Barbara Samuel's Blog: A Writer Afoot, page 6

RITA and RITA–Hall of Fame edition

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Some of you have seen the news elsewhere, but it did seem there should be an official announcement.  How To Bake A Perfect Life won the RITA from Romance Writers of America last week, a third win in its category.

That means, my friends, that I was inducted into the Romance Writers Hall of Fame.  It was one great night, let me tell you.  Christopher Robin was there, and my best writing buddy Christie Ridgway, and my long-time editor Shauna Summers, who happens to be a great friend now, too.  We share a love of food and books and music, and dinners with her are always the highlight of my conference.

And this was the highlight of this conference.

 

Find Me In Anaheim!

I’ll be signing copies of The Garden of Happy Endings, The Sleeping Night, and possibly How To Bake A Perfect Life (which is up for a RITA this year!) in Anaheim next week at the GIANT literacy event staged by Romance Writers of America every year.

The event will be held on Wed., July 25, from 5-8 p.m. at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Nearly 400 authors will be participating, and this year, we are not in alphabetical order. To find the authors you wish to meet, you will need a map, also available at the site.

I will be sitting at table 403.  Hope to see you there!

For more, including how to park and other practical details, click here.

A Tough Year For The Garden

Some sage English gardener said, “It takes 50 years to create a beautiful garden.”

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An allium from my garden, before the hail, heat, and smoke.

It comforts me.

Last year, you may remember, we started the Great Suburban Back Yard Overhaul. Tore out the decrepit wooden deck, rototilled half the lawn, put in new fences, and built a new garden bed with seven areas and pathways. I was half drunk with the glory of planting last year—lilacs and a peach tree, vegetables and perennial flowers, roses and herbs. I had a few disappointments: the onions kept being eaten by some tiny worm (which happened again this year—help!). The only rose that made it was in the mini-greenhouse I erected. The peach tree nearly died of a fungus until I figured it out.

But an inaugural year is always sweet, isn’t it?

This has been a very unkind year for gardens in my world. There was the late spring, then an early and endless and destructive hailstorm just as I managed to get all the seedlings planted. Then came the extreme heat (102 degrees in Colorado Springs is weird indeed), which coupled with the altitude of 7000 feet scorched and exhausted the June plants.

Before the heat broke, fire began to rage in the mountains. The Waldo Canyon Fire pumped tons of ash and particulates into the air, thus further smothering my poor babies. It was too hot and smoky to do any weeding, though I still did my best to keep up in the evenings. Weeds don’t care about smoke or heat or hail. There is a particular little succulent weed that thrives on all of that and they have made themselves very much at home.

Finally, the fire is out (or at least contained). Even better, the monsoon season has arrived. It has rained a lot the past week, and there is more rain to come, nearly every afternoon over the upcoming week. The plants are THRILLED. The corn has gone from a pathetic ankle high to thigh high in six days. The potatoes have started flowering. The peas have croaked, but that’s normal this time of year. I’ll plant some more in a month or so.

The only things that just are not going to thrive this year are the tomatoes. They’re puny and overwhelmed. The watermelon plants were demolished in the hail storm and have not recovered, but they were a looooonnnnnnggggg shot from the start. I’ve left them, anyway. You never know.

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Clearly, I am behind on my weeding and mulching, but it all burst into glory in about three days flat.

This morning I sat in my swing beneath the Ponderosa pine in my garden and admired the returned vigor of the lupines and the beans, the rose that has begun to bloom again and the snapdragons that add a corner of zest. I don’t know if I’ll get peaches, in the end. They were battered badly by the hail, and the tree still looks bedraggled. But there are a lot of them. They haven’t dropped off. They might be unbeautiful, but maybe I’ll get some jam.

Gardens, books, and children, I suppose. You don’t know how it will all turn out for a long time. In the meantime, you show up and do the work—writing pages or pulling weeds or driving them to violin lessons—and try to be present for what is, and trust that things work out.

How is your garden faring this summer? How are your other long term projects—books, children, remodeling? Does anyone know how to organically rid the soil of those annoying little worms eating my onions? 

A contest for The Sleeping Night

In the brave new world of publishing, few things are as valuable as the reader reviews that are posted on book and social media sites.  That is a very good thing because it puts readers–not critics or the like–front and center in the process of selecting which books catch the attention of a lot of people.  To that end, we are holding a contest to help generate interest in The Sleeping Night.

 

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“A beautiful telling of forbidden romance . . . THE SLEEPING NIGHT is a refined, romantic tale. I imagine if Jane Austen wrote novels today, her stories would read a lot like Barbara Samuel’s.”
- ROMANCE BOOK REVIEWS

 

Barbara Samuel is celebrating the release of The Sleeping Night with a heartfelt giveaway to one lucky reader who helps spread the word about the book to others. This lovely prize package will include a collection of recipes – including Angel Corey’s pineapple upside down cake, a cast iron skillet, an assortment of books from Barbara Samuel (Barbara O’Neal) and a few other surprises tossed in for fun.

To enter, help Barbara get the word out about this beautiful book. You can do this by posting about it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or pinning the cover on Pinterest. Write a review of the book and post it to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, GoodReads, Books a Million or any other online bookstore (each review counts as 2 entries!) or make the cover of The Sleeping Night your avatar online. You are welcome to blog about the book or feature it as the book selection for your book club.

As a special bonus, until July 13th, Belle Books is offering a FREE pdf version of the ebook version to select reviewers!
Visit this link and enter in the password: free

Send links or screen shots of your efforts to barbarascontest@gmail.com by midnight Pacific time on Sunday July 22th. The winner will be selected at random from all qualifying entries and notified via email by July 25th.

 

Contest is open to US residents for prize package and to international residents who will receive an online bookstore gift card of equal value.
This giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, Twitter or any other online social media outlet. By submitting your entry you agree to completely release Facebook and Amazon.com from all liability.
By submitting your entry you agree to share your information with and sign up for Barbara’s newsletter. She agrees not to share your information with anyone else. You may unsubscribe at any time.
You must be 18 years old to enter.
Giveaway ends at midnight, Sunday, July 22, 2012.
One grand prize winner will be chosen at random from all entrants. Winner selection is at the sole discretion of SheridanINK.
All decisions are final.
Winner will be notified via email by barbarascontest@gmail.com.

