The Germ of the Story by Judith Hudson

 

Hi everyone.

A story idea has to start somewhere, often with a random thought or image. For me, it is usually a place, or more specifically, an old building. In my current work in progress, it’s a hunting lodge. So far, predictably, I call it The Lodge.

This image is sort of what I had in mind, only bigger and more elaborate because it was built by the protagonist Holly’s great grandfather who was a lumber baron in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the last century. A Victorian monstrosity, to quote Holly.

All of my stories seem to center around these buildings, and I have to wonder – what is it about old, derelict buildings and ruins that intrigues me, and how do they impact the people in the story?  The more I think about it, the more I see it is the history of these places and the stories they tell that gives my imagination flight. 

The cabin in the Fortune Bay series is a good example.

 

This building was around the corner from a house I lived in for a number of years, and I set the Fortune Bay stories around it. In the first story, the cabin has been empty for years, since Aunt Augusta died, but the spirit of the old lady is still active and eager to interact with the new story residents. 

In Temple of the Jaguar, the first Rocky and Bernadette mystery, it was a visit to an ancient Mayan ruin in the jungle that set my mind racing.

Beginning to see the pattern? The Lodge started out with the idea of the lodge itself, loosely patterned on a few old lodges I've visited here on the Island and in Washington State. In this book, Grandad has died and left it to two granddaughters he’s never known, and who don’t know him. Holly, the protagonist in book one, has only a vague memory of a long ago visit when she was a very young child. Now he’s gone, and she’s left to piece together the family history through  secrets hidden in plain sight in the rundown old mansion. 

Of course, there are more pieces to the story puzzle, but that was the start. There was Covid, and family interruptions, but now I’m glad to be back in the story again!

As a reader, I'm also often drawn  to old house settings, going right back to Nancy Drew and The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion. What kind of books are you drawn to? Do you find yourself returning to the same kind of story again and again? Does setting play a part?

If you haven’t check out Goodreads, it is an amazing community, designed specially for readers and writers. Please find and follow me on Goodreads for more updates on how the new book is going.

Talk to you again next month.
Judy Hudson

www.JudithHudsonAuthor.com

PS – The ebook of The Good Neighbor, book two in the Fortune Bay series, is on sale on Amazon for 99 cents until the end of the month! You can read the books in any order.
See you on Goodreads!

Get Away to Fortune Bay - by Judith Hudson

This year, as summer rolls in, many of us are feeling a little stuck at home. But you can always escape into a good book. Or escape to Fortune Bay.

I wrote Lake of Dreams, a prequel to the Fortune Bay series, to give away as my gift to readers for joining my Readers Group. I imagined it as a fun little book – could see Colleen dancing on the dock in her cowboy boots – and was surprised at the personal, poignant themes that emerged as I wrote.


I was lucky enough to spend many holidays at my husband’s family cottage  in Muskoka, in rugged, rocky, northern Ontario. From the stories I heard, he and his four brothers and sisters ran wild there for two months every summer throughout their childhood and teens. Later, our own children got to experience the fishing and boating too for a few weeks every summer.

This was our cottage for many years, my inspiration for Alex Porter’s cottage on Majestic Lake.

On the long weekend in the middle of the summer, the whole active, extended family would meet there for the annual regatta. (Watch for the regatta to show up in one of the Fortune Bay books.) The cottage would groan, but accepted us all, squeezing us into the small sleeping cabins scattered in the forest around the central cabin. Our favourite place to congregate was in the Muskoka room, a screened-in porch that was a must at dusk to hold back the mosquitoes.

Clipped from an old cottage movie – it could be Alex’s Queen of the Lake.

My father-in-law, the patriarch of the family, was a lawyer and eventually a judge, but up at the lake he was more like Alex’s grandfather than his lawyer father. There was a dock with a boathouse and a couple of boats, including canoes hung in slings against the far wall and a rowboat that we used daily. Early morning paddles on lake to the sound of loons were particularly magical.

My cabin at Fortune Bay is an amalgam of one of the cottages in the compound (the one with the washroom outside at the end of the porch), a cute white cottage down the lake that always seemed empty, and a cabin on the lake here on Vancouver Island. Like everything else I write, there is a touchstone of truth, although it is usually unrecognizable by the time it hits the page.

Eventually my in-laws could no longer manage the hill, and when the grandfather died, we were not as lucky as Alex and were not able to keep the cottage. A few years later I wrote Lake of Dreams, and didn't realize until later how many fond memories of summers on that Ontario lake had made it into the book. And, indeed, into all of the Fortune Bay books.

Learn more about Lake of Dreams, and how you can get it free, by clicking here. 

Is there a place that is near and dear to your heart, where you can get away from your regular life and kick back? Or a place you remember where you’d love to return? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Judith Hudson

Don't forget to enter the monthly rafflecopter giveaway. Only a few days left to get in on a chance for one of three  Amazon Gift Cards. To enter click on the link above, then scroll down to find my name on an entry.

Welcome the first day of spring!, by Judith Hudson #Romance Gems

Hi Everyone,
Happy Spring Equinox!
It might be my Scandinavian blood, but I always feel the subtle seasonal change that come with the equinoxes and solstices. Winter solstice is a time of quiet rejoicing when the sun begins it’s return north. As the days inch longer, I can almost feel the plants stirring beneath the ground.

Then Spring! The warm weather burst into the Pacific northwest this week after a month of unrelenting, record breaking cold and snow, the last vestiges of which, small piles in the shade of the hedge by the driveway, will probably be gone today. Yay!
In each of the four full-length books of my Fortune Bay series, the women hold a fun ladies-night to celebrate the change of the seasons. As they share confidences over a bottle of wine, Frankie sharpens her tarot card reading skills, often surprising the women when her readings hit so close to home.

Here’s a short excerpt from Book One, Summer of Fortune, where Maddie attends her first solstice gathering, in this case celebrating summer, with her new friends, Frankie and Louise.

Maddie sat back and listened as Frankie and Louise bantered back and forth. She barely recognized herself, a woman with silver hoops in her ears and a cluster of bracelets on her wrist that tinkled like wind chimes when she moved. A woman taking charge of her life—because that was what they had decided the evening would honor, in the spirit of wise women’s solstice gatherings stretching back for thousands of years. Nothing too weird, they’d all agreed, just something to encourage their own awareness of their personal power. They would each ask for, or choose, a direction to follow for the next fertile quarter of the year.
And for Maddie it had to be fertile indeed. The next equinox fell before the opening of her show, the harvest, so to speak, of her summer’s bounty.
Frankie was playing high priestess tonight. Over her loose linen pants, she wore a robe of sapphire silk with a border of white Celtic symbols down the long front lapels. In honor of the evening, she had abandoned her customary single braid and wore her hair loose on her shoulders, adorned with a garland of lavender. She spoke in a quiet voice as she shuffled the Tarot deck. “Traditionally, the summer solstice was a time of renewal. A time to release all sadness, pain and fear. A time to prepare to reap the abundance. A time to find a husband.” “Bring it on,” Louise intoned.
Frankie closed her eyes, a smile on her lips, and continued to shuffle the deck. Maddie concentrated on Frankie’s hands, letting the soothing motion settle her nerves.
Placing the brightly patterned deck on the table in front of Maddie, Frankie said, “Think of a question, then cut the cards. Be careful though. The tarot knows the question in your heart.”
Maddie smiled and a shiver ran through her as she tried to look deep inside for the answer. There was really only one question on her mind. “Will my show be a success?”
Frankie took the deck from Maddie’s hands. “This is a basic, five card spread. Simple, but very powerful.

“The central card represents the present.” Frankie flipped over the first card, a knight on a spirited horse, and placed it on the table. “The Knight of Wands.”
She squinted at Maddie. “Are you sure your question is about your work? The Knight of Wands can be an idea or an approach to life, but most often it’s about a man.”
“Like Jake,” Louise said.
Busted.

Summer of Fortune is currently free at all online book sellers. You can find your copy HERE.

How do you celebrate the arrival of spring? For me it’s being able to get back out in the garden, and this year I’m starting from scratch in my new house. I'm sure I’ll be talking about that a lot on my facebook page. Please join me there – I’ll need all the help I can get!

www.facebook.com/JudithHudsonAuthor/
Now get out and enjoy the sun!

Judy Hudson

P.S. You can find longer excerpts from all of the Fortune Bay books on my website.