Christmas novella

A Montana Christmas is about bringing together two families, two worlds, for a holiday gathering with the hope of healing old wounds. Helene is convinced it is the season for just that while Phillip, once she explains her plan, is equally convinced it'll be a disaster. Can the Rocking H work its magic as it had in their lives? 

While the novella stands alone, From Here to There came ahead of it. The short story, Curly Learns a Lesson is at its end, and there is bound to be a future contemporary western romance as the Rocking H has more to say.

A Montana Christmas Snippet:

“I wish I could be there but…” Once again his tone had changed. She knew he was feeling his own pressure. He handled it well, or he wouldn’t be in high stakes finance, but it didn’t come without a physical cost.

“What I wanted to… Well it’ll be awhile longer before I can leave Uncle Amos. He really does need me here as much as anything to be sure he takes his meds and doesn’t overdo.”

The hesitation was brief. “I understand. When will you be back then?”

Having split their living between two homes, one on the ranch and the other in Boston, had a lot of complications not the least of which was going to be this year for Christmas.

“I don’t see how I can until the end of January.”

“No Tahiti then?” His voice was toneless, revealing none of what he was feeling. That was so typical of Phillip when he wanted to drop a barrier between others and himself.

“I’m sorry, love, but I just can’t do it to Uncle Amos. And with Rafe as he is, well they need me.”

“I need you too.” He wasn’t condemning her, but she still knew he’d gone into a defensive mode.
“And I need you, Phillip. I want a Montana Christmas this year with you here too. I know you planned for us to go to the islands again, but can’t you cancel that and come here instead, have a real family Christmas?”

This time there was a definite pause, but she waited before she added, “You know what Christmas means to me. I’ve told you how it always was.”

Phillip had told her what holidays had meant to him-- violent drunkenness from some of his mother’s boyfriends. It hadn’t improved as his sisters grew up and added their own chaos. His experiences had been far from Helene’s-- even though most of hers hadn’t involved parents but rather the ranch and her uncle and aunt. For her, Christmas holidays had been an escape from pressure. Up in the mountains at their ranch, she had always been rejuvenated. She understood how different it had been for Phillip, but she could show him another way if he would give her a chance.

“Please at least think about it,” she said. “I know I just dumped this on you but think about it. If you just can’t do it, well, we’ll work out something.” She had no idea what as she was not going to leave her uncle until he was fully himself again.

“Baby, I won’t say no to you. You know that. All right.” Now his voice definitely took on a humorous twist. “What does this business of a family Christmas—Montana style mean?”

“How soon can you get here? I could show you better than tell you.”

“Will there be any presents for me to unwrap?” he asked with that teasing tone.

Holiday novella

Last week I watched the first of the Hallmark Christmas movies. I don't watch them all week, just the new ones on Saturday and Sunday. I discovered them last year and find them simple, require nothing from me, and usually have a good life moral.

For me a Christmas movie or book has to have certain qualities. I started to watch one on the 14th and could not stand its premise, which was of a heroine who was an habitual liar, using her lies to avoid problems and get ahead. A wish made it impossible for to tell a lie and led to complications. Frankly, I couldn't stand her. I left the story before it got to where she was forced to stop telling the lies. I know this premise for a film had been used before. I didn't care for it then either.

On the other hand, I liked the one on the 15th-- Christmas Incorporated. It had a charming heroine and hero, just enough plot, and lots of Christmas. Did I mention the hero was hot? I can see that actor, Steve Lund, having a bigger career as some other stars from Hallmark have.

I've had the holidays in a few of my books, but never at the center of their plots. I did that with the novella, A Montana Christmas, which takes forward a few years the ranch family in From Here to There. Rather than a romance as such, this is more a slice of life story. It has all the characters from FHtoT as well as some additions. (Writing it also suggested a future story for the family, involving an older couple, which I have yet to write because this was the year of historic romances but next year, it's in the plan.)  

