Hens Lay Eggs
food for thought
The end. Really. – #MFRWAuthor
MFRW Author 52-week blog challenge
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nThis week’s blog prompt asks whether epilogues are helpful or hurtful. Like many things, the honest answer is, “It depends.”n
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nI seldom use epilogues in my own stories. When I conclude that last chapter, the story has ended. Finis. Done. And … cut! However, sometimes the end of the story begs for just a little more, especially when the characters insist upon it. At such times, I relent and write just a smidgen more to assure readers that what they think will happen does happen to the characters. The epilogue ties up all those remaining loose ends with a tidy bow. In romance, such epilogues often deal with the inevitable consequences of all that explicit intimacy: pregnancy and/or children and the joyous reception of such news.
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nEpilogues, like prologues, should not be necessary to the story: they are supplemental. Readers should not feel lost or left behind, respectively, if they don’t read the prologue or epilogue. The epilogue should not be necessary to conclude the story; it’s like an encore, the extension of the show to please the audience with a snippet more entertainment. If the epilogue is necessary to finish the story, then I prefer the author simply show it as a concluding chapter.
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nMany authors use epilogues to set up the next story in a series; therefore, the epilogue acts more like a prologue to the next book. I see and understand doing that; however, that’s not what an epilogue is supposed to do–not if you’re a purist.
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nRegardless, my feelings toward epilogues, in general, are ambivalent.
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n#HollyBargoBooks #HenHousePublishing #MFRWAuthorn
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I like cats. #MFRWhooks
Rowan: Branch 1 of the Tree of Life
nby Holly Bargo
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nLion shifter Adrian and vampire Simon are best friends and business partners. When they discover Rowan, each wants her for his own. Rowan does her best to dissuade them, for a supernatural matebond means the end of her freedom. n n
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Excerpt
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nAs though from thin air, the vampire stood beside me. He really was very, very quick. I took in his pale, red-rimmed eyes and the fangs extending over his lips. He sniffed and looked puzzled. He also looked torn between the bleeding carcass and the fresh meat standing beside him.
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n“What are you?” he asked, his voice just a little raspy.
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n“Tonight I’m your waitress,” I said dispassionately. “Please allow me to pass.”
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nHe looked at me, at the dead thug, and back at me. He did not move. Then he raised his hand and ran a finger down my cheek.
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n“Pretty,” he said and smiled.
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n“Poisonous,” I replied coolly and touched the ornate necklace of linked silver medallions that circled my throat.
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nHe sneered, but pulled his hand away. He hadn’t noticed the necklace of linked silver medallions until I pointed it out, which indicated to me that he was very young, very hungry, very stupid, or all three. The way he moved, with his reliance upon speed and stealth, also indicated his recent conversion from human to undead. The inexperienced ones tended to stalk and pursue their prey, using concealment, speed, and ambush techniques—rather like cats, I always thought.
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nOddly enough and despite the similarities, I like cats.
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nVampires, not so much.
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n“You’ll have to lick the pavement if you dither much longer,” I prompted him.
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nHe growled, yanked the necklace so that the links shattered, and yowled again as the silver burned him. (Yes, that was another bit of true vampire lore: silver is toxic to vampires; faerie silver even more so.) Faster than I could get away, he grabbed my hair, forcefully tipped my head to expose the vulnerable neck, and bit down. He gulped once, twice, a third time, and then started screaming as the faerie silver of sidhe blood coursed through his body, burning him from the inside. His face began to char at the mouth, beginning with his lips that were yet smeared with my blood, the undead flesh shriveling and sizzling. I sank to my knees and a scrabbling hand found a silver medallion from my necklace. I wiped it against my dirty, bloody skirt and then pressed it against the wounds on my neck. I felt and heard and smelled the sizzle of my own flesh as the silver burned away the poison of a vampire’s saliva. Those three gulps had been long, deep, starving ones and I was weak and unsteady. Yet still I pulled sufficient energy and strength from deep within myself to heal the wounds and leave no scar. Then I sat there, nearly unconscious, for far too long.
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nAnd that’s where the police found me.n
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Speaking of carrots …
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- I promised to step up content production on a book I’m ghostwriting. Working on my own stuff hinders that.
- I magazine for which I edit is revving into high gear for the next issue.
- Clients for whom I edit send new content to be edited.
- Another client hired me to do the interior formatting for his next book. (Yes, I sometimes do that, too.)
- I finally finished Satin Boots and uploaded the files–which KDP finally accepted.
- Damn, I’m tired!
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nThose are, frankly, explanations that do not excuse my poor time management skills.
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nSo, what’s on the plate this week? I have another round of editing on client projects. I have to finish formatting a client’s book. I have ongoing work with the magazine and two clients’ newsletters. I have to go to the lab for blood work.
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nOh, yeah, the blood work.
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nBoth maternal and paternal sides of my family are prone to severe health issues that result in one certain diagnosis: I’m doomed. But none of us gets out of this alive.
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nSo, about Satin Boots … well, this came about because aligning authors’ efforts is like herding cats. I wrote an article on that not so long ago.
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nAfter collaborating with Russ Town on Six Shots Each Gun, we discussed another collaboration focusing on romantic themes set in the American Old West. He wrote some stories; I got frenetically busy with client work. Here and there I did manage to crank out a story. Then his day job kicked into high gear and he sighed with a new publisher and he got busy. So … I decided to publish my own small collection of romantic short stories set in the American Old West.
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nIt goes live on October 1.
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nThese romances are clean, wholesome, and sweet–nothing to offend here. That marks, of course, a departure from my usual romantic writing; however, I hope that the lack of explicit content won’t matter. We’ve got gunslingers, ranchers, mail order brides, and gamblers–everything that hearkens back to those old western movies. Find thrills, danger, humor, and some deeper social issues. They’re all mixed in.
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nANGELS HIGH: A woman who makes her living by winning at a man’s game learns to expect trouble, especially when the stakes are high. But when trouble finds her this time, Angelica Durant gets more than she bargained for.
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nTHE MAIL ORDER BRIDE’S CHOICE: Looking to improve her circumstances, an indigent woman travels across the country as a mail order bride to meet a fiancé who has plans for her other than marriage.
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nCOMING HOME: Life is hard. No one knows this better than Dessie Humphrey who’s trying to hold onto the family farm. When aid comes in the form of a wanted gunslinger, she’s in no position to refuse.
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nPRIDE AND PEACE: It’s an open secret on the Lazy Five that Jessie North is a woman, but that doesn’t stop Daniel Harper from reacting badly when he learns about it. Can he overcome his prejudice when the proud half-breed saves his life?
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nRESURRECTION: Undertakers bury the dead; they don’t resurrect bodies left for dead. But that’s exactly what Antonio DiCarlo does when a lovely Swedish immigrant lands on his doorstep.
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nTHE RANCHER’S FIRST LOVE: When a gravely wounded Chinese woman collapses on Clint Cheswick’s front porch, he doesn’t expect to compete with his half-breed foreman for her affection.
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nSatin Boots will be sold in both print and ebook formats on Amazon. The ebook will be available during the month of October for only $0.99. Enjoy!n
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nAuthor
Hard boiled, scrambled, over easy, and sunny side up: eggs are the musings of Holly Bargo, the pseudonym for the author.
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Karen (Holly)
Blog Swaps
Looking for a place to swap blogs? Holly Bargo at Hen House Publishing is happy to reciprocate Blog Swaps in 2019.
For more information: