Talking to Calum from Love of Her Lives

Since the weather has finally crept up warm enough to revisit my garden, I thought I’d also revisit my first novel Love of Her Lives. Perhaps you’d like a fun, lightly paranormal romance for your summer read.

In Love of Her Lives, Calum and Beth have lived through many lives, many trials, striving to attain a peaceful, loving union. Striving, but unfortunately not attaining. These two soul partners keep falling short.

To gain a better understanding of the pitfalls that continue to thwart this couple, I took a moment to speak with Calum, the hero of Love of Her Lives, in the Akashic Library in the Upper World where Calum waits for Beth to return from her life on Earth.

Calum stands at a marble table thumbing the pages of a tome. As I approach, he drags his attention from the book, and then turns his impressive body to block the pages he was reading. He flicks a strand of crème-caramel hair from his face and levels discerning eyes of blue on me.

My breath catches in my throat. I knew Calum was startling handsome, but I wasn’t prepared for the way his presence takes up so much space.

SC: Hi there, Calum. Thanks for agreeing to chat with me today. Since you appear to be busy, I’ll keep this interview short.

CC: A pleasure to meet you. I am about to depart, so your expediency would be appreciated.

SC: Okay, let’s get to it then. Has it been difficult for you to be separated from Beth, or does absence truly make the heart fonder?

CC: It wasn’t my idea for Beth to live a life on her own and to describe the condition of my heart as fond in reference to Beth would be a grievous understatement.

SC: That’s sweet, Calum. I understand that you are one of Beth’s spirit guides, yet did you not agree that she would live this life without you?

CC: Agree? No one asked it of me. She made the decision alone. I promised to safeguard her, to help her learn her lessons, and then return to me. But the lass seems to have forgotten she promised to work on her propensity for recklessness.

SC: I wouldn’t call Beth reckless, a bit of a risk-taker perhaps, but as her spirit guide, can you not offer a whispered reminder in her ear?

CC: She pays me no mind, as if I have ceased to exist.

SC: I’m sure she’s just distracted. Life does that to a person. Besides, you really have no choice but to let Beth walk the path of her own choosing, no?

Calum scoffs at this, reaches behind him, and closes the tome he was reading.

CC: How can I, when the woman unwittingly chooses a path that leads to her destruction? Her future is grim. I’ve seen it. She will spend the best years of her sweet life in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. ’Tis an injustice too bloody devastating to bear.

SC: That would be a devastating way to spend a life. Since there truly is nothing you can do about it, perhaps it would be easier to look away and hope you are wrong.

CC: I’m not wrong. I won’t be looking away. I won’t be staying away.

My gaze drifts to the spine of the tome he was reading. Studies of Supernatural Worlds.

SC: There’s a rumour here in the Upper World, Calum, that you’ve been dappling in magic, scrying Beth’s future, perhaps even looking for a way back to Beth?

CC: Hmmph. I wouldn’t be searching through tomes, if the Old Ones would share their wisdom. Beth needs my protection. That’s all that matters.

SC: Let’s hypothesize that you have found a way to return to Earth. Beth is a grown woman. She won’t know you. She didn’t want your intervention in your last life together, why would she welcome it now? Not to mention, you haven’t walked the earth in a hundred years. Things have changed, you know.

CC: Tis a challenge to be sure, but Beth should have a battalion protecting her when she walks the earth. I’ve a quick wit. I’m adaptable. I’ll decipher the ways of the 21st century.

Calum takes a step forward, his hand presses the small of my back. I feel the heat from that light touch as he nudges me toward the door. All power and grace, but there’s dominance in that touch too. A feminine strand in me envies Beth, to be loved so fiercely, and a part of me knows she better brace for the warrior’s intrusion.

SC: Good luck, Calum. I know you have Beth’s well-being in mind, but she is resourceful. Perhaps you should give her a chance to solve her own problems before you intrude on her life?

CC: Perhaps you should be on your way before The Old Ones find you in the library. They wouldn’t want a mere mortal leafing through their sacred tomes.

