Lauren-Rain Snow is someone I would love to have as a neighbor. She’s talented, generous, and very, very wise–you can see that in her lovely eyes. She’s also genuine. When she retired from social work where she specialized in child welfare cases for thirty years, the old dream of writing was soon ignited. Drawing from her vast experiences, Laurel-Rain is an expert at creating characters and detailing their behaviors, inner thoughts and motives in her novels.

Through a chance meeting via social media, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Laurel-Rain and I’m delighted that she accepted my invitation to be featured on Brava. So please give her a warm welcome!

Real Life Experiences

When I look back on my life—and these days, there is much more time behind me than ahead of me!—I ask myself certain questions about how I came to this point in my life.  What were the defining moments for me?

On a couple of my Internet sites, such as Authors Den, I posted a little snippet about myself, and it goes like this:  “I feel like I’ve lived about five different lives…and you can read about them in my five novels.”

Perhaps this sounds glib, but in many ways, it seems to summarize the passages of my life.

As a child, I lived on a farm with very traditional, strict parents.  Any free time I had was something I had to steal after all the chores were done.  And if, for a few moments, I escaped the scrutiny of my controlling father, I felt very lucky indeed.  My greatest passion was reading, followed soon by my “scribblings.”  Like Jo March, in “Little Women,” I turned to my writing as an outlet…and a hope for the future.

Some of these childhood, adolescent, and young adult experiences became the fictionalized core of my novel “Web of Tyranny.”

My college (radical) exploits formed much of “Miles to Go.”

“An Accidental Life” spotlighted events from my social work career, zeroing in on the struggles of young pregnant teens on drugs; these characters were fictionalized, but the events of their lives were very real…torn from the pages of case files and changed substantially to protect the privacy of the clients.

Therefore, in many ways, I did live the experiences described in my novels.  Even the ones I am now writing.  Currently working on two WIPs, I have chosen to move the time period ahead to the present in one that I am calling “Defining Moments.”  In this work of fiction, I am featuring an English teacher who dreams of becoming a writer: something she does achieve once she reaches retirement.  My experiences were similar, except that my primary career was in social work.  My Main Character in “Defining Moments” had a very different childhood from mine, and in most ways, is unlike any of my incarnations—except for the writing part.  And the fact that she becomes an obsessive blogger.

I chose to incorporate that particular “addiction” of mine into the story because it felt like something authentic that a writer could and would do.  My character began to blog and network as a way to market her books.  In the end, she lost herself in the process because of her complete immersion into this world of detached social connections that she found on blogs and social networking sites.  Finding her way back is a struggle, but in the journey she discovers some important clues about who she is.

I believe that, in “writing what we know,” we do sometimes borrow from our life experiences.  Perhaps the insights we have gleaned can be offered to our characters.  Or our struggles can become theirs.  Through these expressions of our “real life experiences,” we can hopefully connect to readers.

Please visit Laurel-Rain’s website Here.

You can also find her on Facebook

This is a very exciting day for the lovely and gracious Laura Harrington, and I’m delighted to introduce her on Brava! Laura’s debut novel, Alice Bliss, launches into the world of published books today, and life, as she knew it, will forever change. Yes, a debut is that big! As an award-winning playwright and the 2008 winner of the Kleban award, Laura is ready for this next chapter in her career. And if the sparkle in here eyes is any indication, I’d say she’d elated!

I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of Laura’s book—it’s an incredibly well done coming-of-age story that I hope you’ll add to your reading list. Please welcome Laura Harrington to Brava as she shares personal thoughts about dreams.

A Father, a Daughter, a Pony, and a Lesson in Dreams

Thank you, Beth, for this wonderful invitation to write something for your blog. I had intended to write about mothers and daughters, because I’m so intrigued by and so love Cee Cee’s relationships with her mother and all of the other women in her life who become surrogate mothers.  But every time I sat down to write about mothers and daughters, I ended up writing about fathers and daughters instead.

In my novel, Alice Bliss, Alice’s primary relationship in the family is with her father, Matt.  They are kindred spirits; their connection encompasses camping, gardening, swimming, hiking, and playing catch.  They are knit together by shared activity, hard work, and play.

