Please welcome back to the stage my friend and fellow Romance Gem writer, Liz Flaherty, and her newest jewel, SHADES OF GREEN.
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How a Series Happens—Whether You Want it to or Not
M.J., it
feels like I was just here! And yet here I am back, with yet another color.
I know
writing series comes naturally and wonderfully to some authors—like yourself,
for instance—but for others among the huge and occasionally dysfunctional
writer family, it’s not natural at all. It’s mostly just hard.
When
Maggie North’s story, Pieces of Blue, decided all by itself that it
wanted to be a series because Ellie Wentz, Maggie’s best friend, wanted to move
to Harper Loch and have her own story. I’m not sure I’m good at writing
series, but I’ve written a few and had fun at least part of the time—with doing
it. Series are definitely the trend these days, so hey, why not? Fine, I said
to Ellie. Fine. (I may have said it a few more times … louder each
time.)
At
Ellie’s insistence, I wrote Patches of Red. I went from one and done to
two and through.
Except
for Cari .
Cari
Newland was one of the first people Maggie met when she moved to the lake. In
her early 30s, single, and a classic non-finisher, she’d quit cheerleading,
college, culinary school, and an engagement to be married before ending
up—kicking and screaming—in seminary.
She did a couple of backup sermons at her grandparents’ church at Harper
Loch and seven years later, she’s still there.
And
there’s this guy who dances well, laughs hard, flies for the Navy, and … well,
you see where this is going, right? It goes directly to Shades of Green,
Book 3 in Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy.
At
least, I think it’s a trilogy. I’ve been wrong before.
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Blurb:
Pastor Cari Newland’s life is
stuck in the middle.
Her friends and parishioners at Harper Loch are mostly
older than her thirty-two years… or they’re younger. While she likes being a
single minister, she would also like to meet someone who sees her as someone
besides “Preach.”
She gets hugged a lot, she realizes, but she never gets held. She’s never been the daughter her parents wanted or the woman her long-ago fiancé needed.
Her life is good, but it’s lonely.
Enter handsome navy pilot Zack Grant. Visiting his parents at the lake, he
attends a wedding Cari officiates. They talk and they dance and they are …
interested. But Zack’s life is a thousand miles away and Cari’s life is firmly
in Harper Loch. When interested begins to grow into something more, Cari
and Zack must decide how to fit into each other’s world and whether or not they
can make a long-distance romance work.
But Cari’s life is in the small lake community in Michigan.
Zack’s is in the Florida Panhandle. And neither of them has any intention of
changing locations.
Buy Links:
Amazon: https://a.co/d/0dKnw8fA
D2D: https://books2read.com/u/3RRAgL
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Excerpt:
I called Zack.
“How did it feel?” I asked when he answered.
“Losing your mother before you actually lost her?”
The question was awkward at best, thoughtless at
worst. I hoped he knew what I was asking.
He was silent for a moment, then he said quietly,
“Her eyes still smiled, even when she couldn’t
anymore. Her expression changed when she looked
at each of us. She and Pop could always talk, even
without words, and they kept us aware of what was
happening the whole time. He had to work a lot,
but my grandparents helped—Mom’s parents and
Pop’s stepmother—and they managed things so that
—”
He stopped, and I could almost feel him choosing
his words. “We remained a family throughout,” he
said finally. “We grieved. Of course, we did. But it
wasn’t just Mom who was sick; rather, we were a
family with ALS. I can honestly say that as rough
as it was, there was good in almost every day.”
I thought of Adria and Dad laughing together while
he held the yarn and she rolled it into a ball. I could
say that, too; moreover, I should say it. Of course I
had issues with my growing-up years, but those
issues were way beyond their expiration date by
now. Besides, didn’t everybody have issues with
how they’d grown up?
Zack chuckled, and his voice was soft with
memory. “The year before she died, when she was
in a wheelchair, but could still talk some, she
wanted to go trick-or-treating with us even though
we didn’t do that anymore. So Lessie, Pop’s
stepmom, dressed Mom up like Whistler’s Mother
in that painting and had Luke and me decked out
like Santa’s elves, only we were whistlers instead
of elves, and we whistled all over the neighborhood.
There are pictures, but you wouldn’t want to see
them.”
I laughed, trying to picture the Grant brothers as
elves.
“Pop and Mom went into marriage with lessons
learned and crazy in love with each other,” said
Zack. “It wasn’t all that long before they found out
their forever wasn’t going to be very long, so they
made every day count.”
I knew how important that was. I preached how
important it was.
Cemetery lanterns danced in the breeze outside. I
didn’t like them much when they started showing
up. I felt like they took away from the peacefulness
of the burial place, but I got
used to them.
DeMaris had sat at her daughter’s grave for a long
time when she was here. When I finally asked if I
could help her, she shook her head and reached to
touch the lantern that hung on a sturdy shepherd’s
hook. “John got this,” she said. “She was always a
little afraid of the dark.”
After that conversation, I liked the gentle lights; I
didn’t just tolerate them. I made sure they stayed lit
when it was dark.
I couldn’t do that much for Dad and Adria, but I
could make sure the lights she needed in the house
stayed on at night and I could find the good.
“Thank you, Zack,” I said, missing him. “I think
you just got me through something.”
“Good.”
I wanted to ask when he was coming. Again. I
seemed to want to do that a lot. But I didn’t want to
sound too eager, much less needy.
“I’ll be in Friday night,” he said, reading my mind
again. He seemed to do that. “Luke and I are both
working till noon and we’re flying out at three. Pop
and Ellie are picking us
up. See you Saturday?”
I was still smiling when I hung up a few minutes
later. Finding the good in this day didn’t take long.
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Bio:
Retired from the post office, Liz
Flaherty spends non-writing time thinking about writing and traveling or wanting
to travel. The author of 20-some books and her husband Duane share an old
farmhouse in North Central Indiana. They do sort of consider moving from there,
but they have literally decades of stuff, and they’re just not ready!
She thinks one of the things that
keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant chances
you have to reinvent yourself. Her latest professional incarnation is as a
fledgling women’s fiction author, and she is enjoying every minute that she’s
not scared to death. You can connect with her at https://linktr.ee/LizFlaherty She’s
always glad for new friends—and to see her old ones!
Thank you, Liz, for once again sharing your talent with us! And may SHADES OF GREEN fly off the shelves!
