Finishing Up

The final draft of Double Vision has been printed and is about to go through the "Dan Test." That's when I read the entire book out loud to him. Two reasons: one, because I can hear if the cadence and correct words have been used, and two, so Dan can catch timeline, direction, sun angle, and all sorts of other errors that I take for granted when I write from the movie in my head.

As you can see, I've also been working on the cover. Let me know what you think of it. There's still the back cover, the spine, the chapter graphics and part one, two and three graphics to be done, so there's still quite a bit to do.

I'm hoping to have the completed book in my hands before the middle of April. My clan has invited me to speak at the annual clan dinner on April 18th down in Massachusetts, and I'd love to be able to present them with the last book in the trilogy. The clan historian from Scotland will also be there speaking about his newest book, so we'll have an Author's Night of sorts. It's quite an honor and I'm looking forward to it. I even ordered my custom-made kilted tartan skirt from Scotland last night!

Double Vision

The third book in the Eyes of Garnet trilogy, Double Vision, is rapidly coming to its end. I should have it finished by the beginning of the new year. 'Course, finished is relative. After I complete the story, there's a period where I work on the cover art, the graphics for the chapters, cover text, etc. Then I go back and rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite some more. It'll easily be March before it's ready to go to the publisher.

But, I'm truly excited about it, and can't wait to begin another book. I guess that makes me a real writer. Or a glutton for punishment! Perhaps they're one in the same.

As small publishers gain favor for their tolerance for new writers, as does self-publishing due to the fact that the big boys are getting more and more difficult to play with, I'm pleased that I can have my work out there and actually have people enjoy it. It's not that I doubted it could happen. If I did that, there'd be no point in going forward with any of it. But I'm truly pleased with my fan-base and the fact that they help to spread the word via friends and family.

Now all I need to do is get the movie sold and made. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander is being optioned for a big screen event, and Randall Wallace of Braveheart fame has been chosen to write the script. If it can happen to her, it can happen to me, though I do so pity Mr. Wallace for the task of taking only enough from the book to make a two, to two and a half hour movie out of it. No matter what he does, there won't be anyone happy about what and who gets cut out. That's why I wrote my own screenplay. So much easier to live with myself and not have to kill another screenwriter for leaving out the true plot of the story.

Pick Up Lines and Book Signings

Yes, you read the title to this post correctly.

I was at the Barnes and Noble store in Newington, NH Sunday doing a signing. Now, I really do enjoy meeting people and talking to them about my books, so what better way to do that then at a crowded bookstore. Well, crowded may be exaggerating. It was actually pretty quiet, but given the sucky economy, there were still people buying books.

There was a lull in the action so I was browsing the new David Baldacci book. My peripheral vision caught sight of an approaching person. I looked up to find an elderly (in his 80's) gentleman with a cane staring at me.

"Hi," I said.

"I know you from somewhere, don't I?" he asked, still staring.

I told him I didn't think so, as I never forget a face.

"You're very pretty," he told me.

By this time, I'm thinking he doesn't care if I'm selling my books or women's underwear. This guy's trying to pick me up using his best lines from WWII!

I try to focus his attention back to my books, rather than my looks, by asking him if he had one of my books.

He said no, but perhaps his wife did.

"See, that's probably why you think you've seen me before."

"But you're very pretty," he reiterates. "I know we've met."

My husband is behind me hiding behind a bookshelf snickering the entire time, wondering how I'm going to get out of this one. He's always amazed that this can happen to me anywhere I go, although it's usually the mentally challenged who are the ones who brazenly approach to talk. I tell him I just look friendly.

After a few more minutes of staring, he told me he was with his daughter, who was about my age and that he'd see me later. Great, now I get to meet the family.

True to his word, about a half hour later, he's introducing me to his daughter, and we go through the whole conversation again. His daughter was finally able to steer him towards the door, but I never was able to sell them a book.

Living in the Past

It's hard not to think about my next series of novels even though I'm still writing Double Vision, the last of the Eyes of Garnet trilogy. I'm really looking forward to putting Gregor Macgregor's story onto the page. He's such a character, and I'll be writing as a man and in the first person. A change that I welcome.

I wonder if I'm painting myself into a corner writing another set of historical fictions. But they're just so much more interesting than the time period we live in now. Not that there isn't much going on now, it's just so complicated. I've always been attracted to the past, not that I want to relive those terribly difficult times, but when you think of what our ancestors went through ... and still managed to survive it all. It's amazing in of itself.

