Timothy Best's Blog, page 3
February 16, 2016
NEW NOVEL COMING IN MAY!
I'm happy to announce that my new novel from TouchPoint Press entitled, A Farm In Pennsylvania, now has a tentative release date of May, 2016. This will be my third novel in three years for this wonderful publisher and I’m so extraordinarily grateful to Sheri Williams, Colbie Myles and Ashley Carlson at TouchPoint for their continued support and belief in my work
A Farm In Pennsylvania is my first historical novel. It’s set in Gettysburg in 1863 and it’s also my first full bore romance. My two previous books, Substitute Angel, and its follow-up, The Intended Ones, were certainly love stories, but they were also steeped in spiritual overtones. Not so for the new book. It’s a love story simply for the sake of romance not to mention my ongoing fascination with American history.
It’s the story of young farmer from Ohio named John Dorian who comes to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, just five weeks after the infamous battle that took place there. He comes to town where thousands of wounded soldiers still are hoping to find information about his brother who was serving in the Union army and was declared missing after the battle. Finding no accommodations in town, he winds up staying on the farm of a lonely Hispanic woman named Maria Angelina Alvarez Samuels whose husband is also off with the Union army and has been gone for two years.
As you might imagine, sparks fly between John and Maria that ignites into a love affair with all sorts of accelerating developments that will keep you turning the pages right up to the day that Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg address in the final chapter.
There are so many things I love about this particular novel. I love that there are thousands of books that have been written about Gettysburg, but none or very few that have been set in the aftermath of the battle. I love that it’s a love story that defies convention. I love that my heroine is a person of color. I love how the novel interweaves fiction with fact. I even loved the research the book required.
Among other things, that research revealed how much our language has changed in the past century-and-a-half. As you know, language is a living, breathing thing. It’s always changing with the times. The way we speak today isn’t the way people spoke back in the 1860’s. Language back then was more formal in many circles. Contractions were used but nowhere nearly as much as today. Several common words we still use today were also spelled differently. Consequently, it was a challenge to set the right tone for the dialogue. On the one hand, I wanted to be true to way people spoke in the 1860’s. On the other, if the language was too formal, or used expressions of the day no longer used, you, as the reader, might feel too removed from the period the characters inhabit and therefore feel no empathy. So a balance had to be struck.
There’s a new series on PBS called Mercy Street. It’s basically a soap opera that takes place in a hospital for wounded soldiers in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1861. Ridley Scott’s production company does the show so the production values are first rate. But I find myself occasionally smiling at the dialogue and how the writers infuse modern language to explain things. For example, there was a scene in one episode where a soldier was describing another by saying: “He doesn’t play well with others.” Ah, no. Nobody said that in the 1860’s. But when an hour-long series only has 51 minutes, I guess you’ve got to move the story along and the occasional modern phrase accommodates that.
Anyway, as soon as I have an exact release date and cover art to share for A Farm In Pennsylvania, I’ll pass it along. Meantime, please make a mental note to add it to summer reading list. And as always, thank you!
BTW, if you have a question about any of my writing, you can either ask it here on Facebook or through my blog at Goodreads.com. I’d love to hear from you!
A Farm In Pennsylvania is my first historical novel. It’s set in Gettysburg in 1863 and it’s also my first full bore romance. My two previous books, Substitute Angel, and its follow-up, The Intended Ones, were certainly love stories, but they were also steeped in spiritual overtones. Not so for the new book. It’s a love story simply for the sake of romance not to mention my ongoing fascination with American history.
It’s the story of young farmer from Ohio named John Dorian who comes to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, just five weeks after the infamous battle that took place there. He comes to town where thousands of wounded soldiers still are hoping to find information about his brother who was serving in the Union army and was declared missing after the battle. Finding no accommodations in town, he winds up staying on the farm of a lonely Hispanic woman named Maria Angelina Alvarez Samuels whose husband is also off with the Union army and has been gone for two years.
As you might imagine, sparks fly between John and Maria that ignites into a love affair with all sorts of accelerating developments that will keep you turning the pages right up to the day that Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg address in the final chapter.
There are so many things I love about this particular novel. I love that there are thousands of books that have been written about Gettysburg, but none or very few that have been set in the aftermath of the battle. I love that it’s a love story that defies convention. I love that my heroine is a person of color. I love how the novel interweaves fiction with fact. I even loved the research the book required.
Among other things, that research revealed how much our language has changed in the past century-and-a-half. As you know, language is a living, breathing thing. It’s always changing with the times. The way we speak today isn’t the way people spoke back in the 1860’s. Language back then was more formal in many circles. Contractions were used but nowhere nearly as much as today. Several common words we still use today were also spelled differently. Consequently, it was a challenge to set the right tone for the dialogue. On the one hand, I wanted to be true to way people spoke in the 1860’s. On the other, if the language was too formal, or used expressions of the day no longer used, you, as the reader, might feel too removed from the period the characters inhabit and therefore feel no empathy. So a balance had to be struck.
There’s a new series on PBS called Mercy Street. It’s basically a soap opera that takes place in a hospital for wounded soldiers in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1861. Ridley Scott’s production company does the show so the production values are first rate. But I find myself occasionally smiling at the dialogue and how the writers infuse modern language to explain things. For example, there was a scene in one episode where a soldier was describing another by saying: “He doesn’t play well with others.” Ah, no. Nobody said that in the 1860’s. But when an hour-long series only has 51 minutes, I guess you’ve got to move the story along and the occasional modern phrase accommodates that.
Anyway, as soon as I have an exact release date and cover art to share for A Farm In Pennsylvania, I’ll pass it along. Meantime, please make a mental note to add it to summer reading list. And as always, thank you!
BTW, if you have a question about any of my writing, you can either ask it here on Facebook or through my blog at Goodreads.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Published on February 16, 2016 15:14
December 15, 2015
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Happy Holidays, everyone!
I really wanted this blog to be about announcing the release date of my latest novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania. But alas, I don’t have the date yet. My publisher and I are still working out a couple of contractual details, so consequently, there’s no release date. Funny, I didn’t think demanding a limo to my signings and having a bowl of M&M’s at the author’s table with only red M&M’s was such a big deal. Geez!
Actually, my wonderful publisher is just busy. The contract will be signed and the release date will happen in due time. In the interim, I have a tentative agreement to have artist Duncan Long do the cover. Duncan is a brilliant illustrator who has done many book covers and I’m very excited about working with him. You can check out his incredible work at duncanlong.com.
Well, until the contract is nailed down for A Farm In Pennsylvania, please remember that my previous novels, Substitute Angel, and its follow-up, The Intended Ones, make excellent holiday gifts. Perhaps especially Substitute Angel since the bulk of the story takes place between December 1st and December 24th in snowy northern Michigan. In fact, as I’ve written before, the holiday film, It’s A Wonderful Life, partly inspired the award-winning Substitute Angel. You can order it on Amazon, or through Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, pretty much any book retailer.
In my last blog, I reported that I was on Chapter 17 of my latest novel-in-development entitled, The Thing With Margot. Well, that’s up to Chapter 32 now. I’m definitely in the final act of the piece and am really excited to see how things are going to turn out. I mean, I “know” how it’s going to end, but somewhere in between doing an outline and the actual writing, manuscripts have a tendency to take on life of their own. That’s part of what makes writing so fun. The exploration of how things are going to go.
And speaking of exploration, have you checked out the new documentary on Netflix entitled Deepsea Challenge? If you haven’t, do so! It’s the story of how filmmaker James Cameron now holds the record of diving deeper in the ocean than any other human being in a submarine that he helped design and engineer. Is this a guy who is really a scientist and he just so happens to make blockbuster movies on the side? Or a director whose great success has allowed him launch a second career as a scientist?
Uh, yes, to both. Very inspiring!
I really wanted this blog to be about announcing the release date of my latest novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania. But alas, I don’t have the date yet. My publisher and I are still working out a couple of contractual details, so consequently, there’s no release date. Funny, I didn’t think demanding a limo to my signings and having a bowl of M&M’s at the author’s table with only red M&M’s was such a big deal. Geez!
Actually, my wonderful publisher is just busy. The contract will be signed and the release date will happen in due time. In the interim, I have a tentative agreement to have artist Duncan Long do the cover. Duncan is a brilliant illustrator who has done many book covers and I’m very excited about working with him. You can check out his incredible work at duncanlong.com.
Well, until the contract is nailed down for A Farm In Pennsylvania, please remember that my previous novels, Substitute Angel, and its follow-up, The Intended Ones, make excellent holiday gifts. Perhaps especially Substitute Angel since the bulk of the story takes place between December 1st and December 24th in snowy northern Michigan. In fact, as I’ve written before, the holiday film, It’s A Wonderful Life, partly inspired the award-winning Substitute Angel. You can order it on Amazon, or through Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, pretty much any book retailer.
In my last blog, I reported that I was on Chapter 17 of my latest novel-in-development entitled, The Thing With Margot. Well, that’s up to Chapter 32 now. I’m definitely in the final act of the piece and am really excited to see how things are going to turn out. I mean, I “know” how it’s going to end, but somewhere in between doing an outline and the actual writing, manuscripts have a tendency to take on life of their own. That’s part of what makes writing so fun. The exploration of how things are going to go.
And speaking of exploration, have you checked out the new documentary on Netflix entitled Deepsea Challenge? If you haven’t, do so! It’s the story of how filmmaker James Cameron now holds the record of diving deeper in the ocean than any other human being in a submarine that he helped design and engineer. Is this a guy who is really a scientist and he just so happens to make blockbuster movies on the side? Or a director whose great success has allowed him launch a second career as a scientist?
Uh, yes, to both. Very inspiring!
Published on December 15, 2015 08:27
September 2, 2015
Visit Me At The Barnes & Noble Southern Writer's Festival
I hope everyone had a nice summer. Mine was really, really busy but still fun. My daughter and I saw the Stones in Nashville. Way cool! Got to visit with family in Michigan. Even cooler! And we just got back from a nice vacation in the Florida keys where I visited Ernest Hemingway’s house. The six-toed cats that inhabit the place were pretty fascinating. But that wasn’t the high point of the trip. The high point, literally, was taking a helicopter tour around Key West and seeing shipwrecks, sharks and stingrays in the clear, turquoise water. That was amazing!
I’ve been writing a bunch this summer. I’m now seventeen chapters into my new novel, The Thing With Margo. As I’ve written before, it’s the story of a college professor who falls for a Disneyesque girl-next-door type, not realizing she’s a deadly assassin for a foreign government. It’s very funny and sexy! My wife, Robin, is a particular fan of the project. But first, we're anxiously looking forward to the release of A Farm In Pennsylvania. Although I don't have a specific release date yet from my publisher, we're hoping it'll be out later this year. If you love romance and history, particularly in a Civil War setting, prepare to be swept away!
Meantime, my current novel in bookstores, The Intended Ones, just received a 4-Star rating from In D'Tale Magazine, an online publication tailored to the romance enthusiast. Thanks so much to the folks at In D'Tale!
Matter of fact, I'll be signing copies of The Intended Ones in Birmingham, AL, on Sunday, September, 13, at the Barnes & Noble located in the Summit Mall. It's part of their 2015 Fall Southern Writer's Festival and I'm pleased to be a participant. So, if you're in the area, please stop by. I'd love to see you!
I haven’t JUST been working on the new novel though, I’ve also been writing for B-Metro, which is the popular lifestyle magazine here in Birmingham. In fact, I’ve got an article in the their current issue. Here’s a link to the story that I hope you check out:
http://b-metro.com/livetwice/22426/
Well, that's it for now. Let's see, did I drop enough titles? The Intended Ones, currently available. A Farm In Pennsylvania, coming soon. And, The Thing With Margot, still in progress. Yep. That covers it.
As always, my deep thanks for taking the time to check out the blog. Happy reading!
I’ve been writing a bunch this summer. I’m now seventeen chapters into my new novel, The Thing With Margo. As I’ve written before, it’s the story of a college professor who falls for a Disneyesque girl-next-door type, not realizing she’s a deadly assassin for a foreign government. It’s very funny and sexy! My wife, Robin, is a particular fan of the project. But first, we're anxiously looking forward to the release of A Farm In Pennsylvania. Although I don't have a specific release date yet from my publisher, we're hoping it'll be out later this year. If you love romance and history, particularly in a Civil War setting, prepare to be swept away!
Meantime, my current novel in bookstores, The Intended Ones, just received a 4-Star rating from In D'Tale Magazine, an online publication tailored to the romance enthusiast. Thanks so much to the folks at In D'Tale!
Matter of fact, I'll be signing copies of The Intended Ones in Birmingham, AL, on Sunday, September, 13, at the Barnes & Noble located in the Summit Mall. It's part of their 2015 Fall Southern Writer's Festival and I'm pleased to be a participant. So, if you're in the area, please stop by. I'd love to see you!
I haven’t JUST been working on the new novel though, I’ve also been writing for B-Metro, which is the popular lifestyle magazine here in Birmingham. In fact, I’ve got an article in the their current issue. Here’s a link to the story that I hope you check out:
http://b-metro.com/livetwice/22426/
Well, that's it for now. Let's see, did I drop enough titles? The Intended Ones, currently available. A Farm In Pennsylvania, coming soon. And, The Thing With Margot, still in progress. Yep. That covers it.
As always, my deep thanks for taking the time to check out the blog. Happy reading!
Published on September 02, 2015 09:07
June 10, 2015
SUMMER SIGNINGS, MUSIC & FREE SAMPLES
Happy summer, everyone! I hope you get to spend some of it by cool blue water with sunscreen and sand. My family and I are going to wind up in the Florida Keys before summer’s over, but first, there’s some book business to tend to.
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be doing a book signing and reading excerpts from The Intended Ones at Theresa’s Angels, a fabulous book & gift store, in Brooklyn, Michigan, on Friday, June 19th, from 10 a.m. to noon. If you’re in the vicinity, please come! I did a signing and reading at Theresa’s Angel’s last September, and it’s a wonderful place to grab a sandwich, get a special gift, and buy a book. I’m also working on dates for a signing with Horizon Books in Traverse City, Michigan. That’ll probably be toward the end of August. Stay tuned for a firm date.
Meanwhile, members of Goodreads can now enjoy free previews of both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones by merely hitting the “Preview” icon when you click on either book. Unlike Amazon, that gives you only a few pages to sample, you get three to four chapters on Goodreads, which gives you a much better opportunity to get into the story. So please, check it out!
Summer to me means puttering around in my back yard with ear buds and listening to new music. Well, some of it may not be new, but it’s new to me. I’d certainly recommend a band called The Grip Weeds. They’ve got a million songs on YouTube and are a lot of fun. You might also want to check out David Crosby’s latest solo effort, “Croz.” Yeah, I know, David’s about 200-years old, but he writes and sings songs of substance and his voice is stronger than ever. Then, just to get in touch with your youth, go back and listen to Marshall Crenshaw’s LP, “Field Day.” Speaking of music, I’m taking my daughter to The Rolling Stones in Nashville next week. She’s very excited. I saw ‘em in ’72, at Cobo Hall in Detroit. But I have to admit, it’ll be a kick to get my ya-yas out one more time.
Getting back to the writing for a moment, the next novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania, should be out later this year. I don’t have a firm release date yet. But as soon as I know, you’ll know. Also, thanks to a computer virus, I lost the first six chapters of my brand new novel, The Thing About Margot. I had to rewrite them from memory. But, oddly enough, I think the story’s a little better for the do over. With luck, Margot should be out in 2016.
I just read the other day that a lot of Americans aren’t taking summer vacations anymore. I hope you’re not one of them. It’s important to break from routine, go explore, and be kind to yourself. But if you simply can’t go on vacation, for whatever reason, then at least take a journey in a good book. As an old friend of mine once said: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need!”
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be doing a book signing and reading excerpts from The Intended Ones at Theresa’s Angels, a fabulous book & gift store, in Brooklyn, Michigan, on Friday, June 19th, from 10 a.m. to noon. If you’re in the vicinity, please come! I did a signing and reading at Theresa’s Angel’s last September, and it’s a wonderful place to grab a sandwich, get a special gift, and buy a book. I’m also working on dates for a signing with Horizon Books in Traverse City, Michigan. That’ll probably be toward the end of August. Stay tuned for a firm date.
Meanwhile, members of Goodreads can now enjoy free previews of both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones by merely hitting the “Preview” icon when you click on either book. Unlike Amazon, that gives you only a few pages to sample, you get three to four chapters on Goodreads, which gives you a much better opportunity to get into the story. So please, check it out!
Summer to me means puttering around in my back yard with ear buds and listening to new music. Well, some of it may not be new, but it’s new to me. I’d certainly recommend a band called The Grip Weeds. They’ve got a million songs on YouTube and are a lot of fun. You might also want to check out David Crosby’s latest solo effort, “Croz.” Yeah, I know, David’s about 200-years old, but he writes and sings songs of substance and his voice is stronger than ever. Then, just to get in touch with your youth, go back and listen to Marshall Crenshaw’s LP, “Field Day.” Speaking of music, I’m taking my daughter to The Rolling Stones in Nashville next week. She’s very excited. I saw ‘em in ’72, at Cobo Hall in Detroit. But I have to admit, it’ll be a kick to get my ya-yas out one more time.
Getting back to the writing for a moment, the next novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania, should be out later this year. I don’t have a firm release date yet. But as soon as I know, you’ll know. Also, thanks to a computer virus, I lost the first six chapters of my brand new novel, The Thing About Margot. I had to rewrite them from memory. But, oddly enough, I think the story’s a little better for the do over. With luck, Margot should be out in 2016.
I just read the other day that a lot of Americans aren’t taking summer vacations anymore. I hope you’re not one of them. It’s important to break from routine, go explore, and be kind to yourself. But if you simply can’t go on vacation, for whatever reason, then at least take a journey in a good book. As an old friend of mine once said: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need!”
Published on June 10, 2015 05:11
April 16, 2015
LOTS TO SHARE, INCLUDING A FIRST LOOK AT THE NEW NOVEL!
Lots of things to share this month, but first, my heartfelt appreciation to those who have contacted me about my latest novel, The Intended Ones, from TouchPoint Press. Some of you have said it’s the perfect sequel to last year’s Substitute Angel, while a few others have even said you enjoyed the book and totally understood the story without even reading its predecessor. Thank you all! I’m grateful for the positive feedback and encouragement. But I know some of you haven’t posted a review yet on Amazon, so please keep them coming. BTW, I think everyone knows this, but you can read several pages of my books for free on amazon to get a feel for the story. I hope to add free chapter samples on my Goodreads Author Page as well, and will try to have them up in the near future.
Meantime—and speaking of free—attached with this month’s blog is the first chapter of my next book I hope TouchPoint will be releasing entitled, A Farm In Pennsylvania. It’s a historical romance set in 1863, just a few weeks after the battle of Gettysburg. As I’ve written in previous blogs, it was an extremely challenging project. Everything had to be researched from the clothing my characters wore to the location of where things were in Gettysburg back in the day. With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, I hope it will be released by year’s end and that you romantics (like me) out there will get swept up and carried away in its pages.
