#8Sunday #SundaySnips: The Hill

Welcome to the Sunday Eight, the blog hop where writers post eight sentences of a writing project or a published book.
I'm nearly ready to send Dancing to the White Room back to my editor for another round. The book is a full length women's fiction about the love we keep and what makes it precious.

The main character, Mallory, is a ski patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain, a place she refers to as 'the hill'. Here's a little bit of description--

photo by Tina Phillips

It’s the last day of February and there’s a heavy fog here this morning that sticks to the mountaintops. The chairlifts disappear into it. Tomorrow, we’ll turn the calendar page, but it won’t be spring here, not yet. Just a mix of cold and the warm trying to get born. Spring comes slowly here, the transition unruly and guarded; more snow, some wind, then the mud will come and muck up our front steps and suck at our boots. Another month will pass and there’ll be a quick step to heat and black flies, while summer waits in the wings.

I love this time of year on the hill. The days are longer and warmer, the crowds thin to a die-hard few, the craziness in all of us comes out and we ski in shorts and tank tops, the moguls are thick, the slush like syrup, deep and heavy.

Thanks for stopping by!

For more Sunday Snippets, please visit Weekend Writing Warriors and Sunday Snippets. 

Dancing in the White Room is due for release by Turquoise Morning Press in March of next year. For more on the book and my other work, please visit my website  

Introducing Dancing in the White Room

Photo by Tina Phillips

I'm excited to announce that my upmarket women's novel, Dancing in the White Room, will be published in early 2014 by Torquoise Morning Press as part of their After Happily Ever line.  The theme is skiing and the winter release is perfect.

Here's a little bit about the book:

Dancing in the white room is slang for skiing or boarding in deep powder snow. The dancer is PD Bell, one of the best extreme skiers on the planet. Mallory Prescott, the woman who lives with him and loves him, is used to Bell’s exploits. A patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, Mallory is no stranger to risk. But this time Bell is taking on the West Rib of Denali, highest and most dangerous mountain in North America. It’s a descent that has never been done, though it’s been tried. Five years ago, Bell had tried it. The attempt nearly killed him. Five years ago, he promised Mallory he wouldn’t try it again.

     Over the six weeks in which he’s gone, Mallory begins to question her relationship with Bell. Does he really love her? Is he in it for the duration? What has loving him cost her?  Mallory’s life choices are thrown into stark relief when her daughter Emily takes a terrible fall. Together with her life-long friend Creech Creches, she must work her way through a maze of uncharted territory at a hospital miles from home.

            Dancing in the White Room is the story of the love we keep, the price we pay for that love, and the forgiveness it takes to hold on to what is precious.

#SweetSaturdaySamples Blueberry out take.

Hi Sweet Samplers! My women's literary novel, Blueberry Truth, is coming to print soon so I thought it might be fun to do an out take today. Earlier drafts of the book included some of Blueberry's voice. These were later edited out to smooth out the narrative and make it an easier read. Blue's voice, though, helped me to capture her as a character and helped her to come through in later versions.

This is from a very early draft, one of the first things Blue "said" to me. 

   My granny the one who call me Truth. Ma call me Blueberry because that what she like to eat when she have me. I live with my Ma and Julio and Frostie before she gone off to Florida and I have to go to Granny house and she change my name. No baby be called Blueberry is what she say. I say there no baby here. I am seven years old, old enough that I go to the store by my own self. Granny say I seven years old with a mouth. That be Ma fault, she say. Ma ought to have said me some manners, but Ma run off with  trouble, is what Granny say. 

            Teacher at the new school show us to write cursive, but my letters come in crooked. Child write crooked, teacher tells Granny. Uncle Dee say it cause I stupid. I ain’t stupid, I say. You a little bitch like your Ma, he say. She can’t write good neither. I throw a cup at him, hit him in the nose and make it bleed. Uncle Dee got a good job that pay twenty dollars an hour, Granny say. Don’t you be messing with him. She make me sit in the closet. One hour for being disrespect. One hour, but when I see the clock she let me out it been one hour and one half. I can tell the time. I ain’t stupid.

 Beanie and Mac MacKenzie have led charmed lives. They both have jobs they love: he’s a pediatric cardiologist; she’s a teacher at a school for troubled children. They’ve recently bought a big house on a quiet Albany, New York street only blocks from where they grew up together. The only thing missing are the children with which they’d envisioned filling that house.
  Enter seven-year-old Blueberry Truth Crowley, a fiercely independent child whose life has been anything but charmed. When Blue ends up in Beanie’s classroom, their two worlds collide.
     Blueberry Truth is the story of that collision and of the commitment and love it takes to make not a baby, but a family.

