Saturday, October 28, 2017

Puppies and Changing Leaves

Be advised, I'm writing this in the company of a puppy of little brain, like Winnie the Pooh, with a big heart, and even bigger puddles. At seven months, Cooper is a handful, chasing the kitties, and into everything, then he goes into sweet mode and I feel guilty for complaining. Such is life with this boisterous baby. He's a Morkie, Yorkie/Maltese cross, but more Yorkie in the mix so a heap of bounding terrier. Super busy. Super loving. Super devoted. Hard to housebreak. Must change my socks from stepping in a puddle. Again. Walk the puppy. Again. Cooper and I head outside a lot and I'm aware of every flower, leaf, the change of seasons on the farm.


(Cooper watching me)

Back to fall 2017. Autumnal splendor is late to the party in the Shenandoah Valley this year. We began with hopeful indicators, rain and cooler temps in late August, but that dissipated and the weather turned hot and dry. Colors getting underway halted for the most part and we despaired of ever seeing them. How we've longed for our wondrously painted trees, without having to spray paint the leaves ourselves. But now, we've had rain and colder temperatures and ta da! Fall. It's too late for some trees but many are strutting their stuff.


I glory in this time of year. Granted, I'm besotted in April, giddy with spring fever But October brings a mellow kind of joy. I'm happy for the summer heat to go, and though I miss the flowers, pollen isn't my friend. Frost brings freedom to us allergy sufferers. I've cleared the vegetable garden and planted greens, beets, and radishes in the salad patch We shall see if they emerge and thrive in late winter or early spring. I missed my window for a fall garden.


I'm also writing, of course, working on the next time slip/time travel romance in my Ladies in Time Series. I may never finish this book. Writing while hopping up to walk a puppy every half hour or forget to my regret is challenging. My other alternative is to put him in his pen and insist on 'nighty night' no matter what time of day it is. I feel like I have a toddler in my care. And yes, he is adorable. I got him because I was devastated after losing my dear little Sadie and had forgotten what an exuberant puppy is. I remember now. 


Some pictures from our farm or just up the road.



(The woods up behind our meadow)



(Old Order Mennonite School Behind Our Farm)

(Sunset behind our Farm)

 (The old cemetery at Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church a mile up the road. and maple tree in front of the church below.)




(Buggy going past our farm from last fall)

(Cool tree in the mist in our meadow)



My time travel fixation is ongoing. This is the blurb from my upcoming November 10th release, The White Lady (Book 2, Ladies in Time) in pre-order now in Kindle at Amazon.

Avery Dunham has always been ready to follow her friend, time-traveling wizard, Ignus Burke, on incredible adventures. This time, though, she has serious misgivings. It's just one week before Christmas, but she cannot get him to change his mind. The usually cool and collected magic-wielding leader is wholly obsessed by the portrait of the White Lady whom he is bent on rescuing.

Almost as soon as they begin their journey, it becomes clear their mission is a trap.

Avery was right: this adventure is not going to be like any other,

(If a ghostly white lady summons you back in time--don't go.)


For more on me, please visit https://bethtrissel.wordpress.com/

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Autumn in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia

autumn-trees-in-mountain-drive
(The Alleghenies)

We finally got some much needed rain in the Shenandoah Valley this past week and cooler temps. Autumn is here in all its splendor. DH and I took a drive into the Allegheny Mountains. We got some lovely pics. I have gained much inspiration from the mountains for my writing. They are the setting for many of my books, as is my beautiful valley.

chloe-sitting-on-our-pumpkins

No spring nor summer’s beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face....
~John Donne, "Elegy IX: The Autumnal"

I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze.
The sweet chill of pumpkin and crisp sunburnt leaves.
~Ann Drake, 2013


falling leaves
hide the path
so quietly
~John Bailey, "Autumn," a haiku year, 2001, as posted on oldgreypoet.com


A glorious crown the year puts on... ~Phebe A. Holder, "A Song of October," in The Queries Magazine, October 1890

autumn-branch

Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees....
Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream...
~Ernest Dowson (1867–1900), "Autumnal"


tree-on-fencerow-bordering-our-meadow-by-elise
(Behind our farm)

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees. ~Faith Baldwin, American Family

The softened light, the veiling haze,
The calm repose of autumn days,
Steal gently o'er the troubled breast,
Soothing life's weary cares to rest.
~Phebe A. Holder, "A Song of October," in The Queries Magazine, October 1890

A beauty lights the fading year... ~Phebe A. Holder, "A Song of October," in The Queries Magazine, October 1890

"Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower."~Fall Quotes and Images--Beth Trissel

Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him. ~Hal Borland

Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes. ~Hal Borland

There is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky...
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


O’ pumpkin pie, your time has come ’round again and I am autumnrifically happy! ~Terri Guillemets

chipmunkonpumpkin

"Autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such like musings and quotations..." ~Jane Austen

"green-veined leaves suddenly blushing copper
bronze-edged trees swaying in autumn breezes
gold foliage drifting past pewter branches baring all
brass-hued leaflets dying in beauty, falling in grace"
~Terri Guillemets, "In the Autumn Wood," 2016


autumn in the Alleghenies

Mom took the pic of the chipmunk on the pumpkin and the Blue Ridge Mountains above. Daughter Elise took the others of the leaves, trees, grandbaby Chloe with our pumpkins, and the mountains. Grandson Colin is the baby reaching for the leaves taken by his mom, my daughter Alison. Autumn is a family time.

For more on me follow my Amazon Author Page

Friday, October 13, 2017

Historical Romance Novel The Bearwalker's Daughter .99 in Kindle

'A change was coming as surely as the shifting seasons. Karin McNeal heard the urgent whispers in the wind.'


