Winter Wonderland

Happy Holidays to everyone.

I took this photo of our white birch tree after a morning of freezing fog. We've had snow on the ground since Thanksgiving, with a few inches more expected tonight and tomorrow morning.

A Review

*The Pendant: Callie* just got its first review from Coffeetime Romance. 4 cups!
Read the whole review here:
http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Thependantcallie.html

And apologies for dropping Turkey for Dinner in mid-story. Between family demands and a nasty virus that's hit the family (me included! ) I've barely had a coherent thought in the past 10 days. A new installment will be up today.

Short Story

With Thanksgiving only a week away (where did the rest of this month go??)  I'm gearing up for T-day here at home - juggling things in the freezer in hopes that by Saturday I'll be able to go buy the main attraction and have him fit.

Ice cream, anyone?

New Pendant Book!

This is release week for the second book in the Pendant series: *The Pendant: Maeve* by Laura Hamby, from Moonlit Romance http://www.moonlitromance.com/

Laura and I had a blast creating the elements that will "travel" from book to book: the antique shop, Tesoro del Cuore, it's proprietor, Dacien, and of course, the unusual properties of the pendant itself.

So, check it out all this week. Laura is featured on the Authors' Blog : http://ue_authors.bravejournal.com/

There is also an excerpt up on her blog: http://laurahamby.blogspot.com/

And don't forget to visit The Pendant ~ Journeys Through Time website, which is devoted to this series:
http://www.freewebs.com/thependant/

A New Hero

Sometimes I find it difficult to let go of a character so I can move on to a new project. And that is how I feel about Luke Graham in *The Pendant: Callie*

Luke is the epitome of the good guy - even though his efforts are sometimes misguided. His feelings of guilt over his sister's accident have colored his perception of responsibility and have greatly influenced his relationships. After all, if you can't keep an eye on your little sister for a few hours, how on earth could you keep a wife and children safe?

As interesting as I find Luke, it is time to let him go and get to work on a new hero: C. Jefferson Worth. Jeff's attitude toward responsibility is a little different - he is willing to tackle any project his father throws his way, but when it comes to managing a multi-million dollar trust fund for Carilla Morgan, a grad student at NYU, he balks. Unfortuntely, there is nothing he can do. And because Jeff has seen several close friends run through that type on money like it was water, he is bound and determined to keep Carilla's spending under control. His control.

I'm enjoying the nuances of Jeff's character as they develop - and I'm enjoying the tussles he's having with Carilla!

Character Study

What makes the ideal heroine? We all have our own opinions - the wild-child, the spunky go-getter, the sweet girl-next-door. I like my heroines to have a measure of independence - like Callie does in *The Pendant: Callie.* She's independent to a fault, however, and this nearly costs her relationship with Luke.

My latest heroine, Carilla Morgan, has a streak of stubborness and independence as well, but she is not as strongly motivated as Callie. Callie was being smothered by her well-meaning but definitely overbearing family. With four older brothers watching her every move, it's no wonder she fled to Elm Springs, PA.

On the other hand, Carilla has just lost her father, leaving only her Aunt Elizabeth and two cousins as her closest relatives. With independence foisted on her, she turns to the people in her apartment building and they become her "family." When she uses her inheritence to help them, she runs into a road-block: C. Jefferson Worth, who controls the trust fund left to Carilla by her father.

Carilla is stubborn and creative, and she uses these characteristics to outwit Jeff. Meanwhile, Jeff is doing all he can to keep Carilla from running through her inheritence. He's also been charged with the task of keeping her safe from fortune hunters. Fortune hunters!!?? In modern day New York City? No wonder Carilla thinks she's been trapped in a Regency romance novel!

There's a thing in my garden

Huge and green. With a horn on the end to boot, and some huge mandibles.

Freeze, but the writing is hot!

Okay, last night did it. A hard freeze. We'd spent the weekend pulling out the tomatoes and peppers and a bunch of marigolds, and trimming back some annuals that were scraggly.

I'd seen a really fat, green catapillar on one of the tomato plants and just ignored him - and a few days later, his friend. And in my "Oh, but it's going to be a butterfly or a moth" misplaced sympathy, I decided to leave them on a tomato branch instead of sending them to the yard waste collection.

Then I did a little internet sleuthing. Yep. Tomato hornworms.
So, in 40 mph winds, I hike out to find the critters. The big one was gone, naturally. They burrow into the ground to pupate, which I'm sure is where it is now.

