When you swallow a molar, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb
Book 1 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series

Home alone and enjoying my favourite 'me-time' snack: a glass of wine accompanied by lightly salted potato chips and homemade dip (Miracle Whip and Cheese Whiz. No, not yucky - yummy). I bite something extra hard and hesitate mid-chew. My tongue snakes around my mouth looking for the rigid intruder... I don't feel anything unusual. So I swallow. And have a few more chips and dip. But something feels odd inside my mouth. I move my tongue across my upper teeth. All normal. I move my tongue across my lower teeth and snag it on something sharp in the back corner. I press my tongue with more force on this area and dang, it sure feels sharp! Off to the mirror I go. Sure enough, there's half a molar missing and only the old metal filling keeping the other half in place.

OH DEAR! I swallowed my molar. Will I be OK? Will my tummy reject the enameled item and spew it back? What to do?

I did what many people do these days: I googled it.

I type: What happens when you swallow your tooth

Well, like many 'answers' from Google, there's good and there's bad.

The good is that the tooth is digestible, providing of course, that it passes through the narrowest portion of your intestines.

Another good is that you don't require a laxative to 'help' the tooth pass your system.

The bad? 

How to explain to the tooth fairy that there is no tooth under the pillow. Hey - I didn't make this up! It's from Google.

Also bad, and I quote:

"Ingestion of dental foreign bodies, while relatively uncommon, may cause serious, and occasionally fatal, injuries to the airways and gastrointestinal tract. Numerous case reports are available describing the clinical course of such ingestions."

I don't want to know the results of any clinical case reports so I go back to examining my tooth in the mirror. There's no pain in my jaw so the root must be covered by the remaining tooth. That's good!

I go back to my comfy couch and take a sip of wine. AAAAGGHHH THERE'S A NEEDLE POKER ELECTRIC SHOCK and my jaw sings a high C note. C C C for COLD COLD COLD.

Oh, the excruciating pain. What to do?

Well, I didn't have to Google my next step. When you really really want to finish your wine... Isn't that what straws are for? 

Stay safe everyone!

P.S. My dentist fixed me up the next day. Straw no longer required :)

J.C. Kavanagh, author of
The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada
AND
The Twisted Climb,
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll
Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
www.amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)
Instagram @authorjckavanagh

Five Canadian Novels by Aboriginal Writers

 

Canada has a rich tradition of Indigenous writing, with a strong record of support for both writers and publishers of such literature by the Canada Council for the Arts. That movement has blossomed in recent years, as more Aboriginal voices have found space in Canada’s literary and social consciousness.

Aboriginal writing has attracted many awards and prizes in Canada over the years. A few of these include the Governor General’s Award, awarded to Katherena Vermetter for her 2013 collection of poetry, “North End Love Songs.” Another award winner is Lee Maracle’s novel “Ravensong,” which won the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 1993.

 

Here then, are five highly-recommended novels by Canadian Aboriginal writers:

 

“Shi-Shi-Etko” and its sequel “Shi-Shi-Canoe” by Nicola I. Campbell. The first novel details the story of a young girl when she discovers that she is to be taken to a residential school in four days. The second novel details Shi-Shi-Etko’s experiences at the school and her joyful reunion with her family. The second novel won the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Grand Prize.

 

Richard Wagamese’s “Indian Horse” details the life of Saul Indian Horse, his experiences in the Residential School system, his career as an ice hockey player, and the eventual reconciliation with his past. It won the 2013 Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature.

 

“Legacy” by Waubgeshig Rice. The novel describes the violence against an Indigenous woman and the effect it has on her and her family. Another one of his novels, “Moon of the Crusted Snow,” offers a dystopian vision of surviving postmodern civilization. The New York Times described him as an Indigenous writer “reshaping North American science fiction, horror and fantasy.”

 

 

Eden Robinson’s “Son of a Trickster” humorously details the life of Jared, a sixteen year old Aboriginal boy who constantly gets into trouble, his suspicious grandmother and his balancing Indigenous beliefs with dysfunctional family dynamics.

