I wrote the Vicarage Bench Series many years ago – when I first decided I could – should become an author. At the time, I understood it would take a lot of work, many classes, and listening to others who knew what I needed to learn.
Eventually, thinking I had everything under control, I actually joined a Wild Rose Publisher’s contest and wrote my first novella called “She’s Me”. The rules were that the heroine had to walk through a gate and go back in time. Of course, as was my habit of not following directions easily, 🙂 I had my girl go through a gate, sit on a vicarage bench, prick her finger on a magic rose, and go back to 1963… into the body of another female.
I could imagine this beautiful, spoiled, extroverted model from today’s world forced to deal with the subdued spirits of a very shy, chubby librarian whose faith in herself was sorely lacking.
How much fun I had imagining two people living in one body, their thoughts shared between them so they could communicate. After I sent it away, they soon notified me that though they couldn’t put it in the contest, they would like to publish it as a stand-alone novella.
Soon, my editor suggested I write another in a similar vein, two spirits trapped in one body, and along came “He’s Her”. Not long after, I wrote “We’re one”. Wild Rose decided those three stories would work very well in a collection and so today it’s available as the Vicarage Bench Anthology.
Not wanting to stick with short stories, I soon decided this concept of two spirits co-existing in one body could be flushed out into full-length romances. I started writing the Together books – Together Again, Together for Christmas, and Together Always.
The other day, I was on the book page for Together for Christmas – probably my favorite book in the series if not one of the all-around favorites I ever wrote and was stunned to see the many wonderful reviews that book had garnered over the years. It seems that the readers enjoyed my far-fetched fantasies too.
Wanting you to have the experience of the spirit-travel phenomenon yourself, I have made the Vicarage Bench Anthology free for 5 days.
***Please grab my gift and enjoy stretching your imagination.
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