Any new book releases? Any new news? Both, of course!
Remember James and Sally from May I Have Your Attention Please? They were in for quite a shock on the first day of junior year of high school, when Sally returned from private school, had an early morning run-in with James, and the fabric of the whole universe was changed for them both. We followed them through a year of discovery, finding love and their place in the world.
At the same time, Kim and Carl were struggling to get past their challenging childhoods and letting themselves fall for each other fall hard inI Just Can’t Say I Love You. They took a chance on each other, leaving their lifetime homes and everything they knew behind them to venture out west. Along the way, they found themselves learning about what loyalty and happiness meant, and they learned who they could really trust with their hearts, and their lives.
And then there was Chris, in Absolutely and Totally Smitten. He was the ultimate rebel, king of the Bad Boy Posse. Suddenly, everything changed, and Chris found himself alone and confused. None of his old habits and skills could get him out of this one. But one thing he still had were his friends. And he a was amazed when one day, in college, one of those friends became something so much more to him. But was he in any place to open his heart again and let love in? Or would he only be facing a world of pain, maybe even one of his own design?
So what comes next for the friends of McKinney High Class of 1986?
Get ready to meet Stavros. He doesn’t go to McKinney High. He doesn’t even live in Eastboro. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even meet anyone from Eastboro until years after high school. So what is he doing in this series? I’ll tell you what: Stavros is getting ready to overcome one of the worst traumas that can occur in childhood. He is able to try to live his life like normal, not knowing that normal just doesn’t apply to his life. And when everything finally blows up after graduation, Stavros is left in pieces, not knowing how to cope. He makes some decisions that lead him down a very dangerous and destructive path, one he will have to spend years trying to dig himself out of.
In the meantime, Darlene is struggling with her day-to-day life in Eastboro, making friends in elementary school, faking her way through social issues in junior high, and coming close to crashing when something horrible happens to her at junior prom. But Darlene must always keep the smile on her face. She must show the world that everything is just fine, especially her mother. And she must follow the path that her father set in motion for her life years earlier. Inside, she is dying, but somehow, she keeps going. It’s all good until she finally collapses in college, leading to suspicion from her mother. She still powers forward, getting through to graduation, and even into the working world. It’s not until she starts the path to graduate school that the one event that could make her break occurs and puts her out of commission. From that day on, Darlene must work to save herself, and to prove to herself that she is worthy of saving.
What happens when at last Stavros and Darlene meet? What can they possibly offer each other? Are they too broken to let love into their lives, or can love help them to continue in their own recovery journeys?
Coming in September: The Stories That Must Be Told. The story of loss, self-destruction, and final redemption. And overall, learning to let love into your heart, no matter how scary it might be. It might just be the best thing that ever happens to you.
In other writing new:
Coming this September: Don’t Say A Word is coming out in an audio format! I’m so excited to let you all know about this! I have had so many requests for audio versions of my books. This is the first try. I am very pleased to have found a wonderful, experienced narrator, making me feel a lot less nervous about the process. More to come on this venture soon!
COMING IN DECEMBER:
Book 2 of the Anomaly series, called Blinding Justice. Kaya and Graham are back, along with Grayson, Dr. Blake, and a whole new group of characters with various skills and abilities. I don’t want to give away too much right now, but just know this: Kaya is NOT the only person in the world who can do what she does…or other things. And we will be meeting some of them in this book. I can’t wait until you start to meet the gang. I love these characters like they were my own friends, which makes sense, since I’m actually currently writing book 13 of this series!
More to come as all of these releases get closer. If you have any questions, you can contact me. I’d be happy to tell you more about these series, and these dynamic characters!
hat the fork is going on here,” asked the fat man with the shiny forehead.
I had to turn to look at him because the words did not match the tone.
My first vision of him was one to behold. He was wearing a button up Hawaiian shirt in muted tropical colors, like it had become intimate friends with the hot water laundry over many years of beloved service. He was wearing khaki shorts that came down to his hairy knees. He was wearing loafers with white crew socks. He had his hair combed, or combed over, straight across his head, greased down to almost a perfect crease, obviously done with great care in front of the mirror.
He looked out of place in the bar, where business men and women stood waiting for their glasses of wine or craft ale. He held out his brightly colored cocktail toward the bartender, with a bewildered look on his paunchy face. He was rather short, so he had to look up to the bartender as he spoke.
“Why is there a fork in my drink?” He asked. “There is supposed to be a festive cocktail umbrella, like I ordered. A fork looks nothing like an umbrella, I am not sure how you could have mistaken the two.”
