Bell Bridge Books

Music to Write By

by Eve Gaddy

For many writers music is an integral part of their process. Just as everyone has their own method of writing, everyone has their own way of incorporating music into their process. Some writers listen to music while they write, either a playlist they’ve made for the book, classical music, or as Roz Denny Fox once told me, “I have to listen to kickin’ country music. My husband made a classical playlist for me one time and I fell asleep.” On the other hand, my editor, Pat Van Wie, is another who listens to music while she writes. She listens to only classical piano music, with no words, preferably Chopin. Our musical tastes are as unique as our writing.

Each writer’s process is different, so it’s no surprise each writer has a different way of using music to aid in his or her writing. I can’t listen to music while I write. It’s far too distracting. I can’t even listen to instrumental because I’ll hum the tune. But I listen to music, and my playlists, at all other times. In the car, when I clean (Stop laughing. I wash out my coffeepot. That counts, doesn’t it?), when I shower, before I sit down to write. And listening while driving seems to help when I’m stuck.

I make a playlist for every book. When I first started writing I would only have one or two songs I played for the book, but then I discovered playlists! Much better. You can get awfully sick of a song you play 10,000 times. For me the playlist has to develop. I may start out with one song that’s key, and as I write, others are added and become more important.

Cry Love, is a book unlike anything I’ve ever written. While it is a romance, it’s also a love story. There are subtle differences. Love stories don’t always end happily. Just read the first scene of Cry Love and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So, yes, there’s tragedy in Cry Love but there is also triumph. And a love that won’t die.

When I first heard the song Cry Love by John Hiatt, I knew it would be important in writing this book. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it would be. For one thing, it’s a beautiful song. Then it dawned on me that Cry Love was the perfect title for this book. Haunting, beautiful, evocative, different.

My playlist for Cry Love includes songs about forbidden love, hopeless love, songs about mad, passionate, and dangerous love. One song, Andy Brown’s Ashes, I’ve yet to fully understand but it’s so beautiful I added it to the list. The Vivaldi Guitar Concerto by Los Romeros, was added just because I love it. Another song that really spoke to me was Jessica Andrews’ Helplessly, Hopelessly, Recklessly. Musical genres include Rock and Roll, Pop, Country, and Classical songs. Not every musical genre is represented in the Cry Love playlist. However, I cover a lot of genres in my playlists for upcoming books. I like variety. What can I say, I have eclectic tastes.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be tweeting, posting on Facebook and my website the songs from my playlist for Cry Love. Enjoy!

Here is my playlist for Cry Love, with links:

Cry Love John Hiatt http://bit.ly/1m0enN1

Ashes  Andy Brown http://bit.ly/1oVXJof

Helplessly, Hopelessly, Recklessly Jessica Andrews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVJPnEbOkA

Wrong to Love You  Chris Isaak http://bit.ly/1ohIhfL

Forbidden Love Jim Verraros http://bit.ly/1pzJORx

Lips of An Angel Hinder http://bit.ly/1djs3T7

The Right Kind of Wrong LeAnn Rimes http://bit.ly/UGkHCx

Standing on the Edge of Goodbye John Berry http://bit.ly/1j4fbBF

We Can Be Together Jefferson Airplane  http://bit.ly/1ncB28A

Dangerously In Love Beyoncé http://bit.ly/1qy5ehK

Wicked Game Chris Isaak http://bit.ly/1qX4EMY

Midnight Confessions The Grass Roots http://bit.ly/1ldq4Ug

Endless Love Lionel Richie & Diana Ross http://bit.ly/1pAhQ9t

Concerto in B Minor for 4 Guitars & Cello RV 580 (L’estro armonico No. 10): I. Allegro Los Romeros Vivaldi: Guitar Concertos http://bit.ly/VvOX3F

Click the cover above to buy CRY LOVE – out now!!

A Long Time Coming

by Eve Gaddy

Some books are a long time coming.

I had the original idea for Cry Love in 1999.  I found the file not too long ago.  It was a one line description that I had saved in my idea file, many computers ago.  But it was a very different idea and at the time I was writing for Harlequin.  There was no way this book would fit what they wanted.  Since I am one of those writers who does best in total immersion, I filed the idea and kept writing other things.

I am also one of those writers who periodically experiences burnout.  I think it has something to do with being so obsessive.  (What, me obsessive?)

Anyway, every once in a while, especially when I was feeling burned out and battered by the business, I would pull the idea out and play with it.  I went to see the movie Hurricane and found it and Denzel Washington, who plays Hurricane Carter, very inspiring.  My husband and I were the only people in the theatre and it seemed as if it was playing just for me.

Several years ago, maybe around 2003 or 2004, I wrote the first scene.  I was at a conference and laid down to rest and the scene came to me.   A year or so later, I worked on the plot during an endless drive back from Savannah to Tyler with my daughter.  Then I put it aside again.

I couldn’t get going on it.  I would write random scenes occasionally but what I had in no way resembled a book.  I went on that way until I quit writing for about two years due to burnout, family death, twin grandbabies<g>, and life in general.  I played with my grandbabies, did a lot of needlework and didn’t write a word of fiction.  I decided if I never wrote anything else that was okay.  I’d published sixteen books and that was enough.

Then I talked to Debra Dixon, President of Belle Books, and a friend I’d known for many years.  The self-publishing boom had hit.  Although I thought I had retired, almost all my friends are writers and I was still a member of many writing communities.  I had the rights back to eight books and was toying with publishing them myself.  But I couldn’t figure out a number of things.  Formatting for one.  At the time I wrote in Word Perfect.  Everything now requires Word, which I loathe and use only when I absolutely must.

So I asked for help on one of my writers loops and Debra Dixon gave me some great advice.  She also mentioned I didn’t have to do this all on my own.  “I don’t?” I asked.  She said Belle Books was interested in reissuing my backlist.  I knew about Belle Books, of course.  I had always wanted to write for them, in fact.  But I hadn’t realized they had branched out from publishing only original southern fiction to more genres as well as reissues.  I was in heaven.  Belle Books bought my backlist in January 2011.  My first reissue, On Thin Ice, came out with Bell Bridge Books in August of 2011.  I love those books and it is such a pleasure to know they have a new life. I not only have a new publisher but I’m lucky enough to have a publisher and editors who are a dream to work with.

In one of our discussions about my backlist, Deb asked me if I had plans to write anything new.  She knew all about what had been going on with me and that I had mentioned retiring, but she let me know Belle Books would be interested in an original from me.  I said, “Well, I do have an idea for a book that’s unlike anything I’ve ever written.

That was what it took.  Not too long after I talked to Deb, I sent a synopsis of my new book to Belle Books. It was very vague and very short since I still had no idea exactly what I was doing, or even what exactly I was writing.  We decided I’d write the whole book and submit it.

Except I couldn’t write.  I had the synopsis but the book was so complex I couldn’t figure out how to write the thing.  I contacted the fabulous April Kihlstrom, published author and writing coach extraordinaire.  With her help I was able to begin seriously working on my book.  April was a lifesaver.  I truly doubt I’d have been able to write again without her help and encouragement.

My friends, many of whom I list in the acknowledgements, were essential to writing my Book of the Heart. I can’t tell you how many talks we had on every subject under the sun. Or how many times I’d call one of them up to try to hammer out a scene. Or email someone with a problem I couldn’t figure out. I’m pretty sure my friends were almost as glad as I was when I finished Cry Love. For that matter, so was my family. I might be just a tiny bit hard to live with when I’m writing.

Finally, nearly a year after I started writing it seriously, I typed THE END on Cry Love.  Thirteen years after the original idea occurred to me, I finished the book.  To call Cry Love a book of my heart doesn’t even approach how I feel about it.  This book was wrenched, sometimes agonizingly, from deep within my heart and soul.  I love this book.  I hope you will too.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN FRIENDS

by Don Donaldson

These are our two Westies.  That’s Freddy on the left and Billy on the right.  They’re both ten.  We’ve had Freddy for nine years and Billy for only six.  For the first four years of Billy’s life, he belonged to a dog breeder.  When the breeder didn’t want him any more the guy just took him to an animal shelter.  When Billy first came to us, he didn’t even know how to walk on a leash or have the strength to jump from the porch into the house.  In fact, he didn’t seem to know anything about how to be a house pet… probably because he’d been locked up in a cage for most of his life.  But as soon as he met Freddy, he became a dog prodigy, learning so fast it was amazing.  It was apparent that he was learning it all from Freddy.  But how?  I never saw them having any kind of dog conversation.  I’ve often wondered how this transfer of information took place.  Here’s a conversation I can imagine them having:

FREDDY: “Hi kid.  Where you from?”

BILLY: “I don’t really know.  Not from anywhere close, because we were in the car a long time when they picked me up to bring me here.”

FREDDY:  “You should be aware of a few things… First of all, do not pee or do the other thing anywhere in the house.  Nothing will get you in bigger trouble than that.  I did it once and well, I don’t even want to think about it.”

BILLY:  “Did they hit you?”

FREDDY: “They’d never hit us or hurt us in any other way.  But the shouting… you don’t want to hear that.  If you’d like to go outside, just find them and stare at them.  They’ll figure it out.”

BILLY:  “What if I’m hungry?”

FREDDY:  “The stare works for that, too.  They’ll lead you into the kitchen to see if you want to go out.  The food bowls are in there.  Just start licking the empty bowl.  That usually works.

“Once you settle in, you’ll want to sit in their lap and get your belly scratched.  The smaller one with the soft hands does it the best, but the other one, is pretty good, too. “

BILLY: “How do I get them to pick me up?”

FREDDY:  “The absolute best way is too sit up with your paws in the air side by side and start pumping them up and down, like you’re running in the air.  They cannot resist that one.”

BILLY:  “I saw a big basket of toys in that other room. Are those all yours?”

FREDDY:  “They were… but you can play with them too.”

BILLY:  “Thanks. I thought you might be… upset to have me around.”

“FREDDY:  “Humans are great, but they have almost no sense of smell and can hardly hear anything.  I just don’t get that.  So… you can help me protect the place, you know… bark like crazy when anything seems odd.

BILLY: “I can definitely do that.  What’s the best part of living here?”

FREDDY:  “The best part…? No question… it’s the love.

A final note from the humans about the toys:  After about a year, the two dogs seemed to reach an agreement that all of the toys now belonged to Billy.  We didn’t hear that conversation either.”

 Don is a retired professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology.  His entire academic career was spent at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, where he published dozens of papers on wound healing and taught microscopic anatomy to over 5,000 medical and dental students.  He is also the author of seven published forensic mysteries and five medical thrillers. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife and two West Highland terriers.  In the spring of most years he simply cannot stop buying new flowers and other plants for the couple’s backyard garden.

TIKI ROAD TRIPS AND FLAMING COCKTAILS

by Jill Marie Landis

According to Wikipedia (and we all know how reliable Wikipedia is!) the tortured artist is both a stock character and a real-life stereotype. Artists who suffer for their work often succumb to self-mutilation, a high rate of suicide, hours of therapy and/or gallons of Ben and Jerry’s.

I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as a tortured artist, but I will go to just about any length in the name of research. When I wrote western historical romances, I rode horses and rounded up cattle. I watered down pigs. I’ve visited so many historical sites and museums that my husband now punches the car accelerator as we approach any building or rock that might be sporting an historical marker.

