I’m so happy to bring you these seven tiny tales of love and mystery. I hope they make you smile!

Special introductory price – 99 cents!
Kindle | Nook | Kobo

At the Cafe – The place of their meeting, would it also be the place where they said goodbye forever?

Accidental Death – Gary had figured out a way to kill his wife and not get caught.

Murder, Sweet Murder – There was a body on the floor of the coffee shop. Casey’s day was starting out all wrong.

The Pleasure of Refusing – That night in the rain, she almost ignored him.

My Funny Valentine – It could turn out to be the most important day in his life.

The Bell Tower Man – The children’s teacher is missing. Was she taken by the Bell Tower Man?

Sweet Inspiration – Amanda had to get out of the office. She needed stimulation. Motivation. Inspiration.

Available now on: Kindle | Nook | Kobo Coming soon in paperback!

The view from our deck.

Recently I was lucky enough to go away for a weekend with two of my best writing buddies. During that weekend I found a renewed appreciation for peace and quiet: that lovely void where the only sounds are the characters in my head, and the dancing of fingers on a keyboard. During the day-to-day madness of a hectic life, it can be difficult to find that quiet place and time where the words flow smoothly. I found this passage from Beryl Markham, a personal heroine of mine (among other accomplishments, she was a writer, aviatrix and she survived being attacked by a lion – quite a lady!). I like to read it when I need to find that moment of silence.

Another river view.

There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.

There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows.

It is a soundless echo.

-Beryl Markham

What do you do when you need to find your moment of silence?

Stress reared its ugly head. I admit, I spent some time feeling sorry for myself, doing my own personal inner-sulk-and-brood routine. And then, from out of nowhere, a little voice whispered in my ear: “Sometimes, the only thing you can do is the next thing.” So I pulled my chin up off the floor and did the next thing that needed doing; and the next, until everything that I could personally do had been done, and the rest was up to someone else. After that, I took my family out to dinner and we enjoyed ourselves. Within twenty-four hours, the project was completed – for real this time (huzzah!) – and I was left to ponder: “Do the next thing.” Where had I heard that before?

It took some searching, but I finally found the answer on a blog called Ann’s Open Door, which has the following poem posted in its sidebar. If the religious aspect doesn’t speak to you, feel free to set it aside. We all believe differently. The poem is too good not to share, and I hope you love it as much as I do!

Do the Next Thing

From an old English parsonage, down by the sea
There came in the twilight a message to me;
Its quaint Saxon legend, deeply engraven,
Hath, as it seems to me, teaching from Heaven.
And on through the hours the quiet words ring
Like a low inspiration – “Do the next thing.”

Many a questioning, many a fear,
Many a doubt hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from Heaven,
Time, opportunity, guidance, are given.
Fear not tomorrows, Child of the King,
Trust them with Jesus, “Do the next thing.”

Do it immediately; do it with prayer;
Do it reliantly, casting all care;
Do it with reverence, tracing His Hand
Who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on Omnipotence, same ’neath His wing,
Leave all resultings, “Do the next thing.”

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
(Working or suffering) be thy demeanor,
In His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness, praise and sing,
Then, as he beckons thee “Do the next thing.”

- Author Unknown

Fortunately, this year’s word came easily: Persist. It’s not a particularly glamorous word; it’s not lyrical or poetic. There’s even something a little annoying about the way it sounds. But let’s be honest: life itself is rarely glamorous or poetic; and it’s often annoying! Plus, I like this word. Always have.

As we’re tooling down the highway of life, the universe loves to put up roadblocks: money or job trouble, loss of family or friends, health concerns, and even just the countless pesky inconveniences we encounter every day. But when you’re headed in a good direction, you’ve got to keep going. Climb over, navigate around, push through. Continue steadfastly in your course. Persist.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” – Calvin Coolidge

And so that’s the word that will define my year 2013. Do you have a word for the year?

Next Tuesday, January 22, I will officially re-start my own weekly blog with a post about the word that will define 2013 for me. See you then!

“Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.” – Author Unknown

My debut post, One Writer’s Tale of Self Publishing and Free Giveaways is now live and ready for readin’! The post shares the results of my free giveaways with Amazon’s KDP Select program, and it also talks about promotion. Whether you’re already a fan of the lovely Rockville 8, or if this is the first you’ve heard of them, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello.

And yes, I’m planning to revive my own blog later this month! I’m looking forward to getting back in the groove and re-joining the writing parade! I’ll keep you posted on my progress (pun totally intended).

Have a great week!

