A Little Life

I will confess, I live what might appear to be a little life. It's a life built around family and creating. Writing has been a huge part of my life for a long time. But when I took my first pottery class, I knew that would be a part of my life as well. Yes, it was love at first...wedge! LOL We went round and round about where to put my pottery studio (after I'd exhausted all the classes at the university!). I could put it at home, but my options were limited. So we decided to put it at The Cottage. We had more than enough room for sure. We started building the barn last August. And by June, my studio was up and working!

The view is amazing! I spent Monday out there working. I didn't turn on any music...I didn't need to. My Cooper's Hawks are back and were very vocal. Their nest is not far from the barn. I was afraid we'd scare them off with all the building last year, but nope. They're back. The red salamanders are all over! And I rescued a toad that got into the barn the other day. I didn't want Tallulah to find him and taste him. LOL A ton of birds just added to the chorus. Who needs any other music.

The minions came and spent a day at camp last weekend. They played with sticks and lightsabers. LOL (The sticks were Ewok's sticks.) And we took a hike to Second Creek. Yes, we named the creek that borders the back of the property Second Creek. It's not overly creative, but is an accurate description.  We also have other areas named...Powerline Path, Monkey Island (no one's quite sure where that came from) and other areas.

Yes, it's a little life. I wouldn't want it any other way.  I've built my life around family and love. Whether I'm writing love stories about families (like my Hometown Hearts series...that was a sly mention) or loving working on my pottery. It's a little, but lucky life because I love what I do and who I'm sharing my life with.

I think the secret to a happy life is recognizing what's good in your life and giving thanks for it. I hope when you take a look at your life, you find you're as happy with yours as I am with mine! 

Holly

PS. If you have a moment, I hope you'll check out my Hometown Hearts series. Each book stands alone, but since it's a small town, you're bound to bump into someone you know in each book!

Crib Notes: Hometown Hearts #1

Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBook

A Special Kind of Different: Hometown Hearts #2

Kindle, iBook, Kobo, Nook

Homecoming: Hometown Hearts #3

Kindle, Kobo, IBooks, Nook

PREORDER  Suddenly a Father: Hometown Hearts #4

Available in September

Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBooks: 

Kid Characters

by Joanne Rock

My cartoonized profile
pic from a reader friend!

My first writing love will always be romance, so kid characters are never my central focus. But I dearly love it when I have a child in a story because they are so much fun to write. From teens to babies, the differences in personality, gestures and actions are so vastly different from one year to the next. Think about it… between the time you are thirty and forty, does all that much change about you? Maybe you tweak your hair cut or color. But in a child, the difference of ten years is a whole world. So to write any age authentically means research.

My first stop is often my family photo albums. Because what better case studies do I have than the kids that I raised? I had a front seat to watch them grow through all stages. To marvel at their new mastery of skills day by day, seeing how they changed from adorably dependent little baby bundles to the amazing young men they are today.

Bachelor dad falls for nanny
to his nephew

For my January release, THE RANCHER’S BARGAIN, the story set up was given to me because it is part of the Texas Cattleman’s Club series. That means the Harlequin editors dream up the rough concepts and outline character basics, then I write a fifty thousand word story based on a couple of outlined pages. It’s a fun challenge. And for this particular story, I was given a toddler named Teddy.

In one important way, he was very different from any of my boys in that he’d lost his birth parents at a young age. When we meet him, he’s been given to his bachelor uncle to raise—a good-hearted with man with no knowledge of parenting. Is it any wonder my toddler character acts out in unpredictable ways after so much injustice in his young life?

But in so many other ways, Teddy was a boy I absolutely recognized. While my heart hurt for all Teddy had lost, he also has the gift of toddlerhood that allows him to find joy in the moment no matter what happened the day before. Tears to giddy laugher and back again comes with the age. So when my baby-loving nanny steps onto the scene, she can find this boy’s smile in no time.

One of my three favorite toddlers-- my middle
son being sweetly adorable. Yes, that's a
sock in his mouth.

I love the irreverent goofiness of this age. The way a toddler will go full throttle at whatever they try—running down a hill, climbing a bookcase (you know they try it), throwing their sippy cups across a crowded restaurant. It’s amazing what a toddler can do. Who would guess their arm had enough range to ping the man seated at the next table? Toddlers can be exasperating, yes. But so amazing and fun. And you won’t find a more loving age than this one, when sticky hugs and kisses are given with abandon, declarations of love made on a regular basis once the find their words. It’s enough to make a mother’s heart—or a nanny’s, or a bachelor’s—swell with joy.

