new fiction Archives - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

Review ~~ The Forgiving Kind by Donna Everhart

5 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

From the first page, the reader is captivated by the sultry afternoon in the deep South, the cotton fields, the red earth, and the narrative from one small girl.
Be prepared to be unable to put this magnificent story down. Sonny Creech and her family draw you in; sweating as they hoe the fields, worrying about where the next dollar is coming from, putting up with two crass brothers’ antics, and a sudden tragedy that rocks their family.

The characters are so beautifully drawn by this author; the reader feels they have known them their whole lives. Mr. Fowler was a superb villain. I loved to hate him and I was rooting for his downfall, which by the way, wasn’t assured at all.

I highly recommend this book to my readers.

Did you miss my interview with Donna Everhart?
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Book Review ~~ The Summer Swap

5 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

Sarah Morgan has really delivered this time! The characters are so fun and richly drawn. I had special empathy for the 75-year-old, Cecilia. A feisty matriarch, she gets a few surprises when she returns to Dune Cottage after avoiding the place for decades.

The writer’s imagery is powerful. You can smell the salty air from the ocean, hear the seagulls scolding.

Overall, it’s a great summer read and I highly recommend it to my readers.

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Coming Soon!

Interview with Sarah Morgan, Author

Sarah Morgan always knew she wanted to be a writer but took a slight detour along the way to train as a nurse, an experience that has found its way into many of her books. A lover of the outdoors, many of her story ideas come while hiking in wild places and she is also a keen photographer. She has been a published author for more than twenty years and lives near London, England where the rain frequently keeps her trapped in her office.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? (please provide a photo of you at work in your shed, room, closet, barn, or houseboat….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.

SM. At the beginning of my career I worked

anywhere and everywhere. I had young children so I made sure I was flexible – I’d keep notebooks with me and scribble a few lines at every opportunity and I often worked in the evenings when they were in bed. Now I’m lucky enough to have an office at the bottom of my garden, so in the summer I work with the doors and windows open, surrounded by birdsong and the buzz of bees. It’s very relaxing and great for focus.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

SM. I almost always have a cup of tea or coffee, but that’s as far as it goes! I have resisted the temptation to create rituals because I want to be able to write anywhere, at any time, regardless of the conditions. I used to write to music, but now I find I need silence although I often use music for inspiration to get me in the right ‘mood’ for the story.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

SM. I worked behind a bar one summer and it was the most perfect job for observing human behaviour. Also great for learning to mix a drink!

Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?

SM. All I need is something to write on. Preferably my laptop, but if a pen and paper is all that is available I’ll use that. I find sticky notes useful because you can scribble down a line of dialogue or a plot point and put it on the wall. It’s easy to move notes around and a great way to visualize your story.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

SM. I think it’s all about developing positive habits. Presumably you want to write, or you wouldn’t be doing it, so sometimes it helps to remind yourself why you’re doing it. Identify your temptations so that you can plan to avoid them. For example if your weakness is getting distracted by the internet then switch it off until you’ve finished your word count for the day. If you’re finding it hard to concentrate then set yourself small acheiveable goals, either in time (work for thirty minutes without distraction), or word count (write 1000 words before stopping). Having a schedule and sticking to it is often helpful.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

SM. The characters and their situation/problem usually appear to me at the same time. Like most writers I ask myself the ‘what if’ question. No two individuals will respond to a challenge in the same way, and that’s why every story is fresh and new even when you might be exploring well trodden themes.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

Join us for part 2 Click here!

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Coming Soon!
A new novel by Trisha Sugarek: Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Separate Us

Book Review ~~ Thirty Days in Paris by Veronica Henry

5 out of 5 stars Book Review

Good writers have the most wonderful ideas for a book. Great writers have the persistence, courage, knowledge, and passion to get the story written down, weaving those ideas into the very fabric of existence.

Veronica Henry is a great writer of contemporary stories with wonderful empathic, interesting characters. And Thirty Days in Paris is no exception.

Juliet has just suffered from empty nest syndrome big time, and her husband is in some mid-life crisis that she can’t understand. They finally agree that they have grown apart and their marriage has reached its ‘sell by’ date.

Juliet happens upon an advert: “ TO LET. Charming ‘chambre de bonne’ in the 2eme. Situated a stone’s throw from the glamorous Rue Saint-Honore with its chic boutiques….”
Paris, the city of love, has always lingered in Juliet’s heart. Now, fueled by whimsy and courage, she answers the ad. The tiny apartment becomes her cocoon, her canvas for reinvention.

The plot is delicious! Juliet’s courage to move from a suburban-Mom’s life to a soon-to-be single middle aged woman on her own is tantilizing. The writing flows like wine. The surprises? Oh, they sizzle like crepes in a skillet—each flip revealing a layer of vulnerability, resilience, and newfound purpose. Veronica Henry’s prose dances, and we, the readers, waltz along.

I highly recommend this book to my readers.
Did you miss my interview with Veronica Henry?
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Book Review ~ The Physics of Relationships

2 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

Even though this narration was supposed to be from the Mom, the author’s masculine voice frequently leaked through. I can’t quite put my finger on the whys or hows but there is a definite masculinity to her/his ‘dry’, analytical tone. And I never discovered her name.

The narrator is the Mom figure in the story. Unfortunately, she is just that. A talking head. Her deeper feelings aren’t explored. The narrator talks at the reader with conclusions rather than a true exploration. Is Chas guilty of ‘man-splaining’?

Early on the family unit fell into being a clique. Two husbands, one divorce, 1 male child, 1 female child, 1 best friend.

Speaking of the BFF. Amy moves in with Mom for awhile. She also is having troubles in her marriage. They end up sharing the same bedroom and bed and eventually Amy makes tentative sexual ovatures to her good friend. (This is an 8 on the ‘ick’ scale.) First of all, middle-aged BFFs would not share a bed. Except at a hotel, on holiday, and there was only one room/1 bed available and they were desperate for lodging. (Guilty!)
Why do most men think that if two women are very close friends, they must have lesbian tendencies just under the surface of the friendship?

This might have been a better book if the author had written in his own voice (as narrator) and told the story from the three men’s point of view. Greg, Lawrence, and Phil.
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Interview with Author, Donna Everhart (part 2)

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

DE. You’re “looking” at a procrastinator. I’ll come to my desk every day and have a word goal in mind (usually 1,000 words) and oftentimes do everything but start working toward that goal. What follows is GUILT as time ticks by. By the end of the day, if I haven’t made the word count because of lost time on something unrelated to my writing goal, there’s the inevitable slump in mood. My best days are when I make a concerted effort to get the word count in. Even if I don’t, and get, say, 500 words, I’m happier for it because I know the effort was honestly made. It takes discipline to not get onto social media or think of the other million ways to avoid doing what needs to be done to accomplish the end result – i.e., a finished book. What I’ve found works best, write first; everything else comes after – even laundry.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

DE. Usually through an idea for a story. Sometimes a name comes to mind first, and I start to think about who this person would be, and what is it they want, what they’re good at, what they’re bad at, and if they have any enemies. It’s kind of all over the place. A messy, messy process.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

DE. Reading stories that made a big impact on me were the main influence or motivator. The enjoyment I got from books where I wouldn’t stop reading for a long time, and when I finally took a break, I’d look around in a daze. I’d become so invested in that world, I think I was surprised I wasn’t “there,” instead of sitting on a couch in my living room. That kind of story made me want to create something similar. The idea of affecting a person’s mood, thought process, and emotions resonated for whatever reason.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

DE. It’s actually been both. It’s never always this, or that. For example, in my debut, The Education of Dixie Dupree, it was the character of Dixie. In The Road to Bittersweet, it was the situation – the 1940 flood in western North Carolina. It just depends. When I begin to search for a story, I’m often lookin g for a situation, but out of nowhere, a name will come to mind – and then I’m thinking, who is this? (I have to have a name before I can develop a character)

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

DE. Absolutely. When I’m really in that zone, hours can go by and I’ll sort of come out of it and realize, oh, wait. I haven’t eaten. I’m often shocked half the day is gone. It’s kind of scary sometimes!

Q. What compelled you to choose and settle on the genre you now write in?

DE. I love, love, love reading stories set in the South where I’m from, and so I guess it makes sense I’d want to write about my culture and the region I love. Aside from the classics out there for Southern literature, like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, etc., it was reading the more contemporary writers like Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster) and Dorothy Allison, (Bastard Out Of Carolina) that jumpstarted my urge to pursue it. After I read their books and I was on the hunt for more stories like theirs. This was around 1987, or so, and as I began to discover these Southern stories which really resonated with me, I knew if I ever wrote anything, it would be something like this.

Did you miss the start of this interview?
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Much Anticipated Interview with Laila Ibrahim

Luca is the Frenchie. The mini Aussie is named Hazel

Laila Ibrahim grew up in Whittier California. She has lived in Oakland and Berkeley for 40 years, when she moved there to go to Mills College where she studied Human Development and attachment theory. Since 1993 Laila and her wife have lived in a small co-housing community with two other families. Her adult children are a great joy, as is her dog, a toy Australian Shepherd named Hazel. She is beyond excited to welcome her first grandchild in July.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.

LI. Since my last child moved out I have had a room of my own to write it. I LOVE it. It’s in the back of the house with a view of a beautiful redwood tree. Before that I worked at the dining room table when my kids were at school or a small desk sandwiched in the living room.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

LI. I don’t get dressed before I write. I usually make myself a cup of rooibos chai tea. I generally write for 45 minutes to an hour. Take a break. And then do it again. I can’t usually write for more than 3 hours in a day.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

LI. I often write my very drafty, first drafts in bed, in a half dream state.

Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?

LI. I write on a lap top, though I have used a full size external keyboard at times.

Q. Do you have pets? Tell us about them and their names.

LI. My toy Aussie, Hazel Nut Ibrahim-Bartley, often sits by my desk as I write. She’s 18 months olold and we LOVE her. She enjoys laying on our legs, playing fetch and running in big wide circle on grass.

Q. Do you enjoy writing in other forms (playwriting, poetry, short stories, etc.)?
If yes, tell us about it.

LI. I enjoy making visual art, but not other forms of writing, so far. Though when COVID first struck I wrote a poem for the first (and so far only) time.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

LI. Create routines that work for you, and know why you are writing in the first place. I find if I’m sitting at my keyboard and nothing is coming out then I’m not working on the right story for me.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

LI. With the Yellow Crocus series, I am continuing with the descendants of the characters in the first book. With the other two, Living Right and Paper Wife, it was a mystery. In many ways all my characters are parts of who I am, or who I wish I aspire be.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

LI. I was very surprised when I got the call to write a story. In 1998 I had a flash that conceived Yellow Crocus. Before that flash, I had no desire to write fiction. I was with a group of people talking about Tiger Woods. Someone mentioned the fact that he identifies as Asian as much as African American….

Join us for part two of this interview with this wonderful writer on June 16th
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

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Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom ~~ Review

4 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

A much-awaited novel by Kathleen Grissom, who is well known and touted for her two previous books, The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything. While she never mis-stepped when writing the latter and, as far as I could tell, got it mostly, if not entirely right, there were a few things that made me itch to correct her while reading Crow Mary. Maybe I’m overly sensitive as I myself lived on tribal lands (Makah Nation) as a young woman for over two years in Neah Bay, Washington. (Pacific NW.)

I had a problem with several nation lineage issues regarding Crow Mary’s knowledge of her own people. Wouldn’t Mary mention that the Crow People were originally a minor subset of the Sioux Nation and now were at war? The Crow had migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Dakotas and Montana. Know that in spite of the fact that the Sioux were now an enemy of the Crow People?

Secondly, Nakoda is spelled in the book with a ‘D’ when the correct spelling and the most commonly used name is Nakota with an ‘t’.

Mary is a proud Crow woman who really doesn’t take any guff off of any man, native or white. Yet she refers to herself and to her tribe as “Indians”, a derogatory term invented by the white man. I don’t know of any written history of where the People in question thought or spoke of themselves as “Indian”. I think the author also missed an opportunity to weave in Mary’s nation’s full name that the white man bastardized it to simply, “Crow”.

Please don’t misunderstand, this is a really, really good story, and maybe the average reader wouldn’t pick up on any of the things that bothered me but be that as it may…..I could not give the book the resounding 5 stars that I had anticipated doing.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t read the prologue. It’s a clear indication of how the book ends. (or one of the endings) Within the book itself once I read of the practice of the ‘wolfers’ using strychnine when trapping, I thought I knew how the book would end and that spoiled it for me somewhat.

Did you miss my interview with Kathleen Grissom?
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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Interview with Victoria Costello (conclusion)

Q. Are you working on something now or have a new release coming up?

VC. My new book comes out on June 13, 2023, and I couldn’t be more excited to bring it to readers. As mentioned, it evolved from the true story of my tragedy-plagued Irish American family I told in A Lethal Inheritance, but with me giving myself permission to ask, What if? What if the youngest family members dared to confront and reverse this legacy of violence and madness? The result is Orchid Child, a mix of history and fantasy inspired by Celtic folklore, along with science, and bits of mystery and romance. It’s a story told in three voices, one per generation, over a century.
Teague is the novel’s orchid child, who hears voices and talks to trees, but rarely people. Bullied back home in New York, he finds validation when his Aunt Kate takes him to West Ireland, where neo-Druids identify his strange perceptions as the gift of second sight, putting Teague at odds with Kate who sees his mental differences as a medical problem to be fixed.

Kate is the family success story, whose rising star in neuroscience has crashed in a sex scandal. She vows to salvage her career by taking on a study on the epigenetics of family mental illness in a rural Irish county. Only to discover she’s unknowingly come to her ancestral homeland, meaning she’s studying her own genes. As Kate’s research is blocked by hostile locals, Teague drifts further into his pagan fellowship, pushing Kate to confront the limits of science and the power of ancestral ties. Ellen is the apothecary’s daughter who will become Kate’s grandmother. Forced to flee Ireland for New York City after her beloved, also a holder of second sight, is accused of betrayal in the 1920 Irish Rebellion, Ellen lives to her eighties as the matriarch who struggles with the burden she’s accepted to keep the gift alive—until the family wound, past and present, can be healed.
I’m feeling gratified by the early positive reviews, the feeling that the story you’ve slaved over for ten years, is touching people, making them think and have hope when times are tough.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

VC. A weird thing about me is that even as a kid, when I kept a diary, or scribbled poems, I always took my writing seriously. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m a Scorpio and writing has always been my secret life. And that’s probably why it took until this year, when I’ve just turned seventy, to share my most secret story with actual readers around the world.

Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?

VC. I, for one, love paper books, especially hard cover, fine paper books, but I read e-books and listen to audiobooks more often

for practical reasons. I imagine I’m typical that way. So until we run out of trees, that will probably stay the norm.

Q. What makes a writer great?

VC. Oooh, hard one. Maybe the courage to bare their soul, regardless of what anyone thinks or says. The ability to find the right, and the fewest, words to express the ineffable.

Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

VC. It all comes down to perseverance. Orchid Child took ten years from beginning to end. You have to want it more than anything else in your life during that time of writing, revising, querying, and promoting. There may not be room in your life while you have young kids to raise. That’s why I think a lot of women publish later. But I believe our books are richer for it.

Q. How have your life experiences influenced your writing?

VC. It’s all there in my writing.

Q. What’s your downtime look like?

VC. Walks with friends in our wonderful downtown Ashland, Lithia Park. Hikes in the hills. Cat play. I really don’t have what you would call hobbies. I eat but I’m not a cook. I read and watch endless Scandinavian and British mysteries, from Shetland to Inspector Morse, I find are the perfect diversion when my mental energies need a rest.

Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre?

VC. Being new to fiction, I’ll stick with it for the time being as my main creative output. I’ve also been writing essays on craft and theory of fiction and especially autofiction.

Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

VC. I’m good enough. Pretty enough. Smart enough. Why, oh why, did I, like most women, take so long to learn this? Being enough is wonderful. Try it!

Did you miss the beginning of this interview?
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard tells us more…Interview (part 2)

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

HWB. Little elves are not going to come in the dark of night and write your book for you. So: BUTT IN CHAIR, FINGERS ON KEYBOARD.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

HWB. I don’t have a magic formula for that. Since I write historical fiction, some of the characters I run with are real. Many others that I create and plop into historical situations are an amalgam of traits and backgrounds drawn from friends, family, and coworkers I’ve known over the years . . . many years. And a few are just flat out made up.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

HWB. I’m not sure. I always enjoyed reading. Then in high school I discovered I could write pretty well, too, and received some recognition for that. I was also sports editor for the high school newspaper. At the University of Washington, even though I was a physical science major, I took some courses in creative writing and managed to hold my own.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

HWB. Usually the situation, although I often develop the characters in tandem with the plot. In the end, it’s the characters that carry a story. If you don’t have 3D, believable people in your tale, nobody’s going to care about it.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

HWB. Not really. But I hate to leave a scene unfinished, so I’ll keep plowing through one until it’s complete, or until I find a logical break in it. It’s then I may discover it’s 4:30 in the afternoon, not 3 p.m. like I thought.

Q. What compelled you to choose and settle on the genre you now write in?

HWB. The history of WWII is packed with stunning tales that totally fascinate me. They are stories filled with facts and statistics, and strategies and timelines. But I want to bring these things alive. I want readers to realize that real people, just like them or their friends, lived these dramas. I want folks to pick up my novels and not just read about history, but experience it, live it. I want them to sit beside a pilot on a bombing raid, to experience the mind-numbing shock of discovering a Nazi death camp, to become lost in a Burmese jungle crawling with enemy troops, native headhunters, and blood-sucking leeches. I want my readers to keep turning the pages in my books long after they should have turned off the lights and fallen asleep. Or I want them to tear up because a character they were rooting for didn’t make it . . . or had something surprisingly good happen when all seemed lost.

Q. Are you working on something now or have a new release coming up? If so tell us about it.

HWB. DOWN A DARK ROAD will be released May 9th. It’s a “gut punch of a novel” based on the WWII exploits of a prominent Oregonian, Jim Thayer. You’re side-by-side with Jim when, as a young infantry lieutenant, he and his platoon stumble into the very heart of darkness near the end of the war. The scenes are chilling and unforgettable, and Jim refused to discuss what he had witnessed for decades after. When he finally did, my wife—who had worked for Jim when she was a young girl—was one of the people he talked to. After that, she kept a scrapbook of write-ups about Jim. She showed it to me after our recent marriage (and after Jim’s passing) and insisted there was a great story there. I was reluctant to agree initially, but after further research and getting support from Jim’s family, I saw the light, and DOWN A DARK ROAD was born.

Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

HWB. Always have a Plan B, and maybe a C and a D. You’ll need them.

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A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

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