This place, once owned by a woman named Rosie, serves wonderful comfort food, has great drinks and serves breakfast lunch and dinner. Before it was Rosie’s, it was a bar called The Hearthstone.
It’s right on the lake. I took this photo from the steps. I cropped out the road and cars in the foreground but otherwise the photo is not enhanced.
Speaking of steps, check out this plaque on Rosie’s:
I hope some day you get to stand on those steps youself, if you haven’t already.
Rosie decorated the whole restaurant with a lot of antiques that she collected from little farm houses and antique shops around the country.
Check out what they use for pulleys on the door:
And here’s the view from the table at twilight. (Also has no post processing.)
I didn’t photograph the food, but it was great. They offer mostly comfort food (fried chicken, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, pot roast) but also light fare (edamame, artichoke hearts, veggie stirfry). I had their their Bloody Mary and my hubby had the Ultimate Pain Killer. For details on drinks:
Today is cloudy! So even though yesterday’s sunrise was just a repeat of the day before, the image no longer feels ho-hum to me. Here’s yesterday’s mountain sunrise (slightly enhanced):
I forgot to post this photo, sunrise at the Austin, Texas airport, shot through the window:
But you REALLY have to see this incredible sunrise photo (don’t miss the bird in the sky) and gorgeous poem that was just posted by The Hour of Soft Light:
Please forgive the quality, but I had to shoot this from the open window of a moving car. I wanted you to have a picture of Lake Tahoe, which I happened to drive-by yesterday due to the Ironman which was being run (literally) on the North Shore, causing a detour. Instead of being able to take 89 to 80 to Reno yesterday, we had to take 28 around the North Shore and then backtrack on 267 to pick up 80 at Truckee. (30 min. delay.)
Long story just to tell you why I saw Lake Tahoe yesterday! Permanent residents, as I once was, bop along the shores of the lake, going about their business, never bothering to look at the lake. Now that I don’t live here any more, I always make sure to open my eyes if I’m anywhere near it. And now that I’m a blogger, that also means opening my camera and snapping a photo whenever possible. (I was not driving the car.)
I am going to give you the original and the enhanced one. The sky was not actually as blue as the one in the enhanced version, but I thought it looked pretty so I included it.
The answer to the perennial question of when a writer who has not been published can call herself a writer, an answer which is often a total revelation, is: when you write.
I need more information, though! So I came up with a list of questions to which if you often answer yes, then I say you are a writer.
Do you have the tendency to become clinically depressed when your story isn’t working and you don’t know why?
Do you fall deeply in love with strangers for tweeting you?
When you’re online, do you long to write, but when you’re writing, long to be online?
Do you sometimes look in the mirror and say, “Why are you doing this?”
Are you secretly happy when it rains because it gives you the chance to stay inside and write?”
Thank you to everybody who supported me on my Goddess Fish Promotions + Romance Lives Forever (I secured that stop myself and it was so awesome) blog tour. 50 blog sites in four days, 108 (wonderful) comments, (all of whose names I need to enter on a randomizing-list site for a raffle drawing), 50 amazing blog hostesses (all of whom I must thank for their pure awesomeness), who knows how many tweets, many new friends and much new knowledge, oh and shall I also state that between this support and some paid promo efforts to get the book listed on free book listing sites, The Last Straw went from:
1,125 in Kindle Free store
on day 1, T-zero
to:
410 on day 1, 7:33 PM, which is also when Amazon started reporting the category:
Today we have Robena Grant who has a cool book trailer for one of her romantic suspenses. Check it out… it really captures the mood of the novel.
Robena, welcome! What prompted you to get the book trailer made, how did you do it, and do you feel it is helping increase awareness of your book?
Robena Grant:
Thank you for inviting me, Nia. This is so sweet of you. Desert Exposure was my RWA®Golden Heart® finalist book from 2012, so it was special to me. I had not done book trailers for the first two books in the Desert Heat series. I had a friend who had hired GWExtra for hers: www.gwextra.com and I liked the result. I’m not sure trailers do anything toward selling a book though. : )
NS: This is the third in the series — how did you do the research to create the town of Almagro and the neighboring towns?
RG: I moved to the Coachella Valley in Southern California, which is a desert oasis, about eight years ago. I love exploring and became fascinated with the disparity between the poorer small farming towns butting up against the flashy vacation, golf-course-ridden bigger towns. I created Almagro based on my own town, but I moved its location further east.
NS: You created a villain that had real motivation and was three-dimensional. Kudos! Was that a deliberate effort and what made you want to spend the time to develop the villain instead of falling into the common pattern of making villains pure evil?
