Hello one and all! How are you today? I'm back and hope everyone is doing well and happy! It’s so great to be with all of you again. Welcome back to my writing blog page where I try to share whatever I think may interest you. Today I interview another fellow author. I love meeting other authors and promoting them. It's so much fun. Why talk about myself when there are so many wonderful authors out there and everywhere waiting to share with us. With me this time is award winning and eclectic author Melissa Bowersock where she discusses writing and her latest release, Fleischerhaus, which was released on June 1, 2014 in both paperback and e-book.
Melissa Bowersock
is an eclectic, award-winning author who writes in a variety of fiction and
non-fiction genres. She began writing stories at the age of 5, completed her
first novel at 12 and has never stopped. Her work spans several genres from
action to romance to fantasy to paranormal, spiritual and satire, and she never
tells the same story twice. She also
wrote and published the award-winning true story of her aunt, an Army nurse and
POW during WWII (Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan. she published a collection of
the full first chapters of her 12 novels, called A Novel Idea. She has been both traditionally and
independently published and is a regular contributor to the superblog Indies
Unlimited. She lives in a small community in northern Arizona with her husband
and an Airedale terrier. She also writes under the pen name Amber Flame.
Additionally, she has edited and published books by and about her father,
artist Howard Munns.
SJ) Welcome Melissa and thanks for joining us here…. If it‘s all right with you, Melissa, I‘d like to begin
with your experiences in traditional and self-publishing. Why did you choose to publish in both? As a
multi-published author, do you like one over the author? Why or why not?
Melissa: I’m not sure how much of this journey was choice
and how much was being funneled forward by the changes in the industry. I began
writing seriously in the late 70s, and had my first really marketable book by
the early 80s. At that time, I wrote longhand and by the time I was done with
it, I was wanting to start writing a new one, not type up the first one.
Luckily my mother offered to do that for me. As she typed, of course, she read,
and she thought it was worth publishing. She just happened to know an agent and
without even telling me, she gave him the manuscript. He agreed to take it on
and before I knew it, my first book was sold to a NY house. As that one was making its way through the
lumbering traditional publishing process, they asked me if I had any others,
and it just so happened that I did. I sent them the second one and they picked
that one up as well.
At that point, I figured I had a pretty clear path to future
books. Not so. I changed genres, which I found threw me to the back of the
line. Having proven yourself in one genre does not translate to others, so I
was back at square one. The industry was starting to change in drastic ways as
well, and the traditional houses were getting more and more gun-shy about
taking on unknowns or barely-knowns. Luckily, a lot of small presses were
springing up to take up the slack, and there were several author showcases on
the web where writers could post excerpts of work that would be perused by
agents and editors. I actually sold three books that way, all to small presses.
Shortly after that, my original two books had had their runs
and the publisher resigned the rights back to me. I wanted some way to keep
them viable, so I published them through iUniverse, about the only affordable
option at that time. Shortly after that,
I found out about CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing arm, and as I had
several books complete but unpublished, I decided to try it out. The first time
was a learning process, but the results were wonderful—I could publish my own
book, my own way, with my own title and cover. When I realized I could
self-publish more quickly, easily, and for very little money (like $10), I was
hooked. I’ve been indie ever since and have never looked back.
Melissa: Again, I didn’t so much choose to be multi-genre as
it chose me. I write whatever story captures my imagination, and it just
happens that the genres vary from story to story. I began with historical romance, switched to
fantasy, satire, action/adventure, spiritual and paranormal. I much prefer
paranormal above anything else; I have always loved stories that had just a
touch of magic to them. But I don’t sit down and say, “Think I’ll write a
fantasy.” The story comes to me and demands to be written. I never know what
the next one will be.
Front Cover.
SJ) What was your inspiration for your current release,
Fleischerhaus? Can you tell us a little bit of how the idea came about?
Melissa: Fleischerhaus is the story of a woman who experiences a
past-life memory of being murdered during the Holocaust. I actually got the
kernel of the story years ago. I was talking with a friend about reincarnation
and she told me she had been in Germany touring a concentration camp when she
had a vision of bodies hanging from beams in one old building. She felt very
strongly that she had been a prisoner there and had witnessed many atrocities.
