Now Launching: Mended by Moonlight

You've waited three long years to find out what happened to a major character from the Owen Family Saga novel Gone for a Soldier, Ella Ruth. In truth, she wasn't yet ready to talk about her post-war life. However, now she has opened up to author Marsha Ward, and here is her story.

A grief-stricken Confederate widow. A Union surgeon plagued by guilt. What possible set of circumstances would bring them to a meeting of the minds? Can there be a happily-ever-after for Ella Ruth and Alex during Reconstruction?

Purchase Mended by Moonlight: A Shenandoah Neighbors Novella
E-Book: Smashwords (all formats) | Kindle

Advice for Writers: Write the Book

By Marsha Ward @MarshaWard

The first step to getting a book published is to write it. Here's an encouraging excerpt about that from my new book for writers, The Checklist: Indie Publishing My Way.

The essential step in publishing a book is writing it. Yeah. That. This step will take however long it does, but the sooner you develop habits that help you move forward—without an internal editor on your shoulder to make you write, rewrite, polish, and re-polish Chapter 1—the better. It doesn't matter whether or not you own the most popular writer's software out there, or if you write your 1st draft using Word, Open Office, Pages, or Notepad. The point is to push through and finish the draft, because you can't publish a book that isn't finished.

On my checklist, I allow two to three months for writing. Sometimes I hit it, and sometimes I don't, Because Life. Happens. Did I mention that I have a condition known as ADHD? That's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A great many creative people—or Creatives, for short—suffer from this malady in its various forms. The condition is difficult to deal with, but all challenges can be overcome (or so I keep telling myself).

Here's a Truth that you must remember: every writer writes differently. In other words, there is no One True Way to write. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that their method for writing is the only method of writing.

The corollary to the Truth is that every writer may write each book differently. Okay, I don't want to scare you or introduce unneeded stress into your life, so I won't say much more about that. Just realize that you may need to write a second book using a different method. No stressing about it, okay? Just get this book finished.

Writers write using methods that string along a spectrum that ranges from Plotter at one end to Pantser at the other. Where you may fall on this spectrum (and it probably will shift from time to time and book to book) depends on how your brain is wired. Plotters feel a compulsion to know everything that will happen in a book, so they plot it out, using outlines of varying degrees of exactitude and comprehensiveness. Pantsers (the name comes from the term "writing-by-the-seat-of-your-pants") are also called organic or discovery writers. They want to write the story and discover what happens as their fingers work on the keyboard. You'd be surprised how many top authors are Pantsers. Really surprised.

Pantsers often are stymied by complete outlines. For example, if I write so little as a synopsis of a book, my brain says, "Well, look there, you've written the story. You don't need me anymore," and it shuts down and refuses to cooperate with me in writing a first draft.

There is so much danger in this state of affairs that I cannot plot out a book. I can only figure out who the main character is, a vague estimate of where the book could end, and maybe a couple or three things I hope will happen along the way. I usually know when and where the story will be set, and maybe what the "inciting incident" or "change in the character's life" is. Beyond that, I have to let my mind direct my fingers when I write.

The process is really kind of cool.

That doesn't mean it's your process. It's mine. And it can change. Slightly.

Different books I've written have called for different degrees of foreknowledge, so I have ranged a bit from the Pantser end toward the Plotter end, but never so much that my brain turned off.

Go with what works for you in writing your book, but do go forward.

The Checklist: Indie Publishing My Way is now available for only $4.99 on the sites of all major ebook vendors:

Kindle | NOOK | Kobo | Apple iBooks | Smashwords 

Coming soon in Print!

Fresh Book Friday: Sweet Water

My sweet, amazing author friend, Laurie Lewis, has a new book out, and here it is:

Title: Sweet Water: Destination Billionaire Romance
Author: Laurie Lewis
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Gelato Publishing
Date Published: March 4, 2017
Price: $2.99 (Kindle EBook)

Purchase Link: Kindle

Book Description:
Olivia joined friends Hudson Bauer and Jeff McAllister in developing a business. While she and Hudson dreamed of using their success to improve the world, Jeff set his sights and fortunes on Olivia. On the most important night of Hudson’s life, Olivia and Jeff eloped. Betrayed, Hudson ended the partnership, throwing Jeff and Olivia aside as he made his own fortune.

After a tragic accident leaves Olivia’s body and heart battered, and her dreams of a family destroyed, she is forced to accept Hudson’s offer to recuperate at his parents’ empty house on Oregon’s Cannon Beach. Her return to the place where the three friends once summered casts new light on her hasty marriage, and on the enemy she once called friend.

