 It’s funny that for most of my life I had no idea that I was poor or lived in poverty. True, I was raised poor, married poor, had a slew a kids and so stayed poor. I budgeted every nickel. Now here’s the thing. My parents came from good families. Working stock. My grandfathers owned their own businesses. All had been through the Depression. Money was tight. Next along came World War II and my uncles and dad went into the military. We had coupons for every shortage–shoes, fabric, sugar, butter, gas. I had my first stick of gum after the War. Juicy Fruit. One pair of buckled sandals got us through summers, otherwise we went barefoot. A six-ounce Coca Cola was 6 cents and a treat. When I was raising my kids there was no such thing as Food Stamps or Aid to Dependent Children or Disability. Never heard of it. My first job paid fifty cents an hour. My husband earned a dollar an hour. There was no such thing as credit cards. Or ATMs. We didn’t have checking accounts. We got our salary in cash in little brown envelopes. We fed, sheltered, and clothed our families on what we earned. We ate our meals at home, rode buses to church. We sometimes went to a matinee movie. 10 cents. For family entertainment we went on picnics, crabbing, and fishing. Every single woman in my family, including me, darned socks, turned collars, replaced missing buttons on shirts and blouses, and often hand-stitched our own clothes. We put Christmas for our children on layaway at department stores. We went out into the country to pick black berries and wild plums to cook up jellies. During the War we couldn’t get out to the country. Farmers hooked up mules to wagons filled with garden produce and made the rounds in our communities well into the late Fifties. Until bylaws and restrictions were passed against it, we kept chickens and hung our wash on clotheslines. A day trip to the movies with my granddaughter ended at an upmarket bakery. I bought 6 cupcakes…almost fainted at the price: $37. Won’t be doing that again–ever. How things have changed in the fifty-some years since I raised my kids. Rachel Cameron from The Sheriff's Woman knows a thing or two about being poor and raising children. She also prefers to lick her wounds and protect her children from gossip and shame in isolation on a small homestead in the Ozark Mountains. But life-long bachelor and ex-Marine Sheriff Garrett Stark has other ideas. My gift to you, a little taste of living off the land and making do... Download The Sheriff's Woman FREE from your favorite retailer!  “Are you still pretty, Mama?”
Startled, Rachel laughed, and in a brief blink of her eyes, shut out the propane-fueled stove, the steaming canner, and the disarray on the kitchen counters. Was she still pretty? Pffft. If it weren’t for Pond’s night crème lathered on each night like a second skin, she’d be as scaly as a fish. Pete sniffed, offended. “Why are you laughing?” Rachel turned and faced her nine-year-old son. Slim as a whippet and wiry, Pete’s nose was speckled with freckles, and it would be years before he grew into his ears. His shorts were dark around the waist with perspiration, and his shoulders bent with the weight of the basket of vegetables he had hauled from the garden. His solemn expression told her his question was no laughing matter. “Why do you ask, Pete?” “I was just thinking that if you’re still pretty, maybe—maybe you could find another daddy to take care of us.” He had a hesitant look about his narrow-pinched face that suggested he wanted to say more, but Rachel’s mouth fell open in astonishment and for a few seconds, she could not think of a mortal thing to say. “Find another…? Oh, sweetheart, that’s not why people get married.” Pete’s ears turned bright red. “I don’t see why not. It seems a good reason to me. I can’t do it all, Mama. I know you said I was the man of the family now, but I can’t do it by myself. If Daddy couldn’t…” His knotty little Adam’s apple bobbed. “I am so sick of tomatoes!” Rachel grasped the back of a chair, her lungs constricted. If Daddy couldn’t… She felt a sharp stab of guilt and disloyalty of the heart. All those late-night arguments about work. Clive’s lack of it. Money. The lack of it. Arguments she didn’t want to remember and felt guilty about when she did. “I never meant that you had to, Pete.” Rachel could not go on and look at her son at the same time. She turned back to the stove. “I only meant that we all have to pitch in to make a go of it—you, me, Caroline, and even Sara.” “But you said I was the man in our family. I’m not a man, Mama. I’m just a little boy.” Rachel’s throat went dry. Oh, she had gone about her grief, the children’s grief, all wrong. All these months, Pete must have been worrying, taking the weight of the world—their world anyway—on himself. All that brave talk to the children had been to talk herself into bravery. She wasn’t brave. She just didn’t know what to do. Pete had taken his father’s death hard. She had hoped to make him strong—make herself strong. Dear God, she had failed dismally. “I know you’re just a little boy, sweetie.” She waved a dishtowel toward the kitchen counter. “Look, we’ve canned thirty jars already. Why don’t you take that basket of tomatoes and feed them to your pig. He needs fattening if he’s to take a ribbon at the county fair in the fall. Besides, I don’t think I could slip the skin of another tomato if my life depended upon it. Take a break; go for a swim in the creek. Check your fish trap. Caroline’s down there already, isn’t she? And when this batch of canning is finished, Sara and I will come down to the creek, too.” Pete’s gray eyes, so like his father’s, brightened. “You’re sure?” “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. I’m burnt to a crisp. I need a swim, and I’ll bring some sandwiches. We can have a picnic.” Pete turned, but paused. “Are you sure about the tomatoes? We’ll have enough to eat this winter?” Fighting the lump rising in her throat, Rachel realized that all the things she had said so easily, so glibly—comments about money, food, shelter, the future—Pete had taken to heart. “We’ll have enough. We have enough right now. It’s just we can’t splurge. Anyway, I’m going to teach this fall when school starts.” “You got the contract! And you didn’t tell me?” “No, no. Not yet, but it will come as soon as the school board meets. I’m certain of it.” Truthfully, she wasn’t. The disorientation of Clive’s death had overcome her sensible nature. She realized as soon as the bills started piling up that taking a leave of absence in the last quarter of the school year had not been a good decision. But Clive’s death left the children so confused and scattered, she felt they needed her more than she needed the job. Her decision had plunged them so close to poverty she could spit and not miss it. Death always makes for changes, but she had not expected so much uncertainty. “Go on, Pete, scoot. The longer you keep chatting, the longer it’ll take me to get to that swim.” Pete hesitated. “We’re not gonna have to eat him, are we?” “Eat who?” “Rootus.” “Good heavens, no! Rootus is going to the county fair. Even if he doesn’t take a ribbon, somebody’ll buy him. That will fund the start of your college scholarship.” “Is that how you got money for college?” “I earned scholarships the hard way—with my brain.” “Did Daddy go to college, too?” Rachel bit the inside of her lip. “Some, but he was smart in other ways, like you.” “I don’t feel smart.” “You don’t feel intelligence. You know it.” Rachel flapped the limp dishtowel toward the sun-dappled creek. “Shoo.” She listened to the thump-thump of the heavy basket as Pete dragged it down the rickety wooden porch steps. Tears threatened. She took several deep breaths, willing them away. Better, much better. For weeks after Clive’s death, she had cried, short gasping sobs at unexpected moments, burying her face in whatever was handy—a towel, a shirt, her elbow—anything to muffle the mewling to keep from alarming the children. Even after all these long months, she still sometimes felt like her heart was caving in. Rachel glanced at Sara, napping on the bed in the alcove before stepping outside onto the porch. She savored the momentary solitude with the creaking old cabin at her back and the pine-clad mountains hugging the small clearing. She knew every inch of it because she had grown up in the shade of these mountains, played solitary games amidst the brambles, picked berries in season, fished with her father in the creek, and pegged clothes on the lines with her mother. Her parents had not been demonstrative, but Rachel knew without a doubt she had been well-loved. Yet, growing up, she yearned for something larger, greater, and the excitement of a world peopled with more than a snug cabin in a lonely forest. You get ideas, Rachel thought. You get hopes and dreams, you save them up over your lifetime, and then reality slams you in the back until you’re breathless, gasping for air in a suddenly oxygen-depleted universe. She had tossed and turned a hundred nights, trying to pinpoint exactly when her world had begun to crumble. She had asked herself which day, which hour, which minute, and which choice she made that caused her life to go so very wrong. Yet her mind seemed only to travel a long circle of jangled thoughts, trying to comprehend reality. Her gaze shifted to the clearing. Reality was sparse grass, chickens pecking languidly beneath the mulberry tree—chickens bought only that spring as day-old chicks and still too young to produce a decent egg. Reality was the old blue Blazer with a flat tire. Reality was the ancient cabin, its porch unpainted, left corner leaning toward the encroaching gulch as it had for as long as she could remember. The worst reality of all, though, was loneliness. The kind of loneliness that was buried bone-deep and meant a whole dream had ended. If it were not for the children, she would be lonely to despair. But she was lonely. It was just that with the children, she wasn’t alone being lonely. The irony was she had spent her entire youth figuring ways to get away from this isolated cabin and the hardscrabble, constricted life it represented, not to mention the unending succession of dreary tasks. Yet here she was, back where she started, all because of one monumental misstep, or a dozen. The path leading from the old cabin perched on the lonely bluff represented a treacherous path marked by a college scholarship, a teaching certificate, ten years of marriage, and then sudden death. On the other hand, she could not discount the dear old homestead was now a refuge, never mind the unending chores. Moreover, things could be worse. They had been worse. When she and the children lived in Hickory Grove, every time she left home she had to grit her teeth against thoughts she knew were behind the open faces of her neighbors’ scarce words of sympathy. In the teacher’s lounge, it had been awful. Her colleagues kept their distance as if Clive’s manner of death were catching. She hugged herself, suffering a moment of quiet ferocity until the canner began to steam and hiss. A small sob escaped as she emerged from her thoughts. She spent every hour of every day surviving. She would make it somehow. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, she wasn’t afraid of life—not for herself—even if their lives were confined to forty acres of soaring pine and an old cabin that was little more than a shabby sentinel of the mountain’s privacy. Her children were another matter. The crushing feeling of having total responsibility for their wellbeing, today and forever, scared her witless right through to her bones. Swimming was a misnomer because the creek was shallow, water only coming up to Rachel’s knees. Sitting on the pebble and sandy bottom, she leaned back on her elbows, allowing the clear cold flow to brush the back of her neck. It felt wonderful, and all the tension that kept her muscles and nerves in knots ebbed, carried downstream to deeper pools swirling around Pete’s fish traps. Where the sun found passage through the overhead foliage of a chokecherry tree, it shimmered on the creek’s rippling surface, revealing small shoals of silvery minnows that darted into shadows. Rachel wore an old blouse tied beneath her breasts and shorts that billowed with the current. She laughed as a tiny hover of minnows tried to take refuge inside her shorts against the sun and current. She slapped the water and the minnows darted away, following one of Pete’s twig boats downstream. She studied her children’s faces. Pete’s was free of tension—thank goodness—and spicy-natured seven-year-old Caroline seemed never to worry at all, but looked at life askance with the cynical honesty of youth. The sound of Sara’s silvery giggles caught Rachel’s attention. Sara was four, a cherub with short stubby legs, an areole of dark curls framing her round innocent face, and huge saucer eyes that watched and absorbed all she saw. Sara communicated to trees, to flowers, to vegetables in the garden, to the chickens, to her dolls, but she seldom spoke to another human being. Rachel was heartsick that her youngest refused to talk until last year when she heard Sara singing, forming words in a small, soft pure voice. All the doctors who examined Sara insisted she would talk when she was ready. Ready? Doctors didn’t listen. Not once had she been able to prise a word from Sara, not even mama. Rachel often wondered if separation anxiety traumatized her daughter. Sara went into childcare at three months old, which was all the leave Rachel could ill afford from teaching. Sara was oft times distant in her own little world, and this disturbed Rachel, too. She tried coaxing Sara into her watery lap. “Sara wants to look for seashells,” said Pete. “There aren’t any shells here, only rocks and pebbles.” Caroline flounced words as she did her silky brown curls, which were as airy as dandelion fluff unless tamed by braids and barrettes. “You find shells at the beach where there’s an ocean, and in fossils.” “Sara is pretending she’s at the ocean,” answered Pete, ignoring Caroline’s precociousness and all her hints at intelligence. Caroline made connections about things at the speed of light, which was another worry for Rachel. She desperately wanted to encourage Caroline and had done until their lives collapsed. Now practicality ruled and Rachel found herself so bone-tired at the end of the day that questions such as, Why don’t all trees have the same leaf? Or, How fast does the earth spin? Or, Where does gravity come from? Why don’t we fall off and fly into space? fell by the wayside. Rachel slanted a look at Pete. He interpreted Sara’s tilts of her head or expressions as if they shared a secret language. Caroline dipped water with an old tin cup, splashing it on her shoulders and next, trying to scoop minnows. “Do you think we’ll ever go to the beach, Mama? On vacation?” Caroline never put her head under water. “You can’t breathe under water. If your head was supposed to go under, you’d have gills like a fish,” she said the first time Pete encouraged her to explore the bottom of the creek. “Don’t be stupid, Caroline,” scoffed Pete. “Vacations cost money.” “Don’t talk to your sister that way,” said Rachel. “And, yes, we will go to the beach.” “You promise?” “No. I just hope.” Rachel avoided promising anything these days. Promises were traps. “Company comin’,” announced Pete. They all watched as gray dust furled skyward, marking a vehicle’s progress on the one-lane switchback road that led into their yard from the highway. Rachel recognized the cruiser and its driver. A dull ache rose in the back of her throat. She had once respected the man. Now, she didn’t. “Up to the porch, on the double. Pete, take Sara. I left towels on the railing.” The car braked to a stop under the grand old mulberry tree, scattering the pullets pecking like fiends as it dropped ripened berries. Rachel reached the porch behind the racing youngsters. Garrett Stark emerged from the county vehicle and unfolded his long rope-muscled body. His shoulders tested the fabric of his short-sleeved khaki shirt. Years of duty in the Marines had etched his face, but rather than detracting, the etching enhanced his features. He was a man comfortable and confident in his body. Rachel didn’t like him for that, either. Worse, she didn’t like herself for noticing what she didn’t like about him. She halted on a small rise of earth, a rostrum from which to address the man, though it by no means gave her height over him. “You’re not welcome here, Garrett. Get off my land.” He studied her gravely for a moment. Rachel suspected his gaze included a measure of sexual candor. “Didn’t think I would be, but I like to know what’s going on with folks in my county.” “Your county? You’re a legend in your own mind and so stuffed with conceit I could eat it with a spoon.” “It’s just a figure of speech, Rachel.” He leaned against his cruiser, pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket, peeled the cellophane from it, bit the end off with sharp white teeth, lit it, and drew heavily until there was gray ash at the tip. Rachel waited, eyes downcast, a veritable cache of angst. It was Garrett’s show, and she would not give him the homage he no doubt expected. When she lifted her chin, he was studying the ash at the end of the cigar. “Heard you and the children had moved back to your old homestead and nobody’d seen you in town. Just thought I’d—” “I know what you heard.” She gave him a look that could melt skin. “You heard our house went into foreclosure. You know I held yard sales every weekend until I had nothing left to sell. You know because you drove by every single weekend. I saw you. You don’t have to pretend to be nice about it. Being nice somehow doesn’t suit you.” He was so comfortable leaning against the car, all male hoodoo and knowing it. What drew people to elect him sheriff was something intangible, beyond his practiced charisma and favorite son status. He made people believe in doing the right thing. Years in the Marines had taught him to carry his six-foot frame board straight, with a lazy hipshot walk that every woman in Hickory Grove watched openly or surreptitiously, depending upon marital status. Rachel had once been among them. Now she wanted to scratch his eyes out. She didn’t have enough nail to do any damage, but the thought made her feel better. “Yep, that’s what I heard. I checked at the bank and found it was true. Never knew anyone to call me nice. I like it, though.” “Nice is the last thing I’d call you. Wanna hear the first?” He laughed. It was a good rich sound. “Not in front of the kids.” Rachel lowered her voice so it would not carry to the porch where her children hung on the railing like starlings ready for flight. “What do you want, Garrett? Why can’t you stay out of my life?” “You moved out here to protect the kids from talk, Rachel. I get that. Come on back to town, where you have good friends. Nobody holds Clive against you. I’ll help you find a decent place. If any of the town folk gives you any lip, tell me and I’ll put a stop to it.” “I don’t have any good friends and I don’t want your help. We’re managing just fine.” She watched derision flicker across his features and noted the exact moment his gaze took her in from head to toe, lingering where it should not. She knew her wet clothes clung to her, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Listen, hon, I didn’t come out here to pick a fight with you. I guess the reason you haven’t been in town is that flat on the Blazer. I’ll change it for you and be on my way.” “No! Don’t touch my car. I don’t want you to do anything for me. I don’t want you to be able to assuage your conscience.” She watched a vein throb in his temple, saw his light-colored eyes probe in a way that made her heart pump hard. Okay. He had a presence that demanded attention, but not her attention. Anger whipped across his face. He lowered the volume of his voice, but not its force. “Still looking at Clive Cameron through rose-colored glasses, are you? I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. The sooner you face that, the sooner you’ll get on with your life instead of hibernating out here in the woods. I’ll change that tire now.” “I despise you, Garrett. You’ve left me with nothing. You left my children fatherless, and you’re getting away with it. I despise you from the very depths of my soul.” “I know you do. I don’t like it, but I’m not in a popularity contest. You need help and that’s what I’m here to offer. It’s part of my job.” He waved to the children before striding to the old SUV. He reached into the car and pressed the button that unlatched the back gate. Garrett stared at the debris found in the back of every mother’s car—discarded toys, a deflated basketball, storybooks, a sock doll Caroline had made in Brownie Scouts—all of which he brushed aside before hauling out the spare tire. Filled with a seething frustration, Rachel watched for several seconds, then spun off the mound of earth and stalked to the porch. “All of you, in the house and into dry clothes.” “Maybe I can help Sheriff Stark fix the tire,” Pete suggested. Rachel resisted the urge to scream. “No, sweetie, he doesn’t need any help. Change clothes. Caroline, be a darling and help Sara.” There was enough rigid authority in Rachel’s tone that, for once, the children didn’t balk. READ MORE
3 Comments
I'm still kicking! In fact, I'm chasing a litter of ferocious pooping kittens around my house. I also got to spend time with my daughter and great-grandson yesterday. He's as cute as a button with with creamy peach skin and silky brown hair! Happy child, too! Always a plus.
This happened... A bunch of stuff fell off my car (all plastic anymore), so I taped it up with pink duct tape. Now it's easy to find in a parking lot anyway. Yeah, I'm still drivin'! Enjoying life, and still writing, too! Sharing an updated new release with you today! Keep Reading, folks! It keeps us young...or at least knowing what the younger generation is thinking. Another plus! XoXo Jackie
"Sweet Second Chances, Romantic, and Witty!"
Falling for the wrong man landed Stormy Maxwell in jail for eleven months for a bank robbery she says she didn’t commit. Now, while she's trying to restart her life with her seven-year-old daughter, another man wants something from her. Something she doesn't have to give! READ MORE
 Authors are often asked how we choose our characters... How we compose our stories. Sometimes a character will unexpectedly pop into our lives for a brief moment, or perhaps an hour or two, and you just know you’ve got to make a place in the story for that character. Both aspiring authors and the well-published are often reminded by editors to Write What You Know. Those two elements are often combined to create a story. Awful things can happen when you don’t write what you know... For those of you who WANT to read more about Writing What You Know and Choosing Characters, the post continues below. But first, a short commercial break for Book Deals! Three of them are mine, beautifully boxed up in one complete set for your reading pleasure! The next two are authors you've probably heard of. They've been friends of mine for about ten years or so, and while they don't write exactly what I write--thank Goodness, 'cause who needs to read the same thing all the time—I think you will enjoy their books as much as I do! Grab these books right now, and then meet up with me in a few minutes if you want to hear what I have to say about Write What You Know! Or not. Up to you. I already wrote it, so read it if you want to! Women's Fiction, Romantic Suspense  Dive into a world of secrets, laughter, and passion! Three gorgeous men and three fiery women find their destinies together in this unforgettable romance collection. READ MORE Women's Fiction, Coming-of-Age Romance  College and career are hard enough without bringing love into the mix, but when Jesse and Kayla meet over spring break, their individual dreams merge into one. Until tragedy strikes. Now thrust into a world of tragedy and grief, others insist they are too young. But when you find the love of your life, all you can do is hold on and Love Like Crazy. READ MORE Kindle US ● EXCERPT ● SERIES ● AUDIBLE Kindle UK ● Kindle CA ● Kindle AU ● Kindle IN Also available in a Boxed Set! Women's Fiction, New Adult Romance  She was supposed to be a summer romance, but Raleigh fell fast for the only person who made him feel worthy of love. He was supposed to be a fling with a bad boy, but he made Mia feel alive … until a tragic accident tore them apart. Seven years later, fate throws them together and, with the same breath, threatens to separate them forever. READ MORE Kindle US ● EXCERPT ● SERIES Kindle UK ● Kindle CA ● Kindle AU ● Kindle IN Also available in a Boxed Set! And now back to the Writing Post... One of my most embarrassing moments as a writer happened when I was standing before two hundred or so writers, editors and publishers, critiquing manuscripts as a subtext during a talk on Writing What You Know. There I was standing on the podium, ego rattling away on the topic when a little old lady in the second row hollered, “You didn’t!” She stood up and told the entire audience that I had a character in a book set in Louisiana perking coffee. Not in Houma, Louisiana, honey. Those folks drip their chicory-laden coffee. Not only that—they don’t use Half ’n Half. Coffee is lightened with evaporated Carnation or Pet milk—right out of the can. It’s sweetened to the consistency of pudding with good old pure white cane sugar—not brown, not Splenda, not Sweet ’n Low. No ma’am. The awful thing was that I did know folks in Louisiana dripped their coffee. I’d been there, done the site research; I had dinner with a couple of local families. I lived part of the winter in the swamp with trappers. But when writing the scene, I typed in “perk.” What was I thinking? Quick—somebody get a shovel and bury me alive–right here, right now. What happened when that darling old lady reader got to the word “perk” in my book? She stopped reading the novel. I lost my credibility with that reader. She was so annoyed there was no way she was going to enter into the fantasy of romantic fiction that I thought I had created. It was just one awful four-letter word and it ruined the book for that reader—and probably every other Louisiana native. My fault. Well, I was trying to write what I knew. Listen, I was dumb as a rock. I didn’t know anything. Hey, I was raised poor, married poor, had five kids and stayed poor. The only sure-fire thing I did know was that I oft times did not have the sense God gave a flea. Okay. For the most part I wrote about poor women with kids looking for a little love, and security for the kids. I began my writing career back in the dark ages. We didn’t have the internet, Google Earth, maps, search engines, Walmart, or reality shows. I was writing romance novels. My mother, my aunts, my cousins, among others said, “Why don’t you write a real book?” No e-mail in those days. No respect, either. I had to shoot off letters with a ten-cent Alpo Dog food coupon, sign my name with a little smiley face, and tell ’em to have lunch on me. Seven-cent stamp. Had to lick it, too. Lots of DNA in case I committed a crime. Write what you know. Back in the day, if you didn’t know, you had to get out in the world and find it. When I was writing No Perfect Secret, I needed to place two scenes in a restaurant. I spent a week in Washington, D.C. Had my little check list—Library of Congress. Tick. State Department. Tick. Decent neighborhood. Tick. Nice condo for the hero. Tick. I had dinner in a fabulous French restaurant, but no way was hero Frank Caburn–man to the bone and reared in the Midwest–going to eat escargot or those tiny portions the upmarket French are famous for. Fast forward. I got the kids raised. Husband left. The little twerp. My writing career waned. I got my first pedicure. Took care of the old folks. They died. I wandered thither and yon on the cheap with a dog and a tent and in between treks went to university. So now I know how to use a synonym finder, bank online, and find cheap flights. When I heard about eBooks… Whoa Nelly, I thought. Perhaps I can revive my writing career. Some of my books were not all that great, but a few of them had really good bones, and then a publisher offered me the opportunity to flesh out those bones. Write what you know. Oh joy. We can use expressive four-letter words now. We can open the door to the bedroom and let the reader peek. I may be in a snip of trouble here. The little twerp was never into racy sex. I’m gonna fake it. Had a lot of practice doing that anyway. Write what you know. Well, poor old Frank Caburn, hero, is still waiting to dine. I flashed on the internet, found a site that reviewed Washington’s restaurants, chose one, pulled up its web page, scoped out the menu, wine list, serving hours, and location, checking to see if there was on-street parking. I also found pictures of the décor. So that restaurant worked for two scenes in the book. Here’s an aside. Ordinary French cafés/bistros and natives serve generous portions. It is only in classic French restaurants in which one gets a plate presentation with more plate than food. As in the Four Seasons in NYC. The reason places like the Four Seasons get five-star reviews is because the food critics eat free. I took an editor to dine there once and it cost me $400. I wish I had that money back. I’d go to Bingo or get my cat spayed. We are fortunate in today’s electronic world that we can have our characters do just about anything, anywhere in the world—background information is as close as our fingertips on a laptop. However, if you have an exquisite Korean heroine eating pizza—you’ve just made a horrible cultural error. Koreans don’t like cheese. I know that for a fact because I made that cultural error. Write what you know. Years ago I attended a by-invitation-only writer’s school in Derbyshire, in the British Midlands. A Brit asked if I would write a book with an English heroine. I said absolutely not; I didn’t know enough about British culture. I didn’t think I could create a sense of place, which is important in any book. Years later, I spent a summer semester at Queen’s College, and in my free time, I went all over the U.K. I interviewed men laying cable, docents in St. Paul’s Cathedral, old men sitting on park benches, Council members of a small community outside London, clerks who rang up my purchases in grocery stores and gift shops, and mimes in Covent Garden. I read every newspaper I could get my hands on—especially the help wanted ads. I went to all the theatres. Now, I would be comfortable writing a story placed in the U.K. or having an American character living there. However, he or she would not use an American Express card because few merchants accept Amex. Nor is the English pound interchangeable with euros, but an American ATM card will spew out pounds in the U.K. or euros in most European nations. (Provided you first let your bank know you are traveling outside the U.S.—otherwise it will not honor requests). I also took the Chunnel to Paris and spent a week in France. Watch out for the pickpockets! One that approached me was so damned good I gave her a couple of euros in exchange for the entertainment. Write what you know. My first eBook was a Harlequin Intrigue. First page, the author has a character stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. No way. I have been in that museum, stood in front of the Mona Lisa. It is a very small portrait behind specialty glass and rife with sensors. There are barriers to keep a viewer five feet away and guards to move the viewers along. The author did not give the reader any plausible scenario about how the thief could steal that particular piece of art. As a reader, I am very forgiving of the improbable. However, it is up to the author to make me a believer. Okay—so if your character needs to steal something, why not the Forster Codices (five of da Vinci’s notebooks) at the V&A Museum in London? The Codices are not as well-known as the Mona Lisa, and a writer could take some license. The key—the writer better know about museums and security systems, about old masters, how they are stored, and how they are displayed. And especially how to market stolen artwork, the value of it, and the people who would buy it. Stolen art never stays with the thief. Old masters are not something auctioned on e-Bay. Write what you know. I’m not the only author who made an error that ruined a book for a reader. I have a favorite thriller writer. I downloaded his new book the minute it hit Amazon Kindle. After chasing the bad guy through a number of countries, the hero catches and disposes of the villain in Panama, killing him and dumping the body over the balustrade of a fancy hotel onto the deck of a ship exiting the Panama Canal. Oops. There isn’t a hotel in Panama that overlooks any one of the three locks. Every lock is fenced, and there’s about a half-acre of ground between the mechanical mules that guide the ships and that fence. Actually there are no buildings whatsoever overlooking the locks, not in Gatun, Mira Flores, or Pedro Miguel. I was really happy that this error occurred in the denouement of the book because it didn’t ruin the book for me. But I do wonder how he made such an egregious error and that it got by his editor, copy editor, and the proofreader. Notice, I am not saying this author can’t write. He can. He’s fabulous. I’ll buy his next book, too. Perhaps, I’m the only reader who even noticed that error. Yet, what he wrote could not happen in real life or fiction. And therein lies the rub—it only takes one person to know what you don’t know, didn’t learn, or let slide to undo all the pride and creativity we authors put in our books. Write what you know. Last week I picked up a medical thriller. It had a gem of a plot and the blurb was extravagant. Three throwaway lines pulled me right out of the book. The author wrote that we in the U.S. could not buy Tylenol over the counter. He overlaid foreign pharmacies on the American model. In many foreign countries, especially undeveloped nations, one does not buy an entire bottle of aspirin or any other type of pill. It is too costly for the natives. Pills are sold individually—one or two at a time. Next, the author had a three-star American army general wearing those stars above his left shirt pocket. Holy moly. That’s how dictators wear all of their gaudy medals. American military officers wear rank insignia on their collars. Third, the author wrote that a tour guide in the Amazonian basin ran a hundred miles to get help for an injured tourist. Nobody runs a hundred miles in the Amazon or in any jungle for that matter. I lived in a jungle village for two years with my dog. He didn’t run, either. Scientific expeditions are often way off the beaten path, and the ordinary tourist—no way. You slog through mud, quicksand, ford creeks, swim rivers, hack paths with a machete, raft, paddle a canoe, or hire some sort of river craft. Oh, did I mention the wildlife? Boa constrictors, anacondas, bushmasters, pit vipers, tarantulas as big as dinner plates, palm wasps that dive straight for your eyes, blood thirsty bats, fire ants, army ants, marching ants—all of which will devour flesh—even the leaf cutters. Cute little frogs the size of a thumbnail—touch one and you’re dead. Any of these critters can leave an injured tourist who can’t defend himself in a jungle overnight, and something is gonna eat him. By now, you’ve figured out what I figured out. The book was probably translated into English and/or—the writer didn’t know a great deal about America. Hey! He figured he was writing fiction so made up how we shop for meds, how our generals wear their stars, and he just threw in the bit about the tour guide because the line made the tour guide seem like a caring fellow. I slogged through the book anyway and offered kudos because the author had the moxie to give it a shot. The premise of the tale was outstanding. He just didn’t pull it off—not for me anyway. On the other hand, I am told this author is an international best seller; that he is right this minute on a quest to climb the world’s thirteen tallest mountains, AND he is learning to pilot a deep-sea submersible. Sounds as if he quit his day job, don’t it? So who am I to say what he should write or shouldn’t write? I’m not. I’m just telling you—since you’re still reading this long piece—to do your homework BEFORE a reader tells you: “YOU didn’t” in front of hundreds of souls. For the most part, what we do as writers is take ordinary people and places and raise them to the level of art. The only way we do that is with words. Art is what you know. Art is how you weave words to make a character, place, or an action believable. If you’re drafting a story that moves across borders or eras, begin with what you know, your own experiences, and then expand that with the knowledge of others. It helps to know some trivia such as salads in the U.K. and France and other European nations don’t come with salad dressing and only sometimes with oil and vinegar–except in Paris where it might arrive drizzled with a warmed watery honey. Central American natives gag on dill pickles but will serve guests a choice bit of chicken out of the pot—the head boiled complete with eyes, beak, and brain. Yeah, I ate it. Tasted just like chicken brains. Eww. But of course the world you live in is what you know best. Where you grew up, where you work, where you go on vacation, where you do your grocery shopping: You know the nearest beach, lake, golf course, movie theatre, the best and worst restaurants. You know your neighbors, your family, and the mood of your community. You know rumors and secrets. If you know anything about sex, you’re ahead of my game. I still cringe when I recall that little gray-haired lady calling me out on how I had a character in my book brew a pot coffee. Recall has kept me humble and not quite so careless. Now, as I draft a new book or ready a book from my back list for re-publication, it is always in the back of my mind that if I write something that bumps a reader out of my story, or annoys that reader because I got it wrong—it could be all over the internet within hours—with an audience of thousands—not a mere two hundred. I believe when I’m promoting my book that I’m making a covenant with my readers. I’m promising that if they buy my books, I’ll entertain them for hours on end. If I make a good effort to write what I know and research what I don’t, I’m giving good value. Lastly, you may pen a novel in which you are certain you used what you know to create a terrific read. The plot worked, the characters grew, the dialogue raced along, the dénouement was a happily ever after, yet the book gets mixed reviews or none at all. What the heck? This happened: I was autographing. A middle-aged fan gushed about a scene in the book where the heroine was snapping green