I tucked that story away in my brain for years and finally it began to gather
some momentum to the point that I needed to start writing it down.
Melissa: The thing I love the most is having an idea speak
to me, then as I write, having it come alive on the paper. I don’t do a lot of
planning out; I will write out a bullet list of maybe 5 or 10 main plot points,
but I don’t outline or plan in detail. I sit down to write and let the story
evolve as it flows out of me. Very often the characters surprise me, and it’s
not unusual for me to not have any idea where the story is going or how it’s
going to end. That may be surprising to some, but it’s true. With
Fleischerhaus, I got close to the end and realized I didn’t have a clue how it
was going to resolve itself. I finally settled on three possible scenarios, and
I imagined each, how they would play out and how they would feel. Two felt unsatisfactory, mechanical and
forced. Only one felt like it flowed naturally. That’s the one I chose. But I love
the organic quality of writing like this. I love being as surprised by the
story as my readers are.
The thing I love the least is when a story doesn’t flow,
when I have to pull it out of my head like I’m pulling teeth. My current WIP is
going very slowly, which is sometimes discouraging, but I know it will come
eventually. I wish they all just rushed out like a wide-open tap, but I’ve
learned that they all come differently and I just have to take them as they do.
Melissa: I read voraciously as a kid, so many authors
created stories of wonder and adventure in my life. I doubt I could list them
all, or even remember them all. As a teen, I loved the Black Stallion novels of
Walter Farley. When Stephen King’s The Stand came out, that—to me—was an
instant classic. I enjoy all of Marlys
Millhiser’s books, but especially The Mirror, and Rita Mae Brown’s Six
of One is another book I read again and again.
I think the reason all these authors and books stick with me is because
they all have complex story lines and complex, fascinating characters. I like a
book with many layers, stories I have to think about, stories that ask as many
questions as they answer. And good writing like this inspires me to write my
best.
Melissa: Keep at it. Even if you only write one paragraph a
day, or one sentence, keep at it. When you first sit down, thinking that you
might write a 600-page book seems unreal, but if you keep at it, you just never
know what you can accomplish.
Melissa: My favorite book on the planet is A Prayer for Owen
Meany by John Irving. Irving is streaky, and not all of his books are
compelling, but this one is magical. I re-read it about every year, and it
still makes me cry, still makes me laugh out loud. It is just sublime.
Thanks so much,
S.J. for having me. It’s been fun, and you’ve asked some great questions.
http://melissabowersock.com/books.htm
Back Cover.
But before we go, it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t share the
synopsis for Fleischerhaus:
Julia Martin, newly-divorced but still reeling
from her husband’s infidelity, takes a much needed vacation to visit old
college friends in Germany. While touring a little-known concentration camp and
museum, she spontaneously experiences a violent past life memory of being
murdered in this very camp during the Holocaust. Efforts to understand her
memories only lead to more questions, the largest being: is her killer still
alive? Supported by her friends and comforted in the arms of a handsome doctor,
Julia attempts to uncover the mysteries of her past life and find justice for
the person she used to be.
Interested? Then here’s an excerpt from Fleischerhaus: Read
on and enjoy:
Fleischerhaus
CHAPTER 1
JULY, 2003
The bucolic German countryside breezed by, wandering sheep
and a few lazy cows in direct contrast to the racing bike Julia propelled over
the dirt lane. Her blonde hair flying in the late July breeze, she couldn’t get
over how clear the air was here, how sharp everything looked. It was as if
she’d been living under water all her life and now suddenly she’d been thrust
up out of the bleary depths into startling clarity. She couldn’t seem to get
enough of it.
“Jules,” her friend Maggie laughed from her own bike, “you’d
better watch the road. This isn’t Venice Beach. If you hit a rock or a pothole
while you’re gawking around, you’ll go flying.”
