Meredith R. Stoddard's Blog

A Fine Layer of Dust

I was recently blessed with an ARC of Barbara Conrey’s latest novel, A Fine Layer of Dust, and I was not prepared.

Full disclosure: Barbara is a friend, and an all-around wonderful person. However, she is also an auto-buy author for reasons that I will get into below.

Review

In all of her books, Conrey has a knack for reaching deep inside people and finding those complex emotions that we usually only like to talk about with our therapists, scooping them out and exposing them to the light. Her books absolutely gut me on an emotional level, but she never fails to offer hope in the end. A Fine Layer of Dust is no different.

Jake Trenton is a man who has invested a lot in meeting other people’s expectations: the senior partners in his law firm, his father’s, and his family’s. But due to past abuse and trauma, he feels like his efforts are never enough. When his wife decides to become a surrogate to help a couple unable to have a child themselves, her selflessness and the disruption it creates in their lives puts Jake into a tailspin. Jake struggles professionally. His relationship with their teenage daughter starts to fall apart, and he doesn’t know how to steer things back on course. Overwhelmed by it all, Jake makes a bad choice that threatens to blow up everything he’s been working so hard to maintain.

Conrey explores the complex emotions around surrogacy including Jake’s wife, Sophia’s reasons for offering to carry another couple’s child and the complications that can arise within families who turn to surrogates to have children. I have friends who have had children via surrogates and it is not a topic that gets explored on this level often. This book gives a thorough glimpse into the process and the emotional impact.

Over all of this like a ‘fine layer of dust’ (see what I did there) lies the residue of Jake’s own childhood trauma and his father’s ongoing emotional abuse. This is much of what drives Jake’s professional ambition, and the way he sees himself. But once his life gets upended, Jake is forced to examine how he has allowed this trauma to rule him, and what he can do to heal from it.

A Fine Layer of Dust is a heart-wrenching tale about the generational consequences of abuse. It is a stark, but hopeful reminder that breaking the cycle of abuse is a lifelong process which Jake Trenton learns the hard way. Conrey has done it again. She has pulled our darkest feelings from those hidden places inside us and exposed them to a healing light.

A Fine Layer of Dust is available now. You can get your copy here. And find more information about Barbara and her books on her website.

Preorders are open!

Cover Reveal

I like to design my own book covers. There are many reasons for this, but first among them is being able to use a lot of symbolism in the covers. This one is no exception. 

It begins with the background. We have a saying in North Carolina. "If God's not a Tar Heel, then why is the sky Carolina blue?" Which is why there is plenty of blue sky on this cover. In case the title didn't give it away, this book is set in North Carolina, and is very much rooted in North Carolina.

There are some other important colors on the cover. In addition to the blue sky, there are bright pinks and greens. These are the colors of the house Amy inherits which stands out against the muted colors of the houses in the historic district, "like a sinner in the front pew". Those bright colors were not unheard of for Victorian-era houses, but a lot of them have faded or been repainted to fit in with the white Georgian and colonial houses in the South. Not this house though.

The blooms on the cover are crepe myrtles (Or crape myrtles. Either is correct, but I prefer the other because the flowers are as thin as crepe paper.), because the street Amy's inherited house is on, Myrtle Avenue, is lined with crepe myrtles, and they even hold a street festival when the myrtles are in full bloom.

This book is almost ready to hit your virtual bookshelves. If you want it delivered straight to your ereader on launch day, you can preorder your copy now. 

Preorder Now

What is Tar Heel Pie?

I get this question whenever I mention my current work in progress. The simple answer is that it is a type of pie that starts with that Southern classic, pecan pie and adds chocolate. Imagine if pecan pie and brownies had a baby. It’s incredibly sweet, a little dark, and a bit nutty. (I may have just found the tag line for this book.) That’s what Tar Heel Pie is to the rest of the world, or at least the part that knows what tar heels are.

To me, Tar Heel Pie is the novel that I wrote in 2019 and have been inching my way through revising ever since. If you’re a fan of Sweet Magnolias and other small town stories, you’re going to love Haverhill, North Carolina. And if you like the snarky, inner conflict of Fleabag, then you’re going to like Amy Monroe’s inner voice.

Amy Monroe, who Once & Future readers know from that series, is a character in need of some redemption. She carries around a lot of guilt from the events of The River Maiden and while Sarah has forgiven her, Amy hasn’t exactly forgiven herself. Tar Heel Pie is Amy Monroe’s redemption arc, but it’s also more than that.

In the course of learning to forgive and trust herself again. Amy also struggles with something that I think a lot of us from small communities in the South struggle with; reconciling her very modern beliefs and attitudes with those of the small community that she comes from. Amy is happily single and focused on her career, but when she returns to her hometown of Haverhill, North Carolina everyone wants to know when she will settle down and have kids. She’s rootless and travels almost constantly for work, but she is confronted with her family’s longstanding roots in the community. She has deconstructed her faith, but she is asked to help with her family’s floundering church.

I think a lot of us who grew up in small communities in the South struggle with the generational push and pull of needing to be part of the world in the early part of the twenty-first century while still appreciating and honoring some of the things we love about the communities we grew up in. We also struggle with getting those communities to recognize and leave behind some of the less desirable aspects of Southern small town life.

I’m hoping that in the traditions of Phoebe Waller Bridge and Amy Sherman Palladino, I can use humor to help us look at these difficult topics in a way that points out everyone’s foibles while also giving them grace.

For a sneak peek at the blurb and Chapter 1, Click here.

My gift to you for Banned Books Week

It’s Banned Books Week, and this seems like the perfect occasion to revive my much neglected blog.

As an author, I have celebrated Banned Books Week before. And by celebrated, I mean I have posted about the slippery slope of censorship and book banning. This year, Banned Books Week feels a bit different, and unless you live under a rock, you probably can tell why. All over the United States school boards, concerned parents, and conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty have been locked in battles over what is and isn’t appropriate for kids to read. In Missouri they even staged a book burning.

I happen to live in one of the first communities where the talk of banning and even burning books started. Here in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. It started in 2021 when the conservative majority on our school board voted to remove ‘sexually explicit’ books from our school libraries. Of course, the books they deemed to be ‘sexually explicit’ were almost exclusively books with LGBTQIA+ characters, and in most cases it was just the existence of those characters that made the books explicit. Between the ACLU and parents in our community who showed up in droves to stand up against censorship and for the LGBTQIA+ kids in our community (like mine) we stopped the initial ban.

You see our county and almost every school district in this country already had a protocol for challenging whether books are appropriate for school libraries. If parents think a book is inappropriate, all they have to do is follow the challenge procedure. Enter Jennifer Peterson and a couple of other women in the community. Ms. Peterson has made it her personal mission to challenge books. I’ll give her credit for actually reading the books, but who gave her the right to decide what is appropriate for all the kids in the county. You can read more about Ms. Peterson in this interview she gave to the Washington Post.

So, the concerned parents like Ms. Peterson embraced the challenge protocol, boy did they. In fact they embraced it so much that (per that Washington Post article) one high school librarian estimates that it was an entire full-time job to review all of the challenged books, organize committees to read and comment on them, and produce reports on the committees’ work. A full-time job (I might add) that NO ONE is getting paid for. Unfortunately for Ms. Peterson, that process didn’t result in banning all the books that were challenged. The initial batch of books that were challenged were reviewed by committees, read by multiple volunteers and none of them deemed worthy of being banned from schools. Then after a single meeting with one parent (Peterson, I think) Spotsylvania Schools Superintendent Mark Taylor decided unilaterally to ban 14 books.

Now, I’m a parent. I definitely understand limiting the books our kids read to those that are age appropriate, and there are plenty that I as a parent chose not to let my kids read until I thought they were old enough. I don’t know many parents who don’t do that. However, those decisions were made by our family for our family. I don’t think I have a right to make those decisions for other families.

In our house not only did we encourage our young readers (I use past tense because my kids are old enough to make these choices for themselves now.) to read, but we also encouraged them to talk to us about what they read and what they like to read. When they were very young, we would read the same books to make sure they were appropriate. We were not overly permissive, but we also were willing to let them stretch themselves intellectually as long as they talked to us about anything they had questions about. Sometimes, they would read something for an older audience, and when they got to a part that made them uncomfortable or that they thought was inappropriate THEY would put the book down and say so. Because WE empowered them and gave them the critical thinking tools to make those decisions themselves. It’s also because (And I think this is key) we never shamed them for what they liked to read, and fostered a relationship where they felt comfortable talking with us about what they read.

