My Vintage Heart: TOM'S WIFE Book tour

Welcome to this book tour! Please comment to enter the drawing for the prize.

Alana will be awarding the winner's choice of a Screenprinted Camisole - "What Happens in the Bedroom Stays in the Bedroom" or a Brass Nuts T-Shirt - screenprinted "Brass" with 2 brass hex-nuts sewn to collar, to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour. (US ONLY)

BLURB:

It’s the Great Depression and 19-year-old Annie Huckaby is almost resigned to marriage with Tom. He works at a coal mine during the week, leaving Annie to take care of the house and their infant son. Tom’s Native American friend Jim takes care of the farm. Her best friend, Twila, visits every day and helps Annie make a little money selling eggs to the café on the highway. And there’s church on Sunday. Annie’s not always alone, but most times she feels like it…until one afternoon a peddler named Jake Stern steps onto the porch, tips his hat, and starts a world of trouble.

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Excerpt

She already hated being married to Tom after less than a year of it. Hated the three-room pine house with its bare floors and windows. She’d gone home once to her mama’s house trying to get out of it, but her mama told her, “a good woman don’t go off on her husband” and that Annie’s job was to be especially pleasing to Tom so that he wouldn’t get foul-tempered.

The author had this to say about writing:

MY CREATIVE PROCESS

I used to write everyday and have a ritual for writing – a pot of coffee, listen some loud dance music through headphones (for the benefit of neighbors), perhaps dance a bit – nothing too elaborate (again for the sake of the neighbors). And I used to write from midnight to 3 a.m. Over time my ritual for writing has changed. I work from 9 a.m. to noon, generally, and like to work in a coffee shop. My favorite these days is only a block from where I live and they have old-fashioned metal chairs on the sidewalk. I can take my shoes off and work to the sounds of traffic, people walking by, possibly a bike rider.

Now, I plan to write. I have to choose the time, place, and writing implement.

I use a combination of writing directly on the computer and hand-writing. I prefer the latter, because it gives me time to think, to picture, to form a story. And on different days, depending on my creative mood, I might use a fountain pen, a razor-point felt tip pen, a gel pen (my favorite), or a pencil. I may write until I run out of ink, which happens quickly with a gel pen. Some days I just get a sentence or a paragraph.

I suppose I write like a journalist because my stories, my inspiration comes from questions – Who? What? Where? And the most important questions, Why? I see what’s happening in my story, but I also feel it. And, as a writer it’s that feeling I want to convey. For that reason, I include body language, smells, color, weather – my character sees everything, but what is she focusing on? What evokes a response in her. Where is her attention? I don’t have to say what she’s feeling if I can write a picture of what she is seeing and smelling and doing. That is, if I write it well enough.