Prizes include:

* A Murder Among Friends, The Face of Deceit, and The Taking of Carly Bradford, autographed
* Field of Danger, autographed
* New Hampshire: A Living Landscape, Peter E. Randall
* Assorted teas in a gift basket
* Assorted chocolates

Just email me at ramona@ramonarichards.com with CONTEST in the subject. Everyone who has already done so will be entered.

Thanks!

First up is Trish Perry who asked me some of the more intriguing questions so far.

Next, Lyn Cote challenged me to write about the strong women in my life and how my own past informs what I write in my stories.

Finally, I’ll blogging at the Love Inspired Authors site. Not sure what I’ll say yet, but I’m hard-pressed to follow what I’ve said on the other two.

I like these challenges, however. They remind me that I don’t write – or act – in a vacuum. This circuitous journey that God has me on has a purpose, and I hope I honor Him with every step.

I truly appreciate all the folks who’ve emailed and commented here about my absence or my books. THANK YOU! More than you can know.

It has been an odd month. I hit the ground fast and hard trying to stir up a few editorial jobs to make ends meet, and was bombarded with almost more than I can handle. Then the line edits for FIELD OF DANGER hit, and are due on June 1. Rachel graduated from school.

And I headed for the Blue Ridge conference. When I returned home yesterday, I was almost blind from exhaustion. I’ve talked to others who are as tired. FABULOUS conference, which is why we’re all tired. I’ve put a few of the pictures up on my Facebook page . . . others are coming.

Two tidbits. I’ve started some of the blog interviews for CARLY, which I’ll post here as they appear. Second, my contest is definitely ongoing. I’ll be drawing a second winner toward the end of June. The prizes listed on my website are still current, plus I’ll have another book or two to add in. Please feel free to enter by posting here, or sending an email from the website.

Y’all are AWESOME! Thank you.

I will be posting more in the coming days. I’m still finding my feet and a schedule for working at home, and I’ve been a bit distracted by a garage sale and handling the details of being laid off.

In the meantime, please visit the CRAFTIE Ladies . . . and if you’re in the Huntsville, Alabama area this weekend, please come see me at the Heart of Dixie Reader’s Luncheon (and book signing). I’ll be celebrating my birthday, as well as the launch of The Taking of Carly Bradford (which I’ll be signing). It’ll be a blast.

Thank you all.

CARLY’S HERE!!

Yep, my author’s copies of The Taking of Carly Bradford arrived today. Influence copies will be going out in a few days, so if you volunteered for the task, sit tight.

I’ll be back. Promise.

Next week, I’m off to Shreveport to the Written in the Stars conference, and I’m starting my promo work on CARLY as well. And I’m open to new ideas.

For instance, in CARLY, my hero and heroine, Dee and Tyler, have lunch at Portsmouth’s Cafe Nostimo. This is a real restaurant, which is run by two friends of mine, Dean and Nancy Zottos. Nancy and I are working on some ideas to promote both the restaurant and the book, so if you’re in the Portsmouth area, stay tuned for that.

That’s it for now. Life is complex. Rejoice in it.

This note arrived Christmas week, on a card from my first grade teacher. When I met with her during Thanksgiving, I hadn’t seen Mrs. Camp since 1964, when I left her class for the summer.

This woman – this teacher – had been vital in my becoming a writer. Her impact on me has lasted a lifetime, and involves such mundane things as the position of my hand when I write, as well as lifelong memories. It was Mrs. Camp who wisely shepherded a cluster of terrified six year olds through the assassination of John F. Kennedy so that we didn’t feel the chaos the rest of the world did.

When my mother, who recently moved into an assisted living facility, blithely announced that Mrs. Camp lived down the hall from her, I felt a grin cross God’s face. For I had already turned in the dedication to The Taking of Carly Bradford, which focuses on the teachers who have had the most influence on my life as a writer.

Mrs. Camp was first on the list.

If you’re a teacher, never doubt the potential you have for changing a life. If you’re a parent, pay attention to what your kids are saying about their teachers. Although we live in a time when stories about teachers taking advantage of students are so common they’ve become fodder for late night comics, these creatures are, thankfully, a tiny minority. Help your kids find the best teachers out there.

Good teachers are priceless.

When I saw Mrs. Camp at Christmas, she patted my arm and said, “I still can’t get Carly out of my mind.”

I’m glad, Mrs. Camp, I could return the favor, even if it did take 44 years.

I’m exhausted. Today was Rachel’s first day back in school after almost a month of illness. I’m glad for the routine, but it did mean starting therapy at 5:30am, and the day job was stressful, so my rear is drooping along with my eyelids. I had hoped to write tonight, but I think I’ll just try to nap instead. It’s a rainy, bleary night, so it’ll be good for a snooze.

The line edits are in on The Taking of Carly Bradford, so I’ll be working this weekend. This is a good thing. More ideas are blossoming in my head daily, so I need to get focused. I scribbled out the first 1200 words of a new story on Tuesday. This one has only a bare plot so far, so it’s more about the characters for now.

That’s the way the writing goes sometime . . . you take a character, let her grow in her own personal stew for a few weeks/months/years, and on the other end of the fermentation, a book starts to bloom.

More later. I’m so tired, I’m rambling. Hope everyone has a jolly weekend.

First, however, I want to, once again, thank everyone who has sent prayers and good wishes for Rachel’s illness and Phyllis’s back problems. Phyllis is improving; Rachel has stalled in a place of low-level and occasional wheezing, with congestion we just don’t seem to be able to break loose. So we’re off to the doctor tomorrow. Will keep everyone posted.

Now, to the final stage of my creation of a hero, which I think of as the movement from intrigued fascination to creative fruit. The beginning, of course, is the “raw material.” And to borrow a phrase from a recently enjoyed show . . . .

I think Trevor Eve is bloody brilliant.

And not just because I thought Jonathan Harker and Denys Finch Hatton were sexy beyond belief or that Peter Boyd is one of the more fascinating characters on tv. It goes much deeper than that, and over the past few weeks, I’ve been studying Mr. Eve’s acting technique with the same intensity of a scholar with a newly discovered Shakespearean folio.

Most viewers don’t think about (nor should they) the choices that go into every frame of film. Not only is the scenery, each prop, and every camera angle an intentional choice, but so is every twitch of muscle, raised eyebrow, or twiddled thumb. A line’s delivery is rehearsed more than once, with different inflections, until it fits the character just so.

What has caught my attention with Mr. Eve is how remarkably he alters his choices, even within a similar range of emotions – thus the fury of Duncan Matlock at the end of The Politician’s Wife is quite different from any of Peter Boyd’s explosive outbursts in Waking the Dead.

And if you really want a treat, take a look at these clips of his performance as Hughie Green, where he has captured a whole new level of smarmy creepiness.

What this does for me as a writer is to provide a visual smorgasbord of hand and facial gestures, hand movements, body slumps and stretches, struts and strolls, vocal inflections and emotional ranges. And, unlike people watching at the mall, I can freeze, rewind, and watch them again. All without the security guard at the mall thinking I’m creepy because I’ve been watching the McDonald’s counter for an hour.

As I created the plotline for The Bones of Gregory Miller, as I wrote more about my hero and heroine, the more I realized the hero was beginning to look like Trevor Eve. So some of his body movements and voice inflections (although not accent) will resemble Mr. Eve’s. But my Detective Carpenter will not be Peter Boyd or Albert Tyburn or Jonathan Harker.

He will be my own. That’s where “study” leaves off and “creation” takes over. He’s older and is a rare native Nashvillian, so he has childhood memories of the Parthenon at Christmas . . .

the Ryman when it was still the home of Opry. . .

and Opryland when it was still a park.

He’s a little bit obsessive, and has a thing about . . .

You get the idea.

Recently, I mentioned to a friend that I missed Tyler and Dee, the hero and heroine of The Taking of Carly Bradford. She looked at me quizzically and said, “You know they aren’t real, don’t you?”

Well, yes. Sort of.

But when you start with real people and all their foibles, you build real characters.

And that’s the goal of every good novelist.

So good night, Mr. Eve and Detective Carpenter. I know you’ll be waiting when I finally get to Chapter One of The Bones of Gregory Miller.

The final interview launched today here. I’m grateful to all the blog hosts for their support and encouragement to participate. (If you’re interested in the previous blogs, they’re here, here, and here. The interview with Mason DuBroc is here.)

I have two book signings in my future: One in Lebanon, TN at Sherlock’s, and one in Hendersonville. More details on those later. While I’ve heard nothing on my press releases, I didn’t really expect those to produce many nibbles.

The cherry on top was the 4 1/2-star review in Romantic Times, which you can now see on my home page - since Liz has finished most of the updates for me.

I’m sure I could have done more, in terms of promotion, but for now, I’m satisfied. Maybe as I’ve grown into doing more this time, on Carly, I’ll have even more opportunities. For one thing, I’m hoping to do some promotion with Cafe Nostimo in Portsmouth, which I mention in the book.

Now it’s time to dive into the next project, the next stage on my website, and the next level of my career. First, however, comes the writing.

As to the website, I’ll be adding a newsletter in a few weeks, as well as a contest. To see the title of the contest (if not the details yet), check out the contest page. I’ll be doing this once a quarter. If you’re interested in the newsletter, please email me at ramona01@ramonarichards.com. We’ll be adding a sign-up spot later, but I’m already gathering the list of folks interested.

Finally, thank you, Jen, for your glorious comments, and thanks to everyone for your prayers re: Phyllis and her back problems. Right now, she’s stable, but the doc wants to do a MRI and a bone scan before the next level of treatments. I’m still coming home to do all the lifting of Rachel during her shift, so let’s keep MY back in your prayers as well.

I appreciate you all.