#8 Sunday. The Rialto

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Welcome back, snippeteers! I'm gearing up for the release of my latest romantic comedy, Searching for Superman. The book's heroine, Stephanie, works in an old theater called the Rialto.
This week, I'd like to share the reader's introduction to Stephanie's workplace

She was Conrad Finch’s assistant and her job consisted of answering phones and e-mail, sorting the bills, and bringing Conrad soy vanilla lattes from Starbucks like the one she was trying not to spill as she walked.

      That is not to say that Stephanie didn’t love the Rialto. It was the oldest theater in the Capitol district, though like the rest of the city of Schenectady, it was struggling to make a comeback. Conrad Finch was nothing if not passionate about making this happen and Stephanie was proud he’d chosen her to help him. Conrad had a strong vision of someday, when the theater would attract name acts and Broadway road revivals. They would host a regional theater group and maybe they would even show the Metropolitan Opera live on screen as they had in a similar theater in New England last year.

      Stephanie could almost see it. Though today, with the cold March wind sweeping stray paper to the curb in front of the marquee, the place looked downright shabby, like a garish old woman who had insisted on one too many face lifts.

Searching for Superman releases on June 3. For more on the book, click HERE

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#8Sunday: Happy Easter

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Happy Easter everyone! In honor of the holiday, I thought I'd take a break from Anton and Lenora and give a snippet having to do with Easter.

These eight come from "The P-Town Queen", a romantic comedy set in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  Marco, the hero, has just been dropped off in the heart of town by the Teaneck Gay Men's Choir. He's running from the mob and has decided that the best way to hide is by pretending to be gay.

After the bus dropped us off and Evan got the boys to sing “So Long,
Farewell,” as we went our separate ways, I had to stop myself from flagging
down another bus and begging the driver to take me back to Newark.

I walked the length of Commercial Street. Most of the shops were
still closed and the only noise came from the pier where the boats were going
in and out and off into distance. Church bells started to ring, and I thought
about my Nona and how all those years she’d drag me off to Mass every
week and how on Easter she’d always hide a couple of those plastic Easter
eggs with pennies in them. I was a sucker for those eggs. I don’t think she
would’ve liked it to see me walking down the street homeless, so I made her
a promise that I’d find a job. And that, after I got done with being gay, I’d
settle down with a nice girl.

I remembered Evan’s words about my not seeming gay, so every
time I saw two men together I watched real careful so I could imitate.

Happy Spring! 
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#8Sunday Still writing To the Wind

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Hi Sunday snippeteers! I'm still working on the draft of To the Wind. It's a historical novella set in 1852 on and around a clipper ship. I think I'm finally getting to the end of my voyage. The book is a sequel to Sweet Lenora, which will be released in July. I think this may end up being a series, as I won't resolve everything in book two and more conflict keeps arising. So it goes when you let characters run amok. The story is told in the voice of Anton, a sea captain in his late twenties.


Here's my eight:

She put her hands to her hips and a fire lit in her green eyes. “You forget, Sir, that I helped to build Sweet Lenora. I knew her every inch before you even set foot on her and I will not tend roses while a group of poxy old men decide her future.”

“I’ll defend the Lenora,  isn’t that what I have promised to do?”

“And I promised to be your helpmeet, not your flower tender.”

I doubted the poxy old men gathered in the courthouse would agree that my wife had an admirable disposition. But then, they did not know her and love her as I did.“Get dressed and hurry. Wear the gray dress, it is far more serious.”

Thanks for stopping by. Click here for more Sunday Eight. 

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Weekend Writing Warriors: To the Wind

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Well, another week has passed and I'm still busy working on the Sweet Lenora Sequel, To the Wind. It's been fun researching the nineteenth century.

This week's sample comes from the end of chapter three of the novella:

  I stared at her with mouth agape. I could not have caught her meaning clear.

  She turned her eyes from me, her hand continued to offer out the coat. “I have given you

my heart, Anton. I own that I do not want it back. But it is difficult for me to fathom why the man that I love would rather keep a deal with the devil than lay hope in the woman he professes to love.” Tears ran down her cheeks and I would have taken her in my arms had she not so completely set me asunder that my own heart bled. I could not allow a woman to run my life, even if I loved her more than I did that life. I took my coat and my leave.

For a list of all the great WeWriWa samples, click the image at the top of the page. 

Sweet Lenora is coming out in July. For more on this historical romance novella, click on the cover image.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Sweet Lenora sequel

Hi all and welcome to my first weekend writing warriors post. Weekend warriors is a new eight sentence meme where writers post eight sentences of a current work in progress or a published novel. For more weekend warrior posts please click HERE 

I've been doing lots of promo of late.  I've got several books out in the world and it goes without saying I'd love it if you would go and check them all out. But for this meme, I thought it might be fun to give a glimpse of what I'm currently working on.

Right now, I'm deep into a writing the draft of a sequel to Sweet Lenora. Sweet Lenora is my very first historical romance novella. It's a love story between a sea captain and the daughter of a wealthy ship builder. I wrote it as part of Champagne Books "dark heroes" series and you can see more about the novella by clicking on the cover image. You can't read it just yet, it will be released this summer.

Sweet Lenora is written from the first person perspective of the heroine, Lenora.The second novella, with a working title "To the Wind" continues their adventures in the hero, Anton's,voice:

 After we fled, I kept my council because I did not want to cause my love a moment’s worry, nor did I want to remind her of the night she and I sailed from Rio, leaving Mr. Settle in a pool of his own blood. His death at her hand had already caused her far too much grief. There were times she would cry out in her sleep and I knew Settle was the source of her night terrors. How could I add to them?

            Yet as we came into the Pacific and drew closer to San Francisco, the meeting in the public garden weighed heavily on me. I did not want my marriage to contain secrets. I had seen firsthand how secrets could devour trust and cause more grief than any truth uttered. So it was that I vowed to tell her all that had transpired.

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