We have a guest blogger!
Mollie Cox Bryan, who lives in Waynesboro, Virginia, is the author of
Scrapbooks of Secrets -- set in the fictional Virginia town of Cumberland Creek -- just out from Kensington. I was fortunate to read an early copy and related to so much in this story!
Here's the back cover copy:
Having traded in her career as a successful investigative journalist for the life of a stay-at-home mum in picturesque Cumberland Creek, Virginia, Annie can't help but feel that something's missing. But she finds solace in a local "crop circle" of scrapbookers united by chore-shy husbands, demanding children, and occasional fantasies of their former single lives. And when the quiet idyll of their small town is shattered by a young mother's suicide, they band together to find out what went wrong.
Annie resurrects her reporting skills and discovers that Maggie Rae was a closet scrapbooker who left behind more than a few secrets - and perhaps a few enemies. As they sift through Maggie Rae's mysteriously discarded scrapbooks, Annie and her "crop" sisters begin to suspect that her suicide may have been murder. It seems that something sinister is lurking beneath the town's beguilingly calm facade - like a killer with unfinished business...
Mollie is also the author of two cookbooks, and those who read this blog, follow me on twitter, or "like" me on facebook know that, along with scrapping, cooking is one of my favorite things to do.
One lucky commenter will receive an autographed copy of
Scrapbook of Secrets along with a way cool kit to make a small (4x6) "brag book." If you don't scrap yourself, you may have friends or even kids who'd love this generous prize! To sweeten the pot, I'm also tossing in an autographed copy of
A Woman's Heart, the first book in my Irish trilogy. Mary, who was a teenager in that book, appears in Shelter Bay as the heroine of
Moonshell Beach this July.
So here, in Mollie's own words, is how she believes (and I agree) that scrapbooking is another way of telling a story. It's also a good example of, if you have a story to tell, but can't find the time to tell it, you MAKE time.
I've been thinking about this for a few years. Why do I scrapbook?
I held it off for many years. I saw it as way too cutesy for me. Teddy bears and hearts—not my kind of thing at all. And then it was the expense. Once you get into it, it seemed to me that you could really spend some money, which as a part-time freelance writer with basically only one steady income (my husband's), is something I do not have.
The first time a friend suggested I go to a "crop," I said "No thanks. Don't get me sucked into that." The next time she asked, I said okay because I thought if I went one time and she saw that it wasn't my thing and I would not buy anything, she'd leave me alone.
But that's not what happened.
I saw beautiful, artsy, paper and interesting, modern embellishments, and get this, women sitting around writing their memories, calling it "journaling." Then, the same friend handed me a copy of Legacy magazine, where scrapbooking is really taken to an artistic extreme. It was also being used as a way to explore yourself and your family. Visual storytelling. I was hooked.
One recent Saturday night, I scrapped and watched my favorite British comedies on our local public television. I was so tired that I only cleaned up a little, leaving my prized scrapbook on my coffee table.
The next morning, I was in the kitchen making breakfast and came around the corner of my living room to tell my family their blueberry pancakes were ready, and what did I see?
My big, burly husband holding my two daughters with the scrapbook being held by all of them.
"Remember that?" he was saying, And the girls were right there with him, laughing and remembering.
So, while I can ruminate about why I scrapbook—the creative outlet, the visual storytelling, the reason became clear to me as I watched my family remembering as they turned the pages on the scrapbook I made.
Story is story. Whether it’s true stories I've scrapped about my family, or the fictional story of Maggie Rae, the call is the same.
This is how it all began for me: a call to story. When I was a child, I filled notebooks with words and images, and danced my stories in the living room of our tiny mobile home, then later, on the stage. Whether I was dancing, acting, or writing, it was the story that called to me.
Later, I studied journalism in college, worked as an editorial assistant, wrote newsletters, ad and brochure copy, magazine articles, essays, poetry, but the novel question always nagged at me. Could I do it?
So when National Novel Writing Month came around a few years ago, my good friend Kate Antea gently persuaded me. The challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. I had been thinking about this story for a few years. A story about the power of women’s friendship, about community, or the lack of it. So that’s how it started—this glimmer of an idea.
Although I had articles and cookbooks to write , I vowed to finish this novel. I wrote around my deadlines and promotion commitments on my pie book. I wrote late at night. I wrote early in the morning. And when I was lucky, I wrote all day long. The next thing I knew I had a novel—or at least the first draft of one.
In the meantime my fiction agent, Sharon Bowers, of the Miller Literary Agency took an interest in one of those drafts (might have been the fifth) and coached me along to write even another. The next thing I knew,
Scrapbook of Secrets had sold to Kensington Publishing. Based on the first book, they want two more: a series of Cumberland Creek mysteries. So I’ll be writing a lot more fiction over the next few years. But there will be more cookbooks, articles, essays, and so on. I’ve found that one often feeds the other.
Because, after all, story is story.
Again, this Six Sentence Sunday excerpt is from MOONSHELL BEACH, Shelter Bay #4, which will be out July 3rd. Last week, we left Marine Captain J.T. Douchett beneath a weeping sky in Southern California, carrying out a mission he never would have asked for. 
Here's the back cover copy: Having traded in her career as a successful investigative journalist for the life of a stay-at-home mum in picturesque Cumberland Creek, Virginia, Annie can't help but feel that something's missing. But she finds solace in a local "crop circle" of scrapbookers united by chore-shy husbands, demanding children, and occasional fantasies of their former single lives. And when the quiet idyll of their small town is shattered by a young mother's suicide, they band together to find out what went wrong.
I've been thinking about this for a few years. Why do I scrapbook?
I saw beautiful, artsy, paper and interesting, modern embellishments, and get this, women sitting around writing their memories, calling it "journaling." Then, the same friend handed me a copy of Legacy magazine, where scrapbooking is really taken to an artistic extreme. It was also being used as a way to explore yourself and your family. Visual storytelling. I was hooked.
Although I had articles and cookbooks to write , I vowed to finish this novel. I wrote around my deadlines and promotion commitments on my pie book. I wrote late at night. I wrote early in the morning. And when I was lucky, I wrote all day long. The next thing I knew I had a novel—or at least the first draft of one.
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