By Liz Flaherty, Guest Author
Thanks for
having me here today! One thing I love about having a new release is that I get
to visit a lot.
When my
younger son and his wife married, they moved to Vermont the day after the
wedding. Since I couldn’t keep them in Indiana forever—it’s amazing how
independent kids get—I comforted myself by saying at least now I’d get to visit
Vermont, which I’d wanted to do since reading Understood Betsy when I was eight or nine.
You know how
sometimes you anticipate things until you’re practically jumping up and down
with the great expectations that are skating wildly through your mind, only to
be disappointed? Let down because...well, what actually came to pass was
somehow less than you’d hoped?
Vermont
wasn’t like that.
The first
time I went there―during mud season, no less―I felt as though I’d come home.
Over the next 15 years, I visited close to 20 times, and it never got old. Its
beauty, culture, and the people who live there filled a huge place in my heart
I never even knew was empty. Naturally enough, I wanted to place a book there.
This would require several research visits, of course. So I started one.
And another.
And yet
another.
What was
wrong? I had the inspiration, acres and acres of it. I had people (I always get
them first. Do you?). I had a story. Why wouldn’t it work?
I still don’t
know the answers. I only know that when we visited Ireland, the storefront of a
pub in Kinsale caught my writer’s eye (not to be confused with my regular eyes,
which never watch where they’re going, but that’s a different story) and never
went away. When I finally gave my pub a name and a home, its setting was a small
town in Vermont. The writing of Back to
McGuffey’s went quickly enough I never got a chance to go back for a
research trip—though there were many, many emails exchanged with Vermonters who
could look out their windows and see what I was trying to imagine.
I love
inspiration. As a writer without much of an imagination, I depend on it. But I
think it would be nice if just once in a while, it came around when I wanted it
instead of in its own time.
 |
| Liz Flaherty, Author |
:
Liz retired from
the post office and promised to spend at least fifteen minutes a day on
housework. Not wanting to overdo things, she’s since pared that down to ten.
She spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and doing whatever else she wants
to. She and Duane, her husband of…oh, quite a while, are the parents of three
and grandparents of the Magnificent Seven. They live in the old farmhouse in
Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really…37
years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!
The one that got away
Could Kate Rafael’s day get any worse? First she lost her job,
then her house burned down and now her ex is back in town. Apparently, Ben
McGuffey's taking a break from being a big-city doctor to help at his family’s
tavern and reassess the choices he's made for his career.
Ben ends up giving Kate a hand...then giving her kisses...and
finally, a second chance. But when a local teenager shows them both a glimpse
of what it means to be a family, Ben wonders if having kids in small-town
Vermont would clash with his ambitions. Or can he truly come home again…to
Kate?
Excerpt of BACK TO McGUFFEY'S:
Ben leaned into
the bed-and-breakfast’s kitchen when he got back on Friday afternoon, and her
heart quickened, beating a tattoo against her ribs that made her a little
light-headed.
“I’m off to the
tavern pretty soon,” he said. “Morgan’s talking mutiny, so I’m working the
weekend. See you later.” He ducked out, only to stick his head back in a moment
later. “If I need you, will you come and help?”
She thought for
a moment of her weekend plans. There was a trip to the wholesale grocer
tomorrow afternoon and church on Sunday. At some point, she would most likely
clip her toenails and work highlights through her hair.
She could
probably spare the time.
“Okay.”
“I’ll take you
bowling Sunday night,” he promised. “Not that you could beat me, but it will be
fun.”
She snorted.
“On your best day, if I gave you twenty pins, you couldn’t beat me.”
“Those are
mighty big words for such a little woman who probably doesn’t remember where
the bowling alley is,” he drawled.
She laughed.
“You forget, tall guy, I stayed here while you went to the big city. I bowl on
a league in the winter and teach it to kids on Saturday mornings from January
through March. Winner buys dinner? Just remember how much I like steak.”
“Uh-oh, I’m
scared.” With a wave, he was gone, loping across the yard to his apartment, and
Kate sighed, feeling the emptiness he left in his wake. She kneaded dough for
the weekend’s cinnamon rolls, pushing and pushing and turning over and trying
not to hurt.
She liked being
a temporary innkeeper. It was interesting meeting guests from faraway places
and walks of life she knew nothing about. After nearly twenty years of living
alone, she enjoyed sharing space with other people, especially since she had
plenty of room and time to be alone if that was what she wanted.
But it wasn’t
enough. She wanted a family. She wanted children she didn’t have to give back
and she wanted to be in love. She wanted a man to look at her the way Dan
looked at Penny.
She thumped the
dough into a greased bowl and placed it on top of the refrigerator.
Standing at the
sink, washing her hands, she watched Ben’s bicycle ride away. He’d been wearing
a helmet all the time lately as part of teaching Jayson to ride. It made him
look a little goofy, and she’d laughed uproariously the first time she saw it.
His response had been to buy her a matching helmet and refuse to ride with her
unless she was wearing it.
What a great
father he would be.
There’s an emptiness to it, she remembered
her sister Sarah saying during the couple of years she and Chris had had
fertility problems. It seems as though
everyone we know is either pregnant or they already have children. I don’t know
what to talk about anymore.
Kate had seldom
felt that kind of emptiness. She had friends, such as Joann, who had chosen to
remain both single and childless and were perfectly happy that way. Kate had
never minded it, either. Until recently. Until the doctor reminded her as
kindly as he could that her reproductive time was running out.
She didn’t have
a “why me?” personality. She’d even printed “Why not me?” in a 72-point font
and stuck the paper to the front of the inn’s refrigerator to remind herself
that she wasn’t the only person whose dreams had been deferred. She hadn’t
really cried over her house until Penny poured her a pint Mason jar full of
wine and told her no one liked a martyr. Then, of course, she had wept buckets.
She didn’t like martyrs, either.
The truth was
she didn’t want to be a single parent. She didn’t think it was wrong—some of
the best parents she knew were doing it on their own—but it wasn’t right for
her. She wanted not only a basketball hoop in the driveway, but a tall guard to
partner up with her small forward in the game of parenting.
The thought
drew her glance to the front of the refrigerator. Beside her self-directed “Why
not me?” sign was a snapshot of Ben and Jayson on the inn’s driveway. Jayson
was mid-dribble with the basketball, his tongue sticking out the corner of his
mouth as he concentrated. Ben’s arms were up, and only someone who knew him
well could tell he wasn’t really trying to stop his opponent.
What a great
dad he would be, she thought again. What a great guard.
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