Book Cover Contest by Liz Flaherty

They say not to judge a book by its cover but I need you to do just that. If you liked the cover of my book, Pieces of Blue, please vote for it for the Cover of the Month contest on AllAuthor.com!

I’m getting closer to clinch the "Cover of the Month" contest on AllAuthor! I’d need as much support from you guys. Please take a short moment to vote for my book cover here:

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Thank you!

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.

FOR TODAY ONLY! by Annessa Ink Publishing

 For Today Only!

Books2Read: https://books2read.com/FlahertyBlue

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

It's Saturday Morning... by Liz Flaherty

Yes, it is Saturday morning. Mist is lying soft on the ground and the fields are wearing their springtime clothes. It's been a good week. I've had time with friends, time with kids, working time, and time with the guy in the other recliner. Last week, I even had a 13-hour day as a poll worker, working with people I'd either not known before or seldom see. 

I've been to church, waved at my family's plot in the cemetery, run the weed-eater and trimmed the cats in short time increments that didn't do much for either situation I was trying to improve. I baked a pan of brownies that came out hard as the proverbial rock for no discernible reason other than I used my grandmother's pan and as I remember it, she didn't like to bake. 

I have realized, not for the first time, how lucky I am to never be bored. And I've realized something else, that even though days go way too fast in retirement, time is its most precious commodity. I complain sometimes, when the week starts, that I have to be somewhere or do something every single day, and then I have a great time with both the going and the doing. Maybe the only bad part of it is my complaining. Hmm...

Grandkids grow up overnight, and loss is an unavoidable part of things as we go on, but, oh, the good things that happen in this time! Have you seen the pictures of graduates in caps and gowns, the busloads of younger ones on end-of-year field trips, felt the energy of May altogether? The baseball parks are alive with crowds of people who share the love not only of "America's pastime," but love of the ones on the field and in the dugout. Have you seen--or joined--the lines at the ice cream stand windows?

Have you thought, in these times of undeniable strife and division, not of how you can get through another day of it, but how you can make things better?

~*~*~

My new publisher, Annessa Ink, posted a what do you think? choice of covers for Pieces of Blue, my next book, on Facebook. I know what my opinion is, but I'd like to hear yours. Which of the three posted below do you like best? Even better, why do you like it? Please leave your answer in comments or let me know however you like. I'm looking forward to seeing what you think. 

Thanks for voting and for reading. Have a good week--enjoy your time. Be nice to somebody.