September Wind (54 page)

Laura Graham

A long relationship ends. At 48, house taken by the bank, Lorri has little money. What can she do? And where can she go? Gathering her meager savings and her two beloved cats, she escapes England for a new life in a remote Italian village, never imagining the intrigue, passion and adventure she will find.

             
Unable to speak Italian, she survives by letting her bedroom to English tourists. She sleeps in the sitting room; it’s stifling on the floor, but earning €50 a night makes every flea-bitten moment worth it. When she meets Ronaldo, seven years younger than her, she embarks on a tempestuous love affair. But, having been raised in an institution with the priests since the age of three, nothing is easy for him and he is unaccustomed to love.

             
Meanwhile, a Quasimodo-like character is watching Lorri in the alleyway; anonymous letters arrive; there’s a young rival for Ronaldo’s affection; and Sherif, a mysterious man in a black suit, constantly follows her… And hovering in the background is Lionello, the undisputed “wise man”, giving advice while enjoying the wonderful theater Lorri brings to his village.

             
Then disruptive friends arrive and create havoc: Maudie has given up sex and drink and become spiritual; Julian, a Glaswegian hairdresser with dreams of becoming an actor, brings Lorri face-to-face with her ex. A final choice has to be made.

IN THE NAME OF JOANNA

Jean Valli

A mystery about love, friendship and loyalty

             
Samantha was happy enough with her life in Dublin. Now working in the manor house of Glendora - where a woman named Joanna died a year before - she finds herself torn between her romantic feelings for a man who people around her seem to believe is a murderer and her loyalties to those who have befriended her.

As she struggles to break the enigma that is Damon Bartholomew, temptingly close but hidden beneath the surface, something she can't quite perceive, shifts and changes as a shocking discovery begins to emerge.

Her dilemmas and choices are forever changing as secrets are discovered, and Samantha must play a waiting game...as each, in their turn reveal their true natures.

The underlying questions are: Was Joanna murdered? And can a woman, who has been conditioned to love men who are bad for her, go so far as to knowingly fall in love with a cold-blooded murderer?
It seems she can.

As a determined wraith begins to slip back through the cracks between this world and the next...one must wonder, can the spirit avenge murder?

              Is death really the final straw?

Samantha has always thought so...until now...but... she has second thoughts

WHATEVER’S LEFT

Nikki Archer

Summer knows that her relationship with Chris is over—she’s in her first year of college, and he’s touring with his band. Ten years of friendship, and barely twelve hours of romance are gone.  Forgotten.

             
Right.

             
The more Summer tries to move on, the more she’s reminded of Chris. And she’d give just about anything to be the forgetful
,
instead of the forget-
ee.
Because Chris had no problem taking off without so much as a backwards glance.

             
As it turns out, one-night stands do an okay job of pushing away unwanted memories. But each new conquest makes her feel cheaper. Each ‘improvement’ takes her farther away from who she used to be.

             
Then she hears it; Chris’s apology to her, verse after painful verse, playing on every radio station. His words bring everything back, and make her take a long, critical look at the life she’s disappeared into. But is he still the same Chris who wrote the song for her? And even if he is, can she find her way back to being the girl he loved?

QUESTIONS FOR KATHLEEN

September Wind has been a long time in coming. What made you finally decide that your novel was ready?

A number of years ago I wrote a book called An Empty Forest, (September Wind). I entered it in a contest with a small publishing house (Gardenia Press) and it won second place. I worked it over, sent it for an edit, and was expecting it back for the usual rounds of editing, but instead it was sent to the presses. One phone call from me and it was pulled back. And so there begins the saga, the winding trail I took writing September Wind.

I know it must sound strange to develop a story for over sixteen years, and I jokingly say that I had to practically learn the English language from scratch as I told Emily’s story. Looking back now I believe it was therapy in many ways. And I might add that research takes many hours to get facts straight. I had a story I wanted to write, and in some ways needed to tell. I took breaks in-between, maybe a year or two at one point, and other times six or seven months. During this time I worked on other writings. Most of them aren’t finished yet, but I do have some short stories and poems that are finished. Some can be seen on my website:
www.kathleenjanzanderson.com
, and also on
www.Authorsden.com
.

Did you ever think of self-publishing?

