It's been a few years . . .

It's been a few years (say, about 14?) since the publication of the last Rainbow Rock book. That seems a bit too long. Hence, a new book is coming, appropriately titled RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK. Marcie Carmody was 13 when she first visited her Aunt Meg in Rainbow Rock, Arizona. That was the summer she met Lydia Sherwood and her dad met Lydia's mom. The rest of that story was told in A LITTLE NIGHT RAINBOW.

Now time has passed, in Rainbow Rock as in the rest of the world, and it hasn't all been good to Marcie. Here is the opening of her story:

CHAPTER ONE

Late February

The sun was setting behind her, lighting the clouds ahead in delicate pastels that would have been beautiful on any other day. It was the kind of winter sunset tourists came to the desert to find, but Marcie Carmody only found it worrisome. “Damn,” she muttered, slamming her hand against the steering wheel and pushing hard on the accelerator. It was bad enough to be crawling home broken and defeated. She didn’t want to have to call for rescue just because the lights on her old clunker had shorted out somewhere this side of San Bernardino.

She passed Joseph City on her way to Holbrook, grateful for light traffic on I-40. “Can’t you make it twenty more minutes?” she grumbled aloud. With luck, the miles would run out before the last of the light.

That was when she spotted the Highway Patrol car sitting under a billboard for the Sagebrush Trading Post: “See our Jackelope! Cold Cherry Cider!” As she passed, going some fifteen miles per hour above the limit, she wasn’t at all surprised to see the trooper pull in behind her and light her up. She ran a hand through her mop of unruly auburn curls.

“Dammit twice!” She slowed and pulled to the shoulder. “This is not my day. Or my week, month or year, for that matter.” She rolled down the window, dropped her head against the back of the seat in a gesture of utter exasperation and waited for the next blow to fall.

“Napping out, are we?” The officer at her window was grinning.

“Danny? Oh, Danny! I’m so glad to see you!” She clambered out of the front seat and threw both arms around the handsome man in the tan uniform who eagerly hugged her back. Over the next few minutes, Marcie explained between hugs about the lights shorting out and why she was speeding.

The officer got out his ticket pad. “You know I’m going to have to write you up, anyway,” he said.

Marcie choked and coughed. “I guess if you have to—”

Danny grinned. “Just teasing. Come on, Sis. I’ll light the way and you can follow me. You’ll get a police escort all the way home.”

Marcie kissed his cheek. “Thanks, Danny. You always were the best.”

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant in June. RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK will soon be available as an original e-book. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.

Getting off to a poor start

First, my apologies for repeating this post, but several regular readers told me they missed it last Saturday when I managed to set the scheduler for PM rather than AM. I hope you enjoy, or perhaps, enjoy it again. Thanks!

How bad a first impression can a new employee make? Pretty bad if you're Marcie Carmody. In my newest WIP, titled RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, I am indeed revisiting the scene and characters from my earlier six-book series. Here's a snippet to suggest how bad things can get for Marcie:

The policeman made notes and mumbled, “Happened before, huh?” Behind him Marcie watched as the other officers led the handcuffed suspect outside and helped him into the back seat of a patrol car. He was eagerly protesting, but they were taking no chances. She couldn’t help noticing how tall he was. Tall and impressively built. He looked clean-cut and Marcie could easily see why he might be good at this sort of white collar crime. “Miss Carmody? Ma’am?”

Marcie snapped her attention back to the officer who had apparently just asked her another question. “I said, do you have any photo identification?”

“Oh yes.” She reached into her purse for her wallet. “Driver’s license okay?” She was pleased she had already received her updated Arizona license. The one from California might not have leant the same believability factor under the circumstances.

“Yes, ma’am.” The officer made another note. “Looks good. Thank you, Miss Carmody. We’ll call you if we need you.”

“Thank you, sir, and thank all the other officers who responded as well.”

“I’m sure Mr. Redhorse will be pleased with the way you’re looking out for his interests.”

“I certainly hope so.” Marcie watched as the third officer got into his car and pulled out. She wondered if she should call Logan and let him know what had just happened. Maybe the officers take care of that? She was still pondering the right thing to do when her cell phone whinnied. It was the ringtone she had designated for Logan Redhorse. She answered immediately.

“Hi, Logan. I guess the police called you, huh?”

“They certainly did. Listen, Marcie: I’m going to send you a photograph of Ryan Fields, my new associate we talked about? After you’ve seen it, I’d like you to go down to the police station and please get our new colleague out of jail.”

“You mean… Oh no. Oh Logan, I’m so sorry! I didn’t think he’d be here yet and when I saw someone going through your files, I thought—”

“He was going through his files, trying to get moved into the office. Wait just a second… There, I’m sending the picture. Is this the man you saw?”

Marcie looked. She’d been fifty or sixty yards away and the man she saw was wearing a hood, at least until the officers escorted him outside. Still, she had no doubt she was looking at a picture of her new boss. “Oh. Oh Logan. I can’t tell you how sorry I am—”

“Save the apologies for Ryan. He’s feeling a bit … miffed just now.”

Susan Aylworth has written eight published novels, all now available as e-books. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming out from Covenant Communications in June. If she is lucky and the stars align correctly, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK will be her twelfth published novel. Reach her at susan.aylworth.author@gmail.com or follow @SusanAylworth. She also loves "likes" and friends on her Facebook page:  FB.com/susan.aylworth.author.

