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Today my guest blogger is Carlene Havel, author of A Hero’s Homecoming. She is sharing with us some of her early childhood memories.

A Hero’s Homecoming is coming soon to:
www.inspiredromancenovels.com

Remembering

By Carlene Havel

What is your earliest memory? Here are some of mine.

Age two and a half: I sat on the floor watching my mother read a paperback novel. Her eyes moved across, then down. Across again, and down again. Occasionally she would turn a page. If I wanted to know what was in my little picture books, I had to get someone to read them to me. It made me jealous that Mother was so absorbed in her book. I was so envious of her ability to read.

Age three: I climbed into my grandmother’s lap with my Little Golden Book “Kerry the Fire Engine Dog”’ in my hand. “Read to me?” I plead. After a few pages, I pointed out that she had skipped a page. “If you have the book memorized, there’s no point in me reading it to you,” she said, and dumped me out of her lap.

Age five: “I don’t like spinach,” I impertinently reminded my mother.“Those are mustard greens. Eat them.”

“No,” I argue, “this is spinach. I can tell.”

She digs a can from the trash. “Look,” she says, “mustard greens.”

I know I am defeated. “All right,” I agree sullenly, “I’ll eat this stuff because I can’t prove it’s spinach. But next year I’m going to learn to read. Then I’ll know that can says ‘spinach’ on it. And after that, I won’t ever eat this stuff again.”

I eventually learned to love spinach, but never recovered from that wonderful obsession with reading.

Carlene Havel

Author of A Hero’s Homecoming (pending release)

Fifth Grade Writing Lesson

From the second grade on, the first big assignment when I returned to school in September was always the same. Tell what you did last summer. How I envied some of my classmates. They went to far-away and exciting places like The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, and Padre Island. James Parker even told once of his visit to the Statue of Liberty. I never went any farther than 0ne hundred and fifty miles down the road to visit Aunt Opal.
All that changed the year I started the fifth grade. When Miss Morgan wrote on the board, write an essay about what you did last summer and be prepared to read it to the class next Friday, I took my Big Chief tablet from my desk and scrawled in bold cursive across the top line: LAST SUMMER I WITNESSED A MURDER.

That wasn’t exactly true. There had been a murder-suicide in our neighborhood. It took place on the vacant lot across the street from my house. Barton Harlowe, the man who owned the grocery store around the corner, killed his wife Edna and then shot himself.
When it happened I was with my mother and brother. We were visiting a neighbor several blocks away. I had, however, heard several first-hand, if somewhat conflicting accounts. That was good enough, I decided. I began to write.

I told of how Edna ran, screaming and crying from the back door of the store. How Barton followed in hot pursuit brandishing a gun and shouting, “Triflin’ woman.” Most of my witnesses told me that he really yelled something much worse. I didn’t dare write that. Barton stopped, took aim, and shot. The bullet hit poor Edna in the back of the head. She fell to the ground. Her blood gushed out and soaked into the dry earth. Then Barton put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger again. My more reliable witnesses said he’d put the gun to the side of his head. The gun in his mouth sounded more dramatic. When he shot, the top of his head flew off and his brains splattered all around as he hit the ground.

By now I was completely engrossed in the yarn I was spinning. I added, for good measure, that Barton went directly to Hades. Miss Morgan would look askance at the word Hell. There he would sizzle and fry through all eternity. Edna, however, went directly to heaven where she was given a long, flowing white robe and a pair of gossamer wings. I reasoned that gossamer couldn’t be a bad word. I read about gossamer wings in a fairy tale.

The next day, just before morning recess, Miss Morgan said, “Billie, remain in your seat when the bell rings. I need to talk to you.” I thumbed through my memory, trying to think of something I’d done that would elicit a reprimand and came up with nothing.

As the last student exited the room, Miss Morgan, took a sheet of paper from the stack on her desk, and holding it, came down the aisle toward me.

My heart beat double time. I was in some kind of bad trouble.

Miss Morgan sat sideways in the desk in the row next to me. She had my essay in her hand. Her scowl did not indicate good tidings. Maybe gossamer was a bad word. She asked, “Did you really see this murder?”