It was clear the man had partaken in a few of these tropical concoctions as the night had passed. He did not appear angry but more affronted by the bartender’s mistake.
“I can’t do anything with this fork. I can’t drink through it like a straw, and when I try to use it like a spoon, the drink just goes right through it back into the glass. It would take me all night to drink it like this, and I really don’t have all night.”
The bartender smiled kindly at the man, and offered to fix him a new drink, this one with a foldable, paper umbrella, just like they had in Hawaii. The man nodded in appreciation.
As he turned to walk back to his table with the freshened, newly umbrellaed drink, I saw that he had a red carnation pinned to his left lapel.
It hit me like a hammer. This was my tinder date. What the fork.
That was a very short story I wrote in my writing group prior to COVID. We would meet every other week at a coffee shop, a different one each time, and work on writing prompts. This one was simply “What the fork is going on here?” What came after was all from our imaginations. I loved that group. We all loved to write, read our work, and play writing games before we would go back to our own lives which were dominated by non-writing activities. The group tried to stay together after the lockdown, but just like everything else, it faded away over a very short time as we all adjusted to our new lives.
I love going back and reading the little tidbits of stories I wrote back then. They were whimsical and fun. So much different than writing chapters for books, or whole books. They captured mere minutes in life, fleeting thoughts and actions. Something small and trivial until put to words on “paper.”
I always enjoy sharing my work, so I will treat you to a couple more today.
She had not fed for days. She could feel the weakness in her limbs. It had started with the tingling in her toes. She wiggled them in her Converse sneakers, and at the same time that she was developing an unsightly hole in the left shoe. She would have to take a trip to the outlet stores on the weekend to buy a new pair. Black high-tops. Chucks. She had been wearing them for 3 decades, one pair after another, through all the trends and styles. They always seemed to be in. Now she pushed that thought away and found herself shaking her wrists, like one used to do with a mercury thermometer. She hated that feeling of pins and needles. She felt uneasy, and was sure that all around her could sense her discomfort. She did a quick survey. She was sitting at an outside table at a coffee shop, her latte in front of her, ignored as she contemplated her dire situation. If anyone was looking, it was due to her spaced out appearance, not because they knew her secret. She had kept it to herself for over a century, and today would not be the day it was revealed. She had been too careful. She had lost friends and lovers to carelessness over the decades, and now, as she sat alone, watching the city dwellers go on with their daily routine, she thought it might be her time. No, I am not ready, she insisted to herself. There is too much to do, too much to fix. I must find a way to go on. She had been weak, she had succumbed to the urges to leave her past behind and move on, not preparing for what was to come. She sipped her drink and grimaced. She twirled around the contents, as if to believe that the heat resided at the bottom of the cup, just waiting to be released. She sipped again. Cold. She stood up and walked to the trash can and threw the cup inside with a look of disgust. As if she thought this could save her. How long could she go? Did she have the strength to get to where she needed to be, to get what she needed, to thrive again?
She thought of her mother. She had not seen her since that fateful night so many years ago, when she had turned …different. Her parents and brothers would be long gone now. She did not know if they married, had children, grandchildren. It would probably be easy to find out, but to what end? How could she ever explain her affliction, how she remained forever young, and had to feed….
It was time to make a plan. She took out her cell phone and started to search. She found a likely place not too far away. It was one train and 2 bus rides from where she was. She could be there by 4pm. It was a start.
She walked to the train stop and stood apart from the others. She could not stand the smell of humans when she was hungry. They repulsed her. It was hard to believe she used to walk among them as one of them. It was easier early on, when one could go days without seeing a neighbor, and had to make an effort to be in a crowd. Now she could not get away, no matter where she went. They did not understand her any more than she understood their modern ways.
The train pulled up and she got in the front car. Sat in the front and wondered if this would work. Every time was a struggle. But it was worth the effort, to keep going, to keep vital.
An hour later, she got off the bus and approached her destination. She paid her fee and went inside. She walked around looking for the most likely target. There it was, in the corner, by itself, apart from the crowd. She looked around. No one could see her, no one could stop her. She stepped over the fence. She approached it. She stooped down to its level. Now, if only she could think of a way to get the goat to surrender its tears.
Magic was the key. He had been practicing since he was a child and learned about Houdini. He adored escapes and sleight of hand, although an occasional card trick kept him entertained. He was in high school now and trying to work out a plan.