 

Giveaway is sponsored by Barbara Samuel via SheridanINK.

No purchase necessary.

 

 

Cool off with In The Midnight Rain

On special this week at Amazon:  IN THE MIDNIGHT RAIN :[image error]

Ellie Connor is looking for answers when she arrives in Gideon, Texas to stay in the guest house of Internet pal Blue Reynard.  She’s researching a book about the mysterious disappearance of a woman blues singer in the 1950′s, but she’s also seeking answers to a great mystery in her own life.  When she arrives in Gideon with her dog April, she has no idea she’s about to upturn her life and the lives of many of the residents of the small east Texas town–and none more than Blue himself.

This was my first women’s fiction, a book that haunted me for months, showing up when I opened up the oven, following me around like an  annoying child, nagging me to finish it.  It had been a “Sunday book,” a book I write as an experiment on the weekends around other projects, but it finally became quite insistent that I should finish it and submit it.

It was a life-changer, this one.  I found my current agent with this material, and that was the year I started writing women’s fiction almost exclusively.  I had very powerful feedback on the book, from so many segments of society, that it has long been one of my favorites. Please take a look at this sample chapter–maybe you’ll love it, too.

From IN THE MIDNIGHT RAIN:

Turning off the computer and the lamp, Ellie slipped on a pair of thongs and headed up the hill. The house glowed with lights, and as she started out, Blue turned on an outside light that made it easier, but it was still very dark, a kind of dark she’d forgotten existed. Crickets whirred in the grass, and cicadas answered from the trees, the only sounds for miles and miles, and the air was thick and soft against her face, smelling of earth and river and sky. She inhaled it deeply, pausing to catch the moment close to herself.

Peaceful. Life was so peaceful in the country. Not the actual lives—emotions ruled people no matter where they lived, so there was always some drama or another waiting to make things chaotic—but the details were easier. She could think better without cars racing and roaring and people shouting in the apartment overhead, and even little things like televisions and radios in an unceasing undertone of constant sound. She liked smelling air, not fuel, and loved the sight of the sky overhead.

A shadow startled her, and she made a sound of surprise before Blue caught her hand. “It’s just me,” he said.

For that brief second, she let herself feel his big, strong hand, rough from his work. Impulsively, she curled her fingers around his, and said, “You have one sexy voice, Dr. Reynard.”

“Are you flirting with me, Miz Connor?”

She laughed softly. “Maybe so.”

“Good. I like that.” He walked up the path, hanging on to her. Ellie let it be. At the porch, he let her go, and gestured for her to take a chair. “I’m having bourbon, myself. What’ll be your pleasure? Other than me, of course.”

“I wouldn’t mind a bourbon, if you’ll walk me back down the hill.”

“Careful now. I might take that as an invitation.”

“You are amazingly arrogant, you know that?”

“Yes, I do. ” She heard ice clinking in a glass and the quiet flow of liquid, and he gave her a glass.

“Thank you.”

He settled on the step. “Not too many women drink straight bourbon these days.”

“I don’t very often.”

“But you got a little off balance today, didn’t you?”

She gave him a look. “So did you.”

Quietly, he said, “Yes, ma’am, that I did. Guess we both have our closets full of skeletons.”

“Most people do.”

“You think so? I don’t know. It seems like a lot of folks just get it right out of the gate. I see them in town, you know? Guys who’ve been making the right call since the day they were born, live quiet lives without a lot of turmoil, and just . . . keep it together. Never screw up their credit or forget to mow the lawn or leave a project half-done.”

Ellie sipped cold fire from her glass and listened.

“You ever notice,” he said, “that those people don’t ever seem to have big traumas, either? Like their kids never have wrecks and their houses don’t burn down. It’s like they’re protected with some big cloud of serenity”

“That’s seeing it from the outside, Blue. Nobody gets through life without sorrow and loss. It’s just part of the game.”

He turned his face toward her, and in the darkness, Ellie could see no details, but she sensed his attention. “You really believe that?”

“My grandma always says there are green seasons.” She tucked a foot up under her. “Times when everything goes on just right. Got money enough to pay the bills, and nobody dies and things are just the way they’re supposed to be, most all the time.” She paused to take another tiny sip. “But there are also gray times, when nothing seems to go right. You lose pets and people and have trouble with money.”

“Not gray,” he said. “Blue times . . . like when all the plumbing goes bad.”

She chuckled. “Yeah. The gas pump goes out on the car.”

“Stub your toe and get hangnails.”

“Split ends and toothaches.”

His laughter, low and rich, rolled into the night. “Lightning hits the modem. You ever have that happen?”

“No. I turn everything off in a thunderstorm.”

“I do now. I had a whole computer fried one time.”

“That’s not gray times, that’s foolishness.”

“Well, I left it on when I went to bed. Maybe I’d been drinking a little.”

“I get the feeling you drink a little quite a bit. Is that true?”

He didn’t reply immediately, just shook the ice in his glass lazily. “Yeah, I reckon it is.”

“Why?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe not. You just—well. . . never mind.”

“Go on. I’m what?”

The darkness and the quiet made her bolder. “You’re a puzzle, Dr. Reynard. Take those degrees of yours, for example.”

“My degrees?”

She smiled. “Yeah, a big sexy Southern bad boy with advanced degrees in botany?”

“I’m good with things that grow. They never talk back, and if you lose them, you can always grow some more.” He paused, gave her that faintly rueful smile. “If you take care of an orchid, it’ll outlive you, and your grandchildren.”

“You don’t like losing things.”

“No—though you’d think I’d be used to it by now. I’ve had my share.”

“And green times? Have you had your share of those?”

He stood up and refilled his glass before he answered. “Yeah.” The word was rough. “I kinda think I’d rather not have had them, though.”

“If you meant that, you wouldn’t have to drink so much.”

He halted in the act of lifting the glass to his lips. Genuinely puzzled, he said, “Come again?”

“Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

“That’s true, but you can’t leave it like that. What do you mean?”

She looked out at the dark, listening to the crickets sing for one long moment. “You want the green times, but you’re afraid of them, so you keep yourself safe behind the bourbon.”

He gave a snort of laughter and tossed the drink back almost defiantly. “Bullshit. Not everybody needs to be carted off to AA. I drink because I like it.”

Ellie shrugged. “You asked.”

“So I did. And there may be a little truth in there, somewhere, much as I hate to admit it.” He looked at the glass. “Or maybe it’s just that drinking gets to be a habit. It does put up a nice little wall against things.”

Ellie inclined her head. “What’s the wall keeping out?”

He looked at her. “I guess I don’t know anymore.”

The bourbon was infecting Ellie’s blood now, and she found she didn’t want to go anywhere. She wanted to sit on this porch, with this man, drinking and talking in the dark, for as long as she could. “Tell me about a green time,” she said quietly.

He turned his head and a wash of moonlight spread over his high cheekbone, over his jaw and mouth. “Those pictures today, that was a green time. My whole life was green then, had been from the day I was born. My mama always sang and danced and told silly jokes. My daddy was gone a lot on business, but he always brought us presents. We had three cats and two dogs, and a bowl of goldfish. My uncles came in and took me fishing. My brother was a pain in the neck, always calling me names, but Lord—I pretty much worshipped the ground he walked on.”

Ellie smiled. “Pretty normal, I’d say.”

“And there was Annie. My wife.” There was the faintest ragged edge to his voice. “She used to hang around and drive me crazy back then—her folks had a place just on the other side of the river, there.” He gestured. “But I even liked that, being the subject of hero worship, because it gave me somebody to be mean to.”

“Poor Annie.” Ellie laughed. “But I guess she won in the end, didn’t she? She got you to the altar.”

There was surprise on his mouth when he turned his face to look at her, then a perplexed little nod. “That she did. But by then, it was me doing the dragging.” He swirled the bourbon in his glass, drank a little. The grin was broad when he spoke again. “She wouldn’t sleep with me till I put a ring on her finger. Can you imagine? In this day and age?”

“She probably heard about your reputation, sir. Sounds like a smart woman.”

“Who’s been talking about my reputation?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Really?” He sounded offended.

Ellie laughed. “Blue, everybody I meet tells me more or less the same thing—everybody. Stay away from him. He’s a dog. He’s crazy.” She paused. “You have a terrible reputation.”

He put a hand over his heart, wounded. “Well, don’t that beat all. I’m not that bad.” He scowled. “And anyway, it didn’t get bad till after Annie died, so she wasn’t worried about that. She liked me.”

“You can’t honestly tell me your feelings are hurt?”

A single lift of a shoulder.

With surprise, Ellie saw that it was true. He was wounded by the talk, and for some reason she could not, or would not, name, it endeared him to her a little. “They all love you anyway,” she said, and brushed her foot over his. “And I never listen to gossip.”

The mouth lifted on one side. “Liar.”

Ellie rocked a little, breathing in the night, thinking about what it might have been like to be a kid in this house. “You had a great childhood.”

“I did,” he said softly. “Now you. Tell me about your green time, Ellie.”

His voice on her name made her imagine how it would be to have him over her, in her, and saying her name like that in her ear as they made love. She sipped her drink, surprised to find it gone. “Can I make another?”

“Let me get it.”

“I can do it.” She stood up. “I remember this one summer. I was thirteen. My grandma had been working in a bakery, but she just up and took the summer off so I wouldn’t have to go to my friend Jodie’s house every day. I know now that Jodie’s dad was having an affair and the family was none too stable, but my grandma just said she wanted to spend some time with me before I got too big to enjoy her company.”

Drink poured, she settled back on to the glider. “We grew a gigantic garden that year. We always had rhubarb and peas and some corn, but this year, we planted everything you can think of. Watermelons and cantaloupe and dinner plate dahlias that were the talk of the town, I’m not kidding. It was hard work, and she made me weed even when I didn’t want to, but boy—it was really something. The local newspaper, just a weekly, even came and took a picture of it.” She sighed. “I never smell rhubarb without thinking about that summer.

Silence, easy as the humid air, settled between them. Ellie’s thoughts rolled on in her mind. “The next summer was when my grandpa died. That’s when the blue times came. For a while.”

“How’d you come to be living with your grandma? Where was your mama?”

A prickle of alertness walked on her nerves. “She was just kind of unstable. I don’t remember her at all. She was killed when I was two.”

“What about your daddy?”

“Never knew him,” she said carefully, and to be sure he didn’t get suspicious, added, “I don’t think she knew him. That was the free love generation, remember.” She smiled to lighten the comment.

He stretched out his leg and put his bare foot against the top of hers. “Poor little Ellie. Now you’re making me feel bad.”

“How?”

“I think maybe you’re right. At the heart of it all, I’m a coward. That’s why I’d rather live in the plain times. Not green or gray. Just. . . plain.”

His foot moved the slightest bit, and Ellie found herself wanting to kick off her thong and put her foot on his shin, just so she could touch him. She knew if she did it, he’d make the next move. Instead she said, “But without those bad times, we wouldn’t have the blues.”

“Wouldn’t need them.”

Ellie couldn’t tell whether that meant he agreed or not. “And wouldn’t that be a tragedy.” It wasn’t a question.

“You know, it really would be.”

She pulled her foot from under his and stood up. “It’s been a long day. I need to get some sleep.”

“All right. Let me get my shoes and I’ll walk you down.”

“No, thank you, don’t bother. It’s not that far.”

He moved closer, and Ellie smelled his skin, that faintly exotic odor that clung to him. “I’m not going to make a pass at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She bowed her head against that voice, feeling it run like a tongue down her spine. Ridiculous how she responded to him. She shook her head. “No, I’m not worried about that. I just don’t want to put you out.”

“No trouble.” He ducked into the house, then stuck his head out again. “Seriously, wait for me, all right? It’s too dark.”

She nodded, crossing her arms as the screen door slammed behind him as if to literally get a grip on herself and the entirely normal but exceedingly dangerous rush of hormones he roused. She needed to keep her head with Blue Reynard or she was going to end up falling under his spell and into his bed—and she knew from experience she wasn’t the kind of woman who could sleep with a man and just walk away.

What had he said this morning? That sex was easy and friends were hard. Which told her he was the kind of man who could have sex and walk away. He probably did it all the time.

Most men did.

