Some Days You're the Bird...Others, The Windshield...

Years ago, a publisher I had signed with became the center of attention on a well-known blog, and the owner of the house was described as someone with a split personality and a problematic person to deal with.  Many author's fought for their books back at the time, but I remained committed to the contract I'd signed and stuck out my three years.  I promoted the book on various yahoo loops, created a video trailer, and entered my lovely cover in contests.  I did my part.

My three years is up. Imagine my surprise, when asking for my rights back, to be reminded of a small clause in the contract which, despite modern technology, requires a registered letter be sent to the publisher sixty days prior to the contract expiration date. Of course, I missed that in January.  If the publisher deems she will return my rights, it will take her sixty days to hopefully send me a letter notifying me of the reversion of rights. It's not a sure thing.  Does this seem fair?

   Now as someone who has many contracts and has re-released several books, I wrongly assumed that a simple email and friendly demeanor might be the answer.  Nope!  A novella that made absolutely no money during the time it's been featured, and one I can only assume lacked sales because of bad publicity surrounding the house, is being held hostage out of pettiness.  My assumption is based on the fact that everything else I've written is realizing sales.

As if the extra hoop through which I have to jump isn't enough, I've also been informed that should the rights revert to me, I own only the pre-edited copy of the work.  I'm not sure how one goes about determining which words are owned by the house and which are mine.  Basically, I had very few changes to make, most re-wording or omitting words such as "she, so I consider all the words to be my own.  How do I prove this?  My original copy became the working copy for the editor, and I have three copies that we exchanged to reach the final copy which came to me in PDF. 

These are the things of which nightmares are made.  Issues that make an author want to walk away and question whether not what we do is worth dealing with publishers who want to make us as miserable as they are.  I thought I had maintained a good relationship with this person despite her less than glowing reputation.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt, which clearly she hasn't earned.  I saw my contract through to the end, and now I have to play silly games and probably pursue the issue in small claims court.  A novella isn't the be all/end all of my career, but it comes down to letting someone walk on me, and I absolutely refuse to do that.  I did my part, my contract is up, so give me back my story.  Simple, and everyone stays friends.  If only.

Today has been a red letter day for being disappointed in people.  I discovered a review on Amazon written by someone who evidently based her opinion of my book on how she expected my characters to act, react, and even how the story should progress.  I suppose she hasn't ever met a naive person in her life, as she saw that as an unrealistic flaw in my heroine.  Gee...life must suck for people who have to drag everyone down in their miserable mire in order to be happy.  She even took issue with how many releases I announced in a year, suggesting that perhaps instead of cranking out so many books, I should spend more time fleshing out my stories and bringing them up to her standards.  Good luck with that since the majority of people who saw fit to comment liked what they read.  When you research all your facts, drop me a line.  Oh, and hey, Ms. Unhappy reader, I suggest you might want to write your own book, then you can make it exactly as you want.  Before you start, you might want to look up the word "fiction" while you're at it, and please don't read anything in the fantasy category because you'll be so disappointed to find out those stories feature werewolves, shapeshifters and fairies.  Gasp!  *whispering* They aren't real you know?

Okay...I feel better for venting a little.  Just wanted to share that being an author isn't a career without challenges.  Like my title says...some day you're the bird and other days you're the windshield.  Guess which I was today.  *lol*

Tomorrow is bound to be better.

