Connections

 I've been making trees of life, first in bowls and now with these tiles. I'll confess, when I find a new ceramic project or idea I tend to do a bunch of them. I like to figure out how I want to make them and what works best. But I think what I like about making the trees right now is they really speak to today's environment. The world is so divisive right now. And the trees sort of remind me that we're all connected. We all have our roots in this country and we branch out and add our own uniqueness to it. Those differences make for a much richer tapestry.

It's sort of the same thing that attracts me to writing...the uniqueness of each story and each character. Each story allows me to explore something new.

They say that most people live one life, but a reader lives a thousand lives. That applies to writers as well. Each book I read and write allows me to inhabit someone else's life for a while. In Hometown Hearts each character goes through something different and approaches the idea of family in a different way. And yet, like my trees of life, they all have their roots firmly planted in a universal sameness...in family, friendship and love.

I'm finding that my art connects to my writing which connects to my life. Yes it's all intertwined...just like we're all intertwined. Sometimes we spend so long looking at our differences that we forget our connection. I think readers and writers are better at recognizing that our differences are a gift...that we're all rooted in the same soil.

If you haven't read the first three books in my Hometown Hearts series, I hope you pick them up so that you're ready for the fourth book which comes out in September!

I'm heading out to the studio today...so much clay to play with, so little time!

Holly

PS This is Herman. He's the first piece I made in my new HollysWood Studio. That's one of the ash glazes I've made!

PPS Check out Hometown Hearts

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: 

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: 

Are We There Yet?

Surely, I can't be the only one feeling this way, right? The rush up to the holiday season, then as each one passes the let-down? With Christmas and New Year's being midweek, it's a strange, confusing, time-out-of-time when you really don't know which day of the week it is or what you should be doing! 

Well, 2019 is moving on tonight  and I say good riddance to bad rubbish! Yeah, sadly, it's been another one of those years for me. Yet, even with all the negativity and struggle in my life, there have been wonderful times and people. Thank goodness, right? 

For me, my grandbabies have been an ongoing source of joy and wonder. Watching them grow bigger and smarter and funnier each day. Watching as they take on challenges (pre-school, swimming lessons, gymnastics and more) and relish in succeeding. And the joy they experience from every simple little thing that happens. Our whole family trip to Disney World was filled with that wonder and joy!  

Back in February, I had the opportunity to model for a womens' clothing company and what fun!

I spent the day having hair and makeup done and then modeling clothes along with 4 other 'real women' customers. It was amazing to work with the professionals -- photographers, videographers, clothing specialists, dressers, stage crew and executives -- and fun! They treated me like a queen all day and it was a wonderful new experience I never thought possible.

In late August/early September, I got the chance to spend a week on Lake Michigan with my Irish travel group of friends - aka the Plucking Monkeys. We spent the days and nights talking A LOT, writing, shopping, sunning, watching the storms cross the lake from Wisconsin and bring the lightning with them. Got to see the Milky Way and some meteors in the dark of night and we drank a bit of Irish Coole Swan. It was a rejuvenating week of friendship, kinship and fun. And it led me to.....


After two+ years of deep grief and depression, my writing is back! I was asked to join in two different collaborations and am actually writing stories again. I feared I would never find the words and it terrified me. But the week on the lake, stress-free and with wonderful friends who laugh at anything and everything, opened the door that had been shut!

So, as the year ends, I'm still dealing with sadness and family crisis, but am hopeful that things will get better in the New Year. I'm deep into my Viking story - the closer of a 5-book series from Harlequin Historicals called The Sons of Sigurd. Mine will come out in November 2020. I've got more books to write for Harlequin and a couple of smaller collaborative projects with other authors in the offing. But, the words are back and bubbling up from within.



So, are you looking forward to 2020? Leaving bad things behind as 2019 exits and hoping for good in the new year? I wish you all the best -- I hope that 2020 will be happy and healthy and kind and filled with all the joys you need and want -- and books, lots and lots of books!

Happy New Year! 