The idea of pursuing magic came on him like a strike of magic! He would pursue his dream of entertaining the masses with his tricks and illusions. He would tempt them with his deceit and reel them in with his revelations! He had to find a way to make this dream a reality. He had never heard of a college major in magic. That would be his ideal, to spend the remainder of his formative years immersed in his passion, learning from the masters, perfecting his trade and adding his own illusions to those that came before him. But the dream might not come to fruition if there was no place for him to go to learn. There was no Hogwarts University, and no owl to invite him to study with witches and wizards. If there was something like that, he had not been made aware, and had to look at all of his options.
He needed a trick. One would reel everyone in. With everyone having computers now, he would be able to video tape his new trick and entrance the world with his glory. He would have to get a video camera. He could use his savings, that was set aside for college, as college now did not seem to be his calling. He would bring the world of magic to its knees. Magicians would be lining up at his door, seeking to learn his secret, but he would not reveal it, not yet. Not until his notoriety had hit a crescendo, until he was producing new tricks and drawing new audiences. It would be fantastic. No one would ever call him four eyed McGee anymore. They would be begging for his autograph, just to touch the hem of his cape.
So now he needed to invent the new trick. He looked around his room. He listed his assets. A box full of D and D dice, half spilling on to his desk on top of his loose papers and gum wrappers. An apple core that he had hurled toward the trash bin on Tuesday, but it bounced off the rim and onto a pile of dirty jeans and briefs. His fish tank with the single Siamese Fighting Fish, sitting still in the center of the tank but for the wagging of a dorsal fin. Muddy dog prints on the carpet on his white tee shirt on the floor near the hamper. Not much to go on. He could make an apple disappear, but that was simply by ingesting it. Nothing new or fancy.
He opened the window to air out the smell of dirty socks, and to try to extend the time until his mother told him his room smelled like the inside of a gym locker. He took a deep breath of the late spring air, and caught a whiff of baking bread coming from the bakery down the street. His mind started to drift toward the rumble in his stomach. He knew the magic trick to make that go away. Just at that moment, there was a call from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”
As he headed barefoot down the stairs, taking them 2 at a time, he pondered asking his mother her trick for knowing when it was just the right time to feed her family. That was the real magic.
If you are interested in writing groups, you can probably find them on Facebook or Instagram in your search bar. Many are on-line, but there are also local groups that meet too. We enjoyed using word or prompt generators to come up with ideas for our fifteen-minute writing sprints. There are a lot of options to choose from online. I wish you luck in your writing! Happy Summer!
Seven books by seven authors, various genres. We have all gotten together and decided to do a massive book launch. We have all been through this journey together, and want to see it through!
Please consider checking out one or all of the titles!
I’m very excited to be associated with the other six women in this group. I have known Leya Layne for some time, as we are in a writing sprint group together every Sunday morning, and she has introduced me to the other ladies listed above. They are all very talented writers with amazing imaginations! I am honored to be a part of this project!
We will be posting more information this week on our social media pages, culminating in a live launch party on TikTok at various times throughout the time zones of our fine country! For the Pacific region, it will most likely be around 1:30, but I will update as needed.
I am really pumped about releasing book 1 in my new series, Anomaly. Book 1 is an introduction to the continuing story of Kaya and her group of friends, The Merry Misfits, The Anobalies, or the Opposite Horsemen, as they dub themselves at varies times in the series! They are fun, witty, intelligent, and quite skilled. Learn what brings them together, to become the closest of friends and allies, and why you want to always be on their side, never against them. For your own sake!
Happy Thanksgiving to my not-IRL friends! This is also a big anniversary for me. It was two years ago this November that I had the dream that led me to start to write my first book. It was a vivid dream, one I can still see in my head if I concentrate hard enough. I was back in school, and it was high school. But it wasn’t my high school. I was at the public high school in my hometown. Somehow or other, I had ended up back at public high school after a year at private school. I was in the cafeteria, and I had finished my lunch. I was dumping my trash in the garbage can, when suddenly a boy I had not seen since I was in junior high approached me and asked me if it hurt. When I inquired about what would be hurting, he answered with a crooked smile, “when you fell from heaven.” In my dream, that pickup line led to a whirlwind relationship, and I got flashes of the next two years and how wonderful it was. I was so happy that I had gone back to public school. The dream was heading for happily ever after, when suddenly, a voice over spoke. “But none of this ever happened,” it said in a flowery but professional female voice, “because someone was out sick that day and the two never met by the garbage cans.
I don’t know if any Star Trek fans read my blog, but if so, do you remember the classic Next Generation episode where Jean-Luc Picard gets zapped by an alien probe, and ends up living decades on a strange planet, including having a wife, children, and grandchildren, and even learning how to play the flute, until he was a very old man, and he was returned to his ship, only to find that only 25 minutes had passed? Yeah, that’s kind of how it felt for me when I woke up from this dream. It had seemed so real, so vivid, that I had to sit there for a minute and remind myself that I graduated from high school, and not a public one, 35 years earlier! I was a bit disoriented, and couldn’t stop thinking about the dream for days.
