Blog Post
Introducing a guest blogger this week, author
Barbara Ellen Brink
https://www.amazon.com/Running-Home-Second-Chances-Book-ebook/dp/B006LP1JSU
Not too long ago I mentioned Barbara's first book in her first series. She has been a prolific and successful writer of enjoyable fiction that reflect her own healthy perspective and talent. She's going to share a bit about herself, then her journey as a writer. You'll discover just how difficult it can be!
First of all, thank you for inviting me onto your blog,
MaryJo. I am honored to be your guest writer. Hello to all of your readers and
fellow book lovers!
I’ll start by sharing a little about myself. I grew up on the West coast. I married a farm boy from South Dakota, and we ended up in Minnesota. We’ve been married for thirty-nine years. We have two children, now each thirty-something and both married. My son and his wife blessed us with a beautiful granddaughter two-and-a-half years ago and she keeps us running and entertained whenever she’s around. My daughter is a graphic designer and thankfully she still finds time outside her job to design my book covers.
As most writers will tell you, I grew up loving books and enjoyed writing my own stories. But I didn’t get serious about pursuing novel writing until after my kids were in high school. My husband, a big supporter of my dream, bought me one of those “now antiquated” word processors, (one step up from a typewriter), and encouraged me to follow my heart. I began and finished my first novel in 1999. It was set in the city of Seattle and was a time traveling romance with “twins” born fifty years apart, temporarily changing places through a fluke accident. Strangely enough, it was a story that unfolded in my dreams. I’d type feverishly on my word processor by day and at night new scenes filled my sleep like clips from a movie. It is completely different than anything I’ve written since, but at the time I felt compelled to write it. Looking back, I think it turned out to be a form of latent therapy. My first pregnancy ended at 27 weeks when I went into premature labor. Losing my baby was hard enough, but when my water broke and I rushed to the hospital, an ultrasound revealed that I was pregnant with twins. One baby had already died and in that time and place there was nothing they could do for the other, so I was put in a room to listen and grieve as the heartbeat of my second daughter slowly weakened and finally stopped. I stuffed the heartache away for years. People didn’t talk about miscarriage much back then and I’ve always been a pretty private person. But after I finished writing Dream Walking, I realized just how much my past experience had affected the story and threaded it with emotion. It’s never been published, but it is still on a file in my computer as a reminder that dreams do come true. Maybe not the way we imagine, but the way God plans for us, in his time.
After writing the great time traveling novel of the last century, I realized that agents were only looking for writers with publishing experience. One of those conundrums. You can’t get published without being published and you can’t be published without getting published. So, I started submitting short stories and articles to small publications and magazines. I had a number of things published but it still didn’t seem to be enough to impress agents or editors of big publishing houses.
I decided what I needed to do was attend writer’s conferences and learn as much as I could. There I could meet agents and editors and even have a piece of my work critiqued by entering their annual contests. I signed up for The Pacific Northwest Writers Association and immediately began working on a novel. My submission became a top-ten finalist but did not receive a ribbon. Even so, that contest submission, years later, went on to be the first book in my best-selling mystery/romance series, The Fredrickson Winery Novels.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteInteresting story about Dream Walking. Looking forward to the rest of the story next week. Very nice covers! It helps to have a graphic designer in the family. :)
ReplyDelete(I had a typo -- thus I removed my first comment. Blah!)
There are a lot of cover makers out there for hire, but it's special having my daughter design my covers for me and being able to work together in that way. She has the artistic gene I'm missing:)
DeleteI have more to say -- Barbara, if I had gone through what you did with your babies I would have nightmares too. How horrible. Perhaps the dreams, as you say, had a purpose.
ReplyDeleteI tend to tamp grieve down for as long as possible. I grew up competing with two brothers and for some reason, still find myself a bit embarrassed to allow others to see my tears. That suppressed emotion eventually comes out somewhere and as a writer I tend to release it through the characters in my books. Dream Walking was special in that it allowed me to find a way through my harbored grief and finally deal with it.
DeleteThank you for answering me. :) I write but not well. It is therapeutic either way. I have not tried writing fiction. I don't have the inclination for it. I like reading it though!
ReplyDeleteI have, but somehow had forgotten to read, one or two in the winery series. I bought them during a sale, after reading another Barbara Ellen Brink mystery, which I absolutely loved. I downloaded all to my newest e-reader after MaryJo told me about this upcoming blog post, and I am planning to read them (and re-read the others) as soon as I finish my current book.
ReplyDeleteHi Carole. I think the one you are referring to is Roadkill. The first in the Double Barrel mysteries. There are five in the series now and I plan for more. Blake is an ex homicide detective and his wife Shelby is a stage actress who grew up with an alcoholic father who raised her on Shakespeare. There is a little more humor in these stories than in the winery series, so that is probably why they are my favorite. You wouldn't happen to be "Middle Sisters Reviews" would you? Because I had a lovely review for Roadkill not long after it was published that was really encouraging to me. Those kind usually stick with a writer:)
DeleteAllow me to answer your question, Barbara. Carole is indeed Middle Sisters Review. As she explained during her guest post here, Carole's days as an on-line reviewer were short. I had the privilege of contributing a bit of material there during that time. If Carole gave you a good review, she meant it.
DeleteYes, and I loved Much Ado About Murder, too. I somehow missed the release of more, so you will excuse me as I go shopping.
DeleteA postscript:
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that today's culture is any kinder in the wake of miscarriages, as I hear far too many scolding those who grieve and insisting that "it" wasn't a "real" baby.
That is true for some. I would assume that people who support abortion can't in good faith believe the unborn are real living humans or it would destroy their talking points. When doctors perform surgeries on babies inside the womb on the same age infants they regularly murder inside the womb, you would think they would see the fault in their "science." The only difference between the two is that one mother wants their baby.
DeleteBut on a more positive note, I have seen a trend lately in local churches, ours included, that has a special group for these young women to get together and talk about their loss and support one another. I didn't have that when I needed it, so I'm glad to see things finally changing a bit.
I don't think the same doctors are doing those surgeries and the abortions. But that could be changing.
DeleteAs a retired obstetrical nurse, I can give some positive perspective on the care for and sensitivity to babies born so very early. (And my own grandson, now 26, was born at 28 plus weeks gestation.)
ReplyDeleteIt was wonderful to see the care these babies got in the neonatal care unit, and by the nurses who took care of the mother before that. These premature babies were treated as the precious human beings they were, in life and in death.
Outside of the health care settings I worked in, I've seen both the caring and the ignorant responses to the grief of the death of a baby born before its time.