Birth of a Nation; Birth of Willard Manor

This week we celebrate July Fourth and our country’s 237th birthday.  My how the country has grown!  From a fledgling rudimentary sparsely populated land to a well-connected, highly evolved (invention-wise) nation with all the latest gidgets and gadgets.  Thomas Jefferson would be lost in any office today--from getting there in an automobile, to hearing the constant din of telephones, fax machines, printers, and piped in music, to say nothing of having the world glow before him on a computer screen.  The quill pen in his hand would be useless with no ink bottles in sight.

All of this preamble is a sneaky way of letting you know about my new novel due out soon, called Willard Manor.  Willard Manor is a house, built in 1840, by John Willard, in a fictitious town in the middle of Connecticut.  As the country grows and changes, so, too, does Willard Manor.  Many generations of one family occupy this house over a period of 170 years and each generation “modernizes” it to some extent by adding indoor plumbing, electricity, a telephone, septic tank, and, eventually, a television set.  And along the way, the horse in the shed is replaced by a Model T Ford.

In researching for this novel, I learned many interesting things.  Among them:
How to build lath and plaster walls
The route of the Underground Railroad
When telephones and electricity were available for the masses
When polio was rampant and its treatment
How to build a still during Prohibition
The Civil War, WWI And WWII
The Great Depression
How to grow marijuana.

In reading this book, you will become aware that Willard Manor is a micro version of the United States.  It grows and expands, has heartaches and victories, births and deaths, yet, through it all, it stands strong, ready to face the future.

I will let you know when Willard Manor is available both on Amazon and on Kindle.

Here’s a short excerpt from the book:
“Listen,” said Shelley.  “Can’t you hear the voices?”  
Tony raised his eyebrows.  “Excuse me, but exactly what voices do you hear? Should I be calling the men in the white coats?”
“No, silly, I’m perfectly sane.  I just know this house is trying to tell us something.  So many people lived here over the years, so much has happened, right in these very rooms.  I wish I knew their stories.” 
 
Today’s Quote:  Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, 'Grow, grow.'  The Talmud

The Next Big Thing

I am participating in a The Next Big Thing blog hop and today it’s my turn to talk about my Work in Progress.  Here are the questions I was asked, followed by my answers.


What is the working title of your next book?  I have no idea, but I hope to come up with one by the end of the book.  The subtitle is, Two Cranky Seniors Get Married.

Where did the idea come from for the book? It will be the second in the Cranky Seniors Series.  The first was Mishaps and Miracles about two cranky seniors taking a ten thousand mile cross country road trip in a small car.  Talk about extreme togetherness!

What genre does your book fall under? Hmmm.  Humor, senior citizen interests.  Probably not romance.  :-)

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? 
Fred Mertz  - Fred
Ethel Mertz - Linda

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  Can a marriage survive when the bride and groom are independent, advanced in years, and set in their own ways?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?  Like the first in the series, it will be self-published on Kindle.  If I can remember how.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?  I don’t know, I haven’t finished it yet.  At the rate I’m going, it may take more time than I expected.  It would go faster if I uninstalled Solitaire and Mahjong from my computer.  And emails.  And the San Diego Zoo Panda Cam.  And the WeatherBug.  And a few hundred other distracting sites.  There’s a lot to be said for writing with pencil and paper when the biggest distraction you have is making doodles in the margins!  I’m sorry, where was I?  You should see what the panda cub is doing.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?  Ma and Pa Kettle, if anyone can remember back that far!

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?  I invited a man behind a drive-thru window that I barely knew to go to England with me on a vacation; he didn’t take me up on it; I went alone; we eventually got married.  I got more than a burger at the drive-thru!  I’m a self-confessed, card carrying cradle robber since I’m eight years older than he is.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?  I wanted to write the second book of the Cranky Seniors Series while I was still on this side of the grass.  The third installment, God willing, will be subtitled, Two Cranky Seniors Buy a Restaurant.  If you think two independent people living together is difficult, try working together.  Cranky takes on a whole new meaning.

Here’s an excerpt from my current, as yet untitled, story.

I was so used to my own space and quiet time, that I had a hard time meshing with him.  He got home from work before I did and was happy to see me as soon as I walked in the door.  The TV was on.  There was him, there was noise, there was no quiet time.  From morning to night, my formerly quiet little apartment was filled with noise.  I couldn’t stand it.  I needed SPACE.  I needed me time.  I needed quiet.  I told him I wasn’t sure this was going to work.  He had already sold his house so he had no other home to go to.  I felt bad and relented and told him he could stay.  “But,” I said, “I am going to have to have some time to myself once in a while.”  He agreed.

Turns out we had yet another problem.  I had a waterbed which was the mainstay of my life.  When I lived in New England, my bed was always cold at night and I tried everything from an electric blanket to a hot water bottle, to warm up the bed before getting in.  The first thing I did when I moved to California was buy a waterbed.  It had a heater under the mattress and no matter where you stuck your leg out, the bed was warm.  Beautifully warm.  The highlight of my day was coming home to my warm waterbed.  It was a luxury I never dreamed of in cold, bitter, New England.  Granted, Southern Californians don’t have a big need for a heated bed, but after forty-five years of putting up with cold temperatures, I absolutely loved my waterbed.  

Then Fred came along.  We could almost put up with the fact that when one of us moved around in the bed, the other felt like he or she was on a Disney waterslide ride.  It was uncomfortable, but doable.  But one morning, I woke up and said, “Boy, the bed sure feels cold.  I wonder if there’s something wrong with the heating element.”  

“Oh,” he said, “I shut the heater off last night, it was too hot.”

“You what?” I screamed.  “How dare you shut the heater off on my waterbed.  This bed is my lifeline, my solace in a cold world, my constant in my life, my….”  I went on and on, sobbing as I spoke, as though he had just torn out my heart.  When a heater goes on a waterbed, you end up laying on a mattress full of cold water and that was the very thing I had avoided for twelve years.  I moved to California to get warm, not to be cold all over again.  

A Big Victory!

My last post was about little victories.  Well, I just had a big victory this weekend!  Not major, but big to me.

I have ordered books and spent time learning how to upload a book on Kindle eReader.  In order to upload a book, I had to reformat my text and design a cover.  I've spent a couple of weeks or more designing a cover on my own, using a template I purchased on the internet.  But, ta daa!, all of that is done and last night I uploaded Mishaps and Miracles to Kindle and today it is in their online bookstore for sale at $2.99!  I believe it can also be seen on your phone, etc.  You can even read a sample of the book before ordering.  Here is what the book looks like:

There are a couple of mistakes in this one (Senior should be plural) but I'm still learning and will get better at this as I go along.  I am just thrilled to know I tackled a project like this---and won!   This book is a remake of Bumps Along the Way about our ten thousand mile road trip across the USA and back.

One down, a hundred new little victories to go!

Quote of the day:  Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.  Charles Schulz