Hello and welcome to my website!
This is my first blog since revamping and relaunching my books and my website, so I decided to take this opportunity and create something fresh and new for my blog as well.
As I sit down to write this, it’s a beautiful Sunday morning in Alabama; the sun is shining, there’s a slight breeze and my view of the river is an inspirational sight.
We live on the Tenn Tom Waterway for a reason. We love beautiful surroundings, and there’s a peace here on the water you just can’t get anywhere else. Don’t misunderstand, life here has its risk, but the rewards are beyond magnificent on warm sunny days like today.
With this feeling of peace and contentment, I sit down to pen this small snippet of the story of me and The Scrapbook Series.
Way back in 2005, when I began writing professionally, there was always this small persistent little desire to do something fun, something creative, and something just for me. During these early years of writing, The Scrapbook Series was born (although not yet named).
There was a tale I wanted to tell, a chronicle of sorts, that allowed me to roll all the events, people, places and stories I had managed to collect over my life into a cohesive fictional narrative. So, as I wrote for others, I began to put together an outline of the story I wanted to write for myself.
Finally, in 2013, I had the opportunity to begin to put these bits and pieces and outlines together in a series of books and give my dream a name. The Scrapbook Series, Women of the Ozarks
Finally, I named my characters. Jorja Felsenthal is named for an actress that was named Jorja (pronounced Georgia), and Felsenthal Forest in Arkansas. Regina Ingram was my mother’s idea. The idea behind the characters was to have a yin and yang. Two opposites come together to create a whole. This allowed me to take so many snippets from my life in retail and include viewpoints, characteristics, and characters from every end of the spectrum.
There’s room when you have two different characters to include so much material. Jo and Gina allowed me to do just that – one character is world traveled yet has such a narrow point of view about life; the other character has spent most of her life in one small neck of the woods yet has such a diverse view of life. That combination alone makes for an interesting storyline.
When you take them both and incorporate life events that we all experience, pieces of life that almost every reader can identify with, then it’s my hope that every reader finishes the series feeling a kinship with Jo and Gina and enjoys the experience.
After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Where we live, what we read, and the things we experience, aren’t we all hoping for that feeling of peace and contentment at the end?
The Scrapbook Series is my small contribution to a world of make-believe narratives that hopefully make my readers laugh, cry, reminisce, smile, and finish with a feeling of happiness and hope.