Major on the day we brought him home

After losing Mollie, my first golden, I vowed never to get another dog. The pain of losing them was simply too great. I didn’t want that kind of grief. But two weeks after her ashes arrived on my doorstep in California, I stepped off the curb at the dry cleaners near my home in San Diego and broke several bones in my foot.  In a plaster cast, and alone all day while my husband was at work, I felt her absence even more acutely. And so began our search for another golden.

We were lucky to find Ramsey Fadiman, a Hollywood screenwriter and breeder of show goldens. He was planning a litter that would be born in September. After an exhaustive background check and a couple of long phone calls, we were accepted, paid our deposit, and began the wait for our golden puppy.  On September 8, 2000, we were at our rented beach house on Kiawah Island, SC when Ramsey called. The puppies were here! Ron hung up the phone, started laughing and said, “We’re parents!”

We had told Ramsey we wanted another female, but he  told us that he would choose our puppy based on his observations of  their personalities, energy levels, and such. The first of October we learned we were getting a male. Ramsey told us that breeders gave each litter a name and because the 2000 Olympics were underway, he chose “chills and thrills” as the name of the litter. The task for us was to choose a name  for our puppy that played off of the litter name. We chose Sir Winston Churchthrill as his official registered  AKC name, and “Major” as his call name.  On Halloween weekend, we drove up to LA from San Diego and brought him home.

He was everything we wanted. Beautiful, loving, smart as a whip. He took to our house immediately, flying off the stairs with such fearlessness I was terrified he’d break a bone. He didn’t like to be left alone. We left him in the laundry room one evening while we went out for a quick dinner and when we got back, discovered he had eaten a  basketball-sized hole in the drywall.

He moved with us from California to Austin, to Columbus to San Antonio in the back seat of my Toyota Camry. He never complained about the cramped ride, he was just happy to be with us. He developed a taste for Carl’s Junior hamburgers and loved nothing more than a long hike with us in the California hills. He loved to lie on my feet while I wrote, and to watch TV with us in the evenings. He hovered near the bed when I was sick with a cold and hurried to the door to greet visitors. For almost 13 years he was my constant companion.

On May 10 he refused his breakfast and only licked at my hand when I offered him some crushed ice. He settled on his side at his favorite spot in the living room, where the tile is cool and the view through the shutters is to the birds and squirrels in the back yard. I knew it was the end. I spent a long time lying next to him, stroking him and talking to him about everything we had shared, including the time he swallowed $1.15 in coins and had to have them surgically removed. The times we drove to the dog park in San Diego and stopped for a Carl’s Jr on the way home. I told him I knew he was tired and sick and it was okay to go. The next morning, we took him to the vet and let him go.  When I think of him each morning, I think about what I learned from sharing life with him:

Live in the present. Don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow.

Loyalty counts.

Love others unconditionally and see how much of it returns to you.

Explore your surroundings.

Never pass up a chance for a treat.

Sleep now, my sweet boy. My forever friend. My heart dog. I will never forget you.

My favorite authors back then included Anne Emory, Betty Cavanna, and Rosamond du Jardin. I read some of the Nancy Drew books and dreamed of having a convertible and a boyfriend of my own. I read Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, and briefly entertained the thought of becoming a nurse myself. But then I remembered that I usually faint at the sight of blood and looked around for another career path. I read about flight attendants who in those days were called “stewardesses”. Flying seemed so glamorous. Now that I travel often for business and dread the hassle of flying every single time, I’m glad I didn’t become a “stewardess” either.

To celebrate the glories of summer, I am giving away to one reader in the US  a Summer Beach Reads prize which includes an oversized canvas beach tote from Lands End, a fluffy beach towel, plus flip flops, sunscreen, a pair of fun, red-framed sunglasses, an oversized cup for holding your favorite cold summer beverage, and six books. In addition to the complete Hickory Ridge series, I’m giving away Tamera Alexander’s latest historical novel, To Whisper Her Name, and two contemporary novels, Lisa Wingate’s  Firefly Island and Beth Webb Hart’s charming Moon Over Edisto, set in South Carolina.

Entering is easy. Just  go here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck, and Happy Summer!

This Pawley’s Island house says welcome to summer. Photo from the SC Dept of Archives and History

As soon as the entry details are in place, I’ll post them here and on Facebook. I hope you’ll hang out and enter to win. It’s going to be a great summer.

I love this historic beach house on Pawley’s Island, the way it nestles into the dunes. It reminds me of lazy days by the sea, collecting shells, sipping lemonade, and reading  books from the comfort of  a Pawley’s Island hammock. It isn’t summer to me until I have dipped my toes in the ocean.

