Category: Ruminations and Crackpot Theories

Observations on life in general.

How to Keep Your Characters from Getting Bored

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July is National Anti-Boredom month. I recently asked author Carole Ann Moleti what her characters do to fight boredom.

Liz and Mike Keeny are far from bored during the summer months. The Historic Barrett Inn is full of guests. Liz and her beloved housekeeper Mae are busy attending to them-as well as to little Eddie. Mike is fisherman, so he takes full advantage of the warmer days to nab some striped bass and flounder for the local restaurants.

On top of that, the ghosts haunting the Inn are always more riled up in the summer months and the painful anniversaries of their traumatic last years have the specters buzzing and their hosts struggling to contain them. And this year, they have Category 5 Hurricane Edward on the way. Is it just coincidence he’s named after sea captain Edward Barrett? Mike and Liz don’t think so. When the evacuation order comes, do they stay or do they go?

Breakwater Beach: Book One in the Unfinished Business Series

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Available in e-book, print coming Fall 2016  http://amzn.to/1VfwnZR

Blurb:

Liz Levine is convinced her recently deceased husband is engineering the sequence of events that propels her into a new life. But it’s sea captain Edward Barrett, the husband that died over a century ago, who has returned to complete their unfinished business. Edward’s lingering presence complicates all her plans and jeopardizes a new relationship that reawakens her passion for life and love. What are Captain Barrett’s plans for his wife, and for the man who is the new object of her affections?

Excerpt:

Mike tipped his hand in salute and went out to his truck. “Morning,” he said to Mae who was getting out of her van.

“Good morning’ to ya, too,” she replied, looking at him askance. “Come along, lassies, still plenty to do.”

Mae looked at Liz standing in the doorway wearing Mike’s sweatshirt. Her eyes traveled from Liz’s hair, still damp and caked with mud and sand, all the way down to her bare feet.

“Ehh . . . a change in plans, girls. We’ll start downstairs today. First, polish the woodwork and then clean all the fixtures. Then upstairs, after the missus has time to get dressed.”

Mae herded them out of the foyer then followed Liz upstairs, smiling like she was about to solve the crime of the century. “From the looks of ya, that was one wild night on the beach. Now ya best be hoppin’ into the tub after passin’ me the nightie. I’ll soak it and get that mud out before it’s ruined. I’ll freshen the big guy’s sweatshirt, too.”

“It was nothing like that, Mae.” Liz couldn’t bear the thought of having to explain this to another person she knew from another life.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not passin’ any judgment. To be honest, I’m relieved. Ya took my advice. There’s nothin’ wrong with livin’, Liz.”

Also available in ebook and print: http://amzn.to/1RNz7ce

The Widow’s Walk: Book Two in the Unfinished Business Series

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Mike and Liz Keeny are newlyweds, new parents, and the proprietors of the Barrett Inn, an 1875 Victorian on Cape Cod, which just happens to be haunted. By their own ghosts. The Inn had become an annex of Purgatory, putting Mike, Liz, and their infant son in danger. Selling the historic seaside bed and breakfast was the only answer, one that Liz and her own tortured specter refused to consider. Were they doomed to follow the same path that led to disaster in their previous lives? Was getting out, getting away, enough?

Coming in 2017: Storm Watch 

Read more at  http://bit.ly/1Pr1y1x

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Blurb:

Mike and Liz thought they’d gotten control of the specters haunting the Barrett Inn. But things get very complicated when they’re the ghosts from your past life. The Category Five Hurricane bearing down on Cape Cod appears to be headed directly for them–or has it been spawned from inside them?

Excerpt:

Either it was age or too much on his mind, but forgetting your morning routine was like getting lost in your own back yard. Mike was in the parking lot before he realized he’d forgotten to stop for tea. There was some water and soda aboard the Whaler-warm of course-some stale snacks too. The sun peeked through a bank of puffy white clouds, giving the hint of a beautiful day to come. But to the west, a dark expanse rolled over itself like a giant octopus, its tentacles undulating, slapping the shit out of the cottony sky. “Damn ghosts.”

 Bio

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Carole Ann Moleti lives and works as a nurse-midwife in New York City, thus explaining her fascination with all things paranormal, urban fantasy, and space opera. Her nonfiction focuses on health care, politics, and women’s issues. But her first love is writing science fiction and fantasy because walking through walls is less painful than running into them.

Books One and Two in the Unfinished Business series, Carole’s Cape Cod paranormal romance novels, Breakwater Beach and The Widow’s Walk, were published by Soulmate. Book Three, Storm Watch, is expected in 2017.

Urban fantasies set in the world of Carole’s novels have been featured in Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Seers: Ten Tales of Clairvoyance, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, and Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires. Her award winning non-fiction, which ranges from the sweet and sentimental to edgy and irreverent has been published in a variety of literary venues.

Links

Subscribe to Carole’s Newsletter and get a free ebook:  http://eepurl.com/bfNver

Amazon author Page: http://amazon.com/author/carolemoleti

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/Cmoleti

Website: http://caroleannmoleti.com

Facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/CaroleAnnMoletiAuthor/

Google Plus: plus.google.com/103609323247390103301

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomCmoleti

Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/caroleannmoleti/

 

 

Six Degrees of F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The local newspaper recently ran an article about an old apartment building that is scheduled to be demolished. Apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the building when he was a child–around the turn of the last century.

He’s not the only author to darken those halls.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at photos of building the article referred to as 501 Catherine Street and discovered it was the same building in while I lived when I first went out on my own: 735 East Willow Street.

Let me give you a tour.

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I lived on the third floor, in apartment 9. In the above photo, the two windows on the third floor of the brown brick section were my bedroom.

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In this photo, two of the three windows on the front of the building (the painted-red section) were my living room.

(The third window belonged to a vacant, burned-out apartment my roomies and I once tried to explore.)

There were many wonderful things about this apartment:

The ancient Norge gas stove that worked like a charm (oh, how I wish I still had that stove!)

STOVE WITH JENN

The cat loved sitting on the counter. And yes, that is a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” poster hanging behind the stove. It’s possible F. Scott’s mom cooked his meals on that stove.

The wide pine-plank floors that gleamed like honey when the sun poured through the windows.

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The rooftop access–we essentially had a private third floor terrace.

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We would leash the cat out there so she could get fresh air. We could also keep an eye on our cars. (Mine was the dark blue Firebird next to the yellow VW Beetle.)

Other photos:

TOLKEIN

Yes, that’s the Tolkein Mural hanging on the sloped ceiling over the sofa. And yes, I sat on that sofa with my mom’s portable typewriter and pounded out dreadful attempts at novels.

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I’m not sure it’s visible in this photo, but even when I lived in the building, it was falling apart. The landlord had someone come in and bolt the facade of the building to the wood floor with steel bands. We tried to cover the bands with a black and white area rug.

BEDROOM BEDROOM CHAIR WITH CAT

Import stores were my favorite place to shop.

BLUE WILLOW

My great-grandmother’s blue willow dishes dressing up the table for a dinner party.  And yes, I still have that round blue Panasonic transistor radio (hanging over the calendar).

KITCHEN SINK

On the right side of this photo, you can see my grandmother’s Aunt Jemima cookie jar.

Two photos I don’t seem to have are of the stairs going up to the roof and the Milton Glaser Bob Dylan poster hanging on the bedroom door.

I sometimes dream I’m living in that apartment again.

It’s a shame something wasn’t done to save the building a long, long time ago.

 

Loving Day: Getting Political

I try to avoid controversy/politics in my author persona.

Today, I make an exception.

Today is Loving Day, which may not be precisely what you think.

On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court struck down laws in 16 states which forbade “interracial” marriages. The defendants in the case were Richard  and Mildred Loving, a black man married to a white woman, who were arrested because their marriage was illegal in the state in which they lived.

Their surname was appropriate to the situation.

  • I am a romance author.
  • I believe in love.
  • Love should not be legislated.
  • The person you love is none of my business.
  • I am happy for you because you’ve found love.

 

 

Best Friends

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Today is National Best Friends Day.

I’ve had many friends over the years. I’ve stayed in touch–or gotten in touch again, thanks to social media–with many of them. I’ve been blessed with wonderful people in my life.

For the past 15–and that’s an estimate–years, my best friends have been members of my writing community. My tribe. They’re the ones who understand the frustration. The joy. The women who respect my process and who share their processes as we all muddle through this thing called writing books.

Image credit: andrejad / 123RF Stock Photo

An author’s best friends respect her need for solitude. Respect her need for last minute brainstorming. Her need to celebrate the victories and mourn her setbacks.

During interviews, I’m often asked what advice I would give to aspiring authors. My opinion on this never changes: find your writing community. Find your tribe. Find your best friends.

Killing Your Darlings with Author Janis Lane

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never put on the page what’s in your mind and heart.”

“Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again. You must not come lightly to the blank pages.” Stephen King

In my opinion there’s nothing more terrifying than facing those blank pages. There’s also nothing more exciting. I have learned to flash my vocabulary in the first write, but after I read Mr. King’s memoir on writing, I learned how sparse should be my identifying adverbs or adjectives. It hurt, but limiting those modifying words forced me to strengthen my nouns and verbs. It’s an exercise in discipline. Not particular fun, but necessary.

Where do those wonderful words go?

A particular florid paragraph can be saved. (I looked up the definition of florid. When I read ostentatious, I got excited. I love big words.) I tuck them into a file called “little darlings.” Don’t know who coined the phrase, but we all know what it means. Occasionally I check them out. You never know when those pearls that dropped from my mind will come in handy. They never have, but you never know, and it makes me feel better that they weren’t completely wasted.

Meanwhile, and hopefully, the dialogue is strengthened and to the point. It feels brutal, but after all, it’s no more than getting a hair cut. Grooming your manuscript is a necessity.

WHISPERS of DANGER and LOVE

When Cheryl realizes her new next-door neighbor is someone she loved as a young girl, she immediately puts the brakes on her emotions. Never again would she allow the gorgeous hunk of a man to break her heart.

Ruggedly handsome Detective David Larkin isn’t used to pretty ladies giving him a firm no. He persists, even as Cheryl fights her own temptations. The two struggle to appreciate each other as adults, even as they admit to deep feelings from their childhood.

Available on Amazon.com

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Janis Lane lives in Western New York near a small town on a few picturesque acres with her ever patient husband. They own and operate a small herbtique which keeps their days busy and interesting during the summer months. She writes Cozy Mysteries as Janis Lane and Regency Romance as Emma Lane.

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