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An Interview of Sorts

November 27, 2021 by Cameron Leave a Comment

This post originally appeared as part of Damselfly Inn’s AudioBookWorm tour.

I recently answered a few questions while promoting the release of Damselfly Inn’s audiobook, and thought I’d share it with you, since the tour is over.

How did you select your narrator?

Robin’s professionalism and range impressed me, and she nailed Nan’s voice in the interview.

How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters?

Robin has an extensive and insightful list of questions for her authors about the characters. Taking the time to answer them thoroughly really brought out the best in my characters when she performed the book.

Were there any real life inspirations behind your writing?

Lots! Thornton itself is modeled after an idealized version of Middlebury, Vermont, where I went to college. The Damselfly Inn is inspired by an old Victorian house in a meadow not far from Middlebury College. When I was a student, it was abandoned and quietly falling apart. I was fascinated by the house and wished I could rehab it and run it as a B&B. None of my characters are autobiographical or based on real people, but I trained as a chef after college, and my husband is a contractor and fine finish carpenter, so…

How do you manage to avoid burn-out? What do you do to maintain your enthusiasm for writing?

I can’t imagine not being excited about writing. When I burn out, it’s the things around writing that get me down. Day jobs, chores, the never ending work of caring for my home… Writing? That’s a pleasure, and it’s fueled by life, by reading, by soaking in new experiences and cozying up to memories.

Are you an audiobook listener? What about the audiobook format appeals to you?

I am learning to be. I’ve been an avid book readers since I could sound out words, but sometimes there just isn’t time to snuggle up with a book, and audiobooks are so wonderfully portable in a way that even eBooks aren’t.

If this title were being made into a TV series or movie, who would you cast to play the primary roles?

This was an easier question a decade ago when I started working on the book! Mandy Moore and Nathan Fillion were in my head for Nan and Joss. Kate is absolutely based on Lauren Graham’s portrayal of Lorelei Gilmore in Gilmore Girls. I think now, I’ll just have to trust the folks at Netflix (hello, Netflix, Thornton would make a great series…just saying!) to cast it.

What do you say to those who view listening to audiobooks as “cheating” or as inferior to “real reading”?

I’d say that’s nonsense. Before we wrote stories down, we told them to those who wanted to hear them. Listening to a compelling voice tell you a story still takes your imagination to new places, still expands your world, still comforts you like reading the words from a page.

In your opinion, what are the pros and cons of writing a stand-alone novel vs. writing a series?

The pros are often the same as the cons, I think, and vice versa. Stand alones don’t require the same sense of overarching plot, or twining plot, that a series does, but that can be both pro and con. Sometimes, leaving breadcrumbs for future stories helps move the narrative along in ways a standalone can’t, but there’s no pressure in a stand alone to set up those future stories or establish things in the world of the book that have to endure past The End.

What’s your favorite:

Food: This is like asking me to pick a favorite child! (Actually, it’s harder, I only have one child!) Sushi and ice cream, probably…

Song: So. Many. Favorites. But here’s a sampling: Strange Currencies by REM, Buried Treasure by Grant Lee Phillips, Slow Show, by the National, June Hymn by the Decemberists, Debauchery by David Gray

Book: Again, I don’t know how people choose… I will always love Anne of the Island by LM Montgomery (the diamond sunbursts and marble halls proposal? swoon!), and I have a lingering adoration for Daphne DuMaurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. Katherine Neville’s The Eight captured my imagination when I was a teen and I still love to re-read it. Recently, Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering, which does one of my favorite things so well: makes the reader fall in love with the place as well as the characters.

Television show: Ooh! An easy one. The West Wing. Currently airing: Better Call Saul. Runner Up: Schitt’s Creek.

Movie: The Princess Bride

Band: tough call. See the artists listed under favorite song…

Sports team: What are sports?

City: Florence, Italy.

Are any of those things referenced in appearance in your work?

I can’t cite specifically where, but I bet they are, hiding like Easter eggs. I don’t write autobiographically, but little bits of me shine through everywhere in my stories.

The Best Books I’ve Read in the Last Little While

November 20, 2021 by Cameron Leave a Comment

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click, I might make a few pennies…at no cost to you. This post originally appeared as part of Damselfly Inn’s AudioBookWorm tour.

I challenged myself to read 48 books this year, which, when I think about how much I read when I was a young, single woman with a job and no real responsibility, is nothing…but, writing, parenting, practicing with my bow…it all takes time, time I don’t have to read.

And it is a truth universally accepted that a writer must read.

I completed my challenge this week, which means I could draw this top ten list from those books alone, or…I could go back a calendar year and choose from all of them. So, in no particular order, here are my ten favorite books from the last year of reading:

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn: I love when the setting of a novel becomes a character, and Clayborn excels at this. New York City came alive in a beautiful and unexpected way in this book, and the relationships around the central romance were very relatable to me.

A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy: Confession: I love Regencies, especially saucy ones with anachronistically fierce heroines and cinnamon roll heroes. There will be more than a couple in this list. This one I loved for the marriage on the rocks trope.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern: I felt like Morgenstern walked into my dreams and wrote them out as a fairy tale. Keys and bees and honey and extravagant architecture and secrets…oh, my stars. I also loved The Night Circus, but I connected more with this book.

One Good Earl Deserves A Lover by Sarah Maclean: Another Regency, this one definitely fits the saucy and fierce description above. From the tortured but lovable hero to the prickly bespectacled heroine and the Fallen Angel itself. I mean who doesn’t love an exclusive gaming hell run by rogue members of the nobility?

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: I loved the interaction between the siblings and their friends as much as the love story. I love found family and it’s one of McQuiston’s strong suits, and I love the idea of a prince and a first son as a couple.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab: I tumbled into the richness of the prose in this book and the dance between Addie and death. The intertwined destinies and complicated nature of loving and living, and the way Addie survives and self-realizes, were beautifully done.

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade: I found the heroine in this book crazy relatable (that she’s okay with her body, but not okay with how people want her to feel about her body, in particular) and the way the hero loved her dreamy, even if the premise of the book had some flaws. I’m a big believer in suspension of disbelief, which helps.

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron: The. Food. I mean, the writing and the storytelling and the romance, too (I kept picturing Sendhil Ramamurthy as Nadim. Yum), but the cooking in this book…and cooking is one of my catnips, right alongside rich settings and cinnamon roll heroes.

Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert: Found family and a road trip, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA characters, fandoms, gaming, and geekery…really good stuff. There’s also something about awkward young adult longing that just gets me, though I suspect it’s the mom in me hoping those kids will get their HFN.

The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon: This is a fourth, maybe fifth re-read for the flagship book, but I reread the whole series in anticipation of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. Since I read seven of them as one Kindle bundle, I guess that means my total books read count to 54!

Into the Woods

June 18, 2021 by Cameron Leave a Comment

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t have to keep it all spinning all the time.

Wait.

I needed to hear that.

I don’t (usually) publish fast. This we know, but I also work two part time jobs and a freelance gig to pay the bills. I have a family and a few hobbies. Since last March, my family has been very cautious about our stay-at-home efforts. We cancelled our 2020 summer travel plans. We stayed put until it was deemed safe to do more than go out for groceries, and even then, we kept it to small groups we could manage outdoors. Our close families, one other like-minded family we teamed up with to survive the summer, the little pod we meet on the outdoor range to draw bowstrings with at the archery club…

Even with stay-at-home orders and school closures, I spin a lot of plates. Guessing you do, too.

I work from home. My husband can’t always, but he does when he can. Our son is home with me. The chickens do their best to keep me entertained, but I know I’m not alone when I say:

It was a lot. I was lonely. I missed my friends. I was tired of my own thoughts and the increasing anxiety over school and the looming cold season and the election and social media and ohmygodIamscreaminginsidemyheart…

Last August, our survival team friends invited us to go camping with them.

::backstory break:: I grew up far more outdoorsy than I’ve become. Girl Scouts, camp, fishing, canoeing, tents, rifles, rambles and splashes in the woods, campfires, dirt and bugs, all of it. I fell out of the habit somewhere along the last few decades, tired of the smell of musty, poorly cared-for tents from the supply shed and eating dinner made with ingredients flooded by splashy Brownies with canoe paddles. I declared myself done and moved on. I did not figure I would find myself ever craving the gentle filter of morning sunlight through evergreen trees, or the smell of a starry night in the dog days of summer, again::

Twenty-one year old me never imagined the possibility of the fifteen months we’ve just been through. Sweet summer child.

Next week, I’ll release the third ~~novelette…novella? Short novel?~~ book in the Green Mountain Hearts series. I’ll start working on a few new things, new stories, new pen name for a new genre, maybe? New mediums, definitely. Lots of plates, but I am grateful to my friends who knew me better than I knew myself, and forced me to set them down.

Next week, I’m releasing a book, then going back into the woods for a few days, and I can’t wait to tell you more when I get back.

Blink’s Fry Doe: A Buck’s Landing Excerpt

June 28, 2020 by Cameron Leave a Comment

This excerpt originally appeared here on September 2, 2012. And then I re-did the entire site.

Our annual week at Hampton Beach is off the table this year. The Summer That Wasn’t doesn’t have room for crowds and sharing a cramped beach rental (with a single bathroom!) with several branches of the family. The three of us are making the best of it, and I’m doing my best to recreate some of our favorite vacation treats to ease the pain.

