The Whisper of Time, my time travel romance novella has arrived!
When fate offers Gwynn Powell a
chance to start over, she jumps at the opportunity. Laid off and living
with a husband whose gambling problem has eaten through a good part of
their savings, Gwynn buys a farmhouse sight unseen, leaving both her
marriage and her old home behind.
But fate has more in mind for Gwynn than just a new home. The
farmhouse, tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont where even GPS
can’t find it, is also a step back in time. And Slate Peck, the farm’s
caretaker and part owner, is tied to Gwynn’s destiny in ways she never
expected.
Sneak peek at Whisper of Time:
Chapter 1
It figured that I would get lost. Kyle was always telling me
I had a terrible sense of direction. “Turn left,” I would say, and he
would answer “Which left, Gwynn, yours or mine?” I used to think
everything Kyle said was charming.
I’d since found out that Kyle, like GPS, had a limited range. Out
here, in the middle of Vermont farm country, my GPS had stopped
functioning. A signal kept insisting the phone was searching for a
satellite, but it was becoming pretty clear that the satellite was
nowhere to be found. It was hiding, perhaps, from the snippy woman’s
voice that commanded me to turn left when I wanted to turn right.
Luckily, the real estate agent had given me directions. I’d scribbled
them down on the back of an envelope and was now trying to decode them.
The agent’s name was Vera Applegate, which I thought sounded like
Vermont. I could almost hear Kyle, “What, exactly, does Vermont sound
like?” And I might try and explain that it sounded like rolling green
hills and stone fences and cows lying under huge old maple trees. None
of it would have made sense to Kyle.
“Take route 153 from West Rupert town center and turn left on Witches
Hollow Road,” I read aloud. My bulldog Tyrone cocked his head from where
he sat in the passenger seat of the VW bug. “I know, right? Which was
town center, the shopping plaza or that quaint green with the historical
marker and the gazebo? And how far from town center?” Tyrone lost
interest in my pondering and went back to doing what he does best,
sticking his head out the window and letting the wind blow his jowls
back. Miss Kitty, my tabby, was pacing the back seat with a bad case of
nerves. I’d let her out of her carrier back in Saratoga, because she had
been yowling. She had stopped complaining aloud, though the prowl
wasn’t much better. I kept waiting for her to land on top of my head so
that she could navigate.
The road wound this way and that through the hills. I had slowed to a
crawl, nearly coming to a stop at each intersection to read the road
signs. Some of them looked like they had been posted in the eighteenth
century and never updated and some were missing all together. An old
truck, that looked like something out of the fifties, with a huge toothy
grill, eased up behind me, the grill nearly kissing my VW’s back
bumper. I hate tailgaters, so in defiance I slowed even more. The truck
beeped, making Miss Kitty jump and then the driver throttled up the
engine and roared past me. I caught a glimpse of a nice looking
sandy-haired man with a Jack Russell terrier on his lap. In that
instant, I got the notion that the dog was driving the car.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” I said to Tyrone. I went back to
searching for Witches Hollow Road. A wonderful name, isn’t it? I could
picture a trio of old crones stirring a steaming black cauldron,
throwing in mysterious ingredients like eye of newt and chanting spells.
That the farm was on Witches Hollow Road was only one in a long list
of features which made me take the leap and buy the place. I could hear
Kyle saying it was an impulsive thing to do. At least it wasn’t
compulsive, I argued back to his voice in my head.
I had, on the trip from Manhattan, scripted out the whole of the
argument we’d have when he found out what I’d done. He would storm into
the farm kitchen (lots of sunlight, wide oak plank floor), take the bowl
of muffin batter from me and ask “Have you gone stark raving?”
And I would take the batter back, and calm as you please I’d start
putting it into muffin tins. “I need a change. This is a change,” I
would say.
“Who buys a farm sight unseen?” Kyle’s mouth would be set tight, his hazel eyes squinched together.
“It’s an investment.”
