Stitching a Story by Priscilla Brown

 

Anna Marshall, country town mayor and alpaca breeder, would love to have time to sew, 

but what with her civic duties and farm tasks, she barely has a minute to herself. 

Until a sexy television entrepreneur blows into town...

https://books2read/Sealing-the-Deal

 

Alongside writing contemporary romance fiction, my creative output includes working with textiles -- knitting, embroidery, felt making, hand and machine sewing. Although it's winter here in New South Wales, I am getting ahead with making a summer dress, inspired by summer fabrics in a discount sale in my favourite fabric store. While I can design and create various styles of bags, I don't have the skill to make a pattern for a garment, so I bought one and the instructed amount of cotton fabric for the short-sleeved dress. With pattern and fabric neatly pressed and spread out on the dining room table, I arranged the pieces of tissue paper according to the pattern instructions for the size I need. And found that the given length of fabric wasn't quite enough. It didn't have a definite 'this way up', but I had to pay attention to the fact that this was a dress, and back and front must hang looking as if they belonged together. Running out of patience with placing and pinning the sections, I was tempted to put the whole lot in the bin.

Instead, I eventually managed the layout. Fingers hypothetically crossed, breath held, I cut the fabric. This challenge successfully accomplished without any damage, I stitched it all together by machine, with neat seams securely fastened on and off.

I could have written more than one scene of my current novel-in-progress in this time. In fact, the whole of this process was for me similar to constructing  a story. A piece of fabric as the idea becomes the basis, with the characters and activities as the pattern, to be arranged and re-arranged as the plot develops, beginning and ending appropriately secured. I enjoy moving these story pieces around more than I do when attempting to create a garment.  This undisciplined method would be a disaster with dressmaking!

 

To all sewers, you'll be making a better job of your work than I did! I'm returning to my story writing!

 

Best wishes, Priscilla

 

https://bwlpublishing.ca 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

 

Hidden in the Hills by Eden Monroe

 

 

Visit Eden Monroe's BWL author page to view or purchase

Think of a pristine, whitewashed village set against a backdrop of mysterious mountains, a land of wood and water that boasts more than its fair share of natural beauty.

A settler from Yorkshire, England was the first to tame this once wild place, hewing a life from the dense forest that surrounded him. More settlers followed and so the community of Elgin, New Brunswick was created, a welcome setting for my romantic suspense, Dangerous Getaway.

Standing in the heart of the village now, generations after that first axe blow struck giant timber, there is the usual fare of a post office, volunteer fire department, meeting hall, church, restaurant, convenience store and the like, but mere remnants of what it was in its heyday. Not far away stands a sizeable graveyard, awash in granite, where the remains of those who once called this idyllic corner of the province home lie in rest.

            Many carved out farms and homes far above the bottomland, but today much of that higher terrain remains uninhabited and pristine. Cast your eyes to these heavily forested mountains that rise around you and imagine darker possibilities, a different story. Let yourself wonder what goes on up in those hills after dark, or maybe right now as you gaze to the horizon in the full light of day. Ask yourself, as your imagination continues to take flight, do we ever really know our neighbours? All of them? Any of them? When we look to those mountains, this time with a more inspired eye and see them reaching as far as they dare into a fading blue sky, we might think about what could be tucked away up there. The unknown…. Sometimes secrets are revealed over time, reality leaking out when least expected, but it seems the wife is always the last to know. In Dangerous Getaway, she cannot be spared the inevitable nightmare.

These are foreboding thoughts, especially with darkness waiting ominously to draw the curtain closed around us. It’s only a short way off although the sun remains defiant, but steadily sinking. Soon it will shine its waning light upon neatly kept flowerbeds, tidy lawns and chimney tops. So before dusk steals full upon us let’s continue on our way, straight ahead, up a hill, around a bend or two, where the countryside has already been overtaken by deep shadow. Here waits a bolder brush with the Pollett River, spartan cottages clinging to the steep bank that hugs the narrow busy road.