beans. It reminded her of good times on her grandmother’s farm. She used to help her grandmother snap beans by the bushel. Y’know, it wasn’t much, but it made me feel good. So later I asked another reader if she enjoyed the scene with the heroine sitting in a swing and snapping green beans, and she said, “Not really. They weren’t organic.” My friends, the reading public is fickle. Write what you know. Oh, I forgot to tell you. There are concrete barriers all around the White House now. But the sidewalks are wide, and I was doing the tourist thing. There was some jeering behind me. I turned around. Prancing toward me in a pair of size eleven red Jimmy Choo knockoffs while fielding a bunch a catcalls is this he/she/it. HANG ON! Don't get offended!!! Keep reading, please. You've come this far, so listen to WHY I'm telling you about my initial reaction! It was wearing a short black spandex skirt, leopard print blouse (Royal Silk), four sets of Tammy Faye eyelashes (Trivia: eyelids are the weakest muscle in the human body), a Sheena the Jungle girl wig—or maybe it was left over from Halloween. Inch-long nails painted fire engine red. And an over-the-shoulder Coach purse. I am ashamed to tell you, I gaped. I am, after all, an international traveler—on the cheap, I admit. But I have met the Queen of England and Prince Phillip, I have been to Buckingham Palace. I have seen a man walking down a foreign street in a diaper. I did sit on a cardboard box next to Paul Newman at Ria Shoes while we waited for our respective masseurs. I did once ride in an elevator with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and I have been robbed—twice. My mouth was so wide if somebody had pounded me on the back right then, my teeth would’ve taken a hike right through the fence and landed on the White House lawn. Grinning, the creature came abreast of me. "What you starin’ at, sugar?" “You," I offered. "You’re amazing.” The object of my interest struck a pose, one hand on hip. "Ain’t I just, tho?" The long and the short of it is we had coffee, and I interviewed the heck out of him. It was a him. He had a package. “Substantial,” he said. No, I didn’t see it. He had a laptop in the Coach purse and showed me his webpage. Write what you know. I went right home and wrote him into No Perfect Secret. Oh, he was a D.C. local, and he pointed out an underground restaurant that was useful to my story. Best pizza I ever ate. No Perfect Secret is the first book in the boxed set I mentioned above, so grab it, and remember, while I might not always write what the establishment wants at this given moment, I ALWAYS Write What I know. Till next time! Jackie XoXo Oh, and...just sayin'!
 Award Winning and USA Today bestselling author Jackie Weger has been writing romance novels off and on for thirty years.
When she's writing, she's anchored in a tiny room with a desk, a chair, and an annoying cat. When not writing, blogging, chatting with fans, or just being flat-out lazy, she's hanging out on a fishing pier soaking up sunshine and reading a good book. For many a year she traveled our good earth by foot, boat, bus, train, plane, or pickup, and sometimes a mule--but today she only gets as far as Walmart. Falling for the wrong man landed Stormy Maxwell in jail for eleven months for a bank robbery she says she didn’t commit.  Now Stormy’s out and trying to restart her life with her seven-year-old daughter, but another man wants something from her. Tyler Mangus is an asset-recovery agent tasked with recovering the stolen money. Stormy insists she’s innocent and doesn’t know where the money is. Tyler knows she’s guilty and intends to do his job. Neither will give an inch. Their test of endurance will end with a confession, but will it be about money…or love? Save to your BookBub Wishlist! Find it now at your favorite book retailer!
 I always say “Keep a little Romance in your life.” Well, I got a kiss by a camel. That’s Romance! Laffin'! If you prefer human kisses, check out one of my beloved Christmas romances that are fun to read any time of the year! XoXo
 Telling you up front I’m older than God and younger than Death. Since I’m cruising my eighties, my daughter gave me a book: Sub-titled: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy Until You’re 80 and Beyond. I don’t want to be sexy at eighty-one. What kind of fool notion is that? I just hope for ordinary functions…like waking up every day. I want a good hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning until my eyes are open to see if the sun is shining or if it’s raining. That’s a good start for me and you, too, whatever your age. I used to toot around the earth by train, plane, and pickup. I’ve walked up mountains and fallen off the dang things–horses, too. I’ve lived in jungle villages and been lost in the Pacific Ocean. Y’all know I’m a writer. Sometimes I don’t write for years on end, but when I feel the pull, I write, which brings me to today. I've had an idea for sometime. After reading Jerri Hines's books, I knew she was the one who could breathe life into a story, which was doing nothing but collecting dust bunnies. So, there you are. The book my daughter handed me was right! I can live strong beyond eighty! And I'm not finished. I've been rooting through my desk, reading old notes to myself. I plan to produce books as long as God let's me hang around on Earth. Make sure you grab this new release today, and then step back in time with Jerri and me, as we take you back to the forties, Appalachian Style.
The Waking Bell is available at all major book retailers!
|
    Archives
October 2022
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed