Have you ever come across something unexpectedly? Something you haven't seen in years? Something that jerked you back without warning to a time you'd done your best to forget?  And been overwhelmed with emotions you never wanted to remember?
That's what happens to Matt Steele, in the middle of a hotly contested race for the White House and it's going to change everything he thought he knew about himself.

Available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble,  and Kobo

Here's an excerpt:

He gaped at the tattered photograph that had just been slipped into his hand. His heart raced, and Senator Matt Steele, Democratic candidate for president, halted so abruptly his Secret Service agent bumped into him.

“Keep moving, sir.” Joe Venuto urged. Matt barely heard the warning.

“Senator Steele!” A lilting, accented voice shouted above the noise of the crowd. “I must speak with you.”

Matt curled his fingers around the photograph as if to protect it. He raised his gaze to search for the voice. A man’s face with high Asian cheekbones and uncharacteristically blue eyes appeared over Joe’s shoulder. The man fought the jostling crowds to stay close to the rope that separated Matt and his entourage from the press of people who had come to the rally.

“Please, sir! It’s important.”

Matt took another look at the dog-eared snapshot, and then turned to Joe. “Bring him to the bus.”

“Sir, that’s not a good idea. We don’t even know who he is.”

“Pat him down. Run a check on him with that phone of yours, or whatever you want, but I need to see him. In my bus. Now.” Matt turned and strode toward the campaign bus, heedless of the crowd still hoping for their brief moment of his time. Joe hustled to keep up. Matt heard him speak to another man in the detail. He tuned Joe out. Tuned out his chief of staff and his press secretary who were probably confused by Matt’s sudden departure from the planned handshaking opportunity. He tuned out everything, except the photograph in his hand.

As Matt approached, the driver of his campaign bus opened the door, and Matt took all three steps in one leap. “Wait outside, please.”

The driver looked at him in surprise, but then rose to his feet and climbed down out of the bus.  

Matt sank onto the soft faux-leather recliner of his mobile headquarters and opened his hand. The photograph remained curled so he set it on the coffee table and pressed it flat.

A group of laughing Marines dressed in fatigues stared up at him. His much younger self among them. Matt raked thoughtless fingers through his carefully groomed hair, dislodging the difficult lock of bangs that immediately fell onto his brow. He pushed them aside and studied the photo.

His cousin Sam Davis stood in the center of the group grinning broadly. He had one arm draped across Matt’s shoulders, and the other around a slender young Vietnamese woman. Sam had been his best friend and the closest thing he’d ever had to a brother. Matt remembered the day the photograph was taken. More than thirty years ago. A week before Sam had been killed.

The door swished open, and Joe stepped up into the stairwell. “Sir, this man is not a voter. He’s not even an- - ”

“Let him in.”

The Secret Service agent frowned but stepped aside to let the visitor pass by him in the narrow stairway.

“You can leave, Joe.”

“But, sir!”

“Out. Please.”

Joe’s expression said he wasn’t happy about any of it, but with a brief salute, he turned and left. When Joe was gone, Matt invited his guest to come up the stairs and join him.

“I will only take a moment of your time, sir.”

The stranger stopped on the other side of the coffee table, and Matt found himself looking up into an eerily familiar pair of sky-blue eyes. He felt as if he’d met the man before, but he couldn’t think where or when. An emotion he couldn’t identify squeezed into his chest. He rose slowly. Fought to ignore the intense feeling of disorienting familiarity, and extended his hand.

“How may I help you?”

His guest smiled and accepted Matt’s hand. “It is good of you to see me, sir.” His precise English held a trace of the singsong accent of Southeast Asia. He was several inches shorter than Matt’s six feet four inches, had straight black hair, and those blue eyes that were so unexpected in an Asian face.

Matt gestured for the man to sit and resumed his own seat.

“I am Thanh Davis”

The surname added to Matt’s confusion and jangled emotions. “Davis?”

“Yes, but please, you may call me Thanh.” He perched gingerly on the edge of the couch that matched Matt’s chair. “We met. Sort of…” Thanh continued.

I have met this guy. No wonder he seems familiar. Matt pointed to the photograph lying, still slightly curled at the edges, on the table between them. “W-Where,” Matt cleared his throat, “did you get this?”

Old Guard sets out flags                          Funeral for Charles Keating, Coronado, CA

Memorial Day was different for me this year. As a USO volunteer, I was invited to attend a memorial mass for decorated Navy SEAL Charles Keating, IV. There are lots of activities I could have chosen to spend this day doing. Things I’ve done in years past: either march in or attend a parade, join friends for a barbeque, visit a cemetery or attend Memorial Day Observances at the local national cemetery, or even stay home and mow the lawn, nap in my hammock or walk down to the beach. But supporting the family of this sailor who had given his life for the ideals I believe in seemed more fitting.

It was a humbling experience. Listening to his fellow SEALs, his parents, his friends, hearing snippets of letters he’d written to his siblings that began with “If you are reading this, I didn’t make it home…” All of it brought the enormity of this loss into clear and heartbreaking focus. Charlie was one of the thousands of men and women who write that blank check to the US for service up to and including their lives. His parents and his siblings are just one of the far too many gold star families who have had to bury a son, or a daughter, or a husband or a wife, or a father or mother. Their loss was personal and for that moment in time, it became personal for me as well. This is what Memorial Day is all about. Honoring all those who have fallen in service to our country, standing up for the ideals we all profess to believe in, laying down their lives to save those of their fellow warriors.

Later, as I watched the news on TV, a man was interviewing random people on the street asking what they thought Memorial Day was all about. I was appalled at the ignorance. So many people with no idea, no sense of anything beyond themselves. Has this nation of takers become so selfish and self-centered that we can’t even spend a moment in prayer or silence to remember those who sacrificed so much for our freedom to live life the way we wish? Or even be aware that the day they get off from work has a meaning beyond their small world? I doubt there was a single American soul who did not know or celebrate this day after the end of WWII. There was certainly plenty of awareness that we were at war, whether you agreed with it or not during the Vietnam era. What has changed? Did the ending of the draft mean that we no longer need to be concerned with the defense of freedom or the price that others pay to secure it? Or is this just another facet of the sickness that has led to random acts of killing, riots and looting masked as protests, lack of respect for life, and the breakdown of our moral society? If so, I weep for this country’s future.

At sundown last night, I took down my flag – humbled by my choice of how to spend my day and utterly saddened that for so many, the day meant nothing at all. In all the wars Americans have fought in the name of freedom, more than 1 million, 264 thousand men and women have sacrificed their lives. That should stand for something for every single American.

RIP, Charlie Keating – and all the brothers and sisters who went before you. God Bless.

Welcome to the Blog Hop  - it’s the merry month of May and we are talking about confrontation and how it creates powerful drama. Without conflict there is no story and conflict brings confrontation before resolution. Whether it's a protagonist who finds him or herself thwarted by circumstances or opponents, or lovers on opposite sides of a problem, their desires and motives push them into the action that makes the story exciting. I'm fortunate that I have a brainstorming group we call the Sandy Scribblers because I tend to be a Pollyanna and I don't want to hurt my characters. But my Sandy buddies ask the tough questions that make me stop and rethink my plot or my characters' motivations. Often they help me come up with great ways to create conflict and confrontaion. My new book HEALING A HERO which is coming out this summer is a reunion story and the final black moment is full of confrontation. Here's an excerpt.

Background:  One crazy summer, in a whirlwind affair Philip and Elena fell in love while Philip was home on leave, and while no commitments were made when they had to say goodbye, both were eager for his tour aboard a Navy ship in the South China Sea to end so they could be back together again. But then 9/11 happened and due to circumstances neither could control, they lost touch. Philip, a Marine, was sent almost immediately and without warning to Afghanistan and Elena was left wondering why he stopped e-mailing her.

Now, fourteen years later, Philip is injured and in rehab and it turns out Elena is his therapist. Although it breaks all the rules the attraction and passion they once shared comes roaring back and both are eager to start fresh. Then Philip learns that Elena’s daughter Julie is his child.

“I was going to tell you—”

“You should have told me fourteen years ago,” Philip cut her off, his tone harsher than he intended.

“Fourteen years ago I didn’t think you cared.” Elena set her untouched sandwich back into the wrapping it had come out of.

Her accusation slammed into Philip with the force of a sucker punch. “After everything that happened to us that summer?” he asked incredulously. “How could you ever have believed I wouldn’t care?”

“You never replied to my emails. What was I supposed to think?”

“You could have called Jake. He’d have told you why I couldn’t write.”

“I didn’t know Jake knew about us.”

“He knew I loved you,” Philip shot back. He shoved the sandwich he no longer felt like eating into the bag and pushed it aside. “You could have swallowed that damned pride of yours and called my parents.”

Elena blanched. “I couldn’t call them, Philip. I’d have been too embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” Philip shouted. Several heads turned their way. Coming to the canteen for this conversation had been a bad idea. His uniform betrayed his rank, and his behavior was inappropriate. He lowered his voice. “You going to eat that?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her from her chair, led her through the now goggling crowd and out the door. He dragged her along in his wake until they were clear of the buildings where he turned onto a short cut to somewhere on the next block and finally stopped in a cluster of young trees that afforded them at least the illusion of privacy. 

“My parents would never have blamed you. I’d have gotten a reaming, but if you’d gone to them they’d have helped you out in any way they could.”

“I barely knew them.” Elena crossed her arms over her chest.

“But they’re my parents. Julie’s grandparents. And they’d have been better able to reach me and get me back home to accept my share of the responsibility for getting you pregnant. I might have been in disgrace, but I’d have come no matter what was happening in Afghanistan. I’d have found a way.” Anguish was tearing him up inside.

Elena lost some of the defensive posture, but her body language told him she still blamed him for everything she’d endured.

“Do you have any idea how I felt when I got back and discovered you were married? After you promised to wait for me?” His chest ached

“I can explain.”

A bloom of anger erupted, shoving the pain aside. “You’ve had fourteen years to explain. You were pregnant with my baby. I had a right to know.”

“I’m sorry,”

“Sorry!” Philip shouted. He felt the veins popping out in his neck and temples. He shouldn’t be dumping on her like this, but he couldn’t seem to stop the steamroller that had gotten hold of his self-control and was flattening everything in its path. “I’ve missed my daughter’s whole growing up. And you’re sorry? You can’t ever give those years back, Elena. They’re just gone.”

Elena stopped arguing. Stopped apologizing and just stood there cringing like a whipped puppy. Philip ignored the stab of doubt and plowed on.

“What about last week? When we were baring our souls and promising each other a new beginning? What about then? Why didn’t you tell me then?”

Philip’s cell phone rang. He ignored it.

“Didn’t you think it would be important to tell me about Julie when we were talking about the rest of our lives? You’re as big a liar as Holly.”

Elena looked like he’d hit her.

“What about Julie? Didn’t she have the right to know her own father? If you’d told me you were pregnant, I would never have forced you to marry me if you didn’t want to, but I had a right to know. Julie is my daughter. I had a right to know about her. And she had a right to know who her real father was.”

Unable to stand still, he turned in an angry little circle and came back to loom over her.

“When I got home that next summer, I was all set to hunt you down and find out why you stopped writing. I meant for us to get reconnected. Then Andy told me you were married.

“Married!” Philip rammed his fingers through his already disheveled hair. “You can’t begin to understand how I felt. Every dream I had of coming home and making a life with you was smashed all to hell and back. I couldn’t volunteer fast enough to get back into action so I could forget. But if I’d known about Julie, I never would have gone.” His phone rang again, and again he ignored it. “I wouldn’t have been shipped out of the country on every deployment I could get signed up for since then either.”

 “But you were gone. And Julie had Eli. Eli was her father as far as she knew.” The whipped puppy was gone. Elena squared her shoulders and punched two fingers into Philip’s chest. “She had a father who was there for her.”

“And that was a lie too, wasn’t it. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the bastard. You lied to me. You lied to Julie. And you lied to Eli.”

“I never lied to Eli. He knew from the beginning how I felt.”

“You married him. You promised to love and cherish him. Or have you forgotten that part of the vows?”

“We were married by a justice of the peace.”

“So you never mentioned love? Or fidelity. What did you promise him that you didn’t really mean?”

“I promised to be his wife. And I did mean it.”

“You put that man through hell because you couldn’t muster up the kind of love a wife should feel for her husband. Gratitude doesn’t cut it, Elena. No wonder he went looking elsewhere.”

Philip’s phone rang a third time.

“Dammit!” He yanked the offending gadget from his pocket and glared at it. Crap! He should never have started this conversation when there was never going to be enough time to finish it. “We’re not done. But I have to answer this.”

“We’re definitely not done,” Elena snapped. “But don’t bother to call me again until you cool off. You aren’t the only injured party here.” With that, she spun on her heel and stormed off through the trees to the lawn beyond.

Philip gasped at the pain slicing through him. In just two short days he’d gone from ridiculously happy thinking he’d won back the one woman he could love for a lifetime, to finding out he had a thirteen-year-old daughter he barely knew, to this.

To this shattered empty place where his heart used to be.

Check out how all these authors have used confrontation to add drama to their stories:

Dr. Bob Rich
Connie Vines
Helena Fairfax 
Fiona McGier
Rachael Kosinski 
Victoria Chatham
Beverley Bateman
Judith Copek
Rhobin Courtright

Margaret Fieland

Diane Bator

My bucket list has gotten so long I doubt I can possibly live long enough to achieve everything on it. But maybe that’s a good thing. I’ll never lack for something to look forward to. Or something to work for. And my life will always have the possibility of new experiences and great rewards.

Becoming a published author was a bucket list item and now that I have several books out, that desire has not diminished. I have so many stories I want to tell – that ought to keep me busy even when I can’t travel. The fun thing about books whether I’m writing them, or reading is that I can go anywhere in the world. I can even do the impossible and travel through time. I could envision a future that hasn’t come yet. Or I can visit a past that’s faded into history. I can meet famous people and I can create new ones. Writing more books is definitely still on my bucket list. My newest book, HEALING A HERO will be out this summer.

I love to travel, although lately most of my travel has been to visit my kids rather than explore new places. Being on Facebook keeps me in touch with far more people than I could ever hope to see on a regular basis, but it also provides me with stunning photos of yet more places I’d love to visit in person. So far, I’ve been to fifteen countries and spent time in twenty-nine states. Just in the US alone that leaves twenty-one states I haven’t been to and several of the places on my bucket list are in those states.

Living on the beach was another bucket list dream that came to be, but even though I live here and enjoy it every day of my life, beaches are still a very strong draw for me. Everywhere I’ve traveled on the world, if there’s a beach, I’ve walked on it.  From the windswept beaches of Nova Scotia, Scotland and Wales to the quiet coves in Provence, France, La Jolla, CA, and Tonga. I’ve gone swimming in the South China Sea in Vietnam, and from remote islands in the South Pacific, and even in the frigid waters of Maine and Coronado Beach California. Lucky for me, there are a lot more beaches yet to explore. The most recent one was Montauk New York - too chilly to swim, but beautiful anyway. As were the beaches of the South Island of New Zealand.

I’ve taken a helicopter ride onto a glacier in New Zealand, but not down into the Grand Canyon. I’ve been to Niagara Falls, but have yet to see Angel Falls in Venezuela. I lived for two years in the South Pacific, but I’ve never been to the Caribbean. I’ve marveled at the opulence Versailles, the Price Regent’s Pavilion in England and The Breakers in Newport, but haven’t seen the grandeur of the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. I’ve been in Times Square and Paris on New Year’s Eve, but Hogmanay in Edinburg Scotland is still on my Bucket List. So many incredible experiences in my past, but still so many more to look forward to.

