My Guest Today: Author Nan Reinhardt
I'm pleased and honored to welcome author Nan Reinhardt to my blog today. Nan and I are online pals, but I'm hoping one day we'll meet in person. I really enjoyed reading RULE NUMBER ONE, Nan's début novel, and here she is with two more, both released this past week. Welcome, Nan!
Scary Stuff
One of the few jokes I can actually remember well enough to tell is one that comedian Flip Wilson (remember him?) told. It was the sixties and I was a little kid, but this joke stuck. It goes something like this:
Here’s an incident that took place recently when I was returning from Chicago by train. I got on the train and sat down. And I noticed that the woman across the aisle from me had her baby with her. Ugly baby. Ugly baby. From the other end of the coach comes this guy and he was very drunk and he was staring at the baby. And the woman heard him when he said under his breath, “Damn.” So she turned to him and said, ‘What the hell are you looking at?” And the guy said, “I’m looking at that ugly baby. That’s a horrible looking baby, lady. Where’d you get that baby from?” And the woman said, “I don’t have to take this!” And she snatched the emergency cord and the train came to a screeching halt, and the conductor came running in. He said, “What’s going on here?” And the woman said, “This man just insulted me. I don’t have to spend my money and ride this railroad to be insulted. I’d rather walk.” And the conductor said, “Calm down! Calm down! Madame there’s nothing that our railroad will not do to avoid having situations such as this. Perhaps it would be better if we were to rearrange your seating; let you sit somewhere else in the coach. And as a small compensation from the railroad, if you will accompany me to the dining car, we’re going to give you a free meal, and maybe we’ll find a banana for your monkey.”
So… there’s my fear… I’ve released these two books into the world—my babies—and I’ve gone indie, something I never imagined myself doing a few years ago. Now I’m scared people will flat-out call my babies ugly.
I write romance–fun, tasty novels with a happily-ever-after ending and no great moral lesson. I’m not Steinbeck or Hemingway or Wharton—I don’t have any deep messages for my readers. I’m simply a kid from the Midwest who grew up creating fantasies. When I write, I’m letting the characters in my head out, releasing all the conversations and scenes that fill my mind every day. My books are entertainment, a few hour’s escape from a frightening and sometimes demoralizing world.
When I sent my novels to Lani Diane Rich at StoryWonk for the first critique, I thought that was the scariest part of writing these book—letting someone who didn’t already love me see them. Then, when I reworked the stories—hours of revisions, cutting, and rewrites, the fear of what my editor would say suddenly seemed overwhelming. Then, the actual process of putting the books up on my own made my mouth dry and my fingers tremble. That had to be the worst! Well, I was wrong on all counts. The scariest part is waiting to see if people actually buy them and if they buy them, whether they’ll like them.
Right now, my heart’s alternately in my throat and in my socks. Once More From the Top and Sex and the Widow Miles are my babies and I’m putting them out there for all the world to read and comment on—yep, pretty scary. But, I’m proud of my work, and I think the best thing to do is to keep writing. There are a few more Women of Willow Bay waiting for their stories to be told.
Find out everything you want to know about Nan Reinhardt here! And find her books on Amazon by clicking here.
