Liz Flaherty: On Author Friendship

Years and years ago, I wrote a fangirl letter to Harlequin author Muriel Jensen. I sent her a blank stamped envelope in case she cared to respond. If she didn’t have time to answer or if she just didn’t want to, I wanted her to feel free to pay her light bill with the envelope. I wanted to be a writer, I told her, more than anything, and I so loved her books.

A few weeks later, I received a manila envelope in the mail containing an issue of Romantic Times, the go-to magazine for romance readers and writers. Muriel also included a wonderful letter with some advice, some laughter, assurance she would indeed pay her light bill with the envelope, and a note that said Never give up. Never, never give up. I taped that note to my desk, where it stayed until the ink faded completely away.

Several years later, after I had given up and started over at least a few times, my first book, Always Annie, was published. Muriel sent me flowers in a sunflower cup that twenty-some years later sits in place of pride on a bookcase in my house. One of the shelves is full of keepers ranging from her debut book, Winter’s Bounty, to the Harlequin Heartwarmings she ended her career with. When I pull one out to read it again, I’m so reminded of and grateful for that friendship. 

I don’t exactly remember when Nan Reinhardt and I met. She read One More Summer, still the book of my heart nearly eleven years after its publication and sent me a note. I read a blog post of hers and loved it. We found out through a series of blog comments and emails that her lake cottage was within an hour of my house, so we met for lunch. We’ve been meeting ever since.

We travel together a few times a year, talking about husbands, grandkids, and the childhoods that formed us. We ignore the GPS’s commands sometimes and wander wherever our curiosity takes us. Whoever isn’t driving takes notes when we see or hear something special, because we won’t remember what we wanted to; we’ll just remember there was something. We play an endless game of city mouse—her—and country mouse—me, and laugh at both our likenesses and our differences. When we travel, we spend hours of every day across from each other at a table with our laptops. We drink wine and eat a lot. We hand out rack cards and business cards and put the occasional signed book into a little free library. We leave packets of promotional items with librarians and bookstore managers along the way, hoping someone will call and offer to make us famous or at least invite us to come and talk to readers. We love to talk. 

Between trips, we meet at a library midway between our homes and have work days. They’re also lunch days with occasional ice cream stops—hey, we gotta eat. 

Through it all, the trips, the work days, and the morning conversations we have during online chats, we process. At least, Nan calls it processing. I call it begging for help. Either way, it works. I’m convinced some of my best lines in my books have come from what she’s suggested. Occasionally I will read a paragraph in one of hers that brings to mind the conversation that shaped it. It has been suggested that we try writing together, as our voices would probably work well in tandem, but we’ve decided the friendship means more to us than a partnership would. 

Over a decade ago, several authors who’d been critique partners started a group blog called Word Wranglers. I wasn’t an original, but I came in soon after. There are six of us at the present time, and we’ve been together for several years. Our homes range from the Southeastern United States to Canada. We’ve never all been in the same place at the same time, but we’ve developed friendships and support systems all the same. Kristina Knight’s daughter is in middle school, and we’ve watched her grow up. Jana Richards is going to become a grandmother. Janie DeVos built a new house. Margie Senechal just changed jobs to an exciting new one. Nan and I are the others. We don’t critique anymore, unless there’s an urgent call of, “Does anyone have time to see if this works?” And yet we are there for each other. We laugh, sniffle, advise, and roll our eyes like all friends do. 

Over the years, I’ve made other writer friends. It must be admitted that some of their paths have veered in different directions from my own, or maybe I’ve been the one to do the veering. There are a few to whom I thought I would remain close until the day one of us died, and that hasn’t happened. That’s painful, just as it is when we’re ghosted or seemingly forgotten about in real life, and it seems as if writers should know better, doesn’t it? We should understand that our feelings are on a different plane than people who don’t lay out every kind and depth of intimacy on a keyboard every day of their lives. 

I write romance, although I think my segue into women’s fiction is nearing completion. (I say I think because unlike the plotters among us, I often don’t know where my protagonists are going until they get there.) One of my favorite things to write in both my chosen genres is the friendship between women. It is deep and messy and rich, profound without the expectations of romantic love. I love that its dialogue is irreverent and impulsive and often downright wrong, with its speakers knowing it will be forgiven.

Like many other romance and women’s fiction authors, I write the platonic relationship between women well. I seldom even have to think about what they’re going to say…it just spills out there. I’ll laugh out loud when I’m writing it. Or cry out loud. Writing a heroine’s best friend who has breast cancer isn’t for the weak in spirit, believe me. But, really, I should be good at writing that particular gathering of hearts—I learned how from my friends. The writer ones. Thanks, ladies. 

~*~

USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty started writing in the fourth grade when her Aunt Gladys allowed her to use her portable Royal typewriter. The truth was that her aunt would have let her do anything to get her out of her hair, but the typewriter and the stories it could produce caught on, and Liz never again had a day without a what if… in it. Visit Liz at https://windowoverthesink.blogspot.com/ or find her on Facebook—she spends way too much time there.

Find the books in Liz’s Second Chances series at https://amzn.to/3TQhuPf. Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania is a place where people go to heal or, sometimes, to start over. Syd, Riley, and Dinah all need new beginnings…and second chances.  

THE SUMMER OF SORROW AND DANCE, Liz Flaherty

In the midst of a summer of change, they’re both searching for an anchor.

Dinah is a mom, a giver, and a doer, so she’s used to change, but this summer is kind of overdoing that. The diner where she’s worked for half her life is closing, her college-age kids aren’t coming home for the summer, and a property on nearby Cooper Lake is calling her name, bringing long-held dreams of owning a B & B to the fore. Newcomer Zach Applegate is entering into her dreams, too.

Divorced dad, contractor, and recovering alcoholic Zach is in Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania, to visit his brother and to decide what’s coming next in his life. He doesn’t like change much, yet it seems to be everywhere. But he finds an affinity for remodeling and restoration, is overjoyed when his teenage sons join him for the summer, and he likes Dinah Tyler, too. A lot.

Dinah and Zach each experience sorrow and tumult, but go on to dance in the kitchen. Together, they have something, but is it enough?

BUY HERE

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips