SERIES or SEQUELS?

       by Linda Swift

                  Tales that Touch the Heart           

A recent blog presented here by Celia Yeary discussed books published in a series, as opposed to sequels. I have recently written three connected books which seem to have characteristics of both. So what should these short novels be called? I welcome your opinions.

In late 2014, I decided to enter a story in our PbRJV Christmas Anthology. My Civil War novel, This Time Forever, had recently been published, and in my head I was already living in Chattanooga in 1865 so I developed a plot that kept me there. A Season of Miracles was set during the last year of the war. Caroline Ross, a young Confederate widow, sought help from John Oldham, a Union doctor, when her little son became very ill with diphtheria. She was drawn to this shy man who kept a bedside vigil with her but his presence threatened everything she stood for. Could she face the censure of society and follow her heart?

Caroline had a sister, Elizabeth, wife of Clyde Harper, a despicable man. Their son died from the dreaded disease. Elizabeth deserved better than an unsuitable husband and the loss of one of her two beloved children. When an invitation for Valentine stories came from PbRJV a few months later, I took the opportunity to make amends to Elizabeth. In A Season for Love, Elizabeth had become a widow, and was trying to save her farm from being taken by her deceased husband's equally despicable brother. In that time period, women could not own property in most states and only marriage to a man who would share the homeplace with her was a viable solution. Matthew Sutton, a homeless veteran, crippled in the war, was Elizabeth's only option but he was reluctant to oblige her. Could  she risk losing everything and convince him to help her try to save what was rightfully hers?

Although this novella had a satisfactory conclusion, Matt Sutton's story seemed incomplete. He had a sister who shared his estranged father's home and I kept wishing for a reconciliation now that the war was over. When another PbRJV invitation came for a summer anthology, I decided to make it happen. Enid Sutton worked for her father, Judge Sutton, and when he suffered a heart attack, a chance visitor to his office was able to offer assistance. Ben Taylor, a Yankee had come to Chattanooga to claim his aunt's inheritance but was mistaken by the judge as a carpetbagger. Enid sent word to her brother about their father's condition, and with misgiving he came home and brought his new family. The judge refused to accept either of his children's choices until a surprising development forced him to acknowledge the truth about himself.

In December, I was able to combine these three novellas into one collection titled Seasons of the Heart. Now, during our Spring Sale, you can download A Season of Miracles free at Smashwords. Book 2 and Book 3 are also available for 99cents each. Or you can get the three stories combined in the collection titled Seasons of the Heart for $1.99.

* * *

Here is an excerpt from A Season of Miracles, Book 1 in my stories about the Ross-Sutton families. I hope you will enjoy it and check this link for your free download.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=A+Season+of+Miracles 

Excerpt:

The woman lay with her arm across her son's small frame in a gesture of
protection. Though God knows, she couldn't protect him from the disease
now in control of his body. John stood for a long moment looking at her.
She was completely covered by the quilt but he'd bet his wages she was
fully dressed beneath it. Her long wheat-colored hair curled loose about
her face, and for the first time he saw what delicate features she had.
There'd been no talk about her soldier husband, but he was a lucky man to
have a son and a woman like her to come home to. At least, he had a son
now, but whether that would be the case when the man returned remained
in God's hands.

John banked the fire. It seemed strange being in a real house again, and he
longed for the war to end and life to be the way it was before. Life will
never be the same as it was before for me, he silently reminded himself,
war or no war. He had burned all his bridges behind him when he decided
to join the Union Forces. Now he had no home to go back to – but sadder
still, no family.

Unfolding his bedroll, John placed it as near the fire as he could, and slid
his long length inside. His leg ached something fierce since the ride from
camp in the cold. It had been almost two years since the Christmas at
Stones River. Three days of fighting and then getting hit with a minie-ball
had been hell. If it hadn't been for the skill of Major Burke – Captain
Burke then – he would have lost his leg. It was lucky Burke found him in
that muddy cornfield and stopped the bleeding. The man was probably
glad to render aid to one of his own, even though he risked censure from
his Rebel captors. Maybe getting wounded had been lucky too. At least it
gained him an assignment to the camp in Chattanooga when the able
doctors moved on with General Thomas.

He dozed. The harsh coughing of the boy woke him.

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Appalachia Witch Series by Gerald Costlow @RebeccaJVickery #paranormalromance #witches

Anna was having a bad day. The goat gave only half the milk it usually did that morning, a crow flew from left to right across her path as she walked down to the stream, and she tripped on the way back, spilling one of the buckets and bruising her knee. On top of that, the bees were also having a bad day and she was stung several times while gathering honey, in spite of singing the proper calming charm.

