Clarion, where art thou?

25th Street, Ogden. Photo from the archives of the Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah.

 

A few weeks ago I was again asked why, if Tiff obviously lived in Ogden, Utah, I didn’t call the place Ogden in the Whisperings books (yes, I mean you, Kenny!) As always, I was so flabbergasted at being approached by a person who actually knows who I am, and asked about my books, my intellect flew off into the ether and I became all but unintelligible. I mumbled something about thinking Tiff might insult someone (by which I meant an Ogden establishment or proprietor, or lifestyle) so decided to avoid that by not calling her city Ogden. As it was, Tiff didn’t insult anyone, but at the beginning, before I thoroughly settled into her personality, I did worry she would, so it was a concern. As it was, Tiff calmed down a lot as she took over the story and isn’t anywhere as mouthy as I thought she’d be so that problem didn’t arise.

But it was, originally, one of the reasons Tiff doesn’t live in Ogden. I have to stress, though, it was the least of them.

I always knew Tiff was a woman who lived in the mountains, and I pictured her in my mountain valley, the Ogden Valley – which is confusing to some because it’s several thousand feet above Ogden City, while Ogden City itself is in the Salt Lake Valley. But Tiff’s environment needed certain features, like a police department and city streets where her story unfolded, none of which are found in my valley. For me, being a lazy author, it was easier to picture a city layout I already knew, so Ogden became my grid map. Readers who know the area well will detect that although some of the locales I used are similar to Ogden’s, others are not. And the street names are different

I had an imaginary town in a mountain valley and I don’t think anyone would have been the wiser, until I indulged myself by including one of my favorite places in Ogden: 25th Street with its long, narrow shotgun style buildings, now transformed into unique stores, eateries, galleries and clubs, and Union Station facing from the west, became Clarion’s 22nd Street. And as Ogden’s history fascinates and entertains me, I couldn’t resist mentioning it in the books. Popularly known as Two-Bit Street, the area obtained such a bad reputation in the early 20th century due to gambling, prostitution and narcotic sales that Al Capone was rumored to have said Ogden was too wild a town for him. It is also said the connecting basements below the street were used for all kinds of naughty things during that era. Tiff’s 22nd Street (aka 25th Street) is what makes local readers say, wait a sec, this is Ogden!

Now I ask you, as this city is up in the mountains, not down in the Salt Lake Valley, and is not exactly alike, how could I call it Ogden? It became Clarion. And because it is Clarion, not Ogden, the street names, restaurants, etc., are not the same.

How, with a city stuck in the middle of it, can Tiff’s valley be the Ogden Valley? Hence the names of lakes, mountains and canyons in comparison to their location are also different.

This is what is meant by “based on.”

Many of the locations in the Whisperings books are “based” on places I know. The house in Arkansas: my brother-in-law’s house. The farm in Nebraska: another brother-in-law. Janine’s house in a gated community in California: my husband’s uncle’s place. Little Barrow in Wiltshire, England: a blending of Upavon and Rushall, where my parents used to live.

Why Clarion? I thought I invented the name. It seemed to me to have a Biblical sound to it, as so many towns and cities in Utah have. I had no idea there actually is, or was, a place called Clarion in southern Utah. Jewish families from Philadelphia and New York settled a piece of land in Sanpete County, west of Centerfield and Gunnison, beginning 1911. At its peak, 156 people lived in Clarion. But farming the dry land was difficult and water scarce, and the colony as a farming community was a failure. Most of the community had disbanded by 1916. A state order terminated the colony’s title in 1915 and Utah began to auction off the land in 1916. Local residents continue to refer to the area as Clarion although it is now in the Centerfield postal district.  Now, only a few weathered concrete foundations, and two lonely graves, are left of the original Clarion settlement.

My husband and I went to southern Utah to find Clarion. The landmarks and roads spoken of online didn’t seem to exist anymore. We were lucky to find a local lady at the Gunnison Valley Senior Citizens Center who gave us directions. Either the old foundations were hidden by grass, or we got on the wrong dirt road, because all we found were a few early 1900s homes, still occupied, which were not built by the colonists and part of the original settlement. Still, it was a nice day out, apart from all the flies congregated around the nearby dairy, some of which snuck in the pickup and annoyed us most of the way home to northern Utah.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the process by which Ogden became Clarion and the reasoning behind it. Not that I “reasoned” it out beforehand; no, it was a gradual process during the writing and many, many painful revisions of the first two Whisperings books.

Have a good day!

 

ICARI: Young Adult Paranormal

NOW AVAILABLE.

