Celebrating the Seasons … by Delsora Lowe

I had an oil delivery today and with it came the Farmer’s Almanac Country Calendar. With majestic and inspiring seasonal photos and snippets of stories from farmer’s almanacs that spanned several centuries, the perusal through the pages representing each month gave me thought to the visuals of storytelling.

Seasons tell a story. They are also a part of every story you read, whether used as a descriptive show of the character’s environment or as a way to set mood.

To me, seasons are all about moving forward, hope for the future, new adventures, celebrating past accomplishments and accessing the goals that didn’t quite get completed.

There are things I love about each season. And things that I would just as soon not have to experience. Each season has its own feel, scent, look, taste, sound. Each of these are things we might not notice every time we step out the door or back into our living space, because they are part of our environment. Things we take for granted. Things that are familiar to us—or not familiar at all. And that familiarity or lack of familiarity also has an impact on us.

Seasons can affect our moods. And variants of seasons can bring a continuum from joy to despondency.

Think about a damp and stormy fall day, where the air is heavy. It can be hard to breath, weigh a person down in body and spirit. Or a fall day when the sun is shining, the sky is that deep, bold blue, and there is a hefty breeze. Leaves of yellow, red, and orange swirl around your head, to land at your feet. You breathe in the scent of a wood fire drifting from a chimney, or that of a pile of your neighbor’s burning leaves.

Trees and bushes turn to fall colors. The summer flowers are now barren brown or gray stalks tipped with pods hiding seeds to replant the earth come spring. Or the day is a balmy and sunny 60, after the remnants of the first frost have evaporated before your eyes and the last few nights have been cold—a harbinger of winter to come, but a quick reminder of the summer just ended. After pulling a sweater tight as you hugged a warm mug of coffee or tea that morning to stave off the chill, now your step is filled with vigor. The sun warms your face, as you roll up the sleeves of your light jacket and stare skyward to watch one lone, puffy white cloud get carried eastward by the breeze.

How is winter different from fall, and spring different from winter, and summer different from spring? Is your mood changed by the seasons? Do you look forward to and celebrate each season in a different way?

As a writer, season can be used as a character. Seasons are part of the setting that affect your characters. Two characters in the same story can react to the season in entirely different ways that can cause conflict between the two. Or the diversity of their reactions can act as a conduit to help them form a relationship. The use of seasonal variants can add texture to the writing, whether the seasonal element causes fear, joy, longing, energy, depression. All these elements add depth to the character, the setting, and the atmosphere or mood of the story.

I hate thunderstorms. I grew up overseas and also in Washington, D.C. where we had horrendous storms. To this day, if there is a storm, I can’t sleep and I have to occupy my mind reading or watching a good romance.

I have friends who love to fall asleep to the sound of rain or wind. Not me!

Storms bring back memories of living on a mountain in Taiwan during typhoons, with our windows boarded up, sometimes for half a week or more. We knew when we opened the doors, there would be devastation all around us. But in a recent movie I watched, the storm had the heroine inviting her neighboring couple over for board games. She lit a fire, set out candles, and opened her cupboard of “storm snacks.” The hero showed up at her back door to check on her, expecting to find a worried or scared woman. Instead, he found a romantic setting and the laughter of her friends coming from the living room.

In both scenarios the weather was similar. The reaction was different.

All these elements of seasons provide setting for our real lives and the imaginary lives we write about every day.

The Prince’s Son On Zara West’s List of My Favorite Romances of 2020

Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PZD3FNC/
Books2Read
books2read.com/u/b6xzr6
The Rancher Needs a Wife

Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Rancher-Needs-Cowboys-Mineral-Springs-ebook/dp/B07YXB5C4W/

Books2Read
books2read.com/u/bxv56d

~ cottages to cabins ~ keep the home fires burning ~

Delsora Lowe writes small town sweet and spicy romances and contemporary westerns from the mountains of Colorado to the shores of Maine.

Author of the Starlight Grille series, Serenity Harbor Maine novellas, and the Cowboys of Mineral Springs series, Lowe has also authored short romances for Woman’s World magazine. Her newest novella is The Love Left Behind.

Social Media Links:

Author website:
www.delsoralowe.com
Facebook Author page:
https://www.facebook.com/delsoraloweauthor/community/
Amazon Author page:
https://www.amazon.com/Delsora-Lowe/e/B01M61OM39/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Books2Read Author page:
https://www.books2read.com/ap/8GWm98/Delsora-Lowe
BookBub Author Page:
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/delsora-lowe-93c6987f-129d-483d-9f5a-abe603876518
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16045986.Delsora_Lowe
Instagram:
#delsoralowe / https://www.instagram.com/delsoralowe/

Photo/Clip art Attributions:
Moving Forward: Free clipart arrow pointing right 4 » Clipart Station Five Senses: Premium Vector | Icon set of five human senses (freepik.com) Five Senses – Circle: Five Senses transparent background PNG cliparts free download | HiClipart Faces – happy and sad: Free Happy Sad Face, Download Free Clip Art, Free Clip Art on Clipart Library (clipart-library.com)

What Most Men Don’t Know or Forget to Remember: A Biased Study of Adding Details to the Story

by Delsora Lowe

Did this title get your attention?

Here's the real title: Crazy Eights - Scenarios for Your Stories

I had to laugh as the subject for this “Crazy Eights” blog came to me when I was trying to wedge my left foot into my right boot while daydreaming about ideas for a story conflict. Multi-tasking and wedging feet into an uncomfortable position, reminded me of the day I picked up my five-year-old at nursery school. The teacher asked me if my husband had dressed my son that morning?

“Yes, Why?”
The teacher laughed. “Your son came to school with his shoes on the wrong feet.”

What Shoes?

Why do I point this scenario out?


Now I’m not suggesting that all men have trouble multi-tasking, but many men in my generation have never really had to.  It was the era of superwomen, who could have a home and family and a profession all at the same time. And…manage everything perfectly, easily juggling multiple balls with a few boxes and triangles thrown in. Nowadays, most men juggle as much as women. No one has the luxury of only concentrating on one task at a time.

And obviously, I have trouble multi-tasking at times.


Instead, I am pointing out one example of how you can take a minor incident and add depth to your plot, setting, and characterizations. Here are eight crazy and fun examples of real-life scenes I have observed that will spark an idea or add that extra depth of color to a story.

Eight examples – little snippets of life that can be the inspiration for a scene or an entire book – some crazy and some not so crazy.

1- Kid walking funny with shoes on wrong feet and wondering who dressed the child. The child or the parent? What may have distracted the parent? Why was the small child dressing himself? Did s/he throw a temper tantrum and insist on dressing themselves? Was the child trying to be a grown-up and show the parents s/he could do this?


2- Little girl skating with her dad on the two inches of ice formed on a frigid day on the flooded town green, dressed in a purple puffy coat with pink and white flowered leggings, pink boots and hat, pushing a child-sized wooden chair painted in the exact bright pink as her outfit. Who bought the clothes—gramma, mom, dad? Whose idea was it to paint the chair to match the jacket—grandpa’s, dad’s? And how does this scene of teaching a child to skate with a fun “skating aid” fit into a story?


3- A flamboyant outfit or hat on a person strolling down the street or through the grocery store. One of those outfits you can’t help staring at and wondering what possessed someone to wear the outfit. Did they just come from play practice? Do they have a closet full of similar clothes? Are they homeless and wearing whatever they could find in the church giveaway box?


4- A tug-of-war argument over a melon, or two people reaching for the same ear of corn, in the grocery store? Does it end with the hero and heroine each paying half and sharing the melon? Or a fist-fight?  Or a person grabbing the melon and running from the store, chased by the police? Or in an amicable way with one relinquishing the melon to another? Or with a third shopper grabbing the melon and tsking the two as s/he strolls off with their melon?

Mixing Together Ideas for Plots and Characters

5- A young woman teaches ski school on the bunny slope. Her young charges are picked up by nannies. What kind of life do these children have? Who are their parents? What kind of house do they live in?  Is the nanny live-in or providing daily-care only? Who is the young woman and what does she do when she isn’t teaching ski school? Does she have three jobs to support herself? Does she go from location to location working seasonal work? As an aside, I wrote an entire book, The Prince’s Son, starting with these questions.

6- Walking down a hill on a brick sidewalk, past sweet, little cottages, all with fences. One has a gate open and the garden inside is spectacular. Who lives here and works in this beautiful garden? What do the other gates hide? What would it be like to live on such a quiet, neighborly street? I wrote a book, still in draft form, where the reconciliation scene takes place on such a street; one that I wandered down on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine. I need to dig this manuscript out and finish the book.


7- Pacing in an airport waiting for a delayed plane to head to the funeral of your best friend, and striking up a conversation with a man who has been caring for his sick father and anxious to get home to his wife and kids. You can imagine the myriad of stories on who is waiting for a plane and why. Are they happy or sad? Business or pleasure? Afraid of flying or seasoned traveler? Leaving or heading toward home?


8- Looking out the hotel window, as the sun rises, onto a deserted parking lot. A bus is parked way back in the corner. A black car approaches and parks in the middle. A man in black approaches the bus with a big handled black box. The driver emerges and both disappear behind the bus for a long time. Later one emerges and drives away. Who are they? What are they doing? What happened to the bus driver? Was he murdered and stuffed in the box which is now in the luggage compartment under the bus? It turns out the bus was waiting to pick up an airline crew that overnights at the hotel and the man, I assume, was bringing supplies to the driver. But you can imagine the murder and spy mayhem that went through my head for at least a half an hour as I watched and wondered. Crazy, right?

Have fun with this. Open your eyes to the world around you and turn a mundane, observed scene into a short story or an entire novel. Even if you are not a writer, have fun making up scenarios about what goes on around you. Before I started writing, my friends and I would play this game in the airport or as we sat in a coffee shop.

Here’s to a happy and crazy eighth birthday for the Romancing the Genres Blog. And here’s to many more birthday celebrations!

May Flowers

What true-to-life scenes have caused you to make up stories?

~ cottages to cabins ~ keep the home fires burning ~

Delsora Lowe writes small town sweet romances and contemporary westerns from the mountains of Colorado to the shores of Maine.

Author of the Starlight Grille series, Serenity Harbor Maine novellas, and the Cowboys of Mineral Springs series, Lowe has also authored short romances for Woman’s World magazine.

A first meet, royalty and the nanny romance between a self-exiled prince with a royal chip on his shoulders and the local rancher's daughter who rails against any man who tries to tell her what to do. When she tries to tell the prince how to raise his son, tempers flare and sparks fly.

Amazon E-book link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PZD3FNC/ref=sr_1_2?crid=32PO3EI3KDLQI&keywords=delsora+lowe&qid=1553611414&s=digital-text&sprefix=dels%2Cdigital-text%2C196&sr=1-2-catcorr 

Amazon Print Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1091276862?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Books2read link, includes Barnes and Noble and iBooks: books2read.com/u/b6xzr6

AUTHOR LINKS:

Author website: www.delsoralowe.com

Author FaceBook page: fb.me/delsoraloweauthor

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Delsora-Lowe/e/B01M61OM39/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Books2Read Author page: https://www.books2read.com/ap/8GWm98/Delsora-Lowe

BookBub Author Page:

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/delsora-lowe-93c6987f-129d-483d-9f5a-abe603876518

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16045986.Delsora_Lowe 

PHOTO CREDITS:

Hearts - 8 - playing card  

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+clip+art+-+crazy+eights&tbm=isch&source=hp&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjcvJzsx_jhAhXjnuAKHTgCC7YQsAR6BAgJEAE&biw=1366&bih=623#imgrc=mlSWv5bFjHwXUM:

Crazy Eights  

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+clip+art+-+crazy+eights&tbm=isch&source=hp&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjcvJzsx_jhAhXjnuAKHTgCC7YQsAR6BAgJEAE&biw=1366&bih=623#imgrc=L_GZvOYhBY9U4M:

Crazy Lunatic Scientist  

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Man in 8 T-shirt  

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Flowers  

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“A funny thing happened on the way to…” by Delsora Lowe

Funny is a word that can be interpreted in many ways.

