Maria Michaels's Blog, page 2
June 29, 2014
Come See Me at Hearts & Scribbles
I have a character interview: Ryan and Vera from Harte's Peak. It should be fun.
June 23, 2014
Blog Tour and Give-away
For the next three days I'm on a blog tour promoting Harte's Peak. Come on by and enter my giveaway for a $25 STARBUCKS gift card. Here's where I'll be:
JUNE 23RD
Ali’s Books (a review)
JUNE 24TH
3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, & Sissy, Too!
JUNE 25TH
June 21, 2014
Welcome to Harte's Peak ...
Harte's Peak is a small town in the Sierra California "gold country". It's actually based on the real town of Twain Harte, a cozy little town of about 2,000 people at a 3,000 mile elevation. 
It is a short 15 miles to Dodge Ridge Ski Resort in Pinecrest, California (elevation 5,000).
I'm partial to Twain Harte - the town is rich in history, actually named after Mark Twain and Brett Harte. My family started our annual February snow trip to Twain Harte in 1999, and it became a yearly event. Anyone from the Bay Area is familiar with the fact that our public schools often gave the week of President's Day off as what official became known as "February break". It couldn't be "winter" break (a better name, in my opinion) because that became December break. It obviously couldn't be "spring" break, thus it wound up with its boring and unoriginal title. However, in our family as well as in many other Bay Area families February break became known as "snow week".
Although it doesn't snow in the Bay Area, a three and a half hour drive into the mountains and voila! Snow for all snow-deprived Californians.
Thus began my love affair with Twain Harte, and a mere 13 years later it became the setting for my first novel. At this time, there will be two books in the Redemption Peak series. The second is under contract and we should have a cover reveal soon.
May 2, 2014
Blog Hop!
She has a series on Writing California in which she interviews various authors who write with a California setting. Her latest book is The Sheep Walker's Daughter:
"Three generations, four women, a history of family secrets will be reveal when Dee finds a postcard that says "Lost sheep may be recovered. Lost time cannot." 
And now for my writing process interview:
1. What are you working on right now?
At the moment I have turned in my content edits for the prequel book in the Harte’s Peak series (title TBD, but probably Beginnings in Harte’s Peak),and while I wait for the copy edits (we’re way ahead of schedule because thankfully this book didn’t need as many revisions) I’m working on something entirely new. This one is a contemporary romance set in wine country, and is the second in a series as well. A retired baseball pitcher buys a vineyard and tries to hire a woman from his past to run it. The problem is this woman had every intention of buying the vineyard herself, until the ball player plunked down cash for it. Now she has to decide if she wants to work for the man, or wait until he fails. Decisions, decisions.
2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?
As authors we are always cultivating our own "voice". It's a mixture of syntax, emotional depth and delivery. I think and hope that I now have my own voice which is a mixture of humor and emotion. But this is something I'll forever be perfecting.
3. Why do you write what you do?
(Below, Jack naps while I work. It's a rough life, he wants you to know.)
I love stories about real people – people who love are gloriously flawed but know how to love. Though I find mysteries and thrillers engaging I know I could never write them. I like to write from a happy place, even as I put my characters through the emotional ringer. Humor is important to me and I love to make myself laugh as I write. (As long as it isn’t the love scene.)
4. How does your writing process work?
I’m excited to announce I have a new process! I’m officially a plotser now because I begin with knowing what my inciting event will be, and the first turning point. I have a good feel for the hero and heroine, and their pasts (especially if they have some sort of shared past). The subplots I allow to reveal themselves to me as I write the first draft. I’ve got a firm grasp of the setting and the character Arc that each of them will have.
My new process is going to involve writing the first draft of Act I and then reviewing it to make sure all of the points are covered and I’m not missing anything. I hope this will reduce on revisions once I’m done. It’s also going to give me a good outline to follow. Anyway, I’m going to try it and see how it works.
April 21, 2014
Letting Go
I'm happy for him. Really. Even if Chicago is a loooooong way from northern California. Even if he's my baby. There is such a comfort in knowing that though he will be far from home and family he is never far from God. As it so happens, we both believe and serve the same God who will continue to connect us, no matter the distance.
At the same time, I'm mindful to resist an urge to be too proud. This is my son's life, purpose and ministry and it's a matter between him and the Lord. I'm merely incredibly blessed to be along for the ride with a front row seat.
Before I get something in my eye, here's a photo of our beagle Riley. Like me, she has mixed feelings. She was asked by big sister to give a "high five" in celebration. See the first photo - she's not so sure about all this. 
The second photo is her attempt at being a good sport, and my attempt at catching it in action. Sorta missed it, but there you go.
April 9, 2014
Excerpt from Harte's Peak...do you love the Gym?
Meanwhile, there's a fitness craze going on where I work. It started a few weeks ago and coincided with the calendar indicating spring had sprung - co-workers are pairing up and going for walks at lunch time. Carb elimination is rampant - bread is the bad guy, and salad is our new best friend. Of course, the men have already lost weight. Don't get me started.
I thought about a scene in Harte's Peak that involves our hero, Ryan Colton, getting our heroine, Vera Carrington, ready for the slopes. Vera is a girl after my own heart - she'd be the one to say that if she's found dead on a jogging trail people should know she was killed elsewhere and the body moved there.
From Harte's Peak, releasing June 20th in all digital formats from The White Rose/Pelican Book Group:
From treadmill to stair stepper. Running nowhere to climbing nowhere. What joy.
The person who’d invented these machines had a wicked sense of humor. By the end of their session, the sweat dripped profusely from every pore she owned and surely some she didn't.
Ryan threw a towel at her, and she slid down the length of the wall in a heap. He was treating her like one of the guys. Why, then, did she hate it?
"Good work. Tomorrow we'll step it up a little. I didn't want to be too hard on you the first day."
March 20, 2014
#Pitchmadness #TeamLibrary
Check out my entry if you have the time. Results will post on March 25th on Brenda's blog.
March 5, 2014
A Visit with Author Liz Flaherty
Four women whose differences only deepen the friendship forged in a needy childhood…
They were four little girls living in ramshackle trailers beside a lake in rural Indiana. They shared everything from dreams to measles to boyfriends to more dreams. As they grew up, everything in their lives changed—except their friendship. Through weddings and divorces, births and deaths, one terrible secret has kept them close despite all the anger, betrayal, and pain.
Now, forty years later, facing illness, divorce, career challenges, and even addiction, the women come together once again for a bittersweet month on an island in Maine. Staring down their fifties, they must consider the choices life is offering them now and face the pain of what happened long ago.
Secrets are revealed and truths uncovered, but will their time together cement their lifelong friendship—or drive them apart forever?
Excerpt:
I wanted Andie to come to New York, but she didn’t feel up to it. I felt a little shudder go through me when she said that. Andie’s always been so strong, and she’s cancer-free, so I found it startling and frightening when she admitted to feeling less than wonderful. But, as Let There Be Hope shows, cancer changes one in sometimes indefinable ways. Maybe this is one of those changes.
Mark and I visited some islands off the Maine coast once, in our early days. I was so enthralled that he bought me a house on one of them, a little strip of green called, appropriately enough, Hope Island. It reminds me of Bennett’s Island, the fictitious utopia of Elisabeth Ogilvie’s books, except that Hope has all the mod cons.
I love to go there. It’s a place I can be myself with little regard to what anyone else thinks. I sit in my bathrobe on the wraparound porch of the Victorian horror that is my house and drink coffee with Lucas Bishop, our neighbor. I read Jean’s books without worrying that someone will see the covers.
I’ve never taken anyone else—it was Mark’s and my private getaway—but I wouldn’t mind if it was Andie who was there. Or Jean and even Suzanne. Andie and I could work on her book. Jean could cook and keep house since she’s so crazy about doing that, and maybe even spin out one of her romances placed on an island. And Suzanne could...do our hair or something.
We would all be together as we are that single night every year when we drive to the lake and pretend we’re facing down our ghosts. I am a little afraid that the day will come that we’ll have to face them down for real.
I wonder if they’d come.
*****
The Girls of Tonsil Lake is Liz Flaherty’s eighth book, and it is no less thrilling than the first one was. Retired from the post office, she spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and doing whatever else feels good at the moment (like drinking wine on Nan’s boat).
She and Duane live in the old farmhouse in Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really…30-some years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!
She’d love to hear from you at lizkflaherty@gmail.com or please come and see her at: Liz Flaherty.com