And it occurred to her as she stood there in the soft night that he’d been warning her when he said that, and when he’d told her a leopard couldn’t change his spots. It was his way to sleep with women he liked, natural as breathing, and he’d likely try to sleep with Ellie before they were through.

It was going to have to be up to her to make sure that didn’t happen.

* * *

At two in the morning Blue finally gave up on sleep and got up, throwing on a pair of jeans. His dog Sasha eagerly joined him as he ambled into the kitchen for a glass of water, then went upstairs to the widow’s walk on top of the house. It was an anomaly in this area, the legacy—like the lilacs near the back porch—of a bride from the northeast. It was also, aside from the greenhouses, one of his favorite places. He’d furnished it with a couple of chairs and a telescope and a CD player, hooked up by long, trailing lengths of extension cords, to a plug in the attic. Lanie swore he’d burn the house down one of these days.

Piwacket appeared, a tiny white ghost, and perched happily on the back of a chair. Sasha settled down with a sigh beneath Blue’s right hand, and he kicked his feet up comfortably. It was a familiar scene. The night and the animals and the view of the stars.

He did not often sleep well. It wasn’t, as the psychologists and school counselors had believed in his childhood, a result of the losses in his eighth and ninth years. And it wasn’t the loss of his wife in adulthood. He wouldn’t deny his psyche had probably been twisted by all that, but his insomnia stemmed from something else entirely.

Thinking.

As far back as he could remember, he had often awakened in the middle of the night with his brain on fire. The first time it happened, he was eight. That afternoon, he’d gone to the library with his mother. Because there was a hurricane forming in the gulf, he’d wanted to read more about them. He checked out a book on tornadoes, hurricanes, and hailstorms and read it in a single gulp. The idea of the circular motion of wind, and the patterns of high and low fronts, inflamed him and he spent the rest of the day trying to find someone to engage in a conversation about it. His mother listened, but she didn’t seem to grasp the wonder he needed to get across. His dad was gruff. Lanie gave him the longest stretch of attention, but then she had to start fixing dinner.

Frustrated, Blue went outside and stared at the clouds, then wandered down to the river to look at the current, where the spiral pattern of life was repeated where the river dipped into a minuscule cove and circled around before it got out. In the woods, he spied the same pattern in the whorls of time on a tree stump. And in the evening, when the clouds rolled in, he watched them with rapt attention as wind stuttered them across the sky.

That night had been the first time. He’d awakened abruptly from a sound sleep, and it was as if he could see the entire structure of the universe—the galaxy and the stars reflected the water in the river and the circling structure of hurricanes and tornadoes. Wild with the excitement of his thoughts, he began the pattern that would weave throughout his life: he ambled outside to sit on the porch in his cowboy print pajamas and settled there to watch the rain pouring down from the sky. There in the midnight rain, he was free to let the thoughts go where they would.

Back then, he learned quickly not to talk about his dark-of-the-night thinking sessions. For one thing, he had a hell of a time getting anyone to grasp the big picture, no matter how many times he came at a concept. He could see a whole structure—whether it was weather or ecology or math—that simply made no sense to others. For another, he started to get a reputation for being downright strange.

In the ninth grade, two years after his parents had died, Blue was in trouble most of the time, headed for juvenile hall. But as if to make up for all the bad luck, he had one big stroke of good luck: he drew Florence Grace, Rosemary’s sister, as his homeroom teacher.

From the first week, she seemed to get it. Not everything, but way more than he’d ever been able to get across to anyone else. She moved into action. Instead of tsking and shaking her head, she tried to find out what he could do. She fed him geometry, then trig, and had him in calculus in a single year. She hunted up experiments in weather and biology and botany for him to do on his own. She brought him biographies of brilliant scientists and thinkers who’d been tortured by their minds, as he was, and literature from every century, every kind of writer. Poets and dreamers, philosophers and novelists. She said she had no idea where that brain of his would lead, but the only way to find out was to learn as much about everything as he could until something clicked.

And Blue, starved for both attention and knowledge, consumed everything she gave him and more. That year, he spent as little as three hours a night sleeping. He read and pondered and experimented. Florence taught him to keep a journal and he often poured out page after page of speculation and observation.

She saved him. All he’d needed was tools, and Florence had given them to him.

These past four years, it hadn’t been wonder that kept him awake. More often, he came here to escape the demons in his head, the ghosts that had chased him out of the house the night before. The ones that chased him up here now.

The ones that made him want to go down to the cottage and lie down next to that skinny woman with her wild hair and let that laugh roll all over him. What a great laugh she had.

Instead, he stayed where he was, head cocked back to the sky, a cat in his lap and a dog under his hand. He was an intelligent man; he knew the world was just sometimes harsh, but his luck with people had been pretty wretched by any measure. Marcus called him Job sometimes, as a joke that didn’t really make either of them laugh. Blue sometimes thought he must have pissed God off in another life or been born under a bad star or something.

These days, he judged it safer to keep things loose and easy. As long as he didn’t get too tangled up again with anybody, his life was pretty good. He had friends and a home and work and money enough to do pretty much anything he had a mind to do. When he got hungry enough, there were always willing women to warm his bed for a night or a week.

But now Ellie’s words came back to him: What’s the wall keeping out?

He frowned. Lots of people had taken him to task for his drinking the past few years—a comment here and there that made him understand folks thought of him as a hard drinker. Lanie hid his bottle when she thought he’d been hitting it too hard. Even Marcus, who was no stranger to a Saturday afternoon six-pack and always liked a nice bourbon at the end of the day, had commented once or twice that maybe Blue drank a bit too much.

But he’d never paid any of them any mind at all. Why did it matter what Ellie thought? She was a stranger, just passing through.

Still. He rubbed his ribs idly, unable to deny that her comments bothered him. It had bothered him that she’d known by his posts on-line when he’d been drinking. It bothered him that she thought he was hiding behind it.

Even if he was. Losing Annie so suddenly had ripped him to pieces, shredded his faith, his hope, his ability to believe in anything. There was a craziness in that kind of pain he didn’t wish on anyone, and he’d been desperate to escape it.

He’d turned to his experiments, to the eternal flowers, and poured himself into building the big greenhouse, where he could mimic the Central American rain forest conditions as exactly as possible. He’d worked ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day, hiring Marcus to help him and bringing in crews to do the work they couldn’t handle. At night, he opened a bottle of bourbon and anesthetized himself well enough to sleep.

