Excerpt from Moon Dust

With the new year ahead, my thoughts have turned to the books I will be writing. The first has to be an historical to fulfill a commitment I made to readers and myself. After that, I may do something contemporary as I enjoy writing those-- especially based in Portland or maybe try one in Tucson.

This is an excerpt from Moon Dust. It's kind of a tough story in some ways but one of the books I feel most proud of as it deals with the adult ramifications of childhood abuse on men. I did a lot of research for it because I felt it was little understood. Of course, it's also a romance:

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            "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" George asked with an abrupt, and for Dane, unwelcome shift in the conversation.

            "Why?" Dane asked with a faint smile. "You issuing an invitation or want one?"

            "Neither. I'm joyfully going to my ex-wife, her kid, her new boyfriend, and our kid, the new American family along with turkey with all the trimmings--heartburn, the battle royal or is that the battle ax. No, I was just concerned about what you were doing."

            Dane laughed. "And you accuse me of being soft. Well, so you won't worry, I've got plans."

            "You and Susan make up your differences?"

            "Hardly. Didn't you see her with Russ Wright, her new boyfriend? Susan isn't interested in making up with me," Dane said bitterly, remembering again how beautiful she had looked. There was a time where that intelligent beauty had been his, where he'd felt a sense of pride in the knowledge that he would be the man taking her clothes off that night. Now the beauty was like a weapon piercing his heart.

            George shook his head. "Where was I supposed to have seen her?"

            "George, don't you ever look around, observe anything. When you brought the human barracuda to interview me, Susan was at the other end of the restaurant."

            "I thought you ended up liking Margo.”

            “She was doing her job.”

            “Well, I never saw Susan that night."

            Dane shook his head. "You were so high on getting that interview nailed down you wouldn't have noticed Cleopatra and her whole barge."

            "I would too," George denied with a grin, then returned uncomfortably to his point. "I don't like you spending a holiday alone, Dane. I know how rough divorce is... how hard those first months are. How about coming to dinner with me? I was just kidding about the arguing, honest."

            Dane grinned. "I can't believe any of what I'm hearing, that you of all people would become a broody hen. It's out of character, George."

            "It’s just--" George frowned.

            "Hey, quit worrying about me. I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings by myself. It wasn't until Susan that I wanted to be with anybody. I heard they got fresh snow up at Timberline. When you're stuffing your face with turkey, just think of me schussing down the slopes."

            "What if it rains up there?"

            Dane laughed, shaking his head. "Then I'll take a TV dinner out of the freezer. Quit worrying."

            "Your mother lives down the valley. Couldn't you have dinner with her?" George tried again, obviously determined to find a family with which Dane could roost.

            "No," Dane said.

 

Moon Dust and a new cover

One of the aspects to publishing your own books is the need to come up with covers that depict the story in a way that will entice a reader to look at the sample and then buy the book. I've tried quite a few different images for Moon Dust with nothing quite saying all I wanted.

The book is complicated because it's about a marriage on the rocks as well as about sexual abuse and its adult ramifications. The hero is a high school principal who is dealing with militia driven youth gangs. I labeled it romantic suspense but it is also emotional suspense. It's not hard to see why romance readers turn their noses up at it. Many are looking for a relaxing read. Although I believe Moon Dust is a positive book, it does deal with difficult subjects. 

Recently I came across an image that inspired me to try a new cover for it. Don't ask me how many this book has had. The new one depicts the conflicted emotions of the hero and heroine, and it's set in the new apartment the heroine has acquired. She is looking to recreate herself after she opts to leave her marriage-- even though she still loves her husband. 

I went looking through CanStock for an apartment and found the perfect one for my interior decorator heroine. Unfortunately, I couldn't use the whole image as book covers are vertical, but I wanted to share it here as I think it'd be great for a downtown apartment, which is where she moved when she left her husband. It says a lot about the new her.