Can you imagine people of today going back to the 18th century? I believe people are people, not matter what time period they've lived in, but would one have to be stronger to survive it? What would most of us do without the internet, or a washing machine, or something as simple as getting water from a faucet? I feel most would have a very difficult time of it.

There would still be the rich. There would still be the poor. But the street people of today would be the ones coming out on top in that world, having the knowledge of living by their wits and making do with what they have on their backs.

We've grown soft, fat, lazy, and all too willing to pass everything that involves work to someone else just because it inconveniences us. Sad really.

So with all that said, I guess I'll stick to historical fiction for the time being. Besides, it's so much easier to have men with magnificent physiques because they had to do so much manual work. Their hands were big and rough. Their shoulders wide and chests thick. And they probably weren't gay to have those bodies! ;o)

The Dark Side

I wonder how many people have had experiences such as the night my husband and I were awoken because we couldn't breath. There seemed to be a dark presence sitting on our chests, pinning us to the bed. We could both "see" it in our mind's eyes; an angry black blob is the only way to describe it.

For hours we battled this thing, asking for the light forces to remove it from our space. It didn't belong here and the fact that it was actually interfering with us on the physical level is not allowed, in our books.

It finally did leave, but not after having to be ripped apart to make it see that what it was doing was totally wrong.

You see, the house we were renting for the winter was on a jut of land with a tidal river on the east and the open waters of Frenchman's Bay barely twenty feet to our south. And when it rained, we had a small stream run under the house, which was on pillars. This confluence of so much water created a large negative vortex on the property.

Ghosts wearing colonial dress were seen in my kitchen, and perhaps those going back before that time when the Native Americans used it for fishing grounds shadowed the spare bedroom.

When you walked past the guest house, the hair literally rose on your arms. All you felt was death, and worse. There didn't seem to be any way of clearing the house of gremlins, and in the dark, the place could hardly be spookier. It felt as though you walked through air thick and cold with crowds of those who'd passed, but hadn't left. It was a congregation of ghosts.

Some people wouldn't go near the place. Said it gave them the creeps. It certainly didn't look like a haunted house. It was the perfect summer vacation house on the coast of Maine. White clapboard two-story farmhouse with a great covered porch overlooking the ocean. The inside was all shiplap pine ceilings, dark wood paneled walls and wide pine floors. Each window had a view of the water and some amazing sunrises were seen from the bedroom.

But it wasn't lived in on a permanent basis. Many houses on the coast aren't. They remain vacant for most of the year; their owners using them for only a few weeks to a couple months during the year. This allows for displaced spirits to gather and call the place their own. They seem to know a good thing when they see it.

After doing some research, I found that the property once had a Revolutionary War era fort on it, and who knows what went on there. I had crystals everywhere to try and break up the negative energy in the house. Nothing you could do about the outside, though. Just too much area. At the end of our lease, we were happy to move on and leave the place to those who called it home.

Ghosts and Other Such Unexplainables

We're getting closer to Samhain, the time where the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. Every culture has the day named. Some call it All Hallow's Eve, Day of the Dead, or Halloween. Doesn't matter, it's all the same. It does get one to pondering if it's the desire of the masses that makes this occur, or if it's really so. Can thousands of years of belief conjure (pardon the pun) those from the other side to get closer to us? Good and bad?

I believe one can speak with the dead anytime they choose. The trick is to be able to hear what the other side has to say. Most can't clear their minds enough, or get over the disbelief that it can actually happen. I believe and here are some of my experiences.

I was home sick one day and was in bed sleeping. My husband had gone to work, my faithful companion, Sam, a Lab/Chesapeake cross was outside my bedroom catching some Z's. I awoke to what sounded like keys jingling from the living room downstairs. I wondered what my husband, Dan was doing home at eleven o'clock in the morning, but waited for him to climb the stairs to our room.

Nothing.

What was more interesting was that Sam never stirred. If Dan were really home, she would have greeted him in typical dog fashion by running downstairs with her tail knocking over everything not bolted down.

I listened intently, suddenly wide awake. I wasn't facing the door, but had the distinct feeling someone was in my room. I rolled over, but no one was there. My ears were trained on the doorway waiting to see...someone.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I had a waterbed at the time (hey, it was the 80's). I was still watching the door when suddenly they bed sunk on Dan's side. You could actually see the indentation, but no one was there. I did smell chocolate and cigarettes, though.

