Introduction

Thanks to the new readers, subscribers today. It being Sunday and I usually take time in the morning to write, at least on summer break, I knew my schedule was off today for that. I listen to a friend's radio show at 8 am. I had plans to go to church, but too often in the morning, my gut acts up. Today was such a day. Again.

I feel it's a poor excuse, considering how I would never miss church except for when I had to work. But that was pre Covid, which I hate to blame everything on, but it definitely delineated our lives.

Today, I knew I wasn't going to search for a story, but introduce you to my writing. I hope the new subscribers read my stories. I'm on a fourteen day free trial. I hope I can build this platform.

Main Street, a Gables and Gingerbread Story is my first novel or novella. I wrote in isolation as my heroine Martha became more and more isolated, with her husband becoming more involved in a secret society. Researching the KKK in the north opened my eyes to many issues. I always wondered how it came here from the South. I heard of the cross burnings and somehow the Klan was involved in my grandfather's fatal car accident in my hometown. I also heard a man hanged himself in one of our outbuildings of the house I grew up in. We always called that house "Main Street." It was my dad's dream to live in it ever since he was young. I felt proud because my dad lived his dream. I incorporated all this in 2010, but this was before CreateSpace (now Kindle Publishing) and to take time off to go to a writer's conference and meet an agent and hopefully get signed up and maybe get published seemed out of my grasp. I had some English teachers read it. One said to me at a party. "Martha grew on me." I took that as high praise. I put it on the back burner though, waiting for the right time.

I started Country, a Gables and Gingerbread Story, during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2011. I wanted only to write historical fiction. I had been working as a home health nurse in eastern Ohio since 2001, with a brief interlude back to Pennsylvania. I observed houses with the gables and gingerbread trim in many places in Trumbull County, Ohio, that resembled my house. I imagined stories about these houses, not related but when they were first being built. Main Street changed that. Country was a house I saw in Ohio and I imagined a story around it. The opening scene, though, came when I was driving on OH 11 from Austintown to Canfield exit. The clouds hung low appearing angry.

Writing an historical novel for NaNoWriMo is not a good idea for a pants-er who wants to be accurate. I was learning the craft. I had the seed of the idea for the novel, but it took a long time to grow. I finally published it 2024 and am now working on the sequel. I never intended a sequel either. I wanted all my novels to stand alone.

By the next year, when NaNoWriMo rolled around, I had a better idea and had been thinking about it for some time. Summer Triangle came together and was finished in the thirty days of November. I won! CreateSpace offered winners five free books to NaNo winners. The problem was I needed a cover, editing and formatting done. I knew little about that whole process and depended on my writers group at the time to help me. I didn't get the formatting down before the deadline, so there were no free books. August 24, 2013, Summer Triangle launched. It was an exciting time.

Now, I focused back on Main Street. I haggled over my vision for the cover with unsatisfactory outcome. WestBow Press approached me. I had read a book by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, not too long before published by WestBow. They were a division of Thomas Nelson, a Christian publisher. Sounded prestigious. And of course, a new writer needs hutzpah to get herself out there. They agreed to my cover design. I honestly thought the fee was for that and editing, which they said they did. I could make payments over three months. I ran with it. A manager worked with me. As I stood in front of a mirror, getting ready for work, he called me. "Main Street is going live tomorrow."

I cried. That was my dad's birthday. July 23, 2014. How perfect was that? It had to be a God thing. I told my manager that and he cried with me.

After that, they would call me about marketing. I was already doing everything they suggested by myself. They would charge two thousand dollars. I may have stars in my eyes, but I knew that was not what I wanted. So I have done everything grassroots.

I launched Main Street at West Middlesex Sesquicentennial in August. I loved seeing people. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. We had to confront our Klan roots in West Middlesex, but that was in the past. I did well, selling both of my published novels.

Seeing the photos of the KKK display later (I didn't leave my booth to look at it) chilled me. Then at the nursing home, some older residents told me how hard it was for them to fit in my community in the fifties. The prejudice continued for the foreigners. One man told me, he had to finally write "Smith" on his mailbox to keep it from being hit. In other settings, I was told stories of the family finding a robe and hood in the back of closets of the kind grandpa when he died. "Come to think of it, he always got angry in church, when they talked about Civil Rights."

Others told me how they loved the Wilsons in Summer Triangle and wanted more of this family. I combined the feelings and decided on Outside of Time, with a young mother writing a story about the Klan in her town and being threatened. I could imagine the phone calls Amy received. There is more depth in the story of Maria and Amy, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, too. I loved writing this novel. I even sat in the car writing on my laptop while my husband drove around the Poconos.

I visited while he worked there for a week around our thirty third wedding anniversary. I wrote in the car during an important scene. I drove to the library while he was at work and wrote. And I got an idea for the sequel for it on one of my walks. I'm still writing it. Life often gets in my way. I frustrate myself.

The super moon of June 2013 sparked Last Free Exit. I had the title before the story. I drove south on I 680 in Ohio and Western Reserve Road was the last free exit before the turnpike. I loved it for a novel. My youngest being eighteen with the changes in our lives also influenced this story. Again, I kind of got stuck on the Wilsons and branched out to the youngest daughter, Amber, and her friends who just graduated from high school. They were church kids learning to navigate life after the cocoon of living at home; away at college, or working, or still living at home working and going to community college. Standing firm during temptations and forgiveness when some don't. I redid the formatting and the cover last year.

My blogs I have been writing since 2011. That was a fun day with my oldest daughter and niece helped me get set up and started. I believe cookies or cake was involved with tea, of course.

Last year, I thought of a recipe book to go with my novels. I may. The problem many writers confess to is being bombarded with ideas and finishing them. A popular phrase at the writers conference I attended last month was, "I write fiction. I don't always finish it."

I have several novels lined up. Walking with Eternity, I finish this year, with City. Then there is Shore, and Lake, and further down the line, College, and Ledges for my Gables and Gingerbread Stories. I have at least, Toll Road or Toll House Cookies- to finish up the Wilson stories. I haven't landed firmly on it, yet.

Crossroad, I don't know yet. That was the last of the three Gables and Gingerbread I was going to write. A retiring preacher in Ohio (Johnson to be exact) and his old maid sister, but I couldn't decide on a scandal. The beautiful white church and parsonage on OH 193 sparked my imagination.

Imagination. My word picture one year. I have been through Miss Mollie's Musings, Medium, Simily, Substack and now trying Ghost. You can check any of those for past stories. For the fourteen days, now one more week, I'm writing fresh content. I write fiction with lots of truth. If you recognize yourself or anyone, remember, it's fiction.