During summer and fall the Pollett sparkles in well-behaved silence for the most part, save for the occasional mutinous tumble as it steadily drops in elevation. Here it meanders over craggy bedrock, resting it seems from the chicanery of spring when, drunk with freedom, it rushes in a furious white water surge that challenges boats and homemade floating devices of every description in a mad dash called the Pollett River Run.

Everything is calm now, the last light of day snuffed out with not a breath of wind to stir the trees as nature prepares to settle down for the night, the resonance of birdsong slowly dying away. Again there are those mountains, modest peaks in the Appalachian range, ancient and eroded, tempting, luring, offering the perfect getaway for those seeking sweet respite from the proverbial rat race here below. Nestled away up there somewhere is the fictional Birch Shadow of Dangerous Getaway, and oh how I enjoyed telling that story. And what better fun than to entertain a madman in the process? My apologies here to Elginites one and all because he was not drawn from local ranks, but rather emerged straight from the vagaries of my imagination. Shaw Garland of Dangerous Getaway solicits guests to his picturesque hideaway in those hills, and what happens after that is … well… unforgettable.

 

 

Period Detail or: The Writer's Dilemna

 

Roan Rose   ISBN:  149224158X

                            https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/roan-rose/id1023558994?mt=11

  
https://www.amazon.com/Roan-Rose-Juliet-Waldron-ebook/dp/B00FKKAN98/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490904741&sr=1-1&keywords=Roan+Rose

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

https://books2read.com/flyawaysnowgoose

Writing popular historical fiction always leads to a dilemna--how much period detail can you "get away with" without alienating the casual reader? The audience for historical fiction is broad and it's difficult to find the correct niche, the readers you want to reach and entertain.  My own problem as a writer who hoped to make a few dollars from this "hobby" was exactly this.

Who was I writing for? Where was my "market"?

 

In the beginning, I naively hoped to bring more realism into the world of romance--or rather into my imagined new brand of romantic-historical fiction. Much to the dismay of editors, I could not leave out the flies or the fleas or the dirt, or the endless lugging of water, or the everyday sheer drudgery of an ordinary woman's life in the past. Her hair had to be hidden and her head covered, and her mouth must remain closed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089F5X3C

Escaping into a dreamworld of history, usually with privileged protagonists who have servants (or slaves) laboring in the background over laundry and cooking and child care, did not particularly call to me. Trips to the backhouse in the winter, housekeeping, and women's cultural and gynecological issues--for example, Constanze Mozart's repeated near-death experiences while bearing six babies in nine years- interested me more. 

Relationships are the key to any storytelling success, but if these are not placed in the context of historical period, I, as a reader, can't take a story seriously. I sincerely try to make my own stories as authentic as I am able by doing research, by attending re-enactments and spending time with the experts there. They, like me, truly want to walk back into another time and place, immersing themselves not only with the pleasures, but the pains and discomforts, of the times in which our ancestors lived. 

Beyond the consequences of living in a world ignorant of germ theory or human anatomy, the second class "weaker sex"status of women was established and enforced by religion, by law and by custom. Women had very few legal rights, no contraception, no protection from abuse by spouses or intimate partners. There were strict rules for dress and deportment which applied to every social class and in every culture. China bound aristocratic women's feet so that girls grew up while enduring excruciating pain and became fit for little but sex, smoking opium and perhaps penning poetry. Victorians forced their girls into binding corsets that produced high-fashion "beauty," but deformed internal organs and shortened their lives.

Such battles appear to be still going on for women globally. Even here in the West, where, I'll admit, things are somewhat better in 2022 than in the world of 150 years ago when we couldn't vote and could be committed to life in an asylum on the say-so of a controlling father or bored spouse. We generally still don't get paid or promoted like our brothers.

 

These and other reflections about the dues paid by creators, brings me to The Northman, a film by Robert Eggers, now exiting movie theaters, a film which I caught just at the end of it's less than glorious run. What happened to this brilliant historical movie at the box office is, in my opinion, a tragedy, but a not unexpected one. (Set this movie beside the 1958 The Vikings and you will see what a long way historical accuracy has come in big-budget Hollywood films.) 