The hair rose on my arms and I bolted from bed. It swayed a bit as I left it, but there was still "someone" in my bed. Without further adieu, I ran from the room past my sleeping dog and down the stairs.

To this day, I can't be certain who was there with me, but my grandmother was a closet smoker and always ate chocolates. It's what I remember most about her. Could it have been her checking on me in my sickbed? I believe so.

Another of my favorites was just after my mother had passed away. She had always considered her apple pies superior to any other mortal woman's, and she baked many in her time.

I was in my kitchen 300 miles from my childhood home and was making the apple pie recipe that I happen to consider pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself. I was all alone in the house and the radio was blasting out some mindless rock, which I always listen to when baking and cooking. I remember it clear as the sky is blue. I said to myself, Mom always thought her apple pies were the best, well, I happen to disagree. Mine are much better.

As if she were in the room with me, I saw in my mind's eyes my mother's face glower out from behind what appeared to be a cloud, and she bellowed out, "No they're not!"

I was used to her "checking in" from time to time, but this incident actually made me laugh out loud.

"What are you going to do about it, Mom? Now, mine are the best."

I heard a bit of good-natured laughing from the other side and then she was gone. I smiled, knowing I finally got to say mine were better than hers without making her mad.

Wench-wear and Shameless Marketing

The New Hampshire Highland Games are one of my favorite venues for selling books, and just pretending to be Scottish. I make no effort to hide the fact that I'm not a Scot, sad as it may be, but some people choose not to believe it, which is fine with me. Some say the red in my hair makes me look like a Scot. Ok.

I had just finished setting up my table of books, postcards, pamphlets, and other pertinent paraphernalia, when my husband rushes over with one of those looks in his eyes. "You have to come see what I found!"

Hey, I game for anything, so I follow him across the expansive parking lot of Scottish vendors. We stop in front of a gorgeous outfit befitting any Scottish wench wanna-be. A black bustier with white gauze peasant blouse over a Robertson tartan skirt. "You need to get this outfit!" he tells me.

I give him one of my own looks. The one that says, really?

"Just try it on," he says, which quickly summoned a perky salesgirl all too willing to get me into the tight-fitting top. It has the true corset styling of rigid heavy fabric and a lace-up front.

"Are you sure I can get into this thing?" I ask, eyeing the tiny-waisted vest. "My Victoria's Secret won't be a secret in this thing," I tell her.

"Oh, no, you can't wear a bra under it, they tend to fight each other."

I then begin to doubt this entire excursion. She (the salesgirl) has no idea what Victoria's Secret keeps in check. But I agree to try it on and endure the measuring before being shuffled into the make-shift dressing room.

Off comes everything (freeing, to say the least in the 35 degree morning), and I slip on the peasant top. Nice. Soft. Loose. Then I put the bustier on over the top. I begin the lacing up process when I hear the salesgirl from the other side of the curtain telling me not to fret over the laces, she'll help me with them. I'm thinking to myself, how hard could this be?

I finish tying the cord at the top, then do a bit of adjusting of the "girls" before showing the world what I would have looked like in the 18th century.

My husband smiles, impressed. We all know what that means.

The salesgirl comes over and begins the torture process of yanking the laces together so this wee bit of vest closes tightly. I find that, like my protagonist, Catrìona, that I'm not thrilled with this fashion. I can no longer breath, and when I tell my masochistic tender she says, "You need to learn to breath from your lungs, not your stomach. You'll get used to it."

Tcha! When hell freezes over, perhaps. Then she cinches the deal by bringing over the mirror. I have to admit, it really did fetching.

Then she tells me to bend over and lift and scoop.

"Honey," I say, "there's no way these babies are getting that much air time. They're just fine where they are right now. I'm working here, not vying for suitors."

She just shrugged like, your loss.

So the salesgirl rings me up and puts my comfortable, loose-fitting, warm sweater in a bag, and I go back to the clan tent. Apparently, wench-wear is very popular with most men. I was looked over a subtly as possible by the clansmen in the tent, all to approving nods.

My husband's job was done there, so he shed his heavy flannel shirt for the custom-made t-shirt he was wearing. Here's a picture of Dan working the crowd. I actually got a couple sales from that shirt! He's such a good sport. That and the fact that he likes the idea of being a kept man. Who wouldn't!