Posted in News, Thoughts

Remembering Adrienne

I have told this story before to sell books but my telling it now has another purpose, to honor a friend. Adrienne Dunning was a fantastic, funny and feisty woman who lived up to her hair color. She died in a tragic accident the morning of July 5th. We’d just started making plans to return to Murfreesboro for a second writers’ retreat.

It was nearly two years ago, my friend, Adrienne Dunning and I were going to a writers’ retreat in Murfreesboro. I had known Adrienne for several years through the Pamlico Writers’s Group and our work on the writers conference. We’d become closer as we worked more closely together on projects for the Pamlico Writers. Like me, Adrienne had a lot of ideas and together we were looking forward to making them happen. We were still getting to know each other on a personal level, but we liked and respected each other’s work and writing so had made plans to attend several events together or meet up at a couple. The first was our trip to Murfreesboro.

Adrienne drove, and she and I shared stories about ourselves on our trip. I’d left my husband home with no electricity after a hurricane. He had told me to go, no need for me to cancel my plans since everything else was okay. Adrienne pointed out familiar places as she’d grown up in the area. She took me on a quick driving tour of the college and down town before bringing me up to the renovated house where I’d be staying. Adrienne would stay with her parents since they lived nearby and come in for the meals and meetings.

The event’s coordinator and owner of the house, Ruth Akright, had serval authors and a illustrator who would come in to do presentations. While I truly enjoyed the events and meeting the other authors, it was our impromptu discussions about writing that made the weekend the most memorable for me.

I was struggling to write my fourth book feeling frustrated that I just couldn’t get it right. I wanted a true romance without all the murder and explosions. Adrienne pointed out that I was struggling because I was trying to force the story. That instead of trying to make it be a romance, just write it. And if I had to blow things up or murder a few people, well just go with it. I’d already written three romantic suspense stories, evidently that’s what I enjoyed writing.

Being true to yourself… true to your passions. Adrienne loved romance and Scotland, combining the two and finally checking Scotland off her bucket list was what she dreamed of! She enjoyed sharing her books with her readers but helping other writers was another passion.

I will miss Adrienne as a friend, fellow writer and her dedication to the Pamlico Writers’ Group. To her parents, family and friends I add my condolences. To her readers and fans her light was extinguished too soon. To those of us who were just getting to know the wonderful, talented woman, the loss is greater for the regrets, we believed we had more time.

Posted in Thoughts

So Long 20-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JCJFND6

Happy New Year 2021, Good-Bye 2020

This year has been filled with many ups and downs. While some of you have been forced into quarantine and sought to fill your time with delicious books, I and many others were considered essential employees. For those of us blessed or forced to remain on the job, we’ve had to deal with more regulations and responsibilities. While my job isn’t an important one like being on the frontline nursing the sick, it is still considered essential and I try to do it with respect and grace. Working with the public I filled a role that many people felt was a necessity. For me, the biggest service I felt I could give to my friends and neighbors was a kind word and a caring heart. I have to admit that this year has been exhausting. Between the politics and the virus, family tragedies and dramas, extra responsibilities and expectations at work and in the public, I have been a bit overwhelmed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has felt the weight of this year.

While we bid good riddance to this year with its many awful moments, I want to take this time to also reflect on the things that were wonderful and special about this year. I have two new grandbabies, twin boys who are healthy and after losing a grandson in May of this year, that is extremely important. I have a new and improved relationship with two of my sons and their families.

I have never been one to put myself out there, but due to Covid19 and having to do more online, I have started volunteering. I attended the RWA (Romance Writers of America) National conference and even hosted an online chat room. I have been able to attend the Heart of Carolina RWA meetings regularly and I’ve even accepted a position of leadership with the group. Our local writers’ group, the Pamlico Writers is still struggling to stay afloat during this time. Only a small handful of members attend the monthly Zoom meetings.

This year has been a struggle for so many. I know that I and my family have been blessed. My father-in-law has been the only one to truly suffer from the virus. He spent two weeks in the hospital but is thankfully well. Most of the family has kept working in one capacity or another. There have been a few struggles, some days it seems it is two steps forward and three back but with the grace of God and the help of family and friends, we are managing.

I know for many this year has been so much worse. Many have been trapped in their homes due to health concerns and regulations. Many have lost jobs, struggled financially, lost businesses and homes. Many have buried loved ones.  Our schools and small businesses have felt the greatest burden, trying to navigate a new world with new needs. Living in rural America where we are half-quarantined already has given us a bit of freedom people in larger communities haven’t had.

This year has been stressful on many levels. I only published two of the three books I’d planned. I’m hoping 2021 will be a more productive year. I have devoted more time to marketing and learning about marketing. I’ve come to realize that there are only so many hours in a day and I can only do so much within those bounds. If you haven’t taken Sarra Cannon’s HB90 course and you are a small business owner, especially an indie author, I suggest you take it the next time she offers it. It helps you understand how much time you really have and how to use it. I would also suggest her YouTube channel Heartbreathings, and her Publish and Thrive course. Sarra’s YouTube channel helped me through much of this year. Her uplifting spirit and honest approach to problems made me feel as if I too could be a best-selling author.

I’m ending this blog with some highlights from my year on my website and will follow it soon with my 2020 book list and highlights from my Creekside Café Author interviews.

Happy New Year!

HB90 w/ Sarra Cannon

https://wordpress.com/post/sherrilhollister.com/3411

Posted in Thoughts

What Christmas Means to Me

I am a child at Christmas. No matter how old I get, I am still excited by the Christmas lights adorning houses and stores, intricately woven onto boats and stylishly fashioned on business marquees. I stare in wonder and awe at displays of homemade ornaments and family heirlooms, delicate glass balls, wrought metal sculptures, paintings, and nature crafts.

I hum along with familiar songs, belting out the chorus and breaking into dance. I twirl around light poles like Fred Astaire and imagine myself kicking like a Rockette on Broadway. I watch classic Christmas movies and gorge on Hallmark and Lifetime’s sweet romances. I inhale the scent of pine, cinnamon and brown sugar, cocoa and warm apple spices, and I feel the years slip away until I’m a little girl waiting for Santa to arrive.

Christmas, to me, begins at Thanksgiving. It is a reminder of what is truly important, family and friends. Thanksgiving gives us a moment before the hustle and bustle of the rest of the holiday, to stop, thank God for all that he has given us and rejoice in our blessings. It is also a time to reflect on those who are no longer with us.

During the holiday, I find myself thinking of my Granny Berry and my Aunt Martha. These two women were the matriarchs who influenced my life. My dad’s mother, Grandma Anna died when I was six, Aunt Martha became my surrogate grandmother. From our church program on Christmas Eve to our family dinner on Christmas day, they taught me Christmas was more than presents. It was about Christ’s birth, death and the gift of life. It was about our duty to church and family, about community. Christmas was a celebration of love, a wish for peace, and a dream of hope. Some of that is missing from my Christmas this year. I have gotten so caught up in buying gifts and sending cards that I have forgotten to be thankful for God’s greatest gift, his son, Jesus, the reason we celebrate Christmas. I am also thankful for my own sons, my husband and family, my friends, my community, I know that I am blessed to be able to celebrate Christmas and remember the Christmases of my past. I am so thankful for all who have taught me the true meaning of Christmas.

As you swim through the chaos of last-minute shopping, wade through ribbons, wrappings and decorations, stop a minute and look around at the reason you are celebrating. Reach out to a friend or neighbor who doesn’t have family or the blessings you know. Share a little of the love and joy of the holiday with a card, a gift or a just a smile. Let this time of year reflect in how we treat others. That is what Christmas means to me.

Posted in Book Review

Shelter in Place

By Nora Roberts

This was a hard book to start. Nora Roberts writes her characters so well that I felt as if I were the fifteen-year-old girl hiding in the bathroom while her friends were shot down in the mall theater. Simone Knox kept her head and dialed 9-1-1, her early response saved lives.

Reed Quartermain was home from college working at the mall and hoping to get a date with the girl at the sunglasses kiosk when all hell breaks loose. Two guys come into the mall and start shooting people. He rescues a kid and hides out in the same kiosk with the girl’s blood pooling at his feet.

A young female police officer is one of the first responders. She takes down JJ Hobart in the theatre. Her quick response and caring changes lives. It makes a huge impact on the college kid, Reed, who because of that night, because of Essie, he decides to join the police force.

Simone doesn’t know how to live. She just wants to forget. Mi-Hi Jung wants her life to mean something, both mourn the loss of their friend, Tish. It is her one constant, her grandmother CiCi, who sees what she really needs and helps her to find it once she is ready to start living her own life.

Cici, a renowned artist, gives Simone the tools to find her own path. Even as she battles her parents and sister, their relationship strained at best, Simone begins to find herself.

As one thing leads to another, Reed makes detective and becomes partnered with his mentor and friend. He is constantly seeking information about that night. He’s always felt there was something missing.

Things heat up when he realizes the three boys were not the masterminds behind the mall shooting, and someone is finishing off the survivors from that night.

