Today, I'm pleased to welcome one of my favorite authors to SlingWords—
LIZ FLAHERTY.
Liz is one of the Romance Gems Authors on a popular Facebook Group, Romance Gems...Where Authors and Readers Meet.
She posts to the Romance Gems page at least once a month so drop and say hello some time.
MORE ABOUT LIZ
Grab your favorite morning beverage and say hello to Liz who thinks one of the things that keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant opportunity you have to reinvent yourself.
Liz's latest professional incarnation is as a women’s fiction author and she is enjoying every minute that she’s not scared to death.
Liz invites you to visit her online at her
Website or at her
Facebook Page.
To find out more about her published books, click to visit her Amazon Author Page. If you'd like to email her, she can be reached at lizkflaherty@gmail.com.
If you read my post about the first book, Pieces of Blue, you'll be familiar with her series. I asked Liz to tell me about her new book, PATCHES OF RED. It's Book 2 in her series, Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy.
LIZ SAID...When I started writing Patches of Red, Book 2 in Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy, the Lovin’ Spoonful song, Darling Be Home Soon came into my mind for the first time in … oh, a really long time, and made itself right at home. Every day for I’m not sure how long, the tune slipped into my consciousness.
This isn’t a complete surprise. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s music was an important and much loved part of my late teenage years and lead singer John Sebastion is still one of the greater unrequited crushes of my life.
What is a complete surprise is how much music affects my writing, how the melody and the lyrics will tumble between lines and make suggestions not of their use, but of the emotions they share. The way they soften sharp edges, and ease the tension in the back of my neck when I find myself deleting more words than I’ve added. What makes it surprising is that I can’t write at all while music’s playing or the TV’s on. I lost that ability when the last kid left for college and the nest grew empty and quiet.
But, oh, the songs. The Spoonful’s breakout hit was
Do You Believe in Magic? I don’t think I did—believe in it, I mean—when the song came out, but I learned to as I grew older. When sharp, shattered pieces of life somehow came together to create smooth mosaics of knowledge gained and achievement earned and love winning. The things romance novels are made of.
I seldom write straight romance anymore, but my women’s fiction titles contain love stories that bring their couples home, finding magic along the way, and creating their own mosaics and melodies. I am thankful for the stories and for the songs. And, maybe a little, for that unrequited crush on John Sebastian.
ABOUT PATCHES OF RED
He’s handsome but couldn’t even remember her name.
She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy. And yet …
After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.
Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet … again.
In case you already know you want this book, you can find it at Amazon.
To find it at several other online booksellers, visit Draft2Digital.BONUS: EXCERPT FROM PATCHES OF RED
He drew in a deep breath, absorbing the combination of smells she was noticing. “I like this time of year.”
He was surprised that he still did. There were rough days, like this one, times when Grace’s suffering in memory came close to breaking him as certainly as it had in real time.
“Oh, me, too. I even like winter, although I’m not so sure I’ll be crazy about it when it snows. How will I get to the shop?”
“Sam says the Crossleys plow snow in the driveways and on Enoch Trace around the lake. I’m not sure about getting to the highway on Harper Loch Road, though. That could be iffy.” He couldn’t find it in himself to worry about something that hadn’t happened yet—he was having enough trouble not worrying about what already had. “You’ve got a while to think about it, I think.” He could hear the edge in his own voice.
“I’m not really concerned.” She was silent, but not for long. “I just talk sometimes without thinking it might be annoying. I believe that’s where we are tonight, isn’t it?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. She was right. Although he liked her being there with him, he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want her to talk. But how did he explain that without sounding like a total horse’s behind?
“Maybe,” he said, without looking at her, and they rode on in silence.
When they’d started the ride, he’d intended to go back and check on the progress of the pumpkin patch, look at the Christmas trees, and make scary jokes about things hiding in the cornfield, but he didn’t do any of those things. He just turned the Mule around at the wide spot created by the other lane crossing the one beside the ditch.
“It’s a bad day,” he said finally, when they were on Enoch Trace heading toward her cottage. “Grace passed sixteen years ago today, after the longest, hardest week I’ve ever known. I didn’t want to be alone, but it would have been better if I was. I’m not good to be around.” He couldn’t make himself apologize—it would be like saying he was sorry he’d loved someone so much that remembering her death was like an open wound.
Ellie nodded, not breaking her silence. She laid her hand on his on the steering wheel, and when she went to withdraw her fingers, he caught and held them for a minute, until he pulled up in front of her house.
He got out of the cart to walk her to her door, because that’s how Lessie had taught him to treat a woman, and when he walked around, Ellie reached and put her arms around him. She still didn’t talk, just held him there in the sweet smell and clear moonlight of September.
For just a moment, long enough he thought she surely noticed it, he stood stiff in her embrace, and then he returned it, wrapping his arms around her and resting his face against her soft hair.
Nothing would ever have been enough to get him easily through this long hard day, but she offered what comfort she could, and he accepted it and was grateful.
When he went to bed after texting with Zack and Luke, for the first time on this day in those sixteen years he’d mentioned, he remembered—instead of Grace’s death—her life.
TAKEAWAY TRUTH
This book sounds amazing. Let me give those buy links again. Click to buy from Amazon.
In Darling Hubby's Happy Friday post, I read this quote and liked it so much that I'm sharing it here with you.
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