A wall of work and bourbon. He’d erected it to let himself heal.

The answer surprised him, but it had the authentic ring of truth. He’d been flat-out unable to deal with his true reality, so he retreated into a world of flowers and bourbon until he could face it.

Was that such a bad thing? Wasn’t there even something like that in the Bible? That wine should be given to the grieving, or saved for the poor to make them feel better about their lot in life? Maybe. He couldn’t remember exactly.

Sitting in the dark night, he thought maybe it was only bad if he didn’t let go of habits he no longer needed. Maybe it was safe now to let go of the wall and face real life.

Maybe he’d give it a try, just to see. It was time. Maybe he’d even open his heart, just a crack, and see how it felt to really be attracted to a woman, not just sexually, but all the way. Maybe he’d kiss her and see what happened.

As if she heard his thoughts, Piwacket bumped her head against his chin, purring softly. He smiled and rubbed a hand down her bony back. “You like her, don’t you?” He looked at the cabin. “So do I.”

Something very like hope moved in him, refreshing and soft as a long cold drink of water. “So do I,” he repeated.

Colorado Springs On Fire

A mountain wildfire started in a canyon nearby the westside of Colorado Springs Saturday.  I noticed the weird pink light in my house and snapped this picture from my office window, of the smoke plume rising above the city:

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Note the ridge at the base of the smoke column.  That marks the canyon, the wild side. On this side, the city begins.

Forest fire.  Not shocking because it has been deadly dry this year and there have already been two big fires burning, north and south of us. Also, it seemed as if it would be contained to the mountains, where there are few people and fewer structures.

But I don’t remember a fire on the Front Range in my life time. Also, though it is very shallow, I was sad because I adore this hiking trail. It’s only a few minutes out of town, and a nice 7-mile loop that has plenty of good ups and downs.  I’ve hiked it dozens of times, including when I got lost with my friend Chrysauna and we had to hike another three or four miles into Crystola.

For four days, we’ve all been watching it like it was a movie on the horizon.  It’s hard not to stare at the horizon, gauging the progress, the direction–is it better? Worse? Will it gobble Manitou Springs? Woodland Park?

Yesterday, this morning, it seemed better.  I wondered if we were all just settling in, getting used to it.  I got up early–at 4 am–to write so that I would not be distracted by the latest news. I spent some time in the garden before I turned on the television or the Internet.  It doesn’t help the world if I am freaked out.

When I finally turned everything on, the fire seemed a little less extreme. The smoke wasn’t so bad. Some evacuations had been lifted. I had a couch being delivered for my basement and decided to go look for some lamps and pillows to add some color. When I got to the Shops at Briargate, this is what I saw:[image error]

By the time I came out of Pier One, 20 minutes later, the light playing inside the smoke clouds was extraordinary, so I fetched my camera and ambled around the city vantage points to shoot the fire.

No more than 30 minutes later, I shot this pic from Cottonwood Park, virtually the same view as above, just a bit south.

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This one was shot from the UCCS campus, maybe 5 minutes south of the shot above, and only 10 minutes at most.

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This one was also on the UCCS campus. Notice the woman in black has a substantial camera, but she’s not shooting photos. She’s biting her thumbnail.

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The smoke cloud was doing amazing things at this point.  The vantage point was extraordinary, and I was feeling this little bubble of creative pleasure.  I shot a series of pictures:

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Beautiful, right? All that light and the starkness of the telephone pole.  I might have laughed a loud a little.  Some people in the parking lot had brought snacks.

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A change of perspective might be in order.  This is the full view of the telephone pole.  See that street? The teeny tiny cars?

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I drove another three or four miles, directly west.  Everywhere, people were lining the streets, taking photos on their cell phones (while driving!!) and I can’t tell you how many fender benders I saw.  Dozens. The weary police were asking people to pay attention while they were driving.  Please.  I made myself focus on my own driving and the driving of people around me (thanks to my dad, the ex-state patrolman who taught us that it takes two to make an accident).  I still very nearly got rear-ended at one point, but that was a little later and you’ll see why.

My next stop was just shy of Centennial and Garden of the Gods, where I often have coffee with my friend Heather.  Across the street is Ruby Tuesdays, where I spent many many Fridays.  That was where I spotted this:

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Until then, my photo trip had been just that, an artist date of sorts, a chance to shoot the very rare conditions the fire has created. When I spied the flames, my skin rippled.  It was like knowing you’ve cut yourself, then looking down to see blood spurting out from an artery.  I drove another two blocks to a better vantage point, in the parking lot of an office building, and shot this series:

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(To show you I was not close…er…sort of.)  Remember, this fire had been burning for four days and had not posed a threat. This is a close-up:

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Remember the ridge in the first photo? The line of defense the firefighters had held for so long?

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There it goes.  And more:

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Emergency vehicles of all kinds were racing down the main drag, so it seemed like time to get out of the way.  My loop included going home via Woodmen, so I headed up Centennial.  a couple of blocks up, i found myself in very heavy traffic.  Very heavy.  It was way too much to be only gawkers, but it wasnt until I spied a woman in a fully packed Subaru that I realized more neighborhoods were being evacuated.

Because would you want to hang around with this?

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My trip home from there was nightmarish.  That cloud of smoke descended and engulfed us.  Ash and flakes fell on the car. By the time I made it home, I was shaky and newly educated. Fire moves fast.

The flames engulfed those neighborhoods. No one knows how many homes are lost. Or where the fire will go next or…anything.

We are quite safe here. Please don’t worry about that.

More anon.

How One Writer Persisted

Here is the story of a novel.  [image error]

It was written in the wee hours before dawn before the writer’s family awakened and needed to be herded off to school.   Before the work of the day began,  before the brain was sullied by the noise of news and commerce and obligations.

And when it was finished, she sent it to her agent, who loved it. Declared it one of the best romances she had ever read. Ever.  She took it to market with great energy—but the book was rejected over and over with the kind of crushing rejections that say, “we love this book, but can’t imagine that it will sell very well.” The setting was wrong. The love story was too unusual.

After nearly a year, the writer admitted defeat and put the book away.

