Excerpt from The Way Home by Carol Holland March

The Way Home: Desert Song

By Carol Holland March

SYNOPSIS: 

The Way Home, a collection of visionary stories about finding your true home. 

Whether a place or a relationship, all the characters in The Way Home are seeking what they’ve lost, and the clues they follow are just beyond the veil. A metaphysical treat for those who like their stories off the beaten path, their fantasy balanced on the edge of reality. 

In Desert Song, a young woman embarks reluctantly on a road trip, where she is chased by a ghostly skeleton, and faces buried memories so she can open to herself to love. 

CAROL SAYS:

This is an excerpt from Desert Song, one of the stories in my collection of fantasy stories, The Way Home.  Franny has agreed to go on a road trip with Ray, from San Francisco through the Mojave desert even though she hates the desert and has bad memories of her childhood in Los Angeles.  This is not a true story, but the road trip that inspired it did happen. It was my first visit to the Mojave, and after driving well past dark, I ended up in the desert near Palm Springs. When I got up the next morning, the stark beauty of the desert─the sand, the mountains, the light─entranced me.  I will never forget that feeling of being somewhere sacred, a place empty of human life, but infused with spirit. I wanted Franny to feel some of that to ease her way into the trip that was going to change her life.  

EXCERPT:

“It won’t be so bad, being in the desert, Franny. It’s a big place, you know. We’ll camp under a palm tree.”

I thought he was joking, but just before we reached Palm Springs, Ray turned off the interstate, then onto a dirt road that took us past a row of tall date palms. He parked the truck. We dragged our sleeping bags onto a patch of soft sand and zipped them together. Lying beside him with only our hands touching, I thought about my mother and all the places I had lived since LA. I thought of the men I've been with, good and bad, and how Ray had lasted longer than any of them. Through the swaying branches of the trees, starlight pierced the utter darkness. Ray’s hand was warm and solid in mine.

"I love you," Ray said.

I was afraid I'd start crying if I said anything, so I pretended to be asleep. He rolled over and curled his arm around my waist. 

In the morning, everything was colored gold, lit by the rising sun. We were in a valley of sand dotted with cactus and scrub bushes with the ungainly palms soaring above us and nothing of civilization in sight. In the distance, desert mountains towered silent and proud; their nakedness held me still for more than a minute as I took them in. As I walked away from the protection of the trees, the sun seeped into my pores. I felt light and dry as if I could run all the way to those mountains and all the way back again.

Ray emerged from the camper carrying a coffeepot and two cups. It was a familiar ritual. I sat on a rock and took the cup he offered.

“How you doin’?” he asked.

The lines of worry around his mouth had already softened; sunlight works miracles with Ray. I shook my head. So many words crowded my throat, none came out.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Fine. The desert is warming me up.”

Something of what I meant must have shown on my face. His eyes crinkled. I placed my untouched coffee on a flat rock. Ray stood, took my shoulders, and drew me up. I buried my face in his neck and bit the tip of his ear lobe. I wanted to lie down on that warming sand with the sun in my face and the naked mountains watching over us, and I wanted to feel him reaching for me, all the way inside, as far as anyone has ever got, so my body would beat in time to the vibrations of that place. After I conveyed this to him with that one hard bite, he muttered into my hair that getting an early start was not always the best plan for the first day of your vacation, and so it was close to ten o’clock before we started east again.

FIND OUT MORE:

Check out Carol's books on AMAZON or get updates from her WEBSITE and follow her on TWITTER @cmarch555 

Guest Blogger Vanessa Wester on: Ideas, Ideas and More Ideas!

Over the years, I have come up with many creative story ideas which I jotted down on the computer or paper.  Truth, I never saw them as anything other than silly scribbles.  When I watched an author interview back in 2010 a switch flicked in my brain.  I had permission to write – I was not being silly if I wrote.  Lots of people write, why not me?


My first novel was a chick flick type story, which I bravely posted on Booksie and then shared with a few friends.  To my shock and surprise they liked it!  I had a lot to learn though.  It took another year before I joined The Word Cloud and learnt about critique, prose, and the right things to do!

I wrote my debut novel, HYBRID, next.  It went from under 70,000 words to over 100,000 in a
few months and I published it in March 2012 via Smashwords (mainly to share it with friends).  I moved to Amazon in May, after demands from Kindle users.   

I published the second book COMPLICATIONS in November 2012.  The reason it only took 6 months was that whilst I edited Hybrid, I wrote Complications.

I joined Twitter and created a blog in the summer 2012, and realised I should have thought of that earlier… saying that, social networking is addictive and time consuming so I was relieved it took me so long to hook up.


I also started to publish short story anthologies, in aid of charity, from October 2012.  I have made friends and connected with many authors through this and I welcome new submissions.

I find it hard to believe that I have only been in the writing game for over 3 years.  I can’t imagine my life without it now.  My aim?  To share stories in the hope that some of you take something away from them.  A thought, a smile, a tear… an emotion!


I hope you all enjoy THE EVOLUTION TRILOGY, which will be completed this year (I am getting closer), and perhaps, go through some of the emotional journey I have experienced whilst writing it.


Smiles and best wishes,
Vanessa xx

Twitter  
@Vanessa_Wester
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http://vanessawesterwriter.blogspot.co.uk/

http://vanessawesterwriter.wordpress.com/

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http://theevolutiontrilogy.blogspot.co.uk/

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http://www.facebook.com/TheEvolutionSeries

A Reader’s Perspective

http://vanessawester.blogspot.co.uk/

Short Stories Group

http://shortstoriesgroup.blogspot.co.uk/

Amazon 

http://www.amazon.com/Vanessa-Wester/e/B0081KT43U

Rat Bastards and Teapots

Yippee!  I have a new release on Amazon Kindle!  I'm trying something different, something I haven't done before: I'm releasing a mini-book containing two short stories and three little poems.

The collection (that seems like too big a word for this brief project!) is called RAT BASTARDS AND TEAPOTS.  It's the first of three such works that I plan to release between now and Christmas.

The two short stories are The Locket and The Eraser.  The Locket is a story about the two photos in the locket and how they affect the owner.   The Eraser is about a man who wants to make a clean start with his life, but he has a very messy way of doing it.

The three short poems are: Murder without a Clue, Last Words from the Corpse, and Cozy Mysteries, and all three are a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Here's the cover: 

 

Here's the link on AMAZON.

MICRO FICTION! Interview with Randall R. Peterson

Today I get the chance to introduce readers to a new author and to a new writing style.  I "met" Randy via Twitter and I look forward to joining him for a pint someday (he says he's buying!).

Here we go...

 

1.    The genre “Micro Fiction” is rather new – you won’t see the term “Micro Fiction” in literary theory textbooks from 1926.  Tell me what “Micro Fiction” means to you.

My type of Micro Fiction uses a word not as just a part of a sentence, but as an idea, and I link the images together to form a story.  Allow time for an image to form before reading the next word. 

...party, drunk, fall, lamp, break, Jill, mad, sorry, hug, kiss, bedroom, husband, gun, window, jump, dog, bite, run, naked, clothesline, steal, home, phone, Jill … 

I never take Micro Fiction too seriously, it’s more like a comic strip for writers, a new-born baby. Someday a writer with more skill than mine will turn it into something more.

2.    You have a number of short stories linked to your site.  If a reader could only read ONE of your stories, which would you suggest?

“SCARECROWS: The Making” is my most popular short story. It is the first part of 10 (including The Daughters of Melania) about a witch, Melania Descombey, who creates scarecrows. 

One group, the Mommet, become almost human, while another faction, The Hodmedod, turn into monsters. 

The stories are set in a small American town called Cloverdale during WW2, and are the basis for a novel I’m putting together to be published in December.

3.   Referring to the story you mentioned in #2 above, if it were to be made into a short film, who would you cast in the lead roles?

Sophia Loren as Melania Descombey because she is old enough to play the ancient Italian Gypsy Witch. Aussie actor Conan Stevens as the Hodmedod called the Chinaman because he’s large enough. Anne Hathaway’s sweet image would be great in the part of Melania’s granddaughter Margie. Paul Walker would fit the role of  Margie’s Mommet lover Brian because of his intense blue eyes.

4.       You have such a wide array of stories!  It may seem like a banal question, but where do you get your inspiration?

I’ve always had an extremely vivid imagination. My father once told me if I could learn to write, I could conquer the literary world. It’s a lot harder than I thought, but I still intend to find out.

 

5.    Have you dabbled in, or would you like to dabble in other genres or writing styles?  Poetry? Novels? Plays?  Whatever?

In the early 1970’s I wrote and produced a series of animated drug culture films on super 8 film. They were very amateurish and I used friends to dub in voice tracks and I ripped off some of the greatest rock songs of the time for the soundtrack. 

On some of the scenes if you turn the volume up very loud you can hear a party raging in the background, while we lip synched to the edited film in a spare bedroom. Some of these early cartoons “The Coming of Hob” “Spaced Out” & others are buried in the video section of my Facebook pages and are there for anyone to check out. So yes, I would love to write for film or plays.

 

6.     You are very active in social media (it’s how we met after all).  Obviously social media is a great way to reach readers.  Would writing be as satisfying to you if you didn’t have the social media mechanisms by which you’re able to reach so many readers?

Writing is its own reward, you don’t have to have a million readers to be a success, a handful of people who like to read your stories will do … but you do need that handful.

  

7.       Who are some of the authors who have influenced you, who you emulate?

People think I’m joking when I say that I’m the World’s Greatest Reader, but I’m serious. We have a library in our home with about 1500 hardcover books on shelves and boxes of others we don’t have room for. I’ve read them all.

If reading could be classified as an addiction I would be in treatment. I read everything from John Steinbeck to Louis L’amour, Robert McCammon to Sue Grafton and Shakespeare & Mad Magazine... sometimes on the same night...

I read an obituary about a 94 year old woman, Viola Rawls Erickson, someone I didn’t know while at work and it said “…she filled a lifelong dream by having a book published” something about her picture fascinated me. I found her work, an obscure  novel called “THE ONES WE LOVE” a used copy, for sale on Amazon. I bought it and found it to be one of the greatest books I have ever read. 

It was after reading this book that “magic” happened in my life. I became a prolific writer and two years later I’ve written over 100 short stories and 3 novels. I really do believe that there is magic in everything.

8.       What is hardest for you to come up with: dialogue, setting or plot?

I don’t really have trouble with any aspect of writing. I can write anywhere at any time. When I begin something new, I type as fast and as furious as I can and usually do 500 words in about 20 minutes. Most of my stories are written in 15 minute breaks while working in a factory. 

If I fell off a twenty story building and had my laptop I could have a short story finished by the time I hit the street … of course with a bad ending. 

I don’t really edit at all, other than to run a spelling check. I would rather be writing than going over something that’s already been cooked. I lose interest in my stories shortly after I’ve scribbled them out. My hordes of enemies will laugh and say I suck … I say to hell with them. I’m doing what I love.

9.       What was the BEST writing advice you ever got?  What was the WORST?

I think the worst advice I ever got was in the form of an outline as to how stories should be written. It came from a critique group. (I belong to two writers groups.) I don’t think you can write a good story by filling in the blanks … at least I can’t.  It comes out like generic cat food … dry & bland no matter how many flowery words you pour over it. The best advice came from someone’s blog that I found on twitter, she said “The only rule in fiction is imagination” I love that, I wish I could remember who said it.

10.   What has been your most satisfying OR strangest feedback from or interaction with a reader?

Shortly after I began posting short stories on my blog site, I received a horrible, vicious E-Mail from another writer. He said I had no talent what-so-ever, that I couldn’t spell, and that I didn’t know what a paragraph was. He cursed like a sailor stood-up in a cat house. He probably thought I’d give up. 

He didn’t realize I have rhino skin. I took his letter to my writers group and read it out-loud. I said that what hurt the most was - that IT WAS ALL TRUE! We all laughed so hard I thought we were going to pee our pants. I started tweeting about some of the things he said about my work on Twitter and I gained a lot of really great friends.

11.   What else would you like readers to know about you and your works?

I’ve always had the ability for focus on one thing at a time, and block the world out. I’m the world’s best example of here and now. There is no past and no future. I live for the moment. The only thing better than falling in love, is doing it again and again and again. My short story site is http://randallrpeterson.blogspot.com The stories are FREE and - no you can’t have a refund.

Hey folks, do indeed check out his blog - there are some great stories there!   You can also follow Randy on Twitter @ItsOnlyMeAndYou and be sure to keep an eye out for his novel publication in December!