 

“Fly Away Snow Goose” by John Wisdomkeeper and Juliet Waldron. The book follows the trials and travels of two young Aboriginals from Nunavut and the Northwest Territories as they are taken forcefully to a residential school, but yet begin a journey to return to their homes.

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

Never too old for a challenge...by Sheila Claydon

 Click here for my BWL page

I've just been given a musical challenge by my 7 year old granddaughter! She is 7 years old and lives in Hong Kong. Coronavirus restrictions mean that we haven't seen her in person for a very long time. Two much anticipated long visits have had to be cancelled and we can't yet be sure when we will meet up again. This is not quite as bad as it seems, however, because she is in contact frequently, sometimes multiple times a day, via her parents' smart phones or iPads or her own child's smart watch with its iMoo app. Technology is truly wonderful.

This morning, for example, I watched her play tennis. Then she watched me feed my dog and we discussed the medication the visiting dog which is holidaying with us at the moment has to take. She also sent me a video of what looked like a very scary cliff walk, telling me that because her Dad's friend had put it on YouTube she is now as famous as a film star! With this sort of regular contact we certainly don't feel we are missing out on too much of her life although the lack of hugs is an entirely different thing.

Nor does she let only being able to talk on screen curtail her activities in any way. Instead, she sets challenges. For example she will draw something and I have to copy it. Or we read to one another, page and page about. Or we might play UNO or Chess. I've learned to watch her very closely when we do this, however, because she is very good at somehow miscounting the moves I ask her to make on my behalf:) Her latest challenge, however, is in a whole new ball park. 

She is learning to play the piano and in addition to her lessons uses the SimplyPiano App. She enjoys it so much that she has now decided it would be a good thing if I did the same. We bought a piano when our children were young, something that led to our daughter having a musical career, but which I've never tried to learn. Apparently I am going to now, however. And it will be a competition between my little granddaughter, me and her mother. I'm not entirely sure what form the competition will take - I think it's more about how often we practice than how well we play. It's a clever way of keeping her practicing but now I've been challenged as well. According to my daughter-in-law, 10 minutes a day is enough. Granddaughter is more exacting though. She says I will need to practice all day if I want to catch up!

From my perspective, although it's just meant to be a bit of fun, I've decided it is also a really positive thing. As the years advance I insist that writing and crosswords are the two things that keep my brain sharp. Now I've completed my first piano lesson, however, I can see how much more it will be exercised by learning to do something completely new. There is another benefit too and it is the same that writing my books on the computer helps with. Using a keyboard. Both activities will keep my arthritic fingers moving and therefore pain free and reasonably supple. 

Having grandchildren is a blessing at any age and we do have equally loved older ones. But to have such a fearless and extrovert little one is a double blessing as the years swiftly mount up behind us, because she keeps us young. Goodness knows what her next challenge will be. Learning to play the piano is enough to be going on with!

In the meantime, if you enjoy music then take a peek at my book Cabin Fever. It is the only one I have written where music features. Ellie, the heroine, is a professional singer and a dancer, and the hero, Andy Smith, is a very good amateur pianist. It was fun to write but by the time I finished I was a bit jealous of their talent. Yes, that can happen even with imaginary characters. They were right, too, in saying we all need music in our lives, and my little granddaughter is now making sure I have more of it in mine. 

The Osprey cruise ship is in trouble. Can Ellie Masters and Andy Smith solve the problem? When they join the ship in New Zealand they soon discover that it’s going to be hard work all the way to Australia. Not that either of them intend to let long hours get in the way of their blossoming love affair...until Ellie develops feet of clay..or is it Andy who is the problem? Is he really who he says he is? They joined the ship to help the crew, but now it’s Ellie and Andy who need help. Will they get it or is it already too late?

Cinderellas Galore

 

Eileen's BWL page

Did you know that there are more than 700 Cinderella stories?  The theme of the mistreated and underestimated person who rises in the world through true love calls to some deep-seated need in us all, because people never seem to tire of variations on this story.   

Many movies testify to our love of the archetype, from Drew Barrymore’s political strong girl Cinderella in Ever After...

to Julia Roberts hooker-with-heart-and-humor Cinderella in Pretty Woman. 

