The first days of summer always seem to me to be the time of new beginnings -- or at least to start out on those things you wanted to do back in April at the start of the spring season. Summer is the time to enjoy finding new authors or starting new projects. Today's guest in My Writing Corner brings us a story of new beginnings. My guest today is author Liz Flaherty.
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She says she has spent the past several years enjoying not working a day job, making terrible crafts, and writing stories in which the people aren’t young, brilliant, or even beautiful. She says she's decided (and has to re-decide most every day) that the definition of success is having a good time. Along with her husband of these many years, kids, grands, friends, and the occasional cat, she says she’s doing just that.
Liz, what is your book that you will feature today and how did you come up with the idea to write it?
Let's learn more and get a blurb:
For all of her adult life, loner Maggie North has worked for bestselling author Trilby Winterroad, first as his typist, then as his assistant, and finally as his ghost writer. Throughout her first marriage, widowhood, remarriage, and divorce from an abusive husband, Trilby was the constant in her life.
When he dies, she inherits not only his dachshund, Chloe, but a house she didn’t know existed on a lake she’d never heard of. On her first visit, she falls in love with both the house and the lake. Within a few weeks, she’s met most of the 85 inhabitants of Harper Loch and surprisingly, become a part of the tiny community. Her life expands as does a new kind of relationship with her friend Sam Eldridge. She finally feels not only at home, but safe.
Until her ex-husband is released from prison. The fragile threads of her new life begin to fray, and that feeling of safety is about to shatter into a thousand pieces.
We need to hear more about this heroine. Let's talk to Maggie:
Tell us a little about your personal life when you worked as an assistant to Trilby Winterroad.
Personal life? I don’t know that I had much of one. I hung out with my best friend Ellie and did whatever unattached middle-aged people do. I like to bowl, sew, and cook, not in that order. Not too exciting, huh?
Tell us about your life with your husband.
With Tim, my first husband, it was what I thought my whole life would be. We were as intertwined as a woven rope. When he died of cancer while we were still in our twenties, I felt as if I’d died with him.
When I met Greg several years later, I was…I don’t know how to explain it…ready, maybe? I fell in love with him so fast, married him so fast. He was funny, handsome, charming. He was also an abuser who stole things, and that didn’t stop after our divorce.
Oh, gosh, it sounds so strange calling it a relationship. He’s been my lawyer and my friend for a long time, probably my best friend other than Ellie and Trilby. There would be little feelings sometimes that made me wish for more, but they would disappear as quickly as they came. Even if it was the right time for me, it wasn’t for him. At least, until I moved to the lake.
What do you want most in your life?
I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but at the end of the day—and from the vantage point of being in my early fifties—I’d like to love and be loved.
What do you want for your future?
You mean besides that disgusting admission I just made? Lol. I’d like to write, using my own voice and name and telling the stories of people who’ve come to life in my head and my heart. But I’ve never done it on my own, you know—I was Trilby’s assistant and ghost writer. I don’t know that I’d recognize my own voice.
And I’d like to be safe. To go to bed without being afraid I won’t wake up. That’s all.
Want more? Let's get an excerpt:
Like me, he’d brushed his teeth before coming to the kitchen, and he tasted of toothpaste and coffee and…oh, sweetness.
“Plundering,” I murmured against his mouth.
He drew back again. “Huh?”
“I’ve written it,” I explained. “We’re plundering each other’s lips.”
“Nah. Plundering is stealing stuff so you have to go to court and I can get you thrown in jail or keep you out depending on how much you want to pay me.”
I burst into laughter, knowing his integrity much too well to go for that one. “It’s that, too, but when—”
“We’re just deposing each other a little bit. Checking out witness reliability and all that. I think you’re a fine material witness.” He interrupted himself to kiss me again. I very nearly moaned with the pleasure of it. I held it back, but a whimper escaped, and he chuckled as he bent his head to kiss the hollow of my neck inside the soft cowl of my sweater. His breath was warm and fast, the feel of his lips on my skin some glorious word I hadn’t figured out how to write yet.
“Yes, ma’am. A fine one.”
What was he talking about? “A fine what?”
“Witness. Material.”
“Oh.”
“For when I go plundering.”
We both plundered a little more then, until I got up, pushing him away with light hands on his shoulders. “Cinnamon rolls.”
“Oh, yeah.” But he gave me one more smacking kiss before subsiding. “I might have to plunder them when they’re done.”
“Kiss them?” I raised my eyebrows at him as went to get the bowl of doubled-in-size dough. “You’re going to kiss pastries?”
He came around the island, carrying his coffee mug, and pulled me into his side, the motion reminding me of his height. “If you make them, you bet.”
I heard Chloe’s tags jingling as she hurried down the stairs. “Will you let her out? It’s always urgent in the morning, and she’s had to come downstairs, so she’s really hurrying.”
He opened the back door and the mudroom door, and the little dachshund sailed past both of us without so much as a yip of greeting. I watched through the window as she ran to her chosen spot at the edge of the woods and relieved herself.
A moment later, with her ears flapping as she ran, she scrambled toward the house and breakfast, stopping this time to let Sam assure her she was indeed the best dog in the world.
I have always loved mornings. Although I spend more time alone than is probably good for me, there is something about the solitude of the early hours that does, as the Psalm promises, restore my soul.
But for this early April morning on a little Michigan lake, I was glad not to be alone. And both my soul and my heart seemed to be thriving on restoration.
Want to know even more? You'll have to buy the book. Here are the buy links as well as contact information for Liz and to find out about her other books:Buy Link for pre-order:
Books2read: https://books2read.com/FlahertyBlue
Amazon: https://a.co/d/gCUo2FF
Social Contacts:
http://www.facebook.com/lizkflaherty
https://twitter.com/LizFlaherty1
http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com/
http://windowoverthesink.blogspot.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Liz-Flaherty/e/B001J919R4%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3336348.Liz_Flaherty
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/liz-flaherty
https://www.instagram.com/lizkflaherty/?hl=en
https://www.threads.net/@lizkflaherty
https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-flaherty-1a119845/
Thank you, Liz, for being my guest today. Any questions or comments for Liz?
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Thanks for having me, Rebecca! Maggie's interview was a first for me--it was kind of fun.
ReplyDeleteLovely excerpt! You capture an everyday moment that is, in the end, much more than that, beautifully! Your voice is like a blanket worn just right. Thanks for sharing your talent with us!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
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