**Do you have any toddlers in your life? Enjoy a certain age of childhood in particular? Share with me in the comments and I’ll give a random poster a copy of an earlier Texas Cattleman’s Club book, Expecting a Scandal. In the meantime, I hope you’ll keep an eye out for THE RANCHER’S BARGAIN in stores!

Cowboys, Kids and Bull Riding School -- Anne McAllister

Just last week Tule Publishing reprinted a book of mine called The Cowboy and the Kid.  It is the 4th in a series of loosely related books called The Tanner Brothers because the first three were about brothers, and this guy is the best friend of one of them.

Loosely means you don't have to have read the others to make sense of it, but if you do, you'll know more about the people who make up the hero and heroine's world.  Out of my seventy books, it is one that has remained near and dear to my heart.

In thinking about why it has remained one of my favorites, I've decided that it gave me the chance to celebrate bits of my life that I value a great deal -- and it took me out of myself to a place I'd never been, which is always the best part of research.

So . . . what I value:

Cowboys, of course. Goes without saying. I imprinted on one when I was five and the inclination to follow one anywhere still lingers.  Not sure what it is -- maybe the sense of responsibility, the 'try' that means he always makes maximum effort no matter the cost, the  strong/quiet vibe that so many of them do so well. Or, well, maybe it's the Wranglers and the hat . . . but cowboys, especially ones like sinigle-father Taggart Jones, will get me every time.

And kids.  They're very much a part of my world. I've got four -- all grown up now -- and nine grandkids in various stages on the road to maturity (well, one is already there).  And Becky, Taggart's daughter, owes a bit to several of them who are dear to me, in particular to the daughter of friends who was seven when I wrote about Becky and who had every bit of the curiosity and determination and stubbornness that Becky did.  She's all grown up now, too, and I'm thinking she wouldn't make a bad heroine.

And scrapbooks.  I inherited a few scrapbooks from my long-gone relatives, and they inspired the scrapbook at the beginning of The Cowboy and the Kid.  I always loved looking through them and "reading" the story of the person whose life they reflected by reading the news articles and seeing the cards and bits and pieces of memorabilia they saved.  I did one myself in 8th grade to tell the story of Peter Stuyvesant in New Netherlands for a social studies project.  I remembered it when my then editor wanted me to start with something that focused on Taggart (otherwise the book started from Becky's point of view).  It was fun to do.  (There's still an 8th grader somewhere deep inside me).

And small town folks.  Sometimes they can be urban neighborhood folks, of course. But they are the people who live nearby and who feel almost more like family than they do just acquaintances.  They're the ones you can call on when you need a helping hand.  They're sometimes the ones who know you need a helping hand before you know.

And bull-riding.

This is the research part, the part that took me out of my own life and dropped me straight into one I had only seen from a distance.  This wasn't a natural for me, but this kind of research is one of the parts of writing books that I value  more than anything else.

A year or so before this book, I'd done another book -- The Eight-Second Wedding -- and in it there was a bull-rider.  I sort of fell in love with that bull-rider, and in doing research to make him 'real,' I spent a fair amount of time on the phone with a cowboy who taught bull riding "for real."

He was a great resource.  It was a fun experience, so much so that I wished he could be a resource for another book.  He said, "Well, you could write one about a hero who was a bull-riding instructor."

So I did.  And of course, ever the stickler for authenticity, he said, "You should come to bull-riding school."

So I did -- over the Presidents' Day weekend quite a lot of years ago.

Let me be clear: I audited the course. I did not take it for 'credit'  -- I did not ride any bulls. One of the other things I value, besides authenticity, is self-preservation, and I know my limits.

But I did spend three days attending class and watching my fellow students survive -- and thrive -- in the course and in the arena.

I came away with a great appreciation for what it take to put yourself out there, for the commitment and the determination, for all the tiny details that go into making a success of a ride.  Or not.

That weekend was one of the most memorable of all the many bits of life that have turned up in my books. And that bull-riding instruct or was one of the most helpful, insightful cowboys  I've had the pleasure of following around for three days (and it wasn't just the Wrangers and the hat).

Putting it all together afterwards, and finding the heart of the story in all the details from so many places and people, made it one of the most enjoyable books I've written (sometimes I tear my hair. OFTEN, I tear my hair.  But not on that book).  It was even fun to go back through it and touch it up a bit.

The first book in the Tanner Brothers series, Cowboys Don't Cry is available for free for a limited time as an ebook in a variety of formats.