So - what's on your bucket list? 

For twenty years, I lived on the beautiful coast of Maine. From my front yard, I could see the scattering of islands just outside of Boothbay Harbor. One of them has a light and the light keeper’s home on it. Some are just knobs of grass surrounded by stony beaches and ledges. But one of them, Damariscove, caught my interest in particular.

I’d read the history of the islands of the Maine and how there were communities of Europeans living on those islands fishing the teeming waters and salting their catch to be shipped back to hungry Europeans. The islands were a natural place for the Europeans to set up their fishing camps – protected to some degree from the native Americans by water, and easily accessible for the big ships from Europe. In the journal of Henry Winslow, a pilgrim who had come north to beg for food when the little settlement at Plymouth was starving and in need, he mentioned that there were thirty ships of sail in that harbor and that the good people of Damariscove had given them four hundred pounds of food. Later I read an account of how Capt. Henry Mowat of the British Royal Navy had been given orders to harass the communities along the New England coast to discourage them from joining the patriot cause just before the Revolutionary War broke out. While carrying out those orders, he put in at Damariscove and commandeered seventy sheep to feed his crew of sailors and Marines, then the following day set sail for Falmouth, now known as Portland Maine, and burned the little port city to the ground. During the War of 1812 the men of Damariscove were able to watch the sea battle between the British ship Boxer and the American Enterprise from their own shore. And there are even stories of a pirate coming ashore to hide his treasure in the pond.

Until the mid 1950s there was, like on many Maine coastal islands, a vibrant community of fishermen and farmers living on Damarsicove Island. There was a school, a lobster buyer, stores, a post office, a community hall and church services. For a number of reasons, including government interference in the lobster industry, as well as the changing dynamics of rural life and suburban development, families who had lived on those islands and fished their waters for generations began moving ashore and finding new careers. Eventually the schools and shops closed and one by one, the islands became deserted. Damariscove was one of those islands.

From my front yard I contemplated what I could see of this now treeless little island, and I was taken by the desire to explore it. We sailed out there on a beautiful sunny summer day, anchored in one of the coves and rowed our dinghy ashore. There are a few buildings still standing. The coast guard life saving station is kept maintained, although no one mans it any more. Folk interested in the history of the island have created a little museum of sorts in what’s left of a tiny house with bits and pieces of the past displayed for any who happens to wander ashore.

As I stood at the high point of the island and gazed back toward the harbor that Captain John Smith had once described as a busy place, I considered the ghosts who are supposed to haunt this place. A headless man named Pattishall and his faithful dog, a woman with long flowing hair who has been seen walking into the pond. There are others, I’m sure. But as I stood there, balanced on the edge of an old foundation with nothing but a carpet of grass and daisies spread out below my feet, the thought came to me: What if I slipped and fell into this old cellar hole? And what if I hit my head and was knocked unconscious? What if when I woke up, there was a roof over my head? What then?

That was how my book, Iain’s Plaid came to be. It’s not been published yet, but it will be one of these days. From a fascinating, yet little known island on the Maine coast with a long and storied history came a really fun tale of a woman who sailed out there just like I had, who did fall into that cellar hole and woke up in 1775.

Sign up for my newsletter and when this story comes to life in a book you can hold in your hand or download to your e-reader, I'll be sending out an announcement. http://eepurl.com/bsaNs  In the meantime, I interview a different author every month. You might get a peek into the life and writing of one of your favorite authors, or you might find a new author to check out.

This month, being April and you know what they say about April showers, the topic for the Blog Hop is:  Have you noticed how weather is used in writing? How have you used weather in your writing? Drama? Mood? Revelation?

If you think about it, weather, both good and bad influences everything from the moment the sun peeks in your window in the morning until you take your pooch for a walk under a starlit sky. Rainy weather can set it’s own mood, either brooding or making you feel cozy curled up with a book inside. What about a romantic couple on the beach in the setting sun? Or dancing in the rain? How does the setting sun of a perfect summer day color that picture and how different in the rain.

I remember an episode on NCIS when Gibbs’ mentor and friend is shot and killed outside Gibbs’ house on a dark rainy night. There seemed to be a special poignance to Mike Franks having sacrificed his life laying face up in the wet street with rain on his face. And just think of all the romances that have been written around the trope of the hero and heroine becoming stranded together by a major snow storm.

Gloomy weather certainly adds mood to a mystery or even more to a horror story. Moonlight can add romance to any situation, but that same moonlight can heighten the ambiance of a vampire story. The events of 9/11 would have been horrific no matter what the weather, but somehow, the stark contrast of that brilliant blue sky backlighting the atrocity of commercial airliners flying deliberately into the twin towers made the made it seem worse. Consider the different feeling you get, first watching a weather forecaster telling you about the ravages of a hurricane from his broadcast station with the weather map at his back and then they cut to the reporter wearing a rain-soaked slicker, standing at a 60 degree angle against the buffeting gale, his or her hair blowing in their face while they struggle to be heard over the roar of waves or wind and rain. Weather sets a tone no matter if you are watching television, a movie, or reading a book.

In the first book in my series, the defining moment of the story is set against the backdrop of a hurricane. My heroine goes into labor and a huge hundred year old tree is uprooted making it impossible for rescue vehicles to get to her home and the hero is forced to face his worst fears and deliver her baby without even being able to contact help by phone. The sound of wind slapping the side of the house, phone lines down, power out all add to the ambiance and urgency of that scene. 

In the book I’m currently working on, on page one, my heroine is exploring the ruins on a long abandoned island off the coast of Maine on a beautiful sunny day. Flowers line the long abandoned fieldstone foundations, the water in the harbor is a startling blue and a light breeze plays with her hair and tugs at her clothing. Then she falls into that old cellar hole, hits her head and loses consciousness. When she wakes, it’s dark and cold and there’s a roof over her head. She has no idea where she is when the hero lets her out of his locked basement clutching a cudgel in one hand. The contrast makes her confusion even more complete, and the cold and dark adds an extra layer of menace to the scene that sunlight could not have imparted even when staring down an obviously angry man with a big stick.

I think, in all writing, weather can be another character, along with setting. It can add lightness or romance, or brooding or menace. It can add urgency or calm and can change or color just about any scene, even indoor ones. Stand your heroine at a window looking out: first on a moonlit garden, then rain slashing against the window, or jagged streaks of lightening lighting up the dark sky, maybe the sun is setting, its glory reflected in some body of water or fat snowflakes falling in utter silence covering everything she can see. Same woman, same window, but how different each scene is, and how differently it might affect what she is feeling and thinking.

I'm sure there are books and stories out there that never mention the weather, except perhaps when one of the characters is complaining about it, but I think including the weather adds immeasurably to the scene, the feeling, and the action.

Since this is a Blog Hop - why not hop on over and see how other authors use weather in their writing.
 
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Dr. Bob Rich bobrich18.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/oh-the-weather/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Kay Sisk http://kaysisk.blogspot.com
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com                      

What does April 15^th mean to you?

For my mother-in-law – it was the day her son was born. So in our family it was a reason to celebrate. But Cal’s been gone a while and there hasn’t been cake on the 15^th for far too many years. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAL – I miss you.

For all Americans, the 15^th is TAX DAY! Most of us have managed to pull our taxes together and get them filed, after complaining and procrastinating for the last couple months. I hear groans of protest from those who owe a lot more than they thought they would. Not so many happy faces about refunds as there once was – probably because, like me, a lot of us have figured it out, that paying too much up front is like giving Uncle Sam an interest free loan. Some folk are still scrambling to meet tonight’s midnight deadline. And a few more will be filing for extensions. But for all of us, the 15^th of April is a day we can’t ignore.

All of New England celebrates Patriots Day and that often falls on the 15^th of April, too. Patriot’s Day is a celebration that marks the beginning of our country as we know it today – the day when folks finally decided enough was enough and told King George they would stand up and fight for their rights. A few brave men, some still boys, lined up on Lexington Green and faced down the mighty British Army and the Revolutionary War began. Schools are out and parades are in as New England remembers and celebrates how America began.

