Nomad Authors welcomes one of Dee’s favorite author friends, Devin Govaere, and her two writing companions, Maggie McBay and Laurie Keck, and their really great book for Halloween–Halloween Magic. Halloween Magic is an anthology of three stories taking place in Forget-Me-Not, Oregon, a town where ordinary and extraordinary people live their unique lives in harmony.
NA: Hi, Devin. How did you come up with the idea for your book?
DG: My co-authors and I love the small-town, romantic vibe that comes from watching the Hallmark Channel, but we also love quirky and interesting characters that live outside the norm. So creating a small town with paranormal residents was intriguing to us. Since Halloween is coming, we decided to each write a story using a classic Halloween theme.
NA: What sort of research did you do to write this book?
DG: When deciding where to place our town, we read articles and perused pictures to determine which “vibe” most connected to our ideas. We all agreed and chose Oregon and then created our town on a rather isolated peninsula. My story, Just Another Scarecrow Love Story, is contemporary, so it didn’t require research. However, my male character is a miner from the nineteenth century, so in order to get a feel for the life he might have led, I read a bit about early mining practices. The research never makes it into the story, but it gave me a sense of who he is.
NA: A fun fact about writing your book.
DG: I’ve always been intrigued by scarecrows. They’re solitary creatures who reflect how lonely life can be at times. I wanted to write a story about a scarecrow who is much more than clothes filled with stuffing. I wanted my scarecrow to find a happily ever after.
NA: Do you have a day job? What was your job before you started writing full time?
DG: I am a full-time freelance editor and write between projects. I’m lucky, however, to work from home, so my schedule is my own.
NA: What started you on the path to writing?
DG: I tinkered with writing throughout my life, particularly during those awkward junior high years. Then I got sidelined by “having a life,” which included dating as a teen and young adult and then getting married and having kids. One night I was watching TV with the kids, had an idea, got out a spiral notebook, and just started writing a story. It was much too long, and even after I edited it, it was much too long. But I loved it.
NA: The biggest surprise you had after becoming a writer.
DG: I’d always thought I was a decent writer. My teachers had told me so, and I never had any trouble communicating. It came easily to me. However, when I started writing fiction (after being a voracious reader all my life), I realized there was so much to the craft I didn’t know. Sometimes understanding concepts, such as staying within a point of view, hovered just beyond my grasp. When that finally clicked, it hit me like a sledgehammer and I wondered how I’d not seen it the whole time.
NA: Do you outline books ahead of time or are you more of a by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer?
DG: I only have a vague sense of where the story is going, possibly a couple of sentences of an idea. It might start with just a small exchange between characters, but once I have an understanding of who those characters will become, I just start writing and see where it goes.
NA: Which kind of scenes are the hardest for you to write? Action, dialogue, sex?
DG: Sex for sure. I’ve written all sorts of stories and books under my own name and various others. I love developing the characters, giving them dialogue, and choreographing their behaviors and actions, but when sex is required (which it often is, depending on the publisher), I had a habit of typing “Insert Sex Scene Here” just so I could move on and not lose my momentum. Consequently, even when I was finished and happy with the completed product, I wasn’t done yet. That’s a big reason why we’ve written our Forget-Me-Not stories as clean romances with just a hint of closed-door activities. When I type “the end,” I know I’m truly finished.
NA: What are your top three favorite books of all time?
DG: The Stand by Stephen King, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel. All three of these books not only entertained me but opened new worlds and possibilities to me.
NA: Why did you choose the shirt you have on?
DG: It was lying at the bottom of the bed waiting for me. I have several stages of being dressed during the day. The first stage is just to get Daisy, our dachshund, outside.
NA: First thought when the alarm goes off in the in the morning?
DG: “Where’s Daisy?” Daisy sleeps in the bed, but she likes to move around, so unless I feel her pressed against me, I don’t know if she’s scooted to the other side of the bed or is lying under the covers at the bottom. It only takes a moment to find her, because when the alarm goes off, she’s right there.
NA: What errand/chore do you despise the most?
DG: I hate grocery shopping and putting things away. Put things in the cart, take things out of the cart to put on the conveyer, put them back into the cart to carry to the car, put them in the trunk, unload everything and pile it all onto the counter, and then wonder where I’m going to put everything. It seemingly takes forever.
