Nailbiting!

We are coming down to the final days before my first romance novel drops. Fun, sexy, adventuresome, I hope that reads find it an engaging read and come back for book two later this year. 

Writers have a love/hate relationship with their work. We often love our stories; even if we know it's not the next great American novel, lesser novels had still made their impact. We think its a good story, but we worry, what if it's only a good story to the writer?  And we hate that - opening our souls to the judgment of readers.  Then, by the time our book has a cover and passed final edits, we almost hate the story, having read it so many times! 

As an English professor, I only have so much time for writing (much to my chagrin) - I have to parse out my time in class, in prep time, and most of all, grading - the largest time suck of all.  However, I do have some hope that, as an English Prof, perhaps I was able to write something with a sharper turn of the pen, a differently engaging line or quote, that catches my readers.  

In my final proof review last Friday (where I HOPE TO GOD I caught all the last little fixes), what I noticed the most is that I still liked my story. I liked my characters, their assessments and zingers, their decisions and emotions.  Any maybe, just maybe, other will like the story, too.

We will find out this week.  

Happy Reading!   
Michelle

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MDDauthor/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelledalrympleauthor/

On Amazon’s Author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07C784SJ6

 

My daughter's interior cover for the book:

And my Amazon Kindle Cover Reveal:

Pre-Release Excerpt!

💓💓Introduction - To Dance in the Glen    Pre-Release September 5! 💓💓

The thrum of the horses’ hooves on the ground made the earth vibrate in announcement. The horsemen scattered all about the land, searching for a woman who had been missing for nearly a day. The woman’s husband, Laird of the clan MacLeod, Colin MacLeod, was beyond distraught, bordering on insanity in his search for his wife, the Lady Caitir MacLeod of MacLeod. A tall, strong beautiful woman in hair blacker than the night sky and the most piercing blue eyes a soul had ever seen, it was rumored that God himself crafted her body in addition to her soul, carving her out of the most coveted jewels found on earth -- sapphires, diamonds, onyx.

            More than her appearance, however, was her very nature.  While she practiced Catholicism as all good Christians did, she was raised with a deep-rooted belief in the old religion and tied it to her Catholic beliefs. She used herbals and prayer to heal the sick, advice and prayer to help the souls of clansmen and women who came to the Laird for help. She was genuine and honest and would give her very last shift to a poorer soul if they needed it. It was oft said that she kept Colin grounded since Colin, though he was a full-grown man reaching nigh two score of years, could still be a rash and hot-headed man much of the time. However, just a movement or gesture from Caitir was usually enough to calm the storm that was her husband.  All these reasons and more made her the most loved person in the clan MacLeod.

            No one, however, loved her more than Colin. He was infatuated with her and did everything in his power to spend most his waking moments in her presence. He scheduled hunts, farming, even his business for accounts on Market Day around Caitir and how often he could be with her. Friends and family made jokes about how Caitir led Colin around by his nose, or other body parts, but instead of growing angry, Colin just laughed at the comments. He knew them to be true.

            But today, it was not laughter the Colin felt, it was anger and concern, more concern than he had ever felt in his life. Even more than when his oldest had fallen off a tree and landed awkwardly. They feared that the future Laird would be crippled from a broken leg, but it turned out to be naught more than a twisted ankle, and the lad healed fine. This time, however, there was little hope that all would be fine.

Trailer for my new book.  Pre-Release date Sept 5. Official release date Sept 12!

https://www.facebook.com/MDDauthor/videos/286655848590552/

Scroll down to join my newsletter! 

Book One Sneak Peak!

I'm in the process of publishing my first historical romance novel: To Dance in the Glen - hopefully in the next month! The second in the series is already in the works, and I am also working on a more serious book of contemporary fiction, inspired by actual events.

 As I get all my ducks in a row (quack, quack, waddle, waddle, as I used to tell my kids!), I thought I should start on a few preemptive tasks - namely a snippet from my first novel and a sign-up sheet for my newsletter.  Here is the link to the newsletter sign-up on Google forms: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ol6BfXkCNMuda5QScDu6419ck-ghHwn0FQ7TNLKLqDw/edit

And here is an except from my upcoming historical romance:  To Dance in the Glen! 