Of course the website I visited suggested "squishing" them as a control method in a small garden; I'd like to see whoever wrote the article "squish" a caterpillar that is 5" long and 1/2" in diameter and has a pointy hook on its rear end.

Daylight savings gives us so much. You really pay for that extra hour of sleep you get on Sunday morning. We're paying because the animals have decided they're not falling back this year, and between the dog woofing and the cat crying at the door, you just may as well get up. Well, today I just ignored the beasts, and in that wonderful state between sleep and awake, plotted two scenes for my new work-in-progress.

Of course this comes on a day when I'm running errands galore and still haven't even opened the document. I have about 35 minutes before it's time to pick up the car from the garage... let's see what I can do!

Contest Winner!

Congratulations JoAnn Carter, you've won *The Pendant: Callie* and a TryMe kit from Devita Natural Skin Care!

Thanks to all who participated!

Check back, I'll be having another contest soon!

Frosty, But Not Freezy

Thanks to all who participated in the contest. The winner will be announced tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the garden is still holding its own. We had a heavy frost in some areas last night, but it didn't do much damage in the garden. Even the most tender of the plants are still green. It is time spray the evergreens with an anti-wilting solution that will protect them from the bitter cold and harsh winter winds that they're subjected to here in the plains. This weekend will be busy as we add mulch to the perennial beds and start clearing out the annuals.

Writing was a little slow today. I came up with some names for two secondary characters that I think fit their personalities well. After all, a woman who wears lurid blue nail polish and eyeshadow needs a name that stands up to her quirkiness! The plot is plodding along. There were a lot of interruptions this morning; hopefully tomorrow things will take off.

Powdered Doughnuts and Apple Cider

Fabulous fall treats: powdered doughnuts and apple cider. Candy or caramel apples. Candy corn and those little mellowcreme pumpkins. I'm getting the shivers - not thinking about scary cosutmes - just thinking about all that sugar.

Trick or Treats has changed. My parents put time and effort into the treats they gave away. A paper napkin was unfolded. In this you put a couple of MaryJanes, a couple of circus peanuts (the orange marshmallow kind) and some candy corn and other small candies. A lollypop was put in the center and the four corners of the napkin were pulled up and twisted around the stick. Considering we had in the neighborhood of 100-150 kids come to the door, it was a fair amount of work. And the littlest kids started coming just as it got dark - which in the old days before daylight savings time extended into November was about 4:30.

We'll carve a pumpkin this afternoon and tonight we'll toast the seeds in the oven, sprinkled with salt. I love the crunch of the shell and the salty-sweet taste of the kernel.

The garden is winding down. One of the basil plants has turned completely brown; the other may give us one more batch of pesto. The raspberries are nearly done; there were only about a dozen ripe ones today; I ate them as I picked them.

Now the writing should be picking up. It's time to immerse myself in the new story, play the "what if" game and see where it leads. Rather than my usual "seat of the pants" method, I think this story will require some actual advanced planning. We'll see how far I can go - hopefully all the way to Happily Ever After. I've also got two sets of names for the hero and heroine. I'm not really sure how that happened.

Romance Genre Survey

Bronwyn Clarke, winner of the RWA 2007 Golden Heart for Best Romantic Suspense Manuscript, "Falling into Darkness" is conducting a survey on the "Online communities of romance readers and writers and their perspectives on the genre." The survey is part of her research for her PhD.
Please take a few moments of your time to complete the survey, which closes at midnight, Oct 31st.
http://bronwynclarke.com/survey.html

First Frost

It's hard to believe that it's already the 27th of October, and we still have not had a frost. Fall is about 2 weeks late, here in the plains. We're not taking any chances; we'll pick all the tomatoes and peppers today.

As for the writing, I've picked up a story that I began just before I first saw the photo of the pendant. It's been percolating for a while; there are about three chapters or so in very rough draft. We'll see what the characters have been doing while I was busy telling Luke and Callie's story.

Enter A Contest!

It's easy, it's fun, and you can win a great prize!

Here's how to enter:

Answer the two questions taken from exerpts of *The Pendant: Callie*, available from Moonlit Romance. www.moonlitromance.com

The answer to the first question can be found in the exerpt that was posted here on my blog on Release Day. For the answer to the second question, visit The Pendant ~ Journeys Through Time website and read the exerpt there.
Email your answers to: susan atwood writes @ g mail dot com
Close up all the spaces and change dot to a period. Because spam should clog your arteries, not your inbox.

Make sure to put "Contest Entry" in the subject line!

Everyone with the correct answers will be entered in a drawing for a download of
*The Pendant: Callie* and a Try-Me kit from Devita Natural Skin Care.
http://www.devita.net/

The contest ends on Wednesday 10/31/07. Winners will be announced on Friday, 11/2/07.

From my blog:
Question #1: Luke calls Callie by the name of a character in a childrens' book and recent movie. What name does he call her?

From The Pendant ~ Journeys Through Time website:
http://www.freewebs.com/thependant/
Question #2: Dacien looks at Callie with eyes that burn with the same fire as this stone. What is it?

Good Luck All!

More Garden

The plan was to post some pictures of the Book Garden yesterday. As usual, things didn't work out quite as planned. My daughter took the camera to the state Student Council convention. So, here is what I'm calling my Book Garden- minus furniture as the weather had been rainy and we didn't put it back outside. The area has several names, mostly depending on my husband's beverage of the moment. :) We like to sit here to read or to relax after working in the yard. The empty space under the window used to have a beautiful calla lily, but it was getting too much water, so we moved it.

The Garden

According to my husband, yesterday was the last nice day that we will have this year. I'm not sure what he means by *nice* - but yesterday's high temperature was near 80 degrees. I'm still looking for those sunny, crisp fall days when the sky is dark blue, the clouds are impossibly white, and the trees and shrubs are a whirl of gold, red, orange, and brown. I hope we'll have lots of those before winter sets in.

Those are my favorite days of the whole year. Working in the garden is invigorating, and there is something wonderfully cinnamony-apple baking in the kitchen.

For now, we're letting the tomatoes and peppers stay. We've had so much rain this month that all of the tomatoes are split before they ripen. But with colder weather just around the corner, it is time to rescue some of the more tender plants. Today, we're bringing in a calla lily, rosemary, and some Australian violets that won't survive the harsh Midwestern winter. And with some TLC and a lot of luck, we'll be returning them to the garden next May.

Release Day!

*The Pendant: Callie* will be available today from Moonlit Romance! And here, just to whet your appetite, is a bit for your enjoyment:

Callie knelt before him and watched his face as she pried the shoe off, but he showed no evidence of pain. Anger? Oh, yeah, there was still plenty of that. His eyes were blue lasers that bored a hole right through her. A small muscle worked in a jaw clamped so tight Callie was afraid he’d break his teeth.
She removed his sock, took his foot in her hand and bent her head to examine it. The base of his big toe was red and swollen, and the nail was chipped.
“We need to get some ice on that. Stay put.”
Callie rummaged through a drawer and came up with a plastic bag with a zip closure. She grabbed the ice tray from the fridge and dumped half-frozen cubes and cold water into the bag.
“Of all the hare-brained stunts, this one takes the cake,” Luke growled.
“Hare-brained?” Callie wheeled on him, hands on her hips. “You call that hare-brained? I’ve studied hares, and I’ll have you know that they are not stupid, if that is what you’re implying. In fact, they’re quite intelligent. And if you’d let go of the hammer in first place—”
“Okay, Doctor Dolittle, whatever. It was still dangerous to be hanging out the window like that.”
Doctor Dolittle?
“Here’s your ice.”
She knew she shouldn’t push him any more. After all, the man was holding on to his temper by a thread. But still…
The bag of ice cubes fell from Callie’s hand.
“Ouch!”
“Oops.” Callie spun on her heel. Before she could stalk away, Luke’s hand shot out; his fingers closed around her wrist like a vise and yanked her back. The room darkened to pinpoints of light, just like the end of an old cartoon. That low hum grew louder, resonating in her head.
She needed to sit down. Quick.

(c) 2007 by Susan Atwood

The Inspiration

Friends and relatives have asked: How did you come up with the idea for this book? Well, it all started about a year and a half ago. A friend in an online writing group was selling some old costume jewelry. She posted pictures of the pieces. I was browsing through the pictures when one struck me - a pendant with an opal in the center and eight emerald-green stones surrounding it. Wow, I thought. What an interesting piece. Just look at the picture - I think it's beautiful.
I kept thinking about the pendant - and then I started to wonder - what if it had magical powers? What if it could tell who your soul mate was?
I contacted Laura Hamby and said - hey, here's an idea for a continuity series. You can write one, and find some other people who are interested in the concept. She said - you write one. I said, Oh, No! I'm just giving you the idea.
And then she said those three little words - I'll help you.
So together, we wrote the prologue and came up with the elements of the series that will carry from book to book: Dacien, the guardian of the pendant, his wife, Lena, and the antique shop, Tesoro del Cuore (which means Treasure of the Heart in Italian.)
And that's how it started - and the result is The Pendant: Callie - book one in the series, and The Pendant: Maeve, Laura's story, which will be out in November.

