Women’s Fiction

Cover Reveal and a Giveaway!

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Every once in a while a story comes along that slams into you like a bulldozer  and demands that you write it. That was Wildwood Healer and Miss Sicily Rossi. She’s known in Silsbee, Texas as a healer. A few call her the Witchy Woman but she’s far from being a witch. Miss Sicily collects plants, roots, herbs, and things from the woods and makes her remedies. She’s the only kind of doctor these people have for their many ailments.

Come on this journey with me to 1930.

This is in the middle of the Depression and food is very scarce. Starving people worries Miss Sicily. But how to help so many people is beyond her meager resources. It makes her heart sore and weary.

Then a young wife keeps appearing at her door after beatings she suffers at the hands of her raging husband. That’s something Miss Sicily can’t ignore and she has to try to save her.

Throw in a fourteen-year-old orphan boy who’s eager to learn what Miss Sicily can teach him about plants their power to heal.

At times, this book reminded me of the book Fried Green Tomatoes that was made into a movie back in 1991. I loved that story of the Whistle Stop Café and those women who ran it. Wildwood Healer is sort of like that but quite different. It’s set in the deep Piney Woods of east Texas. They don’t barbeque the bad guy and serve him in the café. I still laugh when I think of that sheriff and detectives eating it and raving about how tender the meat was. Maybe I’m weird for laughing.

Anyway, this book has a lot of humorous scenes to lighten the darkness. Albert is an 80-year-old who thinks every young woman is after him and wants to marry him. And the preacher in town who has a wicked sense of humor. Then a man who once asked Miss Sicily to marry him returns after forty years. This book doesn’t lack for side stories.

When everything comes to a head, who will live and who will die?

Miss Sicily has her work cut out for her and it takes all her expertise and skill to save the town. It’s a quirky, fun story where everyone gets what they need.

I just love this cover that was again designed by Dee Burks who made Love’s First Light. It’s up for preorder HERE. It releases October 8th.

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Here’s the opening passage:

The Piney Woods surrounding Sicily Rossi’s small dwelling whispered stories to her as she milked her cow and fed the chickens. She was luckier than most; she knew that. Everyone seemed to be starving these days unless they had a garden. Before she went inside, she studied the dark shadows of the forest that spoke of secrets and mysteries—some as old as time. She was a part of this land and knew she always would be. Here she was born and here she’d die. There was comfort in that.

Christmas wasn’t far off but it made no difference to her. It would call for nothing special.

The sun was just making an appearance when a soft whine outside drew her attention. Sicily often had sick folks appear at her home asking for her help, but they always knocked. 

Curious, she opened the door to see the cutest, ragged dog tied to her porch railing.

 A sign hung from the pooch’s neck that said: Will yu please feed Gypsy? Got no food.

 Of course, she’d feed her, no question about that. She never turned away anyone or anything in need.

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I have a free copy available for ones who want to read and review the book. Click HERE for the link and put it on your ereader.

And Click HERE for the Preorder Link. Again, it releases October 8th.

 

What do you look for in a cover? What grabs you? Or is a cover really not that important to you? Lots to ponder. The book isn’t out yet but I’m giving away a $10 Amazon gift card to one lucky commenter.

 

Writer Research

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I’m not great at research – I could never be a historical writer. But you’d be surprised how much research goes into even a contemporary book. I write about the West, and I’ve been to a lot of the places I write about (most on a motorcycle), but I’m writing my second ‘road trip’ book in a row, and there’s no way I could have been to all these small towns and back roads…or if I have, I don’t remember them!

So that means lots of maps, measuring miles between places, and TONS of internet searching!

Photo of the map of my latest road trip – and my cat, Harlie

But maps only take you so far (no pun intended). To write a location convincingly, you also need to know the ‘lay of the land’ – the terrain, the demographics, and the ‘feel’ of the place. I find that realtor web pages and homes for sale in the area give you a good cross section of that.

Downtown Sedona
Downtown Seattle

 

Historic Seattle building turned into a condo

 

 

 

 

 

Then there’s the really good stuff! I get to look up everything from clothes to tractors to cool motorcycles, and put them into books! I’m telling you, this writing gig can be FUN!

A dress my character wore to an art gallery opening
The motorcycle two sisters are riding in my current work-in-progress
My heroine’s almost-boyfriend. Oh yeah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also get to make up places. For example, in my last romance series, Chestnut Creek, I made up the small town of Unforgiven, New Mexico. It’s small, with a weedy town square with a paint-flaking gazebo in the middle. A lot of the buildings surrounding it have butcher papered over windows. The hub is the diner, housed in an old railroad depot. That was so fun to write, and had me searching for old depot photos and diner interiors. Oh, and more heros!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m telling you, there are a lot worse careers than writing fiction!

 

So tell me, have you ever thought of writing a book? If so, what genre would it be? Do you have a story in mind? If so, tell us a bit about it!

 

 

Cover Reveal!

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You may recall a while back, I wrote a post about Historic Route 66. I was researching it for what I call my, ‘Grandma Road-Trip Story’. A Women’s Fiction, set in the west. Well, I finished, and it’s becoming a real book!

I just got this beautiful cover from my publisher the other day!

 

Here’s the blurb:

Jacqueline Oliver is an indie perfumer, trying to bury her ravaged childhood by shoveling ground under her own feet. Then she gets a call she dreads—the hippie grandmother she bitterly resents was apprehended when police busted a charlatan shaman’s sweat lodge. Others scattered, but Nellie was slowed by her walker, and the fact that she was wearing nothing but a few Mardi-Gras beads. Jacqueline is her only kin, so like it or not, she’s responsible.

Despite being late developing next year’s scent, she drops everything to travel to Arizona and pick up her free-range grandma. But the Universe conspires to set them on a Route 66 road trip together. What Jacqueline discovers out there could not only heal the scars of her childhood but open her to a brighter future.

And on my vacation fly fishing in Colorado, I did a clip of me reading the first pages:

I wish I could tell you it was available for sale, but it isn’t yet (dang it!). But know that when it is, you’ll hear me shouting it from the rooftops!