        Grabbing her around her waist, he lifted her onto his horse then swung up behind her, nudging the horse forward. He wrapped one arm around her and held the reins tightly in his other hand. She marveled at how well he handled the beast. Not having been on a horse before, she awed at the height and speed at which she traveled, and shortly they arrived at her family’s small croft.

               The croft was typical of most clansmen and women, with short, squared-off sides and a single open door. The wood and peat roof hung low, helping to keep in the heat during the even the coldest winters. Meggie’s croft, however, was much farther off the main road to the village and up to the Laird’s house. It was the northernmost croft of the clan, surrounded by large tracts of grass and trees, buttressed by rock, which was fortunate for Lachlan, who mainly raised sheep. At the front of the croft sat a trough of water for easy household access and heaps of peat to throw on the fire when necessary. Ewan caught sight of a small garden off to one side, where the family raised some onions and cucumber. Overall, the croft was fairly isolated in this location, so Ewan could understand how a family could feel secure in their surroundings. That left Meggie more open to an attack up on her person. What Ewan could not understand was how such a large family, like Meggie Lachlan’s, could fit in so small a house. Perchance it made them closer as a family?

 Meg began to wiggle in an attempt to slide off the animal, but the laird’s son grasped her more tightly around the waist and held her on the horse. He moved his arm up and grasped her breast as he forced a rough kiss on her unyielding lips. She strained against him, pushing against his chest until he pulled away. He grinned at her with a boyish look on his face, as though he had done nothing wrong. Meg straightened her clothes, then turned more fully in the saddle and slapped Ewan as hard as she could. She finished her slide off the horse, angry as a bee. She glared up at his feigned surprise, then whacked him on the leg for added good measure.

               “What?” he asked innocently.

               “What do ye think ye were doing?”

               His grin widened. “I’m the Laird’s son, soon to be the laird. Most lassies would be honored to be in your position.” He was almost leering at her. She was appalled.

               “An honor, ye say? In the eyes of the Lord God, ‘tis a sin! My mother says that a woman’s body is a privilege, and that privilege is for her husband only! Ye would no’ put your hands on an honorable woman that way!”

               “The position ye were in with the English might indicate ye are something other than honorable,” he insinuated.

               Her eyebrows rose nearly off her face at his statement. “How dare ye? Ye think yourself so great that women should lose their honor ‘acause ye are the Laird’s son? Ye leave your less than honorable hands to yourself.”

 

Since the school year is over and I know homeschool parents and school educators are on the hunt for new resources, I have completed revising my popular homeschool co-op classes into text.  Here are the first three, available at:
 Barnes & Nobles!  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/michelle%20deerwester%20dalrymple

and of course, Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Michelle-Deerwester-Dalrymple/e/B07C784SJ6/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Time to get serious. I have several writing curricula, and I'm formalizing them into texts for educators. They are simple and easy to integrate, and available both as Kindle and print texts. Here is the first: 

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07C6TD17N/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523916085&sr=8-1&keywords=rhetoric+a+text+for+middle+and+high+school+students

Commencement

It is a large word, one that we often confuse with "graduation" - that we are completing something, not beginning something.

But that is what it is, a beginning.

This summer was Aden's commencement - the completion of childhood as we know it in America and the beginning of his adulthood. The beginning of his college experience, of living life more on his own terms. Of him making his own decisions that will affect the rest of his life.

It is both a graduation and commencement for me.  It is a graduation in that I am no longer the primary teacher for my son; he is now taking college classes. I, of course, will help him maneuver those classes as necessary, but they will not be my classes.  I will no longer grade his material, set up his syllabus, or tell him when assignments are due. This coming fall, I have a homeschool class load of 2, and it makes me so happy and sad that I cannot believe the depth of both emotions can be felt so at the same time.

It is a commencement for me, though, as well. It is a new dialogue I have with him. I find myself telling him: "here are your options - which do you feel would work best?"  I have told him: "I cannot make that decision for you."  I have told him, "I can help you with the material, but I cannot do the work. You are the adult, and you have to do the work."   Suddenly it is a dialog of choices and plan A and plan B, but it is not I making those decision, it is Aden, and I have to step back and see how his decisions unfold.

And it is so hard. After years of having my hands on that unfolding process, of making the choices and determining what will happen and softening the blow or broadcasting his achievements, I have to step back and give him his future.  His hands are the ones in the unfolding process, and I can only hope that I have provided enough guidance for those hands.

So now I just hope and pray:  that he sees the joys in the smallness of life, not just the big things. That he learns to save money, but also to spend it when necessary on opportunities and experiences. That he is a strong and righteous man who makes good decisions that benefit him and the world around him.

I see him do things like fight for his family, be diplomatic when necessary, be committed to his purpose and goals, be supportive when things seem bleak, and I hope that as a man, he continues in those behaviours, as they will serve him well.  He is on the right road now, but it is an easy road to lose track of, and I desperately hope and pray that he can stay on that road, even at the darkest moments.

Later this week, we head out to the counselor's office so he can see what classes he should take in the fall. He is hoping to pass some placement tests to achieve some additional college credit, and he is hoping to teach himself some new technology in hopes of earning a job in his field of study.  He is setting goals and working to reach them.

That is what I hope for him the most: at the commencement of his adult life, that he continues to set goals and never stops reaching for them.

Don't call it a bucket list.

I took the kids to see "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"; it has been too long since I read the Thurber story so I didn't recall much of it, but the previews to the film spoke of the theme of taking the risk to live a fullness of life.  This, I know, is something I am trying to instill in my children.

That may seem strange - don't most kids have an impulsive nature to take a risk to do what they want?  Well, most of the time, but for much of my kids' lives, they didn't see an adventurous mom or family - they lived in a family that only played video games or went out to eat or shop.  Due to a specific circumstance beyond my control, we were put in a small box and not allowed to roam, except at someone else's discretion.

To understand how horrible that can truly be (more than just being forced to live in that small box), I have to explain that up until I was 22 years old, I traveled. I love traveling - I love seeing new things, meeting new people, and discovering all that this big blue marble has to offer.  By the time I was 17, I had seen petrified skeletons in Pompeii and two works of Michelangelo -- The Sistine Chapel and the statue of David - in Italy. I spent the weekend in a small casita in Rosarita, Mexico, and could see whales and dolphins swimming off the coast from the living room.  I had been to Canada, the beaches of the east coast, to Disneyworld, to Hawaii, to Nashville, up the Colorado Rockies and across the country from California to Chicago several times, one of which included the worst breakfast eating ever at a diner in  New Mexico.   I visited amusement parks, museums, art fairs, and Pow Wows.  I felt invested in life, and when college came, I threw myself into that adventure just as I had the others.

In the last three years, I have been called the "Disneyland" mom behind my back and to my face.  I want to hate that, but I have to recognize that the slur comes from a place of ignorance - of people who don't really know how to live and value life; from people for whom a different bar on a weekday night is a big adventure. I am now 40 years old, and for almost 20 of those years, what I did and how I did it was dictated by someone else, and I was not able to give my kids the fullness of an adventurous life as I wanted. I tried, and by the time my youngest was 5, we moved to California, where an abundance of adventure was only a hour away, any time we liked.  It was not perfect, because it was a bit few and far between, and since it was just me with the kids, I had to really juggle to make it happen ever.  But the kids were good and we took advantage of what we could - it was so limited, but I loved it and I loved engaging in my kids' sense of adventure.

Now that I no longer have a dictator sticking us in a box, we as a family are expanding our wings and doing things, having adventures, and finding a deeper meaning in life.  My oldest often asks, why are we doing this? (especially if its a very strange adventure, like the Dinosaur discovery center today), and I tell him, because we haven't seen it before, and we can.  I don't want my kids to be 40 and regret that they didn't have the fullness of an adventurous life with their family. It is probably my biggest regret.  I didn't stand up for the fullness of life for my kids.

