With A Hip Hop Hippie To The Hip Hop
I’ve been tagged by a fellow Sunshine Coast writer, Cassandra L Shaw, in an Author Blog Hop.
Follow Cassandra on Twitter at @CassandraLShaw, or visit her website at http://www.cassandralshaw.com/
So here are the questions Cassandra sent through to me and my answers:
What are you working on now?
I’m finishing a book called The Dreamcatcher set on the Oregon Coast. It’s the second book in my Oregon Cost series. The first, The Sand dollar will be released in October/November. It tells the story of Jenny who, stunned by news of an impending redundancy, and impelled by the magic of a long forgotten sand dollar, retreats to her godmother in Oregon to consider her future. What she doesn’t bargain for is to uncover the secret of her birth. The revelation sees her embark on a journey of self-discovery such as she’d never envisaged. The Sand Dollar is a story of new beginnings, of a woman whose life is suddenly turned upside down and the reclusive man who helps her solve the puzzle of her past.
The Dreamcatcher follows Ellen, a minor character in The Sand Dollar. Ellen is a Native American bookshop owner who has the gift of being able to foretell the future, but is at a loss to explain her recent nightmares and the uncanny premonition she experiences one morning outside her shop when a dark cloud obscured the sun and she shivers with a sense of foreboding. When this is followed by the arrival in her life of an old friend of her brother, she links the two. However, there are other surprises in store and Ellen has a difficult journey ahead of her before all is resolved.
Give the beginning on your WIP as an excerpt?
It was a typical spring day in Florence, Oregon. A fine mist covered the river, a sharp breeze was blowing up, and rain wasn’t far away. Ellen stood outside her bookshop, The Reading Nook, and examined the window setting with a critical eye. Weak sunlight sparkled on the cobweb-fine threads and feathers in the dreamcatcher hanging from the top of the window. She’d made it the focus of the display for the Native American fantasy books, much loved by the local youth. Ellen sighed and fingered her long plait of black hair streaked with grey, as a gust of wind blew the tails of her shirt. Gazing at the dreamcatcher, she wished she could catch her good dreams and dismiss the recent nightmares. The display would have to do. She didn’t have time to tweak it any further this morning. Turning away, she became conscious of a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and shivered with a sense of foreboding.
After walking back inside, Ellen lit the scented candle she always kept behind the counter, breathed in the calming aroma of bergamo and geranium, and set to unpacking and sorting a carton of books which had arrived the previous day. She’d hoped to lure the author featured in her display to a book signing, but his publisher had replied that Peter Travers wasn’t doing any signings in the foreseeable future. Ellen was in the process of setting up the inside display, when she heard the familiar clang of the door.
‘You Ellen?’
Ellen nodded and examined the man who had entered. Accustomed to meeting most men’s eyes, she had to raise her head to meet his steely blue ones. Tall and broad shouldered, wearing a soft dun coloured, fringed suede jacket, the man’s faded blonde hair was tied back in a shoulder length pony tail. A scruffy goatee and unkempt moustache completed the picture. He slouched in the entrance, filling the doorway. His neck was festooned with the turquoise jewellery usually only worn by members of her own Native American community, but his Nordic looks indicated he didn’t belong to one of the local tribes. His ancestry hailed from much farther away. All of this must have passed through her mind in an instant, because the man was speaking.
‘Ron’s sister?’ he asked.
Ellen nodded again. What had her brother been up to now? And who on earth was this guy pretending to be a Native American? She had come across a few wannabees in her life and had no time for them. They had no understanding of the profound history of her people. They were an insult to all she held dear.
How is your work different from others?
I write about the more mature woman – women in their prime. In Band of Gold. Anna is in her late forties, in The Sand Dollar, Jenny is in her late fifties and in The Dreamcatcher, Ellen is in her fifties too. I believe that older women and the events which impact on their lives are often ignored in literature. Life for older women presents similar and different challenges to their younger counterparts. They still look for a HEA, but theirs may include stepchildren – even teenage stepchildren – and ex partners with their attendant issues.
And now I’m tagging my fellow Sunshine Coast Author, Sarah Belle, author of Hindsight, and Miss Spelled both of which combine Magic Realism with Romantic Comedy.
You’ll find Sarah’s blog on Monday Sept 8th – don’t forget to pop in and say hi and see which author she’s tagged.
Magic Realism mixes with romantic comedy in this new novel from Sarah Belle about the dangers of internet shopping – and using magic to solve real world problems.
Lou’s life is perfect. She loves her job, her renovated house, and most of all, her gorgeous fiancé, Aidan. But when her old flame and Aidan’s school yard nemesis turn out to be the same person, Hunter Wincott, Lou’s life is blown apart. She must divulge her secret past, or have Hunter give it away. Either way, she runs the real risk of losing Aidan.
In desperation, she turns to Google. A quick search turns up Majique, the Internet Witch, and a spell that will delete herself from Hunter’s memory. But something goes wrong in the casting process, and Lou deletes much much more than just a memory. She deletes herself from her life completely.
Luckily, there’s a one-week window for Lou to get back to the life she loved. One week to win back Aidan, before he walks down the aisle with the wrong woman, and damns everyone to a lifetime of misery. It would be easy, if only Aidan had any idea who Lou actually is.
Link http://sarahbell4.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/blog-tour-with-a-hip-hop-hippie-to-the-hip-hop/
Sarah’s’s Bio
Sarah Belle started her professional life in the hospitality industry, working in some of the roughest hotels in Melbourne in the late Eighties, surrounded by drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and undercover police. Tiring of the inherent dangers of her working environment, Sarah completed a business degree and went on to work in the recruitment industry and the Department of Defence, where she met and married the man of her dreams: a dashing, Army Blackhawk pilot. They have four young sons and live on the beautiful Queensland coast, where Sarah’s days are spent being a frazzled mum, writer, Bikram Yoga devotee and the only woman in a house of five males.