I’m also happy to report I’m making good progress on my next romance, The Thing About Margot, and that I’ll occasionally be doing some writing for a magazine called B-Metro. It’s "the" lifestyle magazine in the Birmingham area. Check out their site at b-metro.com. My first article for them should appear in the August issue.
Until then, I hope you like the first chapter of A Farm In Pennsylvania. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS BLOG DOESN'T ALLOW FOR PROPER INDENTATION :)
As always, thanks for visiting!
JAMES BICKERS' MOMMA
“James Bickers, CSA,” John Dorian read on a hastily made wooden grave marker, “1844 to 1863.”
Nineteen years of age, he quietly calculated. He looked at the roughly hewn knife scratching that bore the inscription, then down at the long, narrow mound of recently dug earth. The mound seemed too small to contain a whole person. “Does your Momma know what happened to you, James?” he wondered out loud. “Did a friend cry for you?” His green eyes shifted to the next wood plank marker: Matthew McDonald, 1843 to 1863, then to the next, William Gavin Duffy, 1841 to 1863. All of the six grave markers sat about fifteen feet off the main road he’d been traveling on. The markers of varying heights looked like they had been made from the ripped-up floor planks of a wagon; probably a supply wagon. All of them had been planted shallow in the ground. All of them were soldiers from the Confederate States of America. The first good rain to come along would certainly erode the soil holding the markers and then they’d topple. Meaning the poor souls lying beneath them would be lost a second time; lost to the seemingly never ending muddy red current that was America’s first Civil War.
Dorian’s brown leather holster squeaked as he rose from his squatting position. When he did, his nostrils flared once again from that repugnant smell. It was like someone was grilling meat, only it was intermixed with the fouled aroma of burning fur. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the way a steer smelled after being branded back on his father’s farm of Mandalay. But there were also nastier parts to the aroma that he couldn’t quite identify. He knew one thing for sure, though, nobody was cooking. Rather, people were purging; burning and clearing away the destruction that over 160,000 thousand soldiers had reeked over the course of a three-day battle. All the newspapers said the town he was near, Gettysburg, was the worst fighting since the war had begun. Even when he had crossed into Adams County miles earlier, he saw the black smoke, snaking its way above the farming countryside, then becoming thinner and thinner as it weaved toward heaven and a cleaner place than where it had originated.
Spotting a loose rock twice the size of his hand, Dorian picked it up, turned, then struck the top of James Bickers’ wooden marker, pounding it deeper into the ground so he wouldn’t be forgotten. He had to be careful not to hit the edge of the wood too hard for fear it might split. After three good whacks, he repeated the process on the next marker, then the next, until he was interrupted by a voice drenched in a thick foreign accent.
“You are trespassing, sir,” he heard a female voice announce. He looked up from his work to see a slender Hispanic woman holding a Springfield 58-caliber musket. She wasn’t pointing the weapon directly at him, but both hands were holding the nine-pound rifle in a businesslike manner. Dorian looked at her steadily, neither nervous nor offended by the gun. Quite the contrary, he understood it. The whole county felt a certain sense of violation. These were troubling times.
She stood erectly at five-feet-four, appeared to be in her mid-twenties and was triangular faced with high cheekbones. She had a narrow nose and large, round, brown eyes that were the color of polished mahogany. Her lips were full but perfectly proportioned to the rest of her poised features. She could have been called beautiful were it not for her plain brown wool skirt, worn black five-button high-top leather shoes, and a faded green long-sleeve cotton blouse that was nearly worn through on the right elbow. Her straight raven-colored hair was mostly pinned up on top of her head, but it was obvious from the perspiration on her brow that she’d been doing physical labor, so several strands had slipped their bindings and were dangling down her back, stopping just above her twenty-two-inch waist. She also had a wide brim straw hat, but it wasn’t on her head. It sat in the middle of her back with two pieces of dark string tied together in a knot that sat on her dainty throat.
Dorian dropped the rock, then touched the brim of his hat as a gesture of courtesy. She was the first woman he’d ever seen with sepia-colored skin and was instantly taken with her looks, although he concealed it.
“I thought this was a public road.”
“You took a wrong turn at the fence,” she replied. Her English was good, but her accent was from a far away upbringing. In his entire life he’d only seen one other Hispanic before and that was a man just passing through the village near his father’s farm. Up north where he had come from, brown people were a novelty, even more so than the black man.
“You came onto my husband’s land at the rail fence,” the woman explained. Then she remembered something. “No,” she said, her eyes drifting downward, “the fence is gone.”
“Is this anywhere near a place called Cemetery Ridge?” he asked.
“No. That is on the other side of town. Go back to Mummasburg Road, then south,” she pointed.
“Mummasburg. . .”
“The road you were on before you turned on my husband’s land.”
He glanced in the direction she indicated, then turned back to her. “My apologies,” he said in a level voice. He slowly reached over for the reins of his chestnut mare that had been patiently waiting a few feet away. “I was examining the graves looking for a name. He could still be alive but—he probably isn’t.” He cracked a small, parting smile. “Sorry,” he muttered, turning his horse to walk away.
“You lost someone in the fighting?” she asked.
He paused, then turned back to her.
“A brother. My family received a letter that he was missing. That was a month ago. We’ve heard nothing further since. I’ve just arrived from the north.”
“New York?”
“Ohio.”
The woman wasn’t sure how far away Ohio was. She’d never been there. But she knew it was a distance. Meaning, this stranger must have been traveling for days. She eyed his expensive but dusty saddle. She knew something about saddles and concluded he probably wasn’t of an unscrupulous character, although she did take note of the Colt Navy revolver in his holster. It was a serious weapon.
“Town is a couple miles down the road,” she said, lowering her Springfield. “Cemetery Ridge is beyond that next to Evergreen Cemetery. You’re welcome to bring your horse up to the barn for water if you want.”
Dorian raised his eyebrows, surprised by the woman’s sudden change of mind and hospitality. “I’m obliged.”
“You must understand, senor, a stranger at fresh graves is suspicious. Bodies have been robbed for valuables. There are stories of deserters roaming the woods. Men from newspapers trespass onto farms making angry those who just want to return to their lives. One needs to be cautious.”
“Of course,” he said, taking a step toward her then stopping. “I was just pounding the markers deeper into the ground. First good rain will wash ‘em away.”
She looked him over, then turned. “The barn is this way.”
What she saw was a twenty-five year-old man whose face had been chiseled from a life of working outdoors. Even though twenty-five wasn’t old, John Dorian looked older. At five-feet-eleven, he was straight and lean like a white pine and nearly as tough. He wore an eggshell colored long-sleeve button-up cotton shirt that had light grey pinstripes on it, dark brown wool pants with thin leather suspenders, a wide brim sweat-stained light tan Stetson hat, brown cowboy boots with spurs that jingled when he walked, and then that formidable Colt that was strapped to his right leg. He also wore a red bandana around his neck. His hair was long, thin, straight and caramel-colored. It was tucked behind his ears and came to rest on solid shoulders. He not only needed a haircut, but also a shave. He had a five or six-day growth of beard on his face and a much thicker permanent moustache under a straight, prominent nose. He was more rugged-looking than handsome. But he had tipped his hat, apologized for trespassing, had clear green eyes and owned an expensive saddle, so she decided there was something more substantial to this man than the nosy reporters and land speculators that had come to Gettysburg to pick over its wheat and cornfields like a plague of locusts.
It was Monday, August 10th, 1863, a little more than five weeks after the biggest battle ever fought on the Western Hemisphere. The graves where Dorian had stopped was were the lane to the woman’s farm and Mummasburg Road, which ran north and south, converged. The dead had been buried amongst a natural half-circle of oak and maples with a thicket of flowering hydrangeas that had grown up at the base of the trees. It was picturesque and shady and that was probably why this particular piece of ground had been selected by the Confederates. That, plus its convenience to the main road.
“My name is John Dorian,” he said.
“I am Maria Angelina Alvarez Samuels,” she replied while walking.
“That’s a lot of names for one person.”
She smiled a little which showed the flicker of even more beauty.
Dorian glanced to his right at a clearing, then to his left. Just beyond the trees and thicket that had obstructed his view, he saw two or three acres of corn that had been laid flat as pancake. Thousands of broken green stalks lay rotting and brittle in the morning sun. Being raised on a farm himself, he paused and furrowed his brow.
“Confederates,” she explained. “That’s why the fence no longer stands. It was on the first day. There was much fighting down the road and this is where they started to—to—” she stopped, not knowing the correct word.
“Come together? Converge?” he guessed.
“Si.”
He remembered reading in the papers that on the first day of the battle, the rebels had ironically arrived in Gettysburg from the north while the Union army had arrived from the south.
“We were lucky,” she continued. “Many crops were completely destroyed. Many families lost everything. One man, a Senor Trostle, even became insane because of all the slaughter on his farm. His family had to take him away to a hospital.”
“You’ve got husks out there that need to be salvaged,” he advised, looking at the corn and beginning to walk again.
“Si, Senor Dorian. I know. You did not see this from the road?” she asked, surprised that he was just now noticing the condition of her field.
“No, ma’am. I guess my mind was otherwise engaged,” he admitted.
“You are from Ohio?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve been traveling a long time?”
“Fifteen days.”
“I think maybe you should have come by train.”
He smiled. “My father would agree with you.”
She likewise liked the warmth of his smile. “All of your family is in Ohio?”
“My brother and I work my father’s place, or did. He was a Corporal with the 25th Ohio Infantry. They were heavily engaged at Cemetery Ridge. He turned up missing either the first or second day of battle. . .The letter we received from his Lieutenant said he didn’t know for sure because some troops got separated. We received word about his disappearance in mid-July. My mother’s been most anxious for further news but. . .” his voice trailed off. “She’s taken his disappearance very hard. I’ve wired my father during my journey to see if they’ve received any additional word. But, alas, no.”
