Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Ann Herrick

People often ask why I started writing. The answer is that I had parents who read to me. That's where I got my love of reading, and my love of reading led to a desire to write.

            My first attempt at writing came when I was eleven years old. I was very much into horses then and decided to write a book about a girl who rides in the Kentucky Derby. This was ages before women jockeys, but that didn’t stop me. What did stop me was, in the pre-computer, pre-eBook age, thinking that I had to actually physically make the book as well as write it. I couldn't figure out how to hold the pages together (I tried gluing—didn't work), so I gave up.

            Fast forward to the age of fourteen. I had an idea for a book set in Wyoming in the 1800s, because Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote (detecting a theme here?). But when I was doing some research at the library, a boy I knew asked what I was doing. I didn't really answer, but he guessed that I was writing a book and he smirked. Unfortunately, I let that deter me from finishing that book.

            In high school I got the impression that one had to be a cross between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in order to be an author. So I put the whole idea of writing on the back burner.

            Years later I met my friend Pat. One day she mentioned that she was going to a writers meeting. I said that I had always thought about writing, so she insisted I go to the meeting with her. I went, and learned a lot. When Pat invited me to a second meeting, I decided at the last minute that I should have some writing of my own to share and sat down and banged out a couple of paragraphs of what I hoped would be a picture book on our old typewriter. I started writing then, and haven't stopped since.

            My first success was with greeting-card copy, and then short stories. I felt I was really getting somewhere when I sold a short story to 'Teen Magazine.

            What got me started writing Young Adult (mostly) Romance novels was my daughter's interest in the First Love Silhouette and Sweet Dreams books. I picked one up and read it. I really liked it and thought, "I could write a book like this." I based my first book on a short story that I had started. That book never sold, but I got good comments from editors about it. I knew editors were super-busy people who did not write a comment on a manuscript casually, so that kept me going until the day I got "the call" that an editor wanted to buy my book!

http://bookswelove.net/authors/herrick-ann/

My Books:

The Next Great Rock Star!
Also Known as Lard Butt
The Farewell Season
My Fake Summer Boyfriend
Life, Love, and Surviving High School
It's All in Your Mind
The Perfect Guy
All's Fair in Love and Words
Hey, Nobody's Perfect
How to Survive a Summer Romance (Or Two)
Snowed In Together
The Real Me
Trading Faces

Boxed Sets (each set has 3 novels):
First Loves
Seasons of Love
Perfect Love

Genres: Young Adult Romance and/or Contemporary

              Middle Grade Contemporary (with a touch of romance)

Blurbs:

Amazon

The Farewell Season: 

Eric used to think he'd live forever, but not anymore. As football season starts, he hopes he can live normally again after the death of his father. But his refusal to face his grief results in anger at his coach, fights with his sister, resenting added responsibilities, and disillusionment with football. It takes a special relationship with Glynnie, who is struggling with the divorce of her parents, to open his heart to love again.

Also Known as Lard Butt:

Amazon

Laura discovers that Ricky, the boy who created her horrible nickname "Lard Butt," has moved back into town--and immediately schemes to keep him quiet. After all, she can't let her new swim teammates, especially drool-worthy Noah, hear the horrible name! No way!

She's determined to put a million years between grade school and junior high--even in the face of a father who drives an éclair, a would-be-movie-star mother who suddenly moves back home, and a past that comes back to haunt her with the dreaded nickname.

Although Laura's embarrassed about how she looks in a swimsuit, she tries to stay true to her vow to take risks. She even lets Maria talk her into going to the school dance, where she braves negotiating a truce for a quarreling couple. New friendships form, Laura's mother starts getting too domesticated for Laura's comfort, and hints of romance start to develop--or do they?

Amazon

The Next Great Rock Star!

Will Jason ditch his best friends--including Layla--in his quest for fame and fortune?

When Jason and his friends form a garage band, they call it "No Frills" because they want to keep it real--even when they enter a band contest and pressures to alter their image mount. Then one day, due to a close encounter with lightning, Jason's life changes in a big way--but is he magically cooler or is it just his perception?

As he goes from blah to cool, his head swells as he takes his fifteen minutes of fame too seriously. His too-busy mother and fortune-telling grandmother don't get through to him. Even maybe-more-than-a-friend Layla is ready to give up on Jason, especially when he starts flirting with much-older Mindy. Only a rescued kitten keeps him even remotely grounded. It isn't until he loses the friendships with the band mates he once counted on that he realizes he has a major problem, and he worries it might be too late to fix it.