For more great Saturday Samples, please visit Sweet Saturday Samples

Blueberry's Coming to Print!

Blueberry Truth is coming out in paperback in mid-October!

Beanie MacKenzie and her husband Mac have led perfect lives, with perfect families and perfect jobs they both love, he a leading cardiologist, she a teacher at a school for troubled children. Now they have the perfect home, a big house on a quiet Albany street, just perfect for raising a big family. Only the babies they’ve been trying so hard to conceive just won’t come.
Stressed in her marriage and fearing she may never bear children, Beanie throws herself into her work, surrounded by society’s throwaways. Enter Beanie’s new student, seven-year-old Blueberry Truth Crowley, a fiercely independent child whose life had been anything but perfect. Abused, neglected, and mistrustful of everyone around her, Truth throws a monkey wrench into the perfect order of Beanie’s classroom--and into her very life--challenging Beanie’s notions of motherhood, commitment, and family. But their unlikely bond may be just the thing to teach them both about love.

Announcing I'll Be Seeing You!

My short story collection, I'll Be Seeing You is coming to Turquoise Morning Press in July of 2013!

I'll be seeing you is a trilogy of short stories about three generations of women and the loves in their lives:

The Lilac Hour: Sara has been widowed longer than she was married. Now in her eighties, she discovers that anything is possible in the lilac hour.

Love Letters: Maggie rediscovers the letters that her husband Jake wrote long ago. Can she rekindle the passion that was once theirs?

The Road Not Taken: JoAnne meets an old love at Target. Has she made the right choice in choosing her husband David?

Sweet Saturday Sample: Blueberry Truth Out Take

Link on cover for details

Welcome to another Sweet Saturday Sample.

I thought it might be fun to do an 'out take' today. Early drafts of Blueberry Truth included some of Blueberry's voice. Though they didn't make the final draft, they did help me to get inside the head of  troubled seven-year-old Blueberry Truth, which made a big difference to the book over all.

This scene comes from the center of the book, when Beanie takes Blue to her niece's First Communion. Blue has never been in church before. This is her take on the experience:

Granny, she don’t believe in church. There be a God, he no friend of mine, she say. Beanie go to a fancy church. All rich with colored windows got pictures in them.  Big vat of water in the back. Beanie dip her hand in and make a sign of a cross like I seen Julio do and drag me down to the front. We sit on a long bench next to a whole bunch of other peoples that is her family. Get them all these bright colored dresses. One lady, she wear a big white hat that flop down all over. The hat lady hug Beanie and kiss her on the cheek. This my sister Lily, Beanie say. Then we all sit down.

There this big music that come up.  Beanie point up behind us to the balcony. Silver pipes going every which way all making sound.  Whoever play that thing miss the notes. Then everybody stand up and start to sing some song I never hear before,  voices all up and down and everywhere. Beanie show me the magazine, which got words and notes all over like a story. Then a bunch of kids come in. Boys all got white suits. Girls like they going to get married, all in white dresses. They walk down girls on one side, boys on the other. Maybe they get married like that, but they just kids like me and kids not supposed to get marry. I want to ask Beanie, but she say no talking so I don’t say nothing.

The big hat lady, sister Lily, she look like she fit to cry. Another lady in a pink dress sister somebody, put her arms around hat lady and whisper something at her. Pink dress lady look at me eyes all sharp and then to Beanie. Beanie smile and look at the magazine.

They go on and on a long time just like Beanie has told to me. We pray and then we sing again and then a man come with a basket on a pole and everybody put money in the basket except some put in a envelope like maybe they write a letter to God or Jesus.

Then all the get-marry kids go up front and the preacher give them something look like a white paper to eat. Then everybody else eat the white paper. Beanie’s Ma and the rest of her peoples go, but Beanie put her arm around me and whisper we wait here. I sit down and wait and everybody come back and say excuse me and kneel on that thing they got for kneeling.  We been here about two million year now. Beanie whisper almost done. Then the marry-kids go out and everybody follow and we stand on the step outside. The sun make me blink.

For more Sweet Samples, please visit Sweet Saturday

Beanie's Interview

 Beanie MacKenzie, the main character in Blueberry Truth, is being interviewed today! Come stop by at the World Literary Cafe and say hello!

Blueberry Truth Trailer

I made a trailer for Blueberry Truth. It's my first attempt at video and I had fun doing it.  Hope you like it!