NA: What are you working on now?
DG: My co-authors and I have just finished Halloween Thrills, another anthology of Halloween stories, set to be released on October 13, and we’re currently writing the third anthology, Winter Tales, coming out on November 20.
NA: What sort of reader would enjoy this book?
DG: Any reader who lives for a happily ever after, who yearns for a touch of magic in their life, and who loves stories that blend paranormal elements with humor, a bit of mystery, and healthy, loving relationships would enjoy this book. We think the combination of the three stories offers something for everyone, and we hope you enjoy them.
Halloween Magic
Blurb:
Halloween Magic
Forget-Me-Not, Oregon, Book 1
Welcome to Forget-Me-Not, Oregon, a magical place filled with magical people. A place that’s most special just around Halloween, when the boundary between worlds thins and all things are possible.
Just Another Scarecrow Love Story
Love Doesn’t Care if You’re Real…
Annabella Paxton, earth witch and single parent, lives on her apple orchard with her three-year-old daughter, Melanie. During the annual Halloween Scarecrow Trail event, Mellie helps to create their exhibit and names her scarecrow Carter, pretending he’s real. It’s all just a little girl’s imagination, right?
Kiss the Sun
She kissed the sun but found love in the darkness.
In the midst of Halloween festivities, visitor Rowan McKenna expected to find a variety of witches, ghosts, vampires, and other traditional monsters. She just didn’t expect to fall in love with one.
Harmonious Haunt
Alone, he made music. Together, they made magic.
As entertainment director for Forget-Me-Not, Fallon James receives her dream assignment—meeting the one man who has entertained her with his music for most of her life. The question is, will they share a harmonious visit, or will they fall into one of life’s traps, leaving a haunting like no other?
Excerpt:
Prologue
Across the Vast Expanse—1695
Three long years, after a grueling journey across landscapes that defied imagination, the Conclave Elders stood at the top of a high cliff, staring at the peninsula below, a spit of land that dared to exist within the immense sea that ravaged its shores. Rings of islands lay in the distance, and rivers, both small and large, meandered through the visible land as far as the eye could see until it became a field of deep blue. How far that sea stretched they couldn’t begin to know.
It was the farthest they could possibly go in their quest for freedom without worrying about their physical survival. If they couldn’t find safe harbor here, there would be no place for them.
But this place felt right.
The salt air spread a welcoming, familiar balm over their faces. The deep, musky scents of the forest at their backs filled them with a sense of home. The endless expanse of the ocean reminded them of another on the eastern side of continent, and that peninsula offered them a sanctuary, a seclusion to live their lives and create a community filled with harmony and peace and…magic.
The eldest of the Conclave, a warlock most powerful named Silas Deeds, leaned down and plucked a small flower from a field of blue.
“I know this flower. I’ve seen it many places in Europe, but I learned of it in the Germanic region. They called it vergissmeinnicht.”
“What does it mean, Master Deeds?” asked Constance Curtis.
“Forget-Me-Not,” Silas said with a smile.
“Such a small thing for such large aspirations,” Constance said.
“And yet, look how it blossoms here. It fairly covers the ground, holding fast and true to the land.” He glanced at the peninsula below. “We can be like this small flower. We can hold fast and true.”
“There are others here,” Richard Summers said. “We saw so many on the journey, and the smoke we’ve seen drifting through the trees and along the riverbanks indicates there are many already living here.”
Silas nodded. “We can share this land. We can offer friendship and peace, and with time, the people already here may grow to accept us, dare I say to truly like us? We can offer them so much in exchange for their fellowship. And if a relationship with them stays firm, we can form a community nestled within theirs. Our families will have a secure haven to grow and build and learn.”
“It is an honorable wish for the future,” Constance said. “Do you think the possibility exists that we could find acceptance and fellowship here?”
Silas sighed. “It can be no worse than the places we’ve left behind, my dear friend.”
“You speak true,” Richard said.
“We come with open hearts, with open minds,” Silas said, “and it is a sorry people who fails to recognize honest and goodhearted intent.”
“Others have,” Richard said.
Silas glanced at his friend. “And we have left them behind.” He twirled the small blossom in his fingers. “Forget me not… We will never forget what has happened to some of our fellows, but we will move on and forge ahead, holding their memories strong in our hearts. These small flowers give us a sign that even the weakest, even the smallest can have strength, and, my stalwart friends, our group is anything but weak. We will make our home here.”
And they settled onto the beautiful peninsula they called Forget-Me-Not.
Buy links:
Amazon
Author Bios:
Devin Govaere is a freelance editor and fiction writer. She has published over a dozen novels and fourteen novellas, writing under her own name as well as several pseudonyms. She lives in North Carolina and can be contacted at dgovaere@gmail.com.
Maggie McBay enjoys writing paranormal stories filled with romance and suspense. She has published several novels and novellas, writing under her own name as well as several pseudonyms. Touched with a bit of wanderlust, she’s lived in several states over the years and looks forward to traveling in the near future. You can contact Maggie at maggiemcbay@gmail.com.
Laurie Keck lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She frequently visits the beach with her two small dogs and enjoys quiet time in natural surroundings. As much as Laurie enjoys the ocean, she is equally at home amidst the forest and mountains. She loves nature and wildlife. Her passion is writing stories about true love and fantasy.
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When I first saw the topic for the week, writing rituals, I had to stop and think. I don’t have any writing rituals. I know that writing a book takes work—it’s not magic (darn it!). But I have trouble thinking of it as a job to do every day. I’ve let my dreams fizzle without intending to. Anyway, because I have no writing rituals of my own, I looked up the topic and found this great article in a 2015 
writing matter and then I back off. Jennifer asks in this point, if you were a bestselling author, would you put your writing “off all the time or would you site down every day and write?” Wow. I really want to follow through on this point!
Generally, I love doing research for books. Since I write contemporary romance (mostly), I usually only have to research towns where my characters live, street names and store locations and such, if I’m trying to keep it real. But I have written few historical romances, too, and for those, research becomes a little harder. And more interesting in a lot of ways.
wanted my heroine to live. I love maps and they are one of the things I research for most books.
points. I still was easily distracted but not to where three clicks on a screen can take me to different universes, not just a small digression. Still, what did we do before the Internet?? I wouldn’t go back…
I like epilogues. I write a lot of epilogues, too, probably because I like to read them. To me, they finish the book. It’s all well and good to have Heroine A say how much she loves Hero A and vice versa, but I like to see that Heroine A actually ends up with Hero A and not accidentally with Hero B. Did they marry? Have a passel of kids? Move to Timbuktu? Inquiring minds want to know. And that’s what an epilogue does for me.
back where two endings were written and which happened was up to the viewer. Or the kind who want to envision their own version of the castle Cinderella and Prince Charming lived in—was it a condo on the beach at Malibu or more like the Biltmore House in North Carolina? When it comes to ending a romance, I prefer to know. I do enough imagining about stuff, like what I’m making for dinner—actual food or reservations. I don’t need to wonder about Cinderella’s living conditions. Give me a good epilogue any time!
There are events in our lives that we always remember where we were when we heard it happened. For me, some of those events were when John Kennedy was shot, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, when Captain Jeremiah Denton arrived home from his nearly eight years of imprisonment in Vietnam, and, of course, when the towers and Pentagon were struck and the folks on United 93 willingly made the ultimate sacrifice.
I’m so anxious for the Black Velvet Seductions supernatural anthology, Mystic Desire, to come out (October 1)! One reason is, I want to read Callie’s story, Dream Catcher!
maybe win prizes.
NA: Does writing energize or exhaust you?
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Personally, I think it’s worth entering writing contests. I am a Contest Queen. Or least a Princess. Or…okay, a Duchess. But I do like contests. I don’t enter a huge number of them because the cost can run up. But I did enter the 
I’ll admit it. I’m cheap. So to ask what I would pay someone else to do in my place is kind of a hard one. There are plenty of things I don’t like to do—dusting, vacuuming, spring cleaning, cleaning the bathroom (notice a theme here?)—but would I actually pay someone money to do them for me? Hmm. Maybe. It’s all relative. How much are we talking here?
care of the lawn. I spent m childhood mowing the grass, but I sure don’t want to do it now. We have a postage-size lawn area, but it’s still worth it to pay a young man to fertilize, trim and mow the grass. Now there is less chance of meeting up with a snake, being injured by a stray rock, or getting sunburned on my neck. Win-win all around!
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