Since I began writing The Tiki Goddess Mystery Series for Belle Books, I’ve gone overboard doing research. I’ve devoted countless hours to paging through Pintrest, pinning photos with the subject heading “Tiki.”  I’ve shopped eBay for tiki mugs to add to my collection. I’ve spent many a night in the local watering hole here on Kauai writing notes on cocktail napkins and taste testing umbrella drinks. An author’s life is one of sacrifice. Believe me, I’ll go to any length to get things right on the page.

So, in the name of research, I’ve visited Tiki Bars on Kauai and on every other Hawaiian Island. When we’re on the mainland (you know it as the continental US), I refer to my handy dandy “Tiki Road Trip, A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America” by James Teitelbaum. I’ve been in tiki bars in some of the most unlikely, out of the way places in the world and lived to tell about it.

I’ll have to admit my husband and our dinner guests were surprised on evening when I walked into the kitchen armed with a long handled gas lighter and a fire extinquisher. I explained I’d decided to create a recipe to include in TOO HOT FOUR HULA, Book 4, the latest of the Tiki Goddess Mysteries and I needed assistance.

I handed my friend and fellow author, Stella Cameron, a fire extinguisher. As I recall, I said something like, “Stand back Stella, and if I blow myself up, use that thing!”

Stella laughed until I started lining up the ingredients which included chocolate candy kisses and three kinds of liquor, one of which was a bottle of 151 Proof rum, the liquor most mixologists recommended for igniting a flaming cocktail.

That night “The Flaming Manic Monkey” cocktail was born. The drink was inspired by a scene in TOO HOT FOR HULA when Uncle Louie relates a trek to the Amazon in search of the legendary Amethyst Monkey Skull.

Thankfully, Stella didn’t have to use the extinguisher after all because we later noticed that warranty on the thing expired ten years ago!

Do stop by and visit me at www.thetikigoddess.com and sign up for my newsletter and read other fun blogs.

Don’t forget to grab Jill Marie Landis’s newest release

– TOO HOT FOUR HULA –

out today!!

Just click the link above!

And make sure you grab the other fabulous books in the Tiki Goddess Series! Just click the links below!

BE CAREFUL WITH THE LITTLE DETAILS

by Melissa Ford

The first thing you need to know is that I don’t know a lot about television.  I watch whatever my husband puts on at night, and if he doesn’t turn on the television, then it wouldn’t occur to me to choose something myself.  One time my husband went to Berlin for ten days. When he returned and clicked on the television, it was still set to ESPN which he was watching before he left.  He looked at me and said, “you either missed me so much that you watched sports… or you didn’t turn on the television for a week and a half.”  Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner.

The second thing you need to know is that when we were making Bermuda shorts in our Home Ec class in eighth grade, I didn’t align the front and the back properly so the fabric pattern went in two different directions.  I had hand-stitched my shorts together because I couldn’t get a hang of the sewing machine, and the fabric puckered strangely between the holes in the seam.

I know nothing about television and nothing about sewing.  So why did I make one character in Apart at the Seams a writer for a comedy news show, and the other a finisher for a clothing designer?

It was sort of by accident.  Noah and Arianna were supposed to be minor characters, meant to help hold up the plotline, but they were thrust into the spotlight when we decided to tell the same story over two books from two very different points of view.  If these two characters were a television writer and a finisher in Measure of Love, then they needed to have the same jobs when the story flipped over and was told from their point of view in Apart at the Seams.

The moral of this story is to be careful with even the little, throwaway details.

I was lucky in that a bunch of kind people in New York jumped in to teach me their craft so I could create a believable television writer and finisher.  Jill Katz at the Daily Show brought me to the set and taught me what goes into crafting a half hour comedy show from script to performance.  She didn’t even roll her eyes when I meekly asked her what the man working the camera was called.

And Brenda Mikel, the Atelier Director at Narciso Rodriguez, spent hours walking me through the process of designing clothing. It’s thanks to her that Arianna attaches sequins before the pattern is cut rather than after as she did in the first draft of the book.  There was no question too basic that Brenda didn’t take time out of her busy schedule to answer thoughtfully.