RG: Thank you. I believe there is good and bad in all of us. I’m interested in what might motivate a person to choose a life of crime. I wanted to show my antagonist’s good side through his loyalty to his family, his brother.
NS: Many of the minor characters were also richly nuanced. Did you work up character sheets for them? (Grandpa, Manuel, and Fernando?)
RG: I don’t do character sheets. When a character first appears to me I’ll flesh him/her out, try to figure out what makes him tick, choose one or two things that make him different from other characters in the story, and then I let him evolve as I write.
NS: Which leads me to my favorite question, are you a pantser or a plotter?
RG: I’m basically a pantser in that I think the story through as I walk, drive, exercise. Then I write a rough draft. With romantic suspense there has to be some plotting as you need to weave both the romance and the suspense. Plus there’s usually a subplot or two. : ) I focus on writing toward the major turning points.
NS: What is your favorite part about writing?
RG: The discovery part of having a character show up and whisper in my ear that they have a story to tell. Then discovering who he/she is, what they’ve done, and how I can do justice to their story.
NS: What is the hardest part about writing?
RG: For me it’s grammar. I still make ridiculous mistakes. I’m getting better at finding them, but thank heavens for editors.
NS: How long have you been writing?
RG: I started in the summer of 2000.
NS: I’m pretty close. I started in the spring of 2001. What are your dreams for your writing?
RG: To be a hybrid author. I adore The Wild Rose Press and I’m currently working on my fifth romantic suspense title for them. I hope we have a long career together. However, I have a couple of contemporary romances already written, and I’d love to secure a contract with a big house, just for the experience, and I’d also like to dabble in indie publishing.
NS: I see you are a nurse. Do you plan to ever try writing a medical romance?
RG: I retired from nursing in 1980. There are many medical stories in my head, but I’m not sure how they would sound on paper. Medicine, technology, all of that has changed so much in thirty years that I doubt I’d ever get it right. I have friends who write for HM&B and there is a real art to the storytelling. Thanks again for hosting me, and I hope you and your readers have a great day.
Robena Grant
To learn more about Robena please visit her website: www.robenagrant.com. Click on My Blog for her weekly ramblings on writing, interviews, and rants, or follow her on FB or Twitter. Robena’s books are available at Amazon http://tinyurl.com/pdndrxr or through her publisher The Wild Rose Press: http://tinyurl.com/keymgfw
Barb, welcome! Caught in the Crosshair was a terrific romance. The hurricane sequence was fantastic. Have you ever been through a hurricane or was it all research?
Barb Han:
Thank you so much for hosting me. It’s such a pleasure to be here. I’ve cruised around three hurricanes, all at a safe distance. Even so, the swells were large enough to make the ship sway. The captain joked that if we wanted to talk straight, we should drink.
NS: Can you tell us a little about your writing journey? How long have you been writing?
BH: Thank you so much. I’ve been seriously writing fiction for nine years. Before that, I worked as a journalist and a freelance writer for a number of years.
NS: No wonder you’re so good. That’s a terrific background. What made you want to write fiction? Romance?
BH: Great question. I love romance because it’s fundamentally about love. Love heals. If you want to see the effect of the absence of love in people’s lives, visit a prison. It’s filled with people who grew up without it. Love is powerful.
NS: Are you a plotter or a pantser?
BH: I’m a hybrid. Now that I’m writing under contract with Harlequin Intrigue, I pretty much have to plot my stories. But then, as I’m writing, the story takes over and doesn’t always stick to the plan.
NS: Congratulations on writing for Harlequin Intrigue. What is the hardest part about the craft of writing?
BH: Letting go.
NS: What is your favorite part about writing?
BH: When I first started out, I used to love the creating part of writing. I didn’t plot, so I’d just run with an idea and let it take me where it wanted. Editing was a nightmare and I’d end up cutting quite a bit later. That was painful. As I’ve matured, I actually began to appreciate the revision process. I accept the fact my first draft is going to be awful because I’m getting the big ideas out. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once I get through that, I get to play with language, sentences, create nuance, etc. That’s what I love doing. That’s when the story really comes alive.
NS: That describes me as well. Do you have any tips about the writer’s life or craft that you’d like to share with us?
BH: I once heard an author say, “Discipline is more important than talent.”
I wrote it down and taped it next to my computer. It’s my mantra.
For five days starting today you can get my story The Last Straw for free from Amazon Kindle. If you are like me and don’t have a Kindle, you can download the application from Amazon for free and read on your PC or Mac.
Nicci Carrera 