But for the people of Boston, April 15^th will forever have an even more poignant meaning. The Boston Marathon is a big event. As big as Patriots Day – the day it is traditionally run. It’s the oldest annual marathon in the world and ranks as the world’s most prestigious road racing event. Runners from all over the world compete and thousands line the twenty-six-mile race route from Hopkinton to downtown Boston where sidewalks are jammed with spectators who come to cheer the runners over the finish line.

Three years ago on this big race day, the finish line of this world-class event was the site of a horrific, terrifying, bombing that took four lives and injured 264 people. The appalling evil and malicious intent shocked not just Boston, but the entire country. Not since 9/11 had we witnessed this kind of carnage on our own soil. An 8 year old boy, a child with a smiling face and a whole future head of him, a student from China, a young woman in her prime and an officer of the law all lost their lives. Sixteen children and adults lost their legs. Everyone was traumatized. We may never know the whole story behind why the Tsarnaev brothers chose terrorism against a country that had offered them asylum and opportunity, but if they were aiming to demoralize the American people, the result was just the opposite. Boston Strong became a catch phrase with a lot of punch. Photos were seen around the world of ordinary citizens leaping toward the carnage to do whatever they could to help save lives. Every event in Boston’s busy calendar became another little triumph over evil. Acts of heroism and the courageous determination of the survivors inspires us all.

April 15^th will go down in history along with December 7^th and September 11^th. Another day when the innocence of America was torn asunder. Another event from which we rose stronger and more united than ever. Pearl Harbor, the Twin Towers, The Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, and now Boston and its Annual Marathon have all become icons of how America can triumph over evil and come out stronger.  

What does April 15^th mean to you? (Please leave comments below.)

   Have you ever read a book or listened to one that so completely drew you in that you felt like you were living it? Well, that's what ACT OF VALOR did for me.

Every once in awhile, a book comes along that you want to share with the whole world for one reason or another. Until Tuesday is that kind of book.

UNTIL TUESDAY – by Former Captain Luis Carlos Montalván with Bret Witter

A highly decorated seventeen-year veteran returned from his second tour of Iraq with serious physical wounds that ended the career he had trained so hard for and had poured so much of himself into, heart, soul and body. But even more crippling was the post traumatic stress disorder that even former Captain Luis Carlos Montalván and those he loved and trusted most didn’t fully understand or accept. Simply coping with a short trip to the corner deli to purchase a sandwich was a journey filled with landmines that threatened to bury him in a morass of migraine pain and overwhelming paranoia.  Navigating the tortuous labyrinth to obtain treatment through the VA was a struggle on every level. The trip to get to the VA or to school on public transportation was often more than this wounded soldier could manage. Life and all hope for the future seemed pretty bleak for Captain Montalván.  Until Tuesday.

Until Tuesday, a dog, bred for service work, but broken himself by circumstance, came into Luis Montalván’s life. Until Tuesday taught this broken warrior how to trust, how to cope and to have faith in himself and the future. Until Montalván found the healing power of a relationship with a very special dog.

In the last few decades, our military and medical fields have begun to accept the insidious and debilitating realities of PTSD and seek remedies, but it is fairly recently that the amazing healing power of a properly trained service dog has come on the scene.  There is still an enormous amount of work to be done in educating, not just the medical field and the military, but the general public. Beyond being a fantastic read and a heartwarming story, UNTIL TUESDAY should be required reading for every American until we, as a society, understand the cost our young men and women will pay when we send them into harm’s way, and until acceptance of these warriors and the dogs that are saving their lives is universal.  

UNTIL TUESDAY is a courageously honest account of one man’s struggle with a disability most of us will never have to face and few understand.  It is also the heartwarming story how the love between a broken warrior and a disillusioned canine healed them both. Read this book and the next time you see what appears to be a healthy, robust young man or woman escorted by a canine wearing a service vest, you will have a far better appreciation for the struggles that person is living with every day of their life.