There is a terrifying evil that only a select few can see. It comes from the depths; whispering, coaxing, pushing people to commit atrocities.

Bobbi Clarke is about to come face-to-face with it.

Despite the vicious migraines she seems to have inherited from her dead mother, seventeen-year-old Bobbi is happy with her life. Soon she’ll be eighteen, graduate high school and begin university with her best friends, and she even has a part-time job lined up. And now Grey Adams, the boy she’s crushed on for two years, asks her out on a date.

Then Ky, a complete stranger, comes busting in with a ridiculous story about fighting demons. With his arrival the blows come hard and fast—her aunt and uncle are not who she thought they were, they’ve lied to her and now mean to hand her over to Ky.

Bobbi wants nothing to do with Ky and what he says is her purpose in life. But has she a choice? And what of Grey? Is he the monster Ky claims he is, or the shy, gentle boy she believes him to be? Who can Bobbi trust? One is her destiny, the other her betrayer.

I hope you enjoy this latest offering! Icari is available on Amazon US as e-book for $3.99, Amazon UK £2.19. This universal link will take you to Icari on Barnes&Noble, Apple, Kobo, Scribd, Inktera or 24symbols.

 

Alive and well and living in Utah.

20160403_131649When I get emails and personal Facebook messages asking if I’m still alive, I know it’s time to write something on this little old blog.

I’ve never been a social media butterfly, never blogged frequently or spent as much time as I should on Facebook and other sites. I do appreciate the opportunities it’s given me, and I’ve met some wonderful people, but as little as I’m active on social media, sometimes I still want to give it a rest. So I’ve been busily filling my life with the mundane. You know, the family, the home, the garden, all very un-writerly things. Gasp! If you want to know what I’ve been up to, read on, but I warn you, it’s all very boring.

We started the year with a redecorating project: painting the kitchen/dining room, living room, upstairs bathroom and hall. In February this was interrupted when I went downstairs late one night and stepped into several inches of water. A toilet tank running water for three hours had filled up our septic tank, which showed its displeasure by belching back into the house. Luckily our floor downstairs slopes slightly so the water was only in the east side of the basement and didn’t get into the den. But the laundry room (it’s a BIG room) the downstairs bathroom and a bedroom were flooded. We were up till 3 AM sucking up water with shop vacs. Such fun, especially having to carry the full vacs upstairs and outside to empty them. Also lucky, no lasting damage and almost everything was salvageable. We did have to move everything out of the bedroom and take up the carpet, and decided to repaint the room while it was empty.

Lo and behold, water started to come into the same bedroom and we realized we have a crack in the foundation. Husband had to chop out a lot of newly painted drywall to find the crack and patched it on the inside, but we still have to dig down outside to patch that.

Are you having fun so far? We did. Ha ha. I hope you can hear the sarcasm.

We’ve since learned our septic system is on the way out. The poor old thing is damaged and all the snow melt is leaking into the tank, plus the leach field needs to be replaced.

We took a vacation in Mesquite, NV. We spent one day on our ATVs south of Mesquite in some incredible red rock canyons. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera because Husband had his, and his camera batteries died, so no pictures. Another day we drove up into the mountains west of Mesquite, along one of the little country dirt roads which deteriorates the farther you drive. When we got to the warning sign – go farther at your own risk – we went farther. The road got very bad, and ended with a punctured tire. My, what an adventure.

We took another mini vacation to Kanab, UT, and stayed at the Best Friends Animal Society in one of their cabins. What an incredible place! I’ve supported Best Friends for probably 20 years and this was my first visit. The staff is amazing, the work they do with abandoned and abused animals is amazing. The countryside is wonderful. Rock formations fascinate me and I got my fill there. One day we took the ATV on the Mail Drop ride. As per usual, the trail maps were not 100% accurate and we wasted quite a bit of time trying to find the actual Mail Drop, driving miles of trails and clambering up cliffs. The two men who directed us – I’d love to meet you again and tell you what I think of you. These two guys sent us in the wrong direction and we ended up taking some really nasty trails. We did eventually find the Mail Drop. What is the Mail Drop? In the 1800s, it was easier to send mail down a cliff to the valley below and the communities there, than ride all around the mountains to deliver it. The history of the Mail Drop is interesting, if you want to take a minute to read it. This is the best account I’ve found so far.

Lately I’ve had a spurt of domesticity. It’s as if my mum is inside my head, possessing me, telling me Linny, you have a lovely home but it’d be lovelier with a dusting rag and polish applied, the floor mopped, the junk tidied away (the list goes on and on.) You’d have a beautiful garden if you tidied it up. So on and so forth. To demonstrate how far down this road of doom I’ve gone, I even took everything out of my display cabinet, cleaned them and the cabinet! This is something I usually only do when we’re expecting visitors and the dust is so thick you can’t see what it’s hiding.