Today, I made Blink’s Fry Doe-inspired fried dough, and thought–as I do every time I have the real thing–of this love song to Blink’s that appears in Buck’s Landing. If you want to try it yourself, there are a few options. One is to grab some refrigerated pizza dough from the grocery store, or you can make any high-hydration yeasted bread dough, and fry slightly stretched out pieces of it until deep golden brown. Brush the finished dough with melted butter, dust with cinnamon sugar, then finish with a dusting of powdered sugar. Trust me, it’s magical.

Sofia couldn’t remember being so happy in Hampton, not since she was a child.

With the panda looped under her arm, she walked in easy time with Silas. At the first cross street, he reached for her hand.

Blink’s was a blaze-orange shrine to fried dough. The porch overhang was crowded with people waiting for orders; the line stretched down the stairs into the sidewalk.

“What do you want?” Silas asked.

She handed him the stuffed panda. “This is on me.”

Silas took the bear. “Cinnamon and sugar.”

She snuck a glance at him while he leaned against the signpost. As if he felt her eyes on him, he turned to her. The street light threw his face into deep shadows but his intent was unmistakable. She shivered, understanding pooling low in her belly.

Rejoining him, she gestured across the street, where several empty benches lined the beach boardwalk. Silas set the panda down to one side to take his fried dough. He looked at hers, brows raised. “Cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar?”

She nodded. “The only way to have it.” The first bite was perfect, crisp from the fryer, soft inside, sugary and sweet. She hummed with pleasure.

“Remind me to buy you fried dough more often,” Silas said, sinking his teeth into his own.

They ate in silence, watching the amateur fireworks displays from the beach followed by the Hampton police on their quads breaking up the lawbreakers. She started to hand Silas a napkin, but he licked the sugar and cinnamon from his fingers with a wink. Sofia swore she could feel his mouth on her own skin.

“Look,” Silas said pointing to the sky above them.

A red Chinese lantern drifted over the beach. It caught a column of air and spiraled gently up before flying out over the Atlantic. They watched it until it burned out over the horizon.

“I’ve never seen one before,” Sofia whispered. “Not like that.”

“Me neither.” Silas stood. “Come on. Let’s walk home on the beach, see if we can find where they’re launching them.”

Buck’s Landing is available in ebook or paperback format from most major vendors.

The Enchanted Tiki Coop

June 17, 2020 by Cameron Leave a Comment

I’ve been quietly lurking on BYC for four years, planning, waiting… And last October, my small city relaxed the chicken keeping laws, allowing flocks of up to 6 hens on a residential property, if properly registered.

Over the winter, I hatched my plans, and in March–just before COVID-19 brought everything except domestic arts to a screeching halt, I ordered my 4 flock-starter hens. Ahead of the curve by about 3 days. I read articles, perused plans, considered blueprints and filled up a Pinterest board with coop and run ideas, but even after the little floofs arrived in late April, I was revising my ideas.

(Holy carp, chicks are cute. In the third image, clockwise from the top left: Flüf, Giraffe, Sharpie, and Trudy–Buff Orpington, Austra White, Green Queen Easter Egger, and Silver Cuckoo Marans) Fortunately for me, I’m married to a finish carpenter who’s been a general contractor for twenty years. “This is your project, he told me, but if you want me to build you something…”

We live in east-central MA. We have four distinct seasons, with hot, humid late summers and bone-dry, frigid midwinters. We live in a large suburb of Boston masquerading as a small city. Our home is on less than a tenth of an acre. We already have a significant raised bed garden and nascent fruit trees; chickens were inevitable, as I see it. I wanted a coop and run my son (12ish) and I could handle between us. He’s all about feeding, watering, entertaining, and egg collection. I shovel the sh– manure.

We chose a site close to the house because ~~our lot is tiny and literally everything on it is close to the house~~ it will suck to be out chicken keeping come winter, and the shortest walk=the fewest cold feet/hands. I hope to offer my girls supervised free-ranging once they’re heavier, and less inclined to scale the 4 foot fence line between us and our closest neighbors, but the area is rife with hawks, and while “Hawksnack” appeals to my gallows sense of humor, it’s not really a great name for a deceased, breakfast-laying pet. Thus, a run.

I opted for 48 square feet, which is comfy for the 4 girls, with a 4’x4’x4′ raised coop. It will be snug, if we get another 2 at some point, but we’ll assess. I hear the Chicken Math Struggle is Real. My contractor is thorough in the extreme and unable to under-construct anything. His only misgivings are that we didn’t dig footings, given that they design changed midway through to accommodate a sand floor in the coop. He took the “chickens want to be dry” message especially to heart. He also has a strong aesthetic and The Enchanted Tiki Coop is just off the deck, in partial view of the neighbors’ patio. No one likes a clucking eyesore, amirite?