Even Shakespeare got into the act and turned the Cinderella story into a tragedy in King Lear.

Because Disney adapted the Charles Perrault’s seventeenth century French version with its court and carriage, ball and glass slippers, this is the one that most children know.

 

But in the Celtic world and Native American worlds, Cinderella is less about fancy dance balls and much more in keeping with those cultures.

Both among the Ojibwe and the Iroquois nations, there is a version of Cinderella, in which the young sister is badly burned and scarred by fire, her black hair singed and raggedy. The “handsome prince” of the stories is a magical being, powerful, invisible, drawing a sledge with a rope made sometimes of the rainbow, sometimes of the Milky Way.  To marry him, the girls of the tribe must be able to see him and his magical harness. This adds a component of spirituality to the stories typical of Native Nations values; see well, tell truly. In the Native versions of the story, it is often the sister of the hero who plays “fairy godmother,” admonishing all the girls to be truthful, rewarding the cinder girl for her true vision-- not with coaches and horsemen, but with a ritual bath or baptism of complete transformation.  This is also in keeping with the matriarchal wisdom archetypes of Native Nations.

In an Irish versions of this beloved story, the Cinderella character is a boy.  He’s a short fellow (atypical to the Celts, who were generally over six feet tall), with huge feet, able to cover great distances in a bound.  His “fairy godfather” is a bull, who gives the boy his own tail as protection and talisman. His many adventures occur in multiples of three, which is the sacred Celtic number. Eventually, the cattle boy slays a dragon, wins a princess and leaves behind a giant boot.  The stubborn princess will marry no prince.  She’ll have only the cattle boy who owns the boot.  -- from: "Sisters in Story"

Choosing a mystery novel victim

 

                                Please click this link for book and purchase information

My three mystery novels all introduce a victim in Chapter One. Winter's Rage, released this month, revolves around a hit-and-run collision that kills a pedestrian. My series sleuth, adjuster Paula Savard, investigates the resulting insurance claims and comes to suspect the hit and run was a murder. 

After I settled on this premise, I started to mull ideas for a victim. Aside from novels about random crimes, mystery plots focus on why someone killed a particular person. For me this is often more important than whodunit.

I can trace my ideas that emerged back to the 1990s, when friends started to tell me about their experiences with repressed memories. One confided that while listening to a radio program on the topic, she suddenly remembered that her father had sexually abused her when she was a child. She'd had no memory of this before, but from then on didn't doubt this had happened. 

Another friend said her sister had accused their older brother of similar abuse. Their parents believed her sister; my friend believed her brother. Not surprisingly, he became estranged from the rest of the family. My friend blamed her sister for making this up, but still got along with her parents despite some tension.   

During the recovered memory episode of the 1980s and early 1990s, I was at home looking after my children and watched daytime television talk shows on the subject. Thousands of people recalled forgotten memories of childhood abuse, spontaneously, like my friend hearing the radio show, or in therapy, sometimes aided by hypnosis. 

My interest led to me read books and magazine articles on both sides of the issue. While cases varied, a large number were young women who sought therapy for general problems and, in the course of treatment, recovered memories of their fathers abusing them when they were children. Therapists encouraged them to confront their families for healing. Typically, the fathers denied they'd done anything wrong, as people do whether they're innocent or guilty. Wives had to choose between believing their husbands or believing their daughters. Other family members took sides. Some daughters sued their fathers for the past abuse; a few fathers sued their daughters’ psychologists for malpractice. Courts of law accepted recovered memories as evidence. In 1990 a man was convicted of a twenty-year-old murder based on his daughter’s recovered memory of witnessing the event.

Today, psychologists heatedly debate the validity of recovered memories. Every time I Google the subject I come up with a different impression on where the profession stands on the issue. One article I read called it the most vicious controversy in modern psychology.

This all struck me as fertile ground for a mystery novel.     

