Write one, knit one

 

Write one, knit one

by Priscilla Brown

 

 

 http://books2read.com/Hot-Ticket

 

          Lawyer Olivia is  familiar with her calculator, 

and would barely know what to do with a knitting needle.

Callum knows his way around a kitchen, 

does complicated arithmetic in his head and knits without a pattern.

💕💕

 

 Writing contemporary romance fiction and knitting whatever appeals to me at that time are my most important creative pursuits. With the ambitious aim of saving time, I started working on these almost simultaneously, in that I handwrote the story in a notebook when pausing the knitting of an adult broad-brimmed hat at the end of a row. I am an experienced knitter, but knitting a hat is of course not like, for example, the unshaped part of a sweater's back. I find working on these two needs more concentration than I allowed for, and calls for frequent coffee stops. So writing and  knitting, while not of course precisely simultaneous activities, for me are both works in progress. 

My current romance fiction on the computer awaits resolutions to assorted dilemmas and attention to the 'villain' of the piece, while the wool yarn in its basket shows promise that it will end up like the hat pictured on its pattern. Fortunately I don't have official deadlines, though I do need to get the hat out into the craft shop which sells my textile work because this is a cold winter in my area of inland Australia and head wear is a good idea.

If you have a work in progress whatever it may be, then good luck for its successful outcome. 

Warm regards, Priscilla.

https://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

Labels: knitting, writing, contemporary romance fiction, hat, wool, creative pursuits, works in progress

Writing Cars by Priscilla Brown

 

 

 

 

 http://books2read.com/Hot-Ticket

 

 

Callum, the subject of the 'hot ticket', lusts after both Olivia's red sports car and its stunning owner.

 Will she ever let him drive this magnificent piece of engineering? 

In my real life, I drive small elderly reliable car. In my writing life, I like to give my characters appropriate - or not - vehicles for their needs and lifestyles.  As an author of contemporary romance, I am always looking out for potential character and situation miscellanies. 

 

Yesterday, in a wet, windy and busy shopping centre car park with the indoor levels full of weather escapees, I had to park outside on the top level. This is an area where whoever designed it probably never 'park-tested' it, since the spaces white-lined between them appear to me to be suitable only for tricycles. As I waited in the car for my passenger to finish shopping, I scanned the nearby rows of 'shop mobiles'. In one, a shopper piled so may large bags onto the passenger seat that one fell out and spilled its contents, revealing the purchaser's choice of several pink underwear items. I was sorry for her that these pretty things acquired a damp and grubby surface. Her shopping now safely in her car, she drove away, its place immediately taken by a small truck. Two men, in shorts and t-shirts in spite of the weather, strode into the shopping area. They returned in minutes, carrying large coffee mugs. Reversing out, the driver had one hand on the wheel and the other holding his coffee to his mouth. Me, I can find  trouble reversing from a tight spot using both hands. And who knows, one day this guy may find a place in a story.

Some years ago, a story opportunity drove into the car park of a cafe in a small country town. As I dawdled over coffee and cake on the sunny veranda, I watched a blonde woman park a seriously impressive scarlet sports car, its top down.  She and her car deserved to appear in a romance, and she became  Olivia in Hot Ticket. 

A casual glance at an an advertisement in a road travel magazine sparked the idea of introducing a female car mechanic. Billie, who is better at fixing cars than at fixing her love life,  takes her place in Finding Billie   http://books2read..com/Finding-Billie

 As a writer who is otherwise not particularly interested in cars as long as mine takes me where I want to go, I do enjoy research matching vehicles to personalities. 

To the drivers among you, may you always find the perfect parking spot.

Love, Priscilla

https://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

It's a cat's life by Priscilla Brown

 

for mechanic Billie, fixing cars is easier than perking up her love life

https://www.books2read.com/Finding-Billie

 

 

In my childhood home, we had a much-loved ginger cat who thought he ruled his people. We bought him as a kitten from a farm where we had gone to buy eggs. My sister, then aged about five, noticed a cat and kittens. She insisted she wanted a kitten, and refused to get back into the car until our parents gave in, probably embarrassed by her temper tantrum. The farm was only too pleased to give us a ginger tom, weaned but not house-trained. This task was beyond a five year old, so it fell to me and our mother, Luckily for us, the animal learned quickly, and in spite of our parents' misgivings, this smart puss settled into a routine.

