THE PURSUIT TO PUBLICATION IS A ROAD WORTH TRAVELING

So many people ask me about how I got my start as a fiction writer.  That's the focus of a guest blog entry I wrote for the Harlequin Books Blog.  Click on the link to read more.

I hope my personal testimony gives hope and encouragement to all aspiring writers. 

AN INFORMAL, UNOFFICIAL BOOK REVIEW

Editor's Note:  This week's guest blogger is my assistant, Angela May.  It is always interesting to learn what readers enjoy about a novel.  

I had been a Mary Alice Monroe fan long before I had the pleasure of working with her as assistant and public relations liaison. The first novel I read was SWEETGRASS and I have since devoured the rest of her books. You know that feeling right? It’s like a literary binge or addiction. What a grand high you get from reading a good book, and so you go searching for every other book by that author. But then the crash comes when you finish reading all of them and you’re left craving more (waiting for a book release always seems to take too long, at least for us readers).

So, imagine my delight when shortly after I starting working with her I learned that I had NOT read all of her books. That’s when Mary Alice told me about THE LONG ROAD HOME, her first novel, which had been out of print since 1995 and next to impossible to find anywhere. She kindly gave me a copy.

I must confess.  Because it was her “first” book, I figured it couldn’t be as good as the rest of her work. Usually, a person's “first” anything is something they try to bury in their memory (kind of like my first live reports as a journalist working for a local television station).

Well, shame on me for having the thought cross my mind that THE LONG ROAD HOME might not be as good as the rest. I was hooked by page 2 of the prologue!

Here’s the basic rundown-- Michael MacKenzie, a shady businessman, makes a public suicide inside a bank. His shocking death leaves his socialite wife, Nora MacKenzie, widowed and suddenly bankrupt, forcing her to try to make a life of her own at a small sheep farm the Vermont mountains. That’s where she meets C.W., a farmhand secretly on the run from his past life, after witnessing the MacKenzie suicide. All Nora knows is that the truth behind her husband’s death is scrawled in the pages of his diary, which she has yet to make sense of.

To me, THE LONG ROAD HOME is secrecy and suspense, hope and healing. You want Nora to make it as a farm girl, but the odds are heavily stacked against her. This novel is so different from the bestselling novels that her fans are most familiar with. However, the similarity I did see was that the parallels of humans and nature she so poignantly writes about in her Lowcountry-based novels existed in her work from the very beginning. That talent has always been a foundation of her writing style since book number one.

I’m thrilled that THE LONG ROAD HOME is available in bookstores again fifteen years after its debut. Now I’ll finally have other people I can talk with about the novel!

LITTLE SECRETS OF "THE LONG ROAD HOME"

It was a story that had been dancing in my heart and mind for quite some time before I actually took the time to put it on paper. Though it is purely a work of fiction, and the characters are of my imagination, small parts of my own life pepper the pages.

First is the farm house to which my protagonist Nora MacKenzie flees.

“Ahead, perched high on her mountain overlooking the Vermont mountain ranges, was a sunlit terrace. And standing she spied the peak of the redwood and brick structure looming high above the purple heather. Next appeared the large, angular windows divided by a mammoth beam and lastly, the breadth of the house.”  (pg. 43, "The Long Road Home")

The inspiration behind the house described in the novel is a family home where I spent many of days as a young wife and mother, tucked away in the Vermont mountains outside of Manchester. A photo of the home is included in the book trailer posted on my website. It's at that home where I learned how to raise sheep, which happens to also be an important element of the story.

Spending time on the farm, I learned a thing or two about pesky porcupines, and I can handle my own when it comes to a shotgun. When you're living way up in the mountains, isolated from police or even a neighbor, a woman must know how to defend herself and her children, just in case.

I give a little nod to my German roots through the character Nora, who periodically reflects on the wise words of her Oma, or grandmother.

And the novel begins with a quote from one of my favorite poets, whom I studied in great detail in college.

“For he hears the lamb’s innocent call,
And he hears the ewe’s tender reply;
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.”

-William Blake “The Shepherd”

What a wonderful experience it was to blend some of my life’s favorite things with the imaginative stories that lived in my mind for such a long time. As the expression goes, write what you know.

WHERE’S MY WALKMAN, DUDE!

It’s wonderful to see my first novel back on store shelves after all these years! It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have passed.

In preparation of the re-release of THE LONG ROAD HOME, I re-read the book for any possible editing. I enjoyed immersing myself again in the story of Nora MacKenzie’s struggle to rebuild her life after her husband’s suicide and shady Wall Street dealings; a socialite forced to flee her prominent big city lifestyle and learn how to live off the land at her small Vermont farm.

Despite the passage of time, the story remains fresh and timely, especially considering the 21st century Wall Street scandals that dominated newspaper headlines not that long ago. While some things always stay the same, other things do fade away into oblivion. And because of that, I did change just a few anachronisms.

In my original story, one of my characters is listening to her Walkman while walking on the farm. They were so popular when I included it in my story. Everyone either had one or wanted one back then. How obsolete they are today!

And remember when folks said the word “dude” practically as often as they said “hello”? That word ended up on the editing room floor this time around, dude.

They were the most minor of changes, but I learned something from the process that’s good for all writers to keep in mind. Avoid dating your work with trends and fads-- be it electronics, fashion or slang. They can be distractions. 

You want your story to resonate with readers today and in the future. And that is my hope, fifteen years after the privilege of getting my first novel published.

SWIMMING LESSONS: True Tales at the Sea Turtle Hospital

There is no denying my deep affinity for sea turtles, particularly the threatened loggerhead. This ancient creature of the deep blue swam its way into the pages of two of my novels, THE BEACH HOUSE and the sequel SWIMMING LESSONS.

SWIMMING LESSONS is being re-released as mass market this July with a fresh seaside front cover. My hope is a new wave of readers will find themselves taking interest in the loggerhead as well as the sea turtle hospitals that care for the sick and injured.

In SWIMMING LESSONS, my protagonist Toy Sooner, a single mother raising her young daughter on Isle of Palms, is also caring for injured sea turtles at the Sea Turtle Hospital located at Charleston's South Carolina Aquarium. Each turtle Toy handles at the facility are reflective of actual case histories there.

Biologist Kelly Thorvalson, who is the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue Program Coordinator, blogs about the amazing turtle cases the staff and volunteers handle. Their mission is to help sea turtles survive in our ocean by healing the ill and injured for their return to the wild. It is through her dedication, and that of the volunteers, aquarium staff, and a long line of generous donors, that the SC Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital has grown into the amazing facility it is today.

After reading, or re-reading, SWIMMING LESSONS when it makes its return to bookstores in July, I encourage you to plan a trip to the SC Aquarium. We have two fabulous new exhibits—an extremely rare albino alligator and a 3D theater that lets you feel the splash of water and more as you watch a film. Also, the penguin exhibit has been extended. And don’t forget to take for a tour of the Sea Turtle Hospital. I hope the pages of my novel come alive when you see with your own eyes the spectacular sea creature that inspired me to write my turtle novels. I hope they capture your heart just as they did mine!