What says “summer” to you?  Berry picking? A trip to the mountains? A family road trip? Lemonade on the back porch? Leave a comment and let me know. I love hearing from you.

Victorian ladies relied on natural beauty products such as oatmeal and beet juice.

Queen Elizabeth the First famously used white lead powder to whiten her skin, and nightshade plant to make the pupils of her eyes look larger, both of which were poisonous and in large quantities could be fatal. But by the time of Queen Victoria, white lead was out and the natural look was in. Only actresses or prostitutes wore rouge and lip paint. Those who considered themselves ladies relied on concoctions made from natural products to enhance their beauty.

Ladies of the era cleaned their skin with rosewater or vinegar and mixed beauty masks made of oatmeal, honey, and egg whites to brighten the skin. They mixed the juice of the chickweed plant with water and applied it to the face twice a day to fade freckles. A drop of lemon juice in each eye was said to make eyes bright and clear. Maybe it worked, but it sounds painful to me.

Since the use of makeup was frowned upon, ladies sometimes rubbed beet juice into their cheeks to produce a rosy glow, and dusted a bit of rice powder on their noses to reduce shine. They didn’t use lipstick, but they applied a clear pomade to lips ( the first lip gloss!) for smoothness and shine.

As I was reading up on this topic, I was reminded of the scene in Gone With the Wind in which Rhett Butler is announced. Scarlett, who has been nipping at the whiskey, gargles with her scented rosewater perfume to disguise the smell of the alcohol, and pinches some color into her pale cheeks.

Throughout human history both women and men have sought to make themselves look more attractive. It’s fun to look back on my teen years and remember when girls ironed their hair to make it straight or made curlers from frozen orange juice cans. The sixties were all about lots of black eyeliner and pale lips. Remember Twiggy and her thick fake eyelashes?

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that I spend less money on makeup but more on products that are supposed to retard wrinkles and restore moisture to…ahem…. “mature skin.”  Tinted moisturizer  and Burts Bees lip balm have become my best beauty friends.

What is the one beauty product you can’t do without?

What’s in the mail?

My favorite aunt lived far away, in a strange Yankee land called Ohio, and from time to time the mail man stopped his car in the road, fished a box out of the back seat and delivered it to our front porch. The box might contain books, or clothes, or a stack of the National Geographic magazines my uncle collected. Once, the box contained a jar of marmalade that broke in transit and ruined the coat my aunt had sent.

First class postage for a letter was 3 cents. If Mom didn’t have a stamp handy, no problem. She sent me running barefoot across the hot gravel road to leave three pennies in a metal jar lid along with the letter. The mailman would pick up the letter, buy a stamp and post the letter for us.

Though summer was my favorite time for mail call, fall was exciting, too, because that was when the Christmas catalogs arrived.  After school each day my brother and I spent hours poring over the pages of the hefty Sears catalog deciding what to request from Santa.

Fast forward thirty years to a life in the city. The commodious mailboxes of my childhood had shrunk to a mail slot in a metal box that opened only with a key. But the anticipation was still there. Then I began a writing career. In the days before electronic submissions, writers sent hard copies of manuscripts–300-500 pages–in sturdy cardboard boxes made especially for that purpose. Shorter pieces–kids’ stories, novellas, magazine pieces were sent off in brown manila envelopes, along with a second, self addressed and stamped envelope, in case the work was rejected and the material was returned. That was when I started hoping not to find the “BBE” ( big brown envelope) waiting in my mailbox. The BBE meant no sale.

These days we shop, bank, and communicate almost exclusively by e-mail. My manuscripts travel between here and my publisher’s offices via cyberspace. Today it’s rare to receive a written thank you note. Not that the electronic thank yous are any less heartfelt or any less appreciated, but it’s a different feeling t0 find a nice note card, handwritten and stamped, and mailed just for me.

When my grandmother became exasperated with all of us noisy kids underfoot, she would sometimes say, “If you don’t shape up, I’ll send you so far away it’ll cost fifty cents to mail y0u a letter.”  Now that first class postage has climbed from the three cents of the 1950′s to 46 cents, Grandma’s threat has lost its punch.

But I still love finding out every day what’s in the mail.

So last week, my BFF and fellow author, Leanna Ellis ( www.leannaellis.com) invited me to join a blog hop called THE NEXT BIG THING… and it turns out the questions are the same as for the previous one. Rather than repeat myself, I’m writing today to answer a  question I get about all of my books: How do you get your beautiful book covers?