(and PS - in 2020, Valentine's Day, 4th of July, Christmas and New Year's are all on weekends!! )

The Most Important Part of Writing ~ @AuthorKristina Knight

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

If you read many ‘how to’ type of posts you’ll find a lot of different answers to the question ‘what is the most important part of writing’.

This is one of those posts, but it’s also not one of those posts.

For me, the most important part of writing is simply to write.

On any given day, there are about a thousand things that crop up that I’m not ready for. Whether it’s my daughter coming home from school with marker on her shirt from art class, or my husband calling to say he won’t be home for dinner, which also means I’m on homework duty. To having a non-fiction assignment come up. To having first round edits and final read-through documents come in from my editors on the same day.

And all of those things can seem, in the moment, to be more important that getting the two or three thousand words on paper that I’ve set for my goal.

What I’ve found, though, is that putting off the writing has a snowball effect. Because the next day not only do I still need to write those words, I also need to write the current day’s words. And there are more last minute emergencies to deal with: like learning my mother-in-law is coming over for dinner, and that I have to fill out an art fact sheet for my cover designer, and I have blog and promo posts to write for my upcoming book release, and I haven’t updated my social media sites in too many days. And. And. And and and and and.

That’s why, no matter what else I have going on, what other items are on my to-do list, what little emergencies have come up that day, at 1 PM every day, I’m at my computer. Writing the new words. The emergencies wait. The to-do list waits. The new words get written, and then I go back to the errands and emergencies and to-do list items. Because if the new words aren’t on the paper, I can’t edit them. If I can’t edit them, I can’t turn them in to my agent or editor. If I can’t turn them in, I can’t perfect them. If I can’t perfect them (at least as much as I can perfect them), I can’t publish them to share with readers.

What about you? What is the most important part of writing, for you?

Kristina Knight's latest release, Moonlight Match, is available now! 

Moonlight Match is part of the Resort to Romance continuity project ~ 10 sweet romances, all set during a week-long matchmaking event in the Bahamas! 

Aster Harrington believes in love but love doesn’t seem to believe in her. She’s hoping Goldie and Ginny, the matchmakers who’ve matched on two generations of Harringtons, can work a little love magic for her…

Some call Ethan Talbot rigid, but he prefers to think of himself as prepared. Unfortunately, when he’s matched with Aster Harrington at Joy Island’s Matchmaking Week, all those carefully prepared plans go out the window. He can get back to finding a suitable wife once he’s home in New York. After all, how much damage can one week in the Bahamas do to his plans?

Kristina Knight is a contemporary romance author, part-time TKD-kid wrangler, and full-time Thin Mints enthusiast. You can find out more about Kristina and her books on her website. To get even closer, stalk follow her on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Cottage in the Woods

Future Studio

See that picture at the top of the page?  That's the site of our future pole-barn. And you know what'll be in the pole-barn? My future studio!!! My studio be facing the woods and pond. There'll be lots of windows and a big porch out the back.  I soooo can't wait!

It's been a crazy summer so far and craziness appears to be on the calendar for the rest of the summer. So whenever I can, I take a moment to myself enjoying the silence. Well, not silence. I hear cars go by and a lot of birds. But that's about it. That silence is a balm. I didn't talk, didn't turn on music. I just settled in that silence by myself.

I was thinking about silent religious orders and realized I get it. There's a certain appeal to being that quiet. To listening to yourself think.  When things are chaotic here, quiet days like this are a balm and recharge me.

My pond.

People tend to move full steam ahead. Jobs. Family. Chores. Sometimes everyone needs to just stop and listen to ourselves think.

I'll keep you posted on the studio. First project is having a road put back to it and leveling out that site (which is currently a big pricker patch). They're supposed to do that next week, then a week or so later, the pole-barn starts! By the time I run out of ceramics classes at the university next spring, I should have my own workspace. A studio in the quiet, quiet woods. Perfect!

Holly

PS Looking for something to read? Check out my New Releases and Books on Sale...and when you're done, please leave an online review!

New Releases:
The Makeover
How to Catch a Groom

Books On Sale:

Just One Things (Which is set at my fictionalized cottage in the woods!)