Yes. I self-published September Wind under the name A Song From An Empty Forest about ten years ago (Yes, another name, just part of the winding tale). Somewhere out there are two versions floating around.

So you pulled back on the self-publishing?

There were some very dramatic things beginning to happen in my life. One day someone said, just let it go. So that day I sent it over to be published. Then when I read it, I knew it wasn’t ready. I did make quite a few changes to it then, but it still wasn’t what I intended and I could see it on every page. I put a halt on the publishing, again.

In the book, Emily was raped as a young girl. This might lead people to think that you were raped.

Let me just say that I was never raped when I was a young girl, and that I was never “molested” by a relative. I guess I should say that when I was about three, when I lived in Canada, there was a male—he might not have even lived near us because I didn’t recognize him—but he had about four or five girls that, well, let me just say if anyone had seen him he would have been arrested. I can’t say for sure what all happen, because I was only three. All I’m sure of was that he didn’t hurt me. Sadly, I can’t say that for the other girls.

Especially since this is your first novel, people might wonder if you have based any of it on reality.

In a way that’s a loaded question because many of the feelings Emily has, I experienced. I did live with an alcoholic, and I was knocked, hit, punched, and kicked around, sometimes on a regular basis for a number of years. Although, I want to say he wasn’t a bad man, inside he was a good man. I blame most of it on the alcohol, and the rest on his two trips to Vietnam.

And then yes, I was raped when I was eighteen. I’d just graduated from high school and was on my own. Like so many girls I felt this young man and I would be married, and I put myself into a situation I shouldn’t have. I blame myself in part for what happened.

Sadly, many people who are raped tend to blame it on themselves. Did you use that experience anywhere in you book?

Yes. I took myself back to that painful experience when I had Emily describe how it felt to be raped.

Abuse seems to be much of the theme, that and forgiveness. Did being abused yourself give you the drive in much of this book?  Also in parts of the story, there is sort of a defenseless hopeless feeling. Is that all part of being abused?

Living through an abusive relationship defiantly is a big part of it, and yes a driving force in writing this book. That hopeless, defenseless part was easy to relive through Emily. That feeling never completely goes away. And when a person isn’t able to work through it, you can forgive, but the memories come back.

It’s been a number of years since I was in that relationship, and thankfully since then there is a lot more support out there.

Would you mind taking a scene from your own life to explain that hopeless feeling.

There were many times I was frightened for my life. A couple of times one step further, or an inch one way or another could have easily taken my life. But one of the most hopeless feelings I had was when I went to see a doctor after an injury. My head had been slammed into a wall during a drunken rage. The side of my face was swelled up pretty good and bruised. I went to a doctor, and I was sitting on the table, in despair, feeling alone and desperately wanting and needing help. He came in and asked what happened. I told him my husband banged my head against the wall. His response was to ask what I’d done to cause it. I burst into tears, got off the table, and walked out.

I believe now that some of his abuse was not only the alcohol, and his Vietnam memories, but also because he was angry with himself. His two Vietnam tours I believe affected him very much and it’s too bad we didn’t realize that at the time. I forgave him long ago, and God forgave long before that.

We lived in the country, and with no relatives less than a two or three day drive away, I was alone. Like I said earlier, there wasn’t as much awareness of this sort of thing back then.

Have you thought of writing about this part of your life?

I have, and I will; if I publish any of it, only time will tell.

What was the most difficult thing you experienced in writing the book?

First let me say that making Grandfather
mean
was very tough for me. I had to really struggle with that. And Claude? Well he was just a combination of all the abusive (I don’t like name calling, but) monsters out there.

And then from there, the most difficult part wasn’t putting down the story, it was the putting myself into each sentence and reliving the story over and over again, trying to make each word into what I wanted to say. I kept telling myself that every good novel is just a collaboration of words in perfect form, and that all I needed to do was get them in right order. Maybe the words and sentences are not just the way they should be, but that is how they ended up and so that’s how I’ll leave them.

What is your advice to a new writer?

Oh, I think you have to go with your gut. And then something I saw in the W
riter’s Digest that really says it all, from a Stephen Merchant article. His father sent him a quote from Pulitzer Prize-winner Herbert Bayard Swope: “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.