I have always had two sides to me. One would love a very modernistic room like this one. The other wants a rustic cabin in the mountains. While I'd love an apartment in downtown Portland where I'd look out at the lights of the city and see Mt. Hood in the distance, I also love my country life, where we raise livestock.

This is the new cover with an attempt to show the conflict and love between these two people who will have to not only fight for their marriage but also for survival.

 As part of reintroducing the book, I also created a new video for it on YouTube. I do trailers for all my books. Sometimes, as I get a better way of showing the book, the trailer needs a redo also-- Moon Dust Trailer.

Bannister's Way

When writing, secondary characters sometimes interest the author enough to find themselves in their own book. This happened to me when I wrote Desert Inferno. David Bannister was an agent sent to Arizona to find evidence and arrest a dangerous man. He was slick, handsome, and dangerous. He and the hero of Inferno, Jake Donovan, became friends. I began to wonder about David's background. When I figured it out, Bannister's Way was on its way. 

The heroine was a sculptress, teacher, and David's ex-wife. To catch a murderer, David was going undercover but didn't have in mind what his partner set up for him.

Having been in a lot of art classes, some with nude models, having painted and sculpted nudes, Raven was a fun heroine for me

 

David only half listened as he heard her tell them about the value there was to be had from taking seriously a study of fine art, how throughout the ages great artists have seen the study of the body--the musculature, the bone structure, in short the anatomy--was important to make their work come alive. They must take seriously the study of the nude--

Whoa! What had she just said? Nude! Who said anything about... nude? And then he knew and wished nothing so much as that Vance was nearby where he could get his hands around his throat. A good dodge, a natural way in, his friend had said. Friend, hah! He'd kill him!

He barely heard the rest of Raven's instructions. It was impossible. No way under this earth or above it could he take off his clothes in front of all these people! He looked at the students, at their interested gazes in a new way. They must know he was the model, the guinea pig, the sacrificial lamb, the... No!  He would not strip. It was out of the question. No way could he do it.

Raven's voice broke through his thoughts. "At one time, I wouldn't have had to say what I am going to next, but times have changed and so have people. There will be no commenting about the model, nor any jokes." One of the girls giggled in what to David seemed a nasty way. He stared at her, wondering how such an innocent looking young woman could have such a perverted giggle. He looked back at Raven, who was looking over the students. "You will at no time treat the model with less than respect. You will not touch him. This is a serious class. If you behave as though your time here is a joke or an opportunity for voyeurism, you will be kicked out of the class. If it happens soon enough, you might be able to just drop it. If it’s too late, you will get a failing grade.”

He felt angry at her for the position in which he found himself, then he remembered her uncertainty, the many opportunities she had extended, trying to give him a graceful way out of it. Except he hadn't known what it was. He remembered her question--are you sure you know what you're doing? His own confident answer--of course.

  He stared down at his scarred boot and thought again of Vance--the man who called himself friend, who had to be somewhere snickering, laughing at the ultimate stunt. This was the worst of the tricks to which Rich had ever subjected him. David's breathing wasn't coming easily as he considered how it would feel to be nude in a room where everyone else was clothed, of being stared at--intimately.

 It is for art, he reminded himself. Everyone knew about the old masters, their works. Michelangelo’s David. Rodin’s Age of Bronze. He'd seen nude paintings on museum walls but never thought about the flesh and blood models who had posed for those works. The thought of being one of those models had never entered his head.

He’d almost turned down the assignment just on it being as a model--a fully clothed model. Only his interest, in what had appeared to be an unsolvable case and the knowledge that his ex-wife taught the class, had persuaded him. Now what was he going to do?

a romance with an edge

For the month of October, I reduced the price of Moon Dust to $.99. That will end with November 1, where it will go back to $2.99.  I wanted to mention it here again; so that anyone who hasn't read it can get it at the lower rate.

