There It Begins by Liz Flaherty

I was thinking about how I start a book. I know, I know--I've been writing them for several decades now and I should have the beginning part down pat. Well, I do, sort of. It's the middle that gives me trouble. It sags every time and I have to run around propping it up like stilts under a waterside house. But I'll talk about that later.

I'm a little less than halfway through my work-in-progress right now and I really need to concentrate on that (the stilts, you know), but we went to a play the other night in Warsaw, Indiana, which is the county seat of Kosciusko County, Indiana. Going up State Road 15, there are a lot of directional signs that point you to Carr Lake, Diamond Lake, Palestine. From other roads you can access Beaver Dam, Yellow Creek, Winona, Center, Webster...all in all, there are over 100 lakes in Kosciusko county. 

A hundred lakes. Wow.

And I thought of an exhausted woman driving up to a cottage on one of those lakes and not even wanting to get out of the car. That's just how tired she is. She has to go to the bathroom and she's starving half to death and she hasn't washed her hair since...since when? She doesn't quite remember. And here she is at a tiny lake without a name yet. 

The lake needs a name. So does she. And they have a story to tell. They're just not letting me in on it yet. 

At home, I tore used sheets out of the front of a notebook and scrawled New Story - Women's Fiction - 2022 on the inside cover. 

And there it begins...

~*~

There's a lake at Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania, too, the home of my Second Chances Series from Magnolia Blossom Publishing. I hope you'll give A Year of Firsts and Reinventing Riley a try. They are dear to my heart. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B2HWVPZ2?ref_=dbs_p_mng_rwt_ser_shvlr&storeType=ebooks

A Year of Firsts by Liz Flaherty

 

I'm sort of sneaking in here...it's not really my day. Instead, it's Release Day for A Year of Firsts, Book 1 in the Second Chances Series from Magnolia Blossom Publishing. 

I love Release Days, in part because I don't even try to be productive--I spend the entire day and evening annoying virtually everyone I know by promoting the book. I've had a lot of firsts myself lately, but never even drew a parallel between my life and the book's until today. My firsts are different from theirs, but still firsts.

Speaking of firsts, though, let me tell you about Syd and Clay's story. 

Widow Syd Cavanaugh is beginning a “year of firsts” with the road trip she’d promised her husband she’d take after his death. An unplanned detour lands her in Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania, where she meets the interesting and intelligent editor of the local newspaper.

Television journalist Clay McAlister’s life took an unexpected turn when a heart attack forced him to give up his hectic lifestyle. He’s still learning how to live in a small town when meeting a pretty traveler in the local coffee shop suddenly makes it all much more interesting.

While neither of them is interested in a romantic relationship, their serious case of being “in like” seems to push them that way. However, Clay’s heart condition doesn’t portend a very secure future, and Syd’s already lost one man she loved to a devastating illness—she isn’t about to lose another. Where can this relationship possibly go?

It's a romance--we know where it's going. It's the trip that's so much fun. 

Although I was probably as glad as anyone else to see 2021 end, the release of A Year of Firsts has made me think about experiences of my own. 

There were new travels--a wonderful writing retreat in North Carolina with near and dear friends. A first-time-ever trip to the coast of Maine with my grown sons. (I swear, they were never that much fun when they were kids, and I liked them then, too!) A new publisher. 

New things, too--the Roomba our kids got us for our anniversary. The smart TVs they got us for the living room and my office that opened up whole new things, like watching the first nine seasons of Call the Midwife with only minor breaks to watch the news and go to the bathroom. (That may be a stretch, but only a minor one!)

Syd's year of firsts included some Big Things, like a Road Trip on her own--where she met Clay; how cool is that?--and a Red Car and Live by the Water, but it also included some others. She wanted to learn to knit well, an entry she crossed out and asterisked so many times it might have become illegible. She wanted to cut her hair and wear leggings.

When I wrote the book, I was just telling Syd and Clay's story, but it became more than that. The year of firsts doesn't actually have a calendar attached to it for most of us. It has different names, too: our bucket list, dream jar, and so forth. It is wishes, hopes, and dreams coming true. 

Maybe there's nothing new here, but it was for me. Those firsts that I had in 2021, of course, and the re-learning that our jobs as writers are so exciting because we get to tell stories of people who've made themselves at home in our hearts. And every time is like the first one. 

Sighs and Stepping Stones by Liz Flaherty

I wrote this post for the Romance Gems blog several years back. I hope you don't mind a re-run. 

Sometimes the goofiest things will give you something to start with. My friend Nan Reinhardt and her husband sold the house they lived in for 35 years. The whole process was...interesting. In the same way having a colonoscopy is interesting. So, anyway, we were talking one morning when one more obstacle was out of the path. I said something about "big sigh," as in relief, and she said it was too soon for that. I said--get prepared for something profound here; it doesn't happen to me very often-- "Every stepping stone deserves its own sigh."

When it comes to books, I don't write fast--ever--anymore. Yesterday I had 600words and called it good. A few days back, I think I had 26. Occasionally I'll get five-to-seven pages in a day and just burst with pride in myself. As someone who used to have 50-page weekends when I worked full time at the day job, this slowing down was hard to accept. I have wondered (and whined about) if it's time to put my novelist shingle in mothballs and stick to my beloved column and blogging.

Like all stepping stones, the ones in a writing career are hard and have a lot of distance between them. They have sharp corners, slick spots, and you stand a good chance of tumbling off into the water when you're only halfway across.

So you stick on Band-Aids, you take care on the slick spots, and you climb back out of the water and keep on walking. You're careful on your journey for a while then. You might try writing to market, to trends, to make your lyrics match the tunes of certain publishers. You skip around between sub-genres, although your heart usually leads you back to the one it lays the greatest claim to. You obsess over covers. Over reviews. Over promotion, promotion, promotion.

But then the day comes when you start that wondering-and-whining thing I mentioned up there. You've written 26 words in too many hours and they're not even particularly good ones. If, like me, you're a person who's always been proud of being productive, it's excruciating to realize that sometimes you're just...not.

I still wonder if it's time, but with the wondering comes a realization.

The thought of not writing books anymore makes me unhappy.

So I've given up being careful on the steps, no longer worried about splashes or sharp edges. Someone doesn't like protagonists in their 40s? Too bad for them. I'm not crazy about my cover? It's okay--I'll like the next one. People are tired of small-town stories? I'm not. My writing's too erotic, too sweet, my prose too purple or too terse, my POV stiffly pure or a little sloppy? Get over it and find another author, but thanks for trying one of my books.

Of course, there's a gasper, too, even in the middle of my hear-me-roar treatise on freedom: I don't have a contract right this minute and I'm a mostly-trad author who doesn't care to go mostly-indie. I'm afraid I'll never publish another book. However, if I'm honest about it, it's exactly like when I get to that spot in the middle of a manuscript where I know I'll never be able to finish the book. It happens every time. (Added in 2022: I DO have a contract now, with Magnolia Blossom Publishing, and am happy for it. However, that does nothing to change the fears in this paragraph, so I left it.)

More stones in the path. Occasionally, I think I can see the other side, but I'll never get there. There are a bunch of old sayings about journeys and destinations, but we all know writing is all journey. We know that, while finishing the books and having them published are wonderful things, it's the writing that counts. It's what makes us happy. One stone, one step, one sigh at a time.

***

Life's Too Short for White Walls will be an April 20 release from The Wild Rose Press. No preorder yet, but there are some free copies still available on Booksprout. (Jonesing for reviews--that's what we do!)