Kathryn's Christmas Memories

Christmas Memories
By author Kathryn Meyer Griffith

My real childhood Christmas memories, in fact most of my holiday memories, essentially began in my ninth year. Oh, I have memories, scattered and muted, of earlier times but none as crystalized as those after that year. That’s because months earlier on a sultry hot August day around my ninth birthday I almost died; the whole experience changed my young life forever from that time on.
It was early August 1959 – a terribly hot and long summer pre-air-conditioning – and I lived with my six siblings, mother and father, in a rambling run-down house near St. Louis. We didn’t have much money or material possessions, wore hand-me-downs and sometimes we didn’t have lunch money or even a working telephone. Our utilities were often cut off for lack of payment, things would disappear from the house and into the pawn shop and a car would one day be ours and the next not. But we had each other and…love.
My maternal grandmother, Mary Fehrt (joy bringer and storyteller of her generation) was always there for us when it came to providing the things we desperately needed; care packages of food and cash. As much as they could give because they weren’t rich either, but frugal; both worked long grueling hours at a dry cleaner. They’d gone through the Great Depression and could stretch a dollar. I always thought it ironic they’d responsibly had just one child, my mother, Delores, but she gave them seven grandchildren. I thought of my family as a modern day Walton’s. Heck, we even had a writer John Boy (me…though I was an artist and a singer with my brother Jim before I became one) and a musician, Jason (my brother Jim), a loving mother and father and a generous grandmother and grandfather. We were poor but happy. A good hearted family.
Anyway, that August I got sick. My side hurt and I lay moaning on the couch for three days while my mother and father agonized if I should be taken to the ER. Money we didn’t have. In the end, my mother won out and they took me. I had a bad case of appendicitis and the doctors, as they rushed me into the operating room, told my parents if they’d waited another hour the appendix would have burst and I might have died. Died.
Thank God, I didn’t.  Afterwards I languished in a hot hospital room (I can still smell the antiseptic, bloodied bandages and feel the pain of the stitches to this day). Ech.
My ninth birthday was two days after I returned home and my family, relieved I was alive, showered me with gifts. A brownie camera. Art supplies. Homemade cake and ice cream. Everyone was there. I, for once, was the center of attention and loved it. I look back now and realize that was the beginning of wanting to be different, to stand out, make a difference in the world, to shine, and shortly after that I began drawing pictures and singing with my brother on the rusted backyard swing set.
The holidays that year were different for me and my family as well. Thanksgiving was full of grateful laughter, a huge roasted turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and marshmallows (my favorite) and lots of my father’s special treats, nuts and tangerines.  I was acutely aware of everything. I was looking at the world through new eyes and was excited at the life I’d been given back. Happy. Thankful for my loving family.
Christmas was a child’s sweet fantasy. Christmas Eve, as the snowflakes, the temperature and the night’s amethyst twilight fell, my brothers, sisters, mother, father and I piled into my Dad’s big Buick and drove through the woods and neighborhoods of twinkling lit up houses to our grandmother and grandfather’s house. We usually stayed home on Christmas Eve and opened our presents the next morning when our grandparents arrived. Not that year. Dad and mom announced it was special and we were going to grandma’s house. Opening our presents there that night. Yippee! What child didn’t want presents early. Sooner the better.
It was snowing heavily by the time we drove into their driveway and I can still see what I saw as a child as I walked wide-eyed into grandma’s house (my grandmother loved the holidays and had twinkling Christmas lights, the big fat old-fashioned bulbs, strung along the front of their house and there were decorated Christmas trees in every room). My grandmother had outdone herself and there wasn’t corner of her home that wasn’t full of Christmas.
We traipsed downstairs and into a Christmas wonderland. Grandpa had gone out and cut a huge pine tree that stood at the end of their 50’s remodeled basement in all its glory. On its fragrant limbs hung hundreds of cherished family heirloom ornaments and beneath it were piles of brightly wrapped presents, more than I’d ever seen in my life, and a miniature Christmas village with a tiny train that chugged noisily around a little metal track, blowing its whistle.  The whole glittering sight took my breath away.
They made us kids sit on the floor and handed out our presents one by one. Grandma and grandpa had gone overboard, as always, and I remember sitting there unwrapping present after present and crying because I’d gotten so many of the things I’d wanted. A large drawing tablet. Colored pencils. Pastels. A watercolor set. A sparkly (some of you remember those don’t you?) paint-by-number of winter sunsets. A new blouse. A big bag of my favorite nuts, cashews. All for me. I was in seventh heaven. The other kids did pretty well, too. By today’s standards, nothing much, but small trucks, cars, new clothes and dolls meant a lot to us.
I gave my grandmother and grandfather a set of porcelain fishes; my mother an inexpensive necklace and father some gloves. My brothers, sisters and I had gone out on a cold night days earlier to the local five and dime and picked out what we could afford, not much, but it was given from the heart. After the gifts we sat down at the long table full of grandma’s delicious food and ate, laughed, and made memories as the snow continued to drift outside the windows. Later, stuffed, content and exhausted mom and dad loaded us all into the Buick and slowly drove us home on the slick streets. Magic. I’ll never forget that night and the joy of my large family. The love. It’d sustain us through the hard and bad times to come and to this day gives me a smile and a catch in my throat whenever my thoughts touch it.  Merry Christmas everyone! ***
Written a lifetime away on this nineteenth October day of 2011 by author Kathryn Meyer Griffith


Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres. Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486       
Her published novels & short stories:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure 1984; Damnation Books 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Blood Forge (Leisure 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out Februry 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out July 2011)
The Last Vampire (Zebra 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Witches (Zebra 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
The Nameless One (short story 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
  Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
The Calling (Zebra 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery 2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press 2008; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press 2008; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
Don't Look Back, Agnes short story (2008; ghostly short story Eternal Press Jan. 2012)
In This House (ghostly short story 2008; Eternal Press January 2012)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Damnation Books June 2010)
The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010)
The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Novels: Volume 1 2011 (I wrote the foreword) ***

A Winter's Journey

The Story of

Winter’s Journey

A backstory and other morsels from an old writer’s life

*****

Eternal Press WJ buy link: http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615724604

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-460-4 * Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-461-1

You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYCs2DVhHg

***

It was February 1994 (I jotted that date down in pencil on the outside of the manila folders where I kept a running fact history of the manuscripts) when I began two novels called Winter’s Journey and Egyptian Heart.

At that time I still had my agent, Lori Perkins, who’d sold four earlier novels for me to Zebra Books (Vampire Blood, 1991; The Last Vampire, 1992; Witches, 1993 and The Calling, 1994…after I’d sold my first three novels on my own to Leisure Books: Evil Stalks the Night, 1984: The Heart of the Rose, 1985; Blood Forge) but in 1994 I’d lost my admiring editor at Zebra and a new one had taken her place...but over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him. Later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my latest book (Predator, a story about a dinosaur in Crater Lake…which never came out but still lingers like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator, bad title since there was a popular movie out by that name and the film had nothing to do with a dinosaur, and the cover was boring, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book, my first ever, dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and had already done my final edits! I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “No one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” And six months later Jurassic Park came out! The book is still sitting in a drawer somewhere and perhaps one day I’ll resurrect and finish it as well).

To get my mind off the loss, Lori told me about a new romantic horror line that Silhouette was starting called the Shadows Line. They wanted to tap into the darker romantic paranormal market. They wanted the kind of dark atmospheric story I wrote but with more romance. It was Silhouette after all.  I’d been labeled as a horror writer from the get go, though all my novels blended genres; usually I wrote a romantic horror mixture with dashes of adventure, suspense and sometimes threw in a little history or mystery as well…but in those days the big publishers felt the need (and I think they still do) to squeeze a writer into one narrow slot. So I’d been branded a horror writer.

Well, anyway, originally I’d called the first novel Shadow Road and the second The Cursed Scarab. Later, I retitled them Winter’s Journey and Egyptian Heart because I wanted them to more reflect the romance tales they’d become and less the horror stories I’d been writing before then.

Egyptian Heart, an ancient Egyptian time travel romance, was written because I’d always loved ancient Egyptian stories; probably because I’d been influenced in my early childhood by movies like The Ten Commandments (I’d been raised a Catholic), horror mummy films of the 1960’s and TV shows on Nefertiti and Cleopatra. I’d always had this affinity for that long ago world. So when asked to write romances, I just naturally set one in that period.

For Winter’s Journey’s theme I choose to write about something that was making a mess of my once happy life at the time…out of stark necessity my husband had taken an awful over-the-road truck driving job and I ended up using some of his knowledge and experiences along the way as the basis for the other romance. His job took him away from me more than we’d ever been separated before and with so much lonely time on my hands I simply…wrote. Venting all my frustration out in my words.  I even tried riding with him (I had a part time graphic artist job at the time where I only worked three days a week)  a few times but the deadlines and the bad weather scared the bejesus out of me so that didn’t last long.

To make me feel better and give me something to take my mind off all of that, my agent suggested I branch out and told me about a new romantic horror line that Silhouette was starting called the Shadows Line. They wanted to tap into the darker romantic paranormal market. Lori said they wanted the kind of story I wrote but with more romance. It was Silhouette after all.  I’d been labeled as a horror writer from the get go, though all my novels blended genres; usually I wrote a romantic horror mixture with dashes of adventure, suspense and sometimes threw in a little history or mystery as well…but in those days the big publishers felt the need (and I think they still do) to squeeze a writer into one narrow slot. I was a horror writer.

