Raise your margarita.

The Chick Palace

the wing key

Hot Dog Johnny's 

Maggie's canoe 

and Lake Allamuchy 

are now all waiting for you at Amazon.com 
as well as Barnes & Noble. 

THE CHICK PALACE

Three Dilemmas, Two friends 

and One Deserted Tree House 

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

Thank you to my readers who shot The Chick Palace onto Nook's eBook bestseller list. Let's do the same at Amazon.

FREEWHEELIN' FRIDAYS~~

 dedicated to artistic endeavors of all sorts

Writer, crafter, weaver, doer of good works Karen Lynn Williams of Pittsburgh, PA; Chinle, AZ; Haiti; Malawi~~ok of the world~~covers it all in her blog & explains a lot in a lively ☛ Interview with the Author...ME! 

You owe it to yourself to hop on over & take a look.

We met when, as a Pittsburgh newcomer, I wormed my way into  Marilyn Hollinshead's fabled critique workshop. I'm now back in coastal MA.  Karen and doctor husband Steve are on the Navajo reservation in Chinle. We get together during the residencies at Seton Hill University where we're mentors & adjunct faculty in the MFA program Writing Popular Fiction. Karen even made a cameo appearance as Karen Holland in  BORROWED BABY, my romance dedicated to all things Pittsburgh.

I'm the proud owner of  this pendant Karen fashioned from coral, pottery chards & an oyster shell gathered on a Caribbean beach during a travel writing seminar she lead for her Chatham University MFA students, another affiliation.

*   *   *   *   *   *   * 

Here's a snippet from her blog to get you started:

Putting me in the Southwest is like putting an addict in a crack house. I have a combined 8 piercings in my two ears and I love earrings, especially ethnic style earrings, long dangling earrings, beaded, sliver, paper, shells...

and a glimpse of some of her award winning books for young readers

☟   ☟   ☟   ☟

get going ☛ http://www.karenlynnwilliams.com/ 

Late May dusk hovered over Lake Allamuchy, New Jersey,

...by the time Johanna Lawrence Wheeler found me staring into the thicket, contemplating the warning on our sons’ deserted treehouse.  

NO GRILS AND THIS MEENS YOU BUTTHED. 

Lilly Drinkwater Covington, The Chick Palace

As fun as this has been, I've nearly posted the entire book in lieu of, well, writing a blog.  

So soon I'll be off to other things & blogging about words at work. 

In the meantime, enjoy words at play 

and head up into that tree house 

by sliding on over to Barnes & Noble.

THE CHICK PALACE

Three Dilemmas, Two friends 

and One Deserted Tree House 

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

Thank you to my readers who shot The Chick Palace onto Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Available now on Nook Book First or via free Nook app

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/free-nook-apps/379002321/

“’Quintessential Graffiti; Art or Vandalism?’...

Man. I could do a whole art history report on Jake’s designs.” (Phoebe)  grinned at me.  

       “I’m sure he’d like that.”

       “...  I bet he could show me real sites in New York. Like Dad would even let me near them.”

       “Jake talks about a big warehouse in Queens with legal graffiti that changes all the time. Google the website. ‘Five Pointz’—with a Z. It’s legal and safe and your daddy could drive you in. Jake might could meet y’all there.”

       “Meet me with Dad? No way.”

...

       I detoured into Johanna’s kitchen for Jake’s number... . I also checked my reflection in the toaster, seeing as how I was driving Phoebe and her bike on over to the Bahnson Homestead. It was not like me to leave home without a fresh pounce of blusher but I sported lip gloss and little gold studs in my ears. ...

       We maneuvered along the lake road, past cottages with flags and patriotic bunting still fluttering from the holiday, their residents filling beachfronts, docks and floats. Lake Allamuchy the way I like it best.  

Lilly Drinkwater Covington,  The Chick Palace       

  

THE CHICK PALACE

Three Dilemmas, Two friends 
and One Deserted Tree House 
during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

Thank you to my readers who shot The Chick Palace onto Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Jump on over & take a look~~

Available now on Nook Book First or via free Nook app

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/free-nook-apps/379002321/

She tucked her ribbed tee... into graffiti-design cropped pants

       ... and shouldered the passenger door closed.

       … I pointed. “Those aren’t by any chance D-by-D Capris?”

       “You know them?”

       “Know them? Johanna and I’ve been to the D-by-D loft. DUMBO-by-Design.” 

...

     

      Johanna explained her early excursions with Jake to the Brooklyn hot spot and how she’d introduced me to the Water Street warehouse-cum-design center. On a whim I waxed poetic about Grimaldi’s Pizzeria on Old Fulton Street and graffiti designs silk-screened on clothes. 

      “Phoebe, sugar, you need to see how Jake’s transformed the Chick Palace.” I looked at her daddy. “ 'Grils' only. We’ll be right back.”  

Lilly Drinkwater Covington,  The Chick Palace

THE CHICK PALACE

A lakeside romp fueled by friendship, family, and one old flame not averse to once again testing the waters

Thank you to my readers who shot The Chick Palace onto Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Jump on over & take a look~~

a four week exclusive launch with Barnes & Noble NOOK FIRST eBooks

THE CHICK PALACE

I wiped the morning’s sawdust off the porch furniture,

... then threw old beach towels over the rattan all the while looking through my screens and across the denuded scramble of hedge at my dearest friend’s back lawn. …

Distance and the Wheeler clotheslines being ringed by six foot pickets prohibit me from reporting accurately. … Johanna’s screen door slammed; I glimpsed motion as he went into the kitchen. Lordy. I stayed still, my heart ripping around my chest.

Lilly Drinkwater Covington, The Chick Palace

THE CHICK PALACE

A lakeside romp fueled by friendship, family, and one old flame not averse to once again testing the waters

Thank you to my readers who shot The Chick Palace onto Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Jump on over & take a look~~

a four week exclusive launch with Barnes & Noble NOOK FIRST eBooks

“Faith is taking the first step...

... even when you can't see the whole staircase.” 

Martin Luther King, Jr.

       Once upon a time I interested Lerner Publishing/Carolrhoda Books in COME MORNING, my Underground Railroad mystery set in the mid-1860s. I wrote about Liza, a 12 year old Delaware Quaker, helping her neighbor Freedom Newcastle. Free, the son of a former slave, thinks he must pull clues from  a Bible passage  left by his kidnapped father, to figure out where he is, only to realize the quote is meant as directions for moving a runaway slave family out of his own barn  & over the line into Pennsylvania.

My editor told me it was Free's story and should be told from his point of view. 

       Despite being a white, middle class woman, she had faith I could do it. The challenge pulled me out of my comfort zone, as we say. It sent me deeper into archives, research  and my own imagination, determined to weave the best tale I could, influenced by the very real work of Harriet Tubman & Abolitionist  Thomas Garrett. It's a better book and I'm a better writer as a result.

     

     Augusta Scattergood has just written GLORY BE, set in the mid-1960s in the Mississippi Delta. She's on firm ground, having written from experience. It's her protagonist Gloriana Hemphill, daughter of the local preacher, who's out of that comfort zone. It's Glory she has researching, imagining, stretching~~finding the faith in herself to stand up for what she believes and ultimately become an even better sister, friend, neighbor~~member of her community.

The more that you read, the more you will know.

The more you learn, the more places you'll go.

Dr. Seuss           I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

 Frederick Douglass

Many Genres, One Craft

It's not all about The Chick Palace over here. 

 Hat's off to editors Heidi Ruby Miller and  Michael A. Arnzen & my fellow writers associated with Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction MFA program who collaborated on this terrific writing guide. From the business of writing to the business of crafting stories, the guide covers it all. 

 Many Genres, One Craft, debuted in June. 

It placed first place in General Non-Fiction at the 2011 London Book Festival. 

The Writer magazine named Many Genres #5 in Ten of 2011's Terrific Writing Books.

MANY GENRES, ONE CRAFT: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction is the equivalent of a graduate program in creative writing captured in the pages of a book...stuffed with great advice, but not stuffy at all.

As luck would have it, my cell phone rang.

I pulled it from my pocket hoping for the perfect interruption, glanced at it and shoved it back. … 

“…For heaven’s sake don’t blame yourself. I got the chance to spend a few hours feeling twenty-one again and Hot Dog Johnny’s seemed a perfectly harmless place to do it.”

“Was it?” Lilly rattled the magazine. “Perfectly harmless?”

I think my shoulders drooped. …

Her eyes widened. “Joho?”

The back of my throat tightened and I waved at the still summer air. “I have a phone call to make.” I started for the ladder and even shocked myself by bursting into tears.

Lilly jumped out of her beach chair so fast it fell back against the lattice. “Johanna, why are you--good Lord--weeping? What are you telling me?”

I swiped my eyes. “Telling you? Am I giving the impression I’m talking?”

 Johanna  Lawrence Wheeler, The Chick Palace 

Thank you to my readers who have shot The Chick Palace into Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Jump on over & take a look~~

THE CHICK PALACE

A lakeside romp fueled by friendship, family, 

and one old flame not averse to once again testing the waters

a four week exclusive launch with Barnes & Noble NOOK FIRST eBooks

The day promised to sizzle...

but with the sun still working its way above the trees, the east side of the lake road stayed in shadows. On how many morning walks had I admired the Bahnson Homestead in dappled breakfast light? Never before with my heart ricocheting off my rib cage.

Johanna Lawrence Wheeler, The Chick Palace

Thank you to my readers who have shot The Chick Palace into Nook's eBook bestseller list.

Jump on over & take a look~~

THE CHICK PALACE

a four week exclusive launch with Barnes & Noble NOOK FIRST eBooks

We stayed on the lake through dusk, ...

... mostly along the shore, Lilly at the bow.

The breeze had stilled and bass jumped at bugs flitting on the calm surface. “I love this sound,” I whispered from the stern seat over the whoosh and papery rustle of the canoe nosing through the water lilies.

Johanna Lawrence Wheeler, The Chick Palace

THE CHICK PALACE

Three Dilemmas, Two friends and One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

Check it out! I'm a Barnes & Noble's Nook First Featured Author

Available now on Nook Book First or via free Nook app

... Johanna moved to the fireplace, pulled the wing key from under the mantel clock and wound it.

“Materfamilias,” Gordon murmured.

She shot him an over-the-shoulder glance.

“I just meant watching you, I got a sudden flash of your mom. My first weekend out here Maggie explained about the clock, that it had been her grandmother’s, the first Johanna Hansford. That the women of the family always wind it, careful to feel for the resistance as the spring tightens. The kind of idle chat meant to make me feel at home and disguise the fact that every Lawrence on the premises was looking me over.” Gordon smiled and jazz piano filled the room. “The baton has passed.”

Johanna looked at the key in her hand before sliding it back in place, then tilted the clock, listening for the click of the pendulum.

Baton passing. “Well Materfamilias,” I said, “you may be just the person to get me through this current crisis.”

Lilly Drinkwater Covington, The Chick Palace

THE CHICK PALACE

Three Dilemmas, Two friends and One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

Check it out! I'm Barnes & Noble's Nook First's featured author

Available now on Nook Book First or via free Nook app