Coming Soon:

 

Azrael’s Whispers

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I thought I'd let everyone read the short story that finished in third place in Red Toque's Canadian Tales Of The Fantastic Short Story Contest

Azrael’s Whispers

 

Desecraters of tombs, looters plucking at baubles, that’s what we were.  Crowbars levered at nails screeched in protest as we tore at the boards erected to bar entrance to this once-hallowed ground. I wiped sweat and stared at rust flows etching down cedar planks, outlining the vestiges of the Catholic cross that once stood over the doorway. White paint crumbled, graying under the oppressive touch of the sun’s heat, only to be swept away by the breath of wind and rain’s caress to dim lands of memory’s fading passages. Haphazardly nailed plywood concealed stained-glass windows that once danced with the colors of heaven.  None of us knew when this old angel of grace had been closed up.

            Behind me commuters motored past on another Abbotsford morning, oblivious. Did grave robbers feel like this as they broke into the pharaohs’ tombs? Were we all infidels born to be cursed, like Howard Carter? King Tut’s curse had always fascinated me. How would I feel, if this were my sacred space? In the end, did it really matter? 

            Our job? To open the doors of this relic of a church one final time.

             “After you.”

            “No, after you,” joked two of my demolition crew. We stepped inside, disturbing dust that billowed up, sparkling in the brilliant rays of sunlight streaming into the chapel. God’s open arms beckoned in the echoes of chants clinging to cobwebs in the rafters.

            “B-Boss?” 

            The crowbar fell from Rudy’s hand. Metallic echoes resounded.

            A slender figure sat in the front pew.

“Jesus,” Manuel uttered, frantically making the sign of the cross. 

  Stale air clung to our nostrils as our eyes became accustomed to the gloom.

            “Is it alive?” someone managed to croak. Then, it moved. Nick’s hammer toppled from his fingers.

 “Ai ... Madonna,” Manuel whispered, emerging from his catatonia. He was from a devout Catholic family and had more respect for the church and God than I’d ever had, but for a second even I nearly buckled to my knees, an instant convert.

            No one dared breathe as the figure rose. A frail old lady’s fingers tracked the same concise movements over her chest as Manuel’s, only slower. She turned towards us, the holiest of smiles on her thin face, somehow personifying the ancientness of the building. Wordlessly, with a dignity that was as much a natural part of her as the Bible clutched in her hand, she moved down the aisle.

We parted to let her pass, keeping a respectful distance, unsure if she was real or some apparition that would spring on us and rip our throats out, like some bloodsucking vampire.

“What the …?” I squinted, half expecting her to turn to dust as she walked into the sunlight.

            “One last time,” she said as she carefully descended the church steps, grabbing the railing for support. The others looked to me for guidance. 

“Look, lady,” I said, hurrying after her, “we’re here to tear down this place. You shouldn’t be here,” I blustered, trying to come across as the hard-nosed guy in charge. 

            “Such a pity. She was grand in her day, you know.” The wrinkles on her face smoothed as she stared back at the musty confines. “I still hear the hymns singing out from the choir.” Her eyes moistened, no doubt seeing this sanctuary as it was before, as it was meant to be, bustling with patrons in prayer and reverence. Dust-laden alcoves had once protected statues of Jesus and Mary. Yet framed in the softness of her gaze I spied a haunting presence shadowing her serenity.  

“How’d you ...?”

            “Get in? I have my ways. Now if you'll excuse me, I must be going.” 

            My crew merely stood there, faces blank. “Ah, just an old lady,” Rudy, a big youth, half-joked.

            Fingering the tattered Bible, clearly a well-used friend, she didn’t move as I returned to join her. She could have been my grandmother. She was more than likely someone’s.

The fleeting hauntedness in her eyes stared back at me, speaking of the peace born from angels' graces. Yet hidden in the shadows where dark spirits congregated, one angel stalked. Azrael. God’s angel of death, his voice calling, bearing whispers of the finality of things.

            “I’ll drive you.”

            “I have money,” she said indignantly.

            I could see that. Floral dress and long coat with a hat pinned sideways on her head, and on her ring finger a diamond that would make the Queen look twice.  Everything pressed and perfectly in place, as if she were attending some elegant ballroom affair. 

            “I know,” I said. “This isn’t about money.” There were things money could never buy. Not for her. “I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.” 

            She looked into my eyes and from that stolid, frightened gaze, I knew she needed a friend. “Thank you.” 

