Happy Birthday, Broken Road

     I'm awake, not by choice, at 3:26 a.m., having been awake since 12:40.  This type of occurrence usually irritates the heck out of me, but I've just realized that yesterday was the second birthday of Broken Road. So it is entirely appropriate that I would have had one of my fall-sound-asleep-only-to-be-wide-awake-two-hours-later events tonight.
     See, when I was in the thick of writing Broken Road, this happened all the time.  The characters couldn't shut up long enough for me to get a decent night's sleep.  They routinely woke me up between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., yakking incessantly about what they wanted to happen next in their fictional lives.
     I sound crazy, don't I?  That's how I felt! Honestly, the made-up people from my story would wake me up.  
     They let me sleep now...well, nearly all the time.  But I guess they were a little insulted that I let yesterday slip by without recognizing their birthday.
     With apologies, happy birthday, Roxie, Cole and Caleb.  I love you guys...but promise me you won't go back to the middle-of-the-night gab fests.

Who You Were Supposed To Be All Along

Did you ever see the first Back to the Future movie?  Like any good story, it's rich with themes, but there is a scene at the end where a box arrives at the house; it's science fiction novels written by Marty's dad, George.


When we were in Chicago last November, for Cindy's "coming out" as an author, someone caught her off-guard with the simplest of questions.  "What's your book about?" Like any good book, Broken Road is rich with themes, and Cindy didn't know exactly how much to say.  When we talked about it later, I suggested that Cindy be ready to tell people that Broken Road is a story about "going home and discovering the person you were meant to be all along."  Yeah, I know, deep, huh!


A lot of us don't discover the people we were supposed to have been all along until much later in life.  Roxie sure didn't discover that until she went back to Derry.  And I think Cindy and I, in our own ways, struggled to know who we were supposed to have been all along, too.  


Then, a few weeks ago, this box came in the mail.  We got to have our "George Mcfly" moment.  And we know a little better, just who we are.

Broken Road News Report

Greetings!  Please allow me to offer you my own personal welcome to 2012.  May it be the best year yet.

It's already started as a great year for Broken Road.  Like many writers, we belong to a nice, but small community of writers who support each other and share in each other's work. A few of these folks read early drafts of BR, some so that we could get comments, some because they were going to have an integral role in its production. They all told us what a good book it was. "Couldn't put it down" was a common phrase.

And although they were wonderful comments that so encouraged us, I longed for a person who didn't know me, who had nothing at stake, who had never met my feelings and was totally unconcerned with hurting them, to say that BR was a good read. We new authors, we need a little affirmation, you know?  It's a little like motherhood.  WE know our kids are geniuses, but when they win the talent show, we feel like their value is seen by more than us, the biased eye.

Well, last night it happened. Someone who graduated high school with Mike had read the book and posted to Facebook, well, let me get the exact quote, because...uhem...it's worth it.  

"If you have not yet read Broken Road by Cindy Rush, you should.  This is a very good book. I found it hard to put down."

It was Mike who pointed out that it had happened.  What a blessing to get those words of encouragement.

Have a happy 2012!

It Doesn't Get More Fun Than This

T
his is exactly what we wanted. This afternoon, a friend of mine called to say she wanted to read our book, but she didn't have a computer.  "Could I come by tomorrow and just get one from you?"  And this weekend, I got another call from a friend who was really wanting to speak with Cindy.  "I've bought a book to give to my sister-in-law for Christmas.  Could I come by and let you sign it?"


Cindy and I are ecstatic that people we know, and especially those we don't, are discovering our characters...well, Cindy's characters.  If you've never written a book, you might not understand what I'm about to say.  If you have, then you completely get it.


We love those folks like they are family members.


And we just love that others are meeting them.

It Really Is Fiction

A few folks have asked me if ‘Broken Road’ is autobiographical at all, and the basic answer is no. It is a work of fiction. But the main character and I do have some things in common-our taste in music, my hankering for a PB&J every once in a while, some issues with faith, and, so my husband says, some quirks of temperament.


Since the question has been asked, I feel it necessary to say that my parents are very different from Roxie’s. My folks have always been supportive, loving, non-judgmental people, and I would hate to think that anyone would draw conclusions about my wonderful mom and dad based on the fictional parents in the book.

A Secret No Longer

Well, well, well.  Here we are in the local paper, the Log Cabin Democrat.  I know, I know, it's not the New York Times.  


But this is such a big deal to us because it all started with an idea.  I had the idea that Cindy could write a book.  She had the idea about Roxie going home and all the things that would happen to her when she got there.  


And now look!  It's right there in Cindy's hands, all published and dust-jacketed!  We're so grateful to Linda Hicks, who wrote the article and to the Log Cabin for running it.  If you'd like to read the article, just click here and it will open in another page.  