Trippin' with Holly and Susan—12

Susan Gable and I have done a series of videos about writing and books...and today's release, about where we set most of our books, Erie, PA.

Yes, Erie is Eriesistible! It's the setting in so many of my books, but more than that...it's home! Come see why we love it so much in today's trip!

You can go back and check out the first eleven videos on YouTube on my aptly named, Trippin' with Holly and Susan playlist.

We had so much fun making these videos and we'd love to have you come along...so climb in the backseat and come trippin' with us!

Holly

PS. Carry Her Heart is on sale, along with the 2nd book in the series, These Three Words.

Polished Off

And don't forget my new release Polished Off: A Maid in LA Mystery is out! Check out Quincy's newest adventure!

Join in the fun at:

Amazon

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One Thing Leads to Another...

I started back to school this year.  I took Ceramics I and Ceramics II.  I signed up for Ceramics Independent Study in the fall.  My first term we had assignments, but the second term was pretty much trying what interested us.  I gave myself a theme for the term...folk art.  It's the kind of art I gravitate to.  I focused on faces and nature.  Lots of trees, santas and even the quilt to your right (which was sized to fit over the electric panel at camp).

 But all the playing with textures and some underglaze painting left me wanting to know more.  I started looking at the world around me with new eyes.  I noticed textures in a way I never had.  One thing Lead to another

I started studying folk art.  My father-in-law was an artist, though he'd never have called himself that.  We have a cabinet full of santas that he carved and painted.  I tried to recreate his designs at first, but then I tried some of my own. I incorporated the trees I'd been studying with the fact I spend a lot of my summers splitting wood for the next winter and added a dash of my FIL's santas and that study of faces.  One thing leads to another.

And that idea of one thing leading to another is still playing out.  I'm going to start throwing clay on a wheel.  To date I've only hand-built my projects.  And I'd done a bit of underglazing on those, using them as paints.  So I wondered how I could make my painting better.  I'm envisioning a line of cups with rural scenes.  Now, I have no intention of being a fine art painter, but folk art...I wanted to explore that in order to add that dimension to next terms class. 
 
 I started out decorating some clementine orange boxes and then branched out to some small 8"x8" canvases.  I'm seeing some improvement and I'm hoping I can come close to replicating some aspects of these in my ceramics.







 Yes, one thing leads to another.

And this year's classes lead to an article in Romance Writers' Report, and my first workshop on Lifelong Learning, and I started a new book where this year's classes might be coming into play...

One thing lead to another.

I think it's a good way to live life.  Learn something new and then have that lead to learning something else.

I have a friend who calls me Renaissance Woman.  I will confess, I smile every time she posts something to me.  I am an expert at very few things, but I do so love learning new bits and pieces.  All of those feed into my writing.

I've wanted to take a ceramics class for a long time. You can see that yearning in Just One Thing.  Maybe that one thing lead to another and here I am.

I hope you all find something that enthralls you!

Holly

PS To all the Moms out there...Happy Mother's Day!

Find my books at:

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BAM

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iBooks

Google Play

In Erie, you can find my books on the shelf at Werner Books! Stop in, check them out and tell them I said hi!

Christina Hollis: Let’s Hear It For The Girls!

…and that’s what we were called when I worked in an office, at the end of the twentieth century. March is Women’s History Month. If you think history is only about politicians and wars, think again. It’s also about the lives of unsung armies of ordinary people, just like you and me. A single flake of snow can’t achieve anything, but thousands of them can create an avalanche. It's the same with women working for change. In Women’s Lives In Bristol, I trace the story of the rich and poor, lucky and unlucky women who battled to gain the basic respect, rights and independence most of us enjoy today.  

From Salisbury Cathedral—perfect for Women's History Month

Never let anyone tell you that writing is a waste of time. Women’s Lives In Bristol tells the stories of two women who, in their different ways, both wrote their way out of trouble. 