 (A Distant Call, 1^st in Appalachia Witch series)

And thus begins my first story in the Appalachia Witch series, set in the 1920s somewhere in East Tennessee in the ridges and hollers of the Appalachia foothills. The imaginary town of Smithville is nearby, and it's a long train ride from there to Knoxville. But to go by the slice of daily life above, it could have been set in any pre-industrial society or frontier. Life for people scraping out a living from marginal land has not changed in millennia.

As the twentieth century began, paved roads and electric lines and telephone wires passed by the folks on the ridges and hollers of Appalachia.   The stereotype of the lazy, clannish, uneducated moonshiner took hold. The word "Hillbilly" began to reflect this. The mountain clans became social outcasts from proper society. A boy from back on the ridge would face huge barriers to courting the daughter of a rich store owner in town.

She sighed. "You don't know what bouquet means, do you? It's a French word I learned at the finishing school. It means 'a bunch of'. I'm just suggesting that maybe if you showed father you were trying to earn more of an income, he'd give you permission to court me."

He let go of her and went over to sit on the bench they'd dragged into the shed. She wondered if she'd hurt his feelings. That was the last thing she'd ever want to do.

            "Jo, honey," he said, "if having a steady income would get your Pa to let me marry you, why I'd work two jobs and be a happy man. Trouble is, he's set on you moving up in the world. You're all he has left since your Ma died, so I don't blame him one bit. He's not about to let some hillbilly with an eighth grade education court his daughter."

(Deal with the Devil, 2^nd in the Appalachia Witch series)

My family came from back on the ridge. I only know it from stories and family reunion visits, since my Grandparents moved North after the Great Depression along what was known as the "Hillbilly Highway" into Columbus, Ohio, to work the steel mills. When I decided to place a series of stories in this world, I had the tales told by my family to go by.

And when I decided to add a touch of the supernatural, I had other family tales to draw upon. People back on the ridge plant by the phases of the moon. Their medicine chest contains roots and herbs and home remedies. A bad omen is taken seriously. There are places and creatures back in those mountains they still talk about in whispers. But mostly, no matter how spooky or magical it got, these remain stories about special people struggling to make a life for themselves.

She did have the honor of watching him learn his first lesson about the limits of their Talent when he got tired of mind-shouting to the birds and squirrels and tried it on a bee working a field of flowers. Billie came yelling and running toward her, waving his arms while several angry bees chased this rude upstart down the road.

Liz stifled her laughter and began humming the soothing charm spell she'd been taught while using her Talent to project peaceful thoughts of a hive going about its business. Mollified, the little stinging warriors buzzed off.

            She turned to address Billie, hiding behind her skirts. "You're lucky they weren't yellow-jackets. Wasps will send the entire hive after you. The next time I tell you to be careful, you bee careful…get it?"

            He groaned at the pun.

 (Crazy Jack, 3^rd in the Appalachia Witch series)

The thing I enjoyed most about writing this series was being able to create characters that came to life, and over the course of time we watch them grow and learn and produce a new generation to carry on. I'll leave you with a picture of my Grandma when she was a pretty young teenager, sitting on the front porch of their cabin back on the ridge and a link to the VTP books on Amazon. 

Books by Gerald Costlow 

   

  

Have You Ever Lost Something of Value?