I’m grateful for all the people who stepped in to help bring veracity to the characters and storyline.  Though next time, I’m going to stick with what I know and make my character a women’s fiction writer, working out of her house.  Then again… it was pretty cool to see the Daily Show in action…

Make sure you grab Melissa Ford’s new release

– APART AT THE SEAMS-

out on June 14!!

Just click the link above!

And don’t forget to grab the first two books in this series – LIFE FROM SCRATCH and MEASURE OF LOVE!

Just click the links below!

You Know Who Mark Harmon is, Right?

By C. Hope Clark

          When you think of mysteries, crime, and agents, the routine acronyms come to mind like FBI, CIA, DEA, and ATF. The more arrogant Secret Service guys like to roll out their name and not use initials. Then not all that long ago, we learned about NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service . . . and Mark Harmon!

But I became aware of another group of federal agents when I signed on with the US Department of Agriculture, and at first blush I wondered what the heck agents with guns and badges were doing around cows and corn, tractors and silos. But when a client offered me a bribe, I learned quickly that crime exists wherever there’s motive and money, even in the country, even within the Ag Department.

The Offices of Inspector General (OIG) quietly exist for all federal agencies, Smithsonian, Transportation, Health and Human Services, etc. But I took particular interest in the Ag Agents since that was my dominion, and I soon learned they could throw cuffs on a culprit as effectively as any FBI agent. So why not open up a new world of crime in a unique mystery series?

Carolina Slade is offered a bribe in Lowcountry Bribe, and she meets Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo with USDA OIG. The culprit? A hog farmer.

Say what? Farmers aren’t like that. Hah! Farmers can be bad guys like anyone else, and this hog producer proved it over and over in the first book of this series. Human blood doesn’t look much different than hog blood, now does it? Our IG agent waded in amongst the muck to help our stumbling yet hardheaded protagonist crack this case.

Then Tidewater Murder drew Slade into the South Carolina Lowcountry amidst tomatoes and shrimp. Drugs and migrant workers caused quite a stir, and we learned that agriculture can get deadly in a hurry.

The term agriculture agent raises visions of cowboy hats, boots, and straw out the corner of someone’s mouth, but as redneck as the role may sound, they are legit. Some of their real cases include:

• Prosecuting Sarah Lee for selling bad meat leading to a Listeriosis outbreak, killing 15 people and sickening over a hundred.
• Breaking up dog fighting rings, to include the Michael Vick case.
• Nabbing a meal and veal exporter who dumped tainted meat on Japan, who then shut down its borders to American meat imports for six months.
• Arresting meat suppliers for dumping uninspected and tainted meat into school cafeterias.
• Busting horse owners and trainers for cruel and illegal practices on horses bred for show.
• Nailing people putting sewing machine needles into food.
• Cuffing a feed supplier for tainting calf feed with formaldehyde.

Theft, conspiracy, fraud, embezzlement, even murder, bribery and smuggling.  It gets bad in many colorful ways the average urban dweller doesn’t fully comprehend.

And now we have Carolina Slade’s newest release Palmetto Poison, where we learn that politics and peanuts can overlap in a bad way. The idea of Palmetto Poison came from the Agriculture OIG’s press release archive, when a produce inspector took bribes under the table to allow substandard products to pass through inspection.

Such action sounds little more than greedy, but can result in serious consequences. Bad peanuts may just sound like a nasty taste, but high levels of mold, fungal, and moisture can make them deadly.

Salmonella can actually wait dormant in that innocent jar of peanut butter until it hits the perfect growth environment, the human stomach. And if inspections get too far out of hand, more serious illnesses rise to the surface, like aflatoxin. Not a common scenario in the protected US of A, thus making it an opportune plot tool in Palmetto Poison, but in third world countries, many die from these cancer-causing peanuts that destroy a liver.

