In celebration of #ThrowbackThursday, I'd like to go back to the publication of my first contemporary romance!  Two Out of Three will always be one of my favorite stories about two flawed people and their toxic love.

He said that he needed her in his life...He swore that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman...But love? That was never part of the bargain.

Sarah Deardon loved two things: Dancing and Vincent Allen. She struggled for years to become the best at the studio while nursing her crush. When a tragic accident destroys her dreams of dancing, Sarah turns her full attention to Mr. Allen and pursues him with the same relentless determination that she had used dancing. Vincent keeps her at bay, trying to let her get through high school and college, even putting an ocean between them. His absence opens the door for the sexy rebel Robert Stewart. With Robert in the picture, Sarah’s life takes a dramatic turn leading her across the country and back again. She seals her fate with a bargain and she finds herself torn between a life of stability and a passion that refuses to be denied.

Excerpt:

With more determination that ever before, Sarah threw herself into her career. Always feeling the need to prove that she was better than her mother, she could make it in the world. Each day Sarah had appointments and photo sessions to go to, leaving Victoria in the care of Miss Chambers.

She battled rush hour traffic and the crowds of downtown Manhattan to reach the studios that were usually located on the upper floors of tall skyscrapers.  Once there, she was put through the torture of preparation and fittings for the winter season. While the rest of the population fought the soaring summer temperatures in their light weight clothes, Sarah was forced to stand under hot lights donning a fur coat or wool dress.

Hot and irritable, Sarah was often made to pose in the middle of Central Park, surrounded by fake snow in eighty degree weather. There were times that she was sure that she would faint before the photographer would get his shot.

As a model, Sarah was never comfortable. When it was below freezing, Sarah was posing in swimsuits. When it was one hundred degree out, Sarah would be photographed in furs. Oh! Modeling was hell!

Victoria became rather moody as the mother who had always been at her beckon call started drifting away and always seemed to be leaving her. She would cry and protest every morning when Sarah would prepare to go. “Momma, don't go! Stay and play!”

The musical twitter-like voice that chimed like bells when Victoria was happy, would raise to a siren-like wail when she was angry or denied what she wanted. Sarah tried to
reason with her daughter, but to no avail.

Every morning Victoria would cry, scream, and beg while Sarah tried to explain. The only result was that her pleas for understanding made her late every day, and according to Miss Chambers, as soon as Sarah was out of sight Victoria's tears would cease and she would go back to her usual agreeable self.

After one such episode, Sarah was pushing her way through the crowded sidewalks of New York. She was over twenty minutes late for her photo shoot; luckily, dressed in torn blue jeans, tee-shirt, and large sunglasses no one could recognize her and hold her up longer. She was able to move through the mob-like maze quickly, as she reached the doors of her destination another frenzied commuter walked into her. The impact caused her to drop her huge bag, the contents spilling out on the pavement.

“Damn!” Sarah exclaimed as she knelt to retrieve her strewn belongings. The stranger was on his knees as well, gathering her things before they were trampled by the crowd.

She lifted her face to thank her benefactor, when she did; she gazed into clear blue eyes, like the ocean or sky after a storm. Oh! She knew those eyes, eyes that could
turn emotionless so easily.

Oh God, she knew those eyes.  Her breath caught in her throat as she stared into the dangerous face of the man she hoped never to see again and yet, here he was, Rob.

Sarah’s heart began to pound loudly again the walls of her chest.  She feared that he would hear it and know her anxiety. Her body began to tingle from just the nearness of him.  She inhaled the scent of him as she removed her glasses. “Dear God!”

That crooked smiled that Sarah used to love came across his face, Rob's raspy voice played across the strings of her heart. “What? Didn't you miss me?”

Recovering from her original shock, Sarah snatched her things from his hands and shoved them into her bag. She was too aware of the electric sensation that run up her arm when their fingers touched.

Sarah couldn’t let herself get pulled in.  She glared at him, remembering all that he had put her through. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Don't tell me you thought that I'd lay down and die just because you left, you must have known that you'd see me again?” Rob asked with a bemused smile crossing his lips. “Didn't you miss me at all?”

