movies

Down the Rabbit Hole

Last weekend’s movie viewing was the two Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies. I’d seen the first one, sort of. It was at a social event where the movie provided the theme but mostly served as background noise while we ate dinner and did crafts. I didn’t remember much about it, and I went home before they started the second one.

I was never a huge Alice in Wonderland fan. I had the book as a kid and read it, but it didn’t click with me in a big way. I also had the Disney “story and songs” record, which was not actually a recording of the movie soundtrack. It seems to have been studio versions by different performers, and it included full versions of songs that only had a line or two in the movie, like the jazzy version of the Jabberwocky poem. When I finally saw the movie, I was disappointed because the music wasn’t nearly as good and the movie was kind of boring. Still, this was pretty much the prototype for the portal fantasy type of story in which a young person (usually a girl) travels to a magical or fantastic land and has adventures before going back home. Narnia owes some debt to Wonderland.

In spite of not being a huge Alice fan girl, I have visited the Alice shop in Oxford, which is apparently in a shop that was mentioned in the book, and I’ve been to the Alice’s Tea Room restaurant in New York (I was there more for the tea than because of the theme).

I still think that my favorite Alice-related telling is Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, but I did enjoy the take on the story in these movies. It was an interesting idea to have an adult Alice going through more or less the events of the book (with some twists and changes) but it being the second time, with her thinking the time she went as a child (and lived out the events of the book) was just a dream. That allowed the story to be a bit more adult while still somewhat following the book and also including new stuff. I liked the theme of Alice having to find her childhood “muchness” again and then bringing that with her back to her regular life.

I may have liked the second movie even better. They’re not even trying to follow the books in this one. It’s an entirely new story involving time travel as Alice returns to Underland (it seems she got the name of the place wrong) to help save the Hatter, and she ends up going back in time to see if she can make things better for him by fixing the past. At the same time, she wants to fix something that went wrong for the Red and White Queens. I was a little worried that they’d go with the “it’s really the good guy’s fault that the bad guy is evil” story there, and they came close, but I don’t think they were really saying that it was all the White Queen’s fault because of something she did as a child, just that she did owe her sister an apology.

The weak link for me was Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter. He was just so aggressively weird and creepy, with the same sort of persona he put on for playing Willy Wonka. In this story, he’s supposed to be so endearing that everyone is willing to do anything to help him, and that doesn’t work when you’re having a visceral “Ew!” reaction to this character, who’s played like late-stage Michael Jackson hosting a children’s television program but without understanding children. Otherwise, it’s a pretty impressive cast.

I like this take on Wonderland/Underland, with a bit of a steampunk aesthetic and the costuming is lovely.

And, unlike so many other movies these days, these are both pretty short movies, under 2 hours. Even the Disney live action remakes of the cartoons tend to go over two hours, so I have to start a movie early in the evening to be done by bedtime.

Books, My Books

Ahead of My Time

When I first came up with the idea for the book that became Enchanted, Inc., it wasn’t as an idea for something I wanted to write. It was a kind of book I wanted to read. It was near the peak of the “chick lit” craze, and I was loving all the books that were more like romantic comedy films than like traditional romance novels. I’d been on a trip to England, where chick lit started, and I’d come home with stacks of books. After reading a bunch of them, I thought it would be more fun if they had some magic in them.

But I couldn’t find anything like that. None of the chick lit books at the time had fantasy elements. There were a few books of the sort that would later be called urban fantasy (I don’t think that term was in use yet), but they were darker, not rom-coms with magic.

So, I had to write my own book, and the rest is history. Urban fantasy took off, and a lot of it was like chick lit with magical elements. It had the sassy heroines and romantic subplots, but it tended to veer closer to soft horror, with vampires, werewolves, etc. There still wasn’t much like Enchanted, Inc. A few of the urban fantasy books were a little lighter, even with their vampires, and that was as close as I got to comparable titles.

Now, though, the market is full of fantasy romantic comedies. I guess if I’d come up with the idea now, I wouldn’t have had to write the book because I’d have had plenty to read. I seem to have been twenty years ahead of my time because Enchanted, Inc. would fit on the shelves with all these other books.

The latest one I read, A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangdu Mandanna, is one of these. In this book, a young woman was once the most promising student in the magical academy, but while performing a major spell she lost most of her powers and got kicked out of the magical guild. Now she runs an inn with her great aunt. The inn has a kind of magic that brings in the people who need to find it and keeps out those who might be harmful, so it’s collected a quirky bunch of semi-permanent residents. She’s somewhat come to terms with her magic being limited to what she needs to do to keep the place running, but then she learns about a spell that might restore her power. To cast it, though, she may need the help of an archivist who works for the guild. He found the inn, so maybe he belongs there, but he doesn’t really want to get involved. And meanwhile, the powerful head of the guild would prefer that there be no rival who can match his power and possibly shake his control over the magical world.

This book really does fall right down the middle between romance and fantasy. The fantasy plot is strong, not just window dressing for a romance, but the romance is key to the character development. The quirky cast of characters provides the humor. There are some intense parts with a lot of tension, and there are real stakes that go beyond just the lives of the main characters, so it may be more cozy-adjacent, but it still has a lot of the cozy elements

It does seem that publishers still don’t know what to do with books like this. My library had this one shelved in mainstream fiction. I don’t know where bookstores are shelving it. This author has been a bestseller, so maybe they’re better at marketing this sort of thing now than they were in my day. I should do a renewed promo push on Enchanted, Inc., since there seems to be a demand for this kind of book. And maybe I should dip my toe back into the contemporary fantasy rom-com waters while it’s hot. I have the germs of an idea for a situation, though no concrete plot yet.

It looks like the Enchanted, Inc. publisher is thinking along the same lines because they put the book on sale for a special promotion this month. If you haven’t bought the e-book, it’s $1.99.

TV

Mildly Spooky TV

Although I’m not generally into spooky or scary stuff, I have done some more thematic viewing this month by starting to rewatch the TV series Grimm. This series started fifteen years ago (yikes!), and while I think it kind of went off the rails toward the end, the first season really holds up.

In case you missed this one, it followed a young Portland, Oregon police detective who starts seeing strange things that no one else seems to see — ordinary people who suddenly turn into strange creatures. He learns that he’s a Grimm, one of a special group of people who can see the monsters that hide as humans, with a duty and destiny to fight and destroy them. Except he came into his powers late and he didn’t get the training he was supposed to get. All he has is a trailer full of weapons and old books that his aunt left him. He ends up being a very different kind of Grimm because one of the first “monsters” he meets is a mild-mannered wolf man, someone who should be his enemy but who becomes his friend and helps him learn how all this works. Contrary to what his ancestors thought, not all these people are evil and needing to be destroyed. He still functions as a cop, and he applies that lens to the creature world, as well, defending the victims and going after the perpetrators, no matter who/what they are.

What I’m enjoying on this rewatch is how they play with the tropes of both the monster story and the police story. We learn in the first episode that the police captain is a bad guy in the monster world, but as a police captain he’s a very good boss who breaks all the “hardass police captain the hero has to rebel against” tropes. He protects Nick (our hero), although he does have his own agenda. He’s fair to the people working for him. He only really pulls the “I’m in charge and you’ll listen to me” act for the good of his people when they’re getting in over their heads, and he listens to them and supports their theories.

Then there’s Nick’s girlfriend, who’s the opposite of just about every TV cop girlfriend. I feel like they ruined her character in later seasons, but in the first season she’s awesome, in spite of having no idea what’s really going on. When her boyfriend has to work late because he’s working on a murder case, she understands that this is part of the job rather than having a hissy fit. Instead of being a damsel in distress, she even comes to his rescue. They have a really comfortable chemistry that makes you believe they’ve been together a long time (and it must have carried over into real life because the actors ended up married to each other and are still together).

They flip a lot of expectations in the monster storylines. It helps that they cast a guy who isn’t particularly physically imposing and who looks like the boy next door as this monster hunter. The guy that the monsters tell scary stories about is just this ordinary guy who’s baffled when terrifying things see him and run away in terror. Along the way, he builds groups of allies from creatures who learn that he is fair and that he will help protect and defend them if they need him.

