Bonus

Not only is my editor a book whisperer, but apparently she's a design goddess too. Look at the lovely graphic she just sent me. Now my email signatures will look spiffy.

Summer Sky at Dusk

After much obsessing, I finally found the essay I wrote a few years ago that I'd been craving to reread. It's not long and it's not wonderful, but it's about one of my favorite things in the world: the summer sky at dusk.

We’re driving home from Home Depot, Bryan at the wheel, our three kids singing along to the radio in the back seat. It is dust. But not the normal dusk that slips by unnoticed, only the slightest mark of it to punctuate the day and night. This is the dusk that lingers in your mouth, seductive, like the sound of its letters pulled out and held in the hollow behind your teeth. We drive past Dottie’s miniature golf course and see that the windmill is finally working, the newly painted red spokes spinning again. We pass the cemetery and turn onto Imperial Street. But it isn’t until we pass over the highway, when the houses and trees no longer block my view to the west and expose the huge expanse of the Salt Lake Valley that leads up to the Oquirrh Mountains that I catch sight of the sky.

The color catches me off guard and makes me call out, a tiny sound, not even a word. I’ve never seen this color before, not in all my years of art school, not in any tube of Windsor and Newton or in any museum, not even on the canvases of Rothko or Diebenkorn, my heroes. This color is not blue. This color is not green. It’s not turquoise or cerulean, not cobalt, not phthalo, not ultramarine. It isn’t one color at all, but the space between and behind, glaze upon glaze, the air between us and the universe, deep and inviting. I roll down my window and breathe because the color has a smell: the warm day cooling, grass and road. Sprinklers. But it isn’t the smell of summer. Can’t confuse it with that.

At the intersection, the bright red of the stoplight glows suspended in the sky, so much richer against this unexpected backdrop. Behind it, the telephone poles are cut from black so deep that they lose their form and become flat, their wires only thin black lines across the sky. The trees silhouetted against this color are dark, but not cavernous. They are simply honoring this other color, not competing, not dominating, just framing, grounding it to our place.

I can’t recreate this color, can hardly believe it, but I’m suddenly certain that this is the color of eternity, and although I can’t hold it, it fills me. This color. It fills me. And it doesn’t just fill this small capsule of a body, my thin wrists, my generous thighs, slightly stubby toes; it settles deep into my chest and expands, draws me out towards the sky itself, makes me a part of it, my upturned face. I breathe.

The Great Pen Hunt

A trip to the office supply store is normally a euphoric experience, but today was particularly exciting because I was on the hunt for the PERFECT pen. (It has to be perfect to sign PERFECTED, right?) 

I consider myself a writing utensil connoisseur, so it was imperative that I find just the right pen for my very first book signing. I couldn't just grab the nearest ball tip and call it good. No, the tip had to flow smoothly across the paper. Not too thick. Not too thin. It couldn't bleed or look patchy. It needed to be the Ferrari of pens. 

After trying a half dozen, I finally found the winner: a black, medium sized felt-tip, marker pen by TUL. AAAHHHH! This pen writes like butta (without the grease spots).

I'm in love. I bought two packs and left the store practically skipping.

Do you have a certain pen that you love?

They're Here!

I can't stopping petting them!

Enter to win a copy of PERFECTED

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Perfected

by Kate Jarvik Birch

Giveaway ends June 08, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Cover Reveal: WHO R U REALLY

To celebrate the cover reveal for Who R U Really? Margo Kelly is giving away TWO Advance Reader Copies of the book! Visit www.margokelly.net to enter by Sunday, May 11, 2014!

WHO R U REALLY?

by Margo Kelly

Merit Press -- September 18, 2014

Description:

Thea's overprotective parents are driving her insane. They invade her privacy, ask too many questions, and restrict her online time so severely that Thea feels she has no life at all. When she discovers a new role-playing game online, Thea breaks the rules by staying up late to play. She's living a double life: on one hand, the obedient daughter; on the other, a girl slipping deeper into darkness. In the world of the game, Thea falls under the spell of Kit, an older boy whose smarts and savvy can't defeat his loneliness and near-suicidal despair. As Kit draws soft-hearted Thea into his drama, she creates a full plate of cover stories for her parents and then even her friends.

Soon, Thea is all alone in the dark world with Kit, who worries her more and more, but also seems to be the only person who really "gets" her. Is he frightening, the way he seems sometimes, or only terribly sad? Should Thea fear Kit, or pity him? And now, Kit wants to come out of the screen and bring Thea into his real-life world. As much as she suspects that this is wrong, Thea is powerless to resist Kit's allure, and hurtles toward the same dark fate her parents feared most. Ripped from a real-life story of Internet stalking, Who R U Really? will excite you and scare you, as Thea's life spins out of control.

