A Writer’s Garden-My Garden Retreat by Suzanne J. Bratcher

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A Writer's Garden, clean romantic suspense, Garden Retreat, Suzanne J. Bratcher, The sliver Lode

Welcome to A Writer’s Garden where writers who are gardeners or just love gardens will be sharing their garden and flower stories, as well as a bit about their writing.

Today’s writer/gardener guest is Suzanne J. Bratcher. Suzanne is treating us to a glimpse of her Garden Retreat.

welcome, Suzanne!

My Garden Retreat

I discovered gardening as a retreat when I was in my mid-thirties. After a long week of teaching, I often meandered through the native plant nursery in Flagstaff, Arizona where I lived and chose from among the surprising variety of plants that thrive in that dry mountain climate. Then the real fun began: finding  just the right spot to plant, digging in the dirt, and making sure my new purchase had everything to make it happy. In the summers I hung feeders to attract broad tailed and rufous hummingbirds.

Now in my early seventies, I live in central Arkansas, where the temperate climate is less challenging. I have Multiple Sclerosis, a progressive auto-immune disease, so I tire easily and rely on a cane or a walker to get around. My garden here is dramatically different from the gardens I had in Arizona, but it’s still my retreat.  A dear friend, a master gardener, has filled my back deck with ferns, vines, elephant ears, jumbo varieties of philodendron, and other foliage plants I’m still learning about. She also supplied flowers in pots so something is always blooming. Red, pink, and white dianthus bloomed early in the spring, followed soon after by two varieties of clematis. Now lantana provides a splash of yellow, a miniature bush is filled with red roses, and two giant begonias are covered with pink and yellow blossoms.

To my delight, central Arkansas is a wonderland of birds. My garden retreat has become an open-air aviary. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, wrens, seven species of woodpeckers, along with three species of nuthatches visit my four feeders regularly. Orioles, indigo buntings, and three varieties of grosbeaks stop by as they migrate through. Goldfinches and juncos spend the winter and spring here. Ruby-throated hummingbirds and tanagers arrive for the summer. I also keep a birdbath filled with clean water for drinking and bathing.

 

Thanks to the temperate climate, I’m able to sit outside nine months of the year. I close my eyes and listen to the squeaky door call of blue jays, the warbling song of Carolina wrens, and the dee-dee-dee call of chickadees. In early spring I’m treated to the haunting song of the wood thrush. A recirculating fountain provides a soft background accompaniment to the variety of songs and calls.

I love relaxing and reading in my lounge chair, but my garden retreat also has an important role in my writing life. When I was working on The Silver Lode, the second book in my Jerome, Arizona mystery trilogy, I ran headlong into writer’s block. After trying freewriting, outlining, character dialog, and every other trick I could think of, I went out to my garden retreat. After getting comfortable in my lounge chair, I began praying for guidance. I wound up falling asleep, but God offers grace freely. When I woke up, I knew the answer to my dilemma. I had tagged the wrong murderer!

 

About the Writer/Gardener

Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University, Suzanne J. Bratcher now lives in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in central Arkansas. A lifelong gardener, she has created an open-air aviary on her back deck filled with foliage plants, a recirculating fountain, and multiple bird feeders. A reader and a quilter, she takes orders from her two rescue cats, Scamp and Mini Pearl. She writes inspirational romantic suspense and fantasy with a twist of mystery set in the majestic, mysterious Southwest.

Connect with Suzanne on her social media sites: Website: Facebook: Instagram:

THE SILVER LODE

By Suzanne J. Bratcher

The mountains near Jerome, Arizona, guard a secret … an unsolved mystery that intertwines a young girl’s future, an old man’s past, and the fate of a teenager’s life.

Beneath the ghost town that clings to Cleopatra Hill, a labyrinth of abandoned mine tunnels hides a vein of silver ore mixed with pure gold—a silver lode. Decades ago, the silver lode’s discovery led to murder. Will more murders follow?

Historian Paul Russell is at risk of losing his job, and the woman he loves, Marty Greenlaw. He doesn’t have time to chase legends and ghost stories. But when a student drops clues to a 70-year-old case on his desk—a case connected to the silver lode—Paul seizes the chance to work with Marty and win her back.

Marty loves Paul but feels she cannot marry him. When she learns finding the silver lode can save a dying child, guilt from her little sister’s death resurfaces. Marty agrees to delve into the mine’s history.

As Paul and Marty’s search deepens, suspicious deaths occur. When Paul’s son disappears, the case becomes personal.

Will they find the truth in time to save Paul’s son and the little girl? And before greed triggers more crime? Will they survive to build a future together?

Genre: Inspirational Romantic suspense/Mystery

Heat level: clean, sweet

BUY LINK

 

 

A Writer’s Garden–In the Garden Retreat with Carole Ann Moleti

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A Writer's Garden, Carole Ann Moleti, Garden blog, Garden Retreat, Unfinished Business paranormal romance series

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Welcome to A Writer’s Garden where writers who are gardeners or just love gardens will be sharing their garden and flower stories, as well as a bit about their writing.

Today’s guest is writer/gardener Carole Ann Moleti. She’ll be talking about her writing retreat. Welcome, Carole!

 

When sitting on the beach, with the water lapping over the sand, kites drifting in the breeze, my inspiration and creative energies surge. Thirteen years ago, when I first got serious about creative writing, I’d hoped to make enough money to quit my job and buy a beachside retreat. I dreamed of being able to write uninterrupted by daily life, and to be able to invite other authors to join me. Of course, I planned to pay for all this by writing a bestselling series or two.

It had never been easy to break into writing, but the seismic changes in the publishing industry took authors from a point where agents, editors, and publishing houses would only accept perfectly formatted, typed manuscripts by mail, to an environment where paper is obsolete and writers are at the mercy of electronic publishers and monopolies that have rendered authorship for most to a hobby that barely covers expenses.

So, I continued to work the day job, which often includes nights and weekends, juggling home, and family responsibilities while trying to write. And I continued my second favorite past time: gardening. Every summer for as long as I can recall, I’ve spent a week or two on Cape Cod. Words flow as I wander the beach at dawn, dictating a scene with the call of the gulls as accompaniment. I linger after morning yoga, staring at a blue horizon that meets the bay. Waves lap onto the shore, and inspiration strikes. I rush home to get it all down.

One of the best parts about gardening, and writing, is when seeds germinate and spring to life. Drab winter deadheads are trimmed, branches pruned, soiled tilled and suddenly, everything turns green, blossoms and grows. I completed the Unfinished Business Series: A paranormal ghost story romance set in Brewster, Massachusetts.

This year, thanks to the day job, a stroke of luck, and karmic timing, my beachside cottage became a reality. Like a tangled first draft manuscript, the neglected lot sported dead and dying trees, choking the life out of each other, threatening to bring the house down. The perennial garden was a tangle, the rose garden was over run with thorny privet and a thicket of weeds.

Garden trees before

Garden before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband and I flagged the trees that had a chance, and found a landscaper to remove the rest, along with privet that was strangling everything around it. And this spring, he, two of our friends and myself spent many days of raking, bagging, pruning, digging, weeding, tilling, ad infinitum. Like the pearls that emerge from an edited manuscript, there were many surprises: spring bulbs around the house and wildflowers poking through the grass thanks to newfound light and air. We unearthed a stone wall garden bed, birdhouses, and added a new garden bench.

We planted more roses, and a “blue garden” of hydrangeas, and day lilies that will bloom next spring and every year there after.

hydrangeas

 

 

 

 

 

 

roses

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best yet, the house emerged from behind a shroud of darkness and the perennials did not have to fight the weeds.

Cottage front yard after

It’s been fourteen years this May since I began creative writing, and my new “writer’s garden” has been planted, and my latest manuscript: a contemporary Western romance, is well on its way to completion.

 

About the Writer/Gardener:

Carole Ann Moleti has been gardening since she was old enough to remember. She loves being surrounded by the sounds of nature, any body of water, fountains, and waterfalls. You can learn more about her at http://caroleannmoleti.com/

Carole’s work has appeared in a variety of literary non fiction and speculative fiction venues. The Unfinished Business Series: A sensual Cape Cod Paranormal Romance is set near the beautiful beaches Brewster, Massachusetts.

http://www.caroleannmoleti.com/the-unfinished-business-series/  

Warning to readers of sweet romance: these book may contain sensual love scenes.