God bless the men and women who have given so much and suffer unspeakably and BRAVO for the growing numbers of special people who understand the difference a canine can make.  People like Montalván’s Lu Picard, founder and director of Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities (ECAD), K9s for Warriors and others.

Until Tuesday was part of the inspiration for book two in my Camerons of Tide's Way series, LOVING MEG. Meg, like Capt. Montalván, has returned from a year in a war zone. She is physically whole, but her soul has suffered. She's coping with survivor's guilt and trying to find her way to fit back into her civilian life and feeling like no one, not even her loving husband, can fully understand. Then she meets Kip. Another survivor grieving for a lost partner, Kip worms his way into Meg's heart and teaches her to trust him. Available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks and Google Play. All royalties for this book are donated to the K9s For Warriors program.

This Month's Round Robin Blog Hop Topic: Secondary characters have many functions in stories. Have you ever had a secondary character surprise you in some way? How? How about in other author's books that you've read? Do you have a favorite secondary character in either your own work or in books you have read?

                                                 
Secondary characters are important in so many ways. Among other things, they can add comic relief or get away with saying things that need to be said but the main characters can’t think them. Secondary characters provide depth to the story and to the main characters depending on the way the main characters react to them or rely on them. Years ago, my dad always watched Perry Mason (the original Perry Mason series) and he always marveled at how clever Perry was to ferret out the truth of who done it in spite of Lt. Tragg’s and Hamilton Burger’s assurance that they had the bad guy. But where would Perry have been without Paul Drake? Paul was the one who always came through with that illusive bit of information Perry needed to prove his client innocent. To me, Perry Mason would not have been the same character without his faithful sidekick Drake, or Della Street, the woman who always had his back.

In a newer series of novels, Murder on Edisto and Edisto Jinx by C. Hope Clark has included a whole cast of colorful characters, including Sophie the Psychic, who give depth not just to the story and the setting, but also are foils to her main character, Callie Morgan. And what would the movie Braveheart have been without the Mad Irishman, Stephen who claimed ownership of the whole Island of Ireland and a direct line to God?

Years ago, I read a book where the hero was an author who argued constantly with his main character. He, the author hero, wanted one thing and his hero character wanted something else. The author character would put his hero a heartbeat away from bedding the woman he desperately desired, then yank the rug out from under him and the would be seducer would scream in frustration. I often wonder how often both of these characters surprised the woman who wrote the novel.

In one of my historical novels, I gave my hero a sidekick who was his closest friend and business partner. But somewhere along the line the friend fell in love with the heroine meant for my main character. My first thought was, “Houston, we have a problem!” That was not what he’d been put into the story to do. But then I decided to just go with it and see where it led. By the end of the book, when the hero and heroine had overcome all their conflicts, it was clear that my lovesick secondary guy needed his own love interest, and of course, his own story, which I began writing at once. In the 4^th book of my current series, which will be out this July, I have a secondary character who I thought I knew really well, but she did something I had never anticipated. And even then, once I accepted that twist, she did another about face. She was a teenager and teenagers are known to be filled with drama and angst, but still, I was surprised.

In considering the question of secondary characters who might surprise their authors, I wondered if those surprises come because the author is what we call a “Pantser”. A Plotter carefully outlines their books before they start writing so perhaps they never have surprises. But I write character driven stories by the seat of my pants. I’m a Pantser. I create my characters with detailed backstories. I interview my characters and ask difficult questions about how they feel about things before I begin to write. Then I just plop them into the situation I’ve set up for them and let them react. Maybe that’s why my characters so often surprise me.

But here are a few other authors willing to share their thoughts on secondary characters and surprises. Check them out. 

Anne Stenhouse 
Beverley Bateman
Judith Copek
Connie Vines
Victoria Chatham
Helena Fairfax 
Marci Baun 
Rachael Kosinski
Hollie Glover
Dr. Bob Rich

Rhobin Courtright

Fiona McGier