To keep the cover fresh; and because the cover I had didn't show as much of what the book was about as I wanted, I redid it. Now instead of the cover's emphasis on the heroine, it is on the hero who faces many of the more dangerous threats, both to his emotional and physical health.

In looking for a new cover, I created two.  The one above is not the one I used. I liked it a lot as it showed the strength of high school principal, Dane Connors who was working hard to get the best for the students in his school and facing up to some tough issues as well as in his personal life.

The story is set in Portland, Oregon but could be any big city across this country for the kinds of problems Dane's school was facing-- guns, bullying, budget crunches, gang activity, parents wanting to enforce their social and religious views onto the school, and in his case a very dangerous man leading a local militia group who felt threatened by Dane's invasive (as he saw it) educational ideas.Writing about our schools, the problems being faced there and having a high school principal for the hero made this book rewarding to research and write.

Dane's personal problems were also threatening his life as his wife of two years was divorcing him; something Dane had totally not been expecting. Her reasons for wanting a divorce went into areas he didn't want to explore from his own past.

There is a reason for the title, but I won't give it away as it is about the truth underlying the story-- a truth I want readers to find in the book rather than be told about beforehand. It is about how we make a difference in the lives of others-- something of much interest in the work of educators.

This story led to another, Second Chance, eight years later where two of the secondary characters from Moon Dust become the hero and heroine of their own story centered in the work of wildlife rehabilitation.

Moon Dust is a strong love story between two adults, with action, danger, an underlying reason for being, and oh yes, healthy sexuality. I've actually gotten a few reviews by those who would prefer no sex in their stories. I don't write sweet romances because I think writing about healthy, vibrant sexuality is important-- especially in a culture where so much of it is anything but healthy. 

While Moon Dust is still in Amazon Select, that may not be true for much longer either because as the heavy lifting work on our little ranch lets up, some of these contemporary romances will go to other ePublishers like Barnes and Noble and Kobo, which means they can no longer be in Select which requires the books to be exclusive to Amazon. I've taken 6 out and won't be putting new ones in there (and I still haven't decided whether to put the historical anywhere just yet).

Gathering material

Although I try to keep myself upbeat regarding this business of publishing, there are those down times and it'd be ignoring reality to not sometimes write about them. As a writer, any writer, you put a lot of yourself into each manuscript. There are not only hours, but your own set of beliefs and values. When that work is rejected, there is no way to feel anything but depressed. What you try to do is pick yourself up and concentrate on other things for awhile.

Because I haven't put dollars into this business of marketing books, I have some comfort that at least I haven't pulled money from one need to feed another. But emotional blood, sweat, and tears, there's been plenty of that. And there have been dollars involved even if indirectly.

For instance this week-end, I finally thought I had the right weather to get a photo of a home that would fit one my heroine owned in the book I am redoing. I had put together most of a trailer for it but wanted her home, as it's an important part of the story and figures prominently in several key scenes.

Getting that photo required driving around 80 miles to the Portland area. The photo (yes, I found one) didn't come for free given gasoline prices-- but we often like to go for drives. This was an area Farm Boss had been a lot as a young person; so it was kind of fun on that level.

This drive was also a step back in time for me. The house I had written about was based on one an uncle had rented between having sold one home and having a better home built. His mother, three kids, and he (he was a widower) spent a summer at that house on the banks of the Tualatin River. I loved when I came to spend a few nights. You could swim off a dock that was right below the house. The home was kind of sprawling, old and not in great shape, but I had had my heroine buy it that way and do the remodeling before the book begins.

Although I didn't get the photo of that house (it has since been nicely remodeled and was not accessible from the public road), we did find a very nice, public trail and park that they have put along the Tualatin. We walked about half a mile down it and got some photos through the brush of homes on the other side. One of which will work nicely for what I needed. I'd hate to try and figure out what that one photo cost though-- so I won't.


The two photos above are not the house. The second one was on the lane leading to the house I once stayed in.