I am happy to welcome back, my dear writing friend, Liz Flaherty, who is celebrating the release of her book, Patches of Red...which I've read and highly recommend.Have a seat and a glass of lemonade, and let's get to know more about Liz...and Patches of Red.
When Ellie Wentz, whose best friend Maggie’s story was told in Pieces of Blue, pushed herself into my mind as someone who might have a tale of her own, my first thought—and likely my thirty-first as well—was No. A rather resounding one. While I’d loved writing Blue and I really loved Harper Loch, its setting, I had no intention of writing a sequel.
None at all. Although I like series, I think there are a lot of them out there. A lot! Could I really focus on another book in the same place with some of the same people? I just didn’t really think so.
But there was Ellie, with her long red ponytail and melty chocolate eyes and her streak of pain-in-the-tush OCD. And then she got a little heart-shaped mole on her face, sprinklings of freckles, and an awful singing voice.
In Blue, she was a nurse practitioner who’d lived in Muskegon, Michigan, her whole life. She was funny and strong, but her life was settled. She was a nana, for heaven’s sake. She owned her own home and had a guy friend. There was no story to tell, right?
Except that she quit her job. Broke up with the boyfriend. Sold her home to her son and his wife. Went to Harper Loch to visit Maggie and met handsome Jess Grant.
Okay, fine, fine. She had me.
I hope she captures your imagination as she captured mine. As much as I loved writing Maggie’s story is how much I loved writing Ellie’s. I hope you love reading it that much.
Patches of Red Blurb:
He’s handsome but couldn’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy. And yet …
After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.
Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet … again.
Buy links:
Amazon: https://a.co/d/09fZR7ntD2D
Patches of Red Excerpt:
On her last day at the practice, after cake and gifts from the people she’d worked with for twenty years, she loaded her personal items into her car and went to Black Dog Coffee, where beer and terrible wine were served in addition to wonderful coffee. She sat at a tall table with Scott Johnson, the owner and her one-time significant other, drinking the red wine her friend Maggie called fermented food coloring and bemoaning her very existence.
“That must be why you broke up with me,” she said. “I’m such a loser.”
“You broke up with me,” Scott corrected, “and the suggestion was that I was a loser and also a slob. I think it was the slob part you couldn’t take. So what are you going to do now?”
She wondered if she looked as blank as she felt. “I think I’ll be a bartender. Will you hire me?”
“You going to drink on the job?”
“Possibly.”
“Then no.”
“Okay, I won’t drink on the job.”
Still no.”
Later, at home in the bungalow her parents had flipped and then sold to her and Gavin when their family outgrew the apartment they lived in, she called Maggie and related the events of the day. “What should I do now?”
“Come to the lake until you decide. Your room’s always ready.”
“That’s too easy, Maggie.”
“Struggle is overrated. Just come.”
“I haven’t even told the kids I quit my job.”
Maggie’s voice softened every time she talked about Bryan and Selena. It had made sense that Ellie’s best friend from second grade on would be the godmother to them both. It was a job she’d always taken seriously. She loved them almost as much as Ellie did, and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that they loved their godmother more than their mother.
“They want you to be happy, El.”
“They’re just scared I’ll want to move in with them and will go around cleaning out the refrigerator and reminding people to take off their shoes when they come into the house. Even if it’s their house.”
“And then there’s that.”
They ended the conversation on laughter, as they always did. When Ellie hung up, she FaceTimed with the kids and told them she’d had a midlife crisis and quit her job. When they finished making dementia jokes and asking if she wanted the grandkids for the summer, she said, “What would you think of me selling the house?”
Bryan looked over his shoulder, talking to Jan, his wife. When he turned back, he said, “To us?”
It was amazing how quickly life could change.
Liz Flaherty thinks one of the things that keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant chances you have to reinvent yourself. Her latest professional incarnation is as a fledgling women’s fiction author and she is enjoying every minute that she’s not scared to death.
Website: https://www.lizflaherty.net/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lizkflaherty
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