FAVORITES, FAILURES & FRUSTRATIONS--GUEST AUTHOR TERRY SHAMES

Critically acclaimed, award-winning author Terry Shames writes the bestselling Samuel Craddock series, set in small-town Texas. Her most recent release is a prequel to the series. Learn more about Terry and her books at her website.

Favorites

This is a great time of year to give a shout-out to favorites. I am going to list my favorite bookstores and books of the year, because they are what sustains readers when everything not-so-favorite is happening.

My favorite bookstores, and why I chose them:

Mrs. Dalloway’s Art and Garden Center, Berkeley. This is my “local.” If it were a pub, I’d have my own stool with my name on it and the bartender wouldn’t have to ask for my order. It has a wonderful, welcoming feel to it and the customers are book-lovers who will engage readily in conversation.

Borderlands, San Francisco. Specializing in sci-fi and mystery. You will never find a bookstore more supportive of writers.

BookPeople, Austin, TX. My home away from home. Scott Montgomery, the mystery section honcho, has probably sold more of my books than any other bookseller. He is also a writer, so he understands the struggles writers have to promote their books, so when he finds a book he likes, he makes a huge fuss over it.

Book Carnival (Orange, CA) and Clues Unlimited (Tucson, AZ)— A couple of months before a book comes out, both Anne and Chris contact me to say, “When are you coming? Let’s get it set up now!” It makes me feel special. I know I’m not the only author they do that for, but it feels that way.

Favorite books? I am an eclectic reader. I will try anything. I may not finish if I don’t like it, but I have been happily surprised by books that I thought were out of my interest range.

Mystery? Not exactly

Liane Moriarity’s books are not necessarily mysteries, but as with so much good fiction, there is a mystery at the heart of each book. Big Little Lies completely captivated me. Moriarity is a writer who isn’t satisfied with an easy ending, which I appreciate.

Sci-fi

The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber. Rich and satisfying. As you peal the onion of the story, you get philosophy, humor, religion, psychology, and a dynamite plot.

Underground Airline, Ben H. Winters. This is a serious “alternate history” book. After Winter’s Last Policeman trilogy, this shows that his imagination is boundless.

Mystery

Gun Street Girl, the fourth in Adrian McKinty’s “trilogy” will break your heart, make you laugh, and make you wish you could write characters as well as McKinty does.

Lamentation, Joe Clifford. I loved this book. About losers who struggle not to be losers when it seems to be their destiny.

Fields Where They Lay, Tim Hallinan. One of my favorite authors. This is in the Junior Bender series—the philosophical thief, hired to catch thieves at Christmas.

Literary Fiction

My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Stroud. Not much needs to be said since this is on just about everyone’s “best of” list. But everyone is right.

Pleasantville, Attica Locke. Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction. It is a mystery, but so, so much more.

Mystery of sorts

Dead is Better by Jo Perry. One of the most imaginative books I’ve read in a while. Really short and really satisfying.

Thrillers

Descent, Tim Johnson—It’s breathtaking, well written, and compelling. About family and courage.

The Drifter, Nicholas Petrie. Great writing, compelling characters, relevant to contemporary life. Action scenes were totally believable, a rarity in thrillers.

Humorous Mystery

The Chet and Bernie series by Spencer Quinn is funny without being precious. Paw and Order does not disappoint. Quinn has an uncanny ability to imagine what a dog is thinking.

Hope everyone has a terrific 2017. Visit bookstores, and read on!

An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock

A Samuel Craddock Mystery

When the Jarrett Creek Fire Department is called to douse a blaze on the outskirts of town, they discover a grisly scene: five black young people have been murdered. Newly elected Chief of Police Samuel Craddock, just back from a stint in the Air Force, finds himself an outsider in the investigation headed by the Texas Highway Patrol. He takes an immediate dislike to John Sutherland, a racist trooper

Craddock’s fears are realized when Sutherland arrests Truly Bennett, a young black man whom Craddock knows and respects. Sutherland cites dubious evidence that points to Bennett, and Craddock uncovers facts leading in another direction. When Sutherland refuses to relent, Craddock is faced with a choice that will define him as a lawman—either let the highway patrol have its way, or take on a separate investigation himself.

Although his choice to investigate puts both Craddock and his family in danger, he perseveres. In the process, he learns something about himself and the limits of law enforcement in Jarrett Creek.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR RAYNE E. GOLAY

Today we welcome back mainstream and literary author Rayne E. Golay for a game of 20 Questions. Learn more about Rayne and her books at her website and blog.

When did you realize you wanted to write novels?

During the Finno-Russian war when I was a little kid, we suffered shortage of most everything. Books were a luxury. We had the Bible and a couple of books my grandparents and my mother took turns reading. There were also two or three child-appropriate picture books my mother read to me so often that I knew them by heart. As a little girl, I came to understand the difference between the spoken and written word. This together with the book shortage, instilled in me the urge to write so nobody would have to go without books. The urge to write novels came after I read Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. It was a kind of ah-ha moment: I can write books like that.

How long did it take you to realize your dream of publication?

Much, much too long. While The Wooden Chair, my first novel, made the rounds of agents, I self-published Life is a Foreign Language. It took a while before The Wooden Chair found a publisher.

Are you traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author?

Hybrid (see above.)

Where do you write?

At home at my desk. From time to time, weather permitting, I move to the lanai and write by the pool.

Is silence golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?

My motto is: “Silence, genius at work.” Even soft Baroque music distracts me.

How much of your plots and characters are drawn from real life? From your life in particular?

My twenty-five years as addictions counselor are a treasure trove for characters and storylines. The protagonist, Leini, in The Wooden Chair is a composite of two women I counseled. I like to situate my stories in places I know with some alterations to suit the time and the characters. My own life is private, but I use my experiences. As I love to describe my surroundings, I often use a camera to take a shot of a flower, a tree, a waterway. Some of these find their way into my stories when I describe a landscape or set the mood for a scene.

Describe your process for naming your character?

An interesting question. I don’t know that I have a process, per se, but names are important. In Life is a Foreign Language, my male protagonist is Michael because to me the name evokes a masculine, sexy man. The female protagonist is Nina; she’s French, and the name is easy to type.

In The Wooden Chair I never struggled with the names; Leini named herself, it seems. When she meets the man she’ll marry, he introduces himself to her as “Arnaud William Gardet, Bill for short.” Here, again, the name just “happened.”

When I was outlining my WIP, my late husband so liked the story, he named every character, and I haven’t seen a reason to change any of them.

Real settings or fictional towns?

Real settings, places familiar to me.

What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?

In The Wooden Chair, Leini twines a lock of her hair when she’s in thought or upset, not very quirky, but characteristic of her. Her mother Mira chain smokes. In Life is a Foreign Language, Nina tends to tear up a lot, which isn’t very quirky either.

What’s your quirkiest quirk?

Me? I always fiddle with something like a small piece of paper or a little twig. My fingers are never still.

If you could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which one would it be? Why?

Without a doubt Pat Conroy’s Beach Music. For the psychotherapist that I am, the characters are wonderfully complex, dysfunctional and unpredictable. The relationship between father and daughter is beautiful. The settings both in Rome and the States are so vivid they jump off the pages.

Everyone at some point wishes for a do-over. What’s yours?

Everyone? I can’t think of a single thing I wish I could do over. I’ve had a remarkably rich and varied life, really beyond my wildest dreams.

What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Two peeves: child abusers, and people who are disrespectful, judgmental of others.

You’re stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?

My husband, lots of drinking water, and books, books, books.

What was the worst job you’ve ever held?

In my late teens, I had a summer job in a travel agency as a ticketing clerk. In those days, tickets were written by hand. It was a dumb way to spend a summer, being bawled out for mistakes of which I made a lot, and the pay was ridiculously paltry.

What’s the best book you’ve ever read?

This is a difficult one. There are so many I’d call the best book. It’s something that changes with age and experience and expectations. A book I really love, that moves me, is Herman Wouk’s The Language God Talks. Despite it’s title, it’s more about philosophy and science than religion. Abreast with this one is The Lawgiver, also by Herman Wouk, about his failed attempts to write the story of Moses. 

Ocean or mountains?

Ocean!

City girl or country girl?