My parents kept close watch on what happened to my brother and me in school. I knew I’d better tell the truth. “No.” I offered in my own defense, “I did talk to several eye-witnesses.” I tagged my assertion with a question, “Does this mean I have to write another essay?”
Miss Morgan shook her head. “No, but it does mean I’m dropping your grade one letter. What was once an A is now a B, and you certainly can’t read this to the class, it’s not appropriate.”
I was beyond disappointed. B grade I could live with, but missing an opportunity to tell the class about seeing a murder seemed cruel and unusual punishment. I was too relieved and too anxious to escape to argue. “Yes ma’am. Can I go now?”

“May I,” Miss Morgan corrected, “And yes, you may.” As I neared the door, she called after me, “Billie.”

What had I done now? I turned, “Yes ma’am.”

“Take my advice and the next time you write, tell the truth.” She stood. “I hope you have learned something from this.”

I didn’t take her advice. To this day I am telling tales, spinning yarns and embroidering the truth. I did learn something. Fiction and fact are conjoined twins.

I enjoy writing stories about ordinary people because I believe that each individual is, in his or her own way, fascinating and unique. When caught in unusual circumstances and faced with difficult decisions, ordinary people rise to the occasion in unexpected and astonishing ways. Although my characters may at first glance appear to be average, on closer inspection you will find that their stories are romantic tales that charm and captivate readers. Allow me to introduce you to some of the ‘ordinary’ characters who reside in my three books that DBP will be releasing in 2010.

A Long Shadow

Meet Tyler Carson. She has lived in the small city of Summerville all of her life. The outside world seems alien and far-away to her. Even so, she has never quite fit into a small town’s 1955 society. She’s thirty and unmarried, she’s had more than one love affair and she has a job that is traditionally man’s work. She would like to hold onto the status quo, but forces she can neither alter nor accept are converging to question everything she feels to be solid and sure.

May I introduce Grant Madison? He is a military man and the son of Summerville’s most revered citizen. He is home again after many years of serving in the army in Europe and Korea. So many challenges await him: The care and rearing of his ten-year-old niece, learning a new trade, adjusting once more to a way of life that seems dated and behind the times. His biggest challenge is facing Tyler Carson, the woman he loved and left six years ago.

Grant sees social and political changes looming on the horizon. He sets about to right some of the wrongs he sees all about him, never realizing what the cost of that venture will be.

If you would like to become better acquainted with Tyler and Grant and their 1955 world, read A LONG SHADOW due to be released by DBP in December of 2010

Meet Lucky Livingston. Lucky is a handsome, twenty-four-year-old devil-may-care cowboy with a silver tongue and an over abundance of charm. He’s out to settle an old score — whatever the cost.

May I introduce Bridget McGuire? She is an eighteen-year-old orphan with a dangerous secret and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to keep herself and her brothers out of harm’s way.

Bridget and Lucky meet and sparks fly. Add to this volatile mixture a dangerous outlaw, a marauding band of Ku Klux Clansmen, three inept matchmakers, a bank’s missing loot and one dishonest deputy sheriff. That’s a combustible concoction!

To learn more about the 1922 world of Lucky and Bridget read BRIDGET’S SECRET due to be released by DBP in July of 2010.

Search for Paradise.

Meet forty-six year old Kate McClure whose husband has just divorced her after of twenty-five years of marriage. Kate is financially destitute and alienated from her two adult children. In a desperate attempt to hold onto her independence, Kate moves with her aging mother Belle, to Paradise Ranch, the homestead they left when Kate was a child.

Enter Hank Sinclair— a handsome middle-aged Casanova who is a confirmed bachelor with an eye for attractive women and the belief that he has prior claim on Paradise Ranch. He is instantly attracted to Kate.

Against her better judgment Kate enters into a business deal with Hank and finds she is falling in love with him despite his frank admission that he wants no lasting relationship. Should she run or settle for a temporary arrangement?

