GUEST POST FROM ALICE ORR -- AND A NEW RELEASE!

Hi There – My Name is Alice

A Guest Blog Post by Alice Orr

I grew up in Northern New York State twenty-five miles from the Canadian border. I thought everybody had snow fall several feet at a time in winter and a field of flowers my grandmother called an English garden in summer.

I was an only child until I was nine but I didn’t mind because I had Grandma who told stories and baked biscuits. And after she was gone I had a flashlight and books to read under the covers until long past bedtime.

When siblings finally did come they were like beings from another solar system. I was waiting for puberty and they were waiting to have their diapers changed. I might have been lonely if not for my imagination which was heavily populated and very active all of the time.

I was mostly with adults until I went to school and that made me sort of an odd bird there. My kindergarten teacher slapped my hand when she caught me writing on the blackboard. I didn’t care because writing was about words and knowing words got me to books where my imagination played more joyously than ever.

That happened about the same time I was suddenly old enough to go back outside after dinner. I’d play Kick the Can with the neighbor kids until an adult voice hollered from one of the porches for us to stop the clatter. Then we’d play Hide and Seek until other adult voices called us home.

We lived on a one-block street but that one block was a world for me. I knew every tree and every bump in the sidewalk and every person in every house. It was a small world but a cozy one and I already knew I loved feeling cozy.

Alice and Jonathan's wedding photo

That’s why in my present-day life my favorite way to relax after an intense day of laboring in the story fields of my imagination is to hang out with my husband Jonathan. We get cozy together on top of the comforter he calls our blue beach. We chat and laugh and snack and binge watch TV.

We tell each other about our work sometimes but mostly we talk about family or what’s on the news or make private jokes that never fail to set us chuckling. We reminisce too. We’ve been with each other forty-three years so we share lots of memories – like the beautiful one in this photo of our hippie-style wedding day.

On Sunday we go to church a few blocks from our apartment and afterward we brunch at someplace or other in the neighborhood. I have a Bellini and Jonathan has a Mimosa and we talk some more because a long marriage is really a long conversation.

My favorite quotation is “Fall down seven times. Get up eight.” Because I know that when falling down and getting up again grow tiring – as they inevitably will – you can always take a welcome rest on a blue beach.

RR

Alice’s new novel is A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2. It launches today along with summer and is available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is a good story to enjoy under the covers or on a blue beach.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com. www.facebook.com/AliceOrrWriter. www.twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks.