After taking a few months off, I’m back for another edition of Writer Wednesday. This month, several of my writer friends and I are sharing our favorite places to read and write. I love to kick back in the recliner with a good book and my afghan (lovingly crocheted by my sweet mom). As soon as I sit down, I’ve got company.
Sometimes I write in the recliner, too, but as someone who loves nature, I feel most inspired when I can be outside. Since I live in Florida, that’s pretty much year around. So I usually take my laptop and head out to the screen room.
I love the view, looking out over the golf course. It’s so serene–the rolling landscape, the Spanish moss hanging from the trees, the breeze rustling the leaves. It’s the perfect setting to get those creative juices flowing.
Check out what my writer friends have to say at the links below.
For this month’s Writer Wednesday, we’re all talking about our phobias.
I’m not afraid of snakes or the dark, or even public speaking. But I do have one phobia. It all started the summer I turned 14.
My dad was a general contractor and always built the homes we lived in. We made one of these moves in the summer of 1974. During the four months my dad was constructing the new place, we lived at my grandmother’s house. I had been there plenty of times previously, had even spent the night, but it wasn’t until we moved in that I met all the other “residents.” Spiders. Big, hairy spiders that grow to be the size of your hand. My grandmother would never kill a spider. She insisted they were good to have around, that they kill the roaches. But for me, those four months were like something out of a horror movie. I never knew when I was going to run into one. One day, I pulled the jigsaw puzzle I’d been working on out from under my bed and headed toward the living room. I had reached the center of the room before I glanced down, and there in the middle of my puzzle board, staring up at me, was one of the biggest spiders I’d seen yet. Amazingly enough, instead of slinging puzzle pieces all over the room, I somehow made it to the piano bench with the board before going into hysterics. In September, my dad finally got our house finished and I was able to escape Spider Central, but the damage had already been done.
My husband Chris is very understanding of my spider phobia and tries his hardest to warn me if there’s a spider around, without instilling panic. The problem is, as soon as he says my name, I know. It’s the spider tone. All he has to do is say, “Carol,” and the panic starts to build. One night, after dinner and movies at my sister’s house, we got home at two a.m. I crossed in front of the car headed toward the front door, when, in the glow of the porch light, Chris saw a huge web with its occupant sitting in the center. Afraid I would walk toward him and through the web, he calmly told me to go straight to the front door. Unfortunately, I recognized the spider tone and in my panic ran to him, right through the web. As soon as I felt the sticky threads, I knew what I had done. Chris thoroughly checked my hair and clothes, but we never did find the spider. Eventually I calmed down, the neighbors got back to sleep and all was fine.
Chris isn’t the only one with the spider tone. I apparently have one, too. The moment I call his name, he instantly knows if I’ve seen a spider. I won’t get close enough to actually kill one. Thank the Lord, every time I’ve found one inside, my knight in shining armor has been there to protect me. There was one time, though, that I did have to deal with it. This one wasn’t inside. It was in the mailbox, a black widow. Chris wasn’t home and I was afraid I would forget about it and reach my hand into the box. I found a brick and hurled it as hard as I could. When he got home, he wanted to know why the mailbox was sitting cockeyed on the post. But the spider was dead.
All spiders are terrifying, no matter their size, but the wolf spiders are the scariest. Not only are they big and ugly, but they jump. (LiveScience describes them as athletic.) If you spray them, instead of running away, they jump on you. A friend of mine sprayed a huge one on his door jamb, and it landed on his neck. (That would have been it for me. At that point, you could have just taken me out and buried me.)
It’s been forty years since that fateful summer at my grandmother’s house, but I still occasionally fly out of bed in the middle of the night because I’ve dreamed there are spiders all over my pillow. For this post, I wanted to find a nice creepy photo for you to enjoy. I typed wolf spider into a Google search and all kinds of pictures came up. That lasted all of three seconds. I can’t even look at them on the computer screen. In fact, writing this blog post is probably going to give me nightmares.
What about you? Do you have any phobias? Do they ever invade your dreams? I’d love to hear about it. Meanwhile, check out what my writer friends have to say at the links below. (For future Writer Wednesday topics, see the calendar at the bottom of this post.)
Also this month, we’re celebrating Firebird sister Tamra Baumann’s release of her new book, It Had to Be Love. Here’s the blurb:
Tara Carter isn’t looking for romance. She’s content seeing patients at her new practice by day, then going home and cuddling with her puppy at night. Her new life in the tiny town of Anderson Butte, Colorado—known by celebrities as the place to lie low—is the perfect respite for a woman with a whopper of a secret. There’s just one problem: the town’s sexy sheriff knows she’s hiding something.
Sheriff Ryan Anderson, weary of small-town drama, has sworn off dating locals and thinks a fresh start in a bigger city is in order. However, the more he gets to know Tara, the more his heart tells him that she could be the woman of his dreams. But he wants to get to the bottom of whatever she’s trying so hard to keep under wraps. Can he uncover her secret before it drives them apart forever?
The Firebirds are back for the August edition of Writer Wednesday. For this month’s prompt, we’re sharing interesting search results.
Sometime back, I was looking for a way to kill someone and have it look like suicide. (Maybe I should explain here that I write suspense.) I decided to have the villain inject drugs into the victim so it would appear that she committed suicide by overdosing. During my search, I found a rather interesting website called Guns, Drugs and Bad Ideas. I ran across a forum where people were sharing their experiences with crushing and shooting up different substances. Based on those posts, I settled on oxycodone as my drug of choice.
Another search that yielded some interesting results was when I asked the question, “How fast do bodies decompose?” The short answer is, “It depends.” A lot of factors come into play, including temperature, weather conditions and whether the body is buried or exposed. For anyone with a strong stomach, there are plenty of pictures to help with writing those descriptions.
Two of the searches I did on my most recent project were how to launder money and how to make a pipe bomb. I haven’t tried either, but I now know how to do both and have incorporated them into my book.
Having so much information at our fingertips is such an advantage in writing stories that ring true. I don’t know how writers did it back in the “old” days. My husband has his concerns, though. He keeps expecting men in black suits to walk up the sidewalk and haul me in for questioning.
What kind of searches have you done? Anything fun? Anything that could get you in trouble? I’d love to hear about it. Meanwhile, check out what my writer friends have to say at the links below. (For future Writer Wednesday topics, see the calendar at the bottom of this post.)
Also this month, we’re celebrating Firebird sister Kristen Ethridge’s release of her new book, The Doctor’s Unexpected Family. Here’s the blurb:
Dr. Pete Shipley is on a mission to save lives and he’s ready to move to another corner of the world where his skills are needed. City Councilwoman Angela Ruiz is a single parent fighting to save her hometown after Hurricane Hope tears through Port Provident, leaving destruction across the community she has sworn to serve. Together, they team up to found The Grace Space, a Christian-based community gathering spot in the heart of Angela’s district, where residents can get food, household goods, and basic medical care while Port Provident rebuilds after the storm.When Pete’s appointment to an international medical mission comes, will the doctor follow his lifelong dream and leave Port Provident, The Grace Space, and Angela and her daughter—or will he stay with the family he didn’t expect to love and realize he can change the world without leaving home?Hurricane Hope: One storm changes Port Provident forever…and for good.
Have you ever received a rejection letter where an editor or agent said there are problems with pacing in your story? Pacing problems can be hard to analyze and fix. The whole concept seems much more abstract than, say, characterization or plot.
So what, exactly, is pacing?
Pacing is the rhythm of a novel and the speed at which the events unfold. It’s what propels the story forward and pulls the reader through each new scene. If the pace is too fast, characters seem shallow and the story lacks depth. The reader doesn’t connect on an emotional level, which leaves her feeling unsatisfied. If the pace is too slow, the story drags and the reader becomes bored.
I am on “Seeking with all Yur Heart” today. To read the interview, go to To check out Lisa’s awesome review of Hidden Identity click here: . (She gave it 5+ out of 5 stars!). And for a chance to win a signed copy of Hidden Identity, click here: .
I was interviewed today by Melanie at Christian Bookshelf Reviews. Follow the link and enter the drawing to win an autographed copy of Hidden Identity. http://christianbookshelfreviews.blogspot.com/
We’re back for another edition of Writer Wednesday. This month’s prompt is to tell about a natural disaster we’ve experienced. I’ve lived in Florida most of my life, but up until 2004, I never took hurricane warnings that seriously since I live in the center of the state. After all, Polk County hadn’t had a serious hurricane since Hurricane Donna in 1960.
But in August of 2004, Hurricane Charlie was headed right for us. So we boarded up the windows, stocked up on supplies and hunkered down to wait it out. We can get some hefty wind gusts during some of our thunderstorms, but this was like nothing we had ever experienced. When the eye moved over us, everything was eerily still, so we went outside to check things out. All six of our huge oak trees were still standing, but there were branches down all over the yard. The cedar trees that lined the north side of our property were all leaning toward the house. When the storm had finally moved past us, the wind coming from the other direction had stood them all back up again.
The accoutrements of cooking–no, not the microwave, the camp stove
For the next five days, we were without power. Not pleasant in Florida in August. But since we lived in the country and were on a well, we also had no running water. That was harder to do without than the lights and air conditioning. After five days of sponge baths, I was ready to pull my hair out.
Three weeks and two days later, Hurricane Frances arrived, again barreling right through
With the second storm on its way, my husband got creative and inserted Plexiglas panels into some of our plywood so we could see the stuff flying across the yard.
the center of the state. Less than three weeks after that, Hurricane Jean was chugging upward in the Atlantic, paralleling the coast. We were so relieved it was going to miss us. Then it made a complete circle and also came through Polk County, three weeks to the day after Frances. By that point, I was feeling as if someone had painted a big bullseye over us.
Two days after Charlie, I waited at a stop sign while 10 or 15 power company trucks from somewhere up north drove past, here to offer us assistance. I sat there and cried. For months, everywhere we went, mounds of debris lined both sides of the street and blue tarps covered roofs. Everywhere was chaos. One weekend, I couldn’t deal with it anymore, and was determined to take a day trip to somewhere that was still pretty. But every place that came to mind had been in the path of at least one of the storms.
That summer, I saw a lot of crushed cars and oak trees in people’s living rooms. But my husband and I were blessed. No trees fell on the house, and other than losing shutters and needing new roofs on the house and workshop, we didn’t sustain any real damage. Thankfully, we haven’t had a season like that since.
This map shows the paths of all three storms.
What about you? Have you been through any natural disasters? Check out some of my writer friends’ experiences at the links below. Coming from areas all around the country, their tales are quite different from mine. (For future Writer Wednesday topics, see the calendar at the bottom of this post.)
This month, two of us have new releases. Check out award-winning author Natalie Meg Evans’ newest book.
London,1937. A talented young woman travels to Paris with a stranger. The promise of an exciting career as a milliner beckons, but she is about to fall in love with the enemy…
Londoner Cora Masson has reinvented herself as Coralie de Lirac, fabricating an aristocratic background to launch herself as a fashionable milliner. When the Nazis invade, the influence of a high-ranking lover, Dietrich, saves her business. But while Coralie retains her position as designer to a style-hungry elite, Paris is approaching its darkest hour.
Faced with the cruel reality of war and love, Coralie must make a difficult choice – protect herself or find the courage to fight for her friends, her freedom and everything she believes in.
A breathtakingly beautiful and evocative tale for readers of The Book Thief, One Lavender Ribbon, and Suite Francaise. Available in ebook at Amazon.
Also, the second book my Cedar Key series released this month.
After becoming caught in a web of blackmail and murder, Meagan Berry escapes by faking her death. She finds anonymity on Florida’s Cedar Key until, while out in her boat, she witnesses a small plane go down and rescues a state senator. Her face is plastered on the 6:00 news, and the nightmare begins anew.
Something tells Cedar Key police officer Hunter Kingston that Meagan is not who she claims to be. But the fear in her eyes and the vulnerability beneath that aloof exterior reach out to him. When he learns the truth, he is determined to protect her, whatever the cost. Because at least one person is trying to see to it that the next time Meagan “dies,” it’ll be for real.
I was interviewed today by Embassie at Remain in His Love. Follow the link and comment on the blog today for a chance to win an autographed copy of Hidden Identity.
Iola’s Christian Reads did a review of Hidden Identity:
“I’m always a fan of a good romantic suspense story, and this one ticks all the boxes: intelligent heroine with a secret, handsome and godly cop, and more twists than I usually find in a full-length novel, let alone a shorter Love Inspired Suspense. Even better, I didn’t see the twists coming …”
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