“So, you have come to find answers for her,” she concluded. “That may not be easy. Thousands of men were killed. Thousands more are missing. Even now, they are still finding bodies—or—what’s left of them. The coyotes and cows have not gone hungry.”
“Cows?” he asked.
“No,” she chuckled, realizing she had misspoken. “The birds. The big, black ones.”
“Crows?” he guessed.
“Si. Crows. I get my English confused, sometimes.”
The jingling of Dorian’s spurs stopped again as he paused and eyed a five-foot pile of horse and cow manure intermixed with old hay sitting near the two swing-open doors of the wood and stone barn. It had been shoveled out of the stalls but not yet properly disposed of and flies buzzed around it annoyingly. Next, he eyed a corral gate in front of the barn where a bottom hinge was missing, then he eyed the condition of the barn. It looked like someone had begun to paint it, but then abandoned it.
“You and your husband new to farming, Mrs. Samuels?” he asked.
“Like your brother, my husband joined the army,” she replied. “Last I knew, he was somewhere in Tennessee.”
“You’re running the place alone?” he asked, starting to walk again.
“I have my son and another man.”
“I see.”
“Most every farm in the county wants for men, Senor Dorian. Fathers, sons, brothers—many have gone off to fight.”
“What’s the smell?” he asked, gesturing to the curling black smoke rising against the backdrop of the blue sky.
“Dead animals,” she answered. “Horses mostly. Hundreds were killed during the fighting. But there was much livestock also. Goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, mules. Wagons pull the remains to cleared fields then men stack them up for burning. I’ve seen piles as high as ten feet.”
“What about your livestock?”
“There was only a little fighting here. I lost no animals.”
“What about the graves?” he inquired, glancing back over his shoulder.
“There was some cannon fire when the soldiers were gathering,” she explained.
He nodded and surveyed the farm again. The barn was medium sized and had a cantilevered forebay. This was a purposeful overbuilding so the top half of the barn—the roof and hayloft—looked like it had been glued onto a smaller bottom half. Two of the barn’s four walls were wood and two were mortared fieldstone. Its oversized top half and the use of fieldstone walls were different from the more traditional square-looking wood hay barns he was familiar with in Ohio. So was its color. The barns in Ohio were either unpainted or red due to the mixture of linseed oil and rust that was used to seal the wood and prevent moss. The wood walls of this particular barn were painted white. Or, at least they were from the ground level up to about five feet, then the brush strokes thinned out in varying lengths. This new coat of paint was going over a much older coat of white but, at the moment, it looked like a haphazard white stripe had been slapped around the bottom front and back of the barn. It was the work of either a youngster or an idiot, Dorian concluded.
He scanned the trampled corn again, then the pile of manure which, if not dealt with, was inviting disease, then the farmhouse itself. It was a two-story wooden house with a wide front porch that ran its full length and had five narrow columns to hold the overhanging porch roof secure. On the porch was a rocking chair. There were two four-pane glass windows on either side of the front door, then four more four-pane windows on its second level. He guessed it was a seven or eight room house. Not a mansion, but more affluent than most of the farmhouses he had passed along his journey. Although above average in size, everything was in need of attention. There were two bullet holes near the farthest right-hand side second story window and another pane in one of the downstairs front windows was cracked. Rose bushes on the right side of the house were scraggly and in need of pruning. About thirty feet beyond them was a bunkhouse. It was only fourteen-by-twelve but in its heyday could’ve accommodated four farmhands. In between the house and bunkhouse and set back close to a wooded area was a vegetable garden in need of weeding. Immediately in front of the garden was a well with a square wooden frame around it and rope hanging on a peg for buckets to be tied and dropped. On the other side of the farmhouse, to his left, in between the house and barn, was a small hen house that needed a new roof. All in all, the farm was too much work for too few people.
“How long has your husband been away?” Dorian asked.
“Two years,” she replied without any particular emotion.
“Do you hear from him regularly?”
“I don’t hear from him at all,” she answered plainly. “But his service should be done soon. When he left, we had two other men. Now there is just myself, my son, and Carl Smithers.”
“What happened to the two other men?”
“They—they didn’t stay,” she answered. She hesitated in a way where he concluded there was a story behind their leaving, but it wasn’t his place to ask. So he nodded and continued to look around instead. “How many acres?”
“Two hundred.”
Dorian furrowed his brow again. He opened his mouth to ask if her husband had ever been home on leave, when he heard a voice ask: “Who the hell is this?”
He turned to see a see a man who was wearing dirty white long-john bottoms, cowboy boots, and an equally dirty blue button-up cotton shirt. He was coming from around the back of the house in between the house and the garden. He had one leg two inches shorter than the other so he walked with a pronounced limp. He carried a newspaper under his arm suggesting he was just returning from the outhouse. He had slight potbelly, was a little older than Dorian and had a high forehead with thin strawberry blonde hair. He also had a rather large purplish birthmark on his right cheek that stretched-up the right side of his flat, gorilla-like nose. He hadn’t bathed in several days and, on the whole, gave an uncivilized first impression. He scowled at Dorian, then his eyes shot to Maria expecting an answer.
“This is Carl Smithers, Senor Dorian. He—” she hesitated again, “works here.”
“Whatever you’re sellin’, we don’t want none,” Smithers said gruffly.
“I’m just waterin’ my horse,” the stranger explained, trying not to show his disapproval of a farm hand that would be so bold as to walk around in such a state of undress.
“Trough is over there,” Smithers jerked with his thumb one way, “town is that way,” he pointed in the opposite direction. He turned and looked at the front door of the farmhouse. “Armando! Coffee!”
A moment later, a skinny, black-haired, olive-skinned boy, nine years old, opened the front door of the house, carrying a steaming mug of coffee. Dorian led his horse over to the water trough along side the barn watching as the boy dutifully delivered the mug to Smithers. Maria walked with him to the trough.
“He ‘works’ for you?” he asked quietly.
“He is a childhood friend of my husband,” she answered. “He’s supposed to help us, si. But, it is—what is the word—‘complicated.’”
No, it wasn’t, Dorian figured. Maria’s husband had asked someone he trusted to look after his wife and son. Maybe besides room and board he was even being paid. But two years had gone by and Smithers had become complacent, and even belligerent, with his situation. Instead of working the place, the roles had been reversed and he’d become the task-master to this Mexican woman and her son, who probably needed a man on the property for safety sake. No, he concluded, it wasn’t complicated at all.
“You one of them reporters?” Smithers asked, farting and taking his coffee from the boy at the same time.
“No,” Dorian said, stroking his horse’s side and watching him take a drink.
The little boy, who was the spitting image of his mother, approached Dorian’s large, brown mare. He wore an old, white cotton button-up shirt and black pants with no belt or suspenders. Like any child, his thick, black hair was a little ruffled and askew.
“This is a Morgan horse, isn’t it?” he asked in an accent not as thick as his mother’s.
“You know your horses,” he smiled, extending a hand. “My name’s John.”
The boy started to raise his hand to reciprocate, but Smithers bellowed at him. “Armando, back inside. Get to your chores!” The boy stepped back then turned to go back toward the house. Smithers limped over and continued his interrogation of Dorian. “One of them picture makers, then?”
“Perhaps today you can remove that pile of manure, Carl?” Maria asked.
“I got business in town,” he answered but still keeping an eye on the stranger. “You lookin’ to own a piece of the battlefield? A land speculator?”
Dorian’s horse raised its head from the trough indicating it was finished drinking. The visitor took the reins, gently brought them back over the animal’s ears, then rounded his horse, stuck a boot tip into the stirrup and mounted, his spurs jingling as he did. He looked up at the sky. He could tell by the position of the sun it was nearly 10 a.m., yet Smithers wasn’t even dressed yet. In his world back in Ohio, four or five hours of work would have already been done on the farm.
“Obliged for the water,” he said, looking at Maria. He touched the brim of his hat again as a gesture of respect, ignored Smithers, then turned his horse’s head and started to ride down the dirt lane toward the wooden grave markers and back to Mummasburg Road that would take him to Gettysburg.
“Not a very friendly son-of-a-bitch, is he?” Smithers concluded, taking a slurp of coffee.
“What ‘business’ do you have in town today, Carl?” Maria Samuels asked. Her query suggested that Carl had had business in town the day before, and the day before that.
“Just business,” he answered, scratching his potbelly.
“Drinking business? Whoring business? Or is today gambling business?”
“Be nice, now,” Smithers warned smugly, smiling and turning toward the bunkhouse. “Remember that nice, young Mrs. Green all alone on her farm? The one that got molested by them drifters? You need a man around here. Unless you’re fixin’ to learn how to actually shoot that Springfield instead of just carryin’ it around.”
Meantime—and speaking of free—attached with this month’s blog is the first chapter of my next book I hope TouchPoint will be releasing entitled, A Farm In Pennsylvania. It’s a historical romance set in 1863, just a few weeks after the battle of Gettysburg. As I’ve written in previous blogs, it was an extremely challenging project. Everything had to be researched from the clothing my characters wore to the location of where things were in Gettysburg back in the day. With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, I hope it will be released by year’s end and that you romantics (like me) out there will get swept up and carried away in its pages.
I’m also happy to report I’m making good progress on my next romance, The Thing About Margot, and that I’ll occasionally be doing some writing for a magazine called B-Metro. It’s "the" lifestyle magazine in the Birmingham area. Check out their site at b-metro.com. My first article for them should appear in the August issue.
Until then, I hope you like the first chapter of A Farm In Pennsylvania. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS BLOG DOESN'T ALLOW FOR PROPER INDENTATION :)
As always, thanks for visiting!
JAMES BICKERS' MOMMA
“James Bickers, CSA,” John Dorian read on a hastily made wooden grave marker, “1844 to 1863.”
Nineteen years of age, he quietly calculated. He looked at the roughly hewn knife scratching that bore the inscription, then down at the long, narrow mound of recently dug earth. The mound seemed too small to contain a whole person. “Does your Momma know what happened to you, James?” he wondered out loud. “Did a friend cry for you?” His green eyes shifted to the next wood plank marker: Matthew McDonald, 1843 to 1863, then to the next, William Gavin Duffy, 1841 to 1863. All of the six grave markers sat about fifteen feet off the main road he’d been traveling on. The markers of varying heights looked like they had been made from the ripped-up floor planks of a wagon; probably a supply wagon. All of them had been planted shallow in the ground. All of them were soldiers from the Confederate States of America. The first good rain to come along would certainly erode the soil holding the markers and then they’d topple. Meaning the poor souls lying beneath them would be lost a second time; lost to the seemingly never ending muddy red current that was America’s first Civil War.
Dorian’s brown leather holster squeaked as he rose from his squatting position. When he did, his nostrils flared once again from that repugnant smell. It was like someone was grilling meat, only it was intermixed with the fouled aroma of burning fur. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the way a steer smelled after being branded back on his father’s farm of Mandalay. But there were also nastier parts to the aroma that he couldn’t quite identify. He knew one thing for sure, though, nobody was cooking. Rather, people were purging; burning and clearing away the destruction that over 160,000 thousand soldiers had reeked over the course of a three-day battle. All the newspapers said the town he was near, Gettysburg, was the worst fighting since the war had begun. Even when he had crossed into Adams County miles earlier, he saw the black smoke, snaking its way above the farming countryside, then becoming thinner and thinner as it weaved toward heaven and a cleaner place than where it had originated.
Spotting a loose rock twice the size of his hand, Dorian picked it up, turned, then struck the top of James Bickers’ wooden marker, pounding it deeper into the ground so he wouldn’t be forgotten. He had to be careful not to hit the edge of the wood too hard for fear it might split. After three good whacks, he repeated the process on the next marker, then the next, until he was interrupted by a voice drenched in a thick foreign accent.
“You are trespassing, sir,” he heard a female voice announce. He looked up from his work to see a slender Hispanic woman holding a Springfield 58-caliber musket. She wasn’t pointing the weapon directly at him, but both hands were holding the nine-pound rifle in a businesslike manner. Dorian looked at her steadily, neither nervous nor offended by the gun. Quite the contrary, he understood it. The whole county felt a certain sense of violation. These were troubling times.
She stood erectly at five-feet-four, appeared to be in her mid-twenties and was triangular faced with high cheekbones. She had a narrow nose and large, round, brown eyes that were the color of polished mahogany. Her lips were full but perfectly proportioned to the rest of her poised features. She could have been called beautiful were it not for her plain brown wool skirt, worn black five-button high-top leather shoes, and a faded green long-sleeve cotton blouse that was nearly worn through on the right elbow. Her straight raven-colored hair was mostly pinned up on top of her head, but it was obvious from the perspiration on her brow that she’d been doing physical labor, so several strands had slipped their bindings and were dangling down her back, stopping just above her twenty-two-inch waist. She also had a wide brim straw hat, but it wasn’t on her head. It sat in the middle of her back with two pieces of dark string tied together in a knot that sat on her dainty throat.
Dorian dropped the rock, then touched the brim of his hat as a gesture of courtesy. She was the first woman he’d ever seen with sepia-colored skin and was instantly taken with her looks, although he concealed it.
“I thought this was a public road.”
“You took a wrong turn at the fence,” she replied. Her English was good, but her accent was from a far away upbringing. In his entire life he’d only seen one other Hispanic before and that was a man just passing through the village near his father’s farm. Up north where he had come from, brown people were a novelty, even more so than the black man.
“You came onto my husband’s land at the rail fence,” the woman explained. Then she remembered something. “No,” she said, her eyes drifting downward, “the fence is gone.”
“Is this anywhere near a place called Cemetery Ridge?” he asked.
“No. That is on the other side of town. Go back to Mummasburg Road, then south,” she pointed.
“Mummasburg. . .”
“The road you were on before you turned on my husband’s land.”
He glanced in the direction she indicated, then turned back to her. “My apologies,” he said in a level voice. He slowly reached over for the reins of his chestnut mare that had been patiently waiting a few feet away. “I was examining the graves looking for a name. He could still be alive but—he probably isn’t.” He cracked a small, parting smile. “Sorry,” he muttered, turning his horse to walk away.
“You lost someone in the fighting?” she asked.
He paused, then turned back to her.
“A brother. My family received a letter that he was missing. That was a month ago. We’ve heard nothing further since. I’ve just arrived from the north.”
“New York?”
“Ohio.”
The woman wasn’t sure how far away Ohio was. She’d never been there. But she knew it was a distance. Meaning, this stranger must have been traveling for days. She eyed his expensive but dusty saddle. She knew something about saddles and concluded he probably wasn’t of an unscrupulous character, although she did take note of the Colt Navy revolver in his holster. It was a serious weapon.
“Town is a couple miles down the road,” she said, lowering her Springfield. “Cemetery Ridge is beyond that next to Evergreen Cemetery. You’re welcome to bring your horse up to the barn for water if you want.”
Dorian raised his eyebrows, surprised by the woman’s sudden change of mind and hospitality. “I’m obliged.”
“You must understand, senor, a stranger at fresh graves is suspicious. Bodies have been robbed for valuables. There are stories of deserters roaming the woods. Men from newspapers trespass onto farms making angry those who just want to return to their lives. One needs to be cautious.”
“Of course,” he said, taking a step toward her then stopping. “I was just pounding the markers deeper into the ground. First good rain will wash ‘em away.”
She looked him over, then turned. “The barn is this way.”
What she saw was a twenty-five year-old man whose face had been chiseled from a life of working outdoors. Even though twenty-five wasn’t old, John Dorian looked older. At five-feet-eleven, he was straight and lean like a white pine and nearly as tough. He wore an eggshell colored long-sleeve button-up cotton shirt that had light grey pinstripes on it, dark brown wool pants with thin leather suspenders, a wide brim sweat-stained light tan Stetson hat, brown cowboy boots with spurs that jingled when he walked, and then that formidable Colt that was strapped to his right leg. He also wore a red bandana around his neck. His hair was long, thin, straight and caramel-colored. It was tucked behind his ears and came to rest on solid shoulders. He not only needed a haircut, but also a shave. He had a five or six-day growth of beard on his face and a much thicker permanent moustache under a straight, prominent nose. He was more rugged-looking than handsome. But he had tipped his hat, apologized for trespassing, had clear green eyes and owned an expensive saddle, so she decided there was something more substantial to this man than the nosy reporters and land speculators that had come to Gettysburg to pick over its wheat and cornfields like a plague of locusts.
It was Monday, August 10th, 1863, a little more than five weeks after the biggest battle ever fought on the Western Hemisphere. The graves where Dorian had stopped was were the lane to the woman’s farm and Mummasburg Road, which ran north and south, converged. The dead had been buried amongst a natural half-circle of oak and maples with a thicket of flowering hydrangeas that had grown up at the base of the trees. It was picturesque and shady and that was probably why this particular piece of ground had been selected by the Confederates. That, plus its convenience to the main road.
“My name is John Dorian,” he said.
“I am Maria Angelina Alvarez Samuels,” she replied while walking.
“That’s a lot of names for one person.”
She smiled a little which showed the flicker of even more beauty.
Dorian glanced to his right at a clearing, then to his left. Just beyond the trees and thicket that had obstructed his view, he saw two or three acres of corn that had been laid flat as pancake. Thousands of broken green stalks lay rotting and brittle in the morning sun. Being raised on a farm himself, he paused and furrowed his brow.
“Confederates,” she explained. “That’s why the fence no longer stands. It was on the first day. There was much fighting down the road and this is where they started to—to—” she stopped, not knowing the correct word.
“Come together? Converge?” he guessed.
“Si.”
He remembered reading in the papers that on the first day of the battle, the rebels had ironically arrived in Gettysburg from the north while the Union army had arrived from the south.
“We were lucky,” she continued. “Many crops were completely destroyed. Many families lost everything. One man, a Senor Trostle, even became insane because of all the slaughter on his farm. His family had to take him away to a hospital.”
“You’ve got husks out there that need to be salvaged,” he advised, looking at the corn and beginning to walk again.
“Si, Senor Dorian. I know. You did not see this from the road?” she asked, surprised that he was just now noticing the condition of her field.
“No, ma’am. I guess my mind was otherwise engaged,” he admitted.
“You are from Ohio?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve been traveling a long time?”
“Fifteen days.”
“I think maybe you should have come by train.”
He smiled. “My father would agree with you.”
She likewise liked the warmth of his smile. “All of your family is in Ohio?”
“My brother and I work my father’s place, or did. He was a Corporal with the 25th Ohio Infantry. They were heavily engaged at Cemetery Ridge. He turned up missing either the first or second day of battle. . .The letter we received from his Lieutenant said he didn’t know for sure because some troops got separated. We received word about his disappearance in mid-July. My mother’s been most anxious for further news but. . .” his voice trailed off. “She’s taken his disappearance very hard. I’ve wired my father during my journey to see if they’ve received any additional word. But, alas, no.”
“So, you have come to find answers for her,” she concluded. “That may not be easy. Thousands of men were killed. Thousands more are missing. Even now, they are still finding bodies—or—what’s left of them. The coyotes and cows have not gone hungry.”
“Cows?” he asked.
“No,” she chuckled, realizing she had misspoken. “The birds. The big, black ones.”