Snippet from A Montana Christmas:

~~~

When Helene heard the truck outside, she went to the door to open it for her smiling uncle and Curly as they stamped the snow from their boots.

“How’d it go?” she asked at the two, who were grinning as though they had been up to something.

“What part?” Curly asked winking at Rafe.

“The doctor part, of course.”

“Oh that,” her uncle said pouring himself a cup of coffee and ignoring her frown. “Doc let me go. Looks like I’ll live to be eighty after all—if I don’t ride with Curly driving again that is.”

“Dangnabit, I did not take the corner that fast,” Curly grouched as he took a big sip of the coffee with a satisfied smirk.

“What else were you up to in town then?” she asked not ignoring the original grins she had seen.

“Little shopping is all and don’t ask for what,” Uncle Amos said. “Tis the season and all that.”

“Speaking of seasons,” she said, “with Christmas just three weeks off, I was thinking we should make some plans.”

“More than the usual with Nancy, Emile and the boys?” her uncle asked.

“I was thinking yes… Phillip will be here, I hope. I’d like to have the dinner up at our house. How would that be?”

Amos shrugged. “Never no mind to me if it don’t matter to Emile and them.”

“I invited too?” Curly asked.

“Of course, and a girlfriend if you wish.”

Curly snorted as he leaned back against the counter, crossing one boot over the other. “Women are too danged much trouble. Not gonna mess with one again. I’m too old anyway.”

Now it was Helene’s turn to snort. “You are still a handsome man, Curly, and you know it. What happened with Sherri?”

Amos was the one to laugh that time. “She found out about Jan and that was pretty much it for both of them.”

“Good riddance to both. Women just wanta own a man.”

“Maybe you haven’t found the right one yet,” Helene suggested.

“He’s been married three times. Maybe he’s right to give it a rest.”

Obviously to divert that direction for the conversation, Curly asked, “What you going to cook, Helene, not that I’d be picky or anything.”

“Just traditional fare.”

“So long as that means turkey, dressing, cranberries, mashed potatoes and lots of gravy,” her uncle said with a grin. “I got no complaints. But what’s this planning business about. Throw a spread, open some presents, isn’t that about it? What’s to plan for?”

“There are the numbers. I’ll call Nancy to be sure they can come.” She glanced at Rafe who had said nothing. “You will come also, won’t you?”

“Where else would I go?” he said with a grimace as he shifted positions and manned up to another sip of the potent coffee.

“If no one minds, I’d like to include a few others. One or two that might have to sleep down here.”

Uncle Amos frowned. “My sister coming?”

“Heavens no.” She laughed. “Mother is in Palm Springs with her bridge buddies, and Dad is off with Sharron to wherever it is she convinced him to take her this year. No, not them. I’d like to ask Phillip’s mother, sisters and brother.”

Curly choked on a swallow of coffee. When he got his voice back, he asked, “Phil okay that?” His look said he doubted it. 

 Available at various sell sites: A Montana Christmas links

Solitude and the Writer

Lately my creative life appears to be revolving around the camera in one way or another. I have put off starting the next book. This was not so much because I don't know where it's going-- as it's evolving in my head quite nicely. It's more because I am not sure I have a big enough block of time to do more than get the first chapter laid out. Sometimes that works and sometimes it creates a mixed energy that can be avoided by just waiting until the time is here.

Long time friends were here on Sunday. Diane Widler Wenzel was beginning the largest plein air painting she's done in ten years. She took on even more of a challenge when she chose to videotape the process to share how such a painting evolves. She set herself up down by the creek.

The reflections in a summer creek are fantastic with so many colorful places where you can hardly tell the reflection from reality. A polarizing lens helps to capture it with the camera. I am thinking sometime I will put together a slideshow of the reflections I've taken through the years and seasons.

As Diane got her painting laid out. I relaxed out in the new yard area and contemplated life and art. No, I didn't. I petted the cats and more or less took a day off-- other than fixing everyone a lunch-- as the guys worked on a (broken-- don't ask how that happened) ATV, cleaned out a barn, and stuffed a wool bag. Me, I just enjoyed listening to the birds and staring up at a beautiful blue sky as some clouds floated past. That cats approved my choice.

On the week-end, I bought a new Logitech webcam. It has wide angle as an option. They all take adjusting the color, contrast, gain, exposure, etc. as light changes. I am hopeful with it I will get less obvious pixilation and sharper images as I continue to learn to talk about my books, the writing process, or whatever comes to mind. It's still a challenge but rewarding too.

Besides discussing each of my books, I also have recorded a few on topics like sexuality in the novel, techniques in doing a video, video potential as another communication medium, etc etc.

My weeks ahead will grow increasing chaotic which may break my posting rhythm here and on Rainy Day Thoughts. We are loading the first of our winter supply of hay. Farm Boss does that work as when bales weigh 800 lbs., I sure am not going to be out helping stack them. It is purely a job for a tractor.

The busy times over the next few weeks will all be enjoyable with more grandkid time as well as Farm Boss's 70th birthday. I am enjoying the season, the family activities that are sandwiched into the ranch jobs, and the wonders of living on a creek during the summer. It's wonderful right now as a deer wandered through and Farm Boss scared the fox as he surprised him hunting by the old harness shed.

I made this video to play with the webcam and discuss something I think  does matter to the writer. Thinking more on those kinds of topics is on my mind--

Chronicles of the fox

With a busy week-end, I am just going to share here the blog I posted in my other blog. It's the ongoing story of us and the foxes, without the happy ending as of yet that I like to see in romance books I write and read. We have to work hard to give ourselves happy endings where it comes to wildlife-- and of course, no such story is ever really over.

