Something for the holidays

  by Rain Trueax

Image from Stencil

One of the sharing things we like during the holidays is give or exchange gifts. As part of that tradition, I put some of my Christmas oriented eBooks on sale in Amazon. The sale lasts until the New Year. We would do them free but unless books are permafree somewhere else, that isn't possible on Amazon except for limited times, and we wanted this to last until we got to 2021. Some of the books have more emphasis on Christmas and others it's a part of the story.

The poster shows the five books on sale. Four of them are novellas, two historicals (which are books 5 and 8 in the Arizona Dreaming series) and two contemporaries; but this year, we have a fifth, which is a full length novel (Book 2 in Arizona Dreaming). All stand alone but some have secondary characters from earlier books.

 

While Christmas is not central to The Marshal's Lady, it is important in the development of relationships. As a father, Marshal Cordell O'Brian, who has been kept from his daughter, is trying to finally establish a connection with 9-year old Grace as she is sent to him in Tucson. Will she ever accept him as her father?

Priscilla Wesley, the woman he is attracted to, but knows it'll never work out, has taken Grace under her wing and now is trying to teach them both about the joys of a holiday neither has really known.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Snippet from The Marshal's Lady, as Cord takes on a new responsibility to the laughter of his deputy.

“You’re doing what?” Rafe asked with a laugh.

“You heard me and don’t bother making jokes.”

“No jokes but come on. Geronimo is supposedly signing a peace treaty soon, but he hasn’t yet. There are always renegade bands just looking for easy pickings.”

“I am not easy pickings.”

“Give me a chance to adjust to this.” Rafe chuckled again and leaned back on two legs of his chair. “You are going out Old Spanish Trail then up in the Rincons to cut a Christmas tree?”

“What? You heathens don’t cut trees?” Cord asked finding an old scarf to wrap around his neck and cover his ears if it got too cold. Where the desert floor wasn’t too bad in December, if he had to go above four thousand feet, there’d likely be snow. As he remembered it, there was a slot canyon where pines grew of the right size. It’s where he’d head, hoping he could avoid going higher.

“When we cut a tree, it’s to build a home. Hell, we even revere flowers as sacred. A tree oughta be more so.” His smile said he took none of it seriously.

“Well it’ll be decorated up real pretty until it gets cut up and burned in a fire. That seems special to me.”

“Want me to go with you?”

“For what, to laugh? No, I want you to stay here and keep an eye on the town. Sheriff Adams is out of sight again, most likely drunk in the backroom of a bar somewhere or maybe in one of the girls’ rooms. Whatever the case and wherever he is, he’s not answering to anything.”

“No surprise in that. Why doesn’t the damn town get rid of him?”

Cord shrugged as he buttoned his coat. Outside the drizzle was cold. Any direction he went, this wasn’t going to be much fun. Usually when he got stuck with such hunts they were to go after a bad guy. Who’d have figured it’d be to chop down a six or seven foot pine tree.

“All right, I’ll do it, but I’d rather ride into the mountains and let you stay here and look after town,” Rafe protested one last time.

“And have you feel you had damaged some ancestor’s special something? Not a chance.”

“We could both go.”

“I told you why we won’t.”

“Are they picking up Evans today?”

“Supposedly but that was supposedly yesterday too.”

“I gotta admit I’m glad your girlfriend got Ben off the hook.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, not my friend, and yes, I am too. Judge Emerson was still chuckling as he delivered the orders.”

“She has a way about her.”

“The kicker was she’s hiring Ben, which will work fine so long as he doesn’t drink.”

“James’ll keep an eye on him. He likes James. He likes Miss Wesley even more.”

“Hopefully it’ll work out for them all.” He had a few reservations mostly connected to his jaw, which had almost gone back to normal, but still hurt when he bit down wrong on something. 

“Well watch out up there. See you tonight.”

Links in Amazon for eReaders:

 The Marshal's Lady-- https://www.amazon.com/Tucson-Moon-OBrians-Arizona-Historicals-ebook/dp/B00GYL9DVQ

The two historical novellas both have older heroines. They have given up on love but has love given up on them: 

Rose's Gift--  https://www.amazon.com/Roses-Gift-Arizona-OBrians-Book-ebook/dp/B00T13IID8/

Frederica's Outlaw -- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYXKWAG

 And then come the contemporary novellas, both with Christmas rather prominent. 