Roberts ratchets up the tension as more people start dying and Reed tries to build his case. When he becomes a target, he knows those he cares about could be hurt as well.

As the newly hired chief of police of Tranquility Island, he hopes to stand his ground. When lives are on the line, a simple mistake could be a costly one.

Will they catch a psychopath before other innocents die or will Reed be too late?

A fantastic story that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Posted in Thoughts

Oh, Christmas Tree

We always had an artificial tree, although dad did insist it be green. His parents’ Christmas tree always looked as if it was made of tin foil. It could also double as an antennae for the television if you set it close enough. When I was able, I was determined to have a real tree. My first real tree was a Charlie Brown pine tree in a coffee can. I dug it up myself and put it in my bedroom. It was pitiful but I loved it. My husband and I often had real trees. He and the boys would go into the woods and chop down a tree or we’d buy one from the grocery store. I love decorating the Christmas tree but over the years I’ve had to do it alone, my husband isn’t interested. He’ll put the tree together, we’ve reverted to the manmade deal and he’ll string the lights. My dad always strung the lights, that was his one contribution to decorating for Christmas. Mom and I decorated until I was older and the whole thing became my job. My sons never got into the decorating the tree spirit. They’d help some but usually, I decorated on my own. This year, my oldest grandson helped me decorate and it was so much fun. We laughed and joked and made up a cool Christmas story. Usually I put on a Christmas movie and watch it while I decorate.
When I was a kid, we never had a set day to put up the tree. It was only after mom got tired of me begging that she’d allow me to pull everything out. It was never before December first and rarely the first week of December, usually it was about two weeks before Christmas that she’d finally relent and I was allowed to put up the tree. After my own kids came along, my oldest son begged me not to put the tree until after his birthday, so we waited until after the first week of December. Now, I put it up whenever I want.
I like to do themed holiday decorations. This is a tradition my mother-in-law started me doing. She has a different themed tree each year. She loves Christmas and decorating. One year I made native American ornaments. I researched many tribes and did Kachina dolls and fetishes for each of the larger tribes, with a native American angel I made for the top of the tree. I decorated with wildlife ornaments, pine cones and gumballs, and pewter charms I’d found with native drawings. I loved those ornaments, that was one of my favorite trees.

Posted in Thoughts, writing inspiration

Holiday Traditions

With a daughter-in-law who was raised Buddhist and Methodist, and dear friends who are Muslim, as well as Jewish, Catholic, Bahai and an assortment of Protestants, each with their own unique traditions and holidays, I am awed by their different traditions.
What is your favorite holiday? How does your family celebrate it? What is your favorite part of your holiday?

Growing up I never really thought we had many traditions centered around the Christmas holiday except to be home for the holidays. No matter where we were, we tried to come back to eastern North Carolina sometime during the holidays. Here Christmas might be warm enough for short-sleeves or cold enough to hope for snow. One Christmas, the year my oldest son was born, it went from high sixties to a windy freezing in a matter of hours.
As a child, Christmas eve was spent at the church across the street performing in the Christmas Pageant. As a teenager, I wrote and directed the Christmas programs, sometimes cobbling together bits and pieces from other plays and pageants to create something to fit our small cast.
After the program, Santa would arrive to the ringing of the church bells. He would hand out the gifts that had been left under the big cedar tree. Everyone in church would then be handed a brown paper bag with an orange, an apple, some candy and nuts from Joe Deal’s store and later, a gift from the church. Those who participated in the play would be given an additional small gift such as gloves or a hat.
Most of my favorite memories center around that old church and the people in it. Hayrides on the back of an old farm truck, singing Christmas carols with the youth group and a few brave adults, returning to the church to drink hot cocoa and eat hot dogs and homemade fudge and rolled cookies. I miss those days, I tortured my boys with parts in the Christmas program. Unfortunately for them, they often participated in three, sometimes four Christmas programs: my home church where I was often in charge, in-laws’ church where their aunt was in charge, my grandparents’ church were my aunt was in charge and when we started attending another church as a family, we still tried to participate in all of them until the boys staged a coup. Because I enjoyed being a part of the holiday programs, I thought they should too.

Posted in inspiration, Thoughts, writing inspiration

Electric Guitars and The Blues

The Pamlico Writers’ Group hosts a monthly, one-thousand word challenge. The month of April, the picture was donated by photographer, Tammy Cooper, a night over the water, drenched in blue. I enjoy attempting to write a story to match the pictures. For me, the challenge offers an opportunity to experiment with my writing. This story is a play on words, using poetry to help me create emotion and tell a story. I’d appreciate your feedback. What do you think? What do you feel? If you’d like to try your hand at the 1K challenge, check out http://www.pamlicowritersgroup.org/writingchallenge.