Saturday Farmer's Market

In this excerpt from my WIP, MAGGIE RISING, Maggie and her BFF Robin are visiting the Saturday morning Chico Farmer's Market. As Maggie explains, the Saturday morning affair is somewhat different from the street fair offered on Thursday evenings:

Saturday was another Chamber of Commerce day, as nearly perfect as a day ever gets. I enjoyed our ride into town, past the cemetery and along the creek to the large parking lot where the market gathers. It was filled with vendors’ pavilions, produce and products for sale, and wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder shoppers. This market was always much smaller than the Thursday night affair. Though there were usually musicians on one side or the other, there were no belly dancers, no jugglers, no bounce houses or two-story inflatable slides. Saturday’s market was more business than pleasure. 

It was also quintessentially Chico—the neo-hippies with their dreadlocks and fabric shopping bags mingling with gray-haired couples holding hands and well-dressed younger families with toddlers in tow; the Hmong farmers working their booths side-by-side with the lilywhite fifth-generation growers whose ancestors had been among the area’s first non-native settlers; the potters and jewelry artists hawking their wares beside the folks with the petition to legalize recreational marijuana, while conservative politicians smiled and shook hands and kissed babies in the next booth over. The whole place smells delicious—scents of fresh produce or yeasty bread mingling with the patchouli oil and sandalwood on the artisans. 

“Are you looking for anything special?” Robin asked as we locked our bikes.

“Really just the usual,” I said. Robin and I made a ritual of coming into town for fresh fruits and vegetables most Saturdays. 



I liked being able to share one favorite facet of my hometown. I hope others will enjoy it vicariously. MAGGIE RISING is currently with my agent, hoping to find a publisher soon.


Susan Aylworth is the author of eight novels now out of print, but available as e-books for Kindle, Nook, and all other e-reader platforms. Her ninth novel, now retitled ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming in June from Covenant Communications. A tenth book, her first historical, has been accepted as is in process, to be published in 2014. MAGGIE RISING is her 11th book.

Making it Sound Right

One of my challenges in the effort to write YA (written specifically for Young Adults) is the dialogue. It won't do for my seventeen-year-old character to speak as I do, nor for her to speak the way I did when I was seventeen MANY decades ago. She needs to speak like today's high school seniors. I've struggled with that. But I think I'm making progress.


Below is a conversation between my Main Character, Maggie, and her friend, Julia. See if you think they sound like seniors to you: 

“Do you have anything to eat around here?” she asked, so I made another veggie panino. For a girl so obsessed with what everybody else weighs, tall, lean Julia can really pack away the food. She finished the first one and asked for a second.

While she ate, she filled me in on where the parties were planned for this evening. “Of course,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “we could always invite people here.”

“Oh no. Not again.” I shook my head as I backed away from her. “I thought I’d never get this place back to normal when you pulled that on me last time.”

“You’re more of a party animal than you let on.” Julia nodded sagely. “Things were really just getting started when we had to shut it down—”

“Get real, girl. There were probably sixty people here. In this little space! And more were coming every minute.”

“Not my fault.” Julia swallowed a bite of zucchini. “I only texted three fun couples—plus Tyler Watts for me and Tyler King for you.”

“And look how that turned out. Tyler Watts never showed and Tyler King brought his own date—some chick from Chico High. And whose idea was it to bring a keg?”

She giggled. “I don’t know, but it would have made the party. I’m just glad the guys got it out of here before the cops showed up. Did you ever figure out who called them?”

            “I really couldn’t guess,” I said, looking away. Best if she never figured out that I got desperate, texted my brother and asked him to play the role of the disgusted neighbor. He gave me three minutes and then called the cops in to clear everybody out of Aunt Betty’s place before I got her business shut down for sponsoring under-aged drinking or some such weirdness.

 

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight traditionally published novels. Her ninth, A SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, will be available from Covenant Communications in June. Her first eight novels are all available now for e-readers. She loves to hear from readers and other writers. Contact her here or at susan.aylworth.author@gmail.com, on Facebook or @SusanAylworth.

Loving Chico

OOPS! First, my apology: I'm sorry, folks, but my automatic time scheduler failed me and this didn't come online when I expected it to. It's here now!

The little town where I live in northern California has much to commend it. I've loved this community for decades now and, when I chose to set a new WIP here, I decided I want my readers to love it as much as I do. I'm taking the opportunity to share some of the things I love most about our little community. Here's one quick bit of description from MAGGIE RISING:

Saturday was another Chamber of Commerce day, as nearly perfect as a day ever gets. I enjoyed our ride into town, past the cemetery and along the creek to the large parking lot where the market gathers. It was filled with vendors’ pavilions, produce and products for sale, and wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder shoppers. This market was always much smaller than the Thursday night affair. Though there were usually musicians on one side or the other, there were no belly dancers, no jugglers, no bounce houses or two-story inflatable slides. Saturday’s market was more business than pleasure.

It was also quintessentially Chico—the neo-hippies with their dreadlocks and fabric shopping bags mingling with gray-haired couples holding hands and well-dressed younger families with toddlers in tow; the Hmong farmers working their booths side-by-side with the lilywhite fifth-generation growers whose ancestors had been among the area’s first non-native settlers; the potters and jewelry artists hawking their wares beside the folks with the petition to legalize recreational marijuana, while conservative politicians smiled and shook hands and kissed babies in the next booth over. The whole place smells delicious—scents of fresh produce or yeasty bread mingling with the patchouli oil and sandalwood on the artisans. 

That's just a taste, of course. Before Maggie has finished, she is going to show readers all that's best about my hometown.

Susan Aylworth wrote her first "novel" on a yellow legal pad when she was nine years old. Her first eight published books are now available in digital form for Kindle, Nook and other e-readers. Her ninth novel, A SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, is due from Covenant Communications in June, 2013.