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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and publishing houses would only accept perfectly formatted, typed manuscripts by mail, to an environment where paper is obsolete and writers are at the mercy of electronic publishers and monopolies that have rendered authorship for most to a hobby that barely covers expenses.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.
