you know, it was my MOTHER. And she wanted me to do this so much. So we compromised. I gave her about 8 or so books, all different, and then we set a time, a few months in the future, so they’d all have time to read and pass on books. So they didn’t all read the same books, but at least they all read one of my books.

One other glitch. The woman who runs the book club is very, VERY religious. Trust me, I have nothing against that, as my critique partner is, also, and she writes some of the sexiest books on the shelves. But this woman wasn’t sure she wanted a :::gasp::: writer who has love scenes visiting.

My mother, ever the bulldog, loaned her my LEAST sexiest book, and she said okay, even though it was very racy. Brace yourself, lady. You haven’t seen anything yet. And I don’t even WRITE sexy, in my opinion. I write sexual tension between two people who so do NOT want to be attracted to each other.

But the day came, and I had to face all of these women and discuss WHY I write what I write, and what I love about this job.

I’m guessing it went really well. My mother said she was “busting her buttons” with pride. And I found out later that night that my dad stood outside listening. And he was proud, too.

I received a lot of feedback from those who attended, and who want me to come back, and that’s all well and good, and I’m glad.

But making my parents proud? THAT’S what mattered.

Parakeets and Dogs and Snakes, Oh My!

by Eve Gaddy

I was thinking today about the many pets I’ve had–or my children have had.  Part of the reason I was thinking about pets was because my ninety-pound Golden Retriever, Maverick, was trying to climb into my lap during a thunderstorm.   Much as he’d like to be, he is in no way a lap dog.

Poor Maverick is scared of many things.  Pillows, newspaper (the noise, not a rolled up paper), baby gates, and above all, thunderstorms.  Or wind, or rain,

or . . . well, you get the picture.  During storms, we lock him up in the back when we’re gone and pray he doesn’t destroy much.  He locks himself in the smallest place he can find. He has shredded numerous doors and his paws in the process.  Once, he knocked over a speaker and broke the glass shelf just below the shelf that held the TV.  How he missed that I don’t know, but we had shattered glass from one end of the house to the other.  At least the TV–and Maverick–were okay.

Anyway, nothing works to cure his storm phobia.  We’ve tried Thundershirts, drugs, both prescription and natural remedies.  Every.  Single.  One.  One medicine we gave him had no effect during the storm, then afterward when it wore off he was insatiably hungry and thirsty.  That was fun.  We crated him until he grew too big to make him go in there.  Sometimes it helps if you put him on a leash and make him lie down beside you.  Maverick’s a sweet dog but crazy as a loon.

We had a Springer Spaniel, Ginny, who loved to roll in stuff.  Mud and smelly stuff in particular.  My in-laws kept her one time and she immediately went and rolled in fresh cow patties.  They were not happy with us for some reason.

My daughter’s Cocker Spaniel, Ellie, recently created havoc when her husband’s parents kept her.  They thought Ellie had slipped out of the house and run off.  After a long sleepless night (part of which they spent driving all over looking for her) she trotted out of the closet early the next morning.  The dog barks at anything.  Leaves, people, dogs, just for the heck of it.  But she couldn’t bark when closed in a closet all night.  Oh, no.  Silent as a tomb.  Their other dog, Lucy, couldn’t find her either.  Or maybe she liked being an only dog.

Besides dogs, when my kids were young we had a parakeet.  Bluebonnet was very pretty and pretty mean.  He didn’t like anyone.  Pecked the heck out of anyone who dared to get him out.  We had a number of guinea pigs, and a hermit crab named Herman. (Herman made it into my book Midnight Remedy.)  I also put my dog, Dusty, (renamed Jumbo) in the same book.  Dusty got up on the counter and ate my beautiful lasagna one day.

The most memorable non-canine pet to me was my son’s snake, Spots.  I am not a reptile person.  I never touched him.  Didn’t mind seeing him but didn’t want to touch him.  Spots escaped one day.  We looked everywhere and couldn’t find him.  A few days later, when I was alone in the house I called a friend who had reptiles.  She told of one snake who escaped and they found two months later.  In the far recesses of her closet.  So, I looked in my son’s closet and who should be there but Spots?  Of course he was.  Moral dilemma.  What do I do?  Close the door and hope he didn’t disappear again?  No, I couldn’t do it.  I bravely picked him up, screaming at the top of my lungs the whole time, and put him back in his cage.  I don’t know who was more traumatized, me or Spots.

