My writing colleague, Leesa Freeman graciously invited me to join this blog tour. She’s a contemporary mainstream author, Secretary for the American Author and Publisher’s Guild, and a native Texan, living Connecticut.
I am currently reclaiming ownership of my first published novel, To Say Goodbye, from a small press in order to self-publish it. I then will issue the sequel, The Light Gets In, where faithful followers can see what Maia and Ben are doing lately. In the fall, if no other options arise, I will publish Caravan of Dreams, a historical novel about gypsies in Connecticut in the 1800s. I can’t wait to get that out!
My works tend to involve historical events and psychological issues. For example, To Say Goodbye focuses on personal growth and transformation through a relationship, with a setting impacted by JFK, Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban missile crisis. Its sequel, The Light Gets In, has a theme of forgiveness in the context of Rasputin. Caravan of Dreams explores the lives of a Connecticut gypsy family, Thomas and Victoria Williams, while examining the psychology behind Victoria’s death on the railroad tracks in East Hartford.
I feel compelled to address questions when I write: did Victoria kill herself or was it an accident? Do we learn from false government claims (Bay of Pigs, Gulf of Tonkin) or do we repeat them? Sometimes, the arc of the story is clear to me; sometimes it evolves as I go.
To continue this tour, I introduce you to three authors I respect, who will post on their sites next week:
Jen Eifrig, a member of my first writing group, is an author, consultant, and full-time mom. She is a lover of all things mysterious and magical, including religion, mythology, archaeology, natural history, space, computers, parapsychology, and string theory. She lives in unabashed geeky glory with an annoyingly brilliant husband, two budding fangirls, and a miniature pinscher that thinks it isn’t.
Another local writer, Kasey Shoemaker, is a transplanted New Englander, originally from Florida, who started writing when she was seven years old. She has a Masters in writing from Trinity College and enjoys drinking red wine, eating anything that goes with red wine (most things do), singing, dancing badly in her living room, practicing yoga and kickboxing (not at the same time), and watching Tarantino movies.
I “met” Stephanie Rose Bird through the A to Z Blog Challenge. Author of five published books, Stephanie is a member of the American Botanical Council’s Herb Research Society, the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (Black Midwives and Healers), and the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy as well as the Authors Guild. She graduated with honors from Temple University, Tyler School of Art and received an MFA from the University of California San Diego. Bird won a Senior Fulbright Scholar Award and through that award she did field work in anthropology in Australia with various groups of Australian Aboriginal people. More recently she has been studying Gullah culture in South Carolina.
I hope you take the time to check out these three amazing and diverse women and learn what they value. And don’t forget to read their posts next week in My Writing Process Blog.
Beth Lapin 