            I turned back to Manuel, his Mexican complexion still ashen from meeting his imagined Blessed Virgin Mary. “You’re in charge. Have everything ready for demo tomorrow.”

            “Tomorrow? She was supposed to come down today.”

            Big Rudy nudged his shorter friend. “Hey, let’s hurry and we’ll have time for a couple of wobbly pops at the peeler bar.” The irreverence of youth ... was I much better at their age?

            “I don’t understand, boss.” Manuel scratched his head, staring at the elegantly dressed lady from another age. Time slid back fifty years, trolley buses clanked by, Edsels tooted their horns and I pictured her standing there in her youth.

            “Neither do I. Call it giving two graceful old ladies another day.” 

            I opened the door to my pickup, wishing it wasn’t full of signs reading Aggressive Demolition. Hastily I cleaned papers, lunch bags and coffee cups off the seat, and she climbed in as regally as a movie star entering a limousine. “I really appreciate this.” 

            “I know. You’re welcome. Where to?”

            As we drove around the older section of town she asked to stop here and there, sometimes staring at empty lots with buildings that no longer existed. Sighs occasionally escaped her lips and she’d talk softly of memories. Often she’d get out and walk to the front of some house or store and stand there, remembrances of earlier days shuttered in the silence of the mind’s eye. I didn’t ask any questions. If she chose to, we’d talk more later.

“Mill Lake, please.”

Damp pungent earth, so foreign compared to the construction smells I was used to, greeted us. “Help me, please. This will be hard on these old feet.”

Under her clothes she was paper thin.

            Few people were around, only nature’s smells and sounds. Now and then I’d have to hold her up, as if my strength and the Bible she cradled so fervently to her chest were all that were keeping her going.

            Arm in arm we walked along the trail a little ways before sitting down at a park bench that had a view of the entire lake in the heart of Abbotsford. “Can’t go any further,” she gasped, tears slowly ebbing down her face.

            The November day was warm and hints of cedar drifted in the moist air, the lake surface smooth as glass. Canada geese honked and ducks squawked as if sharing a bawdy joke between themselves.

            “There really used to be a mill here, you know. Right about over that playground. I met my husband when he was working at that mill.”

            “How long you been here?”

She chuckled, a surprisingly rich voice from earlier years. “All my adult life, since I was twenty. At first I could count the number of buildings in this town on my fingers. John and I used to walk around this lake nearly every evening. We’d feed the ducks that stayed for the winter. Back then we’d get a couple feet of snow and some years we could skate on the lake. The paved walkway was just a muddy trail. Oh, by the way, I'm Agnes McCurty.”

            I grinned, surprised that the frail woman sitting beside me was the same Agnes McCurty whose voice had been one of the loudest raised in protest against the Adams Block reconstruction project. “Dale Green. My folks moved here from Ontario about fifteen years ago.”

            “You’ll have seen some changes here too, then.” She sighed. “After the church closed in seventy-nine, I used to sneak back in every so often just to sit and pray. I was one of the ladies who helped out, arranging flowers, Sunday school, bake sales, what have you. I guess I kind of forgot to give my keys back. 

            A few years later my husband died and my three kids moved out east. Oh, they phone from time to time, and my eldest begs me to move in. Claiming they could keep more of an eye on me, but without my home, my roots, what good is that?” She shivered, the wind seeming to ghost right through her. The birches and poplars were bare, huddling for the winters that never seemed to come anymore.

            “Take me home, please. 1173 Essendene.”

            I knew the address. Only half a block from the church and slated to come down next week for a shopping mall. Revitalization, businessmen called it. In her pre-war house, furniture was covered with dust-sheets and boxes were stacked carefully, many marked Goodwill. A suitcase sat by the door. 

            “Will you take that for me?”

                Her front door sighed closed behind us, her hand shaking as she struggled with the key in the lock, and I drove her to one last address. St. Andrew’s Retirement Home.

     Two attendants in white came to greet us. “We were starting to worry about you. Expected you a few hours ago.”

Agnes, who had fewer movements of time’s hands left than any of us, regarded him with a quiet smile. “I knew this wouldn’t be easy today,” she said as I unpacked her bag from my truck and she stood hugging her Bible. “Thank you.”

             “My pleasure, Agnes.” I gave her hand a gentle pat. I doubted I’d display the same braveness, nor muster half her charm if I found myself in her situation one day. Nowadays retirement homes were much more than places where old folks went to die, but in the hush of the doors closing behind her I heard the whispers of God’s angel calling.

I’d never forget that sound.

The shutting of a life.

