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 

 

The earth laughs in flowers (quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson) ...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my books at Books We Love

I haven't had much time to write this year. Instead, sadly, I have been helping friends whose loved ones were very sick, and who have now passed away. It's been a time of sadness and several funerals but, as is always the way when someone dies, the tears have been intermingled with laughter as the good times are remembered. This was especially the case yesterday.

It was the first secular funeral I had attended so I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a day of joy. The music, which was special to the family and the deceased, was joyful, as were the very personal speeches. Nobody wore black. Instead the women were in bright dresses and the men relaxed and tieless, in shirtsleeves. The sun was warm, birds sang and it wasn't at all difficult to imagine the deceased nodding his approval, his wonderful smile wide as he saw all his family and friends together, laughing as they remembered.

And the lovely display of yellow and red family flowers, glowing like a pile of jewels on top of the coffin, made me think of the language of flowers. Red roses for passion,  red tulips for true love,  lilies and poppies for sympathy in death, pink roses and hydrangea for gratitude, iris for faith and hope, lily-of-the-valley for sweetness and purity, they carry so much symbolism. Cultures differ so much too. What might be right for one country can be wrong for another. And it's not just countries, it can even be local. In some places in the UK it is thought to be unlucky to bring bluebells into a house, whereas it is fine in other areas. Tree blossom is a no no too, as is giving anyone a single daffodil. They must always be given in bunches.  Flower lore is endless, as is the pleasure flowers bring.

My mother was a florist, so I grew up with flowers, and although by the time I was a teenager we lived in an apartment, the balcony was still full of flowers from spring through to winter, and her enthusiasm has not only rubbed off onto me, it increases with every year.  Nothing gives me more pleasure than walking around my own garden checking every new shoot, or deadheading blooms past their prime so that others can replace them. And I love the difference the seasons bring. In the early spring everything is either primrose yellow or white, then comes the blue and purple season followed by  shades of pink from the palest rose to the deepest cerise. Later the yellows return, but now mixed with orange and scarlet, then it's the evergreens and a tracery of bare branches as winter takes over...not for long though. In January the first snowdrops appear, as do the hellebores, better known as Christmas roses, and then the pink camellias start to bud.

















Loving flowers as I do is one of the reasons I wrote Bouquet of Thorns. To me, it was like going back in time to when my mother was alive and I sometimes used to help her when she had to build displays or decorate an hotel. One of my fondest and most exciting memories is helping carry boxes and pots of flowers aboard the  ocean liners that used to dock in the port city of Southampton where I was born. It was long before the days of the modern cruise ship and ocean voyages took weeks instead of days. It  was a real event for many travellers and those with wealthy friends were sent off with huge bouquets. Once my job was done I was sent down to the galley where chefs would pile a plate high with food,  and then later sent me home with boxes of chocolates or a special desert which I had to sneak out.

Now, so many years older, I have been a passenger on cruise liners to many parts of the world, but none of them, however grand, have had that old fashioned elegance and grandeur of the ships of my distant past. Happy memories, whether they are of people or of events are so precious, and if they are garlanded with the memory of flowers, then they are even more so.

Priscilla Brown inhabits several houses

Mayor Anna's town and her farm are struggling.

 Is this sexy television entrepreneur financial salvation or major trouble?

Find details of this and my other contemporary romances on

http://www.bookswelove/net/authors/brown-priscilla-romance 

and visit Priscilla Brown at your favourite e-book store

Inhabits all those houses in my head, that is. In my real life, I have just one house, a small house in a small town in New South Wales: the design and appearance of this dwelling, nor any that I have ever lived in, do not appear in any of my novels. Where do I get the ideas for my characters' homes?

In my stories, the only house that owes its presence partly to an existing building is Anna's farmhouse in Sealing The Deal. Some years ago I used to visit this homestead, and my writer's mind stored its appearance, its timber construction and wraparound veranda for possible inclusion in fiction one day.

Other than this, I am not writing about houses I've met. I glean impressions from various sources, including observations while visiting other areas, travelling, magazines, and some of these fragments gel into composite yet incomplete images for my characters to call home.  Such snippets are merely a small part of the final pictures in my head. Imagination personalises the dwelling, ascertaining the size, appearance and location, adding details. Occasionally the character may have a suitable finished place to live when I begin a story's first draft, but usually this evolves as the plot develops. My aim is to create the home, outside and inside, appropriate to the personality and lifestyle of its inhabitant; it should also promote an atmosphere in which the storyline can flourish.

Each of my stories has a notebook, and among pages of scribble I sketch a rough floor plan of the plot's most important house, not attempting to design it anywhere near to scale. I do this to anchor some ideas for the story, perhaps since I don't devise a plot plan, rather let the narrative carry on. In most cases, the original layout needs adjusting to accommodate not only proceeding scenes but the workability of the whole floor. The sketch for Cassandra's cottage in Silver Linings had the bathroom squeezed into a corner with no place for a door, and much too small for the spa crucial for a significant scene; as a result, the kitchen got moved and reduced. (No significant scenes there and not much cooking either.)

When furniture and other objects are necessarily mentioned, their placement and style may or may not be detailed depending on how important these are to a scene; readers may arrange them how they wish. Furniture can suggest a facet of the occupant's taste and lifestyle: colourful or drab, tidy or untidy, overcrowded or short of seats.

The view from the windows may be critical to the storyline as in the ocean panorama from the Caribbean island cottage belonging to Cameron in Where The Heart Is; Cristina must leave the man and the view, but is finding it hard to say goodbye. In Silver Linings, windows are useful to indicate the weather, if it's suitable to go beachcombing on the blustery Southern Ocean beach (or if spending the day in the spa is preferable).


Physical  surroundings are important contributors to a home's overall ambience, and to the 'feel' of a story. Is the dwelling rural or urban, isolated or on a busy street, and how does this particular location affect the character both emotionally and practically? Is there a garden? If so, is it looked after? Anna's caring nature tends to her roses in Sealing the Deal; Cristina's mature Australian garden of flowers and fruit trees contrasts with Cameron's tangle of tropical vegetation.

While the settings of my novels are clear and complete in my head. I try not to over-describe, to allow readers to use their imaginations, thus perhaps feeling they themselves are inhabiting the story.

May 2019 be kind to you. Best wishes, Priscilla

http://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com