Pictures -- finally!

As I promised a few months ago, there are now images to accompany some of my South Africa blog entries. Go to the March '09 posts, and you will see a little bit of what we enjoyed for three weeks when we visited my daughter in the Peace Corps.

Heather's ring

On January 9, my cousin threw an engagement party for her daughter. We had to drive over an hour to get there, but we like these people, like parties in general, and hoped there would be dancing. The invitation said "semi-formal," however, so that called for a new, fancy dress. I work at a fabric store, got some advice from my coworkers, and finally chose a deep blue satin. As I worked on it, I started thinking about a fancy necklace to go with it. I have always been a "gold" person and surprised to find myself thinking so quickly of silver. Brian likes to make jewelry and has some equipment. We shopped carefully, and he crafted a beautiful two-strand silver and blue necklace. It was a debut for me -- satin instead of work clothes and silver instead of gold -- and I looked and felt great.

Yes, there was dancing, and the engagement party was a surprise wedding!

What does all this have to do with my novel or Heather's ring? Read on.

Our writers' group met again this morning. Brian, my husband, again accompanied me, and I submitted another chapter. Remember, last week I received a lot of what I perceived as criticism. In fact, one man asked me this morning if all of my bruises had healed. I was able to tell him honestly that I was glad for the feedback because it helped me craft the current chapter, about Heather's ring. I didn't know if I would be read today or not, but I was (the THIRD week in a row), and the group's comments were almost all positive.

My past stories have been sweet and happy. No one ever gets anything more than his/her feelings hurt and the man in the white hat handily defeats the one in the black hat (bloodlessly, of course). In this chapter of In An Elephant's Footprint, however, there are definitely bad guys who want to hurt my young heroine, Heather, for their own gain. This is a new and exciting genre for me.

Imagine -- two debuts in the first month of 2010! And all without a resolution.

Writers' Group

Two fascinating things happened in my writers' group this morning. One is that my husband came with me. He writes but tends to stay away from my hobbies. Unfortunately, he's an excellent writer and doesn't let it out, so I'm hoping that he'll stay in the group and pick up the novel he started for NaNoWriMo. It has a lot of potential.

The second thing is that I got read again, after just being read last week. This is unusual, but not many people have submitted chapters to the leader, so there mine was. This was the chapter about Heather taking the stone the dragon gave her to get it made into earrings. The stone, a mandarin garnet, has magical powers and causes some problems for the jeweler. The other writers, even the new ones, were rather critical of some of my writing, to the point that I defended myself. It seems that some heavy duty editing is in order, but I will hang onto some ideas. Brian, wisely, did not enter into that discussion.

Her name is Heather because she's tough

A person in my writers' group said that she got tired of hearing "Shelly," "Seana" (the feminine of Sean, as in Connery), and "she" a lot of times. Since they all start with the same sound, I decided that I could change my main character's name without sacrificing anything. "Michelle" has a nice ring to it, but I finally decided on Heather.

My heroine has a big job to do and needs to be strong and resilient. Heather suits her, mainly because heather grows on the heath (where else?) and, in spite of harsh wind and rain, is a beautiful flower.

There is a book about how to choose names for characters. I requested it for Christmas, didn't get it, so am on my own for a while. Heather and I are tough and will work it out.