I have always wanted to write a book. However, through the years while some of my time included reading several novels, I had very little time to invest in writing. We had a family to raise, and I worked, so finding time to sit at the laptop and let my imagination create a world was very limited. I also have an incredible addiction to crafting and painting, which kept my spare time occupied. 

Then enter the world with covid. Not everything has been a negative during the last year and a half. Some good things are evidence of the restrictions placed on us during this time. As I read post after post on social media about cancelled cruises, concerts cancelled, I let my mind wonder to what would happen if we did have a girl’s weekend at the beach, a weekend to attend a concert, what if the world was not shut down and we could go and do as we pleased.  What were we missing out on and what were we putting in the space to fill our lives?

I read posts on friends learning a new hobby, baking bread, working on home projects, and some even worked on growing their families. Not everything was bad. If you look close enough, you can always see a bit of light shining through the broken areas of our lives. 

My normal default for stress release is to read a book or paint on the canvas. I did do some of that during the first part of the lockdown. But one evening, as I sat in my rocking chair on my screened porch, I felt the urge to start something. What did I have to lose? It was not wasted time because our time was already being governed by the powers to be. Stay home. Go nowhere. Isolation.

I missed time with family. I missed church. We also had a girls trip planned to Asheville to attend a concert. It was cancelled. Fall was already looking different, as games and fairs were being cancelled. I needed to find a survival plan to fill up the space in my head that wanted to wonder about the state of affairs at hand. I leaning into coping skills that would entertain me in a positive way. Especially when it became election time. Mercy, during those nights I may have produced the most content for the manuscript sitting on my back porch away from the television.

So what did I do? I started writing a fictional story to keep me sane. Well, somewhat sane. I took pieces of life from all walks of life and, of course, loaded it down with southern twang and style. After all, you write about what you know and I know southern. I also know that bonds amongst friends are a life line during difficult times. So I created a world of four women and the journey through a period of their lives that changed the trajectory of their future. 

Let me tell you a little about each one of them. They are uniquely different, but ultimately devoted to each other.  

Leslie - Works full time - in her 50s. She is the stable and maybe even boring one of the ladies. She keeps them grounded.  Her hurt in her heart comes from family struggles and dysfunction that left emotional scars on her heart.  She is good at keeping this hidden, but it is weighing in pretty heavily and is a burden too large to continue to carry.  

Carrie - Newly divorced and in her 60s. She is a firecracker and has more personality and energy than most young whipper snappers. Her divorce was brutal, long drawn out, and she is still dealing with the trauma of betrayal and her faith in love. Her husband left her for a younger woman and she is grasping to comprehend how she never knew of the affair. With all that she has been through, she still manages to shine like a bright light and bring a level of energy to this foursome.

Sandra - She is in just shy of 40. She is often misunderstood since she has no filter to sift out her words. She usually says what most people are thinking, but not speaking. She has a horrific detail of her past that she cannot seem to escape in her mind and it spills over into aspects of her life. In her past, it almost ruined her, but in her future she finds her way to come out the other side of the hell she walked through and she hardly smells the smoke anymore.  

Laney - She is the baby of the group approaching 30. Her career in the restaurant industry took a hit and her job was collateral damage. She is a trained chef and is hoping to put her skills to use in a private adventure and be her own boss. She is struggling to find the right guy, and she is gun shy since her last serious love left her for someone else.  

The journey of their lives in a sleepy little southern town gets blown apart by one pivotal event. Although it is quite tragic, they find a way to cope and survive and a few more surprises come their way. But that is as much as I can you, you will have to wait to read how it goes for yourself.  

So what are the next steps? Almost a year and a half later, I have a finished manuscript. What started out as a fun thought or two flying around turned into a devotion to bring it in for a landing. So I began to investigate publishing. Oh my - that is a process. But I had come this far and just having these words trapped on my hard drive felt like a waste. I wanted to share their story because it speaks of the tenacity of women in good times and bad. It has an under current of their faith to prop them up. The story is full of some ironic twists and turns that develop and keep you guessing about what the next page of their life will look like. It is not a difficult read, but smooth and easy. It’s not riddled with elaborate words to keep you in a stiff and staunch course of reading. It reads as if you are walking in their world as I attempt to do more showing than telling. I think of each chapter as an episode of a series you would watch on Netflix.   

I enjoyed the journey and in talking with a publishing team, they suggested that I begin to build a platform to inform potential readers where I am in the process. In this blog I will keep adding updates and let you know when you can expect to have a copy in your hands. As much as I enjoyed writing their story, I equally dislike the publishing process. Although I have edited my manuscript seven times, run it through critiques for fiction, for creativity, checked it up against a thesaurus, looked at sentence structure recommendations. . .do you feel my pain yet? It’s a process that must take place but also takes time to seek out every way to polish the finished novel.   

So stay tuned, as this story should be available in the next few months. Maybe as early as November, depending on how much work my editor thinks needs to be done. I’m holding my breath for her review, as she sends me samplings of revisions she recommends.  

If you would like to read an excerpt - please email me at lisacarol99@gmail.com or private message me on social media. I love to get feedback - good and bad.  

Stay tuned.