An investment. I loved that part. It’s what Vera Applegate said after
I’d called for information on the too-good-to-be-true classified in the
Sunday Times.
Old Homestead. Needs some TLC. There
had been a picture next to the ad, the farmhouse like something out of a
picture book, an old barn sitting on an emerald meadow.
Twenty Acres. Small private pond. I was enchanted.
I’d been looking at estate sales for a long time. Each week, I’d open
the Times and imagine what it would be like to live in the rambling
Gothic in Portland Maine, the brick row-house on Beacon Hill in Boston,
the painted lady on Martha’s Vineyard. Window shopping is what it had
been, a Sunday morning pastime in the tiny basement apartment on Tenth
Avenue.
“We love
the city,” Kyle would say when I pointed out the cedar-shingled beach
house in Hampton. “And we could never afford it.”
He was right. We couldn’t have afforded any of them. And they would
have stayed tight in my imagination if I hadn’t seen the price on Auld
Lang Farm. I thought it was a typo.
When I called Vera, price was the first thing I asked about. “We can
get you financing. You would only need five percent down.”
I quoted the price again. “Is that right?”
“Sticker shock.” I could hear Vera chuckle through the phone lines. “We’ll run through the numbers and find a way.”
I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I didn’t think it expensive. Quite
the opposite. I began to wonder what was wrong with it. “It needs a
little work, updating,” Vera said. “Nothing too daunting.”
I pondered the house for a week. I even asked my friend Gloss to do a
Tarot reading. “Big changes in your future,” Gloss announced.
“What kind of changes?”
“I see a farmhouse. Somewhere pastoral. And a man. Ooh, he’s your destiny. The love of your life.”
This was spooky. I hadn’t told Gloss about Vermont. “Kyle is the love my life.”
Gloss shook her head. Her earrings- a string of silver hearts- began
to chime. “Never was never will be.” Gloss had advised me not to marry
Kyle. She insisted that he was no way no how the man I was supposed to
be with.
“I’m still married, you know.”
“You shouldn’t be.” I had never believed her, though a sliver of doubt
about my future with Kyle had found its way into my brain.
That in itself might have been enough to convince me to buy the farm.
But the universe wasn’t through throwing signals. A few days later, I
was told Bow and Meow, the veterinary clinic where I worked, was
closing. My boss, Ted Carlin, was going to retire.
“You’re a damn fine vet, Gwynn. You’ll find another job.” With that
scant bit of reassurance, Ted handed me a list of places where he
thought I could apply. Most were in the city, but one, right at the
bottom of the list, was in Rupert, Vermont. A Dr. Henry Bolger was
looking for a partner. It didn’t register at first.
“Rupert?” I asked Ted.
“In Western Vermont, near New York I think.”
Then it dawned on me. Auld Lang Farm was in Rupert! How much of a coincidence was that?
Though I still wasn’t convinced, mostly because I wasn’t sure I could
talk Kyle into moving to Vermont. He was a fireman with the NYFD and he
wasn’t likely to give up his job. Just the same, I called Dr. Bolger. I
figured I might as well cover my bases.
“Cornell, huh?”
“Yup. I’ve been working in New York City.”
“I’m a Brooklyn boy myself.” We talked for quite a few more minutes
and after that, Dr. Bolger said. “Well, you want the job or not?”
My heart was pounding. Did I want the job? “Sleep on it,” Dr. Bolger suggested.
Sleep? How was I to sleep with the universe making such a racket?
Though how was I to convince Kyle? The universe, it seemed, had an
answer for that as well. Sometimes, fate can hit you over the head so
hard it hurts.
Available as an e-book at:
Sadly, Whispers Publishing closed its doors at the end of last month. As part of the dissolving of the publishing company, the rights to Whisper of Time were reverted to me. As soon as I have some quiet time to spare, I plan on going through the manuscript and tinkering with a few things to make a new and (slightly) improved version. Then I'll put it out there again. Stay Tuned. 