I decided my victim would be a psychologist who'd treated a thirty-year-old woman for recovered memories in 1990. The woman's mother believed her; her twin sister sided with their father. He owns the hit-and-run vehicle that kills the psychologist in 2020, when my main storyline takes place. Paula, my insurance adjuster-sleuth, learns that the man blames the psychologist for tearing his family apart. But he denies he was driving that night. Is he lying? Or did someone else take his car and run the victim down for another reason? Paula’s job is to figure this out. More than that, Paula wants to help this fractured family. She hopes that solving the crime and uncovering the truth about what happened in their past will mend the family rift.    

The Confessions of a Reading Snob, by Karla Stover

For book details and purchase information visit Karla Stover BWL Author page here

https://bookswelove.net/stover-karla/

Billionaire shocks graduating class with surprise gift

Robert F. Smith announced that he'd be giving 396 college seniors the gift of a lifetime during his commencement speech at Morehouse College. Source: CNN.com. Apparently, only seniors who were there to hear the speech got the gift; tough luck for those who weren't there.

Yes, I confess, I love stumbling on another writer's misplaced modifiers, hereafter referred to as MPM. Here are a few examples: the first one is famous.

Neil Armstrong made history as the first man to step on the moon in 1969. Others may have set foot on the moon in prior years but he was the first in 1969.

 Apparently this one caused waves all over the internet: “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.” Source: the cover of “Tails” magazine. A comma after “cooking” might have fixed it but I’m not sure. Commas are a weakness of mine.

This one comes from a book called Sin and Syntax and apparently came from an unnamed New York Times best-selling author. “We found the address he gave me without difficulty.” Finding the address wasn't hard but I think the person meant it wasn’t hard to find the house/business/park whatever at the address.

 Also quoted in Sin and Syntax,  this time from a student essay: “Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.”

This one came a week or so ago from Facebook friend: “. . . reading a story on my Kindle, by Joyce Carol Oates.” Perhaps the comma makes the sentence acceptable but I think the sentence should be, “reading a story by Joyce Carol Oates on my Kindle,” not that the Kindle was by Joyce Carol Oates.  Either way, I wish I had a Kindle. I could download books my libraries don’t carry.

Comedian Groucho Marx gave us what is probably the most well-known MPM when he said, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in there, I don’t know.”  

This one came up on google when I was looking for a new hot-weather haircut: "layered bob for fine hair over 50." My stylist (and her fine hair) are about thirty. I guess this particular cut isn't recommended for her. 

Since it's apparently not kosher to identify the author, I will just say, I enjoyed the book in spite of the following: "The best room had . . . and a badly executed oil painting above the mantelpiece of hills and heather." Whoever had checked the book out before me underlined the line and wrote in a snarky remark. 

And finally,

I was reading news headlines coincidently during the Britney Spears trial and came across this: "Meghan McCain Hopes Britney Spears Never Speaks To Her Family Again: ‘None Of Them Did Enough.’" Why was McCain 's family expected to do anything?

WHAT IS A MISPLACED MODIFIER:

"A misplaced modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that is improperly separated from the word it modifies / describes. Because of the separation, sentences with this error often sound awkward, ridiculous, or confusing." ragan.com

HOW TO LOCATE A MISPLACED MODIFIER:

"When a sentence begins with a modifying phrase that’s followed by a comma, the noun or pronoun right after the comma should be what the phrase is referring to." ininet.org

HOW TO CORRECT A MISPLACED MODIFIER:

"To correct the misplaced modifier problem, one should place single word adjectives before the word they modify and adjective phrases or clauses right after the word they modify. In the following examples, adjective phrases were placed right after the word they modify to avoid ambiguity." niu.edu > writing tutorial

Okay, I couldn't resist:

"Following Prince Philip's death, Prince William released a never-before-seen photo of his grandfather with his eldest child." People.com/royals. Huh? Prince William is / was the oldest grandchild but the photograph is of Prince George.

 

 

Unique Names...and then again maybe not

 

Coming in October

Names are important to writers. We spend a lot of time researching titles and even more time finding just the right name for each character in our books. I remember early in my writing career, I had settled on a name for my heroine which was tied to a twist in the plot. When my editor read it she told me that name was a well known romance author and perhaps I should change it. (Not really a suggestion.) In changing her name, I also had to change other names and modify the plot. After that, I began taking a little more time when deciding on names.

Just this week, I discovered a whole new perspective on names. My sister came to visit me in Kansas City. Because of COVID we hadn’t seen each other in a couple years, plus the fact she lives in Illinois. But there was an ulterior motive to her visit. You see, her name is Linda, and she was also coming to the L.I.N.D.A. convention being held here. You read right. They have a convention for people named Linda. Check it out at L.I.N.D.A. Club – Lindas Involved in Network Development (lindaclub.org). They’ve been having conventions since 1987 and my sister has gone to so many that she had enough tee-shirts for me to make her a quilt!

 Well, of course, I had to see if there was a Barbara convention, but regardless of whether I looked up “convention”, “conference” or “club”, I couldn’t find one. I did come across My Quest to Find All the People Who Share My Name - The Atlantic. It’s a fun and interesting article from the Atlantic about “All the other Julie Becks and Me”. Even if your name isn’t Julie Beck, the article has interesting information about how the internet has changed our sense of identity.

 Within that article was the website http://howmanyofme.com/. You can put in your first and last name and find out how many people in the U.S. have the same name as you according to the census, although the site does state the numbers aren’t absolute. There is also a section on statistics and famous people with your name. It even lists names similar to Barbara: Barb, Barbie, Bobbi, Bobbie, Bobby.

 Because I know you’re curious, there are 1,638,172 people in the U.S. with the first name Barbara. There are 98,093 people with the last name Baldwin. There are only 481 people named Barbara Baldwin.

 I tried to find a site that gave a list of all the different “name clubs” around the country but without spending days going down a rabbit hole in the internet, I had no luck. I did find Same-Name Clubs - American Profile, which gives information about clubs for people named Betty, Bob, Linda, Phil Campbell, Jim Smith. You would think there would be a club for John Doe or Jane Doe or at the very least “Karen”. I did look to see if there were actually real people with those names and there are 236 John Doe; only 18 Jane Doe. It didn’t surprise me that there are over a million people named Karen. Make yourselves a club, ladies!

 No matter how unique you might think you are, chances are there’s more than one of you out there. (Or in my case 481.) I decided to check out a few of the characters from my novels. According to the “how many of me” website, which as I said is not absolute, the numbers in parenthesis indicate how many real people have the same names as my fictional characters.

            Charles Cannon (644) and Jacy Douglas (1 or fewer!) from “Loving Charlie Forever”

            Joseph Donovan (354) and Cheyenne Tucker (only 3!) from “Prelude and Promises”

            Erin Thomas (652) and Remington Matthews (1 or fewer!) from “Snowflakes and

Kisses” (upcoming release Oct2021)

It’s no wonder many books have a disclaimer at the front stating that characters and places are fictitious and not related to persons past or present.

To find out more about others with my name, I googled myself. I found an actress, realtor, VP of Marketing and an artist to name a few. I was WAY down on the list, but when I put in “Barbara Baldwin author” I was number 2 on the Google search. Not bad! Just so you know if you Google yourself, there are also obituaries!

The U.S. Census Bureau statistics tell us that there are at least 151,671 different last names and 5,163 different first names in common use in the United States, although some names are more common than others. No matter how you do the math, you’re probably not going to get by without someone else having your name.

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

 

           

 

Writing What You No? by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page

Is it the ninth again? A month goes by fast when you're doing jack! Well... maybe not Jack but certainly his young brother Zilch. As I scratch my head wondering what to write about, I suddenly remember that I have published another book! 

Well, maybe not JUST published, but it came out a few months ago. Unlike Ballroom Riot--which has damsels and dragons and romance and as many F Bombs as a small army barracks--my other book, A Child to Cry Over, is about a young, eight year old girl who is convicted of the murder of a two year old boy. 

Yeah... it's a bit heavy!  

Ballroom Riot= Light as a lady's fart
A Child to Cry Over= Heavy as the solid stuff!

I wrote it a little while ago actually. Before I had my daughter and when I was a callous young woman with no heart or soul and who had tons of time to sleep or brush their hair and could go to the bathroom by herself without a tiny human having to attend every single time. 

Every. Single. Time.

But regardless of whether I could write such a book now that I am a mother, I did write this one, and I set it right dab in the middle of my hometown in rural New Brunswick, Canada. Which had... more than it's fair share of unsexy results. 

See, my little pee-brained, not-yet-famous-but-maybe-one-day author voice told me it was a good idea to write what you know. Write a book about a little girl who grows up in rural NB and jot down all her observations about the place in which she lives. The local people will love it! Until some aspects don't paint the town in a great light... then watch out.

Let me tell you, I got my fair share of critics! As well as some great accolades, mind you, but some people were under the impression I was bashing my home town! Nooooooo! Not at all...

Okay maybe some, but not really. If I didn't love Not Here, New Brunswick, I certainly wouldn't be living there, right? Right. 

Honestly though, it's a nice place.

But despite my sentiments, I did get some flack. I also got a lot of local interviews and newspaper articles so... I mean, no regrets! Writing what you know works! But it also meant that people knew who I was. I got private FB messages, texts, calls! so people could tell me what they thought. Which IS pretty cool but also hella awkward depending on the situation. And it's not to say I never got those kinds of things from family and friends before... but its just... now I got it from people I didn't know... 

 

You read my book and live close to me and want
to talk about it?! Oh. God. No.

Which was an experience to say the least... And Mostly good. 

Mostly...

But it has certainly opened my eyes in regards to writing in a real setting. You're not going to please everyone, so please yourself I guess. Which is funny considering my next book is an erotica.

My puns are funny to me at least...

Wait, what was the point of this blog post? Oh yeah. Writers beware! Oo~ooh! Writing about your hometown and not having the good sense to change any or most of the names in that hometown may be baa~ad! Oo~ooh! And if you do it anyway? Be prepared for lots of messages and  .....*&(#%@( . Oo~oh! 

Or not. I mean, maybe no one wants to read your drivel anyway. 

I want to read your stuff George! Don't cry... 
You just need to write it before the sun explodes.

Book Series by J. S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I just finished reading an historical fiction book set in Nova Scotia during WW2. I really enjoyed it, but not once while reading it did it occur to me that it was part of a series. It wasn’t until I reviewed it on Goodreads that I realised it was the second book of the series. The title of another book she wrote was printed on the cover, but nothing indicated that other book was in fact the first of the series.

There was no series name or number on the book cover, so I started searching to see if there were written or unwritten "rules" on how to set up a series. I didn't  find any rules, which I thought wasn't a bad thing since it meant I was breaking any elusive rules, but I discovered that series were classified by types.

 

These are the three most popular types of series: Dynamic, Static, or Anthology Series.

 

Dynamic Series:

A dynamic series follows the same characters as the main story carries out through the series. The characters grow as the series progress. The series should be seen as one whole story, not distinct installments in the characters’ life. These individual books are not standalones and need to be read in order for the story to make sense.

 

Static Series:

A static series follows the same characters, but these characters don’t develop in any major ways over time. Each book features a different story, and these individual books are standalone and can usually be read in any order.

 

Anthology Series:

An anthology series do not follow the same characters for every book of the series. The series are tied by a world, a setting, or character relationship. These individual books are standalone, and while some series can be read in any order, other series may need to be read order to avoid spoilers.

 

 

While I was writing my first novel Salvaged, I wasn’t thinking about series. My goal was to finish it, then not get lost in the overwhelming and scary world of synopsis, query letters, and publishers. It wasn’t until I finished my second novel Unraveled that the word “series” struck me. By then, I had found a publisher and Salvaged was tiptoeing into the published world, so I had started looking farther into my publishing goals. The truth is, I became very attached to the characters in Unraveled. Since I wasn’t ready to let them go, I turned the book into a series.

So far, I have written twelve novels. Eleven are published and the twelfth "The Red Quilt" is scheduled for release this coming December. Out of the dozen, only two are not part of a series. The other ten novels are part of four different series...but what kind of series?

 

In my Duty Bound Series, the main character in each new book is a minor character from the previous book, but few other characters from the previous book make it in the next one. Each book takes place a few years after the previous one, the recurring characters evolve, but it introduces new plots and new characters. There are some dynamic & static elements in them, the books are standalones, but reading them out of order gives spoilers about the previous books. So, to my great surprise, it looks like an anthology series. I'm not sure why, but I would never have associated the term 'anthology' to my series until now.

 

My Heart & Endurance Series is a bit different.  The first two books start with different characters and intrigue, but at one point in the second book, characters from the first book begin filtering through. The main characters in the first two books become minor characters in the third book whose storyline revolves around two new main characters. Each book takes place a year or two after the previous one, the recurring characters evolve, but there is a minor loose end that isn’t resolved until the third book. As much as I would have liked to tie that loose end in the first book, it realistically takes years for justice to render a verdict, so while that verdict didn’t come as a surprise, it only became official in the last book. While these three books can be read as standalone, they should be read in order to avoid spoliers. Again, this series looks like an anthology series, even though there are

dynamic & static elements.

 

My Unraveling the Past Series is definitely an anthology series. Brand-new characters in every book. Different settings. Different years. Different means of time-travel. Standalone stories. No continuity. The theme of the stories is what ties them together. In each book, the main character travels back in time and tries to right the wrongs of the past. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have numbered that series.

 

My Fifteen Shades Series will probably resemble my Duty Bound Series in the sense that one of the minor characters in the first book will become the main character in the second book. More about the first new book of that series The Red Quilt next month. I'm finishing my edits, but I received its book cover. It’s gorgeous! I can’t wait to share it with everyone.

 

Happy Reading & Stay Safe

JS

More info about book series, visit Ignite your ink

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

 

Do-It-Yourself Writing Retreat by Eileen O'Finlan

 

    Click here for purchase information

     

   

   

    

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website 

I have spent that last eight months researching in preparation for my next historical novel. It's always a tough call for me to assess when I'm ready to begin the actual writing. Though I know research will continue through to the final page, there has to come a point when I feel I have done enough to be comfortable diving into the writing. Still, typing those first words is daunting. This time I had just the boost I needed.

On Monday, July 19th, my friend and fellow author, Jane Willan, and I set off for the home of another friend and writer, BWL author, Eileen Charbonneau in Bellows Falls, Vermont for a homemade writing retreat.

Every morning after an amazing breakfast served up by Eileen's husband, Ed, we each went off to our own corners of Eileen's lovely home to write. We had lunch on our own whenever we got hungry and either ate yet another amazing meal cooked by "Chef Ed" or we all went out to eat. Each evening, the three of us gathered to exchange what we'd written that day and critique one another's work.

I doubt I have ever been so productive in such a short time, especially at the start of a new novel. In the five days I was there, I completed the first draft of three and a half chapters. Given that my work-in-progress has a dual timeline, something I've never before attempted, having the guidance and feedback from these two veteran authors was indespensible. 

Writing with others and being accountable for accomplishing something by the end of each day provided great motivation and inspiration. With each of us in a different place with out current projects - Eileen in the middle of her next novel, Jane working on the final revision, and me at the very beginning - we ran the gamut of the writing process.

Thanks to Eileen, we were able to offer a presentation and book signing at Village Square Booksellers. We were honored to be featured in this Bellows Falls book store's first post-COVID event and grateful for a good and enthusiastic turnout.

Though there are many worthwhile writing retreats offered all over the world, the cost and travel involved make them unobtainable for many. My advice to those who would love to go on a writing retreat is to find another author or two and create your own retreat. You don't have to go far or spend a lot of money. You can do as we did if space allows and hold it at the home of one of the writers. What's important is a dedicated time and place to write and, later, to meet for critique. It is amazing what can be accomplished. Of course, it helps to have a guy like Eileen's Ed around to handle all the meals in spectacular fashion.

                                            Left to right - Jane Willan, Eileen Charbonneau,

                                            Eileen O'Finlan at the last critique session of our

                                            writing retreat (follwed by Ed's homemade pizza!)