Cobwebs - The Prologue ...and more

I am so thrilled to know Cobwebs, the mystery I'm worked on for so long, will soon be in print. I know everyone is wondering about this book, and in the next few weeks, until it is available through Amazon.com and all e books outlets, I'm going to tease you. Today's tease includes a few facts about the book, and the prologue.

Genre: Suspense-Mystery, with historical and romantic overtones
Setting: Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma
Time period: Roughly, the year 2000, the first half of April.

Jamie Aldrich returns to the old Osage Capital of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, expecting to help her ill great aunt. Instead, she finds herself in a race to solve her aunt's attempted murder, uncover long buried family secrets and stop a plan for the ultimate vengence.

Prologue

“I’m going to tell her what I think . . . what I know,” Elizabeth Graham moaned.

             “Dearest, we’ve been over this. Don’t talk nonsense,” the familiar voice cooed to Elizabeth from the foot of her bed. 

She heard the words, and they sounded molasses thick, all soft and sweetened up. She’d been a damn fool all these years. But it wasn’t over yet, she still had hope. Jamie was coming. Her old eyes shifted to the bedroom window; outside, gray storm clouds piled up.

“Finish your soup. She’ll be here any minute.” 

 “No more.” Elizabeth jerked as pain gripped her. The spoon clattered in the bowl and chicken broth splashed out onto the silver-plated tray.

Fingers smoothed her thin white hair, and then swabbed a damp cloth across her forehead.  “There now. Better?”

“No.” She cleared the phlegm from her throat and repeated, louder, “No!”

“My, we’re in a temper today.” The tray was lifted away. “Calm down.” The figure faced her from the shadows. “And just what are you going to tell her?”

“The truth.”

The chuckle was soft and long. “After all these years?  She’ll think you’re senile. My dear Elizabeth, you’re not thinking straight. Telling her now, in your condition, would be a big mistake.”

 

Cobwebs, by Mary Coley, available Nov. 1 from Wheatmark, Inc.; Amazon.com and all e book outlets.

 

Journal Entry - Denial

I'm trying to be better about letting the creative juices flow - daily.  Let me share with you some of these things I've been writing in my journal. This one is called Denial.

Think about it.

Denial is that acquaintance who will not look me in the eye. Her shoes seem to be more interesting than anything I have to say, maybe because she doesn't believe the truth of my words. She lives in a dream world with her roommate Perfection. They've taped foil onto their window panes and seldom answer the phone.

(This short piece came from a prompt in the book, A Writer's Book of Days, by Judy Reeves.)

Beneath a Wild Sky - behind the scenes

One of the most interesting things about reading short stories is - as both an author and a reader - the ''why" of the story.

I get my ideas from a lot of places, many of them my personal experiences. You've read about one of my idea-getting methods in previous posts. But here's another. Take a personal experience and tweak it - make it must worse, or much more fantastic than the actual experience. Change the names to protect the innocent, and maybe change the place and the time frame -- or maybe not.

In Beneath a Wild Sky - the story 'Honeymoon from Hell' is actually based on my first honeymoon! I went to Acapulco. I saw the cliff divers. I went parasailing, and I went for a scuba dive and had no air in my tank. But nobody was trying to kill me.

And unfortunately there was one more thing that went wrong with that trip: I became horribly sea sick on a deep sea fishing cruise when we were taken out by a crew we met on the beach. The next morning, the sea was very rough, even in Acapulco Bay. We're talking six foot waves! slamming our fishing boat down into the next trough, with water splashing over the sides.

Unfortunately I had eaten a BIG breakfast because we weren't sure when we'd get lunch. WHOA.

Maybe that will be another story, included in my next anthology!

The Joys of Editing?

Ah, the joys of editing. Not.
Why is it that a writer can read and read his/her own words and not catch mistakes? We know what we 'thought' we said. Those of us who write all the time know the truth of this, but that doesn't make it any less embarrassing.

This week, I've been preparing the manuscript of Naked Ladies - Seasons of the Heart for publication on Amazon through their CreateSpace program, which means it will be available on Kindle, the one ebook format not available through Smashwords. That means I've reformatted and gone over that manuscript again with a fine tooth comb.(It also means you can buy a soft-cover physical book on Amazon!)

Argh! The embarrassment of finding words like 'pubic' when I meant to say 'public,'  and extra word repeats because of a correction made earlier. I find myself second guessing myself and wondering, did I send them the wrong file? Did I really NOT see that error?

Lesson learned, that no matter how much you think you know your manuscript, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have someone else read it/proof it for you.

That said, I will resubmit the Smashwords manuscript today with corrections made, and for those of you who read on Kindles, or buy books through Amazon, Naked Ladies should be available as soon as this weekend, and certainly by Monday. I'll be going through that same process with Beneath a Wild Sky next week.

Thanks for visiting. Comments always welcome.

Beneath A Wild Sky ... and More

Last night I published my second collection of short stories, Beneath a Wild Sky - Forest Cat and Other Stories. See it on my author page at, www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MacColey .

I featured the first story in the book, "Forest Cat," as a serialized story on my nature blog at http://blog.marymcintyrecoley.com.

