Connie Johnson Hambley's Blog, page 14

BOOK LAUNCH: WHEN THE GRITS HIT THE FAN by Maddie Day

You know you're having a great book launch when your book hits the Number One slot on Barnes & Noble within hours! Kudos goes out to Edith Maxwell, a.k.a. author Maddie Day for her new cozy, When The Grits Hit The Fan .

If you're in the Boston Area, treat yourself to attending Edith's book launch event at Jabberwocky Books in Newburyport, Massachusetts on April 7 at 7:00 pm. More information below.

Despite the bitter winter in South Lick, Indiana, business is still hot at Robbie Jordan’s restaurant. But when another murder rattles the small town, can Robbie defrost the motives of a cold-blooded killer?

Before she started hosting dinners for Indiana University’s Sociology Department at Pans ‘N Pancakes, Robbie never imagined scholarly meetings could be so hostile. It’s all due to Professor Charles Stilton, who seems to thrive on heated exchanges with his peers and underlings, and tensions flare one night after he disrespects Robbie’s friend, graduate student Lou. So when Robbie and Lou go snowshoeing the next morning and find the contentious academic frozen under ice, police suspect Lou might have killed him after their public tiff. To prove her friend’s innocence, Robbie is absorbing local gossip about Professor Stilton’s past and developing her own thesis on the homicide—even if that means stirring up terrible danger for herself along the way . . . 

Seriously, can a cozy mystery cover and title get any better? Buy your copy at the link above, grab your mug of tea and treat yourself!





 
National best-selling author Edith Maxwell is a 2017 double Agatha Award nominee for her historical mystery Delivering the Truth and her short story, “The Mayor and the Midwife.” She writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries; as Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Her award-winning short crime fiction has appeared in many juried anthologies, and she is honored to served as President of Sisters in Crime New England.
A fourth-generation Californian and former tech writer, farmer, and doula, Maxwell now writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time as a Facebook addict north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs at WickedCozyAuthors.com, Killer Characters, and with the Midnight Ink authors. Find her at www.edithmaxwell.com and elsewhere.
--


Edith Maxwell
Agatha-nominated and national best-selling author

Called to Justice. Midnight Ink, 2017When the Grits Hit the Fan. (Written as Maddie Day), Kensington Publishing, 2017Mulch Ado About Murder. Kensington Publishing, 2017

http://www.edithmaxwell.com

http://wickedcozyauthors.com

KRISTINA STANLEY: STRONG WOMEN IN STORY

Strong Women in Story – by Kristina Stanley
When Connie invited me to guest blog on the topic of strong women, my mind raced with possibilities.
She asked what does the phrase, “Strong Women” mean to me. I had to think about that. Strong physically? Strong emotionally? A combination of the two.
My gut reaction was to say a strong woman is independent. By that I mean, a woman who can take care of herself. Not that she should do that all the time, or that she shouldn’t rely on others, but that she can if she has to.
This led me to think about the protagonist I write about. Kalin Thompson is the protagonist in the Stone Mountain Series. She first appears in DESCENT.
She’s in love with Ben Timlin but has a life of her own. She relies on him but doesn’t need him. She cares for him and for their dog, Chica, sometimes at the expense of herself and sometimes not.
When Kalin Thompson is promoted to Director of Security at Stone Mountain Resort, she soon becomes entangled in the high-profile murder investigation of an up-and-coming Olympic-caliber skier. There are more suspects with motives than there are gates on the super-G course, and danger mounts with every turn.
Kalin’s boss orders her to investigate. Her boyfriend wants her to stay safe and let the cops do their job. Torn between loyalty to friends and professional duty, Kalin must look within her isolated community to unearth the killer’s identity. 
Strong female characters are smart.
Kalin is a director at a ski resort in change of security and human resources. To do this job well, she must use her brains.
Strong female characters are proactive.
Kalin actively searches for the killer of a skier who was murdered at her mountain. Even though her life is in danger, she tries to do what’s right for the murdered skier, her friends, and her coworkers.
Strong female characters stand up for others who aren’t as strong.
Kalin looks after others at the resort who are in need of her help. She’s kind when required and tough when she has to be.
Does that mean women in real life who are smart, proactive and stand up for others are strong? You tell me. I’d love to hear in the comments what you think the characteristics of a strong female protagonist are.