Buy today: Kindle | Nook | Kobo

A Spirited Season
Holiday Tales with a Paranormal Flair

What’s a holiday without a little spirit? I’m thrilled to join authors Karen Cantwell and Laura Lucas for half a dozen comical, fun, and warm-hearted Christmas tales. Soccer mom, Barbara Marr, is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Scary in “A Christmas Peril.” Delaney Pearce isn’t looking for a magic genie, but she finds one in “Make My Wish Come True.” An antique ornament brings two lonely souls together in “Two Turtledoves.”  A jealous husband gets an unexpected surprise when attempting witchcraft to solve his marital problems in “Squawkin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Something just isn’t right when the lights go out during Kendall Rhodes’ Christmas Eve party in “Jingle Spells.” A rough-around-the-edges cell tower repairman discovers love in the least likely place in “O Christmas Tree.”

All profits from the sales of A Spirited Season go to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, because everyone deserves a miracle.

Get your copy and join the fun! Available on: Kindle | Nook | Kobo

Excerpts from Misha’s stories:

Two Turtledoves

Prologue

 Everything about the little house said dead and gone.

It stood, empty and alone, at the intersection of two old dirt roads. Scraggly bushes had grown up over the peeling walls, poking their way inside through broken windowpanes. The skeletal remains of an old vegetable garden jutted long bony fingers out of the brown scrap of yard by the front door, and the house’s shingled sides had been spray-painted with graffiti. But that too had turned brown, as if even the vandals had moved on to greener pastures.

Reed sat silently in his car, biting his thumb as he looked out at the place where he had grown up. Cicadas, stirred by the heavy heat of the early August morning, whirred their drowsing song in the tall grass by the side of the road. The sun hadn’t even crested the far hills yet, and already the inside of his ancient yellow VW felt like an oven. Sweat gathered along his hairline to drip down his neck, sticking his shirt to the small of his back.

It was strange to think that he hadn’t laid eyes on the place in almost a year. He had been born in that house, as had generations of Fitzgeralds before him. His grandmother had raised him there: he had crawled along the bare, uneven floorboards, taken his first wobbly steps in the patchy front yard.

The old place had never been beautiful. It wasn’t some picturesque cottage nestled in the heart of rural Virginia. It was a squat, ugly dwelling that had seen too many deaths and not enough births, but which knew the pain of both.

The original foundation had been laid by a long-ago Fitzgerald ancestor in the hardscrabble years following the Civil War — a tough little house built by a tough little man, who had gone on to found the very town that sprawled not two miles from here. Later, the Fitzgerald family had built themselves a home more suited to their own sense of importance: an elegant country house high on the hill. The gracious building had ridden the crest of the hill as pretty as a boat on the water. From the front of its wide wraparound porch, you could look right past this tiny hovel to the town that lay beyond.

The big house had burned down when Reed’s grandmother was a child, but money and a kind of careless confidence had resurrected it in the late1960s, just a few years before Reed had been born. A new family had come in from out of town, snapped up the land, and rebuilt the house from the original blueprints. Outsiders, his grandmother always said, her voice thick with anger.

Kate’s family, Reed reminded himself, trying not to notice the way his heart snaked in his chest at the thought of her. He tugged the handle and pushed the car door with his shoulder, ignoring the painful squeal of rusty hinges as it swung open. He unfolded himself from the front seat, peeling carefully away from the old plastic covers, then stretched his long and lanky frame before leaning back against the car, crossing his ankles with a nonchalance that he didn’t really feel.

If he turned his head and looked upward, he would have been able to see that big house — empty now, but still all white and shining with majestic beauty. Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down, contemplating the dirt at his feet. He was on his way out of town. Everything he owned was packed into two cardboard boxes on the cracked back seat of his car. One box held his clothes, which were secondhand but clean and carefully folded. The other held a dozen books and what Grand had once scornfully called the family legacy — an old photo album covered in crumbling black leather, and lined with stained and threadbare purple silk.

And that was it. That was all that was left of his family. Generations of men and women who had lived and loved, killed and healed, taught and raised children. And with all of that history, there was nothing left but a broken, faded photo album at the bottom of an old cardboard box. By this time next week, even the shack in front of him would be gone.

And so would he.

College. Reed felt a nervous grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Two years ago, if anyone had asked him whether he would go to college, he would have scowled and spit a “Hell no” out the side of his mouth. Despite all of Kate’s enthusiastic dreaming, despite her faith in him, the thought of him pursuing a higher education had seemed so remote that he’d never seriously considered it. He certainly never would have believed that he would end up heading off to university, with a scholarship letter in his pocket and a dorm room already waiting for him.

