My dog ate my home work.
That is, my dog ate my ability to work at home. He dug up our FIOS line and ate through it, effectively turning back our clocks to 1939, leaving us without television, cable, internet, or even a landline phone.
We should have it back today, and then I can get back to my regularly scheduled blogging.
Until then, enjoy this picture of Hoo. Happier days for him, before he landed in Puppy Jail.
If you like fast-paced, down home, hot as the Georgia asphalt mysteries, then you need to meet Larissa Reinhart, who brings us Cherry Tucker’s world of Halo, Georgia. With her third book releasing in November, and the fourth being written right now, I thought it was a good time to sit down and have a sweet tea with Larissa.
The Outside Lane: I read your books out of order because I am a big fan of Brunswick Stew. It was very easy to pick up on your characters and their shared histories. With book 3 coming soon, and an anthology on the way, how are you bringing brand new readers up to date on Cherry Tucker?
Larissa Reinhart: Thanks Lane for having me! I’ve enjoyed getting to know you on Facebook and through my buddy LynDee Walker.
To answer your question, I think it’s tricky. I’m working on book 4 now and I try to keep character histories to a few sentences that can wrap up their relationship to Cherry without revealing too much about what’s happened in previous books. And do it in a humorous way. I kind of like the challenge. I’ll give you an example from Hijack in Abstract, book 3:
“Calling Shawna Branson an artist is like calling Ronald McDonald the King of Steaks.” Shawna Branson and I’ve hated each other since the days when we all hung out at the Tasty Dip. When I found out she was sharing her sprinkles with my boyfriend, I wrote her number on the men’s room wall. Accompanied by an explicit drawing of Shawna’s talents. Pretty good rendering for a cement block wall and a Sharpie. Instead of throwing a hissy, she should have thanked me for making her so popular.
TOL: I grew up in and around small towns in Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, and loved how true to form Halo and Sidewinder are. How did you create those towns, and their inhabitants.
LR: I grew up in small towns, too. There’s some universal qualities to country folk, I think. Wonderful characters. I believe where life seems simpler, it’s easier to distill everything into black and white. You can find salt of the earth generosity living next to some truly shiftless S.O.B.s. And because everyone’s life is exposed through the community grapevine, we all know who’s the angel and who’s the S.O.B. And they know it, too. Makes for interesting drama.
TOL: Cherry’s love life doesn’t seem to be going so well. Do you have a romance plotted out for her, or are you looking to see where the spirit takes you? (CherBear! –oooh, look, the spirit!)
LR: The romance is the hardest part for me. I thought I had some things plotted out, but she took me in a whole different direction. Cherry’s not ready to settle down. She needs to resolve her mother issues first. And because that’s a mystery I’m threading through the books, I feel like she should be able to sow a few oats. Without getting slutty. She’s got a big heart and there’s a lot of love for the three men in her life. She keeps veering back to Luke, but Todd’s always there for her and lately, Max, too. I really am not sure what she’s going to do. It distresses me. I’d rather write the action scenes.
By the way, my friend Terri L. Austin is a huge CherBear fan, too. Asone of my beta readers, Terri tries to strongly encourage Cherry in that relationship. She’s a bad influence.
TOL: Let’s talk anthology. Tell us about the process of writing an individual novella in tandem with two other writers. It’s got to be like sewing plaid. How do you make the lines match up?
LR: IT IS SO MUCH FUN! In the beginning, there was a flurry of emails about Memphis and the Heartache Motel. Not even story ideas, just random thoughts about Graceland, Elvis, and this crappy motel and how we would work it into a story. We’d send each other funny pictures (eventually they became a Pinterest board). I can’t even remember how we settled on Memphis. Or how these drag queens entered the picture. Terri L. Austin, LynDee Walker, and I can get a little goofy. But at some point, we just started writing and then began sending descriptions of the motel back and forth to each other. We’d just add in something mentioned in the other books. But the stories are so different, which is cool. I loved using all the Elvis references.
TOL: So you’ve written the book, sold the book, revised the book, published the book, and…what’s the most fun for you in the process?
LR: I like editing. I edit as I write. Once I get going, writing is fun, particularly when the unexpected happens. But editing is very soothing. I like playing around with words.
TOL: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from the first and second releases, to your upcoming third and fourth? What would you tell authors who are hoping for the same sort of success?
LR: You know, I’m not sure. Each time it’s been different. My first two releases were just before major holiday weekends, which my publisher has since learned is a bad idea. Not many books are sold during Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. Everyone’s too busy grilling. So I have no idea what an early November and early December release will be like. I also have deadlines for other books near my launches, so usually I’m just trying to get through the launch.
My release for Still Life in Brunswick Stew was insane because it was the last week of school (I have an eight and ten year old) and I was room mom. And my dog went missing on launch day. And my friends from Minnesota were coming down for the weekend to stay with me. And I had to plan and work the end-of-school-year party for the whole fourth grade. I had two signings. Plus the start of a blog tour.
