Welcome to my first Fall Newsletter!
My debut novel, So Happy Together was published last year by She Writes Press. And even though it took over thirty years from first draft until I held an actual published book in my hands, it turns out writing was the easy part. Publicity and marketing has been a steep learning curve for me and, as I’m an introvert, it’s not exactly in my comfort zone. But, I’ve been advised that a good way to get oneself “out there” as a writer is to send out a newsletter. I’m aiming to write one of these for each season—subscribers will find it in their inbox four times a year. You can sign up or drop me a line here.
Twenty years ago, when my husband and I came to Maine for vacation—well, he wasn’t my husband when we arrived, but a Notary Public officiated at our tiny beach wedding a few days later, with two witnesses and our dogs as flower girls—so by the time we left we were duly married—we fell in love with this little town on the midcoast and spent our honeymoon with a real estate agent and then fell in love with a little house.
A few years later, we found the house a bit too little, so we hired contractors to put on an addition. In the process of digging the new foundation, the contractors uprooted and tossed a tiny apple sapling to the side. Later in the day, I rescued the sapling–we named her Frankie–and planted her in a safer part of the yard.
Where she grew. And grew. And after a while, we realized she wasn’t a dwarf apple, but full-sized, and she started bearing fruit and soon I was making and freezing apple sauce and pies and crisps, And once, apple butter, but oh-so-labor intensive, that one.
This year, despite the drought and the brown-tail moth caterpillar webs I cut from her branches, Frankie bore more fruit than ever before. And I made apple sauce and pies and crisps and found a recipe for oven-baked apple butter (not labor intensive at all) and after we’d picked all we could reach, answered an ad from a local woman who was looking for old apple trees with windfalls so she could make cider and she came here and collected a bushel of apples from Frankie’s branches and from the ground beneath.
And every year, I feel like Frankie’s thanking us for rescuing her. And we thank her right back.
The holidays will be here before you know it, and it’s not too early to make your gift list. Know anyone who’d love to read a novel about a woman who not only fantasizes about a lost love, but takes to the road to track him down? Hmm, I thought so.
And while you’re at it, why not pick up a copy for yourself, too? You can find a copy at your local independent bookstore (if they don’t have it, you can order it); Bookshop.org; Amazon; and B&N. And if you think your neighbors would like to read it, as well, please ask your local library to order a copy.