Chagrinned, Julia dragged her green eyes from the thickly
forested hillsides and the rolling pastures. “I can see why you love it here,”
she said. “It really is gorgeous. I thought you were nuts when you said you and
Denis were moving here.”
“Well, if you’ll remember, I wasn’t completely crazy about
the idea at first, but I have certainly come to love it,” Maggie said. “Like
any born and bred Californian, I thought this was the back of beyond, but after
a while I realized I enjoyed the peace and quiet, the lack of malls and
freeways. It really is almost a fairy-tale existence.”
“Complete with Prince Charming,” Julia noted. “I think you’d
be happy living on a pig farm if you had Denis there with you.”
“Well,” Maggie allowed cheerfully, “that helps.”
Julia fell silent, her friend’s quiet happiness in sharp
relief against her own new emptiness. It still pained her to remember that
gaping hole in her life where her own husband used to be. She wasn’t sure what
was worse, the loss of him or the fact that he had wandered so blithely, hardly
even considering what his infidelity would do to her. She supposed that lack of
consideration had actually underscored their entire married life, but she’d
never been forced to arm wrestle with it until he confessed to the affair. Why
hadn’t she seen it coming? Try as she might, she could not see the signs, even
in the rear-view mirror. Had she been too naïve? Had he been too smooth?
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said softly. Julia looked over to see
the concern in her friend’s blue eyes and realized she’d sunken into the now
familiar silent reverie that seemed to occupy her every day.
“Shit, Mags, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said forcefully.
“Why my brain insists on climbing back onto that hamster wheel and rehashing
the whole thing over and over again, I’ll never know. I go over the same ground
every time and it never changes, it never resolves, it never reduces down to an
equation I can understand, accept and walk away from. I just keep going through
it again and again.”
“It’s only been a few months,” Maggie reminded her gently.
“You don’t undo eight years of life in six months.”
“I know,” she sighed. “But you know what the worst part is?
I feel like I don’t know what’s real anymore, what’s true. Hell, I thought we
had a pretty good thing going, better than most. I mean, sure, there were days
we weren’t on the same page, things we disagreed on, but all in all I thought
we were pretty happy. To find out it wasn’t that way at all … well, it just
makes me wonder what else I’m not seeing clearly. I don’t trust my own judgment
anymore. I see things one way and then wonder if they’re actually different.” She
shook her head. “It really rocked me, a lot more than I would have believed.”
“I guess,” Maggie said slowly, “when you put it like that,
it would be normal to start questioning everything, but I hope you’re not being
too hard on yourself. You’re one of the most down-to-earth people I know,
Jules. You’ve never been flaky, never been an airhead, so I don’t think it’s
fair to start rethinking everything you’ve ever believed. You never expected
Jack to stray, so you weren’t looking for it. He did the unexpected. That
doesn’t invalidate everything you know.”
Julia nodded, not completely convinced. “I guess.” She
sighed. “But I just hate sliding into that zone, obsessing about it at the drop
of a hat. And I don’t want you to feel like your happy marriage makes it worse
for me. It doesn’t. I love seeing you and Denis together. You guys are great.
You two let me know that honest, respectful relationships really do exist. And
the way Denis is with Marita—he’s definitely a keeper.”
“That he is,” Maggie agreed happily, nodding her dark head.
“His offering to keep her today while we go exploring is pretty normal for him.
He’s such a good dad, and Marita just adores him. Sometimes I feel a little
pang over how close they are, but in a few months I’ll have my hands full with
the baby, so I don’t think I’ll have any room to complain.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Julia said, and her meaning was
unmistakable.
Both women had entered USC with no more ulterior motive than
to get the education they needed to have the careers they envisioned, Maggie in
medicine and Julia in teaching. The fact that each had found and married a
compatible partner deterred neither from her course, and for a while it seemed
they had it all—satisfying career and nurturing home and family. When Julia’s marriage
fell apart, the rock-hard foundations of her life had dissolved suddenly into
quicksand.
“At least,” she said, voicing the thought Maggie had kept
silent, “we didn’t have any kids. I can thank God that Jack wanted to wait on
that.”