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Pastel Canvas by Cheryl Wright

 

Click here for an Excerpt

 

A few weeks ago it was my mother-in-law's birthday.  Since she is in a nursing home (due to dementia) it is extremely difficult to buy her gifts.

I've been dabbling in canvases, and I know she loves to look at pretty things, so decided to make this canvas for her.

The background was made using stencils and texture paste, then coloured with various pastel sprays. Once that was dry, the gold birdcage was added, then flowers placed around it. The "love" plate is actually a charm. I tucked the loop behind the flowers so it couldn't be seen.

I hope you've enjoyed this canvas. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!

Links:

My website:  www.cheryl-wright.com 
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cherylwrightauthor 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/writercheryl
BWL website: http://bookswelove.net/authors/wright-cheryl/ 

Indecipherable Corporate Speak by Stuart R. West

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I spent two high school years and four college semesters attempting to learn Spanish. To this day, I'm only able to recognize various words and form pointless sentences (i.e., "La rana es verde." Translation: The frog is green.). Still, I can understand Spanish a heckuva lot easier than the nebulous world of "Corporate Speak," an elusive language that not even cryptologists can decipher.

With over 25 years spent in the corporate sector, I'd certainly been around the puzzling language enough. One company in particular proved extremely fluent in Corporate Speak: the second largest label manufacturing company in North Kansas City, Missouri. I know...big deal, right? But the way the team of managers (count 'em, 42!) acted, you'd think we were performing miracles to benefit mankind.

I was the art department "manager" for many years. And every Friday, without fail (um, until the company began to fail), there was a mandantory manager meeting. We'd sit around a colossal meeting room and, one by one, we'd painstakingly explain what we'd been up to that week. Sheer dread filled me each time. Because the meetings always went on for hours and hours and....nothing was ever accomplished.

And I never understood a word of it!


The head of sales honestly thought he was a Hollywood mogul. Snappy dresser, sex addict (a tale better left untold), fast walker, and nonsense talker.

"C'mon, Stu, baby!" (To him, everyone was "baby." He didn't discriminate.) "You're killing me here! I want you to make those new graphics pop! Make 'em zing, make 'em sting!"

"Um..." I'd say.

"Let me break it down for you...we're looking at a completely new marketing paradigm here. To achieve dominant market visibility, we need to quit out-sourcing, fast track things to shoot to the top." This is when he'd start pacing the room, clasping lawyer hands.

"If what you mean is you want better graphics, then--"

"Now you're getting it, Stu, baby! Instead of our old business to consumer model, we need to aim high, shoot it outta the stratosphere, hit it off the table and bring it down to H2H!"

"Right. What's that mean?"

A thunderous hand-clap! "C'mon, you're killing me here! Stu, baby, it means 'human to human'! It's a way to bring functionality, play hardball in the new world series of marketing! Hey, look at Martha!" All heads turned to Martha. "She's a real goal digger! A goal digger! Aren't you Martha, baby?"

Martha nodded, a prim gold star smile pressed to her lips.

"But I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," I said. "Other than what I'm already--"

"Think smarketing, Stu, baby! Smarketing!" (I would've if I knew what it meant.) "Go the extra mile! Ride the loop, Stu, baby, ride the loop!"

Only thing I wanted to ride were my legs outta the meeting. But it went on...

"Think the It Factor! Be the It Factor! Plug in! Maybe some growth hacking's needed here!"

"Growth hacking..." I said.

Another clap. "I don't feel you Stu, baby! Meet me afterwards! We'll have a mydeation meeting!"

Groan. We did. Have a "mydeation" meeting. And I came out of there still clueless as to what a "mydeation" is.

See what I mean? Corporate Speak is a totally nonsensical language made of of meaningless buzz-words, sports cliches and fabricated sayings. It's enough to give Dr. Seuss nightmares.

During my long tenure in the corporate trenches, I always thought my experiences might form a nifty satire, a comedy of big business. But as when I wake up from a dream, a dream at the time I thought might make a good book, the cold harshness of reality and coffee hit me. Who'd want to read about the inner workings of a label company?

Which is why I wrote my Killers Incorporated series. I hope I found a way to incorporate big business satire into a suspenseful cat and mouse tale. The first book, Secret Society, is out. The second in the series, Strike, comes out next week. In the books, I detail the plight of Leon Garber (an empathetic {again, I hope} serial killer who only pursues abusers) as he goes up against the evil corporation of Like-Minded Individuals, Inc. Big business on a darkly comical and killer level.

Corporate Speak will ensue.

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