Using Second Definition

About an hour after I arrived at work in the alumni office of a prestigious secondary school in the middle of Washington, D.C., my alma mater and my employer, my friend and classmate working as an executive assistant to a senior law partner downtown, called. “Did you hear?” She went on to relate the story of the first plane hitting the first tower in NYC. We couldn’t imagine how air traffic controllers and pilots could miss the warnings of a huge tower looming in the path of the airplane.

The morning quickly unfolded. Hearing about the second tower. Running downstairs to the main office to watch T.V. Hearing a plane just hit the pentagon, where my co-worker’s husband worked. Luckily, he was on the opposite side, but a father of an alumni wasn’t so lucky. Then within hours, streams of people walked from downtown three miles away past my office, on a warm September, blue-skied, perfect early fall day, trying to get home with no public transportation running. 

My view of the cathedral – looking at the long side on the left of the photo.

My building sat on top of a hill, on the third floor of an old stone mansion. My office window faced the towers of the Washington National Cathedral and the flight path from the national airport where planes took off every few minutes, from across the river in Virginia. I never realized until the planes started flying again, that the visual from my window looked as though the planes were headed directly toward the cathedral towers. After 9/11, I had to turn my computer away from my precious view to avoid the sudden lurch in my stomach every few minutes—every time a plane traversed that air space—and looked like it was headed into the towers. In actuality it was an optical illusion of planes many miles away as they flew away from the city up the Potomac River toward unknown destinations. 

My office in Zartman House, under the chimney on the right, with dormer on right roof,

and another window looking out the side toward Cathedral.

That day, the school lost a parent of an alumni in the Pentagon. My co-worker lost a friend in one of the towers, whose wedding he was to take part two weeks later. Another co-worker’s daughter-in-law would have been on the subway getting off that stop at that exact time, if she hadn’t had a dentist appointment that made her late for work. Another co-worker, driving to work near the Pentagon saw the flames when the plane hit. The mother of my friend who had called earlier, saw the plane hit the Pentagon as she watched from her apartment window. A co-worker of my friend knew a flight attendant on that plane. The fire department blocks from my home were first to respond to the Pentagon. All these connections to the tragedy, out of only nine people in my department.

I tell you this, not to bring you down, but to put in perspective my feelings at suddenly being in a job that had no meaning. And in which in a matter of hours, I was two degrees away from tragedy that hit so many people that day. A job where I brought people (our alumni) together to have class reunions and gather in cities around the country for alumni parties with people who had one thing in common—they went to the same school.

I wasn’t a paramedic or a police officer or a firefighter or a soldier or an ER doctor. 

I was ONLY a party planner. I was an intermediary who brought people of common interests together.

That is until I began hearing from our alumni, letting the school and others know their friends were all right, and tracking down those we hadn’t heard from. Bringing people together in joy that their classmates were fine and had made it through a collective ordeal. And bringing those same people together to mourn. And later, celebrating my classmate (yes, I am proud of my class) by bestowing a distinguished alumni award, for the man we later learned had held together the economy of our country that first week, by being a lone person who stayed in harm’s way near the capital, even when they thought a plane might be headed toward the center of D.C. I might add, that in a few weeks I will be at this same person’s home to celebrate the 50^th reunion of my class. And yes, this quiet, mild-mannered unsung hero, he is still our hero.
 
Now to the funny part.
 