“Absolutely,” Maggie agreed. “It would be so much harder to
start over with small kids, plus you’d be tied to Jack forever through them.
This way it’s pretty much a clean break.”
“I made sure it was,” Julia nodded. “I even traded my stake
in his pension for his half of the house. I didn’t want anything tying us
together, least of all money. This way we can go our separate ways and not look
back.”
“Well, it’s great that you took the summer off to come over
here. I think it’ll be a wonderful interim for you, a time when you can relax
and just enjoy yourself and recharge your batteries. At the end of the summer
it’ll be time to switch gears again, but by then you’ll probably be frothing at
the mouth to get back to work.”
“I’ve wanted to see your place ever since you moved here,
but there just never seemed a convenient time to do it,” Julia said. “Now that
I’m here, I wish I had come years ago.”
“We’ll do our best to make it worth the wait,” Maggie
laughed. “When we get to town, I’ll show you our clinic and we’ll eat lunch at
a tiny little café and buy fresh-baked bread and do all those European—”
“What’s that?” Julia interrupted. She pointed to a
collection of small white bungalows in a clearing amid the trees. A neat white
fence bordered the property, speaking of care. A small parking lot had one car
in it. “Couldn’t be a school out here, could it?” Her teacher’s curiosity
sparked to attention.
“No, it’s a museum,” Maggie said. “This was a work camp
during World War II. I’ve actually only been there once, and that was years
ago.”
“Work camp?” Julia repeated suspiciously. “Does that mean
...?”
“Concentration camp?” Maggie finished. “Yes, unfortunately.
It wasn’t a big one and didn’t have the ovens or anything like that, but over a
thousand Jews died there, as well as others, mostly from starvation and
exposure. There’re several mass graves in the back. It’s very tragic, of
course, but they do a nice job of honoring the victims. We can stop there
sometime, if you want.”
“Can we stop now?” Julia surprised even herself with the
hasty request.
“Now?” Maggie repeated. “Well, sure, if you want to. We’ve
got no schedule today; we can do whatever we want.”
“Yeah, let’s stop,” Julia said. In her new unattached state,
yielding to the sudden pull of the place seemed a small celebration amid the
pain. Maybe she really had gotten kind of pedantic without realizing it. How
long had it been since she’d done something so impulsive?
The two women steered their bikes onto the car-wide lane
that snaked through the trees. The morning sun slanted intermittently through
the trees, its yellow rays alive with dust motes and tiny insects. A slight
breeze barely fluttered the leaves around them. The setting was so peaceful,
Julia thought, how could anyone envision a death camp here?
They parked their bikes in a rack in front of the main
building, the small sign reading only Fleischerhaus. Julia had to wonder if it
were the kind of thing where everyone knew the story so no explanation was
necessary, or if it were a subtle sense of shame that precluded any larger
advertising. Any monument to victims that died here had also to be a monument
to the native Germans who lived nearby and turned a blind eye to the Nazi
atrocities. She couldn’t imagine anyone coming through that war unscathed, no
matter how hard they may have tried to go about normal lives. In a conflict
like that, there was just no room for neutrality.
“The fences are all gone, of course, but they’ve set markers
in the ground where they used to be,” Maggie explained as they walked past the
flowerbeds toward the front door. “All of these bungalows are the originals,
just restored.”
Julia nodded, but thought restored might not be the right word.
She doubted that this place ever looked as homey as it did now. Certainly the
startling white paint and the multi-colored flowerbeds were never a part of the
original experience.
“What does Fleischerhaus mean?” she asked. “I think haus is
house, right?”
“Yes. Fleischer means butcher.”
“So, butcher’s house.” Julia shivered. “Ug.”
They went inside. A docent behind a desk welcomed them and
spoke with Maggie. Julia noticed a collection box and slipped a couple Euros
into the slot. The walls were covered with black and white photos as well as
racks of books about the war.
“She said there’s a self-guided tour,” Maggie said as she
joined Julia at the bank of pictures. “I’ve got a guide brochure here. There
are four other buildings beside this one.”
