“Patience is a flower that does not grow in everyone’s garden.”
–English Proverb
Summer is all about sunshine, vacations, pool time, relaxation, longer days, and shorter nights. What are you doing that makes your summer special? Since my husband and I went to the beach for a week in May, our plans for the summer are minimal. We will visit some friends in nearby Tennessee for a long weekend, and maybe spend a cooler night in the Georgia mountains, but other than that, we’ll just be hanging around the house, watching the Braves on TV, cooking on the grill, and having relatives over for dinner. Of course, I’ll still be working on my new novel and Mike will be teaching piano lessons as usual. Yeah, folks, we’re boring people!
I mentioned a while back (think it was February) that I was growing vegetables from seed. Sorry to say, some of my seedlings didn’t survive the transfer to pots and the outdoors. From the original seeds, I have only one tomato plant, five pepper plants, six sad and spent broccoli plants, two thyme plants, and a few carrots. We bought two more tomato plants, basil, cucumber, and citronella. My husband and I had some oregano and a small potted rosemary bush that survived the winter. Everything is growing in large pots on our deck. Fingers crossed that we will soon reap a small harvest.
To this day, my mother’s words remind me, “Patience is a virtue.” Okay, I will admit, that’s not one of my assets. Watching the garden come to fruition tests my patience. In all honesty, sometimes so does writing my new book—LIES IN THE RIVER. I love to write, but it’s the deadlines I put on myself, and the days I need to be super productive that get to me.
“A garden should be in a constant state of fluid
change, expansion, experiment;
above all it should be an inquisitive, loving,
but self-critical journey on the part of its owner.”
–H. E. Bates
Yes, growing a garden takes patience and some work. Any new project you begin is like that. A long time ago, I was into needlepoint. At first, I struggled with it, as I am sort of a perfectionist. The process from beginning to end exhausted my patience. I would start, stop, and put the project aside before trying it again. However, I refused to quit. Eventually, I mastered it enough to want to frame a few pictures.
I’m sure there have been many times in your life when you’ve tackled a hobby or project and you struggled a bit before you got the hang of it, or were able to complete it.
Currently, my work-in-progress (WIP), like one of my seedlings that hasn’t reached its expectations, has stalled, i.e., one of my sad broccoli plants. I have reworked the outline several times and each time I think I’ve got it. Sometimes I have to put the work aside, and play around with a short story or essay for a time. Then I can come back to the WIP. Today I blame the lovely summertime distractions for making me sidestep my goals.
Meet Another Character
I do love my characters. I just need a few more to love me back to reveal the complete story that will be the first book (Lies in the River) in a series called Sequoyah. By the way, I’ve changed the main character’s name again. It’s Victoria Campbell.
Let’s take a look at one of the other important characters—Kenzie Campbell. Like Lucy from Peanuts, Kenzie is a dynamic character, who is never ignored – a strong female character.
In the story, when you first meet her, she is twenty-three, but we also see her when she is nineteen. She is the youngest of Maura and Colin Campbell’s children, the surprise baby born in the couple’s early forties.
Kenzie stands 5’4″ tall and weighs around 115 lbs., and has black hair and violet eyes. Though spoiled, her beauty and personality have won the hearts of the entire small town of Sequoyah, Georgia. Kenzie is charming, fun-loving, immature, naïve, and loves too easily. In high school, she dated Buck Ferguson, grandson of the owner of the Ferguson Mill, Hamilton Ferguson. Unfortunately, she also dated someone else at the end of her senior year and through the following year, but kept the relationship a secret due to circumstances beyond her control.
A few personal facts about Kenzie – she’s an animal lover, wants to be a vet like her father, has a fear of spiders, eats all the time but never gains weight, and she has a diamond-shaped birthmark behind her neck. The worrisome thing about Kenzie – she takes too many risks.
AND THE WINNER IS…
At the beginning of this month, I ran a promotion for the Women’s Fiction Writing Association (WFWA) – WOMEN’S FICTION DAY (June 8, 2023) on Facebook, Instagram, and my website (jodyherpin.com). Anyone who wanted a chance to win a digital copy of my novel just had to signup on the special section on my website. I’m happy to announce the winner – KRISTEN COX received an ePub version of Relative Consequences via her email address.
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Don’t forget that Relative Consequences is available on the following:
BookShop – https://bit.ly/3IMV1Nk
Amazon – https://amzn.to/3GN4l1M
Barnes & Noble – https://bit.ly/35BMdLW
Kobo – https://bit.ly/3IStGKl
BooksAMillion – https://bit.ly/3OifwDp
Its my pleasure to announce that in July, Author Anne M. Beggs will join my blog post. Can’t wait to read her take on strong female protagonists.
Thanks for stopping by,
Jody
Jody Herpin 