So to disprove that I wrote two manuscripts for the Silhouette Shadows Line or tried to.  Winter’s Journey (a romantic suspense about a woman truck driver driving a dangerous wintry route with a murderer on her tail, and a hitchhiker in her cab that she feels she’s falling in love with…and fears, at times, he’s the killer) and the other ancient Egyptian one. To make a long story short, Silhouette Shadows turned both down. Seems I had too much horror in them; not enough sex. They were too long. I didn’t follow the formula. Sheesh. I’ve never liked depending too much on sex in any of my books or writing a book too predictable. The originality of the novel and the characters make the story for me.

After that my agent dropped me. Ah, the life of a writer.

So, then life (as it has many times in my 39 year writing career), family and job problems, and my other novels (I was into murder mysteries for years and sold two to Avalon Books), got in the way and Winter’s Journey and the other novel went into drawer hibernation until, oh, about 2004, when I rediscovered them, dug them out, rewrote them and began trying to sell them again. Sometimes, I’ve found, a book left alone in a dark cubbyhole ages like good wine. (Or sometimes it just turns to vinegar.)

Fast forward three years to 2007 and a new e-book (e-books still being considered a risky new-fangled craze at that time!) publisher called The Wild Rose Press contracted both and eventually a third called The Ice Bridge, a ghostly romantic murder mystery set on Mackinac Island, and published them. Good publisher. They treated me well. But in 2010 when I contracted my two newest novels, Before the End: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson (both romantic horror) my new publisher, Kim Richards Gilchrist at Damnation Books wanted to bring out all my old out-of-print novels again (going back to those early Leisure Books from the 1980’s) in print – and e-books for the first time ever.  Seven old paperbacks. I’d rewrite them all, get new covers and they’d all live again. I was thrilled. And grateful. It would take a lot of work on both our parts but when we were done ALL my old novels would be in print again and in electronic form out in the world. I jumped right in.

Then when my two year contract (I was lucky, e-books still being new, it was only for two years; now most e-book publishers contract for five years or longer) ran out with The Wild Rose Press. I happily switched Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge and a novella Don’t Look Back, Agnes to Eternal Press (Damnation Books sister company). Kim Richards, and her husband William, had just brought Realms of Fantasy Magazine into the fold, as well.

So. Winter’s Journey has had a very long journey.

The new cover for Winter’s Journey is by Dawne Dominique and, I think, is hauntingly beautiful and Kim Richards was my editor. Thank you both.

I hope you’ll give Winter’s Journey a look and a read. The best way to describe it is through its blurb and an excerpt and so here they are:  

Winter’s Journey blurb: To keep the bank from repossessing her eighteen-wheeler and putting her and her daughter on the street, trucker Loretta Brennan takes a dangerous route to Wyoming with a winter storm approaching. She worries if she can make the deadline and navigate the icy roads since her driving partner husband died in an accident the year before.

At a truck stop, Loretta meets handsome hitchhiker Sam Emerson, who helps her out of a bind. She feels compelled to return the favor and offers him a ride to Cheyenne. Blizzards, a series of trucker murders, and a sinister truck haunt them along their route. They grow close despite Loretta's fear that Sam may be aligned with the killer. Is Sam a good man down on his luck or is she falling in love with a murderer?

Winter’s Journey excerpt: “Yeah, yeah. I wish you were on this case instead of me, Hayden. It’s getting too weird. That trucker at the I­-55 and now this. No apparent motives. Nothing stolen. No evidence left behind whatsoever. This is the work of a serial sicko if you ask me. I’ll talk to you later.”

Loretta gripped the edge of the table, trying to catch her breath.

Two more murders! A serial killer. Oh, no.

The rest stop on eighty-six was the same one Sam and she had been at earlier. Loretta remembered the red Volvo Semi with the open door. She frantically tried to make excuses, but she knew the odds of being at the scene of two related crimes in two days had to be infinitesimally small. What did it mean?

That Sam could he a killer.

You should run away now, Loretta. Get up, go out the door and drive off before Sam gets back. Leave him behind along with your fears that he’s the murderer.

