The Woman's Journey by Liz Flaherty

If you've seen me on social media at all, you know I've been blogging a lot, saying Look at me! I wrote a book! a lot, and working on writing the next book--also a lot. I was going to put in a note saying I was going to take a few weeks off, but I'm really not. And then I thought I just did a Fourth of July post, so I could skip today, but that's not a habit I want to get started, so today I'm going to share a post that's just me, the writer. Not so much the Window Over the Sink girl, but the other one who's even more geeky that me at the Window. This is a combination of a couple of recent blog posts, so if you already saw them, I apologize. But here it is--the Liz Flaherty treatise on the Woman's Journey. Thanks for reading the Window. - Liz

I’m not sure when the term women’s fiction entered my consciousness. I don’t recall whose I read first or even if I liked it. The words Woman’s Journey had been bandied about most of the years I’d been writing romance, and I thought that’s what we should do with romance and women’s fiction—just make them into one huge glorious genre known as The Woman’s Journey.

The idea didn’t catch on.

But I read Curtiss Ann Matlock’s Lost Highways and Robyn Carr’s Deep in the Valley and Cheryl Reavis’s Blackberry Winter and Elisabeth Ogilvie’s Bennett’s Island series. I kept thinking yes, this! They’re all women’s fiction, but they’re all love stories, too. They’re all women’s journeys and I’ve read most of them more than once. While I love the relationship that grows between the heroine and hero, I also enjoy the ones between girlfriends, between sisters, between work friends who are there for each other. The romance is important, but it’s not always most important.

Because it's the story that’s important. The journey. How you feel when you finish reading. To a lesser degree, as a writer, how I feel when I finish writing is important, too.

To begin the story of Pieces of Blue, I had two words. Two! What was I supposed to do with that? But there they were: Trilby died.

Great. Who's Trilby? Why did he die? Did someone kill him? 

In a conversation at Home Ec club, my friend Tami Keaffaber said Town Lake was south of Akron and had been for…well, she had no idea how long. But it was less than 10 miles from my house, less than five from where I grew up. How could I not have known it was there? My sister said that of course it was there. Where had I been?

So my husband and I turned where she said to, off a country road onto a little bitty countrier road (yeah, I made that word up.) “It’s a T road. You can’t miss it.” 

Even with its small green sign identifying Town Lake Road, we could and did miss it. But there it was—the lake I’d never heard of and had possibly insisted wasn’t even there. Between the lake that wasn’t there--renamed Harper Loch by Maggie Edgington--and the town I’ve taken for granted for my entire life, one of my favorite settings was born. 

There are only 86 people on the lake, one store, one church, and one beauty salon, after all—but Placer, the town closest to it, strongly resembles Akron.

Akron is where my doctor’s office is, where I go to church, where two of my nieces live, where I used to sit at the drugstore counter and drink a small coke and talk to friends. My first bra and many pairs of stockings came from Eber’s Five & Ten. They have a great 4th of July parade and a pretty little park like the one you’ll read about in Maggie’s story.

Because after having that two-word start that wouldn’t get off my mind and a trip back a skinny, curvy road to a small lake I’d never known existed, heroine Maggie North invited me on her journey. It took her a while, and writing it took me a while, but…gosh, I loved Maggie. And Sam. And her adoptive parents. And Pastor Cari Newland. Oh, and Maggie’s friend Ellie and the dachshund named Chloe, too.

Pieces of Blue has some romance, a setting I never wanted to leave, and, most of all, it has friends and family and community. Their dialogue was so much fun to write. The house—the Burl—is a character unto itself.

How did I feel when I finished writing it? Oh, I felt good. Happy with how Maggie found herself. Sorry it was over and slapping back thoughts that maybe it wasn’t over…maybe there was another story at Harper Loch. Or two.

We’ll see. In the meantime, it’s a story from the “huge glorious genre” I mentioned above. I hope you like it.

Blurb:

For all of her adult life, loner Maggie North has worked for bestselling author Trilby Winterroad, first as his typist, then as his assistant, and finally as his ghost writer. Throughout her first marriage, widowhood, remarriage, and divorce from an abusive husband, Trilby was the constant in her life.

When he dies, she inherits not only his dachshund, Chloe, but a house she didn’t know existed on a lake she’d never heard of. On her first visit, she falls in love with both the house and the lake. Within a few weeks, she’s met most of the 85 inhabitants of Harper Loch and surprisingly, become a part of the tiny community. Her life expands as does a new kind of relationship with her friend Sam Eldridge. She finally feels not only at home, but safe.

Until her ex-husband is released from prison. The fragile threads of her new life begin to fray, and that feeling of safety is about to shatter into a thousand pieces.

Buy links:

Books2Read: https://books2read.com/FlahertyBlue

Amazon: https://a.co/d/eyEjPDA

Thanks for reading. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.