Hank would love to get Kate into his bed. But how can he even consider committing to a woman again? And especially a woman whom he suspects is still in love with her former husband. He’d be a fool to get too involved. Still—

If you’d like to know more about Hank and Kate be sure to read SEARCH FOR PARADISE to be released by DBP in March of 2010.

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I am an avid reader and enjoy most of the book I read. I read mostly e-books that I buy on-line. I don’t write reviews for any book reviewing organization. If I review a book here it will be one I purchased and read, and that I think is an outstanding story.

Summer Wine by Helen Ravell is just such a book. Below is my review.

Claire Graham lives in Australia where she conducts a tour group that after two weeks’ of touring, ends at Hunter’s Rest Vineyard.

At the end of one of these tours Claire meets Sam Bennett who is the most gorgeous man she’d seen in a long time. He’s an American who has come to Australia to learn more about the wine making business.

Claire is immediately attracted to Sam. The feeling is mutual and when Sam asks Claire for a date, she accepts. He apologizes because he has no car. Claire tells him she doesn’t mind. She prefers poor and honest to rich and deceitful.

Sparks fly between the two and soon they have begun a torrid love affair.

At Sam’s insistence Claire quits her tour guide job and applies for a public relations position at the winery although she feels she’s not qualified for the position. She lands the job and succeeds with little help from some of her co-workers and outright resentment from a few of them.

Sam proposes marriage and Claire accepts. By now she’s hopelessly in love with the man.

They board a plane for America and while in mid-air, Sam tells Claire he’s a very rich man and heir to a vast multinational corporation. Claire is stunned. She can’t run nor can she hide. She’s forced to try to deal with the situation, then and there.

Her husband is rich and powerful. “It should have been a dream come true but it didn’t feel that way.” She forgives him even though she feels he deceived her and married her under what she considers false pretenses.

That’s only the first hurdle. Claire must adjust to living in a strange country, dealing with Sam’s elevated social position of power and prestige, and coping with a mother-in-law who is convinced she married Sam for his money.

I love this story. It’s romantic without being melodramatic. It’s very well written. There are no lulls as the plot unfolds. The characters are believable and, for the most part, likeable. Even the mother-in-law has a few late-blooming, redeeming qualities.

Without benefit of fantasy, mystery, time-travel, or any other ploy, Helen Ravell tells a sweet, sensitive love story that I read in less than two days.

If you’d like to purchase this book you can find it where I found it, here:

http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-18/Summer-Wine/Detail.bok

“Control of loveliness is the wisdom of verse.”

Quote from “Solon’s Prayer to the Muses”

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

These words were written by an Athenian law giver who lived some five hundred years before the birth of Christ. He recognized then, as we do now, that there is loveliness in the wisdom of artfully crafted verse.

Technically speaking, verse is a generic term applied to rhythmical, and most frequently rhymed, compositions. The term comes from the Latin word for furrow meaning a turning. It is properly applied to the method by which one metrical line in a poem turns into a new line. Versification is the art of writing in lines.

On the surface composing verse appears to be a simple and uncomplicated undertaking. In truth is the most disciplined and structured of all poetical activities. The ability to see the magnificent in the commonplace, and to set that magnificence to the rhyme and rhythm of conscious life in the cadence of the ordinary, requires the ability to control and match the rhythm of the listening ear to the vision of the seeing eye and then to express that vision in the rhetorical language of the imagination.

Language in poetry is highly organized, concentrated, and intense. This concentration and intensity coupled with sound devises such as rhyme and meter give poetry its musical quality. A controlled blend of rhythm and meter conveys and reinforces meaning even as it sings to our senses.

How can mere words take on the singing quality of music? In the explanation there lurks ambiguity and a touch of mystery. On the most rudimentary level, they can’t; however, sound patterns in poetry affect us in much the same way music does. Structured rhythm and patterned rhyme combined with the words of a poem can create a song—a serenade—a symphony. They weave a kind of lilting enchantment that impinges on the ear to touch the heart and echo through the soul. Poems can stir thoughts and ideas by the loveliness of their musical charms.