Yet doubts filled her. They’d only been apart as long as she’d been in the bathroom and that hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes. Was that enough time to kill two people? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

But why would Sam kill anyone? It made no sense. Only a deranged maniac would kill complete strangers like that. Only a deranged maniac.

The state trooper left and, stealing a peek, Loretta saw him push through the crowd toward the front of the diner.

She looked at the door. Sam would return any second. What was she going to do? She desperately wanted to talk to the trooper about the murders and try to get some information that would help her to decide. The officer would know more about the crimes than she did.

She was frozen like a bug in an ice cube. Her head warred with her heart. Was it worth it to be so wrong about Sam when being wrong could risk her life? What if Sam were a killer? Then why hadn’t he killed her, too? Unless he needed her and her truck to get away. What would happen when he no longer needed her? She didn’t dwell on that possibility.

Her eyes followed the state trooper as he halted at the cash register and spoke to a man in a stained apron who probably ran or owned the diner. The man’s face clouded up and his friendly grin faded as the trooper grabbed a wet rain slicker off a wall of other coats and fled. The diner’s owner knew about the new murders now, too.

The man in the apron hurried over to a waitress serving coffee to a bearded guy in a plaid shirt. The three of them huddled together, whispering.

At a nearby table, a thin woman with dull brown hair and too much make-up asked for more coffee and the waitress with the coffeepot bustled over. The two gossiped as the coffee poured, and after the waitress had gone on to another customer, the thin woman leaned over and yakked excitedly to another woman. There was murder in her eyes.

The bad news was spreading.

Loretta was poised to jump up and run to the other cop’s table when she caught sight of Sam working his way to her through the crowd. It was too late. There was no way she could get to the officer and ask for help before Sam got to her. She could run for it, but Sam was only a few feet away. She could see the fake empathy on his face, see his lying eyes above a killer^’s smile that she^’d been so foolish to mistake as being sexy. She knew that if she tried to run he’d come after her. Maybe he’d even kill her to keep his secrets. ***

So now Winter’s Journey is out alive again in the world…I hope it has a long and happy adventure out there. After all, it’s one of my children and I want it to do well.

And thank you for having me on your blog! Kathryn Meyer Griffith

******************************************************************************

A word about Kathryn Meyer Griffith, August 2011...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21 and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance and two mysteries) previous novels published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-three years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have two quirky cats, Sasha and Cleo, and the four of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die.

       

Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition out Nov.7, 2010)

Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2012)

Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out July 2011)

The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2010)

Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out April 2011)

The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;

  Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2011)

The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2011)

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in August 2011)

Winter’s Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in September 2011)

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)

Don’t Look Back, Agnes novella and bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out again from Eternal Press in January 2012)

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Out from Damnation Books June 2010)

The Woman in Crimson (Out from Damnation Books September 2010)

Her Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http:// www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.Griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith

http://romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

E-mail me at rdgriff@htc.net  I love to hear from my readers.

Welcome Widdershins

On Her Shoulders

By Widdershins

www.widdershinsfirst.com

There are certain individuals in any movement for social change that, although they don’t start out wanting that pivotal place or to be a catalyst for change, rise to the surface of the mass movement and become a leader.

In the days before social media, before personal computers, before human beings walked on the surface of an alien world, these leaders had less extravagant profiles. They worked in their own corners of their world and began the changes that we see around us every day.

Barbara Grier was one such hero, and she died just a little while ago on the 10^th November. The very day I started making notes for this post. Is it any wonder that my Muses are Irony and Serendipity?

I wrote about Barbara on my blog. If you’d like to scoot over there and read up a bit on what I’m referring to, I’ll wait.

To most of the world Barbara was invisible. Even I didn’t know who she was, and the enormous impact she had, until I grew up and began to search for my spiritual lesbian fore-mothers. Turns out there were a whole lot more of them than I ever knew.

Sappho wrote prose and poems to and for women. Radcliff Hall broke a taboo and wrote about love between two women the best way she knew how. Ann Bannon created Beebo Brinker, a butch, in pulp fiction. Katherine Forrest sent a whole tribe of lesbians to another world.  And many more than I could ever list here.