Check it out at your favorite online bookseller if you like cowboys who don't (as another former editor said) "own multi-national corporations on the side.  In other words, there are no billionaires in this series.  Sorry about that!

Book 5, Cowboy Pride, will be released February 13, and can be pre-ordered now.

Holly Jacobs: Books are like Children

Today is the release day for Hold Her Heart.  It's the sequel to my award winning Carry Her Heart.  And I'll confess, I'm first-day-of-school excited. There's a big similarity to having kids and writing books.

Now, if you're a parent, you'll understand first-day-of-school excited.  I have four kids and I love and adore those kids.  But they are not quiet.  Even as they've gotten older, they're still not quiet.  And I'm a writer who writes best in quiet.  I know some people enjoy music or noisy coffee houses while they write.  But I just don't work that way.  I like silence.  My favorite place in the world to write is out at camp.  I love having no sounds other than the birds.  So you can imagine my love of the first day of school.  I'm like this:

It's a mixture of happiness for me, but also there's an element of excitement for my kids because I was that nerd kid who loved going back to school and I always wanted my kids to feel that same excitement.  I loved the sound a brand new text book makes the first time it opens.  It's a creak of the binding that says you are going to learn so much in me.  I loved the way the school smells.  I loved...  I really enjoyed school! LOL

But how is a new release like having a kid? you ask.

Here's the thing...as much as I felt that Staple's Dad's glee on the first day of school, and as much as I remembered my own love of school, there was still a bit of worry over my kids.  I wanted to get a teacher who not only taught, but inspired a love of a subject in my kids.  I wanted them to see old friends, but also make new ones.  I wanted them to be happily received on that first day...and the other 179 days of their school year.  I love my kids so much and I wanted everyone else to feel that love and joy in them.

That's how I feel about having a new book come out.  Like I said, today it's Hold Her Heart.  In Carry Her Heart, I introduced Pip...a woman who gave up a daughter and then built a life around her.  In the These Three Words, you caught a glimpse of Pip's daughter and knew there was more to Pip's story.  Hold Her Heart is that more.  What happens when that mother and daughter meet after a lifetime apart?  More importantly, it forces the characters to ask, What does home look like?

I'll confess, I cried every time I read the opening scene.  And I know it was absurd.  I was writing/wrote the book.  I know there's a happily-ever-after at the end.  Still I cried...I cry.

As I send the book out in the world, I'm hoping that everyone who picks it up feels as strongly as I do about it.  I hope it makes them laugh...and cry.  And if you think about it, that's exactly what kids do...make you laugh and cry, and make you fall in love all over again on a daily basis!

Happy Reading!

Holly

Donna Alward: It's sports season again

My first deadline is met, my next is in progress and it's sport season again in my house. Sport season translates into volleyball - and before I go further, may I just say how in awe I am of the commitment so many parents put into sports like hockey and swimming that happens at ungodly hours, and of those of you who do all the league play. Y'all are way better than I am at this stuff.

My eldest plays volleyball on the school team, which at least means practices are after school and games are in the metro area (which means within a 40-45 min drive at most). I admit it does mean I have to be creative about dinner time some evenings but I do like going rather than having her travel with someone else and me miss it. The funny thing is I always take my e-reader or a book in my purse, but I never get more than a few pages read.

I played sports when I was in school. Unfortunately my mom didn't enjoy them as I did (and do) and so I often caught a ride with friends. And volleyball was my favourite sport. So this past summer I shared driving with another mom while my eldest did a volleyball camp at the university, and I cheered her on when she went for tryouts again this year. Now I get to watch her play and I love it. I get so invested in the game, proud for the efforts of the team, deflated when it doesn't go as well as they'd like. I love watching her make a good play! The worst thing is I think I make her a little nervous. I don't think she gets that I know sometimes you make a bad play and that it's okay. You shake it off, and move on.

That's life.

And that's what sports can teach us. Playing with a team, trying our best, the great feeling of coming out on top, the let down of loss, the pride in playing a good game no matter what the score, and pushing yourself to achieve more than you did before. The days of me playing competitive sports are long gone, but I do feel some of those same things in my daily workouts (especially pushing through when you don't wanna!).

My youngest is hoping to play this year in an afterschool club, so that when she switches schools next year, she too might get a chance to play.

And hey, when Christmas break is over, badminton starts. And my nerves will be shot once again!

Did you play sports as a kid? Do you now? Do you have kids in sports?

You can check out my latest releases and excerpts and all that jazz on my website at www.donnaalward.com.