But I am also their mom, and much of what I say goes in one ear and out the other, so I hope the travel, the adventures, the fullness speaks for itself. Yet, they are still children so the message can be lost. This is where films like Walter Mitty come in. On a large screen in full view, they see someone just passing through life, and missing out on it, until he is in his 40s, and then he has not one adventure, but two, and learns that those adventures provide knowledge, confidence, self-empowerment, and a stronger sense of self.  He seems to almost grow younger as movie progresses, and the look of contentment with life never leaves his face at the end of the film.  

I want my children to have that look.

When they decide to go to college, or take on a career, I don't want them to do it because they have to, as drudgery - I want them to see the challenge and adventure contained therein.  I don't want them to be like me, 40, and wondering why I let someone take that contentment away from me, then feeling like we have so much to make up for.  I tell the kids, there is so much life that we can experience just here, in southern California, and we are going to live it.  

So call me a Disneyland mom if you want, but that is your ignorance. It is actually taking the risk to feel the fullness of life, to do what we love, and I won't let my family miss out on it.

Poise and Grace - something more

The past two years have been tumultuous, to say the least; the last year in particular has been especially rough for all of us, but especially for my baby girl Kaya.

Baby girl is definitely a malapropism. This year she turned 13, is now almost 5'7" and is as slender and willowy and ethereal as a fantasy princess.

She is growing so fast - she is a full fledged young lady! But in my heart I see her as she looks above so tiny, imagining herself a fairy full of wonder in a world that is determined to rob us of all the wonder there could be.   I could write a blog about how she is growing, and what that means, and how it affect us both, but I did that a bit two year ago.

I could describe how beautiful and thoughtful she is, how brilliant and creative she is, but most people don't even have to meet her and can see that in a heartbeat. And most of us can all write similar accolades of our children as they grow into adulthood. I know I will in the next year as my son completes his senior year of high school. Its like a rite of passage.

But this is more than all that.

In reality, she has done more than just grow in to a wonderful young lady; she has become an model of a force to be reckoned with, a superb and surreal example grace under pressure.

In the past year, she has learned extreme patience:  to wait at the doctor's office; to wait for lab work; to wait for test results; to wait for insulin to take effect; to wait and see what her numbers are; to wait to eat until she can; to wait for a snack that she can't have yet because her numbers are too high.  All that waiting has created in her a poised and  patient soul that does not need to rush through any project, who has time to wait for others, who has time to wait for her siblings and I.

In the past year, she has learned sacrifice:  to bleed for her health; to experience pain on a regular basis for her health; to give up certain foods; to sacrifice working with the sugars she needs for cake decorating and search for replacements; to sacrifice time and pause to eat, to check her glucose levels, to work out, or to administer more insulin. All this sacrifice has created in her a compassionate soul who understands that sometimes we are not as in control as we would like to be, and sometimes we have to opt for plan B, or plan C, or plan D.

In the past year, she has learned what it is to hurt:  to be pricked by needles of different sizes several times a day just to live; to be stabbed by needles that need to take her blood for testing or a glucose monitor needle that rivals a harpoon; to have emotional hurts that are worse than the physical ones; to cry in my arms on my bed when an infusion site goes bad, a glucose monitor needs goes in wrong, or her numbers are too high or too low and she feels so scared; to know what it is to have people stare at her when she has an emergency high or low and try not to feel self conscious about it.  All of this has created in her a caring soul, one that understands that we have hurts and need grace when we are in pain and hurting, and that sometimes the best medicine is a hug from someone who loves you.

She has always seemed this ethereal creature, not quite of this world, but now there is something more.

She is now more than just a wonderful young woman; she is a young woman who understands the world and the needs of herself and others more deeply. She has knowledge that many lack of the importance of her health, family, and friends, and just as we are here to help her everyday, she can be there to help us. She can give us grace as she has experienced it; she can be patient for us as she has learned patience; she sacrifice for us and help us learn to sacrifice as well. She shows us she cares every day, just as she has seen us help care for her no matter the hurt, pain, or toll involved, and then teach us to be more like her.

She is more than just a wonderful young woman, and I am so proud of her for it.