Charlotte Figg is Now Available

Here's the thing, the second Bright's Pond novel, Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise is now available. So if you've pre-ordered a copy it should be arriving any minute now. If not, then please be sure to get your copy while they last. Charlotte is doing really, getting some great reviews and endorsements.

From the back cover copy:
"Charlotte Figg makes me want to move to Bright's Pond and bake pies and embrace the freedom to be who God made me to be. Once you've laughed and cried and eaten with the Paradise Angels, you'll want to do the same. Kudos to Joyce Magnin, the Queen of Quirk." ~ Nancy Rue, bestselling fiction author.


A snippet of a review from Storybook Reviews
http://storeybookreviews.com/2010/08/charlotte-figg-takes-over-paradise-joyce-magnin-moccero/
"This story is about people banding together to right wrongs and to support each other in good times and in bad. It is also about Charlotte finding her independence, becoming her own woman and not staying in the shadows.
I really enjoyed this book. I will say that I wasn’t sure with the first chapter or two but am glad that I continued reading because I was inspired by Charlotte for leaving what she was comfortable with and starting over in a small town. She even resists giving in to her overbearing mother who would love nothing more than for Charlotte to move to Florida with her. It would have been very easy to give in, but that isn’t where God wanted Charlotte to be at that time in life. He wanted her in Paradise to bring together this community.
Charlotte isn’t the only one that blossoms with the new friendships that are created. Others become stronger with the various situations that they are faced with at the time.
I give this book 4 stars."

If you've were one of the five winners of a free autographed book and a signed map of Paradise. Hang in there. They're coming.

And speaking of winners. I will send the same deal to the first three people to leave a comment this weekend. Even if you've pre-ordered the book, it will make a great Christmas gift.

Yayyy, Charlotte Figg--the hero of Paradise!

A Difficult Subject

Here’s the thing, I am eagerly awaiting the release of the second Bright’s Pond novel—Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise. It is set to hit the shelves both virtual and physical September first. I’m really excited about this one because it deals with a subject that doesn’t always get the attention it needs and deserves—domestic abuse. I know, I know, what a depressing subject to start the week on but naturally Charlotte takes a look at this subject with both humor and pathos. The sad truth is that millions of women (I am pretty much going to refer to women throughout although many men are abused also in marriages) are abused in one form or another each year. Domestic abuse is not just physical violence—it can be verbal, emotional, spiritual and financial. But, an emotional attack can be just as or even more damaging than a punch in the eye. The hurt, the pain, the scars of verbal attacks linger long after the arguing is over. Verbal abuse strikes at a woman’s core, her self-esteem, her very sense of who she is. These attacks can come in sneaky, underhanded ways with small jabs of passive aggression or they can come loud and full on as a husband shouts obscenities and insults at the woman he promised to love and cherish. There is nothing cherishing about name-calling and demeaning insults. Emotional abuse is insidious and crazy-making, causing women to doubt their own beliefs and feelings and sanity. Emotional abuse is frightening because most women don’t see it early on as she questions the attack. “Maybe it is me. I guess I am stupid or ugly or crazy. He’s my husband, he would never say anything like that if it wasn’t true.” Most women want to love their husbands and please them and will do anything to stop the hollering, the shouting, the name-calling.” But here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter what the woman does, her husband will still find fault, find ways to blame her for everything that goes wrong in their marriage and even in his life.

“Emotional abuse chips away at your feelings of self-worth and independence. Victims of emotional abuse, feel that there is no way out of the relationship or that without your abusive partner you have nothing.
Emotional abuse includes verbal abuse such as yelling, name-calling, blaming, and shaming. Isolation, intimidation, and controlling behavior also fall under emotional abuse. Additionally, abusers who use emotional or psychological abuse often throw in threats of physical violence or other repercussions if you don’t do what they want.
You may think that physical abuse is far worse than emotional abuse, since physical violence can send you to the hospital and leave you with scars. But, the scars of emotional abuse are very real, and they run deep. In fact, emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse—sometimes even more so.” Helpguide.org
If you or someone you know is frightened about something in your relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE (7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224.

The Wednesday Night JOY-ce Ride (and Thursday)