Casting her eyes down, Sarah tried to fight the surge of emotions that were pulsating through her body again with just the closeness of him. “No, I had hoped that you would stay away.”

Rob stepped closer to her, “I'm never very far away from you Sarah.”

She blushed under his steady gaze, causing him to laugh rudely. “Don't flatter yourself, I didn't come here for you.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Sarah asked as indifferently as possible as she placed her glasses back on to hide her too revealing eyes.

“I'm here meeting with some agents,” Rob replied and stepped even closer so that Sarah could feel his breath on her cheek.  “But was that a note of disappointment I heard?”

Eager to escape, Sarah turned away and opened the door, looking back just once more. She was trying to memorize every detail of his face. “Yes, I had hoped that you were dead.”

Rob chuckled as she walked off, “You still don't lie worth a damn, Sarah.”

With that he walked off and mixed with the mass of people, Sarah stared after him from the shadows of the foyer, fighting the urge to run after him.

She had to force herself to look away, Sarah wanted to hate him, but deep inside she had been waiting for his return. Sarah engraved the memory in her mind, hoping to live on that one vision for the rest of her life. She knew that fate had given her one last chance to stare into the face of the love that could have been, should have been, and now could never be.

Anyone that follows me on Twitter or Facebook knows that I just finished the final edits of Incarnate and that it's off to the first Beta reader!  To most authors this would be a moment of celebration and anxiety, but this time my mind has already started dreaming up my next project.

Anytime that I get a new idea for a novel, the first thing that I do is start researching important locations or historical elements.  This time I get to learn about another culture, history, and more!

It may sound strange, but research has always been my favorite part of the writing process.  This is where, in the back of my mind, my characters start to take shape.  After all, in my Spiritus series, who would Alastor be if he hadn't been a soldier in the Civil War?  What would have changed in Becca and Alastor's original relationship if she had not been caught up in the Battle of Corydon?  Those tiny historical elements shaped who the character were and what happened to them.

As a writer, do you love or loathe the research that you have to do?  As a reader, does the tiny historical or cultural details add to your enjoyment of a novel?

Last night, while trying to fight the urge to forgo sleep and continue editing, I was channel surfing for something to watch in bed.  I came across the classic time travel romance, Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.  Suddenly, I could forget all about editing and just savor this movie favorite.

For those of you that have never seen it, I have included the plot summary from wikipedia:

In May 1972, college theater student Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is celebrating the debut of a play he has written. During the celebration, he is approached by an elderly woman who places a pocket watch in his hand and pleads "come back to me". Richard does not recognize the woman, who returns to her own residence afterward.

Eight years later, Richard is a successful playwright living in Chicago, but has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is struggling with writer's block. Feeling stressed from writing his play, he decides to take a break and travels out of town to the Grand Hotel. While looking at a display in the hotel's museum, Richard becomes enthralled by a photograph of a beautiful woman. With the assistance of Arthur Biehl (Bill Erwin), an old bellhop who has been at the hotel since 1910, Richard discovers that the woman is Elise McKenna, a famous early 20th century stage actress. Upon digging deeper, Richard learns that she was the aged woman who gave him the pocket watch eight years earlier, but subsequently died later that same evening. Traveling to McKenna's home, he discovers a music box she had made, in the shape of the Grand Hotel, that plays his favorite melody. He also discovers among her effects a book on time travel written by his old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney (George Voskovec), and learns that McKenna read the book several times. Richard becomes obsessed with the idea of traveling back to 1912 and meeting Elise McKenna, with whom he has fallen in love.

Visiting Finney, Richard learns that the man believes that he himself very briefly time traveled once to 1571 through the power of self-suggestion. To accomplish this feat of self-hypnosis, Finney tells Richard, one must remove from sight all things that are related to the current time and trick the mind into believing that one is in the past. He also warns that such a process would leave one very weak, perhaps dangerously so. Richard buys an early 20th century suit and some vintage money and cuts his hair in a time-appropriate style. Dressing himself in the suit, he removes all modern objects from his hotel room and attempts to will himself into the year 1912 using tape-recorded suggestions, only to fail for lack of real conviction. Later, while searching the hotel's attic, Richard finds an old guest book from 1912 with his signature in it and realizes that he will eventually succeed.

Richard again hypnotizes himself, this time with the tape recorder hidden under the bed, and allows his absolute faith in his eventual success to become the trigger for the journey back through time. He drifts off to sleep and awakens to the sound of whinnying horses on June 27, 1912. Richard looks all over the hotel for Elise, even meeting Arthur as a little boy, but he has no luck finding her. Finally, he stumbles upon Elise walking by a tree near the lake. She seems to swoon slightly at the sight of him, but then suddenly asks him if he is "the one". McKenna's manager, William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer), abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Richard stubbornly continues to pursue Elise until she finally agrees to accompany him on a stroll through the surrounding idyllic landscape. Richard ultimately asks why Elise wondered aloud if he was "the one". She replies that Robinson somehow knows that she will meet a man one day who will change her life forever. Richard then shows Elise the same pocket watch which she will eventually give him in 1972, but he does not reveal its origin, merely saying it was a gift.

Having checked into room 416 at precisely 9:18 am, Richard accepts Elise's invitation to her play. He attends the comedic-farce and she, in an almost trance-like state, recites an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During intermission, he finds her posing formally for a photograph. Upon spotting Richard, Elise breaks into a radiant smile. The camera captures what we realize is the same portrait that Richard will see 68 years later on a wall at the Grand Hotel and that the expression on her face that he fell in love with was from her looking at him. He later receives a letter from Robinson asking to meet him immediately and saying that it is a matter of life and death. Robinson tricks Richard and has him tied up and thrown into the stables. Later, Robinson tells Elise that Richard has left her and is not the one, but she replies that she does not believe him and he is wrong. Elise admits to Robinson that she loves Richard and that he will make her very happy. Dispirited, Robinson leaves her dressing room and reminds her that they leave within the hour.

Richard wakes up the next morning and escapes his constraints. He runs to Elise's room and finds that her party has left. Despondent, he goes out to the hotel's porch. Suddenly, he hears Elise calling his name and sees her running towards him. They return to his room together. The next morning they agree to marry. Elise tells him that the first thing she will do for him is buy him a new suit. (The suit Richard has been wearing the entire time in 1912 is about ten to fifteen years out of style.) Richard begins to show her how practical the suit is because of its many pockets. He is alarmed when he reaches into one and finds a shiny new Lincoln penny with a mint date of 1979. Seeing an item from his real present wrenches him out of his hypnotically-induced time trip, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards with Elise screaming his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably out of 1912.

Richard then wakes up back in the present but in the room he just left in the past at the Grand Hotel. He is drenched in sweat and very weak, apparently exhausted from his trip through time and back. He scrambles desperately back to his own room and tries to hypnotize himself again, without success. Heartbroken and after wandering around the hotel property and sitting interminably at the places where he spent time with Elise, he eventually retires to his room and remains there unmoving for days until discovered by Arthur and the hotel manager; they send for a doctor and paramedics. Richard suddenly smiles and sees himself drifting above his body and (having presumably died of a broken heart) is drawn to a light shining through the nearby window, where he is reunited with Elise.

Do you have a favorite movie moment from this romantic classic?

It's #ThrowbackThursday so I'm dragging out my first fiction novel to be published!  This literary novel set me on the path to my current fiction work.

Ghost Country
Carrying echoes of Amy Tan and Rebecca Wells, Ghost Country takes the reader into the lives of three Cherokee women and the lives of their modern day daughters. Told in a series of vignettes that alternate from the era of the Civil Rights Movement, Woodstock, and the Vietnam War, to the present day. Each story carries the reader through a world where a birthday wish can make people disappear; where a child, after being told that she is nothing, can find her way back to the forgotten Cherokee traditions; and where a woman can give her daughter a treasured bit of advice thanks to a dead rock star.