Here's the story behind it:
I wanted to begin posting some short stories on the nature blog, and since I love the mystery genre, I chose to start there. The story would be a mystery, had to have a natural setting, and an animal had to figure prominently in the story.

Here's the very short blurb from "Forest Cat": Veterinarian Shea Maroney heads into the forest in search of a cougar wounded by a hunter, and encounters the legendary reclusive Bess Milton, “Witch of the Forest.”

With this story, like many others, I start by asking questions. Sometimes, I use my envelopes to provide the answers (see previous posts). For this story, I drew from the 'settings envelope,' and the 'animal' envelope. I also drew from an envelope I've labeled 'professions,' which gives me the employment of one or more characters.

As for the reclusive Bess Milton, I never knew her. But there was a 'witch' in my neighborhood when I was growing up. Truthfully, she wasn't a witch, just an elderly lady who frequently wandered around her backyard in a housedress, usually in the morning hours. I could see her from my seat high up in the maple tree behind my house.

Once I started thinking about a story set in a forest, the character of Bess appeared as well. You'll have to read the story to find out more. BTW, it's free on my blog, or as the 20 percent sample download you get free from Smashwords without any obligation.

I hope you are enjoying the stories, and the inside scoop provided by my blog. If you are, let me know. I'd love to hear from you, and answer your questions!

Naked Lady Story Ideas - part 2

SO - more secrets today. Where do writers get their ideas for the stories they create?

In Monday's post I told you about my element envelopes. I used four of these envelopes when picking elements for the first two stories in Naked Ladies - Seasons of the Heart. Those envelope labels were: holiday, animal, weather, and situation. But there are more envelopes, and some new ones come into play with stories three and four.

Story three is called, "Unlikely Deliverance." Here's a short blurb: Rebecca works as a teacher's aide, and harbors a terrible secret: her father is serving time in prison. When a student, Jace, discovers - and reveals - her secret, she tries to get the young man suspended from school, only to find that his father's wrath rivals that of her own physically abusive father. To make matters worse, Rebecca's dad gets out on parole. Rebecca wonders: will I ever feel safe again?

So what kind of information is in the other element envelopes? The label on one envelope reads: Relationship. (I plucked out the word 'father' for "Unlikely Deliverance.") In this story, the envelope containing the Situation label contained the phrase: 'physical abuse.' I picked a second phrase from this same envelope to give me more ideas, and drew 'prison.'

And then, creativity takes over. My mind whirrs, and the story begins to come. There are stops and starts as the story unfolds. Times when it stops completely, and refuses to go down the path I initially chose. But eventually, my muse writes the story.

In story four, "The Liar," our protagonist is also a younger woman, in this case, a teen. The blurb: Kendra has a terrible secret: her father is terrorizing her family. Distraught over the hopelessness of her life at home, she strikes out at a popular high school teacher. Her web of lies threatens to destroy that teacher's career. Then, Kendra's home situation escalates. After all her deceit, can she admit her mistakes and find an ally who will help her save the life of her younger brother?

Can you guess the envelopes and the elements that I pulled from them? Obviously, the word 'liar' or 'deceit' was one of the elements I drew.

And again, neither of these stories is in anyway autobiographical. I was not the victim of physical abuse as a child, or as an adult. However, I have been in some scary situations and experienced verbal abuse. Those experiences help to color the story and make the dialogue more realistic.

Stay tuned for more about story development in Naked Ladies next week. Meanwhile, check out the book page on Smashwords, http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349717.

Inside Scoop - Story Ideas

One of the most frequent questions writers get from readers has to do with ideas. Where do those story starts come from?

I'm going to share secrets today - and let you know what planted the seeds for two of the stories included in my recently published collection, Naked Ladies - Seasons of the Heart. Here's a link to the book, if you haven't seen it yet.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349717

The first story in the book is St Paddy's Day Leprechaun," (Cheryl's story). Here's the story's blub, "Cheryl's world is crumbling around her. With a convict for a husband, now she's lost her job, and has no prospects for future work. When her favorite holiday finally rolls around, so does a powerful storm. With no electricity and flood waters rising around her, she feels overwhelmed. Should she let herself, and her car, just wash away to end the misery?"

This story is not biographical, although sometimes I do insert biographical elements into my stories. For this story, I used a random writer's trick to generate an idea. I placed possible story elements on small slips of paper into different envelopes, like holiday, weather, situation, animal. For this story, the holiday slip was 'St. Paddy's Day'; the weather slip was 'rainstorm'; the situation was 'job loss in midlife'; and the animal was 'squirrel.' Somehow Cheryl's story came together from those four elements. It was not plotted beforehand, although it was edited afterward.

The second story in the book is "The New Year's Curse," Shannon's story. Once again, the story idea began with my element envelopes: holiday was 'New Year's Eve'; weather was 'snowy'; situation was ' fear of relationship breakup' and the animal was 'puppy.'  The story's blurb reads, "Shannon has had bad luck with boyfriends lately, and her breakups all have one thing in common, the breakups happen on New Year's Eve. This year, she's in love with Justin, and scared. Will she be alone once more come New Year's Day?"

If you're curious about the other eight stories in Naked Ladies - watch for Thursday's post about how I came up with "Unlikely Deliverance" and "The Liar."