Serendipity is a Book Club...by Sheila Claydon

Mending Jodie's Heart, Book 1 of my When Paths Meet trilogy, has just been chosen for next month's read by a local book club. It goes without saying that I am beyond excited. I'd like plaudits of course but even if I don't get them, just knowing a group of people are going to read it and discuss it is enough.

How did this happen?

Well Mending Jodie's Heart is a story woven around the countryside and the village where I live. This is unusual for me because the ideas for most of my books are triggered by other places. Maybe getting away from the humdrum of everyday life gives my imagination the freedom it needs to create. This wasn't the case with Jodie however. She didn't need creating. She arrived fully formed in my mind the way the best characters always do, and so did Marcus, the hero, and the other important characters in the book.

Why?

I know it started when I spent an evening listening to a jazz band with a fantastic pianist but how that segued into Jodie's story I have no idea. Maybe it was the closure of a local bridle path and the ensuing campaign to get it re-opened. Maybe it was the demolition of an old farmhouse. Maybe it was the sight of a pretty, dark-haired girl on horseback. I'll never know exactly what started the story, and what made me continue it into Books 2 and 3. What I do know, however, is that to write it I had to 'borrow' the old farmhouse and the new house that replaced it, the same as I had to 'borrow' the bridle path, and the local riding stables.

Once the book was published I moved on, as writers do, except that I always thought of the 'borrowed' house as Jodie's house whenever I walked past it. Then Books We Love decided to make its digital books available as paperbacks and that changed things. As soon as I received a print copy of Mending Jodie's Heart I crossed my fingers and wrote to the owners of the 'borrowed' house explaining what I had done, and offering them a copy.

I posted the note into their mailbox  when I took my dog for a walk, and then turned into the adjoining woodland and set off down a narrow path between the trees...too narrow for dog walkers to pass one another without giving way. And this is where it gets weird but in a good way. I was halfway along the path when  I saw a pretty blonde woman walking towards me with her dog...a dog I recognised as belonging to Jodie's house, even though I had never seen the owner. With no option but to stop I introduced myself and told her about the letter I had posted. After all if she did decide she wanted a copy of my book I was going to meet her anyway.

How was I to know that she was an avid reader who has run a book club for the past ten years? How was I to know that she would be thrilled beyond belief that I had written a story around the building of her home, and how was I to know that she would be unbelievably friendly and interested. She even joked that she was going to see how her husband scored in comparison with the hero.

So there you have it. I, in true writerly fashion, nosey around other people's lives watching their house being built, and my eventual reward is a new friend and a book in her book club. And what of the happy coincidence that took us down the same path on that windy morning when we had spent the previous 5 years never setting eyes on one another. Serendipity is a curious thing that might just be prompting me towards another book...the second of my Mapleby Memories, but that's another story!

And there's still another copy of Mending Jodie's Heart to give out...to the Riding School that let me watch the stable girls take their horses through their paces, so maybe some more friends too.

My dog found it...by Sheila Claydon

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Something wonderful happened to me this week. I found a bluebell wood. No, that's not quite right. My dog found it.

It's quite a while since I talked about Elfie, and when I last did she was still a puppy. Now, at fourteen months old, she is a teenager. She exhibits all the symptoms. Never an early riser, nowadays she would stay in bed until mid-morning given half a chance, whereas playing 'hunt the toy' or 'fetch the ball' right up to bedtime is her idea of fun. She's moody with her friends too. One day Ginny is her favorite, the next day she's been discarded for Hugo who, according to Elfie, is much more fun. There's her pickiness over food as well, not her main meal which is eaten a top speed, but her treats. A stuffed bone, the same as the one she ate a few days ago and loved, is ignored, because today she wants a cowhide chew...the same chew she has refused to acknowledge for at least a week.

Then there are rules to be broken. The eyes peeping through the banister at the top of the staircase are really saying 'This is a hologram, I'm actually sitting on the bottom step where I'm meant to wait for you.'

The stuffing pulled out of her bed isn't her fault either, it's the visiting cat's fault. In fact the cat is a good all round excuse for anything that goes wrong.

