Swamp Ghosts Excerpt #2

Maggie Devlin owns an eco-tour boat on the St. Johns River. Billy Truitt is her unofficial first mate and mechanic. They have just finished their last tour of the day, and are about to head home.

Swamp Ghosts Chapter 3 Excerpt

A man was walking down the floating pier, reading the name of each boat he approached. A really big man. Big enough that his weight caused the pier to bob up and down, which seemed to worry him, if his frown was anything to go by. Billy and I watched his cautious approach with curiosity. The tours were over for the day, and he just didn’t look like he belonged here at the marina. When he spotted my boat, he smiled and picked up his pace, causing the floating pier to dip sharply. He lurched to a stop in front of us.

Wake-Robin Ridge On Sale!

I just discovered amazon.com has the print version of my book, Wake-Robin Ridge, on sale for $10.17, a savings of $2.82 over the regular list price. If any of you guys were thinking

Christmas Quote #10 – Author Unknown

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

  ~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby~

Summer Magic Has Gone Live!

Exciting news here today! My little volume of verse (also called a “chapbook”) has gone live on Amazon.com today. Wow. Two books live in less than a month and a half. I’m feeling pretty good right now, for sure. 

Summer Magic is a 44-page collection of seventeen poems. Part One of the book is called Mac At Ten, and features the main male character from my novel, Wake-Robin Ridge, as a little boy, camping in his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, where he sees the magic in all that nature has to offer. From tales around the campfire to watching the sunrise, he knows instinctively that he is in a special place, and he throws himself into the pleasure of it all, with reckless abandon.

Part Two concerns itself with a variety of topics…whatever was on my mind on any given day, pretty much. Life, death, summer and autumn, betrayal and abiding love. 

I thought this little book would be the perfect opportunity to learn more about Kindle’s new Cover Creator, and I will be doing a post on that another day, as part of my series on self-publishing. I think it probably worked well enough for this project, but I’m not trading in my graphic designer yet, by any means.

Hope some of you will enjoy Summer Magic. I had a wonderful time writing it, and am already at work on another collection of poetry.

Summer Magic

My Star by Robert Browning

All that I know
Of a certain star,
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird,—like a flower, hangs furled,
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

 

NOTE: And this one is irresistible, as well.

Quote #71 – Anonymous Valentine For You

Please tell if you’ve a loving heart,
For I have come to query,
Ere have I searched both far and wide,
And be both sore and weary.

Do tell if you’ve a loving heart,
For I have come to query,
Give me your heart and be my love,
And I will be your dearie.

–Anonymous

NOTE: I copied this little ditty from a greeting card over forty years ago.  I have no idea who the original author was…possibly a Hallmark poet in some unmarked cubicle somewhere.  But I have always loved it, for some reason. And thus, I send it to all of you tonight (even though it’s a wee bit late) with my heartfelt wishes for a Happy Valentine’s Day.

Quote #69 – Rita Rudner

“Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love.
I’d stepped in it a few times…”

–Rita Rudner

NOTE:  Just one more way of looking at love for you…..

Quote #68 – Marisa de los Santos

“There’s a kind of holiness to love, requited or not, and those people who don’t receive it with gratitude are arrogant beyond saving.”

–Marisa de los Santos, Love Walked In

Poem of the Day by Sara Teasdale

The Look

* Sara Teasdale *

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

Poem of the Day by Dorothy Parker

Unfortunate Coincidence

* Dorothy Parker *

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying,
Lady, make note of this–
One of you is lying.

*

NOTE: Another bit of wry humor from Dorothy Parker, and in keeping with my affairs of the heart theme for this month.

Poem of the Day by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How Do I Love Thee

* Elizabeth Barrett Browning *

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

NOTE: With Valentine’s Day (and coincidentally, my wedding anniversary) fast approaching, I thought maybe some poems of love would not go amiss.  And of course, when thinking of poems of love, How Do I Love Thee must surely be among the first to come to mind.  Enjoy!

Passages #1 – Garden Spells

Passage From Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

I thought it might be fun to post some of my favorite passages from various books.  The beginning of Sarah Addison Allen’s magical Garden Spells is one I really love. Enjoy! (And read the book, if you haven’t already.  It’s lovely!)

“Every smiley moon, without fail, Claire dreamed of her childhood. She always tried to stay awake those nights when the stars winked and the moon was just a cresting sliver smiling provocatively down at the world, the way pretty women on vintage billboards used to smile as they sold cigarettes and limeade. On those nights in the summer, Claire would garden by the light of the solar-powered footpath lamps, weeding and trimming the night bloomers–the moon vine and the angel’s trumpet, the night jasmine and the flowering tobacco. These weren’t a part of the Waverly legacy of edible flowers, but sleepless as she often was, Claire had added flowers to the garden to give her something to do at night when she was so wound up that frustration singed the edge of her nightgown and she set tiny fires with her fingertips.”

Garden Spells

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Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos

My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

I didn’t think it was possible to love a book more than I loved Marisa de los Santos’ first book, Love Walked In,   but I was wrong.  Falling Together is the most profoundly beautiful love story I’ve read in years…maybe ever. The sheer poetry of the language, combined with the astonishingly beautiful portrayal

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

MY RATING (WAY BACK WHEN): 5 of 5 Stars

I’ve been looking around my library a lot lately, picking up books I read years and years ago, and thinking maybe I’m due to revisit some of them once again.  When this book came out in 1987, I thought

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

MY RATING:  5 of 5 Stars

There are readers out there more worldly and cynical than I,  perhaps, who manage to find fault with this book, but for me, it was one of the best surprises I’ve come across in years.  The title makes it sound like sappy, frothy Chick Lit.  It is anything but!  The story of Cornelia, who has gone through life looking

Quote #10 – Emily Bronte

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.  My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

   –Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

MY RATING:  5 of 5 Stars

Hmmm.   Musing, here.  Where should I shelve this beautiful book?  A tricky question.   It’s a love story without being a Romance.  It’s poetry without the rhymes.  It’s a fantasy without a single vampire, werewolf, faery, or dragon.  I guess I should just shelve it under “Books I Will Treasure Forever.”  The writing is

Quote #7 – Sarah Addison Allen

“Claire had added flowers to the garden to give her something to do at night when she was so wound up that frustration singed the edge of her nightgown and she set tiny fires with her fingertips.”

   –Sarah Addison Allen,  Garden Spells