The sky aglow with azure light. Millions of stars shining in a velvet night, sparkle in the reflection of the river below. His face blurs in the ripples of the water, a truer portrait than the image in his mirror.

Sounds of waves and cicadas fill the night with song. People lost in their own stories, pass him on the boardwalk, oblivious to the pain, the shame, the blues pouring out of his soul as he strums his guitar. Fingers pluck the truth from the strings, giving sound to the words he cannot speak. The apologies he cannot make. The song, deep, and dark and blue, shimmers on the tip of starlight, a fragile bubble against the wind.

His eyes, dry, the tears long past, he strums his guitar as the stars wink out. One by one they fade into the darkening sky as he sings the words that mock his pain. Lost in the music that fills the night, a troubadour on the crowded streets. Couples stop to listen, arms entwined they allow the music to bathe their senses. A coin, a dollar, dropped in his guitar case, the price of a bottle, the price of a dream. He collects their pity and packs away his pain, tomorrow is another day, but for tonight the demons rest.

Alone, he turns his collar up against the cold, the wind off the river chills his soul, and portents a future dark and bleak. Shuffling down city streets, dingy and gray in the fading light, his eyes roam neither left nor right. Head down, he counts the foot falls to the faded door. He’s not been here since before. With hands trembling, he fumbles the brass from his pocket. The key jambs in the lock, he jiggles it until the door opens. The hinges creak as he shoves it past the debris and memories gathered behind.

Air blows through the broken glass, swirling leaves and dirt about him in a cyclone of emotions. Faded memories dance in the moonlight, picking their way in the teasing nimbus. Oppressive darkness descends, suffocating, as clouds cover the moon. His feet move of their own volition, familiar with the path, filled with contrition. Stumbling over years of detritus, he visits each room, haunted by his former life.

The laughter and warmth filter through dust covered walls. Long forgotten songs mingle with scenes from the past. In the distance a dog howls, a saxophone lifts its mournful tune, a truck passes loose panes rattle, each sound a reminder this is his reality, now. A present bereft of their song.

Closing eyes, itchy and dry, his tears have all been shed. He leans against the door jamb, his portal to the past. Their room, the master, their haven from children and strife, the place they loved, and where they dreamed their arms and thoughts entwined. He yearns once more to step into time, a time before, when dreams could still come true. An old familiar love song tickles his memories, the sound so sweet he can almost taste the salt upon her skin. Her laughter and Bulgari Rose, teases and beckons to him. He hungers to go, aches to know, the touch and taste and feel of loving her again. With eyes wide open, he thrusts, futilely against the wooden barrier, swollen by time and damp. Aching shoulders sag, once more defeated he turns to go. A rush of wind, powerful and true chills him in his place. A pop of sound, a whoosh of air, like the releasing of a break, the door swings open, on hinges heavy with rust.

The room is a temple. The altar, her dresser shrouded in dust. The vessels and urns, powders and perfumes lay scattered upon the surface. A photo, faded and stained with time, of the two of them, arms entangled, a vacation somewhere, he cannot recall. A time before it all, lay derelict and lost.

His memories all gather, crowded into one. Too many to name, they jumble, like people on a bus. He cannot divine their story from the others in his mind. Only their last night together, plays clear and strong. Her anger, his teasing, her pleas, his promise. They’d stayed too long, the party too wild. It was past the time to retrieve their youngest child. They battled over who would drive. He was high–on life, on booze, on her. “It’ll be okay,” he promised. His last words a lie. How he wishes he could retrieve them, shove them back into his mouth. How he wishes he’d not betrayed her with his music and his lies.

Vanity, man’s vanity, his masculinity and desire. Shoving away the people who give his world measure, for meaningless money and fame. A terrible husband, and negligent father, convinced and conceited, he toiled in strife, to give his family a better life. Life, better or worse is all they wanted. One more moment to treasure, one more laugh, one more song.

“Daddy? Why are you here?”

The child, so like her mother, had forgiven him all. A boon he did not deserve or desire. Her love and kindness, salt to a wound.

“What are you doing here? Come home.”

“I am home,” he whispers, holding onto the memories, holding fast to the pain.

Blinking back tears, she nods. “She’s gone pops.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Not when I’m here.”

Patting his arm, she leads him from the house, the mausoleum. From their old life, to the new. There is nothing left but ghosts here. Specters and regrets, they follow him, a constant reminder of the promise he failed to keep.

The moon pushes through the clouds, electric and blue, as a guitar strums a final tune. The old man whispers, “I’ll be joining you soon.”