By: Celia Yeary

    "Valuable" is in the eye of the beholder and subject to interpretation. We've all lost something we considered valuable; however those were almost always something we could live without. In other words, losing a loved one in death shouldn't fall into this discussion, because at times the death of someone we loved can seem almost too much to bear.
     In the 1950s, my mother lost the beaters to her Kenmore electric mixer, the big kind that sits on a stand. She'd had the mixer for several years, and she used it almost every day. She had all three of us girls searching everywhere we could think of. One of us said, "You threw them in the trash by accident. That's the only explanation left." She would never, ever accept that. She'd say, "No, I would never do that." And even twenty years later, she'd wonder, "What happened to those beaters?"
     My husband and I--at separate times--have lost our matching wedding rings. I wrote an entire blog about that once. I remember how we felt, thinking we'd never find them, but we did. In retrospect, though, we could have lived without them. Our marriage wouldn't tarnish, nothing in our life would change, and we'd manage just fine. We might have even bought new rings if we hadn't found them.
     Last Christmas, my husband bought a beautiful Cross pen and pencil set for me. Really, this set is special, very beautiful, as well as practical. I keep them on top of my desk, to the left, at the base of my little blue lamp. One day I noticed the automatic pencil to the set was not there. I began to search. Did it fall into the nearby trashcan? Did it roll off the desk and under my dresser? Is it in a drawer? A pocket? I went through every single thing in the room to no avail. When had I used it last? Could I have taken it to the hall desk where I have two built-in bookshelves? Could it be anywhere in the desk? I consulted my husband. Did you borrow my pencil? Is it anywhere in your office, on your desk, in your closet?
     He and I searched the entire house, opening everything that could be opened. Bottom line, we scoured the house--and the vehicles--until we could not think of any other possible place to look.
I searched off and on for days. He told me he'd buy a whole new set for me.
     No, I said, I want this set—just like my mother wouldn't accept the fact those beaters were gone.
     But he began searching for another set on the internet anyway. When he found one he thought I'd like, and before he ordered the set, he sat down with me and said: "That pencil did not disappear into thin air. It's in this house somewhere. Now, think. What were you doing when you last used it?" I couldn't remember, of course, but I kept thinking about the hall desk. "I think I looked up a phone number, and the book is on the first bookshelf."
     He said, open it—see if you left it in there. Nope. No pencil. While we stood in the hallway where this little desk is built into the wall, he reached up and pulled down a hardback book, one I use often in research. He said, "Look." Sticking out at the top, between the pages, was about an inch of that mechanical pencil. Then I remembered having the book on my other desk, open, and using the pencil to take notes. I have a habit of laying a pen or pencil in the groove of the open book. He's much taller and saw it, but I couldn't unless I stood on tiptoes.
     Would you believe I cried? But really, would the loss of the pencil have changed my life? No.
Sometimes I think we waste too much time remembering and regretting something we've lost.
---A rejected manuscript.
---A friendship.
---A connection with a family member.
---An opportunity.
---An entire unproductive morning.
---A chance for success.
---A visit with someone before it's too late.
---An unfinished project.
---Our youth.
---A…dream.
    I hope you and I will evaluate our lives, accept that which we cannot regain, clear our hearts and minds, and move on.
    But suppose we do mention someone we loved and believed had died…but he returns? What you believed was lost forever is now standing before you?
    In TEXAS PROMISE, Jo Cameron marries her childhood sweetheart Dalton King. Soon after the marriage, Dalton joins the Texas Rangers without consulting her at all. He leaves and after a long lonely year, she receives a startling letter from the Texas Rangers headquarters in Waco, Texas announcing his “probable” death in far West Texas.
    After a period of mourning and a family service to remember Dalton, Jo moves to Austin and begins a dress shop business.
    But Dalton returns, tarnished, broken and bitter, and filled with rage at his wife.
~~**~~**~~
Excerpt:
Jo's words:
    Her sister True said, "Oh, Jo, I wish… What's wrong?"
    Jo gasped at the envelope she'd picked up, stared, and turned pale. She held the letter in a trembling hand.
    "It's from the Headquarters of the Texas Rangers in Waco." She sat back, shaken, staring at the piece of mail. "I know what this is. I'm sure of it. Oh, True, I'm not ready." She held it to her breast for a moment, took a deep breath, and opened it.
    Dear Mrs. King:
I regret to inform you that upon a thorough search of the Chisos Mountains of West Texas, our investigative unit was unsuccessful at locating your husband, his body, or anyone who might have seen him. The entire force of the Texas Rangers of this great state extends condolences on the loss of your loved one. We also grieve for the loss of a brother in arms.
We advise you to apply for Widow's Benefits as soon as you wish.
Sincerely, Captain Louis Lancaster, Texas Ranger Headquarters, Waco, Texas
     Jo finished the letter, held it out to True, dropped her head in her arms on the table, and sobbed. Her shoulders shook with emotion while she cried her heart out; releasing all the sorrow she'd felt for more than a year. The sadness had begun three weeks after their beautiful wedding, when he had announced his departure.
***~~***~~Dalton's words:
Dalton King had landed in hell, but if he hadn't, the pain and horror couldn't be any worse. His head throbbed dully, fiercely, as if someone hammered railroad spikes through his skull, and the rest of his body didn't feel much better. The excruciating stabs and jolts kept him frozen, with no energy to moan or writhe. Surely, he would die.
But someone stood near in this place. Close, but where?
**~**~

TEXAS PROMISE: The Camerons of Texas-Book II

Now through April 15—full length novel.

Spring 99¢ Sale: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00930ZCOC/

Celia Yeary-Romance...and a little bit 'o Texas

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