It starts with Kristen Vasgaard, my uber talented designer at HarperCollins/Nelson. Once the book is written and turned in, Kristen and my editors ask me for ideas about what the cover should look like. We discuss the setting, the season of the year, and the main character–especially the color of her hair and eyes. We discuss the time period, as this affects the type of dress the model will wear.  Often I provide photos of the locale of the story and Kristen begins working on what we call a “cover comp” –a basic idea of the major elements in the design, where the model will be placed, the background and the color scheme.

In the meantime the search is on for a model who matches my description of my main character. Then my editor sends  the models’ photos and together we decide on who best represents my idea of the character.  Once we make a choice, Kristen and her assistants begin looking through the wardrobe room at the publishing house to find the perfect dress. For my next book, CAROLINA GOLD,  which releases this fall, I chose a dress with a beautiful ruffled collar, but it was green. Since my BEAUTY FOR ASHES cover model wore a green dress, the plan was to Photoshop the dress to a different color.  But then we discovered that the same dress had been used for a recent book by another author at the same publishing  house…..so back we went to the wardrobe room to find another dress. We finally decided on another dress that had a full skirt and a pretty collar….but it was a grayish- brown.

Next, I received several different poses of the model  placed against the background you see here and together with my publisher,  my editor, and my agent, we decided that the best fit for the story was to have her gazing toward her home. But the brown dress made the overall cover too dark and muddy.  Back to the magic of Photoshop and voila! The dress morphed into the  gorgeous, rich burgundy color you see here.

The process takes several weeks and the talents of a team of people. I’ve been lucky to have had remarkably beautiful covers on all my books, covers that invite readers to peer into a window on the past and experience life in another time and place.

Next Wednesday, March 6, my good friend and fellow adventurer Sandra Robbins will be writing about her Next Big Thing. Please pop over to www.sandrarobbins.net to see what she’s up to and to continue following the blog hop. I know you will find some authors whose books you will love.

Granny’s tea cakes, warm and smelling of vanilla. Yum.

But I do. I still remember my grandmother’s banana pudding. Today, most cooks start with an instant pudding, but a real Southern banana pudding begins with a custard cooked over a double boiler, cooled, and layered with meringue  and Nilla vanilla wafers. I have never looked up the calorie count. It would be way too scary. I haven’t made banana pudding in a while, but this week I had a hankering for another of my granny’s recipes, and luckily it’s one with fewer calories.

Remember tea cakes? When I was a kid my mother made them using  Granny’s recipe and had them waiting–still warm from the oven,  when I got home from school. Baking tea cakes made the whole house smell like vanilla. Maybe that’s why vanilla is still one of my favorite scents and my favorite flavor of Blue Bell Ice Cream. Anyway, they are easy to make and quick to bake, so I thought I’d share the recipe.

GRANNY’S TEA CAKES:   Preheat the oven to 350. Cream one cup of butter and one cup of sugar till light and fluffy. Add 3 eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each.  Add one teaspoon vanilla. Then mix in 3 and a half cups of self rising flour, a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut with a cookie cutter. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  If you have to wait for one batch to bake before putting in a second batch, cover the second batch with a damp tea towel so the dough won’t dry out.

These are so good served warm with milk or a cup of hot tea.

Do you have a favorite “granny recipe” to share?  I’d love to know what foods bring back good memories for you.

I said yes. Ron and me on our wedding day, June 8, 1974.

My mother tells the story of the night in March of 1948 when Daddy took her outside her parents’ house “to see the moonlight” and proposed to her on the front porch.  They were married a week later, and it lasted fifty five years, until Daddy’s death in 2003. Their  love and faithfulness to each other and to their children  through good times and bad, was my example as I grew up.

Since my novels have a romantic thread running through them, I love reading fictional proposals. Who can forget Rhett Butler’s clear-eyed, honest and yet completely charming proposal to Scarlet: “Marry, me Scarlet. We’re alike, you and I …and I have plenty of money…”   Or the circumspect Mr. Darcy who doesn’t give up on Elizabeth but proposes a second time before she says yes to “his present assurances.” I love the way Jane Austen wrote that scene.

Leave a brief  comment below, describing a romantic proposal, either from real life or from a book. It might be your own, or that of a family member of friend, or a fictional one from a favorite book. Did he propose on bended knee? By text message? In a park? A movie theater?  Do tell! Winners will be chosen at random at midnight on Feb 14th. I’m looking forward to reading your stories.

Wishing you love and happiness on Valentine’s Day and always.