CLick image to download

I can’t speak to the relationships these ‘concerned’ parents have with their kids. But the fact that they don’t trust their kids to make good choices even when it comes to what they read suggests that their relationships do not foster trust or allow open discussion of the issues that kids may encounter in today’s world without shame or judgement. These parents are afraid that their children might hide what they’re reading, or doing, or who they are from their parents. That’s also where these terrible policies that force teachers to out trans students to their parents come from. That kind of distrust often creates a self-filling cycle. But it starts with parents making their kids ashamed of their interests whether those interests are literary or something else.

I am by no means a perfect parent, but my kids talk to me, and they know they can come to me about anything.

Fortunately, Spotsylvania isn’t being held completely hostage to likes of Mark Taylor and Jennifer Peterson. There are folks here pushing back. The banned books are still available in the library. And one local bookstore, Riverby Books has been leading the charge. They’ve been sharing news of the challenges and of this fall’s school board election. They will also loan Spotsylvania students copies of the books that have been banned.

Here is my little contribution to Banned Books Week. I have made bookmarks of the 14 books banned by the Spotsylvania County Superintendent. I had some printed out back in June and gave them away locally. But here is a downloadable PDF that anyone can print out. there are two versions for color or black and white printing. On one side is the list of books. On the other is a quote from the great, Judy Bloom. Feel free to download, print and share.

And of course, read banned books.

Launchpad Countdown to Writing Your Book

A few months ago, my friends Grace Sammon and Mary Helen Sheriff had the brilliant idea of putting together a book series to help writers through different stages of the process. The first of those books is out today. Launchpad Countdown to Writing Your Book brings together authors, and book coaches sharing their wisdom on researching, world building, writing, and revising your book. I’m so proud to be a part of this project. Below are some details about the book, panel discussions with the contributors and links where you can find more information about it.

Launchpad Countdown to Writing Your Book

Looking for just the right balance of inspiration, skill building, and a toolbox of writing craft tips? 

I have exactly what you need >> LAUNCH PAD: The Countdown to Writing Your Book!

This is a brand new craft book that gives you the literal ‘launch pad’ for your first (or next!) book.

If you’re intimidated by the thought of outlining your novel or creating rich and complex characters, or want to learn the secret to writing a great scene, Launch Pad has you covered!

Each focused chapter of this book brings authors and would-be-authors closer to the creation of a story well told and ready for publication. 

There are even free, downloadable, pdf Top Ten Countdowns for every chapter.

Learn more about Launch Pad: The Countdown to Writing Your Book here >> https://launchpadcountdown.com/ You can buy your copy here or at any online bookseller

Panel DiscussionsDownloadable Countdown tools for each chapter

World Building https://dl.bookfunnel.com/2zwjt53rlx

Finding a Book Coach https://dl.bookfunnel.com/fkm19ybbq8

Research https://dl.bookfunnel.com/kljz1zoy0p

Countdown to Submission https://dl.bookfunnel.com/voh5yuvgpu

Critique Groups https://dl.bookfunnel.com/k2za9us1b2

Character Development https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6bpe78uj52

Suspense in Scenes https://dl.bookfunnel.com/w5agu5i12b

Grammar and Punctuation https://dl.bookfunnel.com/3ofvqltsj3

Outlining a Novel https://dl.bookfunnel.com/guixy4jsd3

Point of View https://dl.bookfunnel.com/bmlenfgzcq

Show and Tell https://dl.bookfunnel.com/qf4hexxbij

Scene Structure https://dl.bookfunnel.com/fdpjla45xm

Author Ride Along - Judy V. Stanigar

I had a great conversation last Friday on Bookish Road Trip’s Author Ride Along. I got to interview Author Judy V. Stanigar about her book Marika’s Best Laid Plan. We had a great time talking about Marika’s journey, and all the things that inspired it. Check it out.

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Introducing Author Talk Network

I am so pleased to be teaming up with 18 other authors to help podcasters, panel hosts, teachers and more find authors to speak, interview or chat with. This is a great group of authors across multiple genres, topics, and publishing experiences who are ready to talk.