Excerpt
My aunts have asked me to accompany them to my grandmother’s house. They want my help to sort through her things now that she has gone on to Tsusgina’i, the ghost country. It is the final duty of a daughter and I was to represent my mother, who was too busy with her artsy friends to deal with the obligation.

My mother commonly had this reaction to death. If we were in nearby Corydon, she would cross the street rather than walk past the front of the funeral parlor. I didn’t pretend to understand this, since it was my aunt Autumn that lost a husband, but then again, my mother had mourned a dead rock star for most of her life. Needless to say, she had some strange ideas about death.

When my Aunt Ama called with the news of my grandmother’s death, my mother came down with a full schedule and volunteered me to act in her place. When Ama told me, I wasn’t surprised by my mother’s reaction, but I was shocked that my grandmother died. I always thought that the devil himself would have to hit my grandmother over the head himself to get her in the ground.

“How did she die?” I asked.

“What do you mean ‘how did she die’?” Aunt Ama barked. “She was seventy-six years old. She just woke up dead, that’s all.”

I did not ask how a person could wake up if she was dead. I understood what she meant, that my grandmother was old, had lived her life, and now she was dead. It was as simple as that, but in our family, it was never that simple.

My grandmother started and honored the traditions in our family. Some of these were handed down from her Cherokee parents, others I was pretty sure she made up as she went along. For example: The name thing, what was that about? All of the names in our family were special, be it the seasons in which we were born (my mother and her sisters claimed that right), the Cherokee name for the month that we were born in such as my cousin Anayilisv, something in nature such as I, or to honor the dead as in my cousin Joe’s case.

My grandmother told us the story of her own name Selu, which meant corn in the Cherokee language. It was something about a woman that could make corn come out of her body and her sons that buried her body wrong when she died; I never really paid close enough attention because I could not ever get the facts straight.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” she would say to my cousins and me. “Always listen to your mothers.”

I do not know about my cousins, but I never took that lesson from her story. What I remembered was the corn coming from the woman’s body, but even that trivial fact somehow got mixed up in my six-year-old mind. I would go into her kitchen in the early summer and see fresh cornhusks in the garbage can. My imagination took flight and I would be pulling at my mother’s hand and announcing that my grandmother had pooped in the garbage can again.

Everyone would laugh when I said this, thinking it was my childish attempt at a joke. I never could understand why they were laughing, no one bothered to explain. It seemed that I never understood anything, that even now I was still seeing the world through the eyes of a six-year-old child. Now, after learning of my grandmother’s death, I was trying to remember the story about the corn woman and just what it was that the sons did wrong when they buried her so that we would not make the same mistake.

* * *

My grandmother’s house was just outside of Lanesville, Indiana. It was a small white bungalow surrounded by three acres that had not been tended in more than thirty years and kept the house lost in a sea of green grass. When I arrived, the first person that I saw was my Aunt Ama. “I was starting to think that you had forgotten us.” She complained. “What took you so long?”

Aunt Autumn stood up, I had not seen her sitting on the porch swing, and nodded as she shook her finger at me. “We were starting to worry.”

I did not say anything. What could I say? Do I tell them the truth? Do I tell them that I sat in my apartment and tried to think of a plausible excuse not to come? My mother would have told them just that, but I was not my mother.

Aunt Ama unlocked the door and motioned us inside, waving her hand as if trying to fan the outside air into the old house. Once inside, I understood. The house held the scent of the food cooked over the years such as greasy venison and sweet grape dumplings, of Christmases long gone when the rooms were decorated with pine boughs and sweet pears, talc from my grandmother’s twice-daily showers, and of ammonia where she mopped the kitchen floor twice each and every day. A lifetime of scents trapped in rooms too small to hold them.

I looked around the living room, expecting things to be different, but nothing changed from my last visit. Along the walls was the same old furniture, nubby and black, looking just as ragged as it must have been long ago when my grandfather brought it home from a yard sale. My mother used to shake her head at this every time that we entered the house and would declare loudly: “Your grandmother never owned anything new in her life until my father left, don’t let that happen to you.”