Emma Marshall (1830-1899) was the daughter of a relatively rich man, and went to a private school until she was sixteen. In 1854, she married banker Hugh Graham Marshall. Her duties after that were supposed to be nothing more than acting as  hostess for her husband’s business associates, and to be a stay-at-home mother to a huge brood of children. The Marshalls had nine daughters, and Emma enjoyed making up stories for them. In 1861 she published a book, Happy Days at Fernbank, which she called "...a story for little girls...". That marked the beginning of a spectacular career for Emma. Over the next thirty-eight years, she wrote more than two hundred stories. Often weaving a drama around a real historic figure or event, Emma instilled a love of English history into a whole generation of children—but behind her enormous success lurked a domestic disaster. When the bank her husband worked for collapsed in 1878, the Marshalls faced ruin. The loss of his job meant they would have lost everything—if not for Emma. By writing continuously, she became her family’s breadwinner and managed to pay off all their debts.

Emma died from pneumonia in 1899, and was writing until the end. Her daughter Beatrice completed The Parson’s Daughter, the story her mother’s was working on when she died. Emma’s youngest daughter, Christabel, was also talented. She became a playwright, author and campaigner for women’s suffrage. 

Long after Petticoat Government, cathedral life is still full of intrigue!

Frances Trollope, née Milton (1779-1863) was born in Stapleton. That’s now a busy suburb of Bristol, but when Frances was born it was a small Gloucestershire village. She didn’t marry until she was  thirty. Barrister Thomas Trollope turned out to be a bad choice of husband. Their marriage was unhappy, but this was in the days before women could obtain any reliable contraception.  The Trollopes had four sons and three daughters, and were always short of money.  At the age of forty-eight Frances fled to America, taking some of her children with her. She wanted to join the Nashoba community, which was a project to educate and emancipate slaves. This was started by Frances Wright in 1826, on the present-day site of Germantown in Shelby County, Tennessee. The high ideals of the commune weren’t realised. It collapsed within a couple of years, and Frances returned to England with her children. The book she wrote about her experiences, Domestic Manners Of The Americans, was very popular in its day. 

After that, Frances’s writing became her family’s main source of income. She produced several more non-fiction books on travel, as well as some fiction. A great campaigner against slavery, her book Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw allegedly inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Frances Trollope’s books were soon overshadowed by the work of her famous son Anthony. Her book Petticoat Government (1850) with its English cathedral full of manoeuvring clerics ruled from the sidelines by a domineering woman is not very different from  the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which Anthony published from1855 onwards. He obviously knew a good idea when he saw one.

English contemporary novelist Joanna Trollope is a distant descendant of Frances Trollope. Literary ambition must run in the family’s genes!

Women’s Lives In Bristol 1850-1950 will be published by Pen and Sword Books early next year. Follow me on Facebook, and drop in on my blog for updates.

As well as her local history work, Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women. She has written eighteen contemporary novels, sold nearly three million books, and her books have been translated into twenty different languages. When she isn’t writing, Christina is cooking, walking her dog, or beekeeping.

You can catch up with her at https://christinahollisbooks.online, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com

Her current release, Heart Of A Hostage, is published by The Wild Rose Press and available at myBook.to/HeartOfAHostage  worldwide.

The Gifts of Ursula Le Guin

by Joanne Rock

Ursula Le Guin passed away this week, and it got me thinking about her wonderful books, and her thoughts about writing. When I read The Left Hand of Darkness, I was blown away by how much I loved it. I wasn’t sure it would be my “kind” of book—a story set in an alien world with its own rules, it’s science fiction or, some say, speculative fiction. I’ve never read much of either.

But with a wonderful story, genre never matters. Good storytelling transcends genre, drawing us in to the protagonist’s story, making us care about the world and the stakes. With The Left Hand of Darkness, it didn’t matter that I was in an alien world. The drama was human enough, and I cared deeply about what was happening. Not only did I love the book, I thought about it for years afterward, and what it said about the effect of sex and gender on a culture.

If all that Le Guin had given me, that would have been generous enough. But the gifts kept coming as, later in life, I stumbled on her thoughts on writing. She sheds insightful light on why the often-repeated “rule” of writing, “show don’t tell,” is detrimental advice to a more seasoned writer.