Click here for more info.

Book 5 Update

Woo! I have been a busy bee for the past few months. If you’ve been reading my newsletter, you’ve seen some of what I’ve been up to. But now, I have an update on book 5. I have finished the pre-writing plotting/researching, and have started writing. This book is going to have some interesting twists and turns. There will be some magic, mysteries, and plenty of big emotions. We’ll get to hear a character’s perspective that we haven’t seen before. And I promise, we WILL find out who Dermot’s father is.

I can’t give an exact date when the book will be released, but it will definitely happen next year. If you want to track my progress, you can always check the status on my Project Pipeline page.

In the meantime, here’s a little trailer to tease you.

Settings Tour - Assynt

In our last post, we followed our fiction team of folklorists through the Highlands and Islands. This time we’re going to take a deep dive into the Once & Future Series sites in Assynt. Come with me as we explore this beautiful part of Scotland in poetry, film, and photos. Assynt is where Sarah gets to meet her people and learns more about what happened to her mother. It’s also where the proverbial excrement hits the fan on keeping her relationship with James Stuart private.

Why Assynt? Why couldn’t the People of the Footprint live in Orkney or Skye, or somewhere else that folks might be more familiar with? It’s the fact that until the North Coast 500 became a thing, Assynt was mainly a spot for hillwalkers and fishermen. The Children of the Footprint couldn’t have stayed hidden for very long near popular tourist sites. Another reason why I chose Assynt for the location of Sarah’s people is the Bone Caves which we’ll get to shortly. And finally, the legend of the Mermaid of Loch Assynt dovetailed so nicely with the story in the song “The River Maiden” that I had to pick this area.

This part of Scotland, like much of the Highlands, is dominated by two forces; geology and the sea. The Moine Thrust pushes the mountains skyward creating dramatic peaks and deep ravines where two tectonic plates meet. The geological formation is so clearly visible in Assynt that it gave one geologist nightmares about being ground in between the shifting plates. While the mountains dominate the land, the sea carves a dramatic coastline of deep sea lochs, gorgeous beaches with crystal clear water, and rock formations like sea stacks.

I couldn’t describe this area in better words than Scottish poet, Norman McCaig. Here is an excerpt from his poem “A Man in Assynt”

A Man in Assynt - Norman McCaig

Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
and left, on the hard rock below –
the ruffled foreland –
this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air –
Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp –
a frieze and
a litany.

Who owns this landscape?
Has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human
we even have quarrels. –
When I intrude too confidently
it rebuffs me with a wind like a hand
or puts in my way
a quaking bog or loch
where no loch should be. Or I turn stonily
away, refusing to notice
the rouged rocks, the mascara
under a dripping ledge, even
the tossed, the stony limbs waiting.

More of this beautiful poem at the Scottish Poetry Library.

Let’s start out with some real-world places that you can visit if you ever find yourself in the northwest of Scotland.

Lochinver (Loch an Inbhir)

The village borders the sea loch at the mouth of the River Inver which flows from Loch Assynt to the sea. It’s the second-largest fishing port in Scotland and is also popular among hobby fishermen. There are many hiking trails in the area nearby, and Suilven, the mountain that overlooks the village is popular with mountain climbers. Lochinver is also near other attractions such as Ardvreck Castle, Achmelvich Beach, and Clachtoll Broch.

The view from Tigh na sith Guesthouse.

In the Once & Future series, Lochinver is the team’s base of operations in Thrice to Thine when Sarah goes to visit her great aunt Eilidh MacLeod. The team visits the Youth Hostel, the Village Hall, and a waterfront pub. All of these buildings can be found in Lochinver, although the pub where I met the man who inspired the older incarnation of Rab Ballantyne is now closed. Lochinver is definitely worth a visit.

You can see more of Lochinver and the area around it in the charming and uplifting film Edie. It’s about a widow who decides to climb Suilven against the advice of almost everyone.