Standing in between these fiction artists are the poets, theorists, shamans, political activists, (the act of being alive is political for lesbians) painters, academics, to name a few. Lesbians who have broken through the secrets and shame we placed around ourselves in order to survive, who have contributed to the beauty in our hearts.

Lesbians today stand on their shoulders and reach still higher. We paint, we politicise, we act, we have our own daytime television show, we teach, we Occupy ... we write.

Could I do no less?

It would’ve been easy to follow a formula for my book. To have a villain whose dastardly plots are foiled by a knight in shining armour, or a shiny spacesuit (I do write SF/F after all). Or to write a love story. Girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl redeems herself and gets girl in the end. (I do write lesbian characters after all)

I could’ve had created a story along any of these lines. There’s a reason those formulas are so popular, they work!

But for me to honour those lesbian foremothers, who created change by refusing to accept the roles that were available to them in the society of their time, I too would have to write outside the standard formulas of my time.

And I did!

Mortal Instinct: Where magic, mysticism, and technology exist side-by-side.

Mortal Instinct: Set in a world of the Gallery - a vast other-worldly web of corridors spun from the body of an Immortal Being. These glittering corridors link the worlds of the Mortal Realm. Anyone brave enough to step through a Portal can journey through them from world to world.

Something is happening to the Gallery, something ... mortal.

****

Three friends find themselves responsible for a mystical Sphere that has the power to destroy or save the Mortal Realm. Immortal beings interfere, lovers and ex-lovers intrude, egos and politics get in the way. In spite of all these distractions, they must achieve their destiny before the Sphere awakens and decides its own fate.

****

An excerpt:

A Portal glowed fiercely, then shattered. Wind rushed through the broken Hall.

Chalone’s face turned white. She barged through the fleeing crowd to Liesha’s side. “The corridors are being ripped apart!” she shouted above the roar of rushing air and an alarm that no one had thought to shut off.

“I can see that,” Liesha said too loudly as the sound eased, and picked up the headset the gale had swept from her head. She’d had no time to reintegrate her implants and used it to communicate with the ECHO network. “I am going to stop this.”

The alarm finally fell silent. “You can’t stop it,” Chalone said.

“What do you mean?” Liesha suddenly grabbed her arms hard enough to cause bruises. Chalone winced and she released her grip. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Tell me.”

“Mor brought us back in time to the moment just after we left,” Chalone explained.

Liesha looked blank for a moment and then she turned as pale as Chalone. “We are witnessing the beginning of the maelstrom in the Hub!” She looked aghast at the dying Hall.

“Not all of it. Our Portals aren’t enough to create that monstrosity, but if this is happening throughout the Gallery…?” Chalone swallowed hard.

Liesha focused inward, listening to a strident voice issuing from her headset. “I still have to stop it here,” she said with jagged determination.

“You have that kind of power? Why didn’t you use it when we were trapped in the Hub?” Chalone accused.

“I was not able to. It requires many ECHOs, and our communications do not work in the Gallery.”

Vian finished giving orders for crowd control, organized the evacuation of the nearby houses, and initiated the clause in the council charter that gave her immediate and total control of all the resources she ever needed or wanted. She interrupted Chalone and Liesha.

“Hurry,” she said to Liesha. “If you can’t hold at least one of the Portals, then we’re marooned here forever. Everything we’ve all worked for will be lost.”

“I am aware of that fact,” Liesha snapped back at her.

Chalone looked from one to the other. “You both knew this would happen.”

“Not exactly,” Vian said. “The ECHO Hierarchs have suspected something similar for a while. Hence their frenzied attempts to get their communications working inside the Gallery,” she said pointedly and pulled Chalone away from Liesha, gathering up Pirelle and Jalemi. “Let’s leave Liesha to get on with it.”

****

Welcome, Anne Patrick

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GINGER!!!  Thank you so much for allowing me to drop by today and give a shout out about my new book.  Kill Shot is the first book in my Wounded Heroes Series.  It'll be available November 15^th at my publisher Desert Breeze Publishing, Christianbook.com, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and most online bookstores.  Here's the blurb and a short excerpt.

Former combat medic Kory Wagner has been in four war zones, served three tours in Iraq, survived countless firefights, RPG’s, IED’s and even a helicopter crash.  Now she’s home and out of the Army for good and someone is trying to kill her in her own backyard.  Just as disturbing is the handsome sheriff who’s on the case. 

