Fight for Love is the second book in the story of Tom Tanner and Addie Varn. It opens with Tom’s words:

“I went to war the way boys do, scared and joyous and wondering. I followed my brother Gaylin and we followed Jimmy. We got home in different ways, mustered out older, some sick, some didn’t come home at all. I wasn’t planning on it, but my Pa came and got me in Springfield. I had lost my brother at Chickamauga. Only one taking it harder than me was my ma. So home I came, always the one to do the hard thing, that’s me. And there I met Addie Varn.

“Addie was widowed with two children Johnny and Janey. Well those three became mine. She is Addie Tanner now, and so it should be.

“So here I am, a newly married man just coming home from St. Louis, my son Johnny in tow. We left the female half in the city so Addie could settle her dead husband’s matters.

“Prior to marrying my bride I rode posse with Sheriff Jimmy and some others, my brother Gaylin among them, and we brought in the bodies of Boyle Monroe, nefarious train-robber and general lawbreaker. I have yet to collect my reward money and I am about to set out to do so once I settle my son at home with my family. So I am nearly a happy soul on this bright day when we cross onto Tanner land.”

Book Two is available for pre-order on Amazon and has a release date of August 8th. Book One: My Wounded Soldier, Fight for Glory is currently available.

Book Two, Fight for Love:  http://www.amazon.com/My-Wounded-Soldier-Book-Fight-ebook/dp/B010W8NDDK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437414662&sr=1-1&pebp=1437414656357&perid=1EKCAFVSP4ZAP25SQRWH

July 4th is here! Happy Independence Day to you all. My Wounded Soldier Book 1: Fight for Glory is now available on Amazon Kindle. If you pre-ordered the book, then you are ready to read! If you still need to purchase Book 1 CLICK HERE

Had the pleasure of being interviewed by Susan Leigh Noble on her blog Into Another World. Susan is a generous writer and according to her blog she has trouble finding writers to interview. Hence me. I stepped  into that empty room and said, “Hello?” and Susan was there.

The interview is about Finding My Thunder with mention of My Wounded Soldier. I think living between these two books is my happy place. What amazes me is the difference in the questions in each interview I have done. I hope my answers are as fascinating though that is probably (definitely) a stretch. I do find I can talk about writing endlessly. Really until an interview I do not speak about writing at all. So I guess it builds.

Actually, on closer look, wonderful though they are, the questions could be perceived as utilitarian. It’s what they make me think of that excites me, and that is about me, of course, so I’m a narcissist. Ah well, I’ll add that to my list.

Anyway, a big thanks to Susan and if you have the time and inclination here are the links to my pontificating.

Susan’s work can be found on Amazon at:

The interview can be found here:  https://susanleighnoble.wordpress.com/category/featured-authors-book-excerpts/

First off, yes, I know it should be Mom and I. I wanted Me and Mom because it was juvenile. And my heroine has some growing up to do. If you do a search on ‘me and mom,’ you will find it is often a child’s way of referring to her relationship with Mom. My heroine Sarah never outgrew the phrase and that’s indicative of her life.

The story opens with Sarah stuck in the staleness of her relationship with her mother. She is overly dependent on her mom and in the process of that she outgrows her mother and the situation reverses. It has changed both of them. Sarah’s comfort zone has become Sarah’s prison cell. Mom has become someone so unlikeable you question if she can be redeemed.

That’s not to say Sarah hasn’t been working hard to redeem the situation. Her shining quality is her ability to touch the people around her. She doesn’t passively co-exist with them, she serves them.

To some degree, the story explores the idea that we are not confined by circumstance so much as by the attitude we allow to develop in ourselves about our circumstances.

Does Sarah need rescued? Maybe. But only if she can rescue as she is rescued. Perhaps love, true love should elevate us, defying the notion that we “fall” into anything, thereby descending. Perhaps we ‘rise’ into love. But if I would have put that as a title, “Me and Mom Rise for Spencer…” you see my difficulty. But Spencer Gundry looking through the fence, unshaven, hair wild, a walk of over a thousand miles behind him and a past he won’t talk about, I ask you, who needs saved here?

Normal things ground us. Normal things ground Sarah. She is nailed to her world, but Spencer Gundry is the proverbial tumbleweed. Notice who is leading on my cover. Notice the light between them. Notice that he can’t touch her, he knows the rules, and they are both looking ahead, not at one another. It all means something.

Sarah’s seemingly meaningless rituals are very much about the need to heal, to understand, and to protect. I rather love her brokenness. I hope you will too.

Available on Amazon

In Darnay Road I try to capture life on an average small town neighborhood street through the eyes of a little girl, ten-year-old Georgia Christine. Through her perspective we get a picture bathed in sunshine with a few dark spots. There is the mystery of the altar in the parish church dubbed Bloody Heart. And a crazy lady who stands on the sidewalk in her slip and talks to her dead husband. And where do the boys go at night when they climb out of their windows and what about that bump on the front of Georgia’s new Ken doll, and why does Granma tell Georgia’s father that he’s missing so much when it comes to her? She doesn’t want him, she doesn’t know him. Then there is her mother who ran off to be a model in Paris, and the picture of a dark haired woman in a beautiful blue dress.