Ardvreck Castle (Caisteal Aird Bhreac)

Between Inchnadamph and Lochinver on the A837 is one of Scotland’s most picturesque castle ruins. Ardvreck Castle sits on a spit of land that juts into Loch Assynt. The 15th century castle commands a strategic view of the land and loch surrounding it. It was built by the MacLeod’s around 1490, and is the setting of a tragic legend about the daughter of the MacLeod chief. The legend goes that the MacLeod was impatient to finish building the castle and made a deal with the devil. In exchange for helping them complete the castle, the MacLeod promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to Satan himself. But when the time came, his daughter Eimhir couldn’t bear the prospect of marrying the devil. She jumped from the castle’s tower into the loch. Instead of drowning, she turned into a mermaid and lived on in the loch, and in the underwater caves in the area.

This legend becomes important in the Once & Future series. The rise and fall of the water in the caves is essential for the matching ceremony in Nothing Good Gets Away. The castle is also an important site in Cauldron as Sarah’s mother, Molly and Rab Ballantyne meet up to escape the pressures of Làrachd an Fhamhair.

You can read a more detailed history of the castle here.

Inchnadamph (Innis na Damh)

Inchnadamph is the small village at the southeastern end of Loch Assynt where the Inchnadamph River spills into the loch. It consists of several houses, a couple of hotels, and a historic kirk on the shore of the loch. The Gaelic name, Innis na Damh means “meadow of the stags”. The meadow uphill from the village is well known for its popularity as a grazing spot for deer. I can attest that while hiking through the area, we saw no less than four. Inchnadamph is also known as a great place to view the Moine Thrust, a meeting of tectonic plates that causes one plate to be pushed upward by the other. It runs from the Northwest Highlands to the Isle of Skye and has an interesting tie-in with the legend of the mermaid. You can read about it in my post “The Mermaid and the Moine Thrust”.

red deer uphill from Inchnadamph

Inchnadamph Bone Caves

Inchnadamph is also the closest village to the Bone Caves. In the 1990’s people exploring the caves in the mountains around Inchnadamph found caves full of a variety of bones of animals and humans dating back to the 3rd millennium BCE. These are some of the oldest and the widest variety of bones found in Scotland. Hikers can go to the caves via a trail that starts at the car park in Inchnadamph, but the trail can get steep.

The age of the bones found in the caves is one of the reasons I decided that Assynt would be an ideal location for an ancient tribe of people to hide from modern society. The Children of the Footprint who live in Làrachd an Fhamhair could have been there as long as those bones were in that cave. The extensive cave systems in the area are also the inspiration for the caves that Sarah, Dermot and Ruaraidh use to escape in Thrice to Thine.

Those are the real-life places in Assynt that appear in the Once & Future Series. Now, let’s talk about a couple of fictional places.

Làrachd an Fhamhair (Giant’s Footprint)

The hidden village where Sarah’s people lived for thousands of years is in an uninhabited glen in the mountains to the east of Inchnadamph. As described in Cauldron, the village is built on the sides of a stream or burn. It’s houses are made of stone and are built into the sides of the mountains with turf roofs. This is what enabled them to stay hidden for so long. Even from the air, it wouldn’t be noticeable. While Làrachd an Fhamhair is entirely fictional, it follows a tradition of hidden, cursed, or disappearing villages in Scotland most familiar to readers in the guise of Brigadoon.

Taigh na Damh (House of the Stags)

Taigh na Damh is the country estate of Lyall Green that we visit in Nothing Good Gets Away. Although the house looks like a castle, Green had it built after the collapse of Làrachd an Fhamhair in the late 1960’s. Here is a tour of a modern built castle replica that can give you an idea of what the inside of Taigh na Damh looks like. Green also makes use of some adjoining caves for the storage of his extensive collection of artifacts including the cauldron.

Next time, we’ll take a tour of Sarah’s favorite haunts in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the meantime, here are some more of my husband’s photos from our trip to Assynt.

Settings Tour - Highlands & Islands

Although, the Once & Future Series is fantasy, there are some very real places that play an important part in the story. These are places that you as the reader can even visit. So, we’re going to go on a little tour of those places and talk about their history and how they relate to Sarah and Dermot’s story.

In the last post, we walked through Sarah and Dermot’s shoes in Edinburgh. This time, we’re going to trace the steps of their Preservation Scotland Research Trip through the Highlands and Western Isles. This trip occurs in Thrice to Thine, Once & Future Book 3, when Sarah, Dermot, Jujhar, Isla, Ewan and Kirstie travel from place to place gathering stories, songs, and viewing the crafts of locals.