Susan

The Hero

Luke Wolverton Graham needs to fix things. The business he started with two college buddies provides computer security. Fixing things is his business, and it spills over into his private life. His sister, Jennie, can attest to that. Ever since Jennie fell out of a tree at the age of eight, Luke has watched over her - like a hawk.

When he meets the new Zoology professor, he knows she's trouble. The woman drives like a maniac and hangs out fourth-floor windows. How can he keep an eye on this Do-It-Yourself-disaster-in-waiting and still run a business?

The Heroine

Meet Calantha Hass, the heroine in my upcoming release *The Pendant: Callie.* Callie hails from Red Prairie, Kansas, population 433. The youngest of five children, with four brothers, Callie has been protected and coddled all her life. Now she is more than ready for a change. With the ink barely dry on her diploma, Callie accepts a position as assistant professor of Zoology at Cherwell Springs College in Elm Springs, Pennsylvania.
To go along with her new position, Callie also has a new attitude. No more relying on her brothers to help her. This is the new Callie. The independent Callie. The Callie who is going to do whatever it takes to be independent.
All this determined independence is good - to a point. But what happens when Callie meets a man who fixes things for a living?

Susan

Catching up

It all comes from using every available minute to work on my upcoming release, *The Pendant: Callie.* Once the edits and revisions were done, I thought, okay, downtime. Ha! There was the galley waiting for my attention. I finished the galley corrections yesterday, and today I received the review copy.

Today I spent the whole day catching up - laundry, a bit of housecleaning, paying more than cursory attention to the dog and cat. Now it's time for some fun!

Join my fellow writer, Laura Hamby, on the Spooky Express. She is posting clues to her next stop on her blog - see if you can guess the spot!
http://laurahamby.blogspot.com/

~Susan

Late nights and early mornings

Staying up late to wait for my daughter to come home from a marching band competition on Saturday, then waking up often last night as a series of thunderstorms rolled through our area brought to mind this picture. And you know he's saying, "How come the cat always gets the top bunk?"

Busy Saturday

I always plan a lot for Saturdays. It seems that it's the only day that my husband and I have to do all those chores and errands that we need to do together. But inspite of all our good intentions, we never seem to accomplish everything on the list. Today was no exception. I really don't know where the time went!

~Susan

Cover Art

Here is the cover for my upcoming release

I love it!

And here is the back cover blurb:
Callie Haas thinks it’s about time she takes charge of her life and leave the family home in Kansas. The first step is taking a teaching position at Cherwell Springs College in Pennsylvania. The next step? Finding a place to live. Easier said than done, given the housing shortage in Elm Springs.

Luke Graham, computer technology whiz and Callie’s new landlord, can’t stop thinking about the new Zoology professor. Her penchant for risk-taking drives him insane. How can he keep her from injuring herself during her quest for independence if she won’t let him help her?

Complicating matters is an antique pendant with the magical power to bring soul mates together. Too bad the pendant believes Callie’s soul mate is a man she can’t stand. Luke. She is determined to prove the pendant wrong. All she needs to do is survive her debunking experiment, and keep firm hold of her heart. Easy. Right?

~Susan

Down to the Wire

The Moonlit Monday chat was a lot of fun. My neighbor won the doorprize. Thanks to all who came!
Okay, this is it, and we're down to the wire. Today is the deadline! I'll be spending the day formatting The Pendant: Callie, and then sending it off for publication.

For anyone who believes that writing romance is all marabou feather boas and high-heeled mules and chocolate bon-bons, well...
Okay, it is about the chocolate! But it's also hard sit-you-tail-in-the-chair-'til-it's-numb work!
But in spite of it all, I'm having a blast!

Check out the Moonlit Readers' Group contest. The link is on the Moonlit Romance home page.
http://www.moonlitromance.com/

Back to the salt mines

Welcome

Welcome to Susan's Book Garden. I'm pleased to announce that my book, The Pendant: Callie will be available this month from Moonlit Romance. Stop by the Moonlit website. Check out the authors' blog and join the readers loop. Tonight at 9 p.m. US Eastern time is the Moonlit Monday chat. We'll be discussing my book.