Sheriff Sean Harding doesn’t quite know what to think of the decorated veteran that managed to outsmart an entire search party.  What bothers him more is the body of a PI, whom she hired to find her sister's killer, was found dead in a building Kory owns.  And Kory isn’t being very cooperative with helping him find the answers as to why someone would kill her sister and want her dead.  Will he be able to keep her alive along enough to discover the truth?

Excerpt

Sean stared at the door that stood ajar. He heard a noise come from inside. "Stay out here, Mr. Chandler." He drew his gun and quietly pushed back the door.

Another sound came from further inside the apartment. His heart pounded in his chest as he checked around each corner and behind each piece of furniture. In one of the bedrooms, he found the intruder going through dresser drawers. Judging from the small frame, blue jeans, purple hoodie and tennis shoes, it was just a kid. One that was about to get the lesson of a lifetime.

"Police... don't move!"

The intruder almost jumped straight up in the air. A figurine fell and shattered on the floor.

"Put your hands up and slowly turn around."

"This isn't what it looks like, Officer."

Sean lowered his gun in recognition of the intruder's voice. Kory Wagner. He should have known.

Kory's eyes widened when she saw him, her cheeks quickly turning crimson. "Are you following me?"

"No I'm not following you." He put his gun back in its holster. "You know I find it hard to believe you were in the army for twelve years because you sure don't take orders very well."

She lowered her hands to her hips. "You're not my superior. You have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do."

"You were a witness to a murder in my county. I have every right."

She seemed on the verge of a comeback when the landlord joined them. "Is everything okay in here? Oh Kory. I didn't realize you were back."

"Hi, Mr. Chandler. Yes, everything is fine. Super cop was just on his way out."

"I'm not going anywhere without you. And if you resist I have a nice pair of bracelets here to persuade you."

Mr. Chandler considered them both, before his eyes settled on Kory. "Before you leave, there is something I need to talk to you about."

"Sure." She looked at Sean. "Do you mind?"

"Just don't go far," he answered.

Find more of Anne's books at her website http://www.annepatrick.weebly.com and blog http://www.suspensebyanne.blogspot.com You can also find her on Facebook.

Welcome, Rachel Brimble

 I'd like to welcome Rachel to Dishin' It Out.  We've put together a few questions and answers so readers can better get to know her.

1)   Are you on track to meet your goals this year and do you have any for 2012?

I love goals! I am a goal fanatic. I work better under pressure than any other time so I tend to set weekly, monthly and yearly goals to keep me focused. I am happy to say I will achieve all my 2011 goals by the end of November which were write three novels and get an agent. I know, nothing too taxing then!

I secured a fabulous agent in March so that was fantastic and two of the three books are already with her. Book number three will be done by the end of November so I am really pleased. My goals for 2012 are less than 2011 because my books are likely to be longer as requested by my agent! Therefore, the goal is simple – two 90,000 word novels.

2)   Where would you like your career to be in five years?

I’d love to be self-sufficient through my writing. That is my ultimate goal. I don’t necessarily need the millions (although it would be nice!), but what I would like is to think I could support my children and myself just through my writing. That would be fantastic!

3)   Best thing you have learned from an agent/editor?

I can answer that question for both –

Editor – Know your characters backstories inside out. This is massive because it is the essence of who they are and why they make the decisions they do today. Whatever happens to us from childhood to adulthood shapes who were are in any given moment. Knowing your characters provides their motivation and ultimately their stories.

Agent – She has taught what polishing a manuscript REALLY means! My writing has honestly never been as good as it is now. I cannot wait for the release of my next book. I am very, very proud of it.

4)   What surprised you the most once you became published?

The time spent on promotion, definitely. It takes up a lot of time but it is also essential part of your future success. There was a time I got sucked into too much promotion which meant I was not producing any new work. DO NOT make the same mistake.

Now I figure out how much writing I have each day and limit myself to a quarter dedicate to promo, the rest creativity. It works!

5)   Tell us about your latest release…

It is a contemporary romance set against the gritty underworld of the UK nightclubs and pubs. Here’s the blurb:

Nightclub manager Grace Butler is on a mission to buy the pub where her

mother's ashes are scattered but the owner wants to sell to anyone but her. And that owner happens to be her father...who has a secret she

will do anything to discover.

