Monday, April 13, 2015

A Wild Rose Press author talks about rejection

Mary Eleanor Wilson talks about rejection and her path to publication.

Check it out


About Mary Eleanor Wilson

I have been telling stories since I was a child. In school I was the kid who always had a 13-page dissertation on "What I Did During My Summer Vacation." I sold my first story to a romance magazine when my youngest son was two years old, and since then I've been waging the love/hate war of writing and publishing. My work has been featured in Guideposts, Angels on Earth, Snitch Magazine, and many other publications. After majoring in Journalism at St. Mary of the Woods College in Terre Haute, Indiana, I worked in newspapers for several years. I now concentrate on writing what I love most -- novels!

Friday, April 10, 2015

150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant

April 9, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War.   What not many people realize is that it was not in fact the complete end of the war, and several skirmishes and battles followed because Lee surrendered only the Army of Northern Virginia, not all Confederate forces.  General Joseph Johnson, with whom Lee’s forces had been trying to link up, presided over a very large force in North Carolina.  For a while, Johnson agonized over whether to surrender or fight on.  Many of his starving troops were eating the bark off trees and picking through horse manure for bits of oats and corn but still wanted to continue the fight.  With no hope of reaching supplies, and with soaring desertion rates, a couple of weeks after Appomattox, Johnson too surrendered. 

The passions that drove the Civil War were epic—as was the cost in lives.

If you add up the number of American men killed in the Revolutionary War, along with The War of 1812, The Mexican War, World War I, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan, more American men died in the Civil War than in all the other wars in which America fought combined. 

The passions of that tragic war, the determination, rage, treachery, and deceit, are captured in Point Blank:  A Novel of the Civil War by Carmine Sarracino, which will be released in the future by The Wild Rose Press.  Follow Louisa March, modeled after Louisa May Alcott, as she serves as a volunteer nurse in a hospital in Washington just after the horrific battle of Fredericksburg. Idealistic and naïve, she struggles to overcome challenges of espionage, drug trafficking, war profiteering, and murder that tempt her to run away from it all and return to her comfortable home in Massachusetts. 


Her love for a war-weary, badly wounded Union soldier, however, keeps her in the hospital—and in the midst of the high drama of this most deadly conflict.  Her limits are tested every day:  first by the gruesome wounds she must tend but then by the collapsed social barriers that put her into situations of sexual temptation she could never have imagined back home in Boston.  Fiercely determined to be strong and succeed, she is challenged at every step of the way.  Only her love for Cole Morgan, a Union soldier who was nearly dead when she began caring for him, inspires her to find strength deep within herself that she did not know she possessed.  The enemies the two confront are as darkly powerful as their love for each other, especially Dr. Stephen Valentine, a drunkard, spy, and war profiteer,  and Eustace Light, an albino Confederate sniper with preternatural vision, almost superhuman marksmanship, and an unquenchable hatred for Yankees.

Colby Wolford
Historical Editor
The Wild Rose Press

Monday, April 6, 2015

It's a great day to snowshoe....

... The most recent storm left a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and the trails have been untouched for eight days, according to the log at the trail-head. The snow sparkles in the brilliant sun, the sky is a high clear blue, and the air is still. Temps are a little below freezing, but that's a good thing; snowshoeing is physical, and we'll warm up soon.

The virgin powder entices me like a blank page, waiting for me to make my mark on it. What will I find out there? Where will the story take me? But I feel intimidated, too. Will I mess it up? Get lost? Destroy something pure? 

Well, sure I will. There is no creation without destruction, even if it's only the destruction of a different story I might have told. Getting lost on snowy trails is ridiculously easy, especially in open woods like these. Where the porcupine tracks cross my route, I'm tempted to turn and see where he lives, deep in the hemlock grove. Happily, getting unlost on snowy trails is incredibly easy--just turn around and backtrack until you get your bearings. My snowshoes will leave tracks for others to follow, but no one else will have the joy of breaking trail.

On the other hand, no one ever follows exactly the same path. Whether I'm writing a classic genre like cozy mystery or attempting the Appalachian Trail, I will move at a different pace and see things differently from anyone else. I may follow someone else's footsteps, but mine will alter hers. Those who come after me will obliterate mine, or widen the trail, or make detours, just as I do as I follow my hiking partner. 

Making new tracks and making new stories are hard work. Snowshoes widen and lengthen your foot, so your outer thighs and quads take on more of the effort, and your core and back muscles need to compensate. Every new story requires a stretching of the mental muscles, makes you reach deep for new characters and insights, and you will develop new skills to support the tale as it grows. I am often as weary after a day's writing as I am after a day's 'shoeing. 

And just as exhilarated, too. All endeavors, mental or physical, have their rewards. Half this essay ran through my head as I walked, and writing anchors the trail in my memory. Either one is precious, but both together are miraculous. 



Nikki Andrews
to Purchase on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00HJEHFV2