FYI: If you were an Insider, you could be reading Chapter 1 right now. (hint, hint)

She’s a California beach town girl, what does she know about London high society? Life used to be bliss for Chelsea and Jeremy, working together at home for the first months with their new baby. Then they relocated to London, Jeremy’s resumed his law career, and Chelsea’s never felt so out of place and alone. Being part of her husband’s prominent Pearce family has a whole new meaning now, and she’s thrown into a society she’s totally unsuited for. With her quirky beach vibe and the mishaps she’s prone to, she just isn’t making the cut.

But being a social misfit could spell disaster for both Jeremy’s career and their home life. (And it’s screwing up her romance writing too.) How can they ever return to that bliss if she can’t be the kind of wife she thinks he needs?

Reader Beware:

Because, apparently, I like to make work for myself, I’ve retitled and recovered two of my previously published women’s romantic fiction novels—Building Love and Midnight Love. So if you’ve read those books and see these two covers below wherever my books are displayed, be aware that they are not new novels.

Meant To Be Mine

A major life change is the last thing she’s looking for. Brigid Marino hates change. She’s lived her entire life in Edgewater, kept the same best friend since childhood, dated the same guy for years, and her beloved father’s tavern is the only place she’s ever worked. Life has been comfortable and predictable. Until now.

Newcomers are renovating homes, and a developer has started buying up business properties. Why everyone else is excited about this urban renewal is beyond her. It’s clearly a threat to life as she knows it. Sure, new customers discovering her family’s bar is nice, but one of them, the handsome, confidant, and possibly rich Alex Conner, makes her uneasy.

Though Alex’s oh-so-blue eyes and smoky laugh are hard to resist, she’s told him she’s not interested. Yet, he keeps coming back, challenging her to open her eyes to new possibilities. Urging her to risk the unknown. Making her question everything she thought she wanted. Like he knows her better than she knows herself. As if …

Meant To Be Mine is a touching, romantic, and sometimes funny novel about finding the courage to move forward.

Stars in Our Eyes

When your life falls to pieces, how do you get it back together?
Beautiful and vivacious Roxy Ostrowski never dreamed that at thirty she’d have zero love life, be envious of her BFF’s marriage, and lose the best job she ever had. Surely her life can only go uphill from here. Well …

She’d enjoy her new “temporary” job tending bar at Marino’s if not for Jack Matthews. Roxy’s nicknamed him “Grim” because he never smiles and barely speaks to her. Then out of the blue, her ex-husband shows up, tempting her to make the same mistake twice. And when her best friend gets pregnant, Roxy’s FOMO overwhelms her.

Imagine her surprise when Jack reveals he’s actually warm and personable—and has her back. As Roxy gets to know Jack better, her self-assurance begins to return. But just when she’s sure they’re becoming more than friends, an unexpected encounter appears to prove she couldn’t have been more wrong. Now what?

Stars in Our Eyes is an honest, touching, romantic, and sometimes funny story about finding the way back to yourself.

Thanks for reading,

I didn’t grow up eating gourmet cuisine. My mother was not an adventurous cook, And we couldn’t afford to eat in restaurants, so we ate good old plain food common in Indiana. The most ethnic food she made was chili­­—with canned spaghetti added. YUCK!

Anyway. As I was preparing dinner the other night, it occurred to me that I associate several of my friends with dishes I wish I had the recipes for. During my grade school years, I spent a lot of time at my best friend Terry’s house. It seemed we were always eating something. One of my fondest food memories is of us sneaking pieces of pork roast from the pot on her family’s stove. I don’t know if this recipe was Terry’s mother’s or grandmother’s, but I’ve never tasted another roast seasoned as well as that one.

My mother worked outside the home, so later, during my junior high years, she paid another friend’s mother to feed me lunch on school days. Susan’s mother was a very good cook, but her meatloaf sandwich was the best thing she served me. I’ve used numerous meat loaf recipes over the years, but none ever resulted in duplicating hers. And I must mention that she also introduced me to the tasty combination of bananas and chocolate chip cookies.

Onward to my teens. I have never eaten better potato salad than the kind made by my friend Karen’s mother. I first tasted that when our group of high school friends had a pitch-in picnic at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Indy 500 qualifications day. Again, I’ve tried to duplicate that recipe many times but never quite succeeded.

Ah, the memories.

Of course, things probably just taste better when you’re a child. Your tongue is not jaded, so to speak. And most things in my childhood were homemade, with higher quality ingredients and without artificial additives to taint them.

Nevertheless. To all the things I’ll never taste again IRL, just know I haven’t forgotten you.

We cooked and ate, played Bananagrams and poker, were entertained by our guitarist grandson and his singer friend, celebrated my beautiful and youngest(!) granddaughter’s 15th birthday, went to the beach, and talked and talked and talked.  A wonderful vacation—until I got a sore throat … and a cough … and a fever … and my husband was getting sick too, so we had to leave a day early. Still, I’ll always treasure the time we had there.

That’s all folks!

I don’t know about you, but a whole boatload of my memories are sparked by hearing a familiar song associated with them, or at least with that era of my life. I can’t imagine how I would have survived a life-changing illness and surgery in junior high without music—thank you Beatles. And high school without the emotional support of music? Unthinkable.

Surprisingly, Geddy writes a lot about the importance of family. The first few chapters focus on his childhood as a Jewish boy, the son of Holocaust survivors, in Ontario. Then it moves on to his earliest memories of the power of music in his life. As I write this, that’s as far as I’ve read, and I’m sure the rest will be equally fascinating. But reading about Geddy is bringing back memories of the early 80s and the arrival of MTV in my house. From 1971 through 1983, I had been a devout member of a fundamental religion that eschewed most secular music and considered rock music purely satanic, so until we got cable TV I had never heard of Rush. My oldest son was fourteen at the time and a fledgling rock drummer who watched MTV as much as possible, so at that time, having only one TV and it being located in the family room, (and next to the kitchen) I was inadvertently introduced to a whole new music world. One of the bands in that world was Rush, and I was instantly intrigued by their powerful sound.

Are you old enough to remember when MTV was all about the music?

Actually, rediscovering this so-called “satanic” music was a necessary step for me. Having married in 1967 (less than two months shy of my 18^th birthday) and giving birth to my first son a year later, followed by three more by 1976, I had a gap in life experience. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being a wife and mother. Adored it. But part of me was still stuck in my youth. I needed to revisit that to be whole.

Anyway.

During the 80s and 90s, I listened to the music I loved as I cleaned my house, did the laundry, drove to do errands, gardened, created my artwork, and daydreamed the kind of stories I now write—in other words, during most of my waking hours. But when I started writing, I found I couldn’t concentrate without silence. The concept of writer’s playlists was beyond me. And since at that time, my days were filled with either taking care of grandchildren or learning to write a novel, I got out of the habit of listening to music all day. I lost the inspiration I’d always received from it.

Then I discovered that I could write with instrumental music playing—thank you, Yo Yo Ma. But eventually I learned that I can also write with lyrics in my ears. So now, though I mostly listen to music from my past decades, I enjoy starting up a playlist when I settle down to write.

(Right now, most appropriately, I’m listening to Rush’s Moving Pictures.)

What part does music play in your life?

Forever has turned out to be my first true love it or hate it book. Reviews called it “gripping,“ “unique,” and “a page turner.” But one reviewer called it very “twisted” and took offense at the “graphic” sexuality and “profanity.” So, yeah, be forewarned—Forever is not like my other novels! It’s not women’s fiction, it’s not romantic comedy, it’s horror. It’s a book not for the faint of heart.

But at its heart, Forever is the story of a marriage tested by extreme circumstances. It’s the story of a husband and father, a good man, blindsided by a demonic entity. It’s the story of an ill-fated couple from a past century reincarnated in the present. I think it’s a great story, but then … I’m a Stephen King fan.

It’s Read An Ebook Week at Smashwords! All of my books are on sale at 50% off. To go directly to them just click on the graphic below.

Or if you’ve already read my books, go here to find a favorite or new author’s books.

Happy reading!

When I first began writing novels, the public library was my go-to for learning things I didn’t know. Now, the internet is invaluable … and in some ways wondrous. With Google Maps, I can even “walk” down the streets in a town thousands of miles away. If you’ve read my romantic comedy series, you might like to know this is how I pictured the street where Jeremy lives in Notting Hill.

And in the second book of that series, you were introduced to his family’s estate in the English countryside. The photo at the top of this post is similar to how I picture their home viewed from one of the gardens. [Photo credit: Clive Nichols] The “actual” houses in my imagination I found on real estate sites and then viewed them and their surroundings by entering the addresses in Google Maps (I’m not using those actual photos because I couldn’t save them.)

I once told a writing group that I detail my fictional homes to the point that I can tell you what’s in their refrigerators. I’ve even drawn floor plans unless my characters are living in a house I’ve lived in or visited, though I’m free to change bits of those to suit my story.

Via the internet, I’ve also browsed restaurant menus, scoped out hotels, and checked average weather conditions in certain months for particular locations. When I was writing my lone horror novel, I was familiar with the contemporary locations in Indiana, but some historical research was necessary for parts of the story. For other books I’ve needed to consult with a nurse, a bartender, an auto service manager, a baseball expert, an accounting professor, a Farsi speaker, and other knowledgeable people.

But it’s the “traveling” I love the most. By the time I’ve finished writing, I feel like I’ve actually been to those places. If you read my newsletter, you know that I’m working on two novels this year. In that second one, I’ll be spending some of the time on a Kentucky farm, and this pretty “crick” will feature in a few scenes. Won’t that be nice?

Thank you for reading!

Working jigsaw puzzles can be a kind of meditation—even the frustrating ones. It frees my subconscious to do its work. Often that involves my writing. Sometimes when I take a break from writing, I move to my puzzle table, hoping, expecting, that some part of my brain is still plotting as my fingers fit pieces together.

Both those endeavors create order from chaos. Dumping 1,000 small pieces on the table and trying to recreate the photo on the box with them seems an overwhelming, maybe impossible, task. But you sort and study the pieces, start fitting together the edges or a particularly distinct part of the puzzle, and go from there until the full picture emerges. One piece at a time.

Much the same with writing. You start with a huge vocabulary—the English language has about 170,000 words currently in use—and your goal is to use some of those words to tell the story in your head. So you choose what you feel are the best words to to describe your characters, settings, and dialogue, fitting them together into coherent sentences to craft your story. One word at a time.

I won’t say it’s to the same degree, but whether it’s the last puzzle piece or the last word you fit into place, you feel a satisfying sense of accomplishment. A reward for patience and diligence. You’ve created order from chaos. Don’t you agree we all need to feel that power from time to time—no matter how small?

Garden Party

Recently, a family tragedy caused an old friend, Karen, to reach out by text, and I decided to be bold and phone her. We spent nearly two hours catching up, which wasn’t nearly enough time to devote to all the topics we touched on. So I’m vowing to keep in touch with her. And sharing an interest in true crime, we’ve already texted today.

In one of the stories I’m working on now, there’s a bit about making new friends and realizing how much you lack when there’s no history between you. Karen and I met as freshmen in high school—that was 1964! We’ve been friends ever since, though we had a parting of ways for a couple of years during my most zealous religious days. But during most of our child-rearing years, we were very close.

Then I moved 2,200 miles away. Still, we kept in contact mostly through phone calls—this was pre-Internet. We met once in Las Vegas, she came to visit me once, and I saw her each time we went back to Indianapolis to visit family. But, somewhat naturally, we drifted apart. Eventually, we reconnected on Facebook with an occasional phone conversation, but then, though I kept telling myself to call her, more and more time kept passing until we only kept contact through those posts.

But the great thing is that Karen and I have shared history. In our recent phone conversation, we could say names of children and friends and not have to explain who we meant. We could mention events in our lives without starting from the beginning. We could fill in mental images of these people and places and events because we’d both lived them. That’s a bond that doesn’t break.

I’m grateful to Karen for literally saving my life even before we knew about the Heimlich maneuver, for turning me on to some great authors, for inspiring me to try breast-feeding, for my first taste of French onion soup, for many, many other good things in my life. Now, if only I can get her to play Words With Friends.

So, here’s my tactic for this new year—blog. Share some words about something frequently. I’d like to share them daily, but that’s too ambitious. Definitely, I can do better than last year when I blogged exactly once! (I couldn’t believe that when I checked.)

Anyway. My theory is that if I ram the block between my thoughts and my words enough, it will finally break, and words will flow freely onto the page.

So today I’ve started with an easy one. During some of the time I couldn’t write, I read. Not every book I picked up was enjoyable, and time is too short to read books that don’t grab me, but last year I was lucky to discover some good books by new (to me) authors as well as read the latest by some faves.

And if you haven’t read the first book in my romantic comedy series, go get it now while it’s on sale for only $.99 and available widely at online retailers.