Planes, Trains and Automobiles and ????

By Judith Ashley

About this time last year, Sarah and I met with our co-author and fellow Genre-ista, Diana McCollum at Detroit Lake, a small town situated in the Cascade Mountains about half-way between where we live. Sarah and I carpooled so we could take care of Romancing The Genre’s business on the way home. 

What was on our agenda? 

Brain storming the list of Guest and Genre-ista themes – and for August, 2014 we chose Planes, Trains and Automobiles. 

What’s missing? We covered travel by air and land but we missed water. Why is that important? It’s important because in the time period of Sarah’s short story Curse of the Neahkahnie Treasure a major mode of transportation was by boat/ship.

So I’m amending this month’s suggested Genre-ista theme and including “ships and boats” because I want to stick with the theme and want to introduce you to this well-written, entertaining, creative short story.

A friend of mine, who has never met Sarah or read any of her work, called me up shortly after Love & Magick: Mystical Stories of Romance was published. Our conversation went something like this:

Friend: “I had to read the first page of the first story a couple of times.”

Me: “Why, what was wrong?” (hear a tad of anxiety in my voice here?)

Friend: “Nothing was wrong. I had to read it more than once because it’s so powerfully written.”

Me: “Yes, it is. Sarah’s a great writer and Curse of the Neahkahnie Treasure was the perfect story to start us off.

I’ve included the first couple of pages of the story below. 

Enjoy!

Curse of the Neahkahnie Treasure

by Sarah Raplee

Father was dead.

Sorrow as strong and bone-chilling as a Pacific gale snatched Samantha Moore’s breath from her lungs. A wave of dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. She forced herself to draw another breath, and then another.

In the weeks since her beloved father had been knifed and robbed in broad daylight, she’d discovered grief lies in wait like a panther, ready to pounce and tear one’s heart out without warning. Warm tears trailed down cheeks chilled by the damp spring winds of the northern Oregon coast.

Turning away from the bustle of stevedores unloading wagon loads of supplies onto the dock, she pretended to study a huge sailing ship floating at anchor. One swipe of a dirty cotton shirtsleeve removed the evidence of tears, as well as a good deal of sweat and windblown brine from her face. Boys are not supposed to cry. She must take her emotions in hand or she would draw attention to herself. The last thing she needed was to be identified as a young woman.

A sunbeam found its way through the clouds to glint off the rippled water of the mighty Columbia River. Gulls soared on the wind. The odors of fish and pitch mixed with the tang of salt water. Astoria, Oregon, was only seven miles from the Pacific Ocean. Here the river stole salt from the sea tides the way Samantha planned to steal food and coin from the tides of people swarming the docks.

She pressed her lips into a grim line. She had never in her life broken the law, but she hadn’t eaten since stowing away on a schooner in San Francisco two days ago. The men who had murdered Father had taken his money as well as his life. She was out of funds and alone in a strange land. And she must honor her father’s dying wish.

After glancing around the docks to make sure no one paid undo attention to her, she surreptitiously ascertained the safety of her precious, accursed secret cargo. Placing a hand at the small of her back, she arched as if to stretch out a kink. First her backbone poked her palm through the fabric of her shirt. She explored the hard outline of a small spyglass case with her fingers. She had sewn a secret pocket for the brass cylinder into the rear of the baggy drawstring trousers she wore as part of her disguise.

Her mouth twisted into a grimace. Father had died because of the furled map hidden inside the metal cylinder, a map he’d discovered hidden in the false back cover of a hundred-year-old book. He was conducting research for a historical treatise on Spanish exploration in the Americas when he noticed the back cover of Las Expediciónes del Pirata Don Carlos Moreno was much thicker than the front cover. So, being Father, he investigated and found the treasure map. Unfortunately, being a man of science, he had dismissed out-of-hand the inscription on the map that stated the pirate had cursed the gold so “no man may take my treasure.”

All things considered, Samantha had come to believe the curse was real.

To find out what happens next, Love & Magick is available through Windtree Press and other major e-retailers.

© Excerpt from “Love & Magick” Copyright 2014 Sarah Raplee

© Copyright 2014 Judith Ashley

Check out more of Sarah's writing at Free Reads from the Genre-istas.

Visit her website.

You can find Judith at Windtree Press and her website as well as on our Free Reads site.

An Interview with Judith Ashley and Sarah Raplee

We decided to try something new today. Freelance writer Sally Sweet volunteered to interview Judith Ashley and Sarah Raplee for today’s Guest Post. We are highlighting Romantic Short Stories this month, and three Genre-istas wanted to share a way to repurpose both short stories and flash fiction (short-short stories.)

Along with Diana McCollum (who posted yesterday), Judith and Sarah decided to debut in a short story anthology entitled LOVE & MAGICK - Mystical Stories of Romance. Ms. Sweet was interested in learning more about their unusual introduction into the world of publishing.

SALLY SWEET: Judith and Sarah, you each took two previously-written flash fiction (short-short stories) and expanded them into stories over 10,000 words long for your debuts in the LOVE & MAGICK anthology from Windtree Press. What was that like? Did you have a process for doing so?