Through a new position doing humanitarian work, Olivia reawakens, giving rise to long denied feelings for Hudson. But guilt over Jeff’s death leaves her stuck between grief and the hope of new love. All her life, other people have made decisions for Olivia, but now the future is up to her, if she can make peace with the past and embrace a future with a man she once hated.

Author Interview:

Hello, my friend! Let's tell the folks about you. Where did you grow up?

Far away from where you live, Marsha. In Carroll County, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington.

Where do you live now?

We raised our family and still reside in the same house, fifteen miles from where I grew up.

That's pretty amazing, Laurie, sticking so close to home! What would you like readers to know about you?

I’m a craft-challenged wife, mother, and grandmother with some life experience under my belt. Some joyful. Some painful. All valuable. I’m also LDS, a woman of faith, and I hope that all those characteristics combine to make me the author of rich, meaningful stories. I’d like readers to pick up one of my books knowing they are getting a smart, clean read that will inspire and lift them.

You're an admirable woman, my friend. How many books have you written, and which is your favorite?

Sweet Water is my ninth published work. As you know, and depending on the day, each book is most writers’ most, and least, favorite, especially while we’re working on it!!! LOL! I generally am exhausted by a book at the end of the editing process, and then I LOVE it again when I see it in print! How’s that for bi-polar authorship??? Seriously, they all are like my children. You put your heart into each of them, so you love them all, but my “Free Men and Dreamers” series and The Dragons of Alsace Farm are probably the two I am most connected to, because those projects changed me.

I know they've impacted many lives beyond yours. Let's talk about writers' ambiance. Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I love writing to music, especially for certain scenes. When I wrote my “Free Men and Dreamers” series, I cranked up “The Last of the Mohicans” soundtrack. Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban got me through The Dragons of Alsace Farm. While writing Sweet Water for Gelato Books’ “Destination Billionaire Romance” series, I listened to a lot of Alex and Sierra, and Adele. *smiles*

Sweet Water: Destination Billionaire Romance is a different type of work for you, isn’t it? What’s the story behind it?

It is, and it isn’t. I’m known as L.C. Lewis for my historical fiction, and I’ve written three women’s fiction novels under my own name, so while it’s true that I’ve never written a “romance” before, with its specific plotting and elements, I am consistent in trying to make all my books character-driven stories that uplift and cause readers to think about something in a new way.

When Christine Dymock and I met at a writers’ conference two years ago, I had no idea she was the owner of Gelato Books, or that I’d be invited to leave my four-hundred-page comfort zone to take a stab at a romance novella for her Destination Billionaire series. I had plotted out a women’s fiction novel during a family visit to the Oregon coast, and decided to use that outline for this novella, but the word count restrictions and pacing demands proved more challenging than I expected. I’d have to say that learning curve is what made this project an absolute blast.

Isn't it wonderful to stretch and grow? What is the major theme of Sweet Water?

Redemption and forgiveness are big themes in my books. We all need a little of both at one time or another. The romance storyline is about hijacked love—when two people miss “their moment,” when their timing gets thrown off by someone or something, and how they react to it when they realize what’s happened. I hope readers see Olivia and Hudson grow, and feel their renewed peace.

That will be good! What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

I hope they’ll find Sweet Water to be an escape book, a few hours’ diversion. With that said, I like to add some depth to each read, so with all the tumult over immigration and refugees, I wanted to introduce my readers to a few amazing women doing great things in the world.

Hudson refers to the AMAR foundation on page eight of the book. A dear friend introduced me to the chairwoman of AMAR, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, while assisting at a reception in her honor near Washington D.C. AMAR provides health care and education to families living in war zones or in areas of civil disorder and disruption. Ninety percent of all donations go directly to helping the people AMAR serves. When so many of us feel helpless to make a difference, here is a safe, trustworthy way we can all help. Click http://bit.ly/1z8Cx2q and enter AMAR to make a donation.

The nuns and orphans being attacked by rebels in Sweet Water are based on an actual convent in The Ivory Coast of Africa. Another friend, Dr. Melei Lath, introduced me to her sister, Mother Eugenie, the Mother Superior of the Fraternité Monastique Des Soeurs de Jesus-Euchariste. These brave nuns support themselves and use their earnings to protect and educate orphans left alone as a result of disease and war. Their great hope is that they will someday be in a position to build a proper orphanage where they can protect the children from the rebels plaguing them. You can see photos of Mother Eugenie, her nuns, and some of the children here on the GoFundMe page I helped them set up. Please consider donating to her work.

Those sound like two very important and worthy humanitarian works we should get behind! But I'm curious. What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be published?