A bit of both.

What’s on the horizon for you?

A trip north to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 100^th birthday! Very exciting. After that, three weeks in Geneva, Switzerland, to visit my children, and to Finland to see my brother, his family and my two wonderful cousins. I’ll also attend Public Safety Writers Association’s conference in Las Vegas this summer. A cruise later in the year. Among all this coming and going, I’ll write, of course. It’s such a given part of my daily life, I don’t always think of mentioning that I write.

Anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself and/or your books?

The Wooden Chair will be published as trade paper back later this summer, for which I’m very happy and look forward to marketing in a different way than I’ve done with the e-book version. My WIP is soon getting ready for my publisher to look at.

The Wooden Chair

Throughout her childhood and teenage years, Leini suffers both physical and emotional abuse from her mother, Mira. Set in Finland during the Finno-Russian war, the story starts in 1942 when Leini is only 4 years old. With time, Mira’s abuse of Leini turns to neglect and emotional abuse, manipulating her young daughter to have surgery to correct a lazy eye. Leini undergoes the operation, much against her will. The procedure fails with dramatic consequences for Leini.

Years later, married to a wonderful man, Bill, a mother herself, Leini is determined to break the pattern of abuse with her own children. With the help of a psychiatrist, Leini works with determination to heal from the abuse and leave the past behind. She struggles through past painful memories to grow into a nurturing and loving parent and wife, a successful professional. Her victory would be complete if she could forgive Mira. Will she be able to reach that point?

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TRAVEL WITH SERENA - SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WITH GUEST AUTHOR RAYNE GOLAY

Award-winning women’s literary fiction novelist Rayne Golay joins us today to discuss the seduction of Southwest Florida and how it’s played a part in her writing. Life is a Foreign Language is her first novel. Her second novel, The Wooden Chair, will be released later this summer. Learn more about Rayne at her website. -- AP

Southwest Florida Seduces

Quite a few years ago, my aunt and uncle used to flee the soul numbing cold and snow and darkness of the winter months in their homeland, Finland. They stayed in a condo in Fort Myers, Florida, and painted delicious pictures of the pleasures they experienced. Together with my husband, we ended up by renting a house in Florida, complete with a pool and a back yard with an orange and a grapefruit tree.

This was the beginning of my love affair with Southwest Florida; the heat, the sun, the glittering waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the lush vegetation, I loved it all, still do. I’d go for walks in my neighborhood and gasp, “Oh, look at that”! I’d grab my husband’s arm if he was with me, point at a flock of pristine white ibis and say, “Isn’t this lovely,” as I stared in silent admiration at the sky with ever-changing clouds and super cells.

When I started writing my first novel, Life is a Foreign Language, it was a given I’d set the story in Southwest Florida. During one of my walks, I stopped to admire a tall jacaranda tree with blue-purple flowers. The florescence was rich, an azure cloud against the white billowing clouds.

When Nina, my female protagonist, meets Michael, much about him attracts her, but she “falls” into his jacaranda blue eyes, compelling, arresting in their intensity. I was able to pour into this story my passion for gardening, experiencing it vicariously through Michael’s trial-and-error attempts to grow the perfect rose.

I must have inherited my fascination for gardening from my father. Despite the harsh weather conditions in my native Finland, my Dad tended a gardenia in our home. When he first planted it, it was no more than a twig. Over time, and with tender care from my Dad, it grew into a bush. Each year in early April it carried a few buds. For my father’s birthday at the end of April it produced one white flower to honor his day.

When I bought my house here in Southwest Florida, before I did anything at all about the yard, I planted a gardenia outside my bedroom widow. Its spicy and exotic perfume fills the air when the bush is covered in white flowers—in April. And of course the intoxicating scent of gardenia wafts through the pages of Life is a Foreign Language.

Life is a Foreign Language

After thirty-seven years of her husband's infidelities, Nina has had enough! Wounded she files for divorce, leaves family and native France. She meets Michael with whom she experiences fantastic joy that tuns to agonizing sorrow when he is brutally torn from her. Alone and bereft, she must continue the legacy Michael has left; trust, the awareness that she is strong enough to survive on her own, against all odds.

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