BIO:
KristinaStanley is the best-selling author of the Stone Mountain Mystery Series. Her first two

Her short stories have been published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Voices From the Valleys anthology. She is the author of THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES.
As the co-founder and CEO of Feedback Innovations, a company started to help writers rewrite better fiction. She loves the self-editing process and wants to help other writers learn how to do a structural edit on their own work.
If you’d like more self-editing tips, you can find out more about her and Feedback at www.FeedbackForFiction.com. Connect with her @FictionRewrite.
Learn more about Kristina on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

CHRISTINE BAGLEY: MY IDEA OF A STRONG WOMAN

I love meeting new authors and learning what excites them. Next week I'm on a panel at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts with some great women who happen to be awesome story tellers. Kick back for a few minutes and meet Christine Bagley. You'll be glad you did!




My Idea of a Strong WomanBy Christine Bagley

I like a mixed bag when it comes to strong women, particularly in literature. And the women I like to read about are not the Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Mother Teresa’s of the world. I like them scandalous. I want them to break the rules, be brave, tough, shrewd, and make unconventional choices, even at enormous personal cost.

Take for example, Loving Frank, the novel by Nancy Horan based on Mama Borthwick, Frank Lloyd Wright’s lover, who left her family to live with Wright in the early 1900’s. She was a translator, intellectual, and feminist. She was relentlessly hounded and condemned in the press for leaving her husband and two children, yet would not return to a loveless marriage or, at that time, the conventional role of a wife and mother. In the end, she paid an enormous price for her choice.            
Then there’s Circling The Sun, the novel by Paula McLain based on the fearless Beryl Markham. Markham was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean – east to west, and went spear hunting in Kenya. She was a friend of Karen Blixen, pen name, Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa.  Markham trained and raced horses, and had numerous love affairs, including the infamous one with Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester while both were married. And she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her.            
Who can forget the incomparable Scarlett O’Hara from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind? She’s naughty, sneaky, beautiful, and a survivor. Her plight to save the family home, Tara, demonstrates her strength and perseverance as well as her conniving, selfish, nature.  Would I want her as a friend? No. Did I appreciate her strength and courage? Yes.             
Remember Mattie Ross? She was the fourteen-year-old heroine who embarks on a journey of revenge in the novel, True Grit by Charles Portis.  Employing the notorious Rooster Cogburn to kill the man who shot her father in cold blood, she is single-minded, independent, and unlike any other female of her time. She is mentally and physically tough, (even enduring amputation from a snake bite) but, in the end, she accomplishes her goal against all odds.             
In the psychological thriller, My Cousin Rachelby Daphne du Maurier, Rachel Ashley is the beautiful, mysterious widow of Ambrose Ashley, the older cousin of protagonist Philip Ashley, who falls in love with Rachel, assuming that she also loves him. What enhances Rachel’s enigma is that the reader, as well as Philip Ashley, never quite knows if Rachel is capable of murder or if she’s a good person wrongly judged. Either way, her character is smart and shrewd enough to fool you. The ending of this novel is superb, and one that often comes to mind when writing my own short stories.              
And then there’s Minny Jackson in The Help by Katherine Sockett. Not only did Minny have the strength to suffer despicable discrimination and humiliation because of her color, she also had the gumption to exact revenge with her special pie, containing her own feces. It was one of those “Yes!” moments in the novel, and an especially delicious payback. All of the female characters in The Helpwere strong, and took risks to open readers’ eyes to what happened in the 60’s to black maids.             
These are the sort of women who fascinate me, with varying degrees and types of strength. I crave these characters in novels, differ with them in some cases, but am ultimately drawn to their toughness - even when it’s sometimes perverse. My own female characters are definitively more perverse than they are strong, mainly because a lot of them are murderers, i.e., The Elevator, The Madness of Ida Mae,and my current project, On a Winter’s Night.             
Maybe some day I’ll write about a strong woman who is good and pure. I do have an adventurous, unconventional woman from the 1500’s in mind, although she probably killed a few people during one of her notorious escapades now that I think about it…


Bio


Christine Bagley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and teaches writing and presentation skills to foreign national clinicians and scientists at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.  She is the former Editor of Eye Contact for the Schepens Eye Research Institute, and The Medical Services Review for the Massachusetts General Hospital. A Member of the Mystery Writers of America, she was a 2016 fiction contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Learm more about Christine at christinebagley.com.                                                                                                                                                


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FRIDAY FEATURES is a steady presence on Out of the Fog where I explore the concept of "strong women." Who are they? What makes them strong? How do we see them in writing and/or in business? If you're an author, what is their place in the world of thrillers of mysteries? If you're in business, how is the working environment impacted by the presence of a "strong woman" and how are they seen as leaders and team members? If you're an emerging strong woman, tell us about your journey. Have other questions you find compelling? Ask away and I'll post the answers here. 

If you have something to say about the topic of 
strong women, contact me on Twitter: 
@conniehambley.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Short Story Panel at Porter Square Books

Love discovering new authors but don't know where to start? Sampling authors by reading their short stories is perfect! 


Join me on Thursday, March 23 at 7:00 at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'll be talking with three authors you should know! We all share a love of mysteries and short stories, but our differences will surprise you. Each of us has a story in Windward: Best New England Crime Stories. Come and discover your next favorite author!


Christine Bagley 



Christine Bagley is a New England writer of fiction. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and teaches writing to foreign national physicians and scientists at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Bagley is the former editor of the Medical Services Review for the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Eye Contact for the Schepens Eye Research Institute. She was also a fiction contributor at the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers Conference.


Janet Halpin 


Janet Halpin writes both short stories and novels. She’s a committed genre hopper, writing mystery, romance, S/F, WWII-set paranormal and YA, but she draws the line at poetry. She lives with her family in the Massachusetts suburbs where, as we all know, nothing is as it seems.






Ruth M. McCarty 


Ruth M. McCarty’s short mysteries have appeared in Level Best Books, Flash Bang Mysteries and Over My Dead Body! She won the 2009 Derringer for "No Flowers for Stacey" published in Deadfall: Crime Stories by New England Writers. She is former editor at Level Best Books, a past president of the New England SinC, a member of MWA and a founding member of the New England Crime Bake.







When: Thursday, March 23
Time: 7:00 PM
Where: Porter Square Books
Address: 25 White Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Phone: (617) 491-2220

BOOK REVIEW: Amber Wolf by Ursula Wong

My measure of a good book is one that sticks with you even after you've finished it. Does it make you think about the human condition? Did you learn something new? 

Amber Wolf is a historical fiction tale set in Lithuania during the Soviet occupation of World War II and is a book I will not soon forget. It is lushly written, impeccably researched, and the story is superbly conceived and executed. 

After witnessing her mother raped and murdered by Russian soldiers, Ludmelia vows revenge. With little more than the clothes on her back and a fierce will to live, Ludmelia vanishes into the wilderness and joins with the partisan resistance movement.

Wong teaches us that the best and worst of humanity may coexist inside the heart of a single person. She forces us to examine how evil is born by crafting life stories for her characters with heartbreaking insight. Life's hard knocks and impossible choices are chiseled into her tale with a mad surgeon's precision. 

Amber Wolf is a book you will not soon forget.


***

Author Ursula WongUrsula was a guest on my blog earlier. Read her take on strong women here.

Ursula is a retired engineer who writes gripping stories about strong women struggling against impossible odds to achieve their dreams. Her award-winning novel,  Purple Trees , exposes a stark side of rural New England life in the experiences of a young woman who struggles for normalcy despite a vicious and hidden past. After losing her parents, Lily Phelps grows up fast to find work and build a future, but her secrets threaten every one she loves, and even her very life.
Her short stories have appeared in magazines and the popular  Insanity Tales  anthologies. For more about Ursula and her prize-winning flash fiction, visit her on  http://ursulawong.wordpress.com .

ANNE MACDONALD: FACING DANGER TO GAIN INDEPENDENCE

Strong Women: How do you gain strength and independence in the face of danger?by Anne Macdonald
Samantha “Sam” Monroe is the heroine of the first two mysteries in my planned Sam Monroe Mystery series. The first, Deadlines Are Murder, was published in 2011 and the second Weddings Are Murder was published in 2016. The third, Trials Are Murder, is anticipated to be available in 2018.
My goal is to take Sam, who is a victim of circumstances beyond her control, extend those circumstances into something a bit more dangerous and turn the table around a little bit. Sam is a fictional character who is not tied to any historical perspective of women but to the current ambiguity of working women in a world where women are paid less than men for the same job, and are considered to be more emotional and less analytical than men.
Sam is more timid than determined when her journey begins in Deadlines Are Murder. When her world turns upside down when she came home a little early one day and her life is changed forever. She goes from someone who is feeling stuck in her life and in her marriage to making decisions about her own working future. Danger arrives a few months later when Ariella, her husband’s grad assistant and lover, is murdered and she is a suspect in this murder.  After clearing her name, Sam agrees to help Ariella’s father find the murderer. Since Ariella’s father is a former mob-boss with a very public presence, this is a more dangerous choice for her to make. Most people would take a step back, say ‘thank you very much, but no thanks.’ Sam’s curiosity about what her estranged husband, Rick, might be up to leads her agreeing to this offer. Sam has a lot of curiosity and this trait causes her to leap before she looks.
In the next story, Rick and Donna will stop at nothing to stop Sam, and others,  from testifying. They will use their perceptions of Sam and her weaknesses to build a defense themselves. As she faces even more challenges, Sam will become the best version of herself that strength and endurance can build.
BIO:
Anne Macdonald has worked in higher education, law, banking, and for herself, as an IT project manager, a webmaster, a freelance writer and an event planner. Writing since the age of ten, her first short story was inspired by her love of history, particularly the American Revolution, her love of a good story and an active imagination. Her love of history led her to a BA and an MA in History. Her unpublished MA Thesis on Asher Benjamin, architect and builder, is held in several libraries around New England. Her active imagination and the love of a good story inspire her novels and short stories. She is working on a biography of her grandfather, a Manhattan Project engineer.
DEADLINES ARE MURDER is her first book in the Sam (Samantha) Monroe mystery series. WEDDINGS ARE MURDER, the second in the series, was released in December 2016, and the third, TRIALS ARE MURDER, is anticipated in early 2018. Sam Monroe is the protagonist and her extended family members and friends are featured in each story. Anne currently resides with her husband in a nice, quiet suburb of Boston, Massachusetts.

You can find Anne at:


blog: http://anneswritinglife.wordpress.com/like: http://www.facebook.com/AnneMacdonaldAuthor
follow: @anne_macdonald
BOOK BLURB:
Her plans for a quiet weekend in Vermont were slowly unraveling . . .

Samantha “Sam” Monroe is a bridesmaid at her brother’s wedding. She’s anticipating a nice weekend away from her life in Boston; where her estranged husband is in a coma and her former best friend is in jail awaiting trial for attempted murder. Complications include her bodyguard boyfriend, her loving but overbearing family, a bride looking for the perfect wedding, a missing father of the bride, a car dealer with a side business in drugs, and a dead body in front of the church. 



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FRIDAY FEATURES is a steady presence on Out of the Fog where I explore the concept of "strong women." Who are they? What makes them strong? How do we see them in writing and/or in business? If you're an author, what is their place in the world of thrillers of mysteries? If you're in business, how is the working environment impacted by the presence of a "strong woman" and how are they seen as leaders and team members? If you're an emerging strong woman, tell us about your journey. Have other questions you find compelling? Ask away and I'll post the answers here. 

If you have something to say about the topic of 
strong women, contact me on Twitter: 
@conniehambley.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First Draft DONE! Now the real work begins

One picture is worth one thousand words.

In my case, it's closer to over one hundred thousand.

Finishing the first draft of anything is momentous, but for this particular book it feels like I've crested the summit of a mountain. When I wrote my first novel, The Charity, I did not expect it to be the beginning of a series. Readers loved the story and asked what happened to the main characters after the final scene. Realizing I had an answer, I knew I had to write the second novel, The Troubles. I branded the series a trilogy because I didn't want the story line to run out of steam or for the characters to stop being compelling. 

Unwittingly, I boxed myself into one hell of a challenge.

The third book needed to have its own reason for being. It needed some new characters and a plot that zinged. It also needed to conclude a few narratives and themes I had developed.

Oh. And I'm a pantser. I knew where I wanted the characters and the story to end, but I didn't know how I was going to get them there. It's like being in Vermont and saying you want to go to New York City. That's all fine and dandy, but are you going to take the train? Bus? Drive? If driving, will you take the Major Deagan, Saw Mill, or Hutchinson River Expressway? Having a destination is great, but you need to know how you're going to get there.

For me, if I'm writing and my characters surprise me, then I know my reader will be surprised as well. I'm not saying how much this book sapped the life out of me, but at times it felt like I was in an Escape Room diabolically created without a solution.

One tool that really helped me focus my story was drafting a brief log line for each novel. By reading the progression of my narrative through the eye of a needle, I could weave a tighter story.

The Jessica Trilogy's first two books' log lines are:

The Charity: Witness to a gang-style slaying, a young woman is hunted to stop her from exposing the money and the people behind a Boston-based terrorist cell .
The Troubles: Deceived by her family, a rebellious woman seeks to unearth how Northern Ireland’s Troubles are buried in her mother’s secret past.
Charity and Troubles flowed out of me. I knew exactly what I wanted to give the readers. The third book took longer to percolate to get all the pieces just right. I workshopped a few log lines for The Wake, but when a best-selling author and fellow Sisters in Crime member read the following, she pulled me aside and said, "If you can deliver on that, you've got yourself another winner."

The Wake: A shattered heiress’ family secret is exploited by her spurned lover to blackmail her into engaging in international terrorism.
Throw in a bombing at a summer Olympic games and I knew I had a corker of a story in my head. The trick was getting it out.
I can't advocate my process to others, because I drove myself crazy. As I progressed the draft forward, I revised and crafted earlier chapters. The first third of the book has been workshopped with my writer groups, and the final third is raw, raw, raw. I know the real work of writing begins with revisions and edits. I look at a first draft as throwing a lump of clay on a potters' wheel. Once out, the true shape emerges through the process of sculpting, shaping and refining with the final beauty in the firing of a perfect glaze.
But today, I wrote a sentence and, in a shock of clarity, realized it was the last.
I did an end zone dance and got back to work.

This is a proposed cover? What do you think?

Christmastime Already? Sheesh!

Okay. I've been slacking off in writing my posts. November events blasted me out of my routine, rocketing past Thanksgiving, and landing me in the land of elves and Santa. Holy schmoly! What just happened?

I know I'm not alone in feeling clubbed and dazed. Book events filled my calendar, and November left many of us numb from a shared experience. (I'm not going to mention the "T" word, or anything about a shocking "E," or, well, you get the idea.) Time marches on. I'm a mom in the middle of an active family, so I feel pressure to get in gear and make Christmas happen.

Past Christmases were a blur of school events, office parties, shopping, baking, and decorating the house. I'll admit to being a little high octane when it came to making Christmas memories. The sleight of hand my husband and I perfected about Christmas Eve magic had our kids believing in Santa well past the average age of enlightenment. Their refrain? There must be a Santa because no way mom and dad would buy all that stuff and no way in heck could we hide it all until Christmas morning. Boo yeah! Mission accomplished.

But this year is different. My family will have one empty seat at the dinner table. It's a fact I'm having a hard time accepting.

Two of my children have graduated college and my youngest is a freshman. Asking them what they want Santa to bring makes them roll their eyes, and with no kids in the local schools, holiday concerts, bake sale fund raisers, and classroom parties are things of the past. I'll confess to being grumpy about decorating my home, too.

This season, the one filled with joy and love, is teaching me to find the joy in my life and focus on the love. I will eventually bake, shop, wrap, and decorate, but I'm refusing to do so when it feels like a "have to" instead of a "want to." I want to enjoy this holiday with my family. And I will.

This Christmas will not be a blur of activities. I am choosing to spend my time wisely and carefully, with people I love. I am going to take the time needed to show how I feel. Maybe we'll hike together or eat warm ginger bread, made from my grandmother's recipe, dripping with melting butter. When we do, I'll listen to their favorite Christmas memories and ask them about their hopes for the future. I don't think anyone's going to notice I didn't wrap a bunch of presents or I served a store-bought quiche instead of making my own. If they do notice? I'll invite them to talk with me while I wrap or cook. I want my time with them.


My second novel, "The Troubles," won best fiction award at EQUUS Film Festival in NYCI realize that finding joy is like looking at yourself through a fun house mirror. Depending upon your perspective, features dominate your view or shrink away. I'm surrounded with joy. I just need to decide to keep my focus there.

Part of my joy was learning that "The Troubles" won a literary award! I may write a whole post on my November events, I may not. For now, I'm sharing a little bit of my joy with you.

If I don't post again for a couple of weeks, please know I wish you a wonderful holiday season and a joy filled new year. 

How Many Years to Become an Overnight Success?

You've heard the sayings by many different celebrities that it takes ten to fifteen years to become an overnight success. There is even a site dedicated to capturing the quips. Certain themes run throughout all of them. Overnight success is a myth, luck plays a part, and years of dogged work guarantees you nothing.

I didn't chose the life of an author to see my name on the New York Times best seller list, the measure most authors would agree on as the epitome of success. Of course, I'd love to see that, but I'm an author because I have fun with the process. I love creating and sculpting a story. I enjoy discovering readers and learning how they discover my work. I'm intrigued by the process of reaching readers through social media and marketing. I love the business and the creativity demanded in the publishing life.

I'm still working on becoming an overnight success, but I'm aware of accomplishments along my way. This November marks a few milestones for me. Four years ago, my first book, The Charity, was published and I started attending author events. Those initial events affirmed my love of the process of marketing as well as writing. Good thing, as some of my signings were more challenging than others.


Fans from Canada! They didn't mind the cold as much as I did.Some of my first signings were at the Equine Affaire. This conference is an annual pilgrimage for professionals and civilians in the equestrian world and draws over one hundred thousand people to the four day event. My books revolve around the horse world, so I knew I needed to be there to reach one sweet spot of my target audience. Was I featured at a book store? Nope. My first signings were as a guest with my brother's company, Eastern Hay. I propped my books up on a few hay bales and chatted with horse-loving and book-reading patrons. I sold a lot of books, made a few fans and learned a whole lot more than I bargained for about alfalfa hay and nutrition content of different horse feeds. I stood outside in the snow one year, cold drizzle another. All the while, I was seeing what people bought, figuring out why they bought what they did, and wondering how to get my foot in the door. I chatted with store owners, met different event organizers, and networked. In my rare down times, I attended equitation clinics and toured the breed barns to satisfy my horse cravings. I had a blast!

Fast forward four years. This month, I've been invited to moderate two author panels at Equine Affaire. Taborton Equine Books, where I was a featured author last year, will host book signings for all of the panelists afterwards. I'm thrilled at the honors, plus I'll be inside and warm! I have a short story (featuring a survivor of human trafficking at a therapeutic riding center) being released in Best New England Crime Stories by Level Best Books, and am a panelist at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City. All of that is in addition to the bread-and-butter events of book clubs and local author fairs. 

These events are fun for me, but they have a purpose as well. If enticing a reader to buy your book is like getting a kid to like broccoli, then it takes more than one exposure to an author name to develop a fan base. With each of these events, my circle of influence is larger than what I could have reached on my own. My name is listed on schedules, in programs, and on websites. When people see my name there, they know I'm serious about writing and the publishing business. I'm leveraging every little bit I can to reach the next rung up the success ladder.

So why bother? Well, if you go by the timeline above, I only have another six to eleven years before I hit it big.

Good thing I'm having fun.

Maggie Dana, Natalie Keller Reinert, Jean McWilliams, Connie Johnson Hambley when I first discovered Taborton Equine Books. The coat and scarf say it all! 

Author Panels at Equine Affaire

I don't know about you, but I love talking about horses and books as much as I love riding and writing...well, almost. When I'm joined by talented authors who share my passions, there's no contest! Let the gab-fest begin!
This year's Equine Affaire is a special one for me. I've been asked to moderate two panel discussions focusing on horses and books.
I know! Pinch me, right?
Thursday, November 10 will kick things off with a discussion on what your favorite fictional horse says about you. Does the Black Stallion make you all dreamy? How about Joey in War Horse? Purple ponies and unicorns count as windows to your soul, too. Me? I always liked the bad boys, and Thunderhead captured my heart long before I thought breaking curfew could be so much fun. I'll be joined by Maggie Dana, author of the iconic Timber Ridge Riders series, Mara Dabrishus, YA equestrian book author, and Patti Brooks, Morgan Horse evangelist and thriller author.
But wait! There's more!
Friday's panel will feature award-winning and best-selling authors Laura Moore, Natalie Keller Reinert, and Holly Robinson discussing how using the essence of the horse in fiction creates better stories. Laura pens sultry romances set in Virginia's horse country. Natalie brings thoroughbred racing to life with such love and realism you can feel the horse grit under your nails as you turn the pages. And Holly? Her books unfold the complex emotional ties inside families. Her recently released Folly Cove features a sister who gave up a promising riding career to care for an overbearing mother. 




















After the panels, the authors will be meeting readers and signing books at Taborton Equine Books. Check out the signing schedule below for more times and authors.