The writer was me, of course.  I was divorced and dating when the book arrived in my consciousness again, when Christopher Robin and I discovered we both knew the facts of the English arm of WWII backwards and forwards.  On one of our first dates, we eagerly exchanged facts about the landings at Normandy and Battle of the Bulge—but I one-upped him: I knew the history of the African American soldier in that war; knew that it was the bloody, bloody toll of Normandy, then the push across France that led to the Army finally dropping its policy of segregation, so black troops were armed and pressed into service, to fight against Hitler’s army in that harsh, terrible winter of 1944-45.  It was that year that led to the desegregation of the Army, and in my opinion, the eventual desegregation of the country.

I knew it because that was part of the story I told in that book I woke up early to write.  Isaiah High joins the Army to flee his hometown. Through his letters home, we see his journey, in England and through France, at last at Dachau, where he is part of the forces of liberation. It’s also a love story, of course, but the WWII aspect is very important.

CR was entranced.  It had been a long time since I’d read it, but I pulled it out and discovered that I had grown quite a lot as a writer and wanted to rewrite it, but the bones were good, and I still loved the characters madly.  The trouble was, I only had a hard copy, and scanning technology—which has taken off insanely the past couple of years, was extremely primitive.  The scan was a mess.  An absolute, practically unreadable mess.   I had deadlines and side projects and just didn’t have time to fix it.

And perhaps I was wary of getting my heart broken all over again.  As long as the book sat safely in my heart and drawer, it would never be rejected again.

But CR did not give up.  We visited the British War Museum.  We traveled to the beaches of Normandy.  He sometimes had a book on black soldiers sent to me, or linked me to a story online.

Two years ago, feeling the urge to maybe make some time to clean up the draft to see what I actually had there, I stumbled over a website devoted to the letters of a young WWII soldier home to his family.  He was stationed in England, just like Isaiah, and he was headed for Normandy.  I read, engrossed, one night, thinking of the letters Angel and Isaiah had exchanged.  I read to the very end of that soldier’s letters.   Powerfully moved, I decided that I would at least give The Book a chance.  Tucked between deadlines was a six week window that I could spare.  I booked a hotel room in a retreat center, and before I went, I cleaned up the worst of the typos and strange words in the scanned file.  By the time I arrived at the retreat center, I was ready to dig in.

I rewrote it, and then came home and rewrote again.  I knew my main publisher and agent would be wary, because it is a very different story than the books I am publishing now as Barbara O’Neal, and we’ve all put a tremendous amount of energy into branding those books.  I knew who I wanted to publish it—Belle Bridge Books.

But again, I was terrified.  What if they didn’t like it, either, and my baby, this book of my heart, was orphaned again? I sent it to a writer friend to read, and she emphatically pronounced it beautiful and moving, so with some trepidation, I sent a note to Deb Smith at Belle Bridge, and she responded in about two hours: SEND IT.

She loved it.  She made an offer in one of the shortest negotiations I’ve ever participated in.   I needed the time to go through it one more time.  One year later I am pleased to announce:

 The Sleeping Night is now on sale!
 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and soon will be in all outlets.

The reviews are amazing.  Read a few here:

Romance Reviews by Sallie:  ”The Sleeping Night is a refined, romantic tale.  I imagine if Jane Austen wrote novels today, her stories would read a lot like Barbara Samuel’s.”  Read More >>>

From Karen Knows Best: “Told partially in the present day, partially in Angel and Isaiah’s past after the war, and partially through their wartime letters, this is not just a suspenseful forbidden love romance, but a powerful story about spiritual and emotional needs. The letters give rich historical detail about everyday life while showing the closeness of their connection, the depth of their sorrow over the ugliness of the world, and their need to understand how such awful things could happen.”  Read More >>>

From Angela Booth’s Writing Blog:  ”I’m not sentimental; I can’t remember the last time a book made me break down in tears, but this book did it. Several times I had to resist the urge to stop reading because it was too painful. I’m glad I kept on, because it was worth it. The Sleeping Night is wonderful, precisely because the characters’ struggle is so agonizing.

(That said, if you hate books with unhappy endings be relieved — there’s a happy ending. )”  Read More>>>

 

There will be some giveaways for this book.  Check back soon.  Oh, and check out the dedication.  Can you guess who got it?

 

 

Rest

[image error]I spent a week in the mountains last week, planning to do some catch-up work, maybe read and start rewriting The Mirror Girl, figure out how to structure this complicated puzzle of a new WIP, and block out some other work.   I arrived on a Saturday, alone with my collaging materials and iPad and books.

The first morning, I woke up FULL of plans.  I had eight days to work, alone, without distractions! I could rewrite the whole book! Plan the little series in my head! Collage the WIP and see if that helped shake the structure loose!  I got out of bed at 5 am, rested, and thought how lovely I would feel about myself if I managed to take home ALL THAT WORK!

One of the other things I promised myself was that I would meditate every morning for as long as I wanted. I sometimes rush because I feel the pressure of getting the day started.  So that was my first action: to drink a cup of tea on the balcony and then meditate in the sunshine. A fox came to see if I had tidbits to share.  Birds twittered in the trees. The sun rose over the mountains.

I fell into bliss.  And you know, I didn’t really want to read the pages of TMG, but after breakfast, I sat down to do it.

And I fell asleep.

Then I took a walk and ate lunch and had a second nap and spent the evening reading a book.  Alone, in the quiet. It was a little lonely.  I

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my breakfast companion most days

was a little bored without the animals or Christopher Robin to talk to.  I went to bed very early, and again awakened very early.

Rinse and repeat.  Monday, Tuesday.  Except that Tuesday, I skipped the pretending-to-work part and leapt straight to reading a novel written by someone else.  I started it in the morning and read the entire day until I finished, at which point I wandered down to the village and sat by the river, journaling, shooting photos of the melting ski runs with my camera phone because I didn’t want to be bothered to carry my big camera.

By Wednesday, I began to realize I was not interested in working.  I didn’t pick up any pages I’d written.  I didn’t journal or blog. I just read and then took a walk, then had dinner with CR.  Slept long.

Rinse, repeat. Thursday, Friday, we wandered down for breakfast, wandered around town for awhile, wandered back to lie around and read.  When I got bored Thursday, I started collaging the WIP, find enthusiasm for the project and possible glimmerings of a fix for the problem.  Love the characters a LOT.  Love the setup a LOT.  Feel strongly that it has the potential to be really good work.  Optimism restored.