And, oh yes, I have been writing. Almost finished the first draft of a young adult paranormal romance: Icari. And I’ve also started on the third and last Downside book: Fallen.

And you thought I’ve done nothing but waste time with domestic issues, didn’t you.

IMG_0173 A very small area of the Angel’s Rest pet cemetery at Best Friends. Beautiful and peaceful. Can you see the wind chimes?
IMG_0201 This is actually the ceiling inside a cave on Best Friends property.
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The Beehives on the Mail Drop ride.

 

Looking out over the Mail

Drop.

Twas the night before Christmas . . .

A Tiff and Royal Christmas.

Click to continue reading “Twas the night before Christmas . . .”

Where Have All The Whisperings Gone?

Scribd did done me wrong.

Click to continue reading “Where Have All The Whisperings Gone?”

Dark Demon Rising is here!

New cover for ebooks

Dark Demon Rising

Whisperings Paranormal Mystery book seven.

 

 

 

Amazon US ~ Amazon UK ~ Amazon Canada ~ Amazon Australia ~ Amazon Germany ~ Kobo ~ iTunes ~ Barnes and Noble

What would you think if you woke in an unfamiliar place, with no memory of how you got there?

Suppose it’s a dream, and pinch yourself?

What if you can’t pinch yourself?

I have to rely on my ghostly buddies and a fake clairvoyant to help me solve a personally harrowing mystery and just when we think we’ve found the guilty party, the game changes. The real culprit’s convoluted plan is diabolical and shooting me was the first step. The next step could change the Gelpha world, and that would be just the start.

Poor Royal. He’s tolerated my interaction with dead people but never been happy with it. Now he has to take a real leap of faith. Now, if he wants to save my life and protect the future of three worlds, he has to believe.

Coming Soon: a new Whisperings novel

Whisperings book seven is almost here!

Click to continue reading “Coming Soon: a new Whisperings novel”

Road Trip, a Whisperings Paranormal Short Story

Road Trip Cover last tryRoad Trip, a Whisperings short story, takes Tiff, Royal, Jack and Mel to southern Utah in a quest to find the body of a  brutally murdered woman. Tiff would rather her roommates stayed at home in Clarion, but there is no way to shake off shades who cling to your aura and come along for the ride. And Jack is determined to see his ex-lover, Dale, and discover why the man has not been in touch for over a month.

I . . . um . . . borrowed (cough) a Whisperings fan for this story. I know she’ll recognize herself.

 

Only $0.99 on Amazon.com and comparative price on Amazon.UK ~ Amazon Germany ~ Amazon France ~ Amazon Canada ~ Amazon Australia. If not listed here, look for it on your local Amazon site!

Also available on iTunes  Barnes and Noble~ Kobo  ~ Inktera ~ Scribd

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2015

 

So I finished this book today

When you find and like something new, you want to share your discovery with your friends. Right? I do. So, today I’m pointing you at a particular book because I really enjoyed it: Stories on the Go, 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors. The description says, ” You should be able to read each story in under five minutes — on your desktop computer, laptop, or tablet at home or in the office, but also on your smartphone, on the go, while you are commuting or waiting at a coffee shop for your significant other to arrive.” Great, I thought. A book I won’t mind picking up, putting down, because I can get to the end of a story in seconds.

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But I had a hard time putting it down. I found it addictive. No story is over 1,00 words so a very quick read, tiny samples of one-hundred-and-one authors’ unique styles of story telling. Each time I finished one, I told myself I’d squeeze in just one more, or two, or three, before I headed for bed. I ended up reading into the early hours of the morning.

Not every little tale rocked my world, but many grabbed me by the heart and twisted, or tickled my funny bone, or made me really think. When I reached the end of the book, I wanted more. There are stories by authors already well known to me, such as Hugh Howey’s A Father’s Fist and John L. Monk’s delightfully slutty parody Trixy Chestity goes to England (Chapter 7). Dee Gabbledon’s Outlandisher was a delicious surprise. You’ve never heard of Dee Gabbledon? If you’re an Outlander fan, you’re in for a treat. <winks>

And I discovered many authors new to me and will definitely be checking out their books: Sheryl Fawcett (The Man Across the Room,) Bob Summer (Words) and Carol Kean (The Tipper)  to name only a few.

The book is free for Kindle and Nook so if you’re looking for an effortless reading experience, download Stories on the Go. See if you can put it down or, like me, become an addict.