Round Robin for June--emotion and fireworks!

"It was the music. Always the music. It started somewhere deep in his soul and coursed through his body in a mad rush to explode on the surface. He had felt it as a small child, this urgent need to touch the piano keys, to hear the notes, to reach inside the old upright in his grandmother’s parlor, close his eyes and feel the strings and make the vibrations. To release the music from within himself and then take it back inside, remold it and start all over again.

"He felt it now. Eyes closed, hands splayed on a keyboard, his foot pumped, his head moved, his body swayed. He felt the music, was the music and both started and stopped with the music. Smoke, lights, crowd, video screens, revolving stage—all enhanced his music, helped others feel it. But no one knew the music as he did. No one was the music as he was. Not the four other members of Bone Cold—Alive, not even his twin brother, who lolled his head as he sang to the 75,000 fans that screamed and yelled and gyrated with them. The drums modulated the rhythm, increased, called to him. He felt them. The crowd called to him. He felt them. Shifting his weight, he took a deep breath, and began to sing into the mike attached to his headphones. His words, his song, his music.

"His soul."


This is the beginning of the prologue for T's Trial, releasing July 1 and the first of six in the Bone Cold--Alive series about a rock band and their individual redemptions. I wrote this years ago, when the book was entitled Heaven on a Kitestring. It was a 1997 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist in Long Contemporary. I knew it hadn't a prayer of winning (it didn't), but RWA in Orlando was certainly more fun because I was a finalist.

Why did I know it wouldn't win? Rock. Star. Music. Drugs. Eddie T, the man who is music, has flaunted every rule and held nothing sacred but his music. While I have rewritten parts of the book over its course of two e-publishers as Lyla's Song, and now being independently published, these words have always stayed the same. I placed my hands on the computer keys, closed my eyes, and gave life to T.

This round robin focusses on emotion. You've wandered here from Beverley Bateman's blog and I'm sending you on to Anne Stenhouse.

But that's hardly fair. Perhaps you'd like the complete list of participants and here they are:

Margaret Fieland
Heidi M.
Beverley Bateman
Kay Sisk
Anne Stenhouse
Connie Vines
Ginger Simpson
Geeta Kakade
Fiona McGier
Lynn Crain
Rhobin Courtright

A new cover!!!!!! Excitement reigns!

My cover artist Lyndsey Lewellen (Lewellen Designs) has outdone herself with the first of my six part rock star novels, T's Trial. This book, as Heaven on a Kitestring, was an RWA Golden Heart finalist back in 1997. Alas, it didn't win. I found a home for it with an independent e-publisher in the early 2000s as Lyla's Song. This past year I requested the return of my rights for this book and the others so I could update them, shorten them, and republish independently.

T's Trial will be followed by: C's Comeuppance, Tib's Temptation, Ron's Run, Ian's Image, and finally, to wrap up any loose ends, Bo's Beauty.

The back cover blurb for T's Trial:

"Eddie T Samuels' addiction to music takes him to the top of the rock world, but his addiction to drugs threatens his life and freedom. Sobering up in rehab is a start, but band manager Levi Fletcher wants to seal the deal by hiding him for another three weeks.

Widow Lyla Lee has never rented her house to anyone like her new tenants. Something is not quite right, from Sam's obsession with the grand piano to Fletch's control of every situation. But hearing Sam play challenges her own long-buried artist and when he wants a duet, she can't resist, either the music or the man.

Welcome to Jinks, Texas, where no one's business is quite as private as they want it to be and T is set to face the trial of his life."

But, the cover:

Let us ponder the cat

So why, in a house with real wood flooring, faux wood flooring and tile, does the cat always choose to be sick on the carpet?

And not the carpet which would disguise this colorful transgression, the area rugs of many colors which I just couldn't resist 12 years ago. Oh, no, the grey carpet. The English wool in the master bedroom. In the middle of the night.

Is there cat food without red/orange/brown dye which won't break my cat food budget? I need to research and realize it would be cheaper than replacing the carpet.

To ponder: The rear view

I've pondered about this for a while: Why, when working in the yard, do we put our rears to the street and not our fronts? Not only is it not our best view (not for most of us anyway), but when someone honks and yells (yes, I live in that kind of neighborhood), we have to straighten up and turn around and half the time the offender has buzzed on by!

My flower beds are deep enough that I can put my better side forward when tending them. Only thing is, so often I don't.

Hmmm. I'll have to work on that.

The Ponderables

I've thought about this for a while, writing blogs about things I ponder, things that make me go: hmmm.

Thing today:

Why is it that when you place clothes in the washing machine, perfectly turned, the washer turns them inside out?

But the dryer doesn't reverse the process and give them to you the way you put them in in the first place?

Or, say you do put them in wrong side out, that's the way they stay? Or, maybe one side, like a pant leg, gets turned? And still the dryer doesn't complete the job.

Or the dryer, bless it, takes the right side out clothes (particularly slacks) and turns them wrong side out? It likes to play with nightgowns and knit golf shirts too.

Why is that?

Are the washer and dryer at odds with each other? Do they not work as a team for the betterment but instead exist to confound their owner?

Ever pondered that? Does it make you go hmmm?