And all of this is wonderfully atmospheric. They filmed on location in Portland, and instead of desaturating everything into a kind of gray, like is so common now, they amp up the color saturation, so the greens and reds are intense. The forests look like something out of a fairy tale. The homes look like fairytale cottages. Most of the episodes in the early seasons are somewhat based on one of the Grimm fairy tales, and they go for some deep cuts, the less common ones. The episode starts with a quote from the tale, and then they link the killer or the victim in some way to the tale.

It’s been long enough since I watched the series that I don’t remember specifics about each episode, so it’s almost like watching something new, but still with the comfort level of knowing what I’m getting into. I remember at the time somewhat comparing Nick to Katie from my Enchanted, Inc. series, with his ability to see what’s really there that other people don’t see. The actor actually would have been good casting for Owen back at that time (though he doesn’t seem to have aged all that much).

writing

Starting Over

A long time ago, I saw a presentation at a writing conference in which the speaker said that the way to revise a book was to finish a first draft, put it aside without even looking at it, step away from the project for a while, then write the book again, still without looking at the first draft. The idea was that the first draft was just you playing around with the characters and situation and figuring out what the story really was. Then you could write it for real. If there was anything worth keeping from that first draft, you’d remember it.

I think every writer in the room, including me, did a full-body cringe at the very idea, but I’ve come to see that there are situations when this is good advice, and I’ve actually done it. I don’t think it applies to every book. Most of my books have been pretty solid after the first draft. It would have been a waste of time to do a complete rewrite. I just did a good round of revision and a round of editing, and the book was what I wanted it to be. But it can be the best way to approach a book that just isn’t working because it means you can get to the core of the story without being tied to the initial draft. You can make real fixes instead of just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s hard to get away from a plot line or structure that’s fundamentally flawed when you’re working with scenes from the flawed version.

One time I’ve done it was with an old “trunk” novel. The characters and situation stuck with me but the book just didn’t work. After years, I pulled it out and replotted and started over. I still don’t think the book matches my idea for what I want it to be, so I may start all over again. Ironically, this was the book I was drafting when I saw that presentation.

I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to do it again with the book I drafted last summer. I was kind of flailing with the plot, to the point that the climactic scene was what I originally planned as the midpoint, characters who were meant to play major roles vanished entirely, and the protagonist was just sort of running around and reacting to things. I’ve been digging into the characters and the world, and I’ve realized that there are some big changes I need to make that will cause even bigger changes down the line, to the point that at least half of the book no longer fits. I may be able to save the first two or three chapters and a few scenes along the way, but the story itself needs to change.

I’m actually kind of excited about this because it means I’ve figured out the problems and how to fix them. It’s getting closer to that perfect story in my head. And I love these characters and this world enough that I want to spend more time with them, especially in “creating” mode rather than in revision mode.

However, this alters my work plan. I’d planned the time for a revision, not a totally new first draft that will require its own revision. I’d also planned to do most of this in October and in early November, but I don’t know that it’ll be ready to write by then. So I need to move around the other book I need to revise and remove a project that was vague enough that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get to it. This may end up being my January deep dive book. January is a good time for first drafts because I don’t want to go out and do much, anyway. It’s time to burrow under blankets with hot tea and play in imaginary worlds.

The project being taken off the list is a possible Christmas book. Every year, I think it would be fun to spend December playing with a Christmas-set romcom, using my decorations and Christmas music to set the mood as I write. Then I could revise it during the year and have something for a holiday-season release. But I haven’t managed to do that in ages, since Twice Upon a Christmas, because either I end up working on something else more urgent or I don’t quite have a story idea ready to go. What I may do is play with an idea this year — while I’m listening to Christmas music, drinking hot cocoa, and eating Christmas cookies I’ll do some pen and paper brainstorming. I can develop the idea along the way during the year, then next December it will be ready to write, if I don’t have something else I need to work on.

Life

October Days

Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I’ve started trying to plan my work so that I have light duty in October. For a long time, I seemed to be in a pattern of writing a first draft in October, which meant that I was in all-or-nothing mode and not doing much else other than writing, and then I’d finish the draft and emerge from my writing cave to realize that the best part of the year had passed without me noticing it. It wasn’t so bad in Texas, since fall usually came in random days during October, and it finally felt like fall around Thanksgiving. Now that I’ve moved, October feels like October should (mostly), and after my first year here, when I was drafting a book during October, I’ve made an effort to break the pattern.

I suspect that a lot of this pattern comes from that “back to school” mentality in September. That’s when I tend to start writing a new series. I do the research and pre-writing work in September, then start drafting in October, and once you sell a book and start that pattern, your deadlines usually line up for the same time every year.

Oddly, as much as October is my favorite time of year, I’m not a huge fan of Halloween. I’m not opposed to it. I find aspects of it amusing. It’s fun to see kids in costumes or see the yard decorations. I just mostly lost interest in observing it myself once I aged out of trick-or-treating. I’m not fond of adult Halloween parties, and I don’t like scary things, so I don’t do Halloween activities like watching scary movies.

A tree that's still partly green, but vividly red around the edges.
It’s beginning to look a lot like autumn.

What I do like is being outdoors. This is the perfect time of year for it, not too hot (well, except for some days this year) and not too cold (except for some days this year). I like the colorful leaves, apple cider, baked goods with cinnamon and other spices, soup, sweaters, and all things cozy. It’s a good time for hiking or just walking around town. The past couple of days, I’ve walked over to the park to go to the Friends of the Library book sale in the park gym, which meant looking at the trees along the way and generally enjoying being outdoors, then obtaining as many books as I could carry. Yesterday, I took a picnic lunch to eat in the park and hung out for a while, doing some writing work, before I walked home with my book haul. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if it was a bit cooler, the kind of day where you want to make some hot tea when you get home. Instead, I was sweating and needed lots of cool water.

This has been a weird fall, weather-wise. We seemed to go straight from summer to November, then back to summer, and we haven’t a lot of days that were properly October. Now we have a chance of a freeze this weekend, and we haven’t yet really had just a regular fall day. My outdoor plants are still blooming, and I still have tomatoes, so I guess I’ll cover the plants overnight. The trees are still just starting to turn. Next week will probably be the best time to hit the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the mountains in full color. Maybe we’ll get a proper fall day, when it’s nippy in the morning, crisp and cool in the afternoon, warm enough to be out and about with a sweater on, but you want a cup of hot tea when you come home.

When/if that happens, I’ll be ready to take the day to enjoy it, since I’m not writing a first draft right now.

 

 

Life

Planning a Real Staycation

As I continue to recover from my vacation, I’ve been thinking more about how I’d go about making a vacation that I don’t need a vacation to recover from, and the solution may be a “staycation,” taking a break without going anywhere. Then I can get good sleep because I’m sleeping in my own bed and I don’t get tired from the return trip. But the trick is to make it different enough that it feels like a real vacation and not just being at home with more goofing off. This will take some strategy.

For one thing, it would take some prep work. The house would need to be clean enough that I wouldn’t feel like I should be doing housework, so the staycation would be preceded by a day or so of good cleaning. I’d also want to prepare some food in advance. I might go out for breakfast one or two days (since we do have some good breakfast spots I’ve been wanting to try), but I might make some waffles to throw into the toaster and have a pretend hotel breakfast buffet, and I’d want some ingredients for a lunch to pack for a picnic, maybe some special treats to enjoy in the evening.

Then it would take planning and even scheduling to make sure I do stuff instead of just hanging around and goofing off. Fortunately, I live in a tourist attraction kind of place, so it’s very easy to play tourist locally just by walking around town. There’s even more stuff to see within an hour of driving. I think on my hypothetical vacation, I’d start with a day trip so that coming home could feel like checking into a hotel (I might even put a chocolate on my pillow and fold the toilet paper end into a little triangle). Then walk downtown to go out to dinner. The next day would be an active day, taking a picnic and going on a hike in the park or doing some kind of local sightseeing, with a relaxing evening. I’d try to schedule the relaxation to make sure I do it — actually watch the movie or read the book and do the spa treatments. Maybe a less intense day of just sitting on the deck or porch and reading. And then a short day trip to give the sense of leaving and coming back home with the “hotel” becoming a house once more, but with a relaxing evening to unwind from the whole thing. I might try limiting online time so I can do things that are fun but not get into the mindset of work.

I’ll have to see where I can fit that in this fall, since I’ve scheduled for a light month and I’ll be wanting to hit the usual places to see the autumn colors. One of my day trips can be heading into the mountains, then there’s a park nearby with interesting rock formations that I’ve been wanting to visit. I’ll just need to find a stretch of time with the right weather for it. I want to try to do several consecutive days instead of grabbing a day here and there so that I can properly unwind. I’ve read research that says it takes about three days of a change of the usual pace before you actually start to reset.

Of course, I can’t really turn my brain off. It’ll be playing with story ideas, but that’s part of what I do for fun. I’d probably come out of this with several new ideas or with something I’ve been working on entirely replotted.

exploring

Vacation Recovery

I took a short road trip vacation at the beginning of the week. This was my first overnight trip just for fun (not traveling to visit my parents or going to the choir retreat) since I came here three years ago to visit and see if I wanted to move here.

I went to the D.C. area to see Mount Vernon and then do some shopping at stores we don’t have around here. I joked about hitching up the wagon to go to town for supplies because that’s what it feels like. Mount Vernon was fascinating, both the house and the grounds. There was a lot to see and I’m not sure I got to it all because I got a bit overwhelmed and tired after a few hours and realized I was no longer absorbing information, so I decided to call it a day.

I could definitely go for a home in that setting, with the view across the river. It was incredible. It seems that living in a small, old house has given me a different perspective on historic homes. I’ve heard people say that Mount Vernon is surprisingly unimpressive, not much of a mansion because the rooms are so small. But I thought the rooms were a nice size. The house has a ballroom, two parlors, five bedrooms, and a study, which seems big enough. If you’re used to suburban McMansions I guess it wouldn’t seem too big because the ballroom is smaller than your typical McMansion great room and the parlors and dining room are smaller than modern living and dining rooms, but it was big compared to my house. If you’re heating the rooms with fireplaces, you don’t want them to be too big.

The view from the veranda at Mount Vernon. A grassy lawn slopes down to the river, with wooded land across the river. Puffy clouds dot a blue sky.
I don’t care what the house is like if you’ve got a view like this.

I think one other thing that affects perspectives on the house is the fact that it stopped being a residence and became a historic site/tourist attraction in the 1850s, so it was never updated much beyond the way Washington would have lived in it. It never got added onto, never got indoor plumbing (one of the guides talking to the line as we waited to go in told the kids to count the number of bathrooms), and never got an attached kitchen. It’s different from other old houses that have been updated along the way because people have been living in them.

After I got to my hotel, I did an Ikea run, had dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant that’s part of a chain based in Austin (I ate at the original before it was a chain), so that was the first real Tex-Mex I’ve had since I moved. Then I did a little more shopping, knocking out most of my list. I spent the whole evening reading, no screens and no sound other than the AC fan, which was nice. I did a little more shopping in the morning, then took the back roads home, going through a few Civil War battlefields (not stopping, just looking as I drove) and seeing a lot of nice scenery.

I need to do more trips like this, since it was one of the things on my list of reasons to move. Years ago, I came up with the idea of the perfect restful vacation, one that was a fun getaway that didn’t leave me so exhausted that I’d come home tired and needing a vacation to recover. I figured it would be something close by, under a three-hour or so drive or a very short flight so that the trip home wouldn’t be so exhausting that it undid any benefit from the vacation. There needed to be enough to do and see to make it worthwhile to be there, but not so much that I’d feel like I was missing something if I spent some time just relaxing in the hotel.

The problem was that opportunities were limited for that in Dallas because there wasn’t much worth going to within a three-hour drive, and driving through the Dallas metro area was so harrowing that the last stretch on the way home undid all the vacation benefits, even with a short trip. I was limited to flying, and that’s just not very relaxing. Here, there’s a lot I can do within three hours. I can get to Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area. There’s Richmond, Charlottesville (that’s close enough to be a day trip, but I could get indulgent and book a hotel so I could see and do a lot without having to worry about beating rush hour to get back over the mountain), Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown. I could get to the beach. Or I could go west into the mountains. Or north to Harper’s Ferry.

Surprisingly, the D.C.-area traffic isn’t too bad. I didn’t make it all the way to the Beltway, but the highways in the area are pretty nice, and they’re surrounded by trees. You don’t realize you’re in a city until you exit and get on the surface streets. It’s far easier than driving in Dallas. Then one of the easiest stretches of the trip is the last bit toward home, so I don’t get stressed by the trip home.