Thanks for asking! I’ve got two projects in progress. Leverage has been in the works for over a year. It’s a complex political suspense novel about two last-chance people who arrive in a dying West Virginia mining town. A tip from a ruthless informant sends fallen journalism phenom, Jackson James, to Cutler’s Ridge to chase down a story lead involving three high-level passengers headed for the town in a private plane that didn’t file a flight plan.

A young scientist, Tallie Brown, was forced by her emotionally distant mother to live a life of seclusion. When Tallie's mother dies in an accident, she leaves behind a newspaper article and a cryptic message that leads her daughter to Cutler’s Ridge, but the townspeople make it clear they don’t like any strangers. Worse yet, they seem to fear the shy, reclusive Tallie Brown.

Even the other stranger in town, reporter James, puts Tallie on his radar when she predicts the fall of the private plane he came to track right before it falls from the sky, killing everyone on board. James uncovers some strange truths about the town and Miss Brown. She has no recorded birth certificate, and the town is riddled with twenty years of secrets that involve the halls of congress and a local military base.

If all goes well, Leverage should hit the market this summer.

Ooo! It sounds delicious! Would you like to hear what readers of this blog think?

I love to hear from readers. I hope they will consider joining my mailing list to receive updates and behind-the-scenes glimpses into upcoming books, or write to me at any of these sites.

Website | Blog | Amazon Author Page | GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Newsletter Sign-up

Fabulous, Laurie! Thanks for visiting my blog today to celebrate your new book.

Thanks so much for the interview, Marsha!

Sample Saturday: Cover Reveal - Blood at Haught Springs

I'm excited to reveal the cover of my new novella, Blood at Haught Springs, which will be released as an ebook next Friday, May 27.

This ebook edition contains two short stories, as well: Cottonwood Cowboys, and No More Strangers.

As you can tell by looking at the cover, I plan more stories featuring men from Haught Springs, a fictional town in Texas, and the surrounding area.

~~~

Have you picked up a copy of my new novel, The Zion Trail?
After you read it, please post a review at Amazon.

Thank you!

The Zion Trail

 $3.99 for ebooks; $12.99 for print books
ebooks: Smashwords | Kindle | Nook | Kobo | Apple iBooks Store 

print books: CreateSpace | Amazon | Barnes and Noble

 

Sample Saturday: The Zion Trail is getting ready for Launch Day

So, it's "next month" now and The Zion Trail is almost ready for Launch Day. "And when is that?" you ask.

And I answer: "Soon. Very soon. But the first folks to get that info are the Subscribers to my Readers Mailing List." See that box over there? --->

That's where you subscribe, so, you know, you are the first to get the word - and to learn about the special offer!

I can't hold on to the release of all that yummy goodness to my Mailing List much longer, folks. I'm looking to send it out on Monday, so this is your last chance to sign up before I hit the "Send" button!

Here is the REAL cover for the ebook. I jumped the gun with what I thought was the final version last week, but this one is the real deal. Pretty, huh?

Today's Sample is the tidbit below, featuring part of the book description and part of an awesome endorsement by author Loralee Evans. The print depicts Fort Bridger, one of the final mercantile stops along the Mormon Trail.

I have more endorsements coming in, some of which will make it onto the back cover of the print version coming out in March.

Go put your email address in that box and hit the Subscribe button. Now. Then check your inbox for the confirmation message.

See you next week!

Sample Saturday: The Zion Trail

Welcome to Sample Saturday!

I'm pleased to report that formatting is finished for the ebook version of The Zion Trail, and it only lacks some "publisher" work before it is released next month. See that box over to the right? The one that says, "Enter your email address..." That is where you subscribe to my Readers Mailing List so you will be among the first to learn the Launch Date of this brand new novel.

Am I excited? Maybe not as much as when the house on the hillside behind my house burned to the ground on Tuesday night, but that's a different kind of excitement (more like terror).

Instead, I am excited in a good way.

I'm also excited that the final version of the ebook cover is finished. Here. It. Is:

See the tag line? Guess what that means.

Enough suspense. Here's the sample for today. The Marshall family is about to make a huge change in their lives:
~~~

Late one night I awoke to use the chamber pot and heard my mother sobbing to my father that she could no longer bear to live here. The next morning, he presented us with a plan: instead of continuing to figure out how to plant crops this season, at the end of March we would gather to Zion, which meant we would begin a journey to Nauvoo, Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Oh, the fuss and feathers that flew over that scheme! Sarah refused to go, crying the night through and arising with swollen, red eyes and a severe attitude not much mended by sleep. I had no patience with her. Taxed by all that had occurred, even the thought of losing my field did not deter my hope that another place—any place—would be better than this one.