Unlike Alice, I did not often choose to hang out with my father.  The things my father loved to do – golfing, gardening, reading history, watching baseball – required a level of patience I didn’t possess.  I worked beside him in the garden grudgingly, I ventured on to the golf course or the driving range once, maybe twice, embarrassed at my ineptitude and bored by the entire enterprise.  I wince at my snotty twelve-year-old impatience as I helped put up the fence to pasture my pony.  Acquiring that pony was a lifelong dream, a dream my father helped come true by buying an old single-stall barn that was slated for demolition for a few bucks, managing to move it onto our property and putting up said fence.

My parents knew nothing about horses but followed me into that world with good grace, much better grace than I displayed by that fence, with my father.  I earned the money to buy my Chincoteague pony ($100) by weeding the vegetable garden (15 cents a row), ironing my father’s shirts (25 cents a shirt) and babysitting (35 cents an hour).  My father drove me to the Kelly Bros Nursery in Danville, NY where the Kelly brothers had purchased a mare and a stallion one pony-penning day on Assateague Island, and now had their own herd.  I picked out a black and white two-year-old filly and paid Mr. Kelly in four installments of $25.  It took a year.

I created the character of Matt Bliss in the weeks and months following my father’s death.  I re-created the relationship my own father had offered me as a child, that I had rejected at the time. I poured my lucky, blessed adult friendship with my dad into Matt Bliss, picking up the threads of my father’s garden, his easy athleticism, the way it seemed he could do anything with the right tools and a how-to book borrowed from the library.

I am grateful that I lived long enough to lose some of my impatience and finally, really get to know my father. I wish I could go back and dig those post-holes again.  There’s so much I would want to tell him now, and even more, so many questions I would want to ask.

It turns out that I appreciate everything I learned in that hot sun, struggling with that post-hole digger, unrolling and stapling the fence to those posts.  I think of all that my father was teaching me, almost without words: how to build a dream, how to work for it and struggle for it, how to reach beyond what you think you can do, by breaking it down into small steps.  Every one of those garden rows hoed and weeded, every shirt ironed properly, every babysitting job.  Rolling dimes and nickels and quarters at the kitchen table, the four visits to the Kelly Bros Nursery, my rolls of change turned in at the bank for real, folding money, putting those dollars into Mr. Kelly’s hands.

The waiting and the wishing and the wanting and the working were as valuable, I now know, as the day we brought that pony home and let her loose in her own paddock.  And then the pony herself was a source of life lessons for years to come.  But that’s a story for another time.

Please visit Laura’s website HERE.

You can also find her on Twitter @bookalike and on Facebook.

Today I’m delighted to announce that Saving CeeCee Honeycutt has sold to the esteemed Hungarian publisher, Alexandra Konyveshaz Kft! This is the 12th foreign sale and I couldn’t possibly be more pleased … or blessed. What a wonderful way to end a busy week. I hope y’all have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

Every now and then, but always on a Tuesday, I drive to a French-style bistro to meet a special girlfriend. We say it’s for lunch, which is true, but that’s not the point. We meet to laugh and cry and talk about our love of words and the lure of story. By the time our pear salads arrive, we’re leaning forward across the table, talking and laughing like a pair of five-year-olds, and guaranteed when the check arrives we’re wiping our tears on our napkins.

My friend’s name is Molly Campbell and she’s a very bright and talented woman, she’s also one of the funniest people I know. One visit to her blog, LIFE WITH THE CAMPBELLS, and you’ll see what I mean.

Molly, an award-winning writer who oftentimes writes in her pajamas, has recently started a new venture—CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A NOVEL—a collection of micro stories that she’s weaving together in an online book that’s already garnering attention from New York to California.

And by “micro” I really mean micro! These stories are generally about 450 words and can be read during a five-minute coffee break. Some will make you laugh out loud, some will make you ponder, and there are some that will break your heart. New characters and stories appear twice monthly, and you can subscribe so you’ll know when a new story has been posted.

I’m among the thousands of people who always look forward to Molly’s “Micro Stories” and after you read them, I believe you will too!

Please Visit Molly at CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A NOVEL and also LIFE WITH THE CAMPBELLS

You can also find her on Twitter @insearchofnovel and @mollydcampbell