And Here It Is!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. We did it.  We figured out the instructions for converting a book to the Kindle format.  And we're dang proud too.  


What an amazing adventure this has been.  Cindy finished her book and we were suddenly learning new technologies.  And by learning new technologies I mean staring at the computer for hours, clicking links that in most cases did not get us any closer to our goal.  But we hung in there and figured a few things out.  


I still can't believe it. 

Broken Road Goes To The Library!

Libraries have always been important to me. I’ve met so many interesting characters, from Ferdinand
the Bull in my preschool library, to Andy Dalziel in my early adult years at the Fayetteville Public Library.
In the last year, I’ve met three new characters in literature that I find fascinating.


Libraries are a place you can find yourself, and completely lose yourself. Reading is so much a part of
my personality that I truly cannot imagine what my life would have been without a library.


The picture shows Mike donating one of our books to the library at his high school.  That's Cindy Stage, the librarian with him.  I knew when I wrote Broken Road that I'd be giving it to libraries.  We're just starting that process now.  

It's a Great Day!

Many things make for a great day.  One of those is coming home and finding a couple boxes of your novel left by the postman.  We've got so many places we want to give these away.  Hopefully, we'll sell a few to make enough money to order some more, so we can give more away.  

Will Wonders Never Cease?

Here we are in the Barnes and Noble online store.  We have Lulu's distribution package, which as far as I know was free, to thank. 


Broken Road has never had better friends.  We're in Lulu.com, the iTunes store, and now Barnes and Noble.  It's so easy to find us now.


And just in time for Christmas!  


Ha!

The Good Deals Just Never End!

Right now, you can order one of the best books available on the web and have it shipped to your house for free!  When you get to checkout, just enter the code "sleighrides" and Lulu will pay the shipping.  And just in time for Christmas!

Coulda Knocked Us Down...

With a Feather!  I got an email from Cindy today.  She had written, "Have you seen this?"  And provided a link.  When it opened, one of my eyes fell out.  I used the other one to find it on the floor.


I've already admitted to anyone who would listen that the technology involved in this project has taken us way above our digital pay-grade.    In other words, when we launched the eBook on Lulu, we just clicked buttons, the pretty ones anyway and agreed to everything.


Little did we know that Lulu would make a deal in our behalf with the iTunes store.  Having investigated that, I've learned that the book is pending with Barnes & Noble.  


We can hardly believe it.


We really want to break into the Amazon book store, but that might be as difficult as actually breaking into a book store.  

Local Couple Reveals Shocking Truth

For those of you who don't know body building as well as Cindy and I, this is the "rear lat spread pose."  I know, that sounds dirty.  And for those of you who don't know Cindy and I, this isn't us in the picture.  Although that's exactly what we look like in swim suits.  From behind, of course.


Actually, this post is about what's happening tomorrow in the life of Broken Road.  We're being interviewed by a free-lance journalist for the Log Cabin Democrat, our local paper here in Conway.  In preparation for that, I suggested that Cindy be prepared to have her picture taken.  


We've talked about how Broken Road is like a child.  Of course, we'd love nothing more than to be attending the meeting where we advise the casting director on which actors to select for the movie version of the book.  But Broken Road was just born.  It hasn't walked or crawled or even rolled over.  It can barely lift its head.  But it's alive, and growing.  


Tomorrow we get to talk about it with the press, and maybe even have a picture made.  We're a little frightened, but that's just because we've never, ever been the object of anyone's attention.  But we're excited too, because we want so badly for readers to meet our characters.


That's all for now, we have to practice our posing.  Our favorite one is in the reclining position, in front of the flat screen.


Picture credit: The official guide to body building and contest preparation http://bodybuildingcourse.com/free_posing_guide_bodybuilding_posing_tips.html

Welcome Friends and Readers

This is what started it all.


We'd probably admit that it started sooner, but this is the tangible evidence that something is going on.


You see...Cindy wrote a book.  


Well, we did it together, but it was her story, and her characters, and her "wake up in the middle of the night and write," that produced it.


We call this blog "A New Shade" because our website is called Shade Tree Writings, but also because being a literary couple, writing and reading together, and managing the supporting technology is a new shade in the tapestry of our relationship. 


We've been together for almost 35 years, raised two, now married, girls, enjoy granddaughters, lived in foreign countries, run marathons (although Cindy's part was greeting me at the finish line), and a bunch of other stuff.


And we've been together in a lot of places, but now we're together here, in the world-wide community of readers and writers.  Cindy's always been a reader, I have always sort of tipped my hat to writing.  Now she's writing, and I'm reading, and together, we're Shadetreewritings.  


You can find us on the web at shadetreewritings.com  We'd love for you to join us there.