General Lee at home in Virginia, just days after the surrender

After the surrender at Appomattox, he returned home to Virginia where he became President of Washington College in Lexington, which later would be named Washington and Lee University. He worked long hours to improve both the school and its students, but the war had taken its toll. The most beloved man of the South suffered a stroke and died on October 11,  1870. He  was buried in the campus chapel where he had worshiped each day with his students.

One of my favorites among the hundreds of books about him is his collection of wartime papers, which contains  letters written to his family from the battlefield. In these letters we catch endearing and fascinating  glimpses of  General Lee  the husband, father, and grandfather.  Here are a few brief excerpts from his letters home.

To his daughter in law, Charlotte (June, 1862) he writes a description of himself: My coat is of gray, of the regulation style and pattern and my pants of dark blue…partly hidden by my long boots. I have the same hat which surmounts my gray head ( the latter is not prescribed in the regulation) and shields  my ugly face which is masked by a white beard as stiff and wiry as the teeth of a card. In fact, an uglier person you have never seen and so unattractive is it to our enemies that they shoot at it whenever it is visible to them…though age with its snow has whitened my head and its frosts have stiffened my limbs, my heart, you well know is not frozen to you…Kiss your sweet boy for me and love always, Your devoted papa, R E Lee.

To his wife, Mary Custis Lee (March, 1864) My dear Mary, your note of the 19th with the bag of socks arrived this afternoon. The number of pairs  stated by you was correct–30 pairs good and true. I am glad to find there is arithmetic enough in my family to count to 30.  (  Note: He was teasing her because earlier in the war she sent him 23 pairs of socks with a note that said here are 25 pairs…)  I have sent the parcel to the Stonewall Brigade which makes over 200 pairs….Give much love to the girls and remember me to all friends. With constant prayers for yourself, I am with great affection, truly yours, R E Lee

To his daughter Annie, written from Savannah (March 2, 1862) I received a letter from Precious Life the other day. She is well but you must tell her not to be too particular in her diet but to eat everything before her. It is not necessary for young ladies to become etherial ( sic)  to grow wise. She moans after Tom, her cat, and knows he is alive and his precious heart will break if he does not see her soon. I shall have to get General Johnston to send in a flag of truce and make inquiries…Goodbye my dear child. May God bless you and our poor country Your devoted father, R E Lee

To his daughter Mildred, (“Precious Life” ) (July 27, 1863) I have heard, my precious daughter that you have returned to your school. I had looked forward to your vacation with so much pleasure in the hope of seeing your for a little while at least….My only pleasure is to think of your mother and my children. May God bless you my dear daughter and  strew your path in this world with happiness and finally usher you and all of us to His mansions of bliss in heaven is my daily and hourly prayer!  Tell me of your companions, your roommate, studies, occupations, &c. All that concerns you will be interesting to me. Your devoted father, RE Lee

In an interview earlier this week. I was asked which person from history I’d most like to meet. The answer was really easy. I hope and trust the general is indeed at home now in the mansion of bliss, surrounded once again by those whom he loved so dearly on earth.

Kate Mara, my choice to play Charlotte in the film version of CAROLINA GOLD.

What is the working title of your book? After much discussion, my publisher and I have settled on CAROLINA GOLD. I originally suggested CAROLINA GOLD then  ALL THAT IS GOLD but as often happens after in- house discussions,we settled upon the original title. It is a great fit for the story which is set on a South Carolina rice plantation.

What genre is this book? Southern historical fiction, of course! With my usual mix of romance, history and mystery.

Which actors would play the leads in the movie?  Henry Cavill as my dashing hero, Nicholas Betancourt, and possibly Kate Mara as my protagonist, Charlotte Fraser.

Give us a one sentence summary: Returning to her father’s ruined rice plantation following the Civil War, Charlotte Fraser determines to restore it to its former glory…if she can prove the disputed land is really hers.

Are you self published or represented by an agency?  My publisher is HarperCollins/Thomas Nelson, and my work is represented by the Natasha Kern Agency.

How long is the first draft?  My first drafts are usually very close to the final length–about 75,00-85,000 words.

What are some comparable books? Others have compared my books to those by Tamera Alexander, Lynn Austin, and Robin Lee Hatcher.

What else might pique a reader’s interest? This book is based on the real life Elizabeth Waites Allston Pringle, who grew rice on her family’s plantation after the Civil War. I’m thrilled that a photo of her will be included in the book.

There you have it. I was linked to this blog hop from www.maureenlang.com. Here is today’s link: http://jimdenney.wordpress.com   I hope you enjoy looking over our shoulders.