Life in Shades of Blue - Just Ask Liz Flaherty

This book was originally published in 2024, then it went out of print because sometimes that’s how things go in publishing, but Liz decided she wasn’t ready to move on from this book. She said: “Pieces of Blue is one of the stories I hold closest in my heart.”

Smart lady. Bringing this book out again is a good thing. Even better, Liz is offering the ebook on sale for only 99¢. For you print readers, you can also get Pieces of Blue in print at Amazon.

My intent, once I got rolling on this book a few years ago, was to write Maggie’s story. Just that. She’s a natural-born loner, so maybe just this once, I could keep the character count in a book at a manageable level. Lots of others writers do it; surely I could, too.

But everyone—at least everyone who makes herself at home in my keyboard—needs a best friend, so we met Ellie Wentz, a nurse practitioner whose been Maggie’s “ride or die” since they were in second grade. 

Then, when Maggie was walking around the lake, she stopped to look at the pristine little church and, before she kept walking, she met its pastor. Young Cari Newland went to culinary school, worked in stained glass, and ended up in the pulpit—go figure.

Then there’s Sam, who’s Maggie’s lawyer and friend for over half their lives. Who suddenly gives her frissons. She’s a writer; she really likes the word frisson. When he appeared to me, he looked like Mark Harmon in his 50s, but to Maggie, he just looks like Sam. And he gives her frissons. Who knew that would happen?

I hope you love Maggie’s story as much as I do, and…hey…if you get a frisson or two along the way, all the better.

Life comes in shades of blue…

Self-imposed loner, Maggie North, has worked for bestselling author Trilby Winterroad her entire adult life, starting as simply his assistant and ending up as his ghost writer. 

Through ups and downs–including a divorce from an abusive husband–he has been the one person on whom she could always rely. So when Trilby dies suddenly, Maggie finds herself adrift, not sure what she’ll do or where she belongs in the world any longer. And the confusion continues when she discovers he’s not only left her his beloved dachshund, Chloe, but a house she knew nothing about, on a lake she’s never heard of.

It only takes one visit for Maggie to fall in love with both the house and the small lakeside community. The longer she’s there, the safer she feels and the more her life begins to expand…as do her feelings toward her friend and Trilby’s attorney, Sam Eldridge.
But is she really safe? Or are the glistening pieces of her new life about to shatter as an old danger returns?

  
There were ten of us that night, all women. A few drove together from Placer to join us. Several of them had been at coffee that morning. We entertained each other by explaining why we were or were not wearing the same clothes we’d worn then.

We’ve all known struggles and heartbreak; several of us have known physical abuse. Sadie had lived in her car for a while. Rose had left Colby in Detroit and come to the lake, saying he could come or go; it was up to him. Adrian told the story of her Uncle Henry’s father beating his wife half to death because their son “wasn’t right.”

Maxine said her husband had raised his hand to her exactly one time and she told him he’d better not let it fall or he’d never, ever be able to go to sleep again. We laughed at that, but she didn’t. “I was scared to death and so was he. Not that I’d kill him, but that he’d gotten so angry over something minor. He got himself to an anger management therapist and I went along with him. But I’m aware every day that we’re the lucky ones. Our lives could have gone a whole different way from that day forward than what it did.”

We’ve laughed together at the images people have of others’ lives. While Harper Loch doesn’t look anything like a resort or even a high point on rural Michigan’s social scale, it does look like a place where bad things can’t happen. Where marriages are all good, no one uses illegal substances, and everyone is safe.

“How many women around here have been abused? Not just on the lake, but in the area.”

“More than we know,” Rose acknowledged. “Just like anywhere. Some talk about it, but more than a few don’t.”

“Many,” Haley agreed. “Because they think it’s their fault or it’s never going to happen again or they don’t have any alternatives.”

I thought of those women. Of their children. I thought of the people who’d circled the proverbial wagons around me to keep me safe. I thought of Cari and Ellie and the confidences they kept and carried with them. I thought of Aunt Lin and Claire and Annabelle and how strong they’d been when their lives turned on them.

I thought of the ashes. And of the sapphires.

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ABOUT LIZ FLAHERTY, THE AUTHOR 

Liz Flaherty has spent the past several years enjoying not working a day job, making terrible crafts, and writing stories in which the people aren’t young, brilliant, or even beautiful. She’s decided (and has to re-decide most every day) that the definition of success is having a good time. Along with her husband of lo, these many years, kids, grands, friends, and the occasional cat, she’s doing just that.

You can reach her at lizkflaherty @ gmail.com or anywhere on https://linktr.ee/LizFlaherty. She’d love to hear from you!