Thanks to “show don’t tell,” I find writers in my workshops who think exposition is wicked. They’re afraid to describe the world they’ve invented. (I make them read the first chapter of The Return of the Native,,,                                                          (On Rules of Writing)

She goes on to de-bunk other over-simplified writing advice in a way that helped me to marry my joy in romance and modern genre fiction with my deep love of literature. Her words gave permission to unapologetically dive into narrative paragraphs. To really set a scene and a mood by dipping deeply into a character’s thoughts, without worrying how fast I’d get back to action and dialogue.

Writers like Janet Evanovich do this all the time, even though we think of her Stephanie Plum books as full of action and fabulous dialogue. She starts High Five with a great paragraph about why being a bounty hunter is like going through life without underwear. It’s funny and vivid, and it gives us a snapshot of the character’s thoughts before we have any idea about the action.

“Telling” is not the root of storytelling evil. It’s an integral part of it, and one that I very much enjoy. So thank you, Ursula Le Guin, not just for your amazing books, but for all the writing wisdom you took time to share. I’ll leave you with a few other Le Guin gems for you to enjoy today:

* It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.

* Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

* When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

***Any writers whose work you return to time and time again? Or any classic books that stood out for you in your English classes that were really memorable? Share with me today and I’ll send one random commenter a signed copy of my December Desire, His Pregnant Secretary. My current release, if you’re interested in taking a peek, is January’s Claiming His Secret Heir!

Christina Hollis: A Writer's Life Is (Usually) A Happy One...

Writing for a living must be the best job there is. To paraphrase Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady’s The Big Bang Theory, being a writer involves thinking about stuff and writing some of it down. 

The snag is, when you’re an author the day-job comes with a whole load of excess baggage. 

Non-Fictional Paperwork

By this I mean the boring everyday toil, rather than useful non-fiction writing work, like my current project about Women’s Lives In Bristol. Accounts and tax returns are only too real. Planning, cross-checking diaries with my OH to make sure our appointments don’t clash, and scheduling work all has to be done. Keeping on top of it all helps reduce the total time I spend on non-writing tasks—for example, I carry a plain white envelope in the back of my purse with the month and year written on it. I stuff all my work-related receipts and parking passes straight into it as I get them. Then it’s a simple thing to sit down at the end of that month and enter all the receipts on my Current Accounts spreadsheet. That’s a lot quicker than scrabbling around the house and car for paperwork once a year, but it all eats into my writing time.

Nobody Believes You...

… when you say it’s your career. It’s hard to believe it myself sometimes. I jump out of bed every day of the year (yes, Monday mornings included!) and find it hard to tear myself away from my desk when the family needs feeding, or they’re in danger of running out of clean clothes. Imagine how tough it is to keep smiling when somebody asks me to take on a task or join a committee which only meets during working hours “…because you’re at home all day…”.

I'm Writing Non-Fiction At The Moment, So This Really IS Bristol

Or They Believe Too Much...

One of the first thing every writer learns is the danger of putting real people into their books. We live in litigious times. If you hate your landlord and the feeling is mutual, they’ll comb your published work for any trace of a similarity between them and a villain in your book. Eye and hair colour, build, habits, speech patterns—change them all, to be on the safe side. Everyone uses real events and personalities as a springboard for their fiction—even JRR Tolkien, whose fantasy world of hobbits, trolls and dwarves is about as far removed from real life as it’s possible to get. Both he and his wife have an important part in his story universe, but they both knew exactly what he was up to, and it was consensual. Moral: only include a real person in your book if both of you are involved in an eternal, true-life love story. 

With each other, obviously. 

When writing is your career rather than your hobby, it’s a wonderful life but there are a few niggles. Thank goodness for family, friends, and understanding visitors to sites like AuthorSound Relations, that’s all I can say!

Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women. She has written six historical novels, eighteen contemporary novels, sold nearly three million books, and her work has been translated into twenty different languages. When she isn’t writing, Christina is cooking, gardening, walking her dog, or beekeeping.

You can catch up with her at http://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com

Her current release, Heart Of A Hostage, is published by The Wild Rose Press and available at myBook.to/HeartOfAHostage  worldwide.