“Look at the children,” Julia noted, pointing to a picture
of school-age children working an unpromising plot of ground. Sadly she
realized these kids were the same age as her students back home.
“Yes,” Maggie said, “unfortunately whole families were
brought here. I believe the youngest to die here was a child of two.”
“Were they all Jews?” Julia asked.
“Primarily. There was a scattering of other ‘undesirables:’
homosexuals, political prisoners, other non-Germans. I suppose the good news is
that this area has always been composed of small villages, so there was never a
large population of any particular group. I think that alone kept this
operation small.”
Scanning the photos along the wall, Julia was dismayed at
the expressions on the faces. She saw the fire of defiance, anger and hatred,
the pain of hopelessness and despair, the shuttered look of resignation.
Somehow that blank stare was the worst. To her, it looked like those who had
abandoned all feeling were dead already. But in what ocean of pain and degradation
had they swum before they slipped beneath the surface? How much had they
endured before they shut down so completely?
“Let’s go outside,” she said, wondering now whatever
possessed her to want to come in. She hadn’t been prepared to see faces, or for
the onslaught of emotions that tore at her.
Leading the way out the back door, she stepped down the two
stairs onto a concrete path. The path led around the perimeter of the grounds
and branched to the other buildings as well. Needing the open space and the fresh
air, Julia turned right along the perimeter.
“Boy, it felt so heavy in there,” she told Maggie. “The
emotions are just overwhelming.”
“I know,” Maggie agreed. “It’s such a horrible thing that
you don’t even want to be reminded, you don’t want to hear about it or think
about it, but it’s exactly because it’s so awful that we have to remind
ourselves. We have to keep it fresh so it never happens again.”
“Amen,” Julia murmured.
“Here’s that garden area that was in the picture,” Maggie
said as they neared a marker. Scanning the brochure, she said, “They mostly
raised potatoes, but some other vegetables as well. When the people got so
emaciated that they couldn’t work, the gardening stopped.”
Julia scanned the ordinary plot of dirt, imagining
stick-thin people scrounging in the earth for shriveled potatoes. Immense
sadness settled around her.
“How long was this place in operation?” she asked. Standing
at the corner of the grounds looking back at the bungalows, she realized the
quaint, unremarkable collection of buildings could never align in her head with
the atrocities that must have happened here. The peaceful image before her and
the sense of the destruction would always be at odds with each other.
“Four years. Long enough for hundreds to die.”
Julia nodded. They walked the perimeter to the back of the
property where markers denoted mass graves. Physically there was nothing to
delineate the graves except the slight rise of the ground. Lush grass covered
the area, dotted with small summer flowers that grew wild. This should be a
picnic area, she thought when she looked at the cool grass and the tiny flowers
nodding in the breeze, but her mind imagined a picnic table set over a pit
stuffed with wailing, suffocating people. She shivered and walked on.
“This next building had been the officers’ quarters,” Maggie
read. “The one dormitory that’s been restored is that last building before we
turn back to the visitor’s center.”
The officers’ quarters could have been any military “home.”
Austere but comfortable, it had several bedrooms, a large kitchen, a genial
front room. The large front windows had heavy, dark drapes that could be drawn
against the sight of the emaciated prisoners on the grounds. Was it really that
easy to block out? Julia wondered.
“I guess the ‘lucky’
ones, if you could call them that, were the ones who were recruited to take
care of the officers,” Maggie paraphrased from the guidebook.
Julia shook her head. “The truly lucky ones were the ones
who were killed outright,” she said. She could envision a bold young man trying
to escape one of the periodic round-ups, imagine him breaking away and running.
The cowed others would see him summarily shot and they would go docilely
wherever they were herded, thinking they were better off than the man lying
dead in the street. Of course they wouldn’t know they were wrong until it was
too late.
Leaving the officers’ quarters, Julia found herself not
caring to touch anything, as if the horrific machinery of the past were somehow
imbued with an evil that could transfer to her through touch. As before, she
felt much better stepping out into the sunlight again.
A smaller building sat behind the officers’ quarters. There
was no sign on it, but Julia felt a morbid curiosity about it. “What’s that?”
she asked Maggie.
Maggie scanned the guidebook. “Storage building,” she said.
“The dormitory is over this way.” She indicated the path that would lead them
to the last large building and then return them to the front of the property.
“I want to see this first,” Julia said, and headed for the
storage building.
She felt a peculiar prickling sensation in her head. A
headache? She didn’t think so. The sensation itself was not unpleasant, just
... unusual. She couldn’t remember ever feeling anything quite like it. She
walked to the door of the storage building and reached for the doorknob, then
found herself immediately, uncontrollably, shrinking back.
Get a grip, she thought. How much misery can be stamped on a
storage building? But she seemed powerless to open the door.
“Jules?” Maggie queried from behind her.
Willing herself through the curtain of dread that seemed to
keep her stationary, she swallowed and reached for the door. The knob turned
easily in her hand—not with difficulty, as with a rusting mechanism as she had
expected—and the door swung open. There was no odor, although she expected one:
the musty, powdery smell of bulk flour or grain, the earthy smell of raw
potatoes. After the brightness of outdoors, the windowless building was dark
but she forced herself to step up into the dimness and let her eyes adjust.
The room was distinctly unremarkable. Blank white walls held
a few pictures of prisoners in a food line, holding dirty, dented metal plates,
each being served a single smallish potato in a thin gruel. A small table
nearby held one of those plates. A desk in the opposite corner was empty except
for a roster of supplies under glass. Rough burlap sacks were stacked against
one wall, but when Julia peeked into the loose opening of one, she saw it held
only rocks.
The prickling sensation in Julia’s head intensified. Her
vision began to swim slightly, as if her eyes were crossing and she could not
get them to line up correctly. Instead of the clean white walls, she saw dingy
raw wood and signs tacked up with flat metal thumbtacks. The paper signs seemed
to flutter as if a breeze disturbed them, and the blurry picture revolved
slowly around and beyond her sight of the actual room before her. She felt her
stomach turn over, as if the moving images were making her nauseous. A heavy
dread descended on her and she wiped damp palms on her thighs.
“Nothing much here,” Maggie said behind her.
But there was, Julia realized. There was a door behind the
desk. A door ... to another room. Clamping her jaws tight against the sickness
that threatened to well up in her throat, she crossed to the door and put her
hand on the knob. Every nerve in her body screamed out against opening it, but
she fought through the intense panic and turned the knob. The door swung open
to another, smaller room, as she had known it would.
Her eyes jumped about the room, looking for things that she
did not want to see but that should have been there. A ghostly vision of
clutter—boxes, wooden boards, stacks of burlap bags and ropes, a crude wooden
palette with a thin ticking on top—was superimposed over her view of the room
as it currently was. The small windowless room was entirely empty but it felt
oppressively crowded to her, as if she couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe. The
air in the room was thick, stifling her lungs. She felt herself struggling for
breath. Chest heaving, sweat breaking out on her face, she had to fight to keep
her feet as dizziness swamped her. She had the distinct feeling that her throat
was closing, her airway shutting down. She heard small, harsh gurgling noises
and realized they were coming from her own throat. Putting a hand to her
throat, she saw the side door leading to outside and she lunged for it. Yanking
the door open, she leaped as if the hounds of hell were after her and fell
blindly down the two steps to sprawl on the grass outside.
“Jules!” Maggie called. She was instantly beside Julia and
turning her limp body face up. Julia’s eyes were rolled back in her head and
she gagged violently. When Julia fought to turn away from her friend, Maggie
let her go and Julia vomited on the grass. Her entire body shuddered with the effort.
Maggie sat quietly beside her and rubbed her back until the spasms stopped.
“Julia?” Maggie said softly. “Are you okay?”
Julia gulped in air and fought the bile that threatened to
rise in her throat again. Slowly her head began to clear and she could open her
eyes and see only the grass and trees before her. Raking in huge breaths, she
turned back toward Maggie and struggled to sit up next to her friend. Maggie
helped her with a supportive arm behind her back.
“You okay now?” she asked.
