Ruth Sharp's Blog

The Lake Effect on The Author Show

Hello, fellow readers!

I’m so excited to share The Lake Effect’s interview on The Author Show!

The Author Show is a professional interview podcast platform used by thousands of authors to promote their books. It is a fantastic platform for new and existing authors. The show broadcasts their interviews on multiple channels across the globe.

Linda Thompson creates an easy-going interview dynamic with her guest authors. She is professional and her number one priority is promoting authors – not Amazon, or Barnes & Nobel or any other book retailer.

I cannot thank them enough.

Enjoy!

https://ruthsharpauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RuthSharp-Final.mp3

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post The Lake Effect on The Author Show first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Amazon Best Seller List

Gaining Some Momentum! 

The post Amazon Best Seller List first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Childhood Adversity in The Lake Effect

The effects of childhood adversity are far reaching in the real world – but also in The Lake Effect. For those of you who have read the book, you already know there is an element of mental illness in at least one of the characters. The underlying take-away questions from the book are, “Is mental illness a physical or psychological condition? And how does it present itself? In birth through or DNA? Through our environment? Through our parenting?”

The sub-title of the book is Impulse or Instinct. So, when I stumbled upon Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk on TikTok, I perked up at the research she and her colleagues did on childhood adversity and its long-lasting effects on not only physical ailments such as heart disease and lung cancer later in life, but also the part of the brain that controls impulse control. 

A bell went off because my characters in The Lake Effect have impulse control issues – or is their behavior instinctual?

Dr. Nadine wrote a book about her research conducted in the mid 1990s called The Deepest Well. She does a fascinating job chronicling her research of severe and pervasive childhood trauma and her subsequent development of the ACE exam.

The post Childhood Adversity in The Lake Effect first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Confidences Never Broken

Hello, fellow reader,

Confidences Never Broken is a snippet of The Lake Effect that reveals the impact the lake had on one of the characters in the book.

Relatable

I think we can all relate to that special someone or someplace that we all turn to to confide our secrets in. For me, it was usually my besties from high school and college. I typically needed feedback in actual words from whomever I was confiding in. But I can see how someone might take comfort in spilling their guts to an inanimate object like a lake.

What are your thoughts? Who do you spill your guts to?

Enjoy!

She and I would always be friends, of course. I was as sure of that as my mother was sure that the lake would always be there for her . . . and me. I took comfort in knowing that I could rely on each of them to have my back as well. After all, she was a part of me, just like the lake was. I knew it was silly to think that a body of water could have “my back.” But I confided in both of them, sought solace from both of them, found comfort in both of them. And neither one of them knew anything about the man at the resort. I liked that I had kept that from them—that I had my own secret. Although, if I had been honest with myself the last two years in high school, I would have had to acknowledge that the lake probably knew about the man. It was almost like it was privy to such secrets, like a boss who is privy to your personnel records. But unlike a human companion, the lake could never break any confidences.

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow reader.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post Confidences Never Broken first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Being Thirteen

Hello, my fellow readers,

More Snippets of The Lake Effect

The following is a snippet of The Lake Effect. I chose this snippet because it is a prelude to the first inciting incident of the book and gives the reader a glimpse into the characters’ mindset at the beginning of the book.

I will be posting other snippets of the book in upcoming blogs. They may not always be in the order of the book, so keep that in mind if you find yourself a little confused as to how they all fit together.

Enjoy!

She asked me if I thought she should wear her hair up to show off her long neck. I told her to go for it. “Why not get noticed?” I said. She beamed at the idea, wanting permission from anybody to let loose and have some fun. She did a twirl to show off her flippy floral dress and her long legs—legs that seemed to run the length of the bathroom wall. I had to admit she was stunning.

I opted for a jean skirt and halter top. I left my shoulder-length brown hair down but teased the bangs to give extra height to my shorter, smaller frame. She let me borrow her lip gloss. I was never one for gooey lips, but I kind of liked the way it made my facial features stand out. I looked in the slightly distorted mirror and almost didn’t recognize myself. I definitely didn’t look thirteen anymore. I knew I was going to walk out of the bathroom a different person, even if it was for just the next five hours. I wasn’t scared, but I was a little apprehensive. The first thing I bought for this new look was a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses. I could see out, but no one could see in. I immediately felt taller, more confident, and more than ready for an adventure.

We made quite a pair, she and I did. What I lacked in bait, she more than made up for with her obvious head-turning ability. She didn’t need sunglasses to give her strength of character; she merely let her hair flow with the breeze. Even though her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, it was long enough to flow. God, some girls had all the luck—breezy hair and a beautiful long neck at the same time—and the boys couldn’t help but stop their conversation mid-sentence to take in her aura. There was something about her when she was out in the open. She knew her value, not just with boys but with the world. I, on the other hand, was her negotiator sidekick.

Looking Back

Remember what it was like to be thirteen? All we wanted was to be older than what we were. Life would be so much easier when we were older, right? We’d have all the freedom in the world to be who and what we wanted to be.

We had no idea what life was all about.

No wonder our parents kept us on a short leash.

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

 

 

The post Being Thirteen first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Small in Stature, Big in Responsibility

Hello fellow readers,

Small in Stature, Big in Responsibility is the next installment of the sequel to The Lake Effect.

I always felt small next to my parents. Not just in stature but in importance – to the family, even though I was the oldest of my two siblings. In fact, all three of us, I believed growing up, felt small compared to our parents. But for me there was duplicitness in my smallness. Yes, they were the parents and provided all of our basic Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but the real authoritarian amongst the three of us was me. My smallness in my parents’ eyes allowed me to be large – not gigantic or inappropriately large – but large in a way that was only slightly smaller than my parents. I thought of our family hierarchy as Dad, Mom, Me, Daniel, Katie.

And subconsciously, so did my parents.

My parents simply trusted me. All day and all night if needed. The idea of me making a bad decision just never occurred to them, nor to my siblings. And to my credit, it never occurred to me to take advantage of the power bestowed upon me. It was just the way it was.

Apparently, there’s a parenting term for that: benign neglect. And my mother was all for it. My dad was all for it by default; being raised in the seventies, and all, dads just deferred to moms on parenting tactics.

And I have to say, it worked well most days – even years. My father was a traveling salesman, out of town more times than not. My mother worked various part-time jobs – retail, hosting Tupperware parties…watching soap operas, drinking whisky sours. It’s not that she didn’t care about us, it’s just that her motto was: If you get yourself in trouble, rely on yourself to figure out a solution. Don’t come to me unless you have a bone sticking out somewhere it shouldn’t, or you’re bleeding so badly it requires stitches. Oh, and be home by dinner time or when it gets dark.

So that’s what we did. We played at friends’ houses, at our house in the basement, behind the drugstore, the local dentist office, rode our bicycles everywhere. Sometimes the three of us would all be together and sometimes we took off in different directions, but I always seemed to know where each of us was, or I knew which house to knock on to find out. All the moms took part in benign neglect, but the houses were small back then, even the most self-absorbed mom couldn’t help but notice if the front door slammed and two or three kids ran inside to use the toilet, even if the kid wasn’t their kid.

I never once felt frightened, for myself or for my siblings. I got to be in charge of myself and have the power over my siblings. All three of us knew how the rules worked.

 

Can you imagine benign neglect parenting these days? Social services, the cops, the nosy neighbors, the schools, you name it, would all be up in arms over the lack of parental control. 

Personally, I think there has to be a happy balance between benign neglect and helicopter parenting.

What are your thoughts?

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post Small in Stature, Big in Responsibility first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Obligations

Hello, fellow readers,

The first snippet of The Lake Effect, Obligations, is here!

It’s been a few months since I posted anything. I’d like to blame it on the holidays or getting sick twice – once with Covid – during that same time period, but mainly I’ve been writing the sequel (or possibly just a short story) to The Lake Effect.

Many people have asked me about the backstory of the other characters, specifically the mother in the story. Everyone seems to want to know her backstory. Lexie’s dad comes in a close second.

So, I’ve decided to post snippets of what I’ve written so far. If you’ve read the book, then you’ll understand how the mom’s story relates to the book. If you haven’t read the book, well, you’ll probably be a little confused. All the more reason to pick up a copy of it, right?

Here goes:

Being a convicted serial killer comes with many obligations. Obligations to the families of the victims I murdered. Their endless why’s and how’s of my decision to pick their son, father, brother, uncle, or friend to lure into my murderous radar.  Obligations to my own family, for they are a special kind of victim, a kind of victim I didn’t intend to inflict my demons on but did. Legal obligations to serve a life sentence under the confines of a state mental institution, as if a private behavior health facility that my trial lawyer husband petitioned for me and was denied was too much of a luxury – white privilege, I think the judge’s words were – for the severity of my crimes. Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter if I have fresh squeezed orange juice provide by the pricy facilities or the watered-down plain labeled “from concentrate” orange juice the state facilities provide, the final obligation required of me will be the same – to spend endless hours a week talking to a mental health professional who sits across from me with their legs crossed with pen and notebook in hand greedily taking notes on my most private thoughts. I can see in their eyes their attempt at grasping the magnitude of my behavior, my sins, my audacity to play God with these men’s lives as a means to right their wrongs, wrongs against their wives, their children, humanity, everyone but me. It was never about me, you see. That’s what these self-serving, obtuse men in white laboratory coats say they understand, but they don’t. The murders were never about evening the playing field for crimes committed against me. It was crimes against society, eliminating the weak, the ones who simply didn’t understand that their behavior contributed nothing to furthering the development of mankind. Survival of the fittest is at its fittest when the fucking philanderers are dead!