Social worker and all around good guy Jimmy Betts needs funds to buy a

house for three special kids before their care home closes. Time is running out

and he's desperate for cash. He agrees to a one-time 'job' for bad-man

Karl Butler. But in a sudden turn of events, Jimmy finds himself employed by

Karl's beautiful, funny and incredibly sexy daughter, Grace. Their lives couldn't be more different, yet one thread binds them: they're both trying to escape the bonds of their fathers. Maybe the only way they'll be free is by being together, instead of alone.

http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=81&products_id=424

6)   What are you working on right now?

I am coming to the very end of book number nine which is a sexy contemporary romance with a huge dollop of humor. I am LOVING writing this book! Totally in love with the hero and want the heroine to be my best friend forever.

It is set in a small town in South West England and about a woman who wants to move her sexy lingerie and toyshop into her home after her business rate goes through the roof. That’s fine. If her new hunky neighbor hadn’t just moved in next door with his two young and very impressionable four-year-old twin girls.  He is far from happy…

For more about Rachel, visit her website.

Welcome, Sharon Donovan

Hi Ginger and thank you for having me on your blog today. Thanksgiving is upon us, a time to give thanks. It’s easy to get caught up in the holiday madness and forget what the holiday represents. Did you start planning the menu for the perfect meal? What are you waiting for? The clock is ticking.

Time to rush off to the market, buy the plumpest turkey to please Grandma, Aunt Tillie, that dear but hard to please mother-in-law, the hubby, kids, grand kids and everyone in between. Butterball or Honeysuckle? Fresh or frozen? How many pounds? Why oh why can’t I remember who likes mashed potatoes and who hates sweet potatoes? Will the strawberry jello set this year or melt into the green bean casserole and form a jaundice ball of something inedible? Oh dear, what kind of cranberry sauce was it that refused to roll out of the can, the one I swore I’d never buy again if my life depended on it? What would my guests think if I put them through that fiasco again. By time Uncle Chuck finally whittled it out with a sledge hammer, it lost its appeal.  Pumpkin or apple pie? What exactly is minced meat pie? Does anyone really know?

Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle. No matter how much fretting goes into the preparation of the Thanksgiving meal, the best laid plans…

When the holiday madness gets to me, I always think of my cousin’s ‘Perfect Thanksgiving’ when she lived in California. It was a warm sunny day, the amber leaves of autumn rustling with every gentle breeze. The family was gathered around the beautifully set table, the wine was poured in the best goblets, the twelve-pound turkey  was baked to a crisp golden brown, and all the trimmings were as picture-perfect as the rest of the holiday setting.. The family had just joined hands to give thanks for the mouth-watering meal when a loud buzzing broke into their revelry. The man next door was having his tree cut down.  Annoyed but determined not to let the loud hissing ruin the perfect holiday, once again, they joined hands. Once more, the prayer of thanks was drown out. The third time was not a charm. The tree crashed through the dining room window, splitting the table in half, smashing the turkey and all the trimmings to smithereens.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. Much later over pizza and beer, they gave thanks and counted their many blessings. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle. It’s not about the brand or size of the turkey, it’s not about the jello or cranberry sauce or pie. It’s about family and giving thanks. Take time to count your many blessings and appreciate the loved ones at your table. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sharon Donovan lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her family. Prior to the loss of her vision, she was a legal secretary for the Court of Common Pleas where she prepared cases for judges in Domestic Relations. Painting was her passion. When she could no longer paint, she began attending creative writing classes and memoir workshops. After a long and winding road, a new dream arose. Today, instead of painting her pictures on canvas, Sharon paints her pictures with words.

Sharon writes stories of inspiration and suspense. She has certificates in business and medical transcription. Echo of a Raven, a narrative non-fiction about her struggles with diabetic retinopathy, received a CTRR award for outstanding writing, and The Claddagh Ring is a 2009 CAPA nominee for best inspirational of the year. Mask of the Betrayer was voted book of the week at LASR and its video by Triad Productions was a second place winner at You Gotta Read. Other books by Sharon Donovan are Touched by an Angel, Lasting Love, Her Biggest Fan and Charade of Hearts. You can visit Sharon at

www.sharonadonovan.comm

or write to her at:

sharonad@comcast.net