This trip didn’t quite work as relaxing, though, possibly because it was only one night away, so I had a lot of driving two days in a row, with a lot of walking (my phone said more than 14,000 steps) on Monday. I think I may need two nights away, at least, to have a little more unwinding and not trying to cram everything in at once. But then that’s two nights in a hotel, and I don’t generally sleep well away from home. I’m spoiled by my bed.

I think my next excursion will be to the Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown area, which will definitely require a few days, or I won’t try to do it all in one trip.

writing life

Post-Book Recovery Time

I finished the first draft of book 6 of the Tales of Rydding Village series this week, and now I’m in recovery mode, when I catch up on the things that weren’t getting done while I was lost in the book. Today was an errand day. It was nice to get out of the house without having to worry about getting home and getting back to writing.

I’m planning to take it semi-easy for the rest of the year — as in, no more deadlines. I’ve drafted three books this year and my brain is tired. Since fall is my favorite time of year, I schedule October as a light month, giving me plenty of time to get out and enjoy fall. I’ll be working on revising one of the books I wrote this year, but a lot of that will be brainstorming. Then I need to revise the book I just wrote. I also want to catch up on admin work and do some promo, as well as getting my fall cleaning done to be ready for the holidays and all the fall work in the yard. That doesn’t really sound like taking it semi-easy, but I’m giving myself fewer quotas and deadlines.

Then I need to think about what I want to work on next year. I have a good idea for the next Rydding Village book and I’ve been playing around with some other ideas I want to develop. I’m hoping to send the book I’m about to revisit to my agent, so a lot of next year’s agenda will depend on how that goes.

For now, though, the leaves are starting to turn, the nights are cool, and we’re having a last burst of warm weather this week before fall really hits next week. I’m going to be taking lots of long walks, doing a lot of baking, and generally reveling in the season. I’ve stocked up on baking supplies, apple cider, and soup ingredients, and the fuzzy socks have come out of storage.

To help with prep for the cozy season, the Cozy the Day Away sale is back. This weekend, Saturday and Sunday the 3rd and 4th, there’s a whole slate of cozy (and cozy-adjacent) fantasy on sale. You can find the sale here (but the link won’t go live until the sale starts).

I’ve put Tea and Empathy on sale. If you haven’t tried this series yet, here’s your chance. Or tell others who might like it. They can try it for less than a dollar. To make it a little more fun, here’s some incentive: A couple of weeks ago, I went to an 80s dance party, and I wore a dress that I actually wore in the 80s when I was in high school. If Tea and Empathy makes it to the top 100 in Amazon’s cozy fantasy category during this sale, I’ll post a picture of current me wearing my high school dress. So tell your friends to buy the book if you want to see me being a dork.

Books

Magical (and not) Rom Coms

I love it when the publishing trends mesh with my personal reading interests, and the cozy romantic fantasy trend means so many books are right up my alley. One I read recently was Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz, and it was a fun romantic comedy in a fantasy setting.

Violet used to be known and feared as the Thornwitch, who worked for a dreaded evil sorcerer. Then after her master was defeated, a hero challenged her to be good, so she took that as a chance to turn her life around. She arrives in a nearby town, hiding her past, and sets out to open a flower shop, using her plant-related magic for good. The apothecary (and would-be alchemist) next door isn’t so keen to have her around, and he sees selling flowers as frivolous, but he’s not the worst of her worries. When someone from her past comes to town, she fears her past will be discovered and her determination to be good will be tested.

This one has all the witty banter of a rom-com (many of the chapters include the warring chalk signs between the flower shop and the apothecary), while also dealing with the serious question of redemption and forgiveness. Should someone who once caused harm be allowed to put that behind her, even if she’s atoned for her past wrongs? And how much responsibility should she bear if she was essentially brainwashed into believing she had no choice and no one else but her master could love her? Then there’s the sense of community and being empowered by love, literally. It really is a cozy, comforting book in the “person moves to town and starts a business and finds love and community” genre.

I have to say that the love story part of the plot is pretty romancey, as in it’s structured a lot like a romance novel. That’s not entirely my personal preference, but it works here. The spice comes down to one big scene, but that scene is semi-graphic. It’s easy to skip if you aren’t into that sort of thing but may not be enough if that’s what you’re primarily looking for.

Meanwhile, after reading all those contemporary-set fantasy rom-coms, I read one without any fantasy elements and kept forgetting that it wasn’t supposed to be a fantasy, and I kept waiting for the fantasy part to kick in. Which, of course, set off the idea factory in my brain as I tried to figure out what fantasy elements I could put in a story like that.

The book was Happy Ending by Chloe Liese, and I would recommend it to fans of When Harry Met Sally. It’s a somewhat similar concept, with a man and woman meeting after both have gone through bad breakups and becoming friends, but then running into challenges when friendship starts to turn to something more and there’s a fear of it ruining the friendship. In this case, they only pretend to have met years earlier. They meet when they run into each other while she’s picking up her dog and he’s picking up his daughter, and they discover that their exes are dating each other, within weeks of their divorces. To save face, they pretend that they already know each other — in fact, they met as teenagers and were each other’s first loves. Their later strategy session to make sure they can keep their stories straight is the start of a friendship that gets them through that tough part of their lives, but they’re a little too convincing with their pretense. Two years later, their exes invite them on a “two family” beach vacation, assuming they’re a couple. Maybe they might be. Or should be.

I really enjoyed the structure of this book. It starts in the present with the invitation, then goes back and forth between the present as they build toward the trip and the past, telling the story of how they met and the milestones along the way in their friendship. By the time we get to the trip, we know something has to happen between them. Things can’t go on the way they are, but it will take courage to take the leap. I think this would make a really fun rom-com movie because I like it when they play with structure, and it would be fun to show the characters in these different phases of their lives, contrasted with the present. That structure also allows the story to show that this is a long-term relationship, so no one is meeting and falling so in love that they want to get married within a matter of days. The present part of the story only covers a couple of weeks, but it still feels like a slow build because the past part takes two years.

This book could be described as a fake dating friends-to-lovers story, and it even has a “there’s only one bed” situation. Like the previous book I mentioned, the spice is limited to one big scene, which is pretty strong. (I mention this because I hear from a lot of my readers that they like my books because they’re “clean,” so I don’t want anyone getting any shocking surprises and getting mad at me for recommending something so different from what I write.)

Now that we’re getting into fall, I’m all about the cozy reads, so I’ll be looking for the kind of books best read while snuggled under a blanket with a cup of tea handy, or maybe things to read sitting on the deck on a crisp autumn day while the leaves fall around me.

My Books

Crossed Wires

Pottery & Peril is now published. The paperback is available at Amazon now, as well. It has expanded distribution, but it may take time to get out through the various systems.

It turned out that the crossed wires about the cover were entirely on my end. I did a search within my e-mail for the last message from my cover designer so I could contact them about it, and I found the cover. That they sent me in August. Yikes.

I’ve had this sort of thing happen before, where I didn’t get something I was expecting, searched the sender’s name and found it, but when I went back to the in box and looked around the date, it wasn’t there. I don’t know if this was the case this time or if I just somehow missed it entirely and have been fretting over it for more than a month without realizing it was all under control.

So, anyway, paperback and e-book are now available.

Meanwhile, I should finish draft one of book 6 next week. I guess I need to get on the cover designer’s schedule, even if I don’t have a firm title yet.

Then I’ll be taking most of October off to enjoy fall. I’ll be doing some brainstorming work and developing ideas, but I won’t be writing a draft. I hope to get to a lot of admin (including in box clean-out) and promo work, as well, and I want to do a good house reset and some gardening, as I’m creating some new flowerbeds to move all the plants that have to be divided to. That will be in between jaunts to look at fall colors and a mini vacation I’ve been planning since this summer, and it was always too hot to take. I think my brain needs a refresh and a break, and this time of year is glorious around here. I have a list of fall activities I want to do.

I was going to start with a big hike this Saturday, but when I looked at the sign-up form, I decided I might not be ready for it yet. It’s close to 8 miles, 4 hours, rated as “very strenuous” and only for those with a high degree of fitness, trekking poles recommended. I should probably work up to that. This weekend is a big festival downtown, so I may do that instead, just walk around and see what’s going on. Then I need to find some moderate hikes so I can get in shape for a big one.