In A Montana Christmas, the heroine (from an earlier full length novel, From Here to There, has it mind that a ranch Christmas is a time to heal her husband's family rifts. Or will it only create more pressure?-- https://www.amazon.com/Montana-Christmas-Rain-Trueax-ebook/dp/B00AOU0IQ2

In Diana's Journey, a retired teacher is facing a change in her life. With so many lost memories, Christmas is the last time she wants to think about. Can it prove healing for her in a small southern Utah community? -- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M5IA26Y

A Distraction or Not?

by Rain Trueax

One of the bigger problems I wrestle with as a writer is-- what goes into the book? How much of what I know should be in the plot or revealed as part of the character's personality? It's not a simple question, as writers know. Most every book takes a lot of research. There is that which is done before the first word is written, but then new questions must be answered as the story unfolds. There is always much more than the average reader would probably find of interest.

Even writing blogs, I've noticed, can end up derailed by something I thought a minor point, but ends up the only thing that gets comments. I wonder how many readers have stopped at a point where a writer found it so interesting to describe the heroine gardening. What one person finds fascinating, another is ho-humming and wondering if it'll ever end.

My paranormal, work-in-progress has several of those potential pitfalls. For one thing, politics are a subplot. Considering our current political atmosphere, in terms of plot, not much would seem unrealistic-- even without ghosts, monsters, witches, and demons to complicate it.

Then I debated whether I should have my hero be in a political party that is not popular with my normal readers-- right away they won't like him. The thing is nothing else would work for the plot. The heroine and her family, of course, are in the opposing party. How much of that to put into the book? And that doesn't even get to my interest in reincarnation theories, an element of the plot. It's not like the average romance reader wants their book to turn into a treatise on spiritual theories.

With this, and assorted other distractions, my WIP will be lucky to get out by the end of May. This has frustrated me because I read that minimally you should have a book coming out every month. Some say every two weeks with the ultimate goal being 2 to 7 books a week. Seriously!!!???

Even one a month, is not happening for me, last year, I released 5 books-- a full length novel of 111,248 words; 2 contemporary paranormals 60,965 and 61,555, and 2 novellas (women starting over-- one contemporary and one historical-- 22,710 and 29,386. After looking up their word count for this piece, I added them together-- 295,864 words (good math practice). Even if they'd all been novellas, that only would have made for ten books-- assuming I had ten original plots in mind. This year with no released books is definitely not keeping up-- not smart if someone wants to sell. Neither, of course, is switching genres as I did in '16, but a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do! I think...

The photos are from April and a lovely trip, with long-time friends, to the Oregon Coast (of course, another distraction to writing). I want to set a contemporary romance along the Oregon Coast someday. When I was there, I came up with the possible plot and the two main characters. It would be contemporary, in the women starting over series, and novella length-- maybe, if I can ever get through this 55-60,000 word paranormal ;).

Romances are about connections

Some think romances are just about the romantic relationship at their heart. While that relationship is the core, it's not remotely all that is in the best ones.  

From the time we are born, connections establish much of how we see life. It begins with family and expands into friends, community, school, workplace, and even government. Writing a book leads to looking for those connections for the characters. Whether someone has created a fantasy world or is using an existing one, I believe the most interesting books reveal these connections.

When I start writing, I have a personality profile, but it’s only as the story comes together that I begin to see the full picture of who these people are in terms of the grounding in their lives. If they are true vagabonds, with no such connections, that’s part of their story but do they then get planted somewhere. I have never written a book where there aren’t such important connections. 

Because I live in a rural community, I have seen the power of that kind of community in negative and positive connections. I live on a place that is still called by the names of the previous owners though we’ve lived here now almost 40 years.

Writing on my work in progress, a paranormal that is set in a real place with descendants of my historicals, it has been interesting to see more connections appear—ones that hadn’t made it to those profiles. The fact that I know new details does not mean they will all appear in the book. I read critical reviews of someone else’s book, where readers felt too many characters had cluttered up the story. If a character has been a hero elsewhere, fans of a series do like to see them appear to see how they are doing, but it can be brief. The key is though understanding that these connections deepen the personality traits of the protagonists and are reasons for readers to care more.

One thing I did this year was create timelines that not only gave the births of my characters (major and secondary) but also what was happening at that time to impact their lives. If you have read the book Generations you saw how the authors showed the connections and impacts on one generation to another in the United States history (a good book for historical writers). Another book I’ve found helpful for those other influences is The Timetables of History. 

Once again, not everything you know has to make it into a book, probably should not; but it helps to know what else was going on, which books were popular, who was governing as it is way to make the characters have depth and be grounded in their world.

I did a timeline also for the Oregon historicals but here’s just the Arizona one: https://raintrueax.blogspot.com/2017/01/timeline-for-arizona-historical.html

I also created a booklist because I wanted in one place all of the books, to help readers who might’ve read a book with an interesting secondary character and find of interest that there is a story for them. https://raintrueax.blogspot.com/2017/02/book-list.html

Lambing season is all about connections, 

and these lambs must find their place in the flock.

dreams as inspiration-- or not

My dreams go from amazing to pedestrian. Sometimes they fit into my day-- at other times not so much.

The times when I am less interested in what I look like tend to be the ones where I'll have a dream with people telling me how gorgeous I am or looking at me openly admiring. My current state of being overweight (if not obese) disappears in such dreams. After one of those, you are desired by everyone, I wake up thinking-- does my subconscious really see me so insecure that I need bolstering?

from Stencil images

More than once, I've dreamed an opening scene for a book that when I wake I know I can use. That happened recently where in the dream a man threw a child into a roiling caldron of seawater (which at the coast we call devil's punch bowls). The hero (looking just like the images that will be him in my work in progress) saw it happen, realized the child could never survive until professional rescuers could arrive, and dove into the water, getting hold of the child and managing to get him on a safe ledge where the heroine, a natural witch, used her own elemental powers to bring the child to the top. As the hero realized he might not be able to get himself out of the hole, she brought him up. It was the first time he believed she was what she had told him. I hadn't planned an episode like that in the WIP but began to think how I could use it as it suits other plot elements. The dream did help my story but did it have another meaning I missing-- one for me personally?

My dream from last week, still vividly in my memory, went the opposite  direction from reassuring myself that I am all right, and it isn't for a scene for a book. 

Living in a kind of apartment building (one I don't recognize), I want so much to be accepted by a groups. I don't really know why I am not, but my life, even when in the midst of others, feels lonely and closed off. I reach to them, but they never reach for me.  I am chosen for nothing. I recognize it's like my high school years all over again.

Wanting to be accepted, I show one of the group's popular leader a piece I had written praising their newest project. I had written it to overcome my jealousy. I am looking for attaboys that I am not admitting. I invite her to my apartment to read it before I publish it.

She is nice, reads it, and then looks up with an uneasy expression before she looks around my apartment. She says, 'I sympathize with you-- but you do understand why you are not part of our group?' When I don't answer, she says, 'Look at this apartment with dirt on the floor and the windows haven't been washed ever.'

I try to make an excuse. 'I've washed them. They're not that bad.'

She then looks at me and says, 'How could you fit with us?' She shakes her head. 'You're such a plain little person.'

'Well, I'm not little.' I was fully aware that was because I was fat-- as I try to not cry. I manage a smile that I don't feel. 'I need to take a shower.' 

The woman nods and leaves, heading back to her fans and friends, while I head toward the shower and a sob fest, but instead wake up. 

It was about 2am. What did that mean? My muse had chosen a woman I know only from the Internet, but she fits the personality and looked like the dream woman. I think she represented all the ones who are on the inside, the ones everybody wants to be friends with, the ones chosen to lead, those who decide who fits and who does not. Women like that aren't really the mean girls like the movie. They are mostly likable, funny, and admired--including by me. They just don't see me as fitting and not sure I can clean up whatever it is that blocks me. 

When I left high school, I thought I had put behind me a lot of the insecurity of a world with cliques. I've found those cliques a few times since then, like in our rural church. But in terms of revealing light and dark, building power, or tearing it down, the Internet is a cosmos of its own. It has the potential for the best and worst to be brought out.

In my experience with the Internet through chat rooms to Facebook, I've seen that some are in on the joke, and they have everyone laughing while I am still trying to figure out what the joke was. My muse/subconscious was not doing anything to build me up with that last dream other than to say--- face how you really feel.

Other than waking me up feeling depressed, I did get one positive thing from that dream-- it helped me get an even stronger handle on my heroine in the WIP because she is shy and never feels she fits. Her more powerful mother and sisters do not mean to but their very strengths have left her unable to see her own powers. Bringing me back, to feeling like I was back in high school, did help me connect with her-- but now may I have one of those-- oh, my gosh, you are so gorgeous dreams?

To end on a positive note, this is the hero for the third paranormal, suspense romance. Some years back, I bought this image on CanStock.