But anger and desperation could make some potent magic. He had finally gotten his act together, and now he was on his way out of this small town, heading to New York, the biggest big city of them all. The idea made his gut clench with excitement and fear, but he clamped down tightly on both and tried to focus on his purpose.

He had stopped here on his way out of town, knowing that he had to have a last look, not knowing when or if he would ever return. He had intended to walk through the little house one last time, to say a final goodbye and thank you to his grandmother. But now he felt strangely unwilling to take the first step up the overgrown walkway. As if moving forward would somehow be going back. As if the front door would open and his grandmother would be standing there, instead of lying in the family graveyard half a mile down the road. As if the house would swallow him whole, and he’d be trapped there forever.

He turned to look at the empty fields around him. In his grandmother’s youth, all of this land had belonged to his family. The little valley had once been green and alive with corn and tobacco crops. Even after his great-grandfather Gussy had gambled it all away, others had worked the land, given it a purpose and a life. But now that too was gone. The fields had gone to seed, the green grass to dust. In a few days, the house would be bulldozed, the land raked and mowed over, and a condominium community would be built there.

The thought of it made Reed ache in a place that he could not have named. But in a secret place it also made him glad, because now there was nothing to hold him here. It was as if the cancer that killed Grand had also poisoned the very soil around them. When she died, she took with her all the ties he might have had to these few acres of earth that had once been called Fitzgerald land.

Reed squared his shoulders. Time to get this over with.

He crossed the yard in four easy strides. He could remember when it had taken five times that many steps for him to get up the front walk. But his legs had been shorter then. Shorter legs and a lighter heart — that was how he thought of his childhood.

On the tiny front porch, he turned and looked out over the land again. He imagined his grandmother standing here, on this same exact spot, year after year, watching the world go by. She had been born in 1900, not exactly a time of great opportunity for women. But she had been whip-smart and from a wealthy family — for her, the possibilities could have been endless.

“But life has a way of fucking you over,” she once told him, with a gleam in her eye. “The trick is to try to out-fuck it.”

She had moved into the little house when she was twelve, along with her mother and their last remaining servant. After the big house had burned down, taking her father’s life with it. After they had discovered they were bankrupt, and the government seized their land for back taxes. After everything had gone to hell.

For her, there had been no great future, no college, no world travel. There was just this little scrap of land, with its broken-down shack of a house, and the wrenching scrape of poverty.

With effort, Reed swung his eyes upward, finally bringing his gaze to the house that stood on the hill. It was so beautiful that it hurt his eyes just to look at it. When Kate lived there, it had been like his second home. He had run down its wide hallways, scuffed up its glowing hardwood floors with his young feet. He had played under the high ceilings and sat before roaring fires in its carved fireplaces. But Grand had hated the place, and small wonder. To her it had been an abomination, like the resurrected corpse of a dead child. It stood as a reminder to everything that she had lost, everything that had been taken away from her. The two houses faced each other across a great divide — not just the physical divide of hill and valley, but a divide of fortune, a divide of fate.

Which would be worse, looking out the front door and seeing the burnt-out shell of your former home, or seeing that home resurrected, given new beauty and vitality, and knowing others were living there?

Well, there really wasn’t any contest, now was there?

The front door was unlocked — it wasn’t like there was anything inside worth stealing — and when Reed pushed, it swung open with a horror-movie squeal. He gave himself a minute to allow his eyes to adjust to the murky interior. Then he crossed the threshold.

Weak sunlight slanted through the broken windows, revealing the place to him in patches of dusty light. He stepped forward into the living room, gazing at the space that he had once known so well. The graffiti artists hadn’t limited themselves to the outside of the place, they had made use of the interior walls as well, no doubt seeing them as canvases on which they could paint their angry art.

Well, Grand had always been a supporter of the independent arts — not to mention an avid cusser — so he didn’t suppose she would have minded.

His footsteps echoed as he walked through the empty rooms. Cobwebs hung like memories in the air. In the kitchen, he touched the faded yellow wallpaper, trying to summon up images of his grandmother from every corner of his mind. Her tiny frame and lined face…gnarled fingers with short-clipped nails…her harsh, uncompromising discipline, and her quick, unexpected kindnesses….

For God’s sake, Reed thought with a sudden grin, had he ever given her a moment’s peace? There hadn’t been a rule that he hadn’t broken, not a class he hadn’t cut. He smoked; he shoplifted; he vandalized. He was a terror, and he knew it. More than that, he liked it. Everyone who knew him knew that he would come to a bad end one day. Everyone. Especially Reed himself.