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When our story begins, the humans are clueless as to what is going on-- not unusual for humans. The story will take place on two levels with two families.

April 2012 and I saw a fox in our deck garden. It's a fenced yard and I thought how wondrous as it sat and sunned itself, almost seeming to take a nap. I felt both thrilled and amazed that the wild had invaded our groomed space. It acted almost as though it was its own backyard... Keep that thought in mind.

We left the farm here not long after the sighting as we had work to do in Tucson on our house there. We were gone a month or so. When we came back, we began to be concerned that something had died in our solarium which is a small room off the house that was a porch we had enclosed. When the smell went away, we forgot about the problem... for awhile.

We pick our story back up in spring of 2013 when we finally had what we felt was a secure outside enclosure for our cats. It was with the goal of keeping them in the deck yard with enough space for them to feel they were having a wilds experience but not so much that they could get out to the gravel road while pursuing a frog, bird, mouse, etc. and end up killed by a passing vehicle.

With spring I began to think I wanted another space enclosed-- what most would call the front yard as it is toward the road but we have a rather confusing home arrangement where what is the front door never gets used by anybody-- people come in through the backdoor to the utility room or through the french door leading to our deck. It's a farm though where driveways relate more to farm use than people.

Farm Boss set out to make that yard secure and about the time he was finishing it, when we set up a picnic table there, a cat door and encouraged our cats to use it, we had also begun to see a pair of foxes. They weren't frightened. They watched us as though we were the intruders. Keep that thought in mind.

When the pair appeared again in the supposedly 'safe' cat yard, Farm Boss set about making the fence higher and more secure. Didn't work. Foxes were still there and we were glad we had the new frontyard that we thought of as a backyard for the cats as although foxes don't choose fights with grown cats, these were obviously trained killers and one of our cats, Blackie, feels a responsibility to guard the property seeming to know no fear.

It was when Farm Boss watched one of the foxes, outside the fenced enclosure climb into a magnolia, get a bird out of it,take it to the orchard to kill and then... leap over our secure fence to bring it into the enclosed front/backyard, now to be known as deck yard. Why would a fox take its prey into a people enclosed yard to eat it?

The fox showed up one day right outside the new fenced garden and both the cat and it stared at each other. Pepper was wise enough to slam through the cat door at a fast run which is why I knew what was going on. I yelled at the fox. It looked at me with curiosity. I then picked up a rock and loosely tossed it over the fence hoping it would scare it off. It ran to it to see what it was. Clearly some humans had been feeding it. Finally I used the hose and when it got sprayed, it left but didn't run far.

Those two experiences pretty much told us something was going on here that we didn't want. Shortly after we found out what it was when Farm Boss put a live trap near where we now believed they were living in the narrow crawlspace under our solarium. The next morning a fox was in it. Farm Boss poked a stick back in the space he had thought too small for any fox to get into and heard a growl.

So here we were with the illusion we were building a higher fence to keep the foxes out and protect our cats... except the foxes were determined to get in because this was their home. That garden was theirs too. The safety of our cats had been an illusion.

We knew foxes mate in winter or early spring. The odds now were that this pair had pups in the crawlspace under our solarium.   We did some online research and found from the time the pups were born, it takes two months to become grown enough to be on their own. It's not hard to understand why the parents chose where they did. It's dry, secure and last year with us gone, it was quiet. Foxes are wonderful hunters and predators but also prey for the bigger predators. We have a safe area-- especially when we weren't there.

It's kind of neat to think you share your living space with a family of foxes, and there was a momentary thought, fleeting, that if we could fence our cats securely away from them they could stay. No, that's crazy. Not only do foxes potentially carry rabies, but they are wild things. They need to be afraid of humans who can endanger them.

New plan. Let the trapped fox go out by the old, downed barn with the admonition that it'd be a great spot for a den. Since they have been here, the rodent population has been way down. Yes, they kill birds but only to eat, not for fun. We would love them to stay but not under the solarium with putrifying smells in that room as they don't eat every bite of what they kill.

When Farm Boss got ready to release the trapped fox, which he thinks was the male, he had  a careless moment and got bit through the wire and his leather gloves. Fortunately a graze more than a deep bite, and it healed fine. It is a reminder that they will attack when feeling threatened.

Trying to find out exactly what was going on, we set up our wildlife camera with a view to their exit door from the crawlspace. Got some great pictures and the possibility that the mother took her babies elsewhere-- to a securer life or so she hopes. Wildlife cams that flash at night are obviously not regarded as friendly and since the trapping in the cage, the foxes have been more wary of us.

I feel sorry for predators as their life is not an easy one. These little foxes are awesome predators as you can see if you look at the slideshow below. They are also so cute, but my priority is my cats. The foxes have to stop denning up under our home, but whether they already have, we will give them a reprieve of two months  to raise those pups if they are still here-- darling pups and I so relate to the struggle these animals face.

In the meantime-- are we deluding ourselves that we can make this less attractive near our home where they have been dry, warm and felt safe from bobcats, coyotes, cougar and bears? Keeping out an animal that can jump and climb as well as they can is not easy. Having been fed by other humans makes it even harder.

The story might be over... or maybe not.