I have almost no memory of that week. Not until Saturday night, I sat around my patio with my friends and a bottle of champagne while we watched Brunswick Stew climb up the Amazon bestseller charts. That was pretty darn cool!
I am praying my next release is more relaxing. So, in response to your question, my advice would be, don’t plan anything else for your launch week. Especially not end-of-school-year-parties. Unless you enjoy nervous breakdowns.
TOL: What do you like to read?
LR: Everything! I’m not stuck on any one genre. I tend to find an author I like, then read everything they’ve published, then move on to another author. It could be mysteries, paranormal, romance, Young Adult, thrillers, horror, literary fiction, classics. I really react to voice more than anything else. I went through a Thomas Hardy phase some years back when I wasn’t even in school. Couldn’t get enough of Thomas Hardy. Then I moved on. It’s like a sickness. I do the same thing with TV shows since the invention of Netflix and Video on Demand.
TOL: Thank you so much, Larissa! Here’s hoping HIJACK IN ABSTRACT is your biggest seller yet!
Find out more about Larissa at:
And find out about all her books on her website bookshelf.
I signed up for the blog tour of Robert McEvilla’s new romance, THE GOATS OF SANTO DOMINGO, because of the title. If you have goats in your title, the book either has to be extraordinary, or extraordinarily funny–intentionally, or not. McEvilla’s story of love and political intrigue is extraordinary.
From the beginning, I was hooked in by McEvilla’s evocative scene setting. You know exactly where you are as you begin to read. You know exactly how the humidity would be curling your hair, how the air would smell, how the streets would sound. It is very easy to step into the world of John Romero’s Santo Domingo–goats and all.
The world is so familiar because it is the first novel McEvilla has based on his experiences in the Dominican Republic. The world is so enjoyable because McEvilla is such a great writer.
Romero and his love interest, Ramona De Fiesta, are fully fleshed characters who share the point of view in the story telling, with equal weight. It did take over a hundred pages to find out Ramona’s last name, and I was despairing of her ever getting one, but McEvilla came through with a great, strong female voice.
I’m very glad I chose to read this. I do enjoy soldier stories, and this is definitely among the top of those I’ve read. I have no compunctions about recommending this one.
4.5 out of 5 stars for me.
About THE GOATS OF SANTO DOMINGO
Whenever John Romero was asked if he was wounded in Vietnam, he always got a confused look when he replied that his eye was lost in Santo Domingo.
A former baseball player with just six weeks left to serve in the army, John’s plans for making a comeback are interrupted when his unit is deployed to the Dominican Republic, and he finds himself in a combat situation. While dodging bullets, he meets a beautiful Dominican woman, the aloof, Ramona. She inflames the private passions of the paratroopers that view her from their command post. Romero plots a course to win her affections, but the political intrigue and the carnage in the streets of Santo Domingo conspire to thwart his every move, forcing him to make a drastic decision.
An Excerpt
A coil of concertina wire stretched down the middle of the street between the sandbags Romero stood behind and her turquoise house. Behind him was a schoolhouse that his unit had occupied since their arrival. The old structure reminded Romero of the Alamo.
“Keep your eye on that house,” Rosen had said to him. “You’ll see her if you get posted at the sandbags; she comes out every morning around nine and reads a book for half an hour—a real beauty queen.” Romero had heard the other men in his squad talking about her. They referred to her as Miss Santo Domingo, the Princess, or the Dominican Damsel.
The door opened on the brightly painted stucco house. She wore a short white skirt, the hem well above the knee. The lawn chair she held was unfolded with a nobility of motion, the way a virtuoso opens his violin case. She sat down, crossed her shapely legs, and opened a book before setting it daintily on her lap. For a confused moment, Romero was convinced she was Carla. He stepped out from behind the sandbags and was a few strides off the curb before the coiled barbs stopped him. The closer view made him see that it wasn’t Carla after all. She was somebody else—a stranger—both mysterious and recognizable. She was perhaps Miss Swanson, his fourth grade teacher to whom he had written his first love letter and hid it in his school bag. There was a bit of Anna about her, too, the little girl who’d lived across the street from him when he was twelve. She was someone who had once held him tight, but not close enough—someone who had left and gone away.
A real Spanish Contessa, he thought.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Robert McEvilla is a retired stationary engineer who lives in a log cabin in the backwoods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His short stories have been published in various literary magazines. This is his first novel which is based on his experiences in the Dominican Republic.
Link: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/romance-c-73/the-goats-of-santo-domingo-p432.html
Maybe the best part of writing a series set in the pageant world is that now when I watch Toddlers & Tiaras, I can call it research. No more guilty pleasure! It’s research. It’s for work, y’all.
