FREE BOOKS and a glance at my WIP

I'm nearing the end of my first draft of part three of the FAMILY PORTRAIT series. The working title is EMILIA. This has been the most difficult of the three books for me to write. The family has grown to four characters, Karla, Andreas and their son and daugher, Tonio and Laura. Trying to tell the stories of four people, giving each one a voice and a destiny without losing the overall structure and theme of the novel and without getting hopelessly lost has been a real challenge. One thing is for sure, there is going to be LOTS of editing. Anyway, just to give you a taste, here is a (preliminary) blurb:

Turmoil reigns in the O’Reilly-Bocelli household. With her two older children, Laura and Tonio, grown and getting ready to fly the coop, Karla finds out she is pregnant again. Instead of devoting her time and energy fully to her painting career, she is forced to raise another child. Andreas, her husband, is looking forward to being a father once more but soon realizes that the little bundle of joy, Emilia, instead of enhancing the relationship to his wife of over twenty years, intensifies the tension that has been building between them. While the parents fight each other, Laura and Tonio try to keep the peace. But more trouble waits in the wings: Andreas catches his son kissing another man in a more than friendly way, and Arturo, Karla’s Peruvian father, has a heart-attack. While Karla is in Peru taking care of Arturo, Andreas gets a little too cozy with a young woman by the name of Susanna. Only when he almost loses Emilia does he come to his senses and embarks on a journey to try to keep his family together.

For those of you who want to find out what has happened so far, part one, AN UNCOMMON FAMILY, is FREE on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk on MAY 23 and 24 and part two, LOVE OF A STONEMASON is available for $2.99 on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk.

Voices of readers that make my heart leap

Writing is a lonely pursuit. You sit at your desk and put words on paper or on the computer screen and begin a silent conversation mainly with yourself. Eventually, if you’re lucky, someone else, a reader, will answer you back and so, out of the monologue a dialogue develops.

Reviews are one way readers communicate with an author. They let the author know if his or her words made them happy or angry or left them untouched. When I published my first novel, I received a few enthusiastic 5-star reviews from a couple of friends who read the book, liked it, and wanted to support me. That was wonderful. Publishing a novel or a poem is like sending a child out into the world. You want it to do well and you need all the encouragement you can get.

However, after a while my readership grew. People I don’t know and who don’t know me judge what they read on its own merits, according to their tastes, likes and dislikes. Some love it and respond enthusiastically, others like it a little, and a few may hate it. People have different tastes and look for different things in a book and so they react differently to it. And that’s the way it should be. An author does not need to please everybody. My only task as an author is to be true to myself and I hope, by doing so, I may connect with people out there of like mind. 

Every once in a while, however, I read a review or receive an email from a reader who tells me that my book touched him or her on a deeper, more personal level, that it reminded him of an experience or a situation in his own life. That for me is the highest praise. It tells me that I don’t only write for myself, but what I put down means something to someone else. I’m not just sitting in front of my computer or my notepad by myself; I am, in fact, communicating something of value to someone else. That’s all the justification I need to go on writing.

Thank you, dear readers, for sharing your thoughts with me!

Two books for the price of one - one day only

BookSwag is a great new book site, where you can find a variety of inexpensive ebooks. Book One and Two of my Family Portrait series are featured on their bookshelves.

Today only, part one, An Uncommon Family, is free on Amazon and part two, Love of a Stonemason, is $ 2.99. So you get both books for a total of $ 2.99. Great deal!

An Uncommon Family - free

Love of a Stonemason - $2.99