[image error]By Friday night, after we’d walked for four or five hours, all over the village, shooting photos, eating Danishes and vegetable sandwiches, shopping for treats for the baby and my d-i-l, I realized that what I’d needed was REST.  Pure, unadulterated rest.  Even boredom.

That night, I worked on the collage some more, drank a couple of beers, fell asleep early reading the third novel of the week. When I awakened, the plot and characters of the WIP were swirling around like a jigsaw puzzle in my head, fitting themselves into various arrangements for my perusal.

If I am to think about the qualities of a wise woman, an elder, then I have to make sure that an examination of rest is on there.  In our hurry, hurry, hurry material world, rest is desperately neglected.   I am very guilty of pushing myself until I crash, like student cramming for finals, and that’s not wise behavior.

Happily, I am refreshed and relaxed, and I have already scheduled a retreat for three months away, so that I don’t get overwhelmed.

Do you find it hard to get enough rest? Do you even recognize when you’re overly tired?

 

A Return To Blogging

I took a little sabbatical last week, and one thing that came up is that I miss my blog. Not the blogs I write for other sites, about whatever their message is, but my own, inward/outward blogs about walking through my life and my work and my garden.  It is said that blogs are dying, that no one reads them anymore, but I do. So do you or you wouldn’t be here.

I have let myself become distracted by a thousand other tasks, distracted away from a form I genuinely enjoy and feels wise to me.  In fact, the quest for wisdom, the desire to understand what wisdom is, what it means to be wise, to be an elder, a wise woman, has been dogging me lately.   Natural, perhaps when a grandchild arrives and you see the future, a future that will not always contain you in this particular form.

The fast, short updates of Facebook and Twitter have shifted attention away from blogs/columns, but while it can feel good to keep up to date with the day to day happenings of people via those methods, there can be no exploration of ideas in those forms, at least I don’t know how to do it.

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spring slopes

What I do know is that this slightly longer form, a column or blog, is perfect for me to mull an idea, think about something, share them with you, my reader.

So I’m going to commit to blogging again here.  I don’t know how often….maybe once a week sometimes, maybe every day.   We’ll see.  There is much afoot in my world.  A baby and books and walking and trips abroad.   I am interested in exploring the idea of wisdom and might come up with a year-long project to see what that looks like.

We’ll see.  For now, I wanted to let you know I’m returning to this form.

 

Broken Hearts, Second Chances

For this Mother’s Day Weekend, Walk in Beauty is free at Amazon.  It is a searing, heartfelt  tale of lost love and a secret child, the [image error]terrible mistakes we can all make, and the possibilities love offers to heal even the darkest of wounds.  I love this book madly, for the Navajo aspects, and the lost child reunited with her father.  Luke Bernali was one of the first characters to ever walk on to the screen of my imagination, although it was nearly a dozen years before I wrote his story. He was my companion for a long time.

The special starts Friday and ends Tuesday, so don’t miss your chance.

 

Excerpt

Jessie glanced out the front window. “It’s cloudy. Won’t it be awfully cold?”

“Not really,” Luke said. “We’ll bundle up and put an extra pair of socks on. It’s nice up there this time of year. Do you remember Cheyenne Canyon? Helen Hunt Falls?”

Jessie chuckled, thinking of her ragged copy of Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel of a California woman and the Indian, Alessandro, she loved. Jessie had discovered a dusty copy in the library when she was fourteen and read it three times—just that year. She’d lost count of how many more times she’d picked up the beloved book. “How could I forget?”

Luke grinned, and his face was suddenly ten years younger. He’d often teased her about falling in love with him because she had loved Alessandro first.

And in a small way, it was true. The first time she had seen Luke, hammering nails into the frame of her father’s new study, she had been riveted. As he worked in the heat of a California afternoon, his long black hair braided and dark skin shimmering with sweat, he’d been the most singularly attractive man she’d ever seen. His back was bare and long and dark, his arms strong and hard-muscled. A red bandanna tied around his forehead kept the hair from his eyes. She stared at him through her bedroom window, her stomach tight, unable to believe he was real. He paused, wiping a forearm across his brow. And then he looked up.

Jessie, romantic and young, had thought with a painful pinch, Oh, it’s Alessandro! Her heart flipped when he gave her a slow, mocking, sexy smile…..

####

In the mountains….

“You forget, Jessie, I was your number-one fan a long time before anybody else realized how good you were.”

Her gaze didn’t stray, but he saw a flicker of something oddly stricken cross her face. “I didn’t forget.” With a little shrug, not looking at him, she said quietly, “I’m pretty sure there would have been no paintings at all if it hadn’t been for you.”

He touched her hand on his arm. “So tell me about them.”

She looked at him, then back toward the up sloping path. “Well, I just sold a group called ‘Canning Time.’ It’s kind of a historical feeling, I guess—the thirties. Four women doing all kinds of things in a kitchen—getting the fruit, washing it, laughing.”

“I’d really like to see them.”

Suddenly she seemed to realize how intimate they’d become, walking close on the snowy path, enveloped by the silence of the winter day. She snatched her hand back and slipped it deep into the pocket of her coat. His coat.

Luke let her retreat. In a moment, he heard her breathy hum start up again. This time, the song clicked in. “I’m On Fire.” Evidently, he wasn’t alone in remembering how it had been between them.

Biting back a grin, he started humming along, loud enough for her to hear. A bright pink splash of color flooded her cheeks. He nudged her gently, chuckling.

She bent her head, but said nothing.

They walked for a long time in the soft gray day. Jessie finally protested that she needed to rest, and they paused at the edge of a wide, high field, blanketed with unbroken snow. Giselle and Tasha raced into the snow, kicking up sprays and tumbling each other into it.

Luke felt the cold air and the brisk walk in his blood as a tingling glow. Next to him, Jessie leaned against a pine, laughing as she watched Giselle. “I should get her a dog,” she said. “I had no idea how much she liked them.”

“Tasha’s not just any dog. She’s the greatest dog I’ve ever had.”

“Really?” Jessie grinned up at him, cocking her head. A fall of hair rippled down her arms. “What about Boris?”