Highland Folk Museum

The research trip kicks off at the Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore. This is a living museum that includes a collection of authentic buildings in various styles of vernacular architecture, as well as collections of agricultural and domestic tools, crafts, arts, and textiles. The mission of the museum is to preserve the Highland way of life that the museum’s founders saw disappearing as industrialization and modernization took over. It does this job so well that the museum’s black house village was used to film an episode of Outlander. Series fans will recognize the museum’s buildings in the “Rent” episode of season 1, which treated viewers to many facets of everyday Highland life.

Note: If you can’t make it to Scotland, we have living museums here in the U.S. Click here for a list.Inverness

The next stop on our tour is Inverness, the bustling capital of the Highlands. Inverness sits at the mouth of the River Ness, which runs through the city. in fact the Gaelic name for the city Inbhir Nis means ‘mouth of the Ness’. That word inbhir occurs a lot in place names in the Highlands, and we’ll hear it again a couple fo times in the course of our tour. It’s location at one end of Scotland’s Great Glen makes Inverness a good base for exploring the Highlands. It is in easy driving distance to such sites as Loch Ness, the Culloden Battlefield, and Eillean Donan Castle among others.

Inverness is a setting in both Cauldron and Thrice to Thine. This is the city where Molly and Duff stay after they are exiled from Larachd an Fhamhair. In Thrice to Thine, this is a stop on the research tour. The most significant site of Once & Future readers is the bench in front of Inverness Castle where Molly and Rab Ballantyne planned to meet. Molly waits for Rab for months, and Sarah remembers the bench as the last place where her mother had hope. If you visit the castle, you can sit on the bench and enjoy a great view of the river running by, and the rabbits that live on the bank of the river.

Skye

The next stop for the research team is the Isle of Skye. Skye is the largest of the islands known as the Inner Hebrides, and is the closest to the mainland. In fact you can drive there via the Skye Bridge over the Kyle of Lochalsh. There are also ferries connecting Skye to the mainland and other islands. Because of its easy access from the mainland and stunning views of mountains and sea, Skye is an extremely popular tourist destination. Some of it’s most famous sites are the Fairy Pools, Fairy Glen, the Old Man of Storr and the Quaraing. Skye is also the home to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College.

In Thrice to Thine, Sarah and Dermot make a stop at Dunvegan Castle which lies on the northwest coast of Skye. It is the seat of the MacLeod clan. Dunvegan is famous for its gardens and for being the home of the Fairy Flag. This ‘flag’ is a piece of cloth that is said to be a gift from the fairies meant to protect the MacLeod Clan. Some accounts are that the flag was given to them when a fairy married the clan chief. Hence the legend that the MacLeod’s have fairy blood.

Note: The MacLeod Clan of Skye and Lewis take their name Leod whose descendants split into two factions. One faction, Siol Tormod who remained in control of the MacLeod lands in the Western Isles, and Siol Torquil who settled in Assynt. Stornoway

Next, the research team takes the ferry over the Isle of Lewis. Lewis is the largest island in the Outer Hebrides and Stornoway is its largest town. The Isle of Lewis is famous for the stone circle at Callanish and for the Lewis Chessmen, a collection of ancient carved chess pieces that were discovered there. Stornoway is also known for its black pudding, a sausage made of beef suet, oatmeal, seasonings and blood that is a staple in traditional Scottish breakfasts.

 Note: For more fiction about the Isle of Lewis, check out Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy. Ullapool

The research team leaves Stornoway by ferry to the port town of Ullapool on the shores of Loch Broom, a sea loch at the mouth of the Ullapool River. As the location of the ferry, Ullapool is an important town connecting the mainland with the Western Isles and is one of the largest towns in the northwest Highlands. It is also an important cultural hub hosting an annual book festival as well as multiple music festivals.

Ullapool is significant in the Once & Future Series for a couple of reasons. In Cauldron it is the site of Molly MacAlpin’s flight from the people of Làrachd an Fhamhair. And in Thrice to Thine it is where Sarah first hears of a direct connection to her mother’s family.

That brings us to Assynt, which we will take a closer look at in my next post.