It wasn’t the content of the dream so much, but the feelings it brought. I felt like I had missed something. There have been several times over the years when I have wondered what my life would have been like if I had gone to public school. Who would I have been friends with? The same people from junior high, or some other people from other junior highs that all converged on the same high school? Would I have met some new boy in high school, and would we have hit it off? Maybe whoever he was, he was at a private school somewhere thinking the same thing as me, about what it would have been like if things had gone differently.
I could have let it go right there, but actually, I couldn’t. I was anxious. We had just started with the Omicron variant of COVID, and things were not looking up with the world at that moment. I was stuck at home, working a job that I felt I could perform better with in-person collaboration, especially with my ADHD. I was craving change, something different. My family was doing the best they could. My poor daughter was stuck doing on-line school, which was not the best plan for her, and my retired husband was trying to keep the house together and also respect my need for quiet and confidentiality while I worked. Poor guy. And there I was, sitting in my tiny little home office, which was more like a glorified closet with windows on the far side of our bedroom. With a desk and a bookshelf in there, there was barely room to push back my chair, and my bed was two feet away, reminding me every moment that I was not in the office, and I had just crawled out of the covers right there only hours before, and would return there later that night. I HATED working from home. And there was no end in sight.
I mentioned before that I had been knitting, and I ended up completing 42 hats. That’s a lot of hats. They were in piles on a table near the front door, and my husband kept asking me what I was going to do with them. They kept falling over. I had no idea what to do with them. But then, the dream. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. The feelings. The not knowing. It was pushing at my brain. So one day, I decided to do something about it.
I started to write it down. I created some people. There was the girl, Sally, who had left her friends and gone to private school, to find her way, and see if it was a better fit for her than private school. Her parents had given her a choice, and she had decided. Then there was James. James was slightly troubled. He had difficulty with focus, and a brother with lots of problems. James represented the unknown to Sally. I had to give them a slight back story, so I did. They were acquainted in junior high, but he was a bad boy, and she was, uh, well, she hadn’t figured out what she was yet at the time. But somehow, she had some kind of connection with the bad boys.
And that’s where reality ended. When Sally meets James again in the hallway of McKinney High on the first day of school, every bit of that book becomes fiction. Sally and James set the stage and told me what needed to happen. Characters do that. They tell you about themselves, and when you put them together, they tell you what they are like together. You can write something else, but it won’t work. There is a chemistry, and if your characters have it, you have to go with it. You. Have. No. Choice. But I’m glad. Because Sally and James’s chemistry worked. It worked well for them, and for me. And the next thing you know, there’s a really long story about Sally and James. And my dream is satisfied.
The only problem, of course, is that once May I Have Your Attention Please was completed, Sally and James told me something else, something new, something unexpected. Their story was over, sort of, but there were lots of other stories to tell, and I already knew the characters. They were Sally and James’s friends, the ones that supported them, and helped them to make it all happen. They all had stories. And I had to tell them.
So I did. I wrote six more books in the series, each of them featuring supportive characters that were present in the hotel room on the night of junior prom. Junior prom. Something I didn’t go to, but Sally did. And it was the most wonderful time of her young life. I’m happy for Sally. And for James. They had it easy, and they found love.
As the series progresses, things are not so easy for all of the other characters. Kim and Carl have a tough time getting it together in Book 2, I Just Can’t Say I Love You. And some of the other characters don’t even end up with who they started with, as you will see in Book 3, coming in February. In Book 4, our female lead doesn’t even really have a high school boyfriend, and in Book 5, the female lead has more than one, but is not who we thought she was. Books 6 and 7 will surprise you, and if you’re anything like me, they’ll make you cry just a little.
I am now working on another series, which is in the same time period, but not featuring our McKinney High friends. They are there in some of the books as minor characters, but this series introduces you to new players, and new settings, including New York, Delaware, and Colorado (Eastboro is still in there, though. I love Eastboro). I’m on book 7 of 7 now, so I’m about to have to figure out what I’m doing next. I might leave the 1980s and Eastboro all together, and maybe try a completely different genre. Maybe add some magical touches. Only time, and my imagination, will tell.
Enjoy your holiday that has nothing to do with turkeys, and make the most of being with your family, whether the one you were assigned at birth, or the one you have chosen for yourself.
Debby Meltzer Quick, Author 