JUDITH ASHLEY:  Sally, Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us. Sarah, Diana and I contribute to Free Reads From The Genre-istas so we already had the experience of writing shorter works of fiction. Deciding which of my stories to expand was easy – I picked the ones that, when I thought of them, I could easily see how I could add length and depth to what was already there.

I do have a fairly simple process, at least for me. I spend time mulling the story over, maybe take a walk and think through scenes, go off and work on other things (leaving this project to percolate or simmer on a back burner). When I sit down to write, I start at the beginning and work my way through adding in the new ideas and at the same time either making the adjustments so the new idea fits or highlighting the section I need to come back and work on. Pretty cut and dried because I’ve done the mental work up front. I consider myself more of an organic writer because I am not very visual so things like storyboards and play lists would be very distracting.

SARAH RAPLEE: Like Judith, I expanded two of my flash fiction stories my readers had liked. The first, a paranormal romance set in 1871 called Curse of the Neahkahnie Treasure, involved the search for a cursed pirate treasure. Readers had told me they wanted to learn how the rest of the quest for the treasure went. Few changes were necessary in the original story, but I continued the story for another ten-thousand words or so. It was almost like writing a sequel. A really long sequel.

For my second story, I chose Enchanted Protector, a story loosely based on one of Grimm’s Fairytales. While outlining the original story, I’d realized the plot and characters I had in mind were too much for a flash fiction story, so I wrote a pared-down version. The little sister character that I had to cut had never stopped pestering me to write the full version of the story, so that’s what I did. This involved major changes in the plot so that Star could take her rightful place as a major character in the story.

It turned out my readers were right. Both stories are much stronger now. However, I learned that expanding flash fiction stories was just as hard and time consuming as writing new short stories from scratch.

SALLY SWEET: How interesting!

Did you find collaborating with two other debut authors more difficult than you expected it to be? What were the special challenges? How did you overcome the problems that arose?

SARAH RAPLEE: More difficult than I expected? Yes. And no!

With three strong-minded, unique and creative people teaming up on this project, it was inevitable that at times reaching a consensus would be difficult. Just ask our extremely talented and patient cover designer, Karen Duvall, LOL.

The fact that we did not all live in close proximity to each other turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. The three of us prefer face-to-face meetings over conference calls and video conferencing. But when a whole day is needed for an in-person meeting (and bad winter weather can cancel drive plans), we found we often couldn’t count on finding room in our busy schedules to accommodate those meetings. Additionally, although I knew both of my co-authors well, they did not know each other well, which led to some miscommunications.

We overcame problems through patience, persistence, focusing on the positives, and consuming a lot of chocolate.

JUDITH ASHLEY: It was more difficult than I expected for some of the same reasons Sarah mentioned. I’d also add in that we had a time frame (publish on February 14, 2014) that when we set that final date in early to mid-December seemed so doable – so doable that we began spreading the news beyond family and friends. Because of public announcements, we felt duty-bound to produce. Add the time pressure on to the other challenges Sarah mentions and something that was merely daunting became so much more. February 13, we subsisted on chocolate and nuts as well as strong cups of tea. Because we were a team we persevered and uploaded Love and Magick at 11:51 p.m. with nine minutes to spare. Why did we persevere? It is a strong trait in each of us and we had each other (and chocolate) and a shared vision of publishing a professional looking book with great stories (and chocolate).

SALLY SWEET: Why are you glad you collaborated on this book? What were the advantages to doing so?

JUDITH ASHLEY: Great questions, Sally! I am grateful I had Sarah and Diana as co-authors and collaborators on Love & Magick. There is so much to learn if you want to self-publish (which we all did.) To have had to climb that steep learning curve by myself would have been so daunting, I know our book would not yet be published.

For example: when uploading to the various e-retailers, there are places to enter your “meta-data” or key words that help readers find your book. Having the three of us work on this project made something that for me was akin to fingernails on chalkboard doable. Not only did we have each other to rely on during this process, we relied heavily on Maggie McVey Lynch’s wonderful book, DIY Publishing, and Maggie’s generous mentoring as well.

The unasked question: Would I do this again? I would. Why? The trials and tribulations were worth it. I can now say I’m a published author which was my goal when I entered this project with Sarah and Diana.

Available Now!

SARAH RAPLEE:

I have learned so much working with these two amazing authors! Our trials and tribulations forged us into a strong team. We each brought different strengths to the project. As Judith said, with three of us working together, it was easier to laugh at our mistakes, figure things out and keep on keeping on. Self-publishing well requires an incredible knowledge and skill base. Because we are so different, one or another of us seems to more easily master the various aspects of the work. Having two people with different perspectives to kick around ideas with has been invaluable.

Walking this path with Diana and Judith has been a huge blessing. My journey would have been long and lonely without their support.

Publishing under the auspices of Windtree Press is an honor. Thank you, Maggie, for being so generous with your encouragement and mentoring. Your how-to book, DIY Publishing, is our go-to reference book for self-publishing.

I would definitely do this again. I look forward to promoting and marketing our anthology together.

You can learn more about our publishing adventures at
www.judithashleyromance.com
www.sarahraplee.com