Pa and John and I bore the brunt of carrying out the plan in the limited time until March thirty-first. Ma was still too weak to participate in much of the work, Mary Eliza was too young, and Sarah refused to perform any labor having to do with our removal. Accordingly, Pa tasked me with many kitchen chores. I therefore learned to accomplish many housewifely chores, and didn’t regret a minute of it.

John found my cheerfulness in the kitchen to be strange, and ragged me about it unmercifully. I didn’t care. I was desperate to get to Zion. If cooking and cleaning up and doing whatever I could to make it possible was unmanly, I simply did not care. Who was to notice? We had no visitors, no nearby kin, no one to wonder at my unnatural education in kitchen skills.

Only one thing chafed me: sharing kitchen time with Sarah. Although I wondered where my former compassion for my sister had gone, I had grown impatient with her constant haranguing against my faith, and her adamant refusal to obey our father. In my mind, she lived under her father’s roof; therefore, she owed him obedience.
~~~

Okay, what do you think is going to happen next?

Go sign up for the Readers Mailing List over there at the top of the right sidebar. See you next week!

Sample Saturday: The Zion Trail

Welcome to Sample Saturday. In this excerpt from The Zion Trail, Lije Marshall confronts his sister, Sarah, to find out what she knows about the beating of their father.
~~~

By the time the household awoke the next day, I hadn't yet cornered Sarah, so I made it my business to do so before breakfast. Milking the cow could wait half an hour. Finding out if my sister had conspired to injure or kill our father could not.

I came down the ladder from the dim loft room I shared with John and peered into the kitchen. The edge of a brown skirt slid through the closing outside door. My sister must be going to gather eggs.

I caught up in the muddy dooryard and stopped her with a hand on her elbow. She made a little squeaking sound, as though I had startled her, and whirled around, dropping her egg basket.

"Lije-" she started to say, her face going white.

"Look here," I cut her off, feeling my anger rise. "Pa's going to be laid up for a week or more. What part did you play?"

She shook her head. "None."

"But you know who did it. I can see you do."

She kept shaking her head, her eyebrows drawn together so tightly that her normally smooth forehead looked like a freshly cultivated garden patch. "No," she moaned. "I didn't know-"

"Didn't know what?" I was so angry at having to drag the story out of her that I wanted to strike her. She must have seen my gathering storm, for she shrank away from me, making herself as small as possible.

"Please, Lije. I didn't think he would do anything. He only wanted to know about the baptism."

"Hans?"

She nodded.

"Anyone else?"

"I don't know. We were alone when we talked."

"Were you kissing him?"
~~~

Aha! What's been going on in the hen house?

Thank you for visiting. The Zion Trail will be published soon as an ebook, and after that, in print. If you liked what you read, talk to me.

Sample Saturday - Something totally different

Welcome to Sample Saturday. From time to time I get the hankering to bust out of my usual routine and do something a bit different. That's how I feel as I'm setting this post up, so here's a thing I don't usually do. I'm announcing future plans.

When I finish writing The Zion Trail, I will work on a piece that will fit in the "Owen-verse" after Gone for a Soldier.

I call it "a piece" because I don't know the length yet, and the "Owen-verse," shorthand for the "Owen Family Universe," refers to works that specifically fit within "The Owen Family Saga," and works that are somehow related, but don't deal with the principal family members. Clear?

For example, The Zion Trail actually is a distant part of the "Owen-verse," since Elijah Marshall and Julia Owen are first cousins. However, I don't plan any characters to cross over from the Saga, nor will I label it an Owen story.

With all that said, I'm undecided on how to label companion works to indicate they are connected to the Saga, but not part of the Saga. If I call something "An Owen-verse Story" or "An Owen-verse Novel," would you understand what I mean?

I'm open to suggestions.

Back to my plans. The new piece will deal with a character from Gone for a Soldier who is not an immediate family member. I trust the story will bring the character hope and happiness. And since this is Sample Saturday, I'll give you a sample of artwork for the cover.

Thanks for coming. I'll have a regular sample for you next week.

Snippet from a New WIP

It's way past time for me to post here. I've had a long run of health adventures the last four months or so, and I'm still trying--unsuccessfully--to limit the usage of my left arm so it will heal from an injury. Good luck to me on that!

The short excerpt below is from a novel I began in the eighties and never finished. It's on my list of goals to be published in 2015, so I've been using my new Dragon NaturallySpeaking software to enter the typescript into my writing software. I've come to the end of the previously typed out work, so I have to start creating new stuff. However, I thought you might like a look at this scene fragment from The Zion Trail, for which I revealed the cover on this post. Warning: the tidbit includes mild swearing.

By the way, the narrator is Elijah Marshall, the younger brother of Sarah; and the name of the character called Henry will be changed before the novel is published. I only need to decide what I want to call him!
~~~

I was slopping our sow and her brood when I first became aware of the voices. The pigpen was built up next to the hen house, and Sarah must've come out to check for any late-laid eggs. But somebody had joined her in there, and from the words that wiggled through the cracks, that somebody's hands weren't gathering eggs.