The best moment was when my son came into the den one day and said, “You probably don’t want to sit on the couch.” 

Of course, I’d been sitting there the last half hour.  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, I was playing with Spots and uh, well, I kinda forgot and went to do something else.”

Yes, Spots was in the couch.  Right beside where I’d been sitting. This happened before I’d had to put him back in the cage.  I might have reacted better after that.  Spots has since gone to snake heaven.  No, he didn’t die.  When my son went to college I found a man who did our pest control who kept snakes and loved them.  He took Spots off to live in a large snake haven with lots of friends.  Don’t tell my son but I actually missed him.  A little.:)

But I have Maverick to keep me company.  And sit in my lap when it storms.

THE FOREVER CHILD
By Sharon Sala

I’m always being asked how do I come up with ideas, and doesn’t it get difficult to find something new to write about after 80 plus books?  I have a pat answer for that question – that ideas are always in my head and that I will get too old to remember how to form sentences before I run out.  And while that is a fact, I rarely, if ever, think why.  How does my mind work in such a convoluted fashion?

The basic truth is that I came this way.  Every child is born with the ability to imagine, because for them, the world is an amazing place of possibilities.  We don’t see roadblocks, or put the word ‘impossible’ into our vocabularies until we’re older.

I have come to realize that people who write fiction are simply people who did not lose their childhood ability to pretend.  As a child, I could frighten myself far worse by imagining what was in the dark, rather than what was really there.  When I was small, I didn’t play with dolls.  That was too passive for me.  I played cowboys and Indians, and rode a stick horse and wore my Roy Rogers gun and holster all day, every day with the rationale that you never know when you might need to shoot a bad guy.

I used to play dress-up with my younger sister, but even then I had to be all about the drama.  If someone was going to be kidnapped or lost, it had to be me, because if I didn’t fight my way out of my disaster, the play just wasn’t fun.

When we were little, we ran barefoot in the hot sand between the rows and rows of grapes in my grandfather’s fruit orchard.  And when the sand was too hot on the bottoms of our feet, we would slip under the low-hanging vines and stand in their shade, picking sweet purple grapes from the ripening bunches and popping them in our mouths.  I can still remember the scent of hot sand, the burst of flavor in my mouth from the dark, sweet grapes, and the rough edges of the grape leaves brushing against my skin.

As a writer, imagery is everything.  If you can’t put the reader in the story and make them care about the characters, they won’t care about the book.  For an adult, still having that ability to impart heart-stopping fear, overwhelming joy, and the feel of hot sand on the bottoms of your feet, or the feel of being caught in a downpour and trying to run for dear life, only to have the deep, sticky mud pull the shoes right off your feet is a priceless gift.

It’s been said that writers are often a queer lot.  We work in solitude, never knowing how something we spent months, even years producing will be received, and yet we persevere because even if we’re the only one to read it, it is enough.

We are blessed because we didn’t lose the sense of wonder we had as children.  We didn’t forget how to play ‘pretend’.  We are never bored with our own company.  And yet the best part about being a writer is that our greatest joy multiplies a thousand-fold when shared with people who love to read.

Finally!  We’ve moved the staff into the new office space which feels like we’ve been building for years.  Can I say that I just hate construction?  And all the millions of decisions that go into creating a new office space.

I think we tested 3 colors on the wall and that was after a number of paint chip discussions.  File cabinets and furniture that were supposed to take forever arrived in mere days.  We had to rent a trailer to store the mountain of incredibly large boxes.  Those were the tiny bumps in the road.  One of the fun bumps was the security installation that put its glass break detectors in spots that screwed up the ceiling lighting plan.  Arrghh.  Delays were the order of the day.

And we decided to bypass the local rep and direct order the office system.  That meant installing it ourselves (hiring the contractor to do it).  Seemed like a good idea until we saw the instructions were well less than stellar.  Let me just say that they look easy to assemble, but not so much.

The cubicles in the bull pen area (pictured) turned out awesome.  Not quite as “sound deadening” as promised but the cubicles are large, with great work surfaces and a large “binder bin” on each side.  For now, the staff has more space in their cubicles than they can even imagine filling.

We’re still organizing, changing out old file cabinets, loading in the supplies and the kitchen items, figuring out that I can’t walk into the bull pen and shout someone’s name because people are on the phone.  Ahem.  That’s a hard one.

