Carolynn Carey has had a lifelong love affair with the written word. She started (and quickly abandoned) her first novel in elementary school. In high school she was editor of the school paper and worked after school for the newspaper published weekly in the rural county in Middle Tennessee where she grew up. Later, in college, she majored in journalism and again worked on the school newspaper. Her career didn’t deviate much from her earliest love: She was an academic editor for many years.
Fiction writing had always been a dream for Carolynn, one that stayed a bit out of reach until she decided to become serious about learning the craft. Joining the Romance Writers of America (RWA®) and then the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers chapter of RWA® provided the encouragement and assistance she needed. In the last few years, she has finaled three times in RWA’s prestigious Golden Heart contest for unpublished writers, and in 2004 she won her own chapter’s Laurie award in the short contemporary unpublished category. Later that year, her winning manuscript sold to Avalon Books and was published as A Summer Sentence in 2005. A sequel, Falling for Dallas, followed in 2006. Since that time, she’s had a traditional Regency, Compromising Situations, published by Cerridwen Press, and her women’s fiction entitled Lily for a Day is available now from Cerridwen Press.
Carolynn lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband, who has been of incredible encouragement over the years by always believing in her. They have one daughter, also a lover of the written word, who teaches English in North Carolina.
*****
I’m delighted to be a guest on Jenyfer’s blog today, just one day following Cerridwen Press’s release of my women’s fiction titled Lily for a Day. The title (as well as the cover design) relates to the book’s setting: a daylily farm in Tennessee.
You say you’ve never heard of a daylily farm? Well, one is located about five miles from my house. The owners boast of growing hundreds of varieties of daylilies, and if you were to pay a visit to the farm in the summer during the days that are open to the public, you would see rows and rows of daylilies in bloom in more sizes and colors than you could imagine. And you would understand why I wanted to set a novel on a daylily farm.
Actually, the fictional Darnell Daylily Farm in Lily for a Day is central to the book’s plot, ranging from the office building (that causes the accident which leads to the independent protagonist, Marti, breaking her ankle and becoming more dependent on her adult daughters) to the shed (where the beautiful Glenna works after her ignominious flight from Hollywood).
I hope you’ll want to visit Darnell Daylily Farm and learn for yourself whether Marti gets a second change to bond with her daughters. And while you’re there, you will probably learn a thing or two you didn’t know about daylilies.
by
Marti Darnell is convinced she was an inadequate mother to her two daughters, but both have married and moved on with their lives, and Marti is content with her non-eventful existence. She and her husband Harold own and operate Darnell Daylily Farm in Tennessee where their daughters were raised, and Marti still has her friends, including Steve, their employee and neighbor.
Then Harold falls off the roof of their small office building and lands on Marti, breaking her ankle and his own wrist. That same day, Glenna, the oldest daughter and Steve’s former fiancée, calls to say she’s leaving her Hollywood producer husband and moving back home. Marti and Harold’s injuries necessitate more contact with their other daughter, the perpetually disapproving Candie, and her busy physician husband Matt. Add to this mix the charming home health care nurse, who falls for Steve, and then Jake, Glenna’s estranged husband, who comes to Tennessee to try to win his wife back.
A gorgeous movie star follows Jake and then makes a play for Candie’s husband. When Candie leaves Matt and moves back to the daylily farm, Marti realizes they have come full circle. Can she be a wiser mother to her girls this second time around? And will her grown daughters pay any more attention to her advice now that they’ve experienced their own failures?
Chapter Seven
Even a small thorn causes festering.
—Irish proverb
Glenna was on a rare rampage. As soon as the reverberations from the slammed back door died away, I heard the sound of cabinet doors being closed so hard that the glassware behind them rattled. I grabbed my crutches. I didn’t look forward to confronting Glenna, but at the same time, I wasn’t going to sit by and let her destroy my kitchen.
By the time I’d propelled myself halfway through the dining room, the popping of a cork told me that Glenna had found what she’d been looking for. Wine in the middle of the afternoon? What a wonderful idea.
“Pour a glass for me too,” I called to her. “And pull out a kitchen chair for me. I’m coming to join you.”
If Glenna was happy to have my company, she did a good job of hiding it. When I stepped into the kitchen, she stood, wine bottle clutched in her hand, and glared at me. “Did you know that Dad was going to invite my low-down, good-for-nothing, ratfink of a husband to live in the office building within spitting distance of the house?”
I quickly shook my head. “I had no idea, sweetheart. You have my word.”
She held my gaze for at least a half a minute. If I’d been lying to her, I’m sure I would have blinked. As it was, I had to hold my breath and call upon eyelid muscles I’d never known existed in order to keep my eyes innocently open.
Finally she dropped her gaze, sighed, and shook her head. “I can’t believe Dad did this to me. Do you really want a glass of wine?”
“Absolutely. Did you get me a glass?”
“No, but I will.” When Glenna turned back around to fetch my wineglass, I hurriedly blinked a few times to get a little moisture back onto my dry eyeballs. Then I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you?”
She sighed again. “No.”
“Good. Once I heard that cork pop, I started craving a glass of wine. Could you step it up a bit?”
Glenna smiled. She also stepped it up a bit. She set my glass on the table, poured it three fourths full of the merlot she’d opened, and then helped herself to a generous measure before dropping into a chair on the far side of the table.
“Cheers. Although I’ll be damned if I know of anything to be cheerful about.” She lifted her glass, then downed half of its contents in three long swallows. “I don’t recall you being a daytime drinker, Mom.”
“Some days call for a glass of wine in the afternoon.” I took a sip of mine. Merlot wasn’t my favorite but it would do. “Can you believe that I didn’t recognize your husband when he came to the front door this afternoon?”
Her eyes widened. “Did he have to tell you who he was?”
“Yep.”
She giggled. “I’ll bet that deflated his ego quite a bit. He likes to think of himself as a household face in this country, and then his own mother-in-law doesn’t even recognize him.”
“He appeared a little shocked, I’ll have to admit.” I took another sip of wine. “He claims he wants you back, you know.”
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Sounds like a wonderful book. Can’t wait to read it.
by Cheryel Hutton November 7th, 2008 at 5:43 pm