But Grand had never given up on him, had she? No, and he had felt the back of her hand more than once as proof of her dedication. But he had never minded that, because he knew that every crime carried a punishment. And eventually, in a weird way, the punishments themselves had become a kind of validation. They made him feel like he was worth protecting.

Besides, he had outgrown his grandmother by the time he was eleven. And by the time he was thirteen, when she backhanded him, it had made him want to laugh at the way she had to reach up to get to his face.

But he had never actually laughed at her, of course. Even he wouldn’t have been so bold.

He gazed around the kitchen, bereft of its furniture and fixtures. Even the cabinets had been pulled down off the walls and hauled away. But all he had to do was blink, and he could see Grand flipping pancakes over the stove for Sunday breakfast. He could hear the folktales she used to tell him, stories that had been around since before even she had been born. And he could see the two of them seated at the kitchen table on a weeknight, playing cards while she lectured him on politics and he tried hard to catch her cheating.

Reed frowned, remembering that Kate had often joined them, both for pancakes and for cards. And the stories, which were always her favorite. Where his memories of Grand were already faded and dim, his memories of Kate were alive and fully colored.

Anger rose up inside him, making his fist clench and his throat close up. Kate. He couldn’t get away from her. He wanted to spit out her name, then spit out her memory so he would carry it no longer.

He turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen, away from the memory. But there were ghosts of her in every room. In his old bedroom, smaller now than he could ever have believed possible, he saw seven-year-old Kate, dressed in overalls and helping to paint the walls, her hair cut into a wild, curling pageboy. He blinked and saw fourteen-year-old Kate climbing recklessly through his bedroom window, lying on top of his old patchwork quilt, sharing plans for the future and torturing him with her nearness.

And sixteen-year-old Kate, pale and trembling after they had found Harry Block’s mangled body in the old barn. Reed had held her tightly and whispered into her ears, and she had clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from being swept away down the wild, raging river of fate.

His grandmother had always warned him against Kate’s family, saying that the Doyles felt they were too good for this town. Reed had never believed it. He had told himself that Grand was just bitter, angry at the way her life had turned out. He knew down to the marrow of his bones that Kate was good, that she loved him and would never hurt him. Her parents had always treated him like family.

But Grand had been right. She had been right all along. The Doyles had packed up and left town in the middle of the night. They had left behind no forwarding address, no goodbye, no nothing. Just a thousand unanswered questions, and a raw and aching hole where his heart used to be. They had shaken the dust of this crummy little town off their feet and not looked back.

But then again, wasn’t that just what he planned to do?

Damn straight it was.

So what was stopping him? The car was packed and gassed, ready and waiting for him. It was a long drive to New York, and he was burning daylight, as Kate’s father used to say.

He had come to the house to say goodbye to his grandmother; it was his only stop on the way out of town. The family burial plot was just half a mile down the road, but he had no desire to visit dead ancestors, people who had once owned half the land in town and lost it. He didn’t know what would become of the little cemetery once the house was bulldozed and the land razed. Didn’t know, and didn’t care.

And he didn’t want to say goodbye to his grandmother where she was dead and buried. He wanted to say goodbye to her where she was still alive. And that was here, in this house. Besides, nothing would have gotten her spitting mad like the thought of her grandson spending money on flowers, then standing beside her gravesite, weeping delicately into a handkerchief.

No, Grand would be the first one to tell him to save his money for gas, to save his tears for later. She would tell him to get the hell out of Angel River, and never look back.

And Kate, what would she tell him? What lofty advice would she give him, were she here to give it? Reed thought about that briefly, then realized that Kate had nothing to say. She was more dead to him than his grandmother was. He would never see her again.

Down the road, in another state, his life awaited him. And he was ready for it. He summoned his courage, murmured a final thanks to his grandmother, and headed for his car.

He didn’t bother to close the door behind him.

In 1950s Virginia, Jenna Appleton seems to have found the life she’s always wanted. But underneath the shallow gleam of her bright suburban world, murky truths are waiting to surface.

On the morning that her husband dies in a tragic accident, Jenna finds a shocking photo of him in the arms of a beautiful woman. And before she can ask him about it, he’s gone forever.

Five years later, Jenna has buried her questions and remade her life. But the reappearance of an old love stirs up guilty questions, and she realizes that some secrets aren’t meant to be kept. The deeper she dives for answers, the darker the water gets. How will she find happiness for herself and her family, when every move she makes toward the strange and awful truth seems to lead her right back to her own home shores?

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Read an excerpt:

“You’re not the only one who regrets the things that were said the other day.” Jenna spoke softly for fear that her words would carry on the night air. She and Adam had reached the end of the drive and were turning right to walk down Lee Street. Jenna wasn’t altogether sure she should be taking this walk, but Adam was right: they needed to clear the air.

Crickets sang shrilly in the tall, sweet-smelling grass that grew along the railroad tracks. Beneath the leafy trees, the street was shadowed, making it hard to see where they were going. But Adam walked through the dark with confidence, and she tried to match his self-assurance step for step as she continued speaking. “I shudder when I think of the way I went after you. It was just the surprise of seeing you that did it. It caught me off-guard.”

“I know. I wish Kitty had told you that I was coming. Otherwise I would have called you myself.”

“It’s not Kitty’s fault. It’s mine.”

Adam stopped walking. “How do you figure that?”

“I should have answered your letters.” Jenna twisted her hands together. “I don’t know if I could have told you the truth about Christopher — I’m not that brave — but at least I should have had the nerve to tell you that I was engaged. After our night together, you had every right to expect me to wait for you.”

The silence stretched again. Jenna couldn’t make out Adam’s features, but she could sense him waiting, thinking. At last he started forward again, and she kept pace. “I don’t have any right to expect anything from you,” he said at length. “And you’re braver than you give yourself credit for.”

In spite of herself, Jenna found herself warming at Adam’s words of praise. She bit her lip and mentally shored up her earlier resolution: she had to define her position, to herself as well as Adam.

She said the first thing that came to mind. “How’s your Latin?”

Adam laughed. “What?”

“When I was younger, I used to sometimes get confused between the words ‘fidelity’ and ‘integrity.’ But then Lucien explained to me that ‘fidelity’ comes from Latin word fidelitas, which means faithful. And ‘integrity’ comes from the Latin word integritas, which means whole. That’s when I finally understood that in order to have integrity, one must maintain wholeness, the fullness of self. Do you know what I mean?”

“Not entirely,” Adam confessed.

A flush of frustration shot through her. She had never been any good at explaining herself. “I mean that life has many parts to it, and integrity is all about seeing how those parts of life fit together, and then maintaining it as a whole.” She heard the words come out of her mouth, and she knew she was making a garbled mess out of her metaphor. “Does that make any sense?”

“You’re saying that for you to keep your integrity, you need to maintain the life that you’ve made for yourself, and not let anything break it apart.” Adam’s voice was neutral.

“Exactly,” Jenna said gratefully. Adam always seemed to know what she meant to say. “Sometimes I feel like my life is a crystal ball: strong and solid, but full of hairline cracks. I have to be strong and hold it just right in both my hands, or the cracks will widen and the whole thing will fall apart.”

“And with you holding your world together so carefully, you’re not sure how I can fit in.”

“Well, it sounds pretty cold and awful when you say it like that, but you’re right as usual. I don’t know how you can fit in — or if you can at all, for that matter.”

He digested that with characteristic silence. “I understand.”

“Do you?” This time it was Jenna who stopped. They faced each other in the murky light. “I wish you could explain it to me, then. Because I seem to be in a complete mess about you.”

Hope flickered in his face, and she knew that she should have kept that last statement to herself.

“That’s encouraging,” was all he said.

She shook her head emphatically. “No, it’s not. At least, it wasn’t meant to be.”

Jenna looked up and down the empty street. Adam caught the meaning behind the gesture. Another metaphor. “Do we keep going forward, or do we go back?” He pointed up the street. “It’s dark up that way, and there’s no telling what we’ll find. Back that way” — he pointed the opposite direction, towards Bill and Kitty’s house — “we know the road. Me, you, Bud — we’ve been over it a million times, and it never really changes. Maybe it’s time we walked forward into the dark, to see what else might be out there.”

Jenna’s voice was hard. “After all these years of running, I would’ve thought you’d know what’s out there.” Memories glinted in the darkness: The silver badge of the kind officer who had knocked on her door one morning and told her that her husband had died. An old photo, showing the man she had loved embracing another woman and a child. A hole dug in the ground for Bud’s coffin, like the hole in her heart, filling up with pain. “It’s just more road, Adam. It’s just more road. I’m sick of the unknown. All I want now is to raise my son in peace.”

Tears threatened behind her eyes, and she summoned her anger to push them away. “You can go on exploring your dark paths if you want to. But I’m going this way.” She turned and started back towards Bill and Kitty’s house. Her words floated over her shoulder in the darkness. “I’m going back to my family. I’m going home.”

Adam watched her walk away. Her slender figure cut through the night like a sword, until she was swallowed up by shadows. Eventually he started after her, his footsteps slow and resigned. He had ruined the moment. Again.