Maybe the worst part of watching Toddlers & Tiaras is how terribly I feel for some of the children, who are going to grow up to need real therapy. Not pretend therapy, but reconstructive help to teach them how to feel good about themselves so that they can function beyond just, “Sparkle, Baby!” No, the worst part is knowing I am watching child abuse for entertainment. Research. Researtainment.
Yesterday, I watched an episode with three great sets of parents, and it was as unusual as it was delightful. The kids were all happy, well-behaved, and seemed quite well-adjusted. The worst thing the editors could do with the material was to make one mother out to look overly proud of her daughter. My mother would tell you that there is no such thing as overly proud of your daughter.
Today, I watched a piece of an episode with a mother who made me want to reach through the screen and yank her bald. The other featured mother was great, and her daughter gave the line of the show.
While she was being interviewed, the little girl talked about raising pigs on their farm. She said, “We butcher ’em. Sometimes I’m sad to lose a pig. …then I’m happy when it tastes good.” Deadpan delivery. Didn’t crack a smile. Kid after my own heart. BACON!
Meanwhile, I saw my first review from someone I don’t know–a reviewer who has my book as part of an upcoming blog tour. She gave me 5 stars and I have been squirming happily over it since yesterday. The first line read, “Ms. Buckman may never be accused of writing great literature,” and went on to glow. I read that first part before I saw how many stars had been rated, and my jaw dropped. And I laughed. Because it is true. Then, I read the rest of the review and laughed even harder because it was pretty awesome. I want it written into my will that it is part of my obituary. “Lane was never accused of writing great literature, but–”
As people who don’t know me, and therefore do not feel obligated to protect my feelings, read the book and enjoy it, I am elated. When people say they have laughed, I am over the moon. I love laughing, and I love when I get to be part of making someone else laugh.
So, if you’re local and you’d like to see me laughing in person, join me on October 12, at the Barnes & Noble in Lewisville, TX. That link takes you to my author event page. You probably can’t hear the high pitched giggle that accompanies me typing, “my author event page,” but your dog can. I apologize.
My coworker and I were strongly considering rescuing an old audio/visual cart from the dumpster area the other morning. We were laughing about being trash grabbers. I am a shameless trash grabber. If I see something that’s going to the dump, I’ll grab it if I like it. I blame my grandmother, who used to take my cousins and me trash grabbing when we spent summers with her.
Let me paint you a picture.
It is 1979, summertime in Georgia. Early morning. So early that the dew is still on the St. Augustine, and wetting the blacktop, and the sun hasn’t quite cleared the thick pines that separate the wood frame houses in the neighborhood. A white, Crown Victoria creeps down the road, driven by a little, fuzzy haired woman. With a cigarette in one hand, she steers toward a pile of trash waiting at the streetline.
A back door swings open and three small children hustle out, and scramble over to the garbage. The two little girls wear bubble suits in the pastels of laundry-faded hot pink, and royal blue, summer legs eaten up with bug bites and the bruises of backyard play, the bottoms of their bare feet as black as the tar they are walking on. Their hair isn’t combed–it’s summer. Summer is for bedhead. The boy wears thick, plastic framed glasses, a mesh-back baseball cap, white t-shirt, and shorts he outgrew a couple of weeks ago, shorts that fit him when the summer started. His bare feet are just as dirty, and his legs just as backyard scarred, covered in goose pimples because he is always cold.
They skirt the line where the lawn meets the blacktop, no sidewalk between front yard and street, and creep up to the trash pile, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be coming. They have been briefed on the importance of stealth. Their grandmother has seen a stool she wanted in this garbage pile, and sent them to fetch it, but along with that stool they found a few boxes. The boy calls out to the car, and the cigarette waves at them to hurry. Pursed lips shush him from the driver’s seat.
He grabs the stool, and the smallest girl, his sister, helps him wrangle it into the trunk of the car–a cavern so deep, they wonder if they could just climb in and ride home that way. Their cousin has cautiously pulled back the lip of a box, and squealed with delight. A whole stack of 78s! On top? The soundtrack to the movie Grease.
Just like that, stealth is forgotten as all three children descend on the boxes like vultures, hopping around one another with excitement, trying to see over the other’s shoulder as he and she scrabble through the other two boxes of another man’s junk. Loaded with treasure, they return to the car, chattering over their finds. Any worry they had in scavenging has transmuted into the thrill of a good haul. They don’t even mind how early it is anymore.
Their grandmother watches them in the rear view mirror, smiling with vulpine fondness, and eases her foot onto the gas. There are still other treasures to find in the half hour left before the garbage man comes to sweep away the waiting trash like the tide.
When my mother found out Grandma was using us as her personal trash pickers, she had a fit. It was too late. I had found the soundtrack to Grease, a movie then forbidden me, and I was sold. If I could find Grease in the trash, what else might be out there?!
The Outside Lane 