 

When all the family went out together, on return we always found him sitting on the roof of our single-storey house. I  imagined him looking up and down the street, waiting for us.As soon as we arrived, he would jump off the roof onto the garden wall and then onto the driveway, circling our legs and purring, as if telling us how pleased he was that we were home.  At the back of my writing mind, I always had the thought that one day I would put him into a story. As I drafted Billie's contemporary romance, she told me she wanted a cat, so I gave her my fictional ginger tom. The inclusion of this feisty feline who purrs with most humans but spits at any who are not nice to his owner rounds out the household of only herself and teenager Tim.

As an adult, I've never owned a pet. I like to claim part ownership of two cats belonging to friends. One friend's large super-friendly tabby will give up his place on the sofa under a sunny window if I let him settle on my lap. In contrast, the other is a snooty white female who possibly dreams of catching birds as she sits on the windowsill, and whose only interest in people is where the food comes from since eating birds is forbidden.

 

Best wishes, Priscilla

 

 https://bwlpublishing.ca

 

 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Pruning Business by Priscilla Brown

 

 

www.books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-Is

A contemporary romance set mostly on a Caribbean island.

The subtropical plants in Cameron's small Caribbean garden are threatening to take over the house. While he has neither the time nor the interest to bother pruning, Cristina's hands are itching to sort it out. Back home in temperate country Victoria, Australia, she loves to spend time tending her large garden with its flowers, bushes and trees. He might have to learn how to help with the pruning...

Yesterday I spent the day pruning. In the morning,  I cut off dead twigs and overlong branches from the two bottlebrush trees to keep them from hijacking the garden path, and trimmed the geraniums who believe it's their right to take over the border. While I was working in the garden and filling the council's green organics recyclable waste bin, I kept in mind the pruning I planned to do at my desk in the afternoon.

Editing my work-in-progress, I am looking for 'dead wood' -- twigs and whole branches. If I 'prune' a scene out, I need to be sure its removal will make a significant difference to the story. The scene where the two main characters, by now well-known to each other and to the reader, are having a nice time at a lakeside picnic reveals itself as a branch. I admit I rather liked this scene, but neither their dialogue nor actions moved the story on, so into the recycle bin. Twigs such as starting paragraphs or adjacent sentences with the same words unless included for emphasis need trimming.

This pruning business, in the garden and on a developing story, is for me satisfying and enjoyable. 

Best wishes, Priscilla

https://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

 

Garden watching by Priscilla Brown

 

 

Cristina intends her working holiday at a luxury Caribbean resort to be a much-needed man-free zone. Why won't this zany charmer of a pilot get the message? And is he more than he seems? 

Find this contemporary romance at https://books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-is

 

Here in the cool-temperate high country of inland New South Wales, Australia, it's early summer, a period of busy activity in gardens; grass is growing doubly fast, flowers are flourishing. My desk is by a window looking onto the garden. I've considered moving it as at the moment my writing momentum is being hindered by bird-watching. But instead, conveniently disregarding the fact that the lawn needs a haircut, I took my laptop and garden chair outside.

In my garden, one bottlebrush (Callistemon) tree is loaded with vivid  scarlet 'brushes'. and my other bottlebrush shows off those of a deep pink. Apparently these Australian natives were originally named bottlebrush because way back someone rather unimaginatively thought their long conspicuous stamen spikes were shaped like an implement for cleaning a large bottle. These trees in my garden are hosting honeyeating birds, thrusting their long beaks into the blooms to find the nectar. My favourites are the tiny eastern-spinebills smartly dressed with a grey-brown back, cinnamon collar and white bib. Noisy middle-sized wattle birds, striped brown and white with red ear wattles, are sometimes not so favourite as they like to dine on camellia blossoms as well as the bottlebrush.These are only two members of the large  honeyeater avian family. Even the usually seed-eating crimson rosellas (small parrots) enjoy a taste of the bottlebrush.

So much for writing outside!  How lucky I am to have such lovelies sharing my space.

 Enjoy your reading, best wishes from  Priscilla, contemporary romance author 

https://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com