Scholarly research, breath-taking reproductions of weaponry, of clothing, of ships and towns, beautiful photography and settings, an all-star cast who acted their hearts out, a great depiction of Norse/Icelandic magic and an epic love-and-revenge story, it has is a financial "flop." Not even those warrior scenes and buckets and buckets of blood could not attract the same folks who appear to love the two Netflix Vikings series, one I could not watch. 

The reality is there is little that is admirable about Vikings. The Northman showed us why.  Plainly depicted is a society powered by toxic masculinity and a violent proto-Capitalism which involved stealing from everybody else they encountered and either murdering or enslaving the rest.  It is based upon an Icelandic saga, the one which became the inspiration for Hamlet. 

The hero, Amleth, is from a ruling class who are supported by campaigns of murderous ferocity, their wealth and life style supported by robbery and slaving. When his father, a local king, is murdered by his uncle and his mother is (apparently) abducted, Amleth, a mere pre-teen, must run for his life, vowing vengeance as he goes. We have no idea how he survives, but when we next see him, he is grown, a mercenary for Viking slavers in the lands of the Rus. He is now a full-grown berserker warrior, a ripped killing machine who has suppressed every human feeling.  Maybe "anti-hero" is a better designation for this character, although, naturally, that would not be the case for the original hearers of the tale.

I know something about Norse/Icelandic mythology, so I put my--meaningless--stamp of approval   ;)   on the mythic content of the movie. Those many magical episodes made perfect sense in that context. The mix of grim reality and the numinous and terrifying world in which the characters dwell brought the story to life for me. Here, and, and fairly successfully I think, is portrayed the Viking mind-set.  

Women's magic--sorcery was very real and much feared by the people of this time--was also powerfully conveyed. Before the Aesir gods of Asgard, were the mysterious, primordial Vanir gods. Among these survivals of earlier times was Freya, goddess of sex and sorcery, one of the few truly powerful female figures in Norse mythology. 

This same kind of Feminine Power is also exercised in other cultures. Olga of the Birch Trees, a Slavic witch enslaved by Amleth's band of mercenaries during one of those atrocity-filled Viking raids is introduced.  Although I tend to resist love stories in such settings, I got into this character. Amleth on his way to revenge (and given a kick-start by his encounter with another Slavic sorceress) naturally responds to Olga's ferocity and she assists him with her knowledge of potions. Additionally tasty was the addition of Icelandic legends concerning their island's clever Blue Foxes. And who could find fault with the Valkyrie carrying the slain-by-the sword warriors to Valhalla, those ritual markings carved into her teeth, howling like a demonic wolf, riding her winged white horse across the stormy sky?

--Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Romance in Bloom--The Art of Perfuming By Connie Vines #The Art Of Perfuming, #BWL Insider Blog, #Gumbo Ya, Ya, #Cajun Romance

 Romance in Bloom

Fragrance can transform your entire mood. 

And when the mood you want to conjure up is romance, a whiff of the right scent gets you there faster than a binge session with your favorite romance movies. 🎥

From spicy, sensual accords to rose-based floral diaries, I’ve updated rounded 5 of the best fragrances to wear to Announce Spring—or whenever you won't feel like you're living in a fairy-tale! 🏰

Perfumes, like wines, are categorized by notes. As many of my readers know, I was a fragrance consultant at a Perfumery. I love to share my acquired ‘secrets’ in blog posts and novels.

 *Remember, perfumes are a personal preference, and all fragrances lingering scent (bottom note) vary by a person’s PH Level.

Now let the fun begin!

1. Ralph Lauren's ROMANCE

Designed to hit all the feelings associated with falling in deep L-O-V-E, a spritz of this classic and light romantic fragrance treats you to notes like white violet, patchouli, musk, rose, and marigold.

2. Tom Ford’s infamous BLACK ORCHID Fragrance has become a cult icon in the beauty industry.

It is recognizable from just one spritz, but it's also one of the most compliment-inducing smells I've ever come across. Smells like: Warm incense spices, creamy vanilla, and heady patchouli.

3. Lancôme's TRESOR

The diamond-shaped bottle is one of the most popular fragrances out there. The brand evoked the radiance and warmth of love using floral and fruity notes like rose, lilac, peach, and apricot.

4. YSL’s BLACK OPIUM (one of my personal favorites) The fragrance is: Initially sweet with punchy notes of vanilla and coffee but dries down to a musky white floral base.

The creamy notes of coffee and vanilla give a non-sickly sweetness that develops into a dry white floral scent, after which you get the base notes of musk and patchouli. It's unique and oh-so moreish; this one will 100% become the most reached-for in your perfume collection.

5. Jo Malone London's LIME BASIL & MANDARIN COLOGNE. Smells like: Long summer days.

This fresh and zesty scent will have you dreaming of warm summer days with every spritz. Juicy notes of lime and mandarin are balanced with earthy basil and white thyme.

Like so many BWL authors and our readers, I love their gardens!

While my garden is no longer producing the lush harvest of fruits and vegetables of my two son’s elementary school years. I still maintain a PERFUMED GARDEN.

My Perfumed Garden is small because the scent can be overwhelming—robust scents. I try to intersperse my fragrant garden plants with scentless plants that complement their appearance over time.  

Lilacs have a strong scent, but only in late Spring. Therefore, Jasmine is a vine and a plant I utilize where ever possible. And, of course, roses🌹 and herbs.

The garden brings peace to my life, nourishes my soul, and inspires my creative spirit.

This clip has New Orleans Music: 🎤🎹🎵

How do I keep the Romance in Bloom in my stories?

Gumbo Ya Ya—an Anthology for Women who like Cajun Romance, features Persia, a New Orleans perfumer, and Cooper T., a breeder of the Catahoula Leopard Dog and Westminster Dog Show favorite handler in “The Love Potion.”

You will discover that the art of perfuming creates complications for this no-longer-together-couple. But love is, and a happily-ever-after is definitely in the air!

Enjoy the fragrances of Spring and Summer....and the latest releases from BWL Publishing, too!

Happy Reading, everyone,

Connie

XOXO

https://bookswelove.net/vines-connie/

https://books2read.com/Gumbo-Ya-Ya  (all vendors)

*copyrights of photos and videos have been granted to the author by Canva.

Imagination, science fact, science fiction, ancient history, and fantasy – part 2 - by Vijaya Schartz

 

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

Last month, we covered the mythology of Asia as a source of inspiration, and Indian mythology that could be interpreted as advanced technology. But this is not unique to that part of the world.

In the Norse legends, Odin possessed two magical raven who flew over the world and showed him everything that happened in real time. These black birds often represented inside a clear globe would now be called “camera drones.” There is mention of a rainbow bridge, which, according to Albert Einstein, could have been a wormhole (or Rosen bridge). Also, Thor, God of Thunder, did have the power to harness lightning and thunder and used them as a weapon.

Similarly, in Greece, Zeus wielded weapons of lightning and thunder capable of great destruction… not unlike our war missiles.

The god Apollo flew north each year in a golden chariot… in other words a shiny metal craft.

The Anunnaki (meaning: they who from the heavens came) claimed to have come to Earth to harvest gold, a commodity they needed to save their own planet. In the process, they genetically improved, educated, and enslaved humans to provide a labor force to work and mine the gold for them. In doing so, they may have started the Sumerian civilization.

The Egyptian pharaohs claimed to be descended from the gods who came from Orion in barges. They were embalmed to make the trip back. The pyramids are aligned on Orion’s belt.

Ezekiel - St. Augustine Church - Paris France

The Old Testament says Ezekiel saw a chariot coming down to Earth with wheels turning inside wheels… not unlike the modern representations of UFOs.

Jacob witnessed angels climbing a ladder into a luminous craft.

And the Book of Enoch, one of the oldest manuscripts banned from the bible, describes in simple words his trip into space with angels, aboard a spacecraft, where he saw the Earth from space, then went to another planet and studied in their company. The elaborate details of his trip make a lot of sense to a modern mind familiar with space travel, but couldn’t have been fabricated by someone who didn’t understand advanced technology. Yet, this witness account was penned millennia ago.