Being only a child, I dared to ask her once what was so wrong with that furniture. She snorted, “Every time I sit down, I think of some stranger farting on that same cushion.”

That thought stuck with me over the years. Each time that we visited my grandmother, I would look at that couch and picture an overweight man in his boxer shorts passing gas while drinking a beer. It got to where I could almost smell it.

Back when she first corrupted me with this idea, we lived with my grandmother, later we visited her every Sunday. The aunts would be there with my cousins and we would all have lunch together as a family.

My mother and her sisters would stay in the kitchen with my grandmother. My cousins and I would pretend to go off and play, but then we would sneak back to listen at the door. We heard stories of things that took place before we were born, people we never met, and things never meant for our ears. I think we all learned about sex by listening to our mothers’ giggling conversations through that kitchen door.

“Your mom is so cool,” my cousin Ana whispered after overhearing my mother talk about her escapades at a place called Woodstock. “I wish my mom was more like her.”

Ana’s mother was my Aunt Ama and I used to think that Ama was the most beautiful, even more so than my own mother was, because Aunt Ama kept her black hair in two long braids and always dressed in rich shades of turquoise. She was by far the most Cherokee of all of us and proud of it even though my mother often teased her and called her Pocahontas behind her back.

“Your aunt wouldn’t know a good time if it hit her in the ass with a tomahawk,” my mother would whisper, often loud enough for Ama to hear. “What Pocahontas needs is a big chief in her teepee.”

If Ama was the most beautiful, Aunt Autumn was the most tragic. No matter what she wore, she gave everyone the impression that she was in a perpetual state of mourning. Her life was like the script to an old movie, something sad and in black and white. She married her childhood sweetheart and when he died in Vietnam, she never got over it. She had to raise my cousin Joe all alone. It was the saddest thing that had ever happened in our family.

“She’s going to die of a broken heart,” my grandmother used to say about Aunt Autumn. “And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Then there was my mother. She was not the most beautiful, in her face were too sharply blended the angular traits of her Cherokee mother and the fluid features of her German American father. She was full of contradictions, my mother was, and seemed to change her convictions as often as she changed her clothes. She could be the most annoying person in the world, preaching about animal cruelty, but when you asked her about her new leather purse she would smile and say that it was from the Big Mac that she ate for lunch. She took up all of the space in a room with the enormity of her personality; you couldn’t be near her without feeling pushed out of the way.

I followed my aunts to the back of the house and into the kitchen. I was stunned to see them opening cabinets and taking down cans of soup and boxes of crackers. “What are you doing?”

“First we will have lunch,” Aunt Ama explained. “Then we will take care of things.”

Now the idea of cooking and eating in a dead woman’s kitchen did not appeal to me at all, regardless of the fact that the dead woman was my grandmother that I had seen almost every day of my life. “Why don’t we just go out to eat then?”

“And waste all of this food?” Aunt Autumn chimed in while pouring the soup into a pan. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

If there was any one principle that all of us inherited from our ancestors, it was the idea of never taking more of anything that we could use, waste was the unforgivable sin. Long conversations would take place regarding what to do with a scrap of fabric or the remnant of carpet left over when Aunt Autumn had her bedroom carpet replaced. I still remember the guilty pleasure I experienced the first night in my own apartment when I threw an empty jar of mayonnaise away. The family motto, if there was one, had to be “Waste not, want not”. My mother even adhered to this strange idea, although she did warp it from time to time to suit her mood.

Because of this ideal, our feast that day was a potluck of items from the cabinets that would soon go stale and products from the refrigerator that were nearing the expiration date. Eating in our family was not a formal affair, or even a gracious one. By the meal’s end, Aunt Ama was eating chocolate chip ice cream straight from the carton with one of my grandmother’s serving spoons.

“Rose, make us all some coffee.” She ordered with a wave of her spoon, “We will have some while we work.”