Julia nodded, still not quite trusting her voice. She looked
around at the open grounds and was acutely relieved to notice that it all
stayed put. She steadied herself with a few more deep breaths and finally faced
Maggie.
“Jesus,” she said wearily.
Maggie felt her forehead. “You’re warm but you don’t feel
like you have a fever,” she said. “I wonder if you’re catching something? Or if
something at breakfast didn’t agree with you?”
Julia shook her head, then regretted it as the dizziness
returned. She clamped her jaws tight and waited for it to pass.
“No,” she said finally, “it’s nothing like that.” She
glanced over her shoulder at the small white building behind them. “It’s that,”
she said, hooking a thumb in that direction.
Maggie looked back over her shoulder, clearly confused.
“It’s what?” she asked. There was nothing there, at least nothing that would
make anyone sick.
“Can you ... help me up?” Julia asked. She rolled to her
knees and let Maggie pull her to her feet. “I’d like a drink of water.”
“Sure,” Maggie said. “Come on, let’s go back to the
visitor’s center.”
“No,” Julia said firmly. “I want to stay outside. Over
there.” She pointed to a bench set beneath a large tree just off the parking
lot.
“Okay,” Maggie said. “Can you walk okay? I’ll go get you
some water.”
Julia nodded and started across the grounds toward the
bench. Maggie angled back toward the visitor’s center and found Julia beneath
the tree a few minutes later.
“Thanks, Mags,” Julia said gratefully. She opened the small
bottle of water and sipped it. The cool liquid felt heavenly on her rough
throat. She sloshed some water around in her mouth and spit it out on the
ground, then drank deeply. She held the cool bottle to her forehead.
“So, now,” Maggie said, watching her friend closely, “what
did you mean back there? What do you think made you sick?”
Julia rolled the bottle across her forehead, stalling a bit.
“This is going to sound nuts,” she started slowly, “but the truth is that I
feel like I died in that room.”
Maggie sat silently, a blank look on her face. “What do you
mean?” she asked finally, her brow knitted in confusion. “You only blacked out
for just a few—”
“Not just now,” Julia said quickly. “Before. I think I died
there, suffocated there ... like in another life.”
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Fleischerhaus-Melissa-Bowersock- ebook/dp/B00KPI2F5A/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid
=
For more information about Melissa, writing and her books,
please check out her website at:
http://melissabowersock.com/
Thank you all for visiting with us. Until
next month...every one please stay safe. Smile. Be happy. Show compassion. Be
nice to others. Put a little love into your heart. Please speak up for those
without a voice, whether it be a dog, cat, elephant or monkey. One person, one voice can make a difference.
Regards,
S. J. Francis
Advocate for the underdog, and cat, et al.
In Shattered Lies: "It's All About
Family." Coming soon from Black
Opal Books.
My Black Opal
Books Author Page:
http://www.blackopalbooks.com/author-bios/bio-sj-francis
View My Shout Out: http://bit.ly/1r3oynM
My web page: http://sjfranciswriter.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sjfrancis419
Face Book:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006313201444
My Writing Blog: http://sjfranciswriter.blogspot.com
A Book Review 4 U: http://abookreview4u.blogspot.com
A Consumer's View: http://aconsumersview.blogspot.com
One for the Animals: http://
onefortheanimals.blogspot.com
Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/sjfrancis419/
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104831238907682620486/about
Good Reads:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33550975-s-j
And now for some legal stuff: Copyright 2015 by S.J. Francis. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the author, S. J. Francis and the guest author and are meant to entertain, inform and enlighten, and intend to offend no one.
Amazing lady...and don't I know it, just from reading her posts on Indies Unlimited. And now I know what a prolific and talented writer she is, too. Thanks for featuring Melissa on your blog today, S.J. Francis. Enjoyed learning more about her!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Linda for stopping by and leaving a comment. I'm sure Melissa will appreciate it. I do. I love promoting other writers!
DeleteLinda, thanks so much! Appreciate your comments, and your constant presence on IU. This was a fun interview, good questions! She made me think!
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