Whenever you have money, subsidies, or profits in the picture, you have crime. While it’s not palatable to think of our food infected with something that could kill us, the potential exists for large-scale tampering. While some mysteries poison the drinking water or substitute flu vaccines with crazy virulent strains of disease, Carolina Slade’s plots scare us where we feel safe, where we don’t expect crime to hit. And the agents in the mix specialize in that arena.

USDA’s OIG might not have a Mark Harmon yet, but I suspect we’ll see one downstream. And if you’ve read any of Slade’s stories, you’ll immediately wonder who could play the luscious Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo. I know I do. And since I married the agent in my bribery investigation, he’s rather intrigued as to who would play him, too!

BIO

Palmetto Poison is C. Hope Clark’s latest in The Carolina Slade Mystery Series. Hope is also editor of FundsforWriters.com, a website recognized by Writer’s Digest for its 101 Best Websites for Writers for the past 13 years. www.fundsforwriters.com / www.chopeclark.com

Check out C. Hope Clark’s newest release – PALMETTO POISON – today from Amazon!

Just Click the Link!!

Fried Okra and an (Almost!) St. Paddy’s Birthday

by Jean Brashear

Is it possible to love leprechauns too much? To thrill overly to the sight of a shamrock and too-deeply cherish the color green?

Yes, my name is Jean, and I adore St. Patrick’s Day to a possibly embarrassing degree.

Okay, so I got attached as a child—its proximity to my birthday and the ready-made party theme imprinted on me early. Learning that my ancestors came from Ireland (with more than a few braw Scots in the mix) only cemented the bond.

Discovering that the first of my family tree to arrive on the shores of what would become America occurred as a result of my ship’s captain ancestor wrecking on the Virginia coast…oh, golly, does that mean I can maybe throw a pirate into the mix? Be still my heart!

I KNEW there was a reason Eudora “Pea” O’Brien of THE GODDESS OF FRIED OKRA (can you say The Great Subconscious?) became a swordswoman!

I’m all grown now, and, yes, I know March 17 isn’t actually my birthday…but I still have this deep-seated urge to brandish shamrock napkins and don green leprechaun birthday hats every March…and maybe to also whip out my sword and join Pea and Glory in a little celebratory sword dance to honor the sisterhood of all those remarkable Goddess of Fried Okra women!

Happy St. Paddy’s, fellow lovers of all things Emerald!

Jean

New York Times and USAToday bestselling author of THE GODDESS OF FRIED OKRA and nearly 40 other novels in romance and women’s fiction, a five-time RITA finalist and RT BOOKReviews Career Achievement Award winner, Jean Brashear will also confess to an ongoing fangirl adoration of the remarkable women at Bell Bridge Books and the amazing books they publish

Visit Jean’s website

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AND DON’T FORGET TO GRAB JEAN BRASHEAR’S NOVEL – THE GODDESS OF FRIED OKRA – TODAY FROM AMAZON!!

JUST CLICK THE LINK!

No Pot of Gold at This End

by Kathryn Magendie

Lots of supernatural magic happens in the Smoky Mountains. And if some of it is unbelievable to you and you and you,  well, there’s no way to prove that, now is there? We can hide more deeds in and among these mysterious mountains than city dwellers can (and I say “dwellers” as if it’s not spelled and pronounced that way, as if I am saying “fellers” all mountain south way).

But there are some things that need no proving. You must believe them! For in believing them, you can take away a piece of the magic for yourself—you can look for what you must find.

I once was hiking along a ridge-top when I saw a rainbow arcing across the sky, touching the next ridge-top over from where I was. There was something different about this rainbow, something more solid though it undulated, sparkly, and it was beckoning to me. I was mesmerized, hypnotized, and didn’t even think to consider the distance I’d have to trek to find the end of that strange rainbow.

But in the way that magic happens, when the earth aligns just so with the moon, and the stars although unseen bare their sparkled supernatural gifts, with only a few long running steps I soon arrived at my destin(y)ation.

