Jodi Thomas – SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY- Guest Post
Thanks for inviting me to drop by and talk about my newest book. After writing thirty books I feel this may be the strongest story I’ve ever written. SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY will make you feel like you know these people so well you might drop by for a visit.
In my new book I had a great time creating characters. In truth it was more like meeting them. I felt like they were so real, I just had to get them down on paper, nothing more.
The first one who talked to me was Gabe. He was a man shattered by what he saw in war and now only wanted to live lone without anyone, but he met Liz and couldn’t stay away. She was everything he wasn’t in life. She completed him and surprisingly, he did the same for her.
A few lines from Liz and Gabe’s story:
“You have any idea whose blue Mustang that is?” He pointed at a car parked on the side street halfway between the front and the back of the building. “Could be a stalker. That parking spot allows whoever’s in the car to see both stairwells. You should really park out front, Elizabeth. It’s safer.”
Liz slammed the trunk. “This conversation is over, Mr. Smith. Stop trying to frighten me.”
He grabbed her arm to stop her retreat, then let go an instant later as if realizing his mistake. “I didn’t mean to. I came to say I’m sorry about what happened the other night. I . . .”
Liz waited several seconds before she realized he wasn’t going to continue. “Let me make it easy on you, Gabe. Let’s try a multiple-choice question. A. You’re sorry you kissed me. B. You are sorry you stopped. C. You’re involved with someone else and figured your wife and kids wouldn’t approve. And of course, D. We should just be friends.” She moved away. “Oh, wait, we’re not friends in the first place, so forget D.”
He followed her, standing just behind her as she opened her car door. “B,” he said as she backed into him trying to open her door. “I’m sorry I stopped.”
She turned to face him. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want to be friends. You don’t want to talk or hang out. You just want to drop by now and then and kiss me.”
He was so close she could feel his breath. “That’s about it,” he said as he shoved her door closed and backed her against her car. “You interested, Elizabeth?”
“You’re nuts,” she answered.
He moved away. “Yeah, you’re right, but I’ve lived alone for so long, one kiss a week is all I can handle right now, and you’re about the most kissable woman I’ve ever met.”
He turned and walked into the shadows close to the building. “I had to give it a shot. No hard feelings.”
Liz had to hurry to catch his arm before he started up the stairs.
Another character who almost danced across my desk to get me to notice her was Martha Q.
Martha Q Patterson had been considered the town slut for so long she’d learned to embrace the title. When she was in her teens she’d take any dare. In her twenties and thirties, folks claimed she married half the eligible men in town and slept with the other half.
Which wasn’t true, Martha liked to remind everyone. Two of her husbands were from Bailee and one from Oklahoma City. But in the twenty years she considered her “marrying phase,” she did marry seven times, if she counted Bobby Earl Patterson twice, him being both her second and seventh.
Jodi Thomas
This looks fantastic!!
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