I'll let Liz Flaherty do the talking today, and she does a fine job of it!
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| Liz Flaherty with her dog, Bandit. |
I worried
before I retired, about the things I imagine most of us worry about. Would we
have enough money to live how we wanted? Would our health hold up? Would we
still like each other when we had more time to spend together? Would I still
want to write when I had time for it? What about changes?—I hate changes!
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| Fearless Liz Flaherty Parasails! |
Even my
writing changed, although not because I wanted it to. Many, many writers’ voices
don’t reflect their age. Nora Roberts writes a 20-some protagonist even better
now than she did at the beginning of her career in 1981. So do Mary Balogh,
Robyn Carr, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, to name but a few.
I, on the
other hand, can make a 30-year-old sound like…yes, exactly, like a 62-year-old
retiree. A former—and very good—editor and a few contest judges referred to my
voice as—shudder—old-fashioned. No one said it was bad, nor that I should just confine myself to helping with the
church bulletin, nor that I should quit. I just needed to…well, what? Jazz it
up? Oh, good grief, there I go again. No one says “jazz it up” anymore. No one
has Early American furniture or decorates with baskets or still has flowery
wallpaper in their bathrooms.
Except maybe
me.
So here I was
with Early and Nash McGrath, in their late 40s, divorced after 30 years of
marriage. And it was time for another change.
Although I’d
read quite a bit of inspirational romance and some of my favorite people write
it (Cheryl St. John, Cheryl Reavis, Diann Hunt, and Janet Dean, again just
naming a few), I’d never seriously considered writing it. If for no other
reason, I didn’t think of it because my faith is private. I once told my
mother, when I was in the process of refusing to go to a revival with her, that
I didn’t consider Christianity a spectator sport.
That hasn’t changed much. But
inspirational romantic fiction has. More than just change, it has expanded.
There are many evangelistic books to be found, but there are also many that are
by and about people like me. People who go to church on Sundays and say quiet
prayers every day and read a lot of secular fiction but don’t really like a
whole bunch of cussing and are bored with sex scenes. Granted, even now most of
the heroes and heroines aren’t 62, but Early and Nash fit just fine.
A
Soft Place to Fall has already been released by Pelican Book Group in
paperback and will be out digitally on April 26. Although I don’t know yet how
my segue into inspirational fiction will work out, if it’s like the other
changes of the past couple of years, I’m really looking forward to it.
Oh, and ziplining—I’m looking
forward to that, too.
Visit me at http://lizflaherty.com or email me at lizkflaherty@gmail.com —I’d love to
hear from you and the coffeepot’s always on!
What A Soft Place
to Fall is about:
Early McGrath didn’t want freedom from her thirty-year marriage to
Nash, but when it was forced upon her, she did the only thing she knew to
do—she went home to the Ridge to reinvent herself. Only what is someone who’s
taken care of people her whole life supposed to do when no one needs her
anymore? Even as the threads of her life unravel, she finds new ones— reconnecting
with the church of her childhood, building the quilt shop that has been a
long-time dream, and forging a new friendship with her former husband. The
definition of freedom changes when it’s combined with faith. Can Early and Nash
find a Soft Place to Fall?
Liz Flaherty
JAR OF DREAMS / Carina Press / Available now!
ONE MORE SUMMER / Carina Press
A SOFT PLACE TO FALL / Harbourlight Books - 4/26
Please welcome Liz Flaherty to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by leaving a comment.