About the Author:

Margo Kelly is a native of the Northwest and currently resides in Idaho. A veteran public speaker, Margo is now actively pursuing her love of writing. Who R U Really? is her debut novel and will be published by Merit Press in September 2014. Margo welcomes opportunities to speak to youth groups, library groups, and book clubs.

Website | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Author Spotlight: Jane Jazz

Jane Jazz

Hilary Mantel has spoken of ideas circling above her like aeroplanes waiting to land, but mine are silvery moths. They flutter round my head all day and wake me up at night. I have to capture them swiftly and pin them to the page before they dissolve. Over my writing career I have written newspaper articles, magazine features, advertising copy, short stories, poetry and songs. I even wrote greetings card verses for a time (I know) but although ludicrously lucrative, it had to stop. I was starting to think in rhyming couplets.

We recently relocated from wuthering moors to blue remembered hills and I love the gentle Shropshire landscape, but still miss dramatic Yorkshire hills and dales. Tantalus was written in our draughty old Yorkshire vicarage - one of a pair built for neighbouring artists in the late 1800s. The houses had adjacent studios and whenever I walked through our side voices would whisper at me. Loudly. Loud whispers can be hard to ignore, and they didn't give me any peace until I started to write their story.

As a writer and a reader, I find the slightly impossible quite irresistible...

Q&A

If you could be best friends with another author (past or present), who would it be?

I would like to have befriended Emily Brontë. I loved Wuthering Heights and felt we had a lot in common when I was growing up. It’s such a shame she only lived long enough to write one novel; it would have been fascinating to see her develop as an author. I lived across the valley from their old home - The Haworth Parsonage - for several years and often visited the Brontë museum. It was fascinating to see her tiny dresses and shoes, and walk around the rooms where she and her sisters lived.

What made you decide to become a writer?

I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t write, and I still have a tattered cardboard box full of all the little stories and poems I penned as a child. My family moved around a lot through my childhood, so I was quite a lonely little girl and spent a lot of time reading. It just seemed natural to start telling stories as soon as I could scribble.

What is the most rewarding part of writing?

That’s easy! I have all these people whispering in my ears all day long, and if I don’t write down their words the whispering turns to shouting. It is quite a luxury to be able to invent my own world and create the people I spend time with there. I get so lost in their lives that it’s sometimes hard to leave…

Do you write every day? Do you set word goals?

I have spent years as a freelance copywriter, so I’m used to writing all day. If I can’t be at my desk I write in my notebook and type it up later. I don’t have set word goals as the words usually come faster than I can type, but I do have a problem with stopping at a reasonable time to make sure I get enough sleep!

Do you have any writing rituals? How about any favorite writing spots?

My ritual is to wake up with strong coffee, then comb through what I wrote the previous day before writing a word – partly to tidy it up, but also to dig myself back down into this other world, after the hours away from my characters.

I usually write at my desk, overlooking  the Shropshire countryside. It’s a lovely, rural view but nothing much happens in it – a lot less distracting than if I overlooked bustling city streets!

Is there any special writing paraphernalia that you’re obsessed with: notebooks, pens, special paper?

I make lots of notes and like to have gorgeous notebooks for this. Currently I’m using a dusky-pink leather book but it’s getting quite full. I’m eyeing the next one already: an embossed, metallic-finish Mucha  design, with a little pocket for loose papers, and a magnetic flap to snap it shut. It might be a bit decadent, but I’m convinced it makes me more creative!

TANTALUS

Jane Jazz

316 Pages

Synopsis

Sylvia, a lonely young polio survivor, is fighting hard to be independent, scraping a living as an artist in a neglected old house. In the last moments of the first day of May 1975, she sees something dark stir the shadows in her studio, something that makes her long to be back home and safely tucked up in her childhood bed.

Sylvia is about to discover that the past and future are closer than they seem... separated only by a quicksilver wall of now.

With one foot planted firmly in the Yorkshire hills and the other in the marble mountains of Carrara in Tuscany, Tantalus explores the torment of soulmates forced to live apart.

The anguish and ecstasy are familiar, as is the devastating meltdown when one of them finally snaps, but the plight of Sylvia and Tom is unique and surreal, requiring the reader to undo just the top few buttons of reality.

Learn more about Jane and her books at the links below.

Blog | AmazonUK | Amazon