Historical romance novel, The Bearwalker’s Daughter, is a blend of carefully researched historical fiction interwoven with an intriguing paranormal thread and set among the clannish Scots in the mist-shrouded Alleghenies. The story is similar to others of mine with a western colonial frontier, Native American theme, and features a powerful warrior or two. My passion for the past and some of the accounts I uncovered while exploring my early American Scots-Irish ancestors and the Shawnee Indians is at the heart of my inspiration.

A particularly tragic account is the driving force behind the story, the ill-fated romance of  a young captive woman who fell in love with the son of a chief. As the result of a treaty, she was taken from her warrior husband and forced back to her white family where she gave birth to a girl. Then the young woman’s husband did the unthinkable and left the tribe to go live among the whites, but such was their hatred of Indians that before he reached his beloved her brothers killed him. Inconsolable and weak from the birth, she grieved herself to death.

Heart-wrenching, that tale haunts me to this day. And I wondered, was there some way those young lovers could have been spared such anguish, and what happened to their infant daughter when she grew up? I know she was raised by her white family–not what they told her about her mother and warrior father.


Not only did The Bearwalker’s Daughter spring from that sad account, but it also had a profound influence on my historical romance novel Red Bird’s Song. Now that I’ve threaded it through two novels, perhaps I can let go…perhaps….

The history my novels draw from is raw and real, a passionate era where only the strong survive. Superstition ran high among both the Scots and Native Americans, and far more, a vision that transcends what is, to reach what can be. We think we’ve gained much in our modern era, and so we have.  But we’ve also lost. In my writing, I try to recapture what should not be forgotten.  Read and judge for yourself. And hearken back.  Remember those who’ve gone before you.

As to bearwalking, this belief/practice predates modern Native Americans to the more ancient people. In essence,  a warrior transforms himself into a bear and goes where he wills in that form, a kind of shapeshifting.

 Blurb: A Handsome Frontiersman, Mysterious Scots-Irish Woman, Shapeshifting Warrior, Dark Secret, Pulsing Romance…The Bearwalker’s Daughter~

beautiful dark haired woman

Karin McNeal hasn’t grasped who she really is or her fierce birthright. A tragic secret from the past haunts the young Scots-Irish woman who longs to learn more of her mother’s death and the mysterious father no one will name. The elusive voices she hears in the wind hint at the dramatic changes soon to unfold in the mist-shrouded Alleghenies in Autumn, 1784.

Jack McCray, the wounded stranger who staggers through the door on the eve of her twentieth birthday and anniversary of her mother’s death, holds the key to unlock the past. Will Karin let this handsome frontiersman lead her to the truth and into his arms, or seek the shelter of her fiercely possessive kinsmen? Is it only her imagination or does someone, or something, wait beyond the brooding ridges–for her?~

family musket and powder horn image by my mom
The Bearwalker’s Daughter is .99 in Kindle through Oct. 19th at:  https://www.amazon.com/Bearwalkers-Daughter-Native-American-Warrior-ebook/dp/B007V6MA22

*Cover by my daughter Elise Trissel. She also formatted the novel for print.

*Image of old family musket, powder horn, and shot pouch by my mom Pat Churchman

***The Bearwalker’s Daughter is a revised version of romance novel Daughter of the Wind Publisher’s Weekly BHB Reader’s Choice Best Books of 2009 

“Ms. Trissel’s alluring style of writing invites the reader into a world of fantasy and makes it so believable it is spellbinding.” –Long and Short Reviews

For more of my work, visit my Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Beth-Trissel/e/B002BLLAJ6/

Or just do a find on my name. I am the only Author Beth Trissel in the world.


Sunday, October 1, 2017

#Ghostly #Timetravel #Romance Somewhere My Love .99 in Kindle

I conceived the idea for my Somewhere in Time series years ago while watching one of my favorite British mysteries, Midsomer Murders.  I enjoy the historic setting of these modern-day mysteries, but especially when the story flashes back to an earlier time period in an old manor house to get to the root of the mystery. So I thought, why not incorporate mystery with my love of romance and history.
Moreover, I'm intrigued by ghost stories, and Virginia has more tales than any other state. I find myself asking if the folk who've gone before us are truly gone, or do some still have unfinished business in this realm? And what of the young lovers whose time was tragically cut short, do they somehow find a way?  Love conquers all, so I answer 'yes.'  The theme behind ghostly, murder mystery romance Somewhere My Love, the first in my Somewhere in Time series.
Blurb: Fated lovers have a rare chance to reclaim the love cruelly denied them in the past, but can they grasp this brief window in time before it’s too late?
Two hundred years ago Captain Cole Wentworth, the master of an elegant Virginian home, was murdered in his chamber where his portrait still hangs. Presently the estate is a family owned museum run by Will Wentworth, a man so uncannily identical to his ancestor that spirit-sensitive tour guide Julia Morrow has trouble recognizing Cole and Will as separate. As Julia begins to remember the events of Cole’s death, she must convince Will that history is repeating, and this time he has the starring role in the tragedy. The blade is about to fall.
"A beautiful love story with plenty of suspense and mystery. With a murderer on the loose and a house haunted by the ghosts of the past, can William and Julia figure everything out and survive? Visit Foxleigh Hall and find out." 
~Night Owl Romance, a Night Owl Top Pick
"As I read Somewhere My Love, I recalled the feelings I experienced the first time I read Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca long ago. Using the same deliciously eerie elements similar to that gothic romance, Beth Trissel has captured the haunting dangers, thrilling suspense and innocent passions that evoke the same tingly anticipation and heartfelt romance I so enjoyed then, and still do now." ~joysann for Publisher's Weekly
****.99 In Kindle from Oct. 1 through Oct. 7 at: https://www.amazon.com/SOMEWHERE-LOVE-Somewhere-Time-Book-ebook/dp/B00AFJ7DZ6