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Playing with the mirror again. Self-portrait. A throwback to many years ago.
Memories flash with the photo, dissolved in time past, lives changed, and a simple moment in time brings it all back.
Father, I can never thank you enough for rescuing me from myself. Redemption is what I was missing. Please help me to continue in the design you have just for me. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Storm clouds deciding whether or not to bear down and create havoc with thunder, lightning, and hard rain. But there's also the possibility they could move on and not settle on the area.
Point being, these storm clouds are indicative of the chaos in my head concerning this latest novel. It's going to be a story some will love and others will hate. I'm too far along to dump it. Besides, I love the hero and heroine. I'm too attached to not let them finish their story.
Stormy. Or not.
Crazy novelist.
Father, only you can get me out of this. You know this story better than I do. Help me. Apart from you, I can do nothing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
That hard place for me - and from what I've heard from some other authors can also be for them - is when suddenly you read a comment or bad review about one of your books, and you start spiraling into doubting yourself. Is this just a mirage - me thinking I can actually write a novel? Do I actually have any talent at all?
It's suggested we need to develop a thick skin - I can't. It's not in me to either ignore or not be affected by anything negative directed precisely at me. I'm as thin-skinned as they come.
Well, in a rather unique chain of events, I picked up my second novel The Famous One to address a comment from someone I know who's reading it now. This started on page 88. I remembered the scene quite well, but I read that page again and the following pages and a few more, and I just kept reading over the next two days until I finished that book again. Some authors will tell you that the number of times they've read their books by the time they're published is enough to make them not want to see it again for a considerable amount of time. Saturation might be a comparable word for the feeling. Well, apparently the number of years that have passed since I read my novel provided just what I needed to truly enjoy it once again - ratifying the phrase I use quite often: I write what I want to read.
The Famous One is written like a fictional biography, telling the story of one Joey Parr. If any of my novels fit the tagline I've given myself: Raw Romantic Redemptive, it's this one.
Point being, "my" audience loved this story. Those who are not, did not. And so it goes.
I can write novels. I do write novels. And I'm not stopping writing them because those who are not my audience don't like them.
Father, apart from you, I can do nothing. Period. Thank you for giving me any of my abilities. Anything I do that's good and worthy of any praise is you working in me. All honor goes to you. And all thanks - even though it can never be enough. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
The Offer by D. L. Wood is a part of the Deadly Decision Collection.
Addie Nichols is an up and coming chef in her Manhattan restaurant. Having recently survived a tough breakup, she's immersed in making her restaurant a success, but the financial toll is hefty, and she's worried. One evening, she's interrupted by a request from a patron and must step out of the kitchen to see who insists on seeing her. The brash woman dressed in designer duds offers Addie 10 thousand dollars to make a weekend trip to a secluded island to prepare food for her husband's birthday. Hoping to make it a private weekend for them with Addie serving her special creations, she talks Addie into making the trip. The reason she's selected Addie is because her husband had previously eaten at Addie's restaurant and raved about one of her desserts.
Addie has suspicions about the woman, but the offer is the proverbial "too good to be true". Nevertheless, having been told a car will be sent for her, she makes the long trip with a can't-be-bothered-to-be-civil driver and a kind and attractive ferry operator who drops her at her destination and helps her take her bags to the downstairs kitchen of the impressive and isolated mansion.
From this point on, prepare for the noir - Alfred Hitchcock type experience. The bizarre begins and Addie feels trapped but determined to pull off this gig and get out of this weird circumstance in which she's found herself a captive. D. L. Wood does a very good job of making the house creepy, the people creepier, and the situation almost impossible for Addie. She wants to call the kind ferry guy who assured her he would come for her if she needed him, but before she can get things wrapped up, everything goes horribly wrong.
If you want a quick, noir-ish suspense novel, this new one by D. L. Wood provides that dark atmosphere of a heroine caught in a deadly decision.
Father, thank you for your authors. Please continue to bless D. L. and provide more stories you have just for her to tell. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.