I did as I was told. Even though I was there in my mother’s place and she was the middle child, I was still the youngest in the kitchen that day and I was brought up to serve my elders. I took the mugs from the cabinet, avoiding the chipped white cup in the corner. No one had to remind me which one was my grandmother’s cup; I looked at that mug and knew that it only belonged in her crooked fingers.

“Cream and sugar?” I asked the aunts, blinking back the tears. It never crossed my mind before then that I would never see my grandmother’s leathered hands again holding that cup. How long before I even forgot what they looked like?

I poured the coffee as the aunts washed the dishes in the sink. After drying the dishes, they divided and then packed them away in three boxes bearing each of their names. They stuffed the garbage from our feast into a trash bag and set it by the door. They walked then back into the living room with me following behind, struggling with the three mugs. They ignored the sofa and instead sat cross-legged on the worn carpet.

Aunt Ama took one of the cups from me, “We might as well get started. Go and fetch Momma’s trunk from her room.”

It was as if she asked me to go right into my grandmother’s tomb. That is the only way that I could describe the way that I felt. After all, she died in that very room. “Oh, I don’t think I should. I mean it’s not my place.”

“Of course it’s your place,” Aunt Autumn whispered and patted my hand. “That’s why we’re here.”

“I just wouldn’t feel right going through her things.” I explained, hoping that Autumn would rescue me.

“Nonsense, would you rather a stranger do it?” Aunt Ama asked. “Some person that Momma never met pawing through her things like some dime store sale?”

How could I argue with such reasoning? I couldn’t, so again I did as I was told. I wished then that my mother wasn’t so crazy when it came to these things. Even though all of this was giving me the creeps too and I was wishing I had some artsy friends to disappear with.

The halls of my grandmother’s house are very narrow and dark, cooler than the rest of the house. My cousin Joe and I used to sit at the end of the hall during the summer and talk of boys, school, and the insanity of our mothers. That seemed a thousand years ago as I turned and walked into the bedroom. My grandmother’s chest sat at the foot of her bed. The mattress had been stripped, but her slippers were still beside the bed. It was odd to see those empty house shoes there, waiting for feet that would never come.

I took the chest, which was less heavy than I expected, back out to the living room and sat it down on the floor between my aunts. They both just looked at the wooden box, each solemn and quiet

“Are you two okay with this?” I asked. “We don’t have to do this today.”

“Sit.” Aunt Ama ordered without looking up.

I took my place beside them, expecting that one or the other of them would open the chest right away, but they did not. Both of them sat there, the chest before them, drinking their coffee. I was confused, sitting there listening to the two of them sipping and slurping their coffee. “Is this some sort of ceremony?”

“No.” Aunt Ama replied, not taking her eyes from the box. “I just want to drink my coffee before it gets cold.”

Taking sips of my own coffee, I wait, glancing at each of them from time to time. Aunt Autumn met my eyes and smiled in her own tragic way, “It is good to see you again Rose. It seems that I never get to see any of our girls anymore.”

That was how they had always referred to my cousins and me, as if we belonged to each and every one of them. I also suspected that this was her way of asking about her own daughter, Joe, I couldn’t remember if they were bickering or not. It happened so often, I never could keep up. I knew Autumn saw Ana a couple times a week so she wouldn’t be referring to her, which only left me and Joe.

“We are all very busy.” I answered diplomatically. “We all wish that we could find the time to see each of you more often.”

Aunt Ama snorted and I lowered my eyes. I was in dangerous territory. I spoke to each of their daughters on the telephone a couple of times a day. At that moment, I probably knew more about their daughters than they did and I did not want to give away any secrets. It is a treacherous place to be, between a mother and a daughter.

Perhaps sensing that I was not going to say anything else, Aunt Ama sighed and motioned toward the trunk. “Well, let’s get this over with.”

She opened the chest, throwing back the lid to reveal the woody scented leftovers of a life. There were photographs of people I had never met, bundles of letters with the ink so faded that I could barely make out any of the words, a few bottle caps, and other such meaningless antiquities. This was the true Tsusgina’i, I thought, a lifetime of memories contained in mundane objects and no one there to explain the meaning.