“Yeah, Boris was great, too.” He rubbed his cold nose with cold fingers, thinking of the shepherd that had accompanied him on his wanderings for ten years. Every night for three weeks after Jessie left him, Boris had paced the house and howled mournfully.

“What happened to him?”

“He was so big, his hips started to go. I had to have him put to sleep. He couldn’t walk anymore—I even had to carry him outside to do his business.”

She regarded him steadily, a softness of sympathy in her eyes. It struck him all at once that it was Jessie standing here next to him. She was smiling gently, as if she wanted to tell him she knew how hard that had been for him, that she knew he’d wept privately when he buried his dog. She was the only one he’d ever let close enough to see that weakness in him. Embarrassed, he glanced away.

Overhead, an enormous blue jay—a camp robber—claimed a branch. With a flurry of wings and noisy straightening, he harangued the intruders, screeching at them like a fishwife to get out of his territory. Jessie laughed.

“You still like those evil creatures?” Luke asked.

“Yes, I do.” She grinned. “They’re sassy and strong.”

Drawn by her grin, he stepped closer and then paused. All at once, the tumult of emotions that had risen at the surprises of the past day dropped away. Left in its place was a calm, sharp desire—a hunger that had never ceased, not in eight years; a need that still thrummed through him, like the eternal sound of drums in a heartbeat. He wanted her. Plain. Simple. Clear.

He licked his lip. “You’re a blue jay,” he said, touching the array of bracelets on her wrist and then the earrings winking through her hair.

“Am I?”

Earlier, she had kept up walls of fear between them when he stood this close. Now there was nothing, only Luke and Jessie the way they’d always been. Before she could protest, he bent and brushed a kiss over her cold lips.

The contact sent a zinging rush over his nerves. In the tiny second it took, he felt the slight dryness of her chapped lips and a hint of the warm moisture beyond. Her hair brushed his cheek, and her chin jutted up a little so she could meet him halfway.

He lifted his eyes to meet her surprised gaze. A snowflake caught on her cheek and he brushed at it, feeling his heart thump and his soul swell a little from the headiness of finding something lost. In her eyes he caught a flicker of pain and fierce desire. He winked.

Before she could protest, he quickly stepped away and joined his daughter in the snow.

* * *

The walk back took much less time. Jessie felt oddly free and calm as they hiked down. She and Luke didn’t speak, but she felt his kiss lingering between them, not quite a promise, not fierce enough to be a threat. He seemed as content as she to simply be quiet.

Back at the truck, Giselle begged to be allowed to ride in the rear with Tasha. Jessie frowned, and Luke shook his head firmly. “Nope—there are tools and all kinds of other junk back there right now. Maybe another time.”

Exhausted by the long walk and her romp with Tasha, Giselle looked mutinous. Jessie recognized the expression and stepped forward to gather her into a hug before she fell to pieces. “I think,” she said to Luke over her daughter’s head, “we have one very tired young lady here.”

He returned her smile. “I’ve got some stew at the house. Some lunch and a nap and she’ll be fine.”

“I really think we need to go back to the hotel.”

“Why would you want to pay good money to eat at a bad restaurant when you can eat my home cooking for nothing?” he said lightly, opening the bed to let Tasha into the truck. “If you want to go back to the hotel after lunch, I’ll take you.”

Holding her daughter close to her chest, Jessie looked at him. His black, glossy hair was tousled from his play in the snow, and the wind had stung dusky color into his high cheekbones. Tasha leapt into the truck and turned to give an adoring, thankful lick to her master’s chin. Luke scrubbed her ruff, smiling fondly.

It was so easy for Luke, Jessie thought. He just opened up and loved things—dogs and cats and cloudy days and little girls. So easy. And they all loved him right back.

Just as Jessie had.

Her silence stretched a long time. Luke seemed to sense her gaze and he turned. Across the snowy ground, with a child of their making and a cold wind between them, they looked at each other. His strongly chiseled face was grave. She hoped hers showed nothing, but was afraid he could still read her all too well.

“Hotel or rabbit stew?” he asked at last.

Jessie couldn’t repress the chuckle that rose in her throat. “You didn’t tell me it was rabbit.”

He slammed the doors closed on the back of the truck and winked. “Tastes just like chicken,” he said, tongue-in-cheek.

Jessie inclined her head, thinking with relish of his fragrant stews. “It’s been a long time.”

“Is that a yes?”

She nodded. “I guess it is.”

He grinned, and the expression gave his eyes a devilishly sexy tilt. “Will you show me how to make Mrs. O’Brien’s biscuits?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pretending reluctance. “Maybe her biscuits are one of those things that just needs a woman’s touch.”

“Maybe. It’s worth a try, eh?”

“Sure.”

Giselle fell asleep before they had driven out of the canyon. She slumped against Jessie’s shoulder. “I am definitely buying this child a dog,” Jessie said quietly. “Tasha wore her out—and believe me, that’s no small feat. She’s like that battery—she just keeps going and going and going…”

Luke glanced at the girl. “She’s out cold now.” He shook his head and signaled to join the main street out of the canyon. “She’s so much like Marcia, it’s almost eerie.”

“I guess you’ll want her to meet Giselle.”

A strange expression flickered over his face. “Mmm.”

“‘What?”

He touched his jaw, shifted the truck and glanced in the rearview mirror. “I, uh, already made arrangements. She’ll be here this afternoon sometime.”

“You had no right do that without my permission.”

“I know.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I did it last night when I was feeling so blown away. If you want me to take you to the hotel now, I will. Marcia doesn’t know it’s you guys—I just told her there was somebody I wanted her to meet.”

Jessie stared at him, holding the warm weight of her child against her, and suddenly realized it was not only Jessie who was upset by all this. Luke, too, had to grapple with the demons of the past. “No,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

He gave her a grateful smile and reached over to touch her hand. “Thanks, Jessie.”

All at once she realized how much she had relaxed in his company. He was so damned easy to be around, so easy to talk to. He never seemed to expect anyone to be anything except just what they were.

Alarmed, she moved her hand gently from his and saw a ripple of hurt cross his features. Pressing her lips together, she resolutely turned her face to the window. “It’s only fair.”

His voice sounded tired as he said, “Fair doesn’t have much to do with any of this.”

“No,” she agreed softly. “I guess it doesn’t.”