Calum directs me across the room and closes the door behind us. I haven’t had a chance to warn him against using Alfarian magic, but it’s too late. With long strides, Calum charges down the hallway and out of view. Yep, Beth, better brace herself.

If you’d like to find out how Beth does, you can purchase Love of Her Lives in whatever format works for you here: sharonclare.com

Or click the link on the sidebar to buy for your Kindle.

 

 

 

For The Love Of…

My turn at the Romance & Beyond love wheel, my mind was a blank. Turning the task over to free-association, I considered the word, love, because we’re all about everyday love here at R&B.

Mother’s voice pops into my head. Oh, for the love of Pete!

Hands behind my back, one foot doing that rocking back and forth thing we do when we’re kids and we’re uncertain how to reply, all I could think was, Who’s Pete?

Exasperation was clear each time she used the phrase, and she used it often. In a frustrated whisper, head buried in the pots’n'pans cupboard. Turning inside out socks right side in, one hip braced against the washer. On the phone with her sister, cord spiralled around her stockinged ankles, ashes ready to fall from her cigarette. Brow twisted as she plucked a doozy of a knot in my laces…

I did not know Pete,  did not know how I managed to get such a knot in my shoe. My lack of knowledge in such worldly matters were enough to elicit another oh-for-the-love-of-Pete from her lips.

This unknown nemesis, Pete, was mystery enough, but no, my folks had to throw Dad’s arch enemy, Sam, into the mix.

In the shed, the rake, clearly caught on something unseen, would not come free at his bidding. Our black & white TV turned to snow in the middle of the 6 o’clock news, the car wouldn’t start after a night of leaving on the headlights. A lock of Dad’s brylcreemed hair would fall over his forehead. What the Sam hell…?

Sam. Pete. I take leave of this post to mention, my parents had only girls.

 

To Blog or Not To Blog

I’ve been blogging here at Romance and Beyond for about six years now. For the last year or so, I’ve debated starting my own blog. Both Sherry and Carole have their own wonderful blogs.

After the release of my second book, I realized that for all the promotion I’d been doing, I was not driving traffic to my website. There are endless promotional opportunities available online and I’ve been like a dog in a yard full of squirrels. I’m now trying to learn to scale back and stick with social media modalities I can manage.

Like something I know. Blogging. After seeing how well Sherry and Carole have done with their blogs, I realized it’s time to start one myself. I think I’ve learned a few things that will help.

First, write a blog that’s focused around a theme. Second, offer readers something beneficial. Third, I don’t want to go crazy soliciting comments. Fourth, keep posts short and easy. Fifth, invite guests because they have wonderful things to share.

I’d been thinking about a topic. A few weeks ago, my chiropractor suggested I envision my perfect day, how it feels when I wake up, what I’m doing, tasting, seeing. So I wrote it out, my perfect day from morning to night. I’m a believer in the law of attraction. I believe we draw into our life the things we focus our thoughts on.

I have my theme. Focus the blog around the things to be found in a perfect day. Specific things. I don’t want to share concepts, like my perfect day has sunshine, but rather my perfect day has this product or place or food, something that everyone could have. Almost like Oprah’s favourite things without the studio.

How do you feel about blogging? Do you think my theme idea is something you’d want to read?

Please look for my first post on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 12 here because I have something to share that changed my relationship with my daughters and I’d like to share it with you.

 

Love Letter

Previously featured on Psychological Sizzle under the title, ‘Mightier Than‘

~*~

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the pen is merely an instrument. Words, be they formed by pen and ink or by lips and tongue, hold the true power.

‘It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.’

The Bee Gees

In the context of the the beautiful ballad, Words, the heart in question is taken away on the wings of romantic love, yet a heart can be taken away as easily by words spoken will cruel intent.

‘It takes a thousand “Atta boys” to erase one “You’re an idiot”.’

Dr. Phil

Still, we are often careless with our words, even our thoughts, believing they can do no real harm. Sticks and stones. Ask any survivor of schoolyard bullying, ask any battered wife. They will tell you bruises heal, but the scars of verbal abuse are seared upon the heart. The scars may scab over, but the slightest brush can break the seal. Blood, tears, and self-doubt ooze from the open wound.

“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they will become your destiny.”

Ghandi

Tami Clayton is Making the World a Better Place, One Letter at a Time. A good, practical and loving use of her experience writing all those Letters From Benedict.

Elbow-deep in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, I am keen for signs of synchronicity. In January, still in the early stages my Artist’s Way quest, I questioned, prayed, and struggled, anxious to believe that something as simple as words, my words, my novels, my short stories, even my blogposts and tweets, were not blathering and frivolous self-absorption, but real work, with a real purpose.

I examined the issue in my morning pages then, that task complete, I made ready to log into my email account. My Internet home page, like any other, is a source of news, some light, some entertaining, some political, some tragic, some…

Uplifting.

One news item stood out, different, personal, touching. The bare simplicity spoke to my soul.

Anonymous girls who’d had nowhere safe to vent their pain, had printed their loss and their fear on the wall of a public restroom. I doubt even a one of them believed their anguished cries would be answered.

The letter, made of paper and ink, secured with strips of tape, simple and pure and unselfish, provided comfort. More, the letter allowed those in sorrow to know that their words did not go unheard, that their despair mattered, and that someone cared. Anonymous as the despair penned on the restroom wall, the sender reached out, and her answer reassured each writer that she was precious and treasured.

 

Bob Strother’s Place

I see Bob every two weeks or so and I listen to his smooth voice as he reads stories, his words just as smooth and it’s difficult to find any piddly diddly wrongs to critique.  We belong to South Carolina Writers Workshop and I enjoy his creative work.  I am miffed that I haven’t heard anything about Shug Barnes and I look forward to receiving my copy of Shug’s Place.

I am honored to share Bob Strother here at Romance & Beyond.

***

Although my stories sometimes stray to the darker sides of human nature, I’ve always been a romantic at heart. My first novel, Love Among the Greeks, dealt with a frat boy’s rollercoaster romance with a sorority girl—a painful but poignant coming of age tale. My as yet unpublished novel, Burning Time, set in the early 1900s, chronicles the trials of a teenaged girl who sacrifices her youth to provide for her family. In return, she finds love where she least expects it. Then there’s my short story collection, Scattered, Smothered, and Covered, published in 2011, where romance—if not always found—is at least aspired to. Carla Damron, author of A Death in Zooville, said of the collection: “Strother is at his best when choreographing the dance between a man and a woman.” And that’s what it’s all about, right?—that weird and wonderful world’s-gone-crazy-cotillion that we call love.

Shug Barnes, the protagonist in my latest novel, Shug’s Place, is so busy trying to make a success of his bar in mid-1980s Detroit, he doesn’t have much time for romance. Enter Eve Campbell, a former member of the radical group, Weatherman, on the run for her life, and Darcy Raintree, a Detroit P.D. homicide detective obsessed with finding a vigilante killer. Suddenly, Shug finds himself involved with these two dangerous women—one he’d kill for, and one who might get him killed. There are lots of other quirky characters as well: Leon Tweed, Shug’s partner, who finds the right woman during the worst of circumstances; private investigator Rick Scanlon, who’s in love with his best friend’s wife; and a group of old soldiers—bar regulars—who take it to heart when one of their own is swindled. The book has humor, romance, thrills, and suspense—something, I think, for every reader.

There are a couple of quotes I like. The first is (as far as I know) mine: “The reader’s mind is the writer’s canvas.” The other came from a Doonesbury cartoon where one of the characters is describing a novelist: “He lies for a living.” So, sure, writing fiction is lying in a way—making up stories that aren’t true about people who aren’t real—but at the same time, painted correctly, with just the right combinations of color and texture, those same lies can help us realize certain truths about ourselves.

Bob Strother began his writing career nine years ago. In addition to three novels, he has penned over one hundred short stories, most of which have been published in a number of literary journals and magazines. A former Pushcart Prize nominee, Bob most recently won the Hub City/Emrys Foundation 2012 Fiction Prize. He and his wife, Vicki, live in Greenville, South Carolina.

Shug’s Place, (due for release May 18) may be preordered at 40% off the cover price through May 7, 2013.

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/BStrother_2012.html

www.bobstrother.net