Curious, I found a knot hole in the side of the coop, and took a sight around the interior.

Henry Stiles, the brawny blonde farmer from down the road a piece, had his arms around my sister, and she wasn't struggling any. In fact, from the look on her face, I figured she was mighty content.

"Then they started in telling Pa about their religion," she told Henry. "He's still sitting there, listening to every word they say."

"But they are not from around here?"

"They come from Illinois. Some place called Nauvoo."

"Ah hell!" Henry dropped his hands from Sarah's shoulders. "It's those damned Mormons!"
 ~~~

Yes, my friends of other faiths, this book is going to explore Elijah Marshall's trials and tribulations in getting to his Zion, that is, Deseret--more commonly known today as Utah--to join the other Saints. I hope I can count on you to be along for the journey.

Gone for a Soldier - Cover Reveal

All good things come to those who wait...patiently!

I'm counting a lot of blessings lately, even as I remain frazzled over various issues in my life, like, um, taxes. Which I must get down to doing very soon.

Be that as it may, this post is a reward for those who have waited for a long, long time. Those who have stuck by me through thick and thin. My loyal readers, book buyers, and Street Team. My loyal family members who have encouraged me and helped me carry on, even as I continue to live life alone. Alone, but never lonely.

Remember the name of this blog? I know these characters like my own family. That's why I knew them the instant I set eyes upon this art work.

Yes, the couple is Rulon Owen and Mary Hilbrands, exactly as I've seen them in my mind's eye.

The incomparable Linda Boulanger of Tell~Tale Cover Designs has done it again! 

Gone for a Soldier will be out later this summer, but I couldn't wait any longer to reveal the cover.

If you want to help me show it off, please contact me for additional blog materials at marshaward.az@gmail.com. In the meantime, feel free to Tweet, Share, Pin, etc., and help me get the word out that Rulon Owen and his brothers are going to war ... and they won't take any prisoners.

Fabulous Friends and Fans...and Stumblers upon the Scene

Because I have been negligent to a group of people who I have designated as my Fabulous Friends & Fans─and some of them are very much Super Fans─I am extending the olive branch below, an advance reveal of the cover of a forthcoming novel. It's not the next novel, but the cover is complete and exceedingly awesome, and I don't know how I have kept it hidden all the time that I have.

For those of you who happened to stumble upon this site, this is your lucky day.

The designer is the fabulous Linda Boulanger of Tell~Tale Cover Designs. This is the book I am going to a retreat in June to finish, so it won't be out really soon. Maybe by the end of the year--maybe early in 2015. We'll see how it goes. I get all tickled inside when I realize how perfectly the cover reflects a scene from the novel. I am so blessed!

Okay, what do you think?

Spinster's Folly: The Dream is Alive!

Spinster's Folly has now been published both in ebooks, at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com, and in a print edition, available right now at CreateSpace.com. The print version will be on Amazon.com soon, so watch for it (although I earn a better royalty if you get it at CreateSpace).

I'm very happy that this book is finally available in all versions. It will slowly make its way forward, out to all the online booksellers. In a few weeks' time, you can even urge your local bookstore to carry it, if you give the buyer the International Standard Book Number. It soon will be in the Ingram Book Company pipeline (they are the major distributor this side of the pond), as well as other entities, and should have wide distribution.

What is the International Standard Book Number or ISBN?

978-0988381001 

Armed with that number, my name, the book title (Spinster's Folly), and the word Ingram, you might try asking not only bookstores, but your library to order it.

Do you have anything to lose but a few minutes of your time?

Spinster's Folly: Cover Revealed

I think it's about time I put a lovely piece of art on this blog. Here it is, the cover for Spinster's Folly, coming to you in November.

What do you think? Is it attractive enough?

Stay tuned for updates on the Book Launch and Blog Tour.

Coming soon

I think I am close enough in the process of finishing to post a teensy bit of the front cover for my forthcoming novel, Spinster's Folly. You can see it over there in the sidebar:

The cover is progressing

Although I'm not ready to do a "reveal" yet, I'm delighted at the progress of the cover for Spinster's Folly. It won't be too much longer before I can show it off.