When I tell this story, seeing as it happened on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, people will ask, “Did you find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? A leprechaun?” I just shake my head. Seriously? A pot of gold? A leprechaun? Those kinds of things are for other legends and other fairytales in other lands. Not for here. Not for me. And they will then ask, “What did you find, Kathryn?”

“I found,” I then say, “a cup spilling over with brilliant color that washed into the cup and over its sides, and down the mountain . . .” . . . on it flowed, as if a creek where many colors of paint were spilled. I didn’t hesitate, but threw off my clothes and dived in. The water-colors were warm against my skin, and when I lifted my hand, it was red, green, purple, blue, yellow, orange—and all the colors among and between those. Glancing down at my body, it was just as my hand appeared. My hair streamed out behind me, brilliant golden silver.

I then drank some of the water, unafraid, for the rainbow whispered promises to me—“It is good; it is good; it is so very good, dear one.” And it was. I tasted sweetness, a sweetness that entered my body and then spilled out from my pores. I sweated colors, and then, quite suddenly, because it was so very lovely, I began to cry. I sat upon the grass tinted by the colors, my feet emerged in brilliance, and I cried for everything I ever lost and gained and would lose and gain again. My tears fell upon the grass in gemstones of emerald, ruby, sapphire. I did not pluck them from the ground for my gain, for they belonged to the rainbow.

The waters then rose up and washed around me, hugging me, and I knew the rainbow would soon have to leave. The cup tipped and spilled all of its wonder and I lay upon the ground and let the colors wash me clean. I saw my life before and ever since. But I could not see what was to come, and that was okay, for the rainbow eased my worry.

Soon, the cup was empty, the water-colors rising up out of it and back into the rainbow, and then, as if it had never been there at all (but it was! I saw it!), the cup and the rainbow disappeared. I mourned it for a moment, until I saw something glimmer in the grass—one perfect tear still held there, garnet—deep blooded red. I touched it and it melted into my skin becoming a part of my blood that raced through my veins. I smiled, rose, and hiked back down the mountain.

I would never be the same.

When I tell this story, people think it is a metaphor, that I have some grand reason for telling it, some purpose.

That is up to the listener. I only know what I experienced that March 17 in a year that is secret to everyone but me—perhaps it is this year, and I simply saw the future. Perhaps it was a hundred years ago, and I saw a past.

I long to hike up to the ridge-top once more, to see a rainbow, where I would not look for pots of gold or leprechauns, but instead for the beckoning. I long to search until I find it again—though, I know in that knowing way, it happens only once in a lifetime, in ten-thousand life-times. I know that now comes the time that I must leave it behind and never ever will I ever see it again.

Check out Kathryn Magendie’s novel – THE LIGHTNING CHARMER – today on Amazon!

Just click the link! 

Tip o’ the Hat to Murph

 by Judith Arnold

My ninth-grade English teacher was a tall, broad-faced, red-haired, vehemently Irish man named Eugene Murphy. Murph was brilliant, motivational, stern, and funny—the best teacher I had in high school. All these years later, I still remember the cadence of his coordinating-conjunctions chant, his purple-prose parodies, his explication of The Iliad and his flummoxed reaction when we all handwrote our Iliad essays in spirals so he’d have to rotate our papers to read them. I remember the day he confiscated our water pistols and then turned them on us and mowed down the entire class with spritzes of water. I remember the day he read us a short story he had written, a lovely, lyrical tale heavily influenced by James Joyce. I remember him serenading us with “Danny Boy,” his voice a sweet, high tenor.

One reason I wound up writing for and then editing the high school newspaper was that Murph was the faculty advisor. I didn’t want to lose the chance to work with him once I’d finished ninth grade.

Not surprisingly, Murph took St. Patrick’s Day very seriously. My senior year, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City coincided with an awards luncheon for high school newspapers at the Waldorf-Astoria. Our school newspaper had won some sort of recognition from the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Murph piled the newspaper’s senior editors into his car and drove us into Manhattan so we could receive our award.

I don’t remember much about the award or the luncheon. What I do remember was that we arrived in the city hours before the luncheon so we could view the St. Patrick’s Day parade first. I recall little about the parade itself—a parade is a parade—but everything about Murph that day. He wore a necktie festooned with shamrocks, and balanced a kelly-green derby precariously atop his red hair. He waved at the marchers. He sang. He cheered. He made me wish I was Irish.

I am not Irish. I come from Eastern European Jewish stock, and I’m as proud of my heritage as Murph was of his. And so, the following Monday, I brought Murph a St. Patrick’s Day present: a square of matzo painted green.

Tears glistened in Murph’s eyes when he opened the box and saw that bright green matzo. Whether they were tears of joy or horror, I can’t say. I did warn him not to eat the matzo, because I’d used real paint, not food coloring. Perhaps his tears arose from disappointment over not being able to snack on my gift.

I kept in touch with Murph for years after I graduated from high school. He was my mentor, my inspiration. He definitely deserves some of the credit for my career as a novelist. Never does a St. Patrick’s Day go by when I don’t summon a memory of him standing on that crowded sidewalk on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, wearing a tacky green derby and singing “McNamara’s Band” as the parade passed by.

CELEBRATE EVERYTHING GREEN (PAINTED OR NOT) THIS ST. PATRICK’S DAY!

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Three-Leaf Weeds

by Kimberly Brock

I’m not Irish. Not even close. I don’t even look good in green. But there’s something that gets to me every spring when St. Patrick’s Day rolls around – this whole business of luck. I don’t have it. I want to know how to get it. And I’m starting to worry maybe I just missed the turn on the way to my pot of gold.

People will put ridiculous amounts of faith in luck. They’ll latch on to just about any old thing and then claim it to be lucky. There’s the luck of the Irish. Blind luck. Lucky pennies. Lucky horseshoes. Lucky numbers. Lucky socks or shoes or hats or garter belts. Lucky stars. But even with these endless options, I’ve never really been lucky. I don’t stumble upon opportunity or trip over good fortune. I don’t win at slots. I never scratched off a game card and got the Free Big Mac Meal. I never met Ed McMahon at my front door in curlers to receive my Publisher’s Clearinghouse millions. But this stuff happens. Out of the clear blue, it seems, there’s luck. So, maybe people who love the idea of luck are in fact, actually, lucky. Maybe it’s real enough, not just coincidence. But – and this is not because I’m green with envy – I’m starting to think luck might be a lot more than, well, dumb.

I married a man who can find a four-leaf clover without fail. It’s a wonder to behold, how that taciturn man can walk onto any patch of grass, bow his quiet head, and call up a little miracle. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he creates them out of the wishes of his heart. To tell you the truth, I am suspicious of his methods. There’s something annoying about the fact that I can stomp all over that same little patch for hours and all I’ll see is grass and the most ordinary three-leaf weeds on earth. I resent it, if you want to know the truth. I put in the effort. I crouch and squat and squint until my back aches and my head is dizzy and in the end, I have nothing to show for it but a bad attitude. He, on the other hand, waltzes along, whistles, even. He will hardly glance at the ground, just plucking up little bouquets of blessings. He finds them so easily, he doesn’t even care to just give them all to me. Now, what is that? Is that luck?

So, finally, one day I said, It’s not fair. You don’t even have to try. I asked him how he did it. He smiled. And this is what I’ll think about this spring when the stout little leprechauns start trotting around, measuring their shillelagh sticks. He gave me a handful of clover and said, Maybe you’re just looking so hard you can’t see what’s right in front of you.

And that’s when I realized, my luck isn’t Irish at all. He’s German.

Check out Kimberly Brock’s novel – THE RIVER WITCH – on Amazon today! 

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