But we’re in.  We’re operational and only hideously behind instead of non-functional.  Once the contractor does about ten tiny chores, like putting up the blinds, we’ll be completely finished with the office.  We had to move in before they finished everything.  Shelving in the supply closet was only finished the end of last week!

Isn’t it lovely?  (Remember this is like someone asking you if their baby is pretty.  You say, “Yes.”)

For those who may know some of the staff:  Brittany on the left has her back to camera and the summer intern is on the right.

COLOR ME HAPPY . . . ANYWAY

I heard on the news this morning that a study’s been done and if you’re an optimist it’s because the frontal lobe in your brain is malfunctioning. Have you ever heard such utter nonsense?

Look, life’s tough. Nobody reaches puberty much less adulthood without enduring a broken heart, emotions that run the breadth of the stratosphere, and a couple head-­‐on collisions with brick walls. That’s called life and growing up. Not brain malfunction.

Optimism is a choice. The way I’ve always looked at it is that the day is coming anyway. It’s going to unfold anyway. Now it can unfold with me having a good attitude, making the most I can make of the day, or it can unfold with me having a bad attitude, wasting the chance to make anything good of the day because I’m tied up griping about it, being depressed about it, or being snagged in the pit of despair. Either way, the day will unfold.

The griping, depressed, pit of despair doesn’t sound at all appealing so I’m not going there. Period. I choose to use my functioning-­‐fine brain and see the glass as half full. It’s a choice. A choice I make. Fair, since I live it.

I didn’t just get this attitude; I’ve had it as long as I can remember. It’s probably a pretty good thing because life sure throws us a lot of opportunities to make lemonade, now doesn’t it? I got lucky. I happen to love lemonade.

So I was having not a single glass but a pitcher full, and this truth about life settled in. It’s a choice. That’s what settled in. I was contemplating my next writing project and deciding what path I wanted to take. At a crossroads, so to speak. Anyway, that kept going through my mind. The choice. And then reaching for a fresh glass of lemonade, a thought struck me: What if you didn’t seem to have a choice?

Ooh, I didn’t much like that. It shot holes in my theory. Made leaky my façade that I at least had a little control of my life. No one likes those kinds of theories becoming sieves right before their eyes—and yet I couldn’t shove the thought away. What if I didn’t have a choice? Mmm, couldn’t fight it. I was intrigued.

So what happens? Say you are pretty banged up from life battles and you’re chugging lemonade by the barrel. Say you’ve looked at the problems and now you’re focusing on the solutions only there are none. You’ve been robbed. Your choice is MIA—and you’re stuck. I don’t mean figuratively. I mean literally. What do you do now?

That’s the situation that led to the Seascape novels

Led to Beyond the Misty Shore, specifically.

Being stuck doesn’t exactly inspire you to be in the most receptive frame of mind. Sunshine is arrogant when you’re grieving, right? But isn’t it true that the worst possible time is always when important things happen?

It has been in my life, and it is in T.J.’s too. He’s the guy stuck in Beyond the Misty Shore. Toss in a woman who loves to hate him, and the wise Seascape innkeeper (who seems to know everything but won’t just tell anyone anything because “some things are best learned firsthand”), a colorful cast and Maine cliffs and a little otherworldly intervention, and, well, T.J. has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he?

Don’t feel too bad for him. We’ve been there. And, you know, sometimes when we’re broken, we have to really hurt to ever get beyond the pain. We have to figure out that we can heal before we do heal. Eventually, we get it. And when we do, magic happens. We no longer just survive. We truly live.

Gee, I’m misting up here. I think I’ll pack a bag and go visit Seascape Inn again . . . just as soon as I finish this glass of lemonade.

Blessings,

Vicki

Vicki Hinze

www.vickihinze.com

www.facebook.com/vicki.hinze.author

www.twitter.com/vickihinze

P.S. The Seascape novels are general market novels I wrote under the pen name Victoria Barrett. What a joy it is to have Beyond the Misty Shore out now under my own. Color me happy!

Deborah Grace Staley has a new Christmas short story!  Staley has written four Angel Ridge books: Only You, A Home for Christmas, What the Heart Wants, and I’ll Be There. To read the short story and her latest blogs, click the following link:

http://deborahgracestaley.wordpress.com/