Every writer who ever lived can learn something from Stephen King who preaches we need a place and a time to write. He  means with no interruptions, doors closed.

Yeh, right. When you’re rushing to get to work, when the laundry needs doing, diapers need changing, and some robo’s calling for your vote– not so easy.

I think I’ve always hungered to write stories. Have scribble and scratched since I learned cursive. Years ago, I wanted to quit just scribbling  and  WRITE.

It didn’t go well; interruptions, intrusions: phone calls, the brownies sitting on the counter, checks on the weather all  knocked at the door and I let them in.

I finally gave Stephen King a try. In the mornings, began turning off my phone and closing up in my little space (a landing at the top of the stairs). I resisted the urges to check email and the stock market. Laundry did not exist. The phone didn’t exist. I told friends I wasn’t available in the mornings, but some still called. I felt guilty when I didn’t answer, had to make myself resist.

I kept myself cooped up there, hands on the keyboard, rear in the chair and—voila—pages began to get written.

My friends have since learned I’m not available mornings until after eleven o’clock. And, to a person, they respect my privacy. One, an artist, is the sort who thrives on contact. We share an awful lot in common and can debate almost anything endlessly. He waits, and when the phone rings at 11:02 I know it’s him.

Get your hands on Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. He’s generous at conveying the behaviors that allow writing to get done. And one of his most important lessons is  that we need some place and time for our writing or our stories will never be told.

Thank you, Stephen King.

You’re in the hands of genius when a tiny novel of 198 pages can convey two entire lives.

Having risen above her upbringing of abject poverty, Lucy Barton is visited in the hospital by her estranged mother. What follows is a treatise on class and a deep and troubling coming together.

Nearly as brief and as powerful, Anything is Possible returns to the small town where Lucy Barton grew up. We see her, scattered among stories, that continue the theme of class and poverty among the dense lives of the people Lucy knew.

These two books are amazing work. Amazing.

Now onto her newest title: Olive, Again. May she never quit writing!

If you like legal mysteries with a touch of thriller, you’ll love Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series. I just finished A Crime of Passion, the seventh in the series . (For a literary reader and writer, it’s a bit of an admission, but hey, I’ve read them all.)

Joe Dillard is a practicing attorney in Nashville. He is honest, down-home, has a wife he adores, some trusty friends, and a good family. He has been through the trenches from DA to private practice, to prosecutor and has seen the oily underbelly of all sides the law.

Pratt takes readers on a real romp that even I, with no sense of the law, can enjoy and understand.

I won’t review any of his titles, will just say get your hands on one–preferably the first in the series, An Innocent Client, then thank me for the introduction.

I just finished Kate Manning’s My Notorious Life. What a read.

In the mid 1800s an impoverished New York mother dies in childbirth. She leaves behind three siblings who are shipped off to remote county agencies that split them up. The eldest, Axie nurtures them until the agencies take them away.

Axie sets out to make her way on her own, all the while continuing a futile effort to find her baby brother and sister. She finds a helper’s position with a “female Doctor”, a midwife, who advises women, poor and rich, in all aspects of women’s difficulties, including “unblockings”, a euphemism for abortions.

Eventually, Axie takes over the practice and becomes incredibly successful. But waiting for her are the men of established “morality” who come down on her in their full and righteous dudgeon. Her world thunders down on her in a form of hell, the righteous slamming their full power onto Axie’s husband and her young daughter,

My Notorious Life is wonderful read, one that can sink readers to their knees when they acknowlede the distances we’ve come.

For everybody who likes a free deal (and may return the favor with a review), check Come the Morning’s NetGalley advert startling Tuesday Oct 29. The ad will run off and on for a short time. Catch it while you can.

Come the Morning is on Netgalley!

Tomorrow is the official publication date and I am so excited; Come the Morning will be available everywhere tomorrow: in bookstores, Amazon, Apple, Google, Europe, Asia, India, you name it.

For readers who write reviews, sign in or sign up with Netgalley for a chance for a free eBook of Come the Morning, which has been called “Deep”, “Superbly engrossing“, A top recommendation.”

Orphaned at fifteen in 1883, Ezekiel Harrington is forced from his home in remote Nebraska into the hands of strangers in Philadelphia. They steal from him, and he flees their abuse. Only his drive and stubborn tenacity keep him from starving.

After desolate years, a collective of striving artists befriends him. A crude Bohemian of incredible talent is in the group, a woman Ezekiel despises.

He rents a failing storefront, sets himself up as an art gallery owner and naively tries to make his fortune.

Reality has another idea. When chance throws Ezekiel and the illicit Bohemian together, life catapults him on an intense and unexpected course.

Somewhere I read that getting anywhere takes a million baby steps. Right now, with Come the Morning due to publish in a week, most “steps” should be done But they’re not, not even close.

Am I getting older? Tireder? Lazier? I don’t know.

Looking back I must have already taken a billion baby steps. That should be enough, why more? she whines. “Well, Jeannie,” my mother’s voice hums in my head, “that’s the way it goes.” She was always the sage; I wonder if Mom ever got overwhelmed like her daughter does. Probably, but if so, she hid it well.

I got up this morning, worked on some pressing details, worked on more, then some more. Went to lunch, came back and had ten (or was it a hundred?) more to go.

This will surely end. knock wood, and when it does you’ll likely see fireworks from my neck of the woods.