Pieces of Blue - New Release by Liz Flaherty

I’m pleased to welcome my friend Liz Flaherty to SlingWords.

Liz has a new release you’re going to love. Pieces of Blue can be preordered now. It’s available at most ebook sellers including Amazon Kindle.

You won’t have to wait long to read it because it publishes July 1! 

NOTE FROM LIZ FLAHERTY

I think I could release an anthology entitled Liz Flaherty’s Lake Stories. I’m not going to anytime soon, but the truth is, I’ve written a bunch of them. 

Three Harlequin Heartwarmings took place on Lake Miniagua. The three-book New Season series was set at Cooper lake on the edge of Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania. Banjo Creek (not a lake!) ran through Life’s too Short for White Walls. Even Because of Joe was largely set on a Florida beach. 

My only previous women’s fiction title, The Girls of Tonsil Lake, wasn’t really set at the lake, but we spent some time there anyway, remembering how the Girls grew up, and then they went to an island off Maine for a long girlfriend vacation.

It wasn’t on purpose. Honest. I’ve never lived on a lake, although I’ve camped near them. I don’t know how to swim. I like boats. I love visiting friends who do live on lakes or who, like my friend Nan, have cottages where they spend soul-saving time.

And then my husband and I meandered to small, rural Town Lake, just south of Akron, Indiana, turning around at the end of the dead end road that gives access to it. That visit gave me Harper Loch. Not everything in Pieces of Blue happens there—there are only 86 people on the lake, one store, one church, and one beauty salon, after all—but Placer, the town closest to it, strongly resembles Akron.

Akron is where my doctor’s office is, where I go to church, where two of my nieces live, where I used to sit at the drugstore counter and drink a small coke and talk to friends. My first bra and many pairs of stockings came from Eber’s Five & Ten. They have a great 4th of July parade and a pretty little park like the one you’ll read about in Maggie’s story.

As I’ve wandered through this post, I think I figured out why I use lake settings so often. It is for the sense of community so many people find in them. Nan and her husband and friends drive their golf carts to each other’s cottages and enjoy Beer-30. Sitting on docks or porches seems to invite company at other friends’ houses. They look after each other. They have a good time. That’s what happens with Harper Loch’s residents, too.

I hope you enjoy meeting them in Pieces of Blue.

PIECES OF BLUE BLURB

For all of her adult life, loner Maggie North has worked for bestselling author Trilby Winterroad, first as his typist, then as his assistant, and finally as his ghost writer. Throughout her first marriage, widowhood, remarriage, and divorce from an abusive husband, Trilby was the constant in her life.

When he dies, she inherits not only his dachshund, Chloe, but a house she didn’t know existed on a lake she’d never heard of. On her first visit, she falls in love with both the house and the lake. Within a few weeks, she’s met most of the 85 inhabitants of Harper Loch and surprisingly, become a part of the tiny community. Her life expands as does a new kind of relationship with her friend Sam Eldridge. She finally feels not only at home, but safe.

Until her ex-husband is released from prison. The fragile threads of her new life begin to fray, and that feeling of safety is about to shatter into a thousand pieces.

PRE-ORDER PIECES OF BLUE

From Amazon.

From other online ebook sellers.

READ AN EXCERPT

The drive took me farther into the country than I’d ever been—at least that I could remember. While the temperature didn’t drop, the wind did increase, blowing snow from the roadsides across in front of me in gusty swirls of white. I was surprised that Gladys, the elegant voice of my GPS, didn’t sound either confused or disdainful even when it took me three tries to see the little green sign that indicated Harper Loch Road.

Canopied by naked February trees and lined with animal-tracked snowbanks, the road was one and a half lanes wide. I hoped it would be wider when there was no snow, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It was hilly, with serpentine curves that reminded me of a Chutes and Ladders game board minus the ladders. Gladys didn’t enlighten me as to how far it was to the lake itself, and two miles in, I was starting to wonder if it was all a bad joke.

Trilby had been the master of bad jokes.

A barnwood sign at the side of the road encouraged me to Keep Right! I inched over, flinching when the snowbank brushed the side of my car, my pride and joy. Chloe looked my way, wide eyed.

Apparently, it was a popular meeting spot on the road, because I met a pickup immediately, going at least twice as fast as I was. The driver waved cheerfully and missed me by what I was certain was the hair’s breadth Trilby used to insist was purple prose if used in a book. I would have waved back, but my hands, white knuckled, didn’t want to let go of the steering wheel.

“Trilby,” I said, “what in the hell were you thinking?”

ABOUT LIZ FLAHERTY

Joan Reeves aka SlingWords: The Word Slinging Adventures of Joan Reeves