Did I mention he fell a little in love with the ridiculous little raptors along the way?

And so it begins…

We dug out and leveled an old compost pile for the site, so I screened the compost (he re-homed what sod he could) and backfilled the run with the fresh topsoil. The plan is to amend the fill with summer grass clippings and fall leaves, as well as what pine shavings I have left over from the brooder. Next, he built 1/2″ hardware cloth panels to install on the run. Note the base is finished with 1/4″ hardware cloth to prevent diggers. The rolled bit was temporarily stapled in place where the coop would eventually be, so the girls–now aged 4 weeks–could safely play outside on nice days until they’re big enough to move outside.

The run is about 4 feet high. I can’t stand up, but I’m hoping due to some design updates, that I won’t have to spend a lot of time hunched over in there. We shall see. The coop framing came together in a somewhat modular way. The opening for the cleaning/maintanance door is shown. The rest he cut in afterwards, as we worked out dimensions. He also added latches and a spring on the run door. I added some upside down pots and a big branch to the run.

Here’s a fun four-day weekend: He used a set of snowblower ramps to bring the coop down to the yard, where he could work on it without scaring his feathered audience. Cut outs for a window, nest box, and gable vents went in, then he roofed it, and sided the two sides which would become inaccessible once it was re-installed. The board-and-batten siding is made from pressure-treated fencing, and has a rough, rustic texture. We may not paint, since it will age nicely to match the fencing we’re slowly replacing around the perimeter. The Omlet AutoDoor was a pricey upgrade, but I want to be able to leave the girls overnight without a full-time chicken sitter, and those guillotine-looking automatic doors made me nervous.

Then it was time to get the coop into place. It was…heavy. The GC ended up enlisting me to help him shift it Egyptian-style, with levers and blocks. It was dicey, but we did it!

Tada!

Two more long weekends saw the second gable vent, the next box, and the hatch-style window installed, as well as the roosting bars and the solar-powered wi-fi chicken cam. Siding is up on three sides now. The carp windsocks keep us from banging our heads.

We decided to do a sand floor in the coop, after reading The Chicken Chick’s article on the subject. She’s a New Englander, so I figured if it worked for her it could work for us, and I like the idea of scooping out only poops and a little sand to add to the compost, instead of having to fill it with shavings more frequently. With such a small property in a dense neighborhood, composting needs to be handled with some diplomacy.

The GC fabricated a sheet metal pan to fit the frame. For now, the nest boxes are blocked off with a broken down Misfits Market box. We have about 6 linear feet of roost, set up so they can use the lower rung to get to the upper one. (The first night they were in there, three of them roosted on the top frame of the box, so basically in the soffits, but what are you going to do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

For the first couple of days of That Coop Life, they stayed closed in with their food and water, but we’ve shifted those to the covered run area beneath the coop, which hinges down like a tailgate under the coop’s access door.

I wanted to try the Sugar Maple Farm PVC feeder concept, but we decided that despite the conventional wisdom, we didn’t want traditional drain PVC leaching into the food source. We’re making a small food-grade polycarbonate bin feeder with 1/2″ CPVC (potable rated) fittings, and a horizontal nipple waterer from a smaller food-grade polyethylene bin, since I want to max out the space in the run for chicken playtime and foraging while minimizing the daily feeding routine.

Why the Enchanted Tiki Coop? We’re huge Disney Polynesian Village and Adventureland fans, and our raised bed garden has all kinds of tiki themed statuary and the carp windsocks for charm and scaring off critters. We call it the Enchanted Tiki Garden. The GC added a statue to guard over the run, so it’s thematically connected now

The girls seem to be enjoying themselves!

We’ll use the same salt marsh hay we mulch the gardens with to line the next boxes when the time comes. Updates as we finish!

There’s no time like a pandemic?

March 25, 2020 by Cameron 6 Comments

… to welcome readers to a wholly new website design.

I hope this finds you safe and healthy. Here in Massachusetts, I’m taking my non-essential status seriously, and staying home unless it’s necessary for work or to stock the pantry. I can work remotely for both of my day jobs, but without commuting, our son’s activities, our activities, or any kind of social life beyond Zoom and FaceTime, I had time to explore a complete overhaul of this site. I hope you’ll find a little escape, a little romance, and a little hope on these pages, and in the pages of my books.

Connection suddenly means something entirely new. However you define it, I’m glad you’ve chosen to connect with me.

Welcome.

Personal

This post originally appeared as part of Damselfly Inn’s AudioBookWorm tour.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click, I might make a few pennies…at no cost to you. This post originally appeared as part of Damselfly Inn’s AudioBookWorm tour.

… to welcome readers to a wholly new website design.

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