As in definition number two: difficult to explain or understand.Through all that, I questioned everything I did. Part of my escape was to start writing. My first completed manuscript is lost somewhere, under a bed maybe. Poems I wrote got wiped out in a computer fix. But the feeling I got from using my imagination to weave stories, grew. I may not be a paramedic or in any of those other saving and protecting careers, but my gift to you, is to give you a place in which to escape to a world of make-believe. The world of happily-ever-afters, where hurts can be cured with the love of a special person.

And my gift on 9/11 and days and weeks to follow, was to bring people together, to connect them with friends, and to reassure them. To write their human-interest stories for the alumni magazine. It made me realize in the little spec of my world, that I had a talent to connect people and tell their stories. And that in this moment of history, that was important.

I no longer write non-fiction for alumni magazines. But that year marked the beginning of my fiction-writing journey. And for that I am personally grateful, as the writing saved me, made me strong enough to bring people together for fun and learning experiences, and understand that the small part I (and all writers) contribute to the world is important.

DELSORA LOWE

~ cottages to cabins ~ keep the home fires burning ~
 
Delsora Lowe writes small town sweet romances and contemporary westerns from the mountains of Colorado to the shores of Maine.

Author of the Starlight Grille series, Serenity Harbor Maine novellas, and the Cowboys of Mineral Springs series, Lowe has also authored short romances for Woman’s World magazine.

New Release - Blurb: The Prince’s Son 

A first meet, royalty and the nanny romance between a self-exiled prince with a royal chip on his shoulders and the local rancher's daughter who rails against any man who tries to tell her what to do. When she tries to tell the prince how to raise his son, tempers flare and sparks fly.

Ari Orula, a prince with a royal chip on his shoulders, has sworn off women.
Carla Peters, the rancher's daughter, has big dreams and it doesn't include listening to her dad, big brothers, or the new prince in town.
When the prince finds himself in dire straits and must find a nanny pronto, the last person he wants is his son's know-it-all ski teacher who insinuates he has a lot to learn about fatherhood.
The money the prince offers Carla for two weeks as a nanny will put a big dent in the cost of renovations for her new school, her life's dream. Does she dare risk working for the rancher her brothers think is trying to destroy their livelihood?
Despite best laid plans, two people at odds are brought together to rescue a child. At risk of alienating her family, Carla accepts the position. At risk of melting his stone-cold heart, Ari hires the rancher's daughter.
Will the sparks that fly torch Carla's dreams and inflame Ari's resolve, or ignite an everlasting love?

READ ME LINKS:

Amazon E-book link:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PZD3FNC/ref=sr_1_2?crid=32PO3EI3KDLQI&keywords=delsora+lowe&qid=1553611414&s=digital-text&sprefix=dels%2Cdigital-text%2C196&sr=1-2-catcorr  

Amazon Print Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1091276862?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Books2read link, (includes Barnes and Noble and iBooks): books2read.com/u/b6xzr6

Social Media Links:

Author website: www.delsoralowe.com

Author FaceBook page: fb.me/delsoraloweauthor

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Delsora-Lowe/e/B01M61OM39/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Books2Read Author page: https://www.books2read.com/ap/8GWm98/Delsora-Lowe

BookBub Author Page: 
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/delsora-lowe-93c6987f-129d-483d-9f5a-abe603876518

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16045986.Delsora_Lowe 

Photo Credits:

Google Dictionary Definition of Funny:https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=GaFIXOmbE82m_Qan0IjIBg&q=definition+funny&oq=definition+funny&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0j0i22i30l9.1737.6628..8852...1.0..1.411.3121.0j14j3j0j1......0....1..gws-wiz.....6..35i39j0i131j0i22i10i30._gTJ2m4HwHY

National Cathedral:  https://www.yelp.com/biz/washington-national-cathedral-washington

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Sidwell Friends School Zartman House:
https://www.weathermaster-window.com/portfolio/sidwell-friends-zartman-house/