We are coming up on some anniversaries. It has just been one month since we approved publication of The End of the World and we have 49 sales to date.
You can get The End of the World at the press or Here.
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If you are in time for the discount, it is here: The End of the World Amazon Discounted
We have scheduled marketing day for April 16th so if you are thinking of purchasing a copy of The End of the World, doing so that day from Amazon would be a great help.
Have been scheduled to speak at a book group on The End of the World in early July. I am asking that they generate questions so I can prepare. I have no idea if I shall get any. Put an interview up on the website at Regency Assembly Press
Another anniversary is that on the 21st it will be a year since Aspen Interiors closed. At that time it will be a moment to reflect and take stock of what we have accomplished in a year. Another 10 days.
The Shattered Mirror continues. Over 61K words and well over half way. (We are targeting under 100K words.) Last week, since writers group was very productive. Moved a chapter around and then wrote over 36K words in the week. If I do that again might finish in this week, or at least the next week in a half.
In the Shattered Mirror perhaps we are at that point where we can post the first few paragraphs:
Celebration
The war was over, really this time. Bridget had arrived in the dining room to break her morning fast and this is what greeted her when she entered the empty room except for the two servants there. That was the word throughout the house. Bridget’s father had gotten the morning papers from London. He had glanced at them, then picked them up Sam, the butler who was in the dining room tending the breakfast buffet, said. Her father did not read his papers at the dining table in regard for Bridget’s mother. The countess was not one to allow such to occur at her table. Not at all.
Bridget had lost one brother to the war, but there were two others. It did not lessen the hurt for she missed Francis. There were also various cousins about that had been in service, neighbors, friends. Francis’ death though had been the closest loss that the family had encountered over the entire war. More than twenty years it seemed they had been fighting the tyrant, in one way or another. Father had a brother who had fought in the Colonial war, but that was a long time ago.
The brother had come home and died a few years after that war ended. Long before she was born. Bridget who was at least two inches in height over most of the girls of an age with her, reflected. She had never met the uncle, whom her youngest brother was named after. Her father told her that her Uncle Michael had the same chestnut hair. The same brown with traces of red in it that caused her face to glow. That and the cream complexion and high cheekbones she had inherited from her mother.
Her oldest brother John, was in the army, but he lived in Town. He was safe as heir, and had no thought of being posted to where there was fighting. He would wear his uniform and spend his time at his clubs. He had no thought of going to where the fighting was. The Earl thought his son was a fool.
Bridget prepared a plate of food and thought much of that had to do with Francis dying while serving in Spain while John was never in jeopardy. But it was a subject that she and her sisters never mentioned. Anne and Mary were both married, which only left her and Michael at home with their parents. This however was the last year that she was to be at home, in the schoolroom. Her season was the very next one. She would go to London and all the eligible men would finally return from France, or Flanders.
The morning room that was used to dine was different then that when they entertained. Though if just the family were at home for dinner, they would use this same room. The table was a mahogany wood that had been sanded and polished and stained and lacquered until it’t dark brown richness gleamed in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the three full length windows on the east wall. The entire room was painted in cream and the latest in papers bedecked the walls, for the Countess had changed them only last October, so they were not quite a year old.
Aside from the table and chippendale chairs, the darkest things in the room were the two butlers, for they were in their dark gray livery. Sam and Henry. Henry having been in service just two years deferred to Sam and kept quiet, while Sam had been with the Halifax-Stokes almost all of Bridget’s life and they were quite good friends. At the sideboard, not a piece by Chippendale the Countess always said, but one that had been inherited from some previous Scardale several generations ago, the wood was an alder, or other very light wood, and the carpenter had never been able to darken it to match the dining table. It was thus covered in a very broad piece of cloth which also helped to keep spills and stains off the wood.
Gratitude Log for the day:
- Hot Pastrami Sandwiches–A no no if you had one every day…
- Julie & Julia, the movie–The book by Powell is trash. And I reviewed it here But the movie is good. Meryl Streep should have won best actress in 2009. She makes you believe she is Julia Child.
- Friends–Need I say more? Okay. Got together at Borders with a group and we laughed for over two hours together.
- Cats–My mother is allergic so we never had them when we grew up, but now we have two and they are sweet;
- Macintosh Computers-Went and fixed my mother’s computer. She had lost her photos, but I easily found what she did and fixed it.
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