Here’s the thing, I just got back from the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference. It was as always a great, fun time of learning and fellowship and praising God for all the year’s writerly blessings. I love to teach and get very attached to my clinic people (more on that later). It is also an opportunity to catch-up with other authors who I only get to see once or twice a year and to meet some for the very first time. We chat via email and FB but have never actually met, or we share an agent but have never met face-to-face. So, writer’s conferences do so much more than teach aspiring writers the craft. They really are a small world unto themselves that writer’s get to enter a few times each year.
And every year a couple of things stand out that will remain with me forever and possibly become book fodder down the road. This year’s most memorable event was of course, the Wednesday Night JOY-ce Ride. I realized I had left my blood pressure meds at home and that I had forgotten to feed Cosmo—my son’s Russian Tortoise. So, I decided I had no choice but drive home. I asked my friend Phoebe to tag a long and Pammy and Lauren and we were getting ready to go when I caught up with a new friend, Marti Pieper—she was one of the folks I was excited to meet thinking that I would make an awesome first impression since authors have reputations to consider. But, well, little did she know. I invited Marti to ride along with us.
We piled into my little car and off we went on a ride that ordinarily takes about forty minutes. Long story short, it took well over an hour because we hit traffic that gave new meaning to the word slow, although I did see the splendid irony in the fact that I was stuck in sloooooowwww moving traffic on my way to feed a tortoise. Other highlights of the trip down the Boulevard was the sinister looking white SUV with the vanity plate of RMD RBBRY. We figured him to be an armed robber with a serious ego, not to mention a lot of Hutzpah. Then there was the strange low-rider vehicle that cruised next to us for a good bit with three women inside, one that was overly engaged with a stuffed monkey. She and the monkey looked very happy together. And of course the stop at Rita's for water ice. My friend Marti, being from Florida had never met Rita before but I know she's glad she did now. Rita Rocks! We got to my place and we all shlepped up the fire escape. Bet you didn't expect that girls.
I felt so bad for the people I had invited. It was quite late by the time we got there, but hey, not everyone gets to see where the Bright's Pond magic happens. I fed Cosmo, snagged my meds then off we went back to PBU. The ride back was not nearly as long. But and here’s the kicker, the next morning I went to take my medication and couldn’t find it. I went into this freaky reality/dream thing, thinking that maybe I never drove back to the apartment, maybe the night never happened. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find my drugs. So, that morning I was scheduled to spend some time with my editor and guess what we did? Well, we didn’t drive back home, no we spent nearly the same amount of time however trying to find a CVS so I could get a few pills to get me through the weekend. Geeze, double JOY-ce rides in one week. That doesn’t happen much—oh, well, then again, this is me we’re talking about.

It's the Ikea Store not the Idea store

Here’s the thing, I’m a writer not a carpenter or an engineer but I built a piece of furniture this weekend. That’s it in the picture—an entertainment center. Pretty sweet. My sisterfriend, Rebecca helped. She went to Ikea with me, helped me choose it and then helped me lug it home. Which let me tell you was hard. It was quite heavy but we are women, hear us roar. Then we unboxed all the pieces and started to build. Fortunately Ikea packs their stuff in ways that are amazing feats of engineering unto themselves and the directions are pretty easy to follow—for the most part.
We assembled and screwed screws and tightened bolts—don’t you love those little round, grommit, do-hickey things they come with? Geeze if only everything in life is that easy. Insert part A into B, turn a quarter turn to tighten and voila—you built an entertainment center. But alas nothing is perfect. I did end up with two pieces on backwards, not that you can tell, but I know it and someday I might take the thing apart and fix it but not now. Imperfection has its own rewards.
But the experience got me thinking, if only writing a novel was so easy. Wouldn’t it be cool to go to the Idea store (notice I said Idea, not Ikea—ha! I crack myself up) choose your story package from among millions, bring it home, open the box and all the parts are neatly nestled inside. You get seven characters, three subplots, one main storyline, two needs—one hidden, one obvious, a small packet of metaphors, five hundred scenes, one beginning, one ending, a few panels of laughter, a romance for support, and a tiny little self-editing tool that helps you tighten it all together.
Would you buy one? The thing is that novel writing is like Ikea furniture in a way. It takes having all the parts of the whole and then fitting them together in a way that makes it entertaining, functional, attractive, sturdy and just like my new entertainment center, a little quirky. But also, like Ikea furniture, you can’t leave any of the pieces out—it just won’t work. It will fall down. Sometimes writing a novel really is about technique, the system and not so much about talent.
So, are you writing a novel? Do you have all your pieces in place or are you still shopping? I will admit that I assemble my novels piecemeal, I keep running back to the store to snag a plot twist or find a new character, or dig up a new scene. But the system stays in tact and all the pieces must fit together to form one beautiful whole.
How about it? Are you stumbling over the directions?

Arthur and Me

Here’s the thing. I made an observation this weekend. Did you ever notice how quickly we go from being a driver to being a pedestrian? One minute you’re safely tucked away in your vehicle. The next minute you park, step out of the car and whamo! You are a pedestrian and all the rules, the mindset changes. It’s instantaneous. Just moments ago you were the one annoyed by slow walking pedestrians and now you are the very annoyance you were annoyed ( if you were annoyed) at moments before. Weird.
But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about today. Today I am officially going under. I have a book to finish in a couple of months—the fourth Bright’s Pond book. That just amazes me. Four novels. This one is called Blame it on the Mistletoe and that’s right—it’s a Christmas story. Without giving too much away—a Christmas love story of Bright’s Pond. It’s sweet and quirky and fun and sentimental and all that good stuff that readers like.
The other day I was watching a tv show about tv pioneers—all the truly amazing people who made television what it is today—Red Skelton, Milton Berle, Imogene Coca, Sid Ceaser and Arthur Godfrey among others.
As I watched the segment of Godfrey it occurred to me that the same qualities people related to in Arthur they relate to in the Bright’s Pond novels—quirky, gentle, smart, folksy. Even back then when life was slower and less technological people needed and enjoyed a relaxed tone, a quiet humor. I guess you could say that Bright’s Pond is the Arthur Godfrey of today. Like him I want to capture Americana at its best--warts and all.
But, I say all that to say that my posts might become less than daily for a little bit because I really need to go under the writing spell and get my work done. But please check in. I might find something to talk about—probably, I’m almost certain.
IN the mean time, talk among yourselves and keep in touch, eat pie, pet a dog and do a random act of kindness today.