“Crows?” he guessed.
“Si. Crows. I get my English confused, sometimes.”
The jingling of Dorian’s spurs stopped again as he paused and eyed a five-foot pile of horse and cow manure intermixed with old hay sitting near the two swing-open doors of the wood and stone barn. It had been shoveled out of the stalls but not yet properly disposed of and flies buzzed around it annoyingly. Next, he eyed a corral gate in front of the barn where a bottom hinge was missing, then he eyed the condition of the barn. It looked like someone had begun to paint it, but then abandoned it.
“You and your husband new to farming, Mrs. Samuels?” he asked.
“Like your brother, my husband joined the army,” she replied. “Last I knew, he was somewhere in Tennessee.”
“You’re running the place alone?” he asked, starting to walk again.
“I have my son and another man.”
“I see.”
“Most every farm in the county wants for men, Senor Dorian. Fathers, sons, brothers—many have gone off to fight.”
“What’s the smell?” he asked, gesturing to the curling black smoke rising against the backdrop of the blue sky.
“Dead animals,” she answered. “Horses mostly. Hundreds were killed during the fighting. But there was much livestock also. Goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, mules. Wagons pull the remains to cleared fields then men stack them up for burning. I’ve seen piles as high as ten feet.”
“What about your livestock?”
“There was only a little fighting here. I lost no animals.”
“What about the graves?” he inquired, glancing back over his shoulder.
“There was some cannon fire when the soldiers were gathering,” she explained.
He nodded and surveyed the farm again. The barn was medium sized and had a cantilevered forebay. This was a purposeful overbuilding so the top half of the barn—the roof and hayloft—looked like it had been glued onto a smaller bottom half. Two of the barn’s four walls were wood and two were mortared fieldstone. Its oversized top half and the use of fieldstone walls were different from the more traditional square-looking wood hay barns he was familiar with in Ohio. So was its color. The barns in Ohio were either unpainted or red due to the mixture of linseed oil and rust that was used to seal the wood and prevent moss. The wood walls of this particular barn were painted white. Or, at least they were from the ground level up to about five feet, then the brush strokes thinned out in varying lengths. This new coat of paint was going over a much older coat of white but, at the moment, it looked like a haphazard white stripe had been slapped around the bottom front and back of the barn. It was the work of either a youngster or an idiot, Dorian concluded.
He scanned the trampled corn again, then the pile of manure which, if not dealt with, was inviting disease, then the farmhouse itself. It was a two-story wooden house with a wide front porch that ran its full length and had five narrow columns to hold the overhanging porch roof secure. On the porch was a rocking chair. There were two four-pane glass windows on either side of the front door, then four more four-pane windows on its second level. He guessed it was a seven or eight room house. Not a mansion, but more affluent than most of the farmhouses he had passed along his journey. Although above average in size, everything was in need of attention. There were two bullet holes near the farthest right-hand side second story window and another pane in one of the downstairs front windows was cracked. Rose bushes on the right side of the house were scraggly and in need of pruning. About thirty feet beyond them was a bunkhouse. It was only fourteen-by-twelve but in its heyday could’ve accommodated four farmhands. In between the house and bunkhouse and set back close to a wooded area was a vegetable garden in need of weeding. Immediately in front of the garden was a well with a square wooden frame around it and rope hanging on a peg for buckets to be tied and dropped. On the other side of the farmhouse, to his left, in between the house and barn, was a small hen house that needed a new roof. All in all, the farm was too much work for too few people.
“How long has your husband been away?” Dorian asked.
“Two years,” she replied without any particular emotion.
“Do you hear from him regularly?”
“I don’t hear from him at all,” she answered plainly. “But his service should be done soon. When he left, we had two other men. Now there is just myself, my son, and Carl Smithers.”
“What happened to the two other men?”
“They—they didn’t stay,” she answered. She hesitated in a way where he concluded there was a story behind their leaving, but it wasn’t his place to ask. So he nodded and continued to look around instead. “How many acres?”
“Two hundred.”
Dorian furrowed his brow again. He opened his mouth to ask if her husband had ever been home on leave, when he heard a voice ask: “Who the hell is this?”
He turned to see a see a man who was wearing dirty white long-john bottoms, cowboy boots, and an equally dirty blue button-up cotton shirt. He was coming from around the back of the house in between the house and the garden. He had one leg two inches shorter than the other so he walked with a pronounced limp. He carried a newspaper under his arm suggesting he was just returning from the outhouse. He had slight potbelly, was a little older than Dorian and had a high forehead with thin strawberry blonde hair. He also had a rather large purplish birthmark on his right cheek that stretched-up the right side of his flat, gorilla-like nose. He hadn’t bathed in several days and, on the whole, gave an uncivilized first impression. He scowled at Dorian, then his eyes shot to Maria expecting an answer.
“This is Carl Smithers, Senor Dorian. He—” she hesitated again, “works here.”
“Whatever you’re sellin’, we don’t want none,” Smithers said gruffly.
“I’m just waterin’ my horse,” the stranger explained, trying not to show his disapproval of a farm hand that would be so bold as to walk around in such a state of undress.
“Trough is over there,” Smithers jerked with his thumb one way, “town is that way,” he pointed in the opposite direction. He turned and looked at the front door of the farmhouse. “Armando! Coffee!”
A moment later, a skinny, black-haired, olive-skinned boy, nine years old, opened the front door of the house, carrying a steaming mug of coffee. Dorian led his horse over to the water trough along side the barn watching as the boy dutifully delivered the mug to Smithers. Maria walked with him to the trough.
“He ‘works’ for you?” he asked quietly.
“He is a childhood friend of my husband,” she answered. “He’s supposed to help us, si. But, it is—what is the word—‘complicated.’”
No, it wasn’t, Dorian figured. Maria’s husband had asked someone he trusted to look after his wife and son. Maybe besides room and board he was even being paid. But two years had gone by and Smithers had become complacent, and even belligerent, with his situation. Instead of working the place, the roles had been reversed and he’d become the task-master to this Mexican woman and her son, who probably needed a man on the property for safety sake. No, he concluded, it wasn’t complicated at all.
“You one of them reporters?” Smithers asked, farting and taking his coffee from the boy at the same time.
“No,” Dorian said, stroking his horse’s side and watching him take a drink.
The little boy, who was the spitting image of his mother, approached Dorian’s large, brown mare. He wore an old, white cotton button-up shirt and black pants with no belt or suspenders. Like any child, his thick, black hair was a little ruffled and askew.
“This is a Morgan horse, isn’t it?” he asked in an accent not as thick as his mother’s.
“You know your horses,” he smiled, extending a hand. “My name’s John.”
The boy started to raise his hand to reciprocate, but Smithers bellowed at him. “Armando, back inside. Get to your chores!” The boy stepped back then turned to go back toward the house. Smithers limped over and continued his interrogation of Dorian. “One of them picture makers, then?”
“Perhaps today you can remove that pile of manure, Carl?” Maria asked.
“I got business in town,” he answered but still keeping an eye on the stranger. “You lookin’ to own a piece of the battlefield? A land speculator?”
Dorian’s horse raised its head from the trough indicating it was finished drinking. The visitor took the reins, gently brought them back over the animal’s ears, then rounded his horse, stuck a boot tip into the stirrup and mounted, his spurs jingling as he did. He looked up at the sky. He could tell by the position of the sun it was nearly 10 a.m., yet Smithers wasn’t even dressed yet. In his world back in Ohio, four or five hours of work would have already been done on the farm.
“Obliged for the water,” he said, looking at Maria. He touched the brim of his hat again as a gesture of respect, ignored Smithers, then turned his horse’s head and started to ride down the dirt lane toward the wooden grave markers and back to Mummasburg Road that would take him to Gettysburg.
“Not a very friendly son-of-a-bitch, is he?” Smithers concluded, taking a slurp of coffee.
“What ‘business’ do you have in town today, Carl?” Maria Samuels asked. Her query suggested that Carl had had business in town the day before, and the day before that.
“Just business,” he answered, scratching his potbelly.
“Drinking business? Whoring business? Or is today gambling business?”
“Be nice, now,” Smithers warned smugly, smiling and turning toward the bunkhouse. “Remember that nice, young Mrs. Green all alone on her farm? The one that got molested by them drifters? You need a man around here. Unless you’re fixin’ to learn how to actually shoot that Springfield instead of just carryin’ it around.”
Published on April 16, 2015 15:22
February 27, 2015
Valentine's Movies & Bigger Seats
Sorry that this month’s entry is coming at the end of the month instead of at the beginning, but as I think most, if not all of you know, besides writing books, I’m also a Creative Director in the advertising business as well as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alabama, and both of these responsibilities have occupied a lot of my time this month. Take last week, for instance. I was in Cincinnati on Wednesday to meet with clients where it was a balmy minus 6-degrees, then got on a plane and went to San Antonio for another client meeting on Friday where it was 70-degrees. Then, I spent the weekend grading papers and writing my lecture for the following Monday night’s class. As they say, no rest for the wicked.
By the way, is it just me, or are the seats on airplanes getting smaller?
February being the month of Valentine’s makes me think of all the great romantic movies that have inspired me over the years. Some favorites would include Notting Hill and Love Actually, both of which were directed by Richard Curtis. As I’ve written in a previous blog, in my dream world, Richard Curtis would be the director I’d choose to make the movie version of Substitute Angel. Also, in my dream world, the late, great John Barry would come back from the dead to the score it. Any movie he scored was made better because of his involvement. (A Lion In Winter, Born Free, Hanover Street, Indecent Proposal, Out of Africa, Dances With Wolves and, if memory serves me, 12 Bond films.)