I could not imagine touching these items. No matter how trivial they appeared to me, those things were the very essence of who my grandmother had been. These were all of the secrets she never told. I kept my hands folded in my lap, but I wondered the history of each item. Whom were the letters from? Why save bottle caps?

Aunt Ama reached in and took a faded photograph from the top of the pile. She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as she strained to see the picture. “Grandmother and Grandfather maybe?”

She passed the photograph to me, but I had no way of confirming her assumption for I never knew my great-grandparents. I looked down at the photograph, printed on thick paper that was starting to curl at the edges, to see a young unsmiling couple standing side by side. It was no different from other pictures I had seen of other people during the depression era except that both the man and the woman had long black hair down to their shoulders.

Aunt Autumn took the photograph from me. She gave it a brief glance and shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember what Grandmother looked like.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Ama scolded with an arrogant toss of her head.

“I don’t see why,” Aunt Autumn said in her own defense. “You don’t know who is in the picture either. After all, I only saw Grandmother once and I was too little to remember it.”

“You should have more respect for your ancestors.”

To end their bickering, I forgot my reservations, reached into the chest, and gathered up the bottle caps. “What were these for?”

“For bottles of course.” Aunt Ama snapped, dismissing them with only a glance.

“They are much more than that.” Aunt Autumn explained, taking the bent pieces of metal from me. “These are from the bottles of the first soda pops that your grandmother ever drank. She thought that they were so delicious, that she drank six of them one right after the other and got a horrible stomachache. She kept the bottle caps to remind her never to be so greedy again.”

“Who in the world told you such a stupid story?” Aunt Ama asked as she thumbed through another stack of photographs.

Aunt Autumn smiled, not tragically this time, but with an expression that can only be described as gloating. “Momma told me.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“Then you must not have been listening close enough.”

Again, I tried to find a way to end their quarrel, even though I hated to do it since it was one of those rare moments when Aunt Autumn had the upper hand. “Does anyone need any more coffee?”

Neither answered, they sat there glaring at each other. Fuming over age-old grudges that began when they were only children until Ama shrugged. “It doesn’t matter any way.”

She went back to sorting through the items in the chest, handing some to Autumn, and a scarce few to me. I looked down at the tarnished silver and turquoise jewelry she handed to me, some were intricately carved and others looking as raw as the earth itself. What was the story of these pieces? Why did she choose each one and why were they hidden away?

Ama handed me a sharp black and white photograph. My grandmother’s young face smiled back at me, paler than natural, but still beautiful. I studied the photo for a moment, “Why is she so pale looking?”

“This must have been taken just after her and Daddy got married.” Aunt Autumn said as she leaned over to look at the picture, “She wanted to look whiter. She didn’t think his mother would approve of her if she knew that she was Cherokee, so she powered her face.”

“What did she use?” I asked. “Chalk?”

“Rice powder.” Ama stated and took the picture away from me. “She learned soon after that there is no point in trying to hide who you are. It always catches up to you.”

Aunt Autumn sighed and rolled her eyes, “Does everything have to be a moral lesson?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the way that life is.” Ama said and then took a bundle of letters from the trunk. She turned to me and smiled. “Now here is something that should interest you.”

I took the packet from her, studying the smudged postmarks and the thin pale script. There must have been more than a dozen of them, all yellow and crumbling, held together by a tattered white ribbon with a dried and withered spray of white flowers. The smell of moldy decay clung to them. I could feel the aunt’s eyes upon me and I felt that I should say something, but what?

“Thank you.” I whispered, looking down at the letters again, straining to read the addresses from all over the world.

The aunts were staring at me; I could feel their eyes bearing down. I felt that I should say something more, but what? I met Ama’s eyes again, seeing the shock and disappointment filled me with guilt even though I had done nothing wrong.

“You have no idea what I am giving you, do you?” Aunt Ama asked and then shook her head. I could see the disappointment in her face.

I stole a glance at Aunt Autumn and saw much of the same expression. What had I done wrong? Was it my fault that I did not know the importance of a stack of old letters? I had a ticket stub from when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was ten. When I die, would my aunts cast such disapproving eyes on my granddaughter if she did not jump for joy over a faded ticket stub?

I wondered then if their anger was not just for me, but for their own daughters as well. There was an entire history that we knew nothing about, things we had never asked. To be honest, a history we cared nothing about.

“You know nothing about who you are or from where you came.” Aunt Ama sighed. “These are the letters that your mother wrote to Momma after she left home and went traipsing around the globe. You should have asked her about them a long time ago.”

I wondered then if my cousins and I were not the true ghost country, souls lost to them and our ancestors. Were we dwelling in a void where the past not only did not matter, it simply just didn’t exist? Were we doomed to be lost forever? Did the souls of Tsusgina’i even know that they were condemned?

Kindle Ver

So, my daughter is back in school and of course, that means a whole new year of assigned reading to make kids hate books just a little more, or so I thought.  This year's teacher has allowed the kids to pick their own books to read as long as it is on their reading level.

I was thrilled when one of the first books my daughter selected was Little House on the Prairie.  The Laura Ingalls Wilder series is one that I read again and again, savoring each page and even memorizing entire passages (Yes, I'm a total geek).  It was one of those super awesome mom moments when I felt a complete connection to not only who my daughter is at this moment, but to who she is going to be as she grows older.

Are there any classics that you just loved as a kid and can't wait to share with next generation?

In celebration of #ThrowbackThursday, I thought I'd drag out my first published book.  It's a far cry from the paranormal romance I write now, but I am still quite proud of it.

About Home Decorating for the Real World:

Dana Michelle Burnett will show you how to decorate your home to fit your busy life of work, family, and pets. She will show you how to stop trying to live in a magazine and decorate for your real world.

Discover fun new ideas and helpful hints for every room. Learn the simple step-by-step plan for designing a beautiful room. Get tips and tricks for seasonal decorating on an actual budget. Home Decorating for the Real World will have you thinking about decorating your home in a whole new way.

So, as many of you are aware, I am deep in the first edits of Incarnate, the third and final book in the Spiritus series.  The process got me to thinking about the different rituals and superstitions that we writers have when we edit and how odd we can be at times.

Paper- When I print out that first draft, I do it a chapter at a time.  As I edit, I insert additional scenes by putting "insert #1 where the new scene is needed.  I then write the new scene out long hand on college ruled spiral notebooks with perforated margins. I then tear the pages out and paper clip them to the chapter.  Now, here's where the superstition comes in.....I like to use red notebooks because red is the color pen normally used in editing.

Pens- The red notebook brings me to my next dysfunctional little quirk.  I won't use a red pen and ask anyone editing my work to please not use one.  Why?  Red is such a hostile color!  It's very discouraging to get back a manuscript that looks like it's bleeding.  I prefer using blue or better yet, purple.

Post-Its- Okay, this is a little odd too, but I don't like to use yellow post-its when I edit.  They are just so ordinary and boring.  It sort of makes me feel like I'm doing secretarial work instead of creating.

Junk Food- When I am writing, I might indulge my sweet tooth every now and then, but for the most part, I avoid sweets.  When I'm editing, the exact opposite is true.  I proofread while munching on gummy bears and burn the midnight oil by drinking orange soda by the gallon.  Definitely not good for the waistline!

So, to the other writers out there, do you have any strange editing superstitions or dysfunctions?

I am so excited for the first sneak peek at the last novel in the Spiritus series, Incarnate!

            I sat alone at the Louisville International Airport. It wasn't yet lunchtime, but a steady flow of people walked past with half eaten fast food orders looking neither right nor left, all of them on their way to somewhere and they were in a hurry to get there.

            It was odd how very normal they all looked as they rushed about the terminal. What would any of them think if they knew what I was trying to do? How terrified would they be to realize just how thin the line really was between life and death? Would they all look so normal then?

I can't help it.  I love classic romantic horror and the very best example in my opinion is Bram Stoker's Dracula.  So, I thought I would share one of my favorite songs, from my one of my favorite soundtracks, from one of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books.  Did you get all of that?