Like all teenagers she can be a delight though. She knows to obey all the important commands like come, sit, stay, wait and leave. She even knows what 'Yuk' means if she goes too near something unsavoury when we're walking, and leaves well alone. When the mood takes her she likes cuddles as well. She has one other good point too. She never fails to remind me I need to exercise every day and then insists on coming along, and it was on one of our recent outings that she found the bluebell wood. I'm not talking about any old bluebell wood either, I'm talking about something so magnificent that it took my breath away. A narrow sandy path meandering through a a sea of blue that stretched as far as the eyes could see, and overhead the fresh green of new beech leaves.

Now I don't know what your fix is, but I find the great outdoors always cheers me up. While I can enjoy towns and cities, in my opinion they don't compare to the beauty of the natural world, so when Elfie added the bluebell wood to our daily walk I gained far more than physical exercise. It's this sort of serendipity that keeps me exploring the world around me, and it's the knowledge that the bluebells will come back next year and all the years after that, that excites me, and I guess it's why I write nature into a lot of my books. This is particularly the case with Reluctant Date, my book set in a very small town in Florida that I once visited, where the inhabitants wake up to dolphins swimming across the bay, and where pelicans have their own special roost known as 'the doss house' because there are so many of them. There are nesting osprey and wild turkeys too, and right in the middle of them all is a love affair, well two of them actually.

Maybe a bluebell wood will feature in my next book.

Sheila's books can be found at amazon.com/author/sheilaclaydon  

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Was it serendipity or a higher power? By Sandy Semerad

As I reflect on certain events in my life, I can't help but wonder. Did these things occur by chance or was a higher power at work?

Tell me what you think after you've read this:

 Years ago, I worked as a reporter for the Marietta Daily Journal. The phone rang in the newsroom, and I grabbed it.

“Where can I turn to for help?” a woman asked. “It’s almost Christmas and my children still believe in Santa. We’re running out of money for shelter and food. I’ve called the United Way and all the churches. No one will help us,” she said.

I listened to her plea. Her husband and two young children had driven across country to relocate for her husband’s job, she said. He’d been offered a better position, as a trucker for a local transport company.

On the long drive to Atlanta, their car broke down. They spent most of their savings on repairs, she said.

When they arrived in the city, they found a motel they could afford. The room was grimy and scary, but she told herself, it was only temporary. Once her husband started his job, they'd be able to afford a better, more permanent home.

Her husband, being protective, didn’t want to leave his family alone and unsafe. So he took them along with him in his truck. When the company found out, he was fired.

“We have never asked for a handout before,” she said. “I used to criticize people who begged for handouts. Now I know I was wrong to judge.”

Her story touched me. It rang true.

I wrote a feature article about her family’s dilemma. The story ran, with their photo, in the next issue.

The following day, I was in my kitchen, and the phone rang. I started to let the machine get it, but something told me to answer the call.

“Are you the lady who wrote the article about that poor family?” a man asked, and then described in detail what he'd read.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think these people are dependable?” He asked.

“Yes.”

 “I have an apartment, and I’m thinking of letting them live in it for free until they can get on their feet,” he said.

“That would be great,” I said.

A year passed. I was working as an editor for American Health Consultants in Atlanta. Christmas was approaching.

The phone rang in my office. I answered it.

It was the desperate woman, who had called me a year ago. She said she got my new work number from the Marietta Daily Journal. “I had to call and thank you and let you know, we’re going to have a wonderful Christmas this year.”

Her words touched me to tears, but it was years later when I began to wonder. Why was I in that exact spot when the phone rang in the newsroom? Why did I decide to write the story? And why did I answer the phone when that generous man, with the apartment, called?

I don’t know.

There have been many other examples I could share. I’ve included at least one of those instances in A MESSAGE IN THE ROSES, a novel based on a murder trial I covered in Atlanta. The book is primarily fiction, but as a professor once told me, “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.”

Truth is a relative term, I know. We strive for truth, but don’t always achieve it. As to the truth about what causes certain events to occur, I’m still wondering. Do these things happen by chance—serendipity--or is a higher power at work?

What do you think? 

To find out more, visit my website: http://www.sandysemerad.com/ 

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