There are the tracks behind the houses that line Darnay, there is the run-down neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Granma calls that place the slums.

Georgia’s homelife is idyllic. She is being raised by her grandmother. Her father is a cop in the city and he has a new family. Her mother is dead. Across the street her best friend is being raised in similar circumstances by her aunt. Granma and Auntie make up the stable forces in Georgia’s life.

But what about those boys that come from the other side–the slums? Georgia is drawn to the one who lives on his bike. The one who whistles at her while she’s skating. She gets so thrown she doesn’t make the corner and zips into traffic instead. She narrowly escapes disaster with a broken bone.

That is the beginning of a true friendship between Georgia and Easy Caghan.

An excerpt of this book can be seen on Amazon along with some lovely reviews. I quote one here from reader Fran:

The characters portrayed in Darnay Road are so real, especially if you grew up in the 60s. Living with your Gram instead of your parents makes you think so differently and care so much more. You appreciate her selflessness in taking you in, and you develop that trait, the nurturing one. This is what happens here. Young, Georgia Christine’s destiny was written the first time Easy (E.C.) rode his bike by her house. She was smitten, as was he. But life gets in their way and the path is not clear until years later. Take the journey with them

Darnay Road is listed as literary fiction and historical romance and is available for 2.99 at:

My Wounded Soldier, Book One: Fight for Glory, is my newest offering on Amazon available for pre-order. It goes live on July 4th, 2015. This is the saga of Tom Tanner and his reluctant love for Addie Varner.

After he mustered out of the Twenty-Seventh, Tom never expected to follow the boys home to Illinois. Having failed to protect his older brother Garrett, Tom planned to take his wounds out west where a man could get lost under the endless sky. But his father prevailed on him to come home and comfort his grieving mother.

Tom had nearly filled his obligation when the neighbor boy came running and calling his name as he worked in the field. Johnny was the boy that looked like his mother, Mrs. Varn. Tom had seen the woman at meeting. She rattled him some for he’d not had a woman, just that one time and he’d been liquored up and taking a dare and were he to have one, she was not hardship to look at. But Johnny was calling for him. Tom knew the sounds of war. The country was rife with veterans, some looking for trouble instead of home. What Tom finds at the Varner’s farm offers him a new kind of battle, a new kind of glory trail.

I have been writing this story for fifteen years. In its various forms it has garnered attention in literary contests and with a number of writerly folks. But stuck in ‘bridesmaid,’ mode it has never really walked the aisle. Until now. I hope you give it a spin and maybe fall in love.

Finding My Thunder is Literary Fiction with a strong love story. It is the book of my heart. All of my stories are dear to my heart, but this book stabs me in a special way. It is closest to my own story even though it is not autobiographical in the truest sense. But the emotions of it, the rejection, the desperation, the joy, the levels of those feelings…wow. I get those levels right out of my own life. This story takes place in a time gone by. Each character is inspired by someone I’ve known. Truth takes so many forms. Each one of these players are important with a distinctive voice. They were here, they are here. I write to make sense of life. Mine. Yours. Ours. I have respect for the dark times. When we get those right in the worlds we create, the light is a no-brainer. It is not what we go through that ultimately matters as much as what we learn and share, how we grow, what we give, how we bless. Finding My Thunder is about a girl’s courage and conviction. It changes her and ultimately it changes the people in her world. If you read it, or have read it, I would love to read your review. Thanks, Diane

I just published Leaping and want to gift it to readers this weekend. It is a survivor’s story, a love story, a facing Goliath story and finding Goliath is really your own fear. It’s my shortest work at around 43,000 words. I hope you’ll find it a worthwhile read.

Diane

If you haven’t viewed the site Robsessed lately you’ve been missing out. Miss Tink and the girls over there have been writing and posting their little hearts out in support of Robert Pattinson. Do you want to laugh and have a smile on your face? Go to Robsessed and read Tink’s article: Seeing Robert Pattinson in the Flesh is What Sweet Robsessed Dreams are Made of.

Tink is quite the writer. Whenever she ‘sees Pattinson’s flesh’ I mean sees him IN the flesh, she goes silent. In this story we learn it can also mean (spoiler alert) semi-silent hysterical laughter. You DO NOT want to miss this encounter as told through Tink’s adoring eyes.

Miss Tink has also been incredibly generous to me. Robsessed is sponsoring a book giveaway for Darnay Road and Finding My Thunder. For two weeks you can enter to win BOTH BOOKS! One drawing, two books.

Thanks Miss Tink.

#ROBsessedGiveaway: Travel down DARNAY ROAD and FINDING MY THUNDER by @dianemunier for Fiction Friday! http://www.robsessedpattinson.com/2015/04/robsessed-giveaway-travel-down-darnay.html …