As always, feel free to post any feedback you’d like me to consider when I go back and make my edits. These snippets are merely the first draft. I could completely ditch what you just read and re-write something entirely different.

How cool would that be to see your contributions to the final book?!

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post Obligations first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

Snippet of The Lake Effect

Every author knows that snippets of their work are great opportunities to sell their books. Readers know that snippets are great opportunities to see if they are instantly drawn to the book’s plot, characters, and the author’s writing style.

Two Scenes, Two Emotions

The following is two scenes of The Lake Effect. In one scene, main character, Lexie, is having her past come back to haunt her and one scene where she sees herself really happy for the first time.

Can we not all relate to these two emotions?

Enjoy!

In the bathroom mirror, I saw how sweaty I looked. I also saw how happy I looked—terrified, but happy. Why am I terrified? I asked myself as I washed my hands after I went to the restroom. My pee was clear. That meant I had alcohol in my system, right? Whatever. Trey was driving; he had less to drink than I. Back to feeling terrified. Why, exactly, was that? I liked what I saw in the mirror. I liked Trey. He liked me. I wasn’t pretending. I was not. Trey made me not pretend, just by being him, nothing else.

But, still. I felt this fragility to my being. This feeling of doom. Of what? Of Trey not liking me as much as I liked him? That could happen to anyone. No guarantees in relationships.

Dr. Phil always said, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” His famous last words, along with, “That dog won’t hunt,” said in a perfect Southern drawl. Well, it had been a while since I had a dog, but I did have Trey’s past behavior etched in my mind—nothing but good things that boy had done for me. So suck it, up, Lexicon. You. Are. Happy. I wagged a finger at my reflection, also happy that no one else was in the bathroom with me.

And he was going to deflower me in twelve days.

*******************************************

The crowd was starting to thin a little when I reentered the main room of the colosseum. The Psych Department may have been party animals, but their bedtime was approaching. Eleven twenty-five on a Friday night is pushing the envelope, I guessed. Oh, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, I thought. Maybe they have other plans, like Trey and me. Quit stereotyping them, I chastised myself. You just have to give yourself a pep talk about being happy. I bet these bookworms never have to wonder if they are happy. Oh, God! I did it again with the stereotyping.

I was chuckling to myself as I walked up to our table to grab my shawl, when I ran into someone as I turned around from the table to find the exit door.

“Oh, sorry,” I said.

“No worries,” he said.

I continued to walk toward the exit door, but I could see out of my peripheral vision that he was looking me over. He just stood there, watching me walk away. Honestly, I hated this kind of situation. Was it a compliment that he was checking me out, or was it a potentially dangerous situation? My instinct told me to speed up the pace of my walk.

As I turned the corner to make my exit, the lights came fully on. I glanced around as nonchalantly as I could to see where he was. I didn’t see him anywhere. I sighed a sigh of relief and let down my guard. I saw Trey’s Ford Ranger about a fourth of the way down the parking lot. My chariot awaits me, I thought. I went to step off the curb, and I heard my name being called.

“Lexie,” he said.

I snapped my head to the left, where the voice came from. I had that heightened sense of awareness that overtakes everything else going on in your mind. I could see only a silhouette ten feet away. I’m safe, I told myself. It’s okay to find out who it is. I waited in the light of the entryway to the building like my parents both told me to do. Still, I clutched my purse closer to me.

As he began walking toward me, his image became clearer. He looked familiar. I scrunched my eyes together the way people do when they’re trying to place someone they know they should know but can’t recall where or how they know them. My pulse elevated; my breathing quickened. God, who was he?

He let me take him in—his height, his build, his eyes. I just couldn’t place him.

“It’s Justin Cook. My friend Cody and I met you and your friend Shannon up in the Catskills one Fourth of July. Remember?” He had a blank look on his face, as neutral as Switzerland. But he had a defensive posture: hands in his pockets, standing up straight, holding his head even with mine, eyes locked on mine as well.

Oh, my God! Cody and Justin. Jeez. He looked different—bigger. But he still had the same eyes and mouth. He’d gotten over the Justin Bieber haircut, now sporting a typical short and somewhat spiky cut. Not a bad looking guy, really.

“Hey. Oh, my God. What are you doing here?” I asked at the same time I looked over to Trey’s car. I’m safe, I told myself. Trey’s right there.

I don’t feel safe. But I have to look confident, I argued with myself.

“Um, well, I go to school here. You?”

God, of course, he went to school here. “Yeah, me too,” I said. He nodded, however imperceptibly. We stood there looking at each other, with equally blank looks on our faces. Like it was a shootout almost.

“Well, I should go. My boyfriend is waiting for me.” He nodded again, more discernibly this time. I was glad he didn’t say anything more. I didn’t have it in me to think on my feet at that moment. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, but I just wanted to get back to Trey, my safe haven.

I began to walk into the parking lot. I was almost to the car when he yelled, “Hey!” I turned around immediately, which I regretted immediately. Nothing says “Hey, you have the upper hand” like acting like a hungry puppy. But the mistake was made, so I had to finish the conversation with him having the last word. Whatever it was he had to say, I knew I wouldn’t be able to respond back.

“Does your boyfriend know what a tease you can be?” He walked toward me again, slowly and not too far, but enough to scare the hell out of me. Clutching my purse to me didn’t give me the reassurance it did earlier. “Does he know that you have it in you to pound somebody on the head with a rock of the same size?”

Not much to say to that. No, I hadn’t told Trey about that night. Why would I have done that? We’d only been going out for a couple of months.

I stared at him, trying to get a read on what his intentions were. He wasn’t going to let me in on that decision. That was truly his upper hand. All I could do was just turn away from him and jump into the car.

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post Snippet of The Lake Effect first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

52 New Year’s Resolutions

52 Resolutions!

Don’t I sound ambitious? Why limit yourself to just one resolution? We’ve had two years to sit around and take stock of our priorities, our values, our true desires. We’ve reorganized everything from our closets to our closest friends. Finding 52 resolutions should be a piece of cake.

I Get It. 52 Resolutions. 52 Weeks in a Year

Did you automatically think, “Hmm? 52 resolutions. 52 weeks in a year….I bet she’s doing one resolution a week until the end of the year!”

You’re so smart, my fellow readers.

But that’s not quite what I’m doing. But you’re close.

When You’re not Writing You Should be Reading. 

They say writers should write every day. They also say that when you’re not writing you should be reading….and reading books that are outside what you normally read. Reading books that are in different genres that you write in. Reading nonfiction when you usually read and/or write fiction. The point is to challenge yourself not just as a reader but as a writer. Typically, I think writers are natural life learners. They read to be informed as well as to be entertained, so it only makes sense that writers are voracious readers too.

So, with that being said, I ran across a Facebook post from The 52 Book Club. They sponsor an annual reading challenge by providing 52 different reading prompts for their readers. Participants are to find 52 different books to read, one for each prompt. Ideally, you would read one book per week. The challenge starts on January 1 and runs through December 31 of that same year.

So, I signed up! And of course, there’s a Facebook page for the group so that we have the opportunity to post the books we’ve read throughout the year.

I was very excited about this challenge. I mean, it’s just a way to make ourselves accountable to “something”. This isn’t a college course or anything, right? No pressure.

Well, here’s a sneak peek at some of the prompts for 2022:A second-person narrativeFeaturing a library or bookstoreTitle starting with the letter “E”A five-syllable titleA book that has an alternate titleAn unlikely detective

Hmm, I may be in over my head with some of the prompts. But thankfully, the website gives helpful hints and tips to making a book selection.

It’s meant to be a challenge, right?

I think I’ll need moral support for this challenge.

Who’s with me? We can do this together!

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

The post 52 New Year’s Resolutions first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.

The Top 100 Christmas Movies Based on a Book

When I think of Christmas movies, I think of It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol (so many versions to pick from!) or even Die Hard (I didn’t know this was a book first) but when I Googled the top 100 Christmas movies adapted from a book, I was surprised to see movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night (a 1984 horror movie), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999 Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman movie. I guess it takes place during Christmas and is thought by some critics as an anti-spiritual holiday movie. Um. Yeah. Whatever.)

Variety is the Christmas Spice

I think what struck me the most about the list was the variety of movies listed. I initially thought of sappy Hallmark or Lifetime Christmas movies. You know the type…has-been actors and actresses paired up with up-and-coming starlets and handsome pretty-boys with cookie-cutter plot lines that, nevertheless, pull us in from the first hot chocolate the characters spill all over themselves as they fall in love with each other at the same moment.

A heavy sigh.

Honestly, what else could you possibly want to watch while wrapping your Christmas gifts?

Here’s a peek at some of the flicks that made the list (in no particular order):

Silent Night, Deadly Night (horror)

Christmas Story (my fave)

A Flinstone Christmas Carol

A Midnight Clear (a war movie)

March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934 Laurel and Hardy flick)

Babes of Toyland (fantasy)

Black Nativity

Christmas Holiday (1944 film-noire)

Christmas with Tucker (a boy and his dog)

Die Hard

Eyes Wide Shut

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Yay! Ron Howard film)

It’s a Wonderful Life

The Polar Express

As usual, I have attached a link to the website so you can peruse the list for yourself here.

It’s all about the discussions, my fellow readers.

Till next time.

Ruth

 

 

The post The Top 100 Christmas Movies Based on a Book first appeared on The Lake Effect Book.