This happened all over the world. In the Americas, many Native American tribes relate that sky people came as teachers (Kachinas) to educate their ancestors. The Thunderbird can also be interpreted as a vehicle transporting sky people.

The Incas, the Mayas, the Aztec, all had similar stories, about beings coming down in crafts from the Pleiades, sometimes demanding blood sacrifices, and strongly influencing their culture.

Several African tribes also spoke for centuries about being visited by space travelers from the Sirius II system. No one knew Sirius II existed until quite recently, as it is hidden by Sirius I.

So, you see, one doesn’t have to go far to find inspiration about science fiction stories. Space travel and alien visitation are old recurring themes even on our little planet.

This month, Congress reviewed undeniable footage of UAP (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) taken by the US military, to discuss the implications for National Security.

Soon we will explore space on our own, search for new planets and encounter new civilizations, some more advanced, and others in infancy, and we, too, will become the powerful beings who encourage the pursuit of knowledge and accidentally start new myths and new religions… like in the Star Trek movie, where Captain Kirk inadvertently starts a new cult when the natives witness the Enterprise rising from the depths of the ocean and taking flight.

In the meantime, you can dream and imagine other worlds by reading science fiction, my favorite genre.

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 Happy Reading!

Vijaya Schartz, author

Strong Heroines, Brave Heroes, cats

http://www.vijayaschartz.com

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Ancient Celts--Tricia McGill

Find all my books here on my BWL Author page

While searching around during research for an entirely different subject I stumbled upon some notes I took long ago on the Celts whose tribal societies lived throughout Europe centuries before the birth of Christ. Often described by Ancient Greek and Roman writers as ferocious warriors there was certainly more to these people than warfare. Farmers, miners, seafarers and traders, they produced amazing works of art and jewellery. Their bards would recite many tales of their gods and heroes at their resplendent feasts. 

By the 1st century BC, the Romans controlled most of Gaul but under pressure from tribes to their north the Celtic Helvetii tribe attempted to migrate out of Switzerland. Confronted by Ceasar’s forces some Celts rebelled under the leadership of Vercingetorix. Julius Caesar, now the governor or Gaul, and known for his speed and decisiveness in battle had six Roman legions under his control and saw a perfect chance to gain great glory.

The ancient Greek writer Strabo said the Celts had little on their side in a fight except strength and courage, but were easily outwitted. The Celts were no match for the disciplined Roman army and especially strategic generals such as Caesar.

It seems that Celtic warriors liked to make a tremendous noise on the battlefields, beating their wooden shields while yelling to intimidate their enemies. They also favoured a trumpet called a carnyx which consisted of a 12-foot-long thin bronze tube, bent at right angles at both ends. The lower end terminated in a mouthpiece, and the upper end flared out into a bell which was most often decorated to look like the head of a wild boar. Historians believe it likely had a tongue which would flap up and down thus increasing the noise produced by it. 

The religion of the Celts remains somewhat a mystery. They did worship both gods and goddesses and we know that their religion was based on nature. They rarely built stone temples, instead visited shrines set in remote places, such as clearings in woods, rivers and springs, or near lakes to worship their gods and to make offerings. Celts saw water as a transition between this world and the next. In the 1st century BC Celts in parts of Wales threw weapons, chariot and horse harness as well as certain tools into water as offerings to their gods. Perhaps they saw this as a way to seek protection against the Roman armies or were giving the gods their spoils of war.

Celts lived on farms in small villages. In the 5th and 6th centuries BC leaders in different parts of Europe built vast hill forts. Later they often lived in a fortified town while in Scotland they built defensive stone towers. From the most humble to the wealthiest their burials took very careful preparation and is testimony to the belief in life after death. Bronze funerary carts found in some Celtic graves show a goddess directing the procession to lead a soul of the deceased person into the next life. Some classical writers and Irish poets also recorded their ideas of an afterlife, which included the concept of a soul passing from one body to another or of the soul continuing to control a person’s body after death. They might enjoy a land of peace and harmony after death, or warriors could carry on enjoying the combat they loved through life on earth.

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