Then there’s Jane Eyre, the 1970 made-for-TV version starring George C. Scott and Susannah York. It’s not wonderfully shot, but it’s skillfully acted. There’s also, It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, Sleepless In Seattle (I guess everybody puts that one on their favorite Valentine’s movie list), and Say Anything. I’m probably missing a few other ones, but these are some of the films that made me want to try and touch people’s hearts with my stories.
Even though I don’t have much spare time these days, I’ve started to binge watch The West Wing late in the evenings after all of the day’s business is concluded; just an episode or two. I think I’ve seen all of the episodes before, but Alan Sorkin and his team wrote so intelligently on that show! I’m sure that’ll have an affect on my next novel—still in the noodling stages—called The Thing With Margot. It’s a romance and a comedy, but it’ll also involve the world of geopolitics and no doubt people having conversations in long, winding hallways.
But that book is way out there in the future. Meantime, The Intended Ones, makes a great read if you’re heading to the beach this spring. Also, don't forget my first historical novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania, will hopefully be out sometime later in the year. More on this in upcoming blogs.
As always, I thank you so much for your interest and support! Lord willing, one of days, one of these efforts will catch fire with a mass audience, and you can say to yourself: “Ha! I discovered him way back when.”
If that ever happened, what would I do?. . .Well, I think I’d fly first-class. At least once in my life. The seats look bigger.
By the way, is it just me, or are the seats on airplanes getting smaller?
February being the month of Valentine’s makes me think of all the great romantic movies that have inspired me over the years. Some favorites would include Notting Hill and Love Actually, both of which were directed by Richard Curtis. As I’ve written in a previous blog, in my dream world, Richard Curtis would be the director I’d choose to make the movie version of Substitute Angel. Also, in my dream world, the late, great John Barry would come back from the dead to the score it. Any movie he scored was made better because of his involvement. (A Lion In Winter, Born Free, Hanover Street, Indecent Proposal, Out of Africa, Dances With Wolves and, if memory serves me, 12 Bond films.)
Then there’s Jane Eyre, the 1970 made-for-TV version starring George C. Scott and Susannah York. It’s not wonderfully shot, but it’s skillfully acted. There’s also, It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, Sleepless In Seattle (I guess everybody puts that one on their favorite Valentine’s movie list), and Say Anything. I’m probably missing a few other ones, but these are some of the films that made me want to try and touch people’s hearts with my stories.
Even though I don’t have much spare time these days, I’ve started to binge watch The West Wing late in the evenings after all of the day’s business is concluded; just an episode or two. I think I’ve seen all of the episodes before, but Alan Sorkin and his team wrote so intelligently on that show! I’m sure that’ll have an affect on my next novel—still in the noodling stages—called The Thing With Margot. It’s a romance and a comedy, but it’ll also involve the world of geopolitics and no doubt people having conversations in long, winding hallways.
But that book is way out there in the future. Meantime, The Intended Ones, makes a great read if you’re heading to the beach this spring. Also, don't forget my first historical novel, A Farm In Pennsylvania, will hopefully be out sometime later in the year. More on this in upcoming blogs.
As always, I thank you so much for your interest and support! Lord willing, one of days, one of these efforts will catch fire with a mass audience, and you can say to yourself: “Ha! I discovered him way back when.”
If that ever happened, what would I do?. . .Well, I think I’d fly first-class. At least once in my life. The seats look bigger.
Published on February 27, 2015 17:35
January 24, 2015
Writing About History & My New Site
There was an interesting article in the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly that addressed this year’s biopics ranging from Selma, to American Sniper, to The Theory Of Everything. The article spoke of how even though these films were wonderful, certain parts of the movies weren’t factually correct. This got me to thinking about historical inaccuracies I’ve either read in books or seen in movies, and the question of: “How many inaccuracies should an audience member let slide?”
I think the answer is two-fold: writers & producers should try to do due diligence regarding historical accuracy, but at the same time, the audience member needs to suspend disbelief. At the end of the day, most novels and movies are pieces of entertainment. Unless, of course, we’re talking about something that’s meant to be educational, like a textbook, authorized biography, or a documentary.
I recently experienced some of the “facts versus entertainment challenge” in my just published novel, The Intended Ones. The novel is set in the present and is the continuing story of Farren & Doc, my main characters from Substitute Angel. But it’s also the tale of the angel in Substitute Angel, Clair, and her love story when she lived in the same small town back in the 1950’s. So the book ping-pongs back and forth in time. One chapter takes place in the present, while the next occurs in the past, until Farren’s and Clair’s stories converge. (That, BTW, is why the paperback edition of The Intended Ones is a little more expensive than the paperback edition of Substitute Angel. It’s a lot longer, literally two novels in one book.)
Since half the book took place in the 1950’s, I had to do a lot of research about cars, planes, popular songs, hair styles, swim suit fashions, men and women’s clothing, and what was going on with the economy in Michigan where the story takes place. Did I get everything historically accurate? I hope so, but there also came a point where I to stop worrying about it and can get on with the story telling. The same was true with the brand new book I just finished, the still unreleased A Farm In Pennsylvania. That novel is my first 100% historical novel and takes place in Gettysburg, PA, in 1863, five weeks after the infamous battle. I fully realize Gettysburg is hallowed ground for many Civil War fans, but the book isn’t a historical study, it’s a love story. So again, at a certain point, I had to leave my penchant for historical accuracy behind and concentrate on my characters and plot development.
I’m learning that writing books is a lot like cooking: you need certain ingredients to make everything tasty, and ultimately, the reader will decide if the author had a good recipe.
Switching subjects somewhat, I’d like to remind everyone that The Intended Ones from Touchpoint Press is now available both in paperback and eBook editions. If you buy it through Amazon.com, please be sure to write a kind review! I’d also like to invite everyone to visit my new website, timbestonline.com. The site is divided into two parts: my advertising career and my book-writing career. So, whether you want to hear some funny Mayhem radio commercials for Allstate, watch award-winning TV spots for Honda, or check out reviews and story synopses of my books, you can do it at timbestonline.com. You can even read some short stories there. Please check it out and, as always, thank you!
I think the answer is two-fold: writers & producers should try to do due diligence regarding historical accuracy, but at the same time, the audience member needs to suspend disbelief. At the end of the day, most novels and movies are pieces of entertainment. Unless, of course, we’re talking about something that’s meant to be educational, like a textbook, authorized biography, or a documentary.
I recently experienced some of the “facts versus entertainment challenge” in my just published novel, The Intended Ones. The novel is set in the present and is the continuing story of Farren & Doc, my main characters from Substitute Angel. But it’s also the tale of the angel in Substitute Angel, Clair, and her love story when she lived in the same small town back in the 1950’s. So the book ping-pongs back and forth in time. One chapter takes place in the present, while the next occurs in the past, until Farren’s and Clair’s stories converge. (That, BTW, is why the paperback edition of The Intended Ones is a little more expensive than the paperback edition of Substitute Angel. It’s a lot longer, literally two novels in one book.)
Since half the book took place in the 1950’s, I had to do a lot of research about cars, planes, popular songs, hair styles, swim suit fashions, men and women’s clothing, and what was going on with the economy in Michigan where the story takes place. Did I get everything historically accurate? I hope so, but there also came a point where I to stop worrying about it and can get on with the story telling. The same was true with the brand new book I just finished, the still unreleased A Farm In Pennsylvania. That novel is my first 100% historical novel and takes place in Gettysburg, PA, in 1863, five weeks after the infamous battle. I fully realize Gettysburg is hallowed ground for many Civil War fans, but the book isn’t a historical study, it’s a love story. So again, at a certain point, I had to leave my penchant for historical accuracy behind and concentrate on my characters and plot development.
I’m learning that writing books is a lot like cooking: you need certain ingredients to make everything tasty, and ultimately, the reader will decide if the author had a good recipe.
Switching subjects somewhat, I’d like to remind everyone that The Intended Ones from Touchpoint Press is now available both in paperback and eBook editions. If you buy it through Amazon.com, please be sure to write a kind review! I’d also like to invite everyone to visit my new website, timbestonline.com. The site is divided into two parts: my advertising career and my book-writing career. So, whether you want to hear some funny Mayhem radio commercials for Allstate, watch award-winning TV spots for Honda, or check out reviews and story synopses of my books, you can do it at timbestonline.com. You can even read some short stories there. Please check it out and, as always, thank you!
Published on January 24, 2015 10:04
December 18, 2014
Lots To Be Thankful For!
Had a great time up in northern Michigan toward the end of November. Twelve inches of pristine snow had just fallen a day or two before our arrival and it was the perfect setting to do a couple of book signings for Substitute Angel, especially since the book is set in northern Michigan during winter. There’s a great chain of bookstores up there called Horizon Books, and I did signings at two of their three locations. (Many thanks to Jill and Ragnar for being so hospitable!)
As we were driving from one signing in Petoskey, through Charlevoix, to the next signing in Traverse City, I kept pointing out book locations to my wife and daughter: “Oh, here’s where that bad accident occurred in chapter 6 of The Intended Ones.” . . . “Here’s about where the shooting club was in chapter 8 of the The Intended Ones.” . . . “Look, there’s The Weathervane Restaurant where important scenes took place in both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones.” We hadn’t been in northern Michigan since we went there to do initial research a few summers ago. So to return in winter and revisit places that I’d written then rewritten about in endless drafts was really cool! I was also greatly relieved that my descriptions were still accurate and things hadn’t changed much. A couple of local businesses that I’d mentioned in the books were now gone, but other than that, the charm of the area and warmth of the people was the same.
Not only did we have a great time at the signings, we also shot the author photo for The Intended Ones in Charlevoix. I always hoped to shoot the author photo for Substitute Angel there as well, but it didn’t work out that way. The photo used at the end of the book was actually shot at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. Anyway, I’m glad that at least one of the author photos could be taken where the stories actually took place.
As I write this, The Intended Ones, which was supposed to be released December 1, hasn’t been released yet. But we’re close. Really close! The eBook is supposed to be released tomorrow, December 19. So please be sure to check it out on Amazon.com, the TouchPoint Press Book Store, or the online stores of most major book retailers like Barnes & Noble or Books A Million.
In other news, I’m happy to report that the respected web site, Coffee Time Romance & More, just gave Substitute Angel its highest review rating of five coffee cups! Thank you, Coffee Time! That’s an honor! In part, the review read: “What a fun, entertaining read. Quirky feel good with a touch of mystery. A melting pot of every genre is what Substitute Angel reads between the pages. I loved it.”
Those kind words are certainly keeping me inspired behind the keyboard these days, and I hope you’re having inspirational days, too. Overall, I think the holidays should have an element of both inspiration and magic. Both are intangible concepts, but they can be manifested in many physical ways: like a smile to a stranger, or a five dollar bill dropped in a Salvation Army pot, or maybe reaching out to an old friend or relative you haven’t spoken to in years. Whatever and however you do it, I hope you enjoy a truly special holiday season—with a good book—of course!
As we were driving from one signing in Petoskey, through Charlevoix, to the next signing in Traverse City, I kept pointing out book locations to my wife and daughter: “Oh, here’s where that bad accident occurred in chapter 6 of The Intended Ones.” . . . “Here’s about where the shooting club was in chapter 8 of the The Intended Ones.” . . . “Look, there’s The Weathervane Restaurant where important scenes took place in both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones.” We hadn’t been in northern Michigan since we went there to do initial research a few summers ago. So to return in winter and revisit places that I’d written then rewritten about in endless drafts was really cool! I was also greatly relieved that my descriptions were still accurate and things hadn’t changed much. A couple of local businesses that I’d mentioned in the books were now gone, but other than that, the charm of the area and warmth of the people was the same.
Not only did we have a great time at the signings, we also shot the author photo for The Intended Ones in Charlevoix. I always hoped to shoot the author photo for Substitute Angel there as well, but it didn’t work out that way. The photo used at the end of the book was actually shot at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. Anyway, I’m glad that at least one of the author photos could be taken where the stories actually took place.
As I write this, The Intended Ones, which was supposed to be released December 1, hasn’t been released yet. But we’re close. Really close! The eBook is supposed to be released tomorrow, December 19. So please be sure to check it out on Amazon.com, the TouchPoint Press Book Store, or the online stores of most major book retailers like Barnes & Noble or Books A Million.
In other news, I’m happy to report that the respected web site, Coffee Time Romance & More, just gave Substitute Angel its highest review rating of five coffee cups! Thank you, Coffee Time! That’s an honor! In part, the review read: “What a fun, entertaining read. Quirky feel good with a touch of mystery. A melting pot of every genre is what Substitute Angel reads between the pages. I loved it.”
Those kind words are certainly keeping me inspired behind the keyboard these days, and I hope you’re having inspirational days, too. Overall, I think the holidays should have an element of both inspiration and magic. Both are intangible concepts, but they can be manifested in many physical ways: like a smile to a stranger, or a five dollar bill dropped in a Salvation Army pot, or maybe reaching out to an old friend or relative you haven’t spoken to in years. Whatever and however you do it, I hope you enjoy a truly special holiday season—with a good book—of course!
Published on December 18, 2014 19:43
November 12, 2014
New Awards Received and Upcoming Signings.
I’m delighted to share two pieces of news. The first is I’ll be doing two book signings in northern Michigan on Saturday, November 22. The first will be at Horizon Books in Petoskey, Michigan, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Horizon Books is located at 319 E. Mitchell Street. Then, later in the day, I’ll be at another Horizon Books location in Traverse City. The second signing will be from 5 to 7 p.m. at 243 E. Front Street.
If you’re anywhere near these two Horizon locations, please stop by and say hello! I’d love to meet and chat with you about Substitute Angel. I’m especially looking forward to this trip because the novel is set in northern Michigan. In fact, several key scenes take place in Traverse City, while Petoskey is also an important location (without spoiling any plot points) in both Substitute Angel and its follow-up book, The Intended Ones, coming out December 1st.
The second piece of news is the cover art for The Intended Ones just won a Platinum Marcom Award at the 19th Annual Marcom Awards held in Dallas, TX. The Marcoms is a national and international competition honoring excellence in marketing and communications. The show is divided into several categories: TV commercials, web sites, print ads, book covers, etc., and Platinum is the show’s highest honor in a particular category. This year, there were over 6,500 entries from throughout the U.S. as well as 15 different countries including Great Britain, Russia and India. Simply scroll down to my blog entry of September 24 if you’d like to check out The Intended Ones’ award-winning cover art.
I’m fortunate in that this is actually my second Platinum Marcom in as many years. In 2013, Substitute Angel also won a Platinum Marcom for its digital cover design. So, to have two award-winning book covers back-to-back is very, very cool, and I’m very grateful! In both cases, yours truly conceived the idea for the covers, then they were brought to life by a wonderfully talented art director/illustrator in Birmingham, AL, named Brannon Hall. Brannon and I happen to work together at the same advertising agency.
It’s hard to believe that Substitute Angel has been available to the public for a year. The digital version came out last November and the paperback edition was released five months later in April. In many ways, the book still feels new to me because I still see it generating more and more interest among readers. So to shift gears and to start blogging about The Intended Ones is kind of weird. Suffice to say, I loved the characters in Substitute Angel and its setting of northern Michigan. So much so, I wanted to continue with what I started in the first book with The Intended Ones,
which picks up six months after the first book ends.
As I’ve written in a previous blog, The Intended Ones is both a prequel and sequel. How can it be both? It volleys back and forth between two times, the 1950s and the present. So, in a very real way, it’s two separate stories bridged by Substitute Angel. (A great trilogy for you film executives out there looking for a franchise to develop!)
Some months ago, my publisher and I talked about how great it would be if we could have both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones packaged together in an attractive box set with an angel Christmas tree ornament as part of a holiday package for book and gift stores. My publisher, Sheri Williams, came up with the idea and I thought it was brilliant! But time just got away from us. Sheri couldn’t find an angel ornament design she liked, we never got around to designing the look of the box for the set, so maybe, hopefully, the idea will be fulfilled in 2015. Meantime, Substitute Angel would make an excellent Christmas gift this year for family and friends. Giving the gift of literature is literally giving an entire world of escape to someone. It also shows your great sense of taste. :)
As always, thank you for taking the time to check out the blog and you’re ongoing support. And again, if you’re up in northern Michigan the weekend of November 22, I surely hope to see you at one of the Horizon Books locations. May you and yours have the happiest of Thanksgivings!
If you’re anywhere near these two Horizon locations, please stop by and say hello! I’d love to meet and chat with you about Substitute Angel. I’m especially looking forward to this trip because the novel is set in northern Michigan. In fact, several key scenes take place in Traverse City, while Petoskey is also an important location (without spoiling any plot points) in both Substitute Angel and its follow-up book, The Intended Ones, coming out December 1st.
The second piece of news is the cover art for The Intended Ones just won a Platinum Marcom Award at the 19th Annual Marcom Awards held in Dallas, TX. The Marcoms is a national and international competition honoring excellence in marketing and communications. The show is divided into several categories: TV commercials, web sites, print ads, book covers, etc., and Platinum is the show’s highest honor in a particular category. This year, there were over 6,500 entries from throughout the U.S. as well as 15 different countries including Great Britain, Russia and India. Simply scroll down to my blog entry of September 24 if you’d like to check out The Intended Ones’ award-winning cover art.
I’m fortunate in that this is actually my second Platinum Marcom in as many years. In 2013, Substitute Angel also won a Platinum Marcom for its digital cover design. So, to have two award-winning book covers back-to-back is very, very cool, and I’m very grateful! In both cases, yours truly conceived the idea for the covers, then they were brought to life by a wonderfully talented art director/illustrator in Birmingham, AL, named Brannon Hall. Brannon and I happen to work together at the same advertising agency.
It’s hard to believe that Substitute Angel has been available to the public for a year. The digital version came out last November and the paperback edition was released five months later in April. In many ways, the book still feels new to me because I still see it generating more and more interest among readers. So to shift gears and to start blogging about The Intended Ones is kind of weird. Suffice to say, I loved the characters in Substitute Angel and its setting of northern Michigan. So much so, I wanted to continue with what I started in the first book with The Intended Ones,
which picks up six months after the first book ends.
As I’ve written in a previous blog, The Intended Ones is both a prequel and sequel. How can it be both? It volleys back and forth between two times, the 1950s and the present. So, in a very real way, it’s two separate stories bridged by Substitute Angel. (A great trilogy for you film executives out there looking for a franchise to develop!)
Some months ago, my publisher and I talked about how great it would be if we could have both Substitute Angel and The Intended Ones packaged together in an attractive box set with an angel Christmas tree ornament as part of a holiday package for book and gift stores. My publisher, Sheri Williams, came up with the idea and I thought it was brilliant! But time just got away from us. Sheri couldn’t find an angel ornament design she liked, we never got around to designing the look of the box for the set, so maybe, hopefully, the idea will be fulfilled in 2015. Meantime, Substitute Angel would make an excellent Christmas gift this year for family and friends. Giving the gift of literature is literally giving an entire world of escape to someone. It also shows your great sense of taste. :)
As always, thank you for taking the time to check out the blog and you’re ongoing support. And again, if you’re up in northern Michigan the weekend of November 22, I surely hope to see you at one of the Horizon Books locations. May you and yours have the happiest of Thanksgivings!
Published on November 12, 2014 20:24