Beth Carpenter Books

It's that in-between time. Christmas is over but the new year hasn't yet started. Here in Anchorage, it's dark. Today we only have five hours and thirty-three minutes of daylight, and the sky is overcast so even that daylight is gray and flat. On top of that, we're having a Chinook, a warm wind that blows down the mountains and is melting our meager covering of snow, so once the sun goes down, parking lots will be ice rinks and the night will be that much darker. But things are looking up. We have almost ten minutes more of daylight than we did on winter solstice a week ago. The new year is coming, along with resolutions and goals and a chance for new beginnings. Summer will come again, and the world will be green. And, as a consolation for the nasty wind, just look at this morning's sunrise behind the Chugach mountains.  A new day begins ... Happy New Year!

The scent of a fresh evergreen tree has to be the loveliest smell of Christmas. Unless it's baking cookies.  Or peppermint candy canes.  Cloves and cinnamon sticks in spiced tea?  Sage and roasting turkey? Wood smoke from neighbor's chimneys? Whatever your favorite Christmas smells like, I hope yours was perfect, and that  all your Christmas Wishes came true.   Merry Christmas and wishing the Happiest New Year to you and yours. -Beth

It’s that time of the year when my reading preferences, which tend toward to sentimental anyway, veer into what some would call sappy. I love a good Christmas story, with tears and laughter, redemption and happily ever after. Cold dark nights, a warm cup of tea, and a dog to curl up beside me on the couch make this the perfect time of the year to settle in for a read. Yes, traditionally, the dog would be at my feet, but Roxy insists if she's under my blanket, we'll both be warmer. There are a few stories I visit almost every year, like favorite relatives. First is the classic, Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol .  The ultimate story of redemption, Ebeneezer Scrooge becomes a new man overnight after seeing ghostly visitors. What may be my all time favorite, Winter Solstice  by Rosemunde Pilcher, is the story of a man who’s lost everything and the people, especially one amazing woman, who bring joy back into his life. Recently I finished a wonderful...

I've always lived in the West. West Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alaska, and Arizona to be exact, all different, but similar too, with a certain spare, rugged beauty. I love the West, the wide-open spaces, the rocky landscapes, and the big blue skies. It's only this time of year that I get a little jealous of those of you on the East Coast, because of your trees. Western forests are mostly evergreen, pines or spruces, with some cottonwoods along the creeks and golden aspens high in the mountains, but we don't get the glorious masses of autumn color like the hardwood forests in the east. I see the amazing yellow, red, burgundy, and bronze of oaks and maples in neighbors' yards, so much more luminous than the pictures I've seen of autumn foliage, and can only imagine a whole forest of rich, glowing leaves in so many different shades. Someday, I'll visit New England in the autumn and see it for myself. In the meantime, I try to make up for the lack of outdoor au...

Thunderheads in East Last Friday, I decided I needed to focus on the positive and improve my attitude. With that in mind, I resolved to pay attention to the beautiful things around me every day for a week, and post  One Beautiful Thing  everyday on twitter, under the hashtag  #1BeautifulThing . Conclusion: I'm constantly surrounded by beautiful things. These are the pictures I posted, but there were many more moments of beauty every day, especially the contributions from  Bethany House  on Twitter. She elevates doodling to fine art.  When I started paying attention, I began to see beauty everywhere. I snapped pictures of a dozen beautiful things, and there were dozens more I'd have liked to captured in a photo, but I couldn't. Home-grown Tomatoes There was  t he hawk perched in a dead tree The cowdog riding shotgun in an ancient jeep Mule deer, two doe and two fawns, bounding across the road Gambel quail rustling through the brush and...

According to Christopher Booker,  there are only  Seven Basic Plots  in existence.  And romance writers, with the required ending of HEA (happily ever after) have even fewer to chose from. Most, if not all, romance stories are Plot 7, Rebirth . Sometimes Rags to Riches , a Quest , or a Comedy might get thrown in as well, but romance is really about change and growth. Two people are meant to be together, but some force within one or both of the protagonists keeps them apart. When they grow enough to overcome that force, they have earned their HEA. Successful romance writers are prolific, often writing several stories a year. So how do they manage to come up with so many different stories using one basic plot? I think it’s a little like zucchini. We have two healthy zucchini plants in our garden. If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know a modest plant can produce an astounding number of squash. I’ve heard a rumor that people in the Midwest lock their doors...

I've been a little cranky this week. I'm not sure why: maybe minor disappointments and rain ... maybe hormones ... who knows? Yesterday, the sun came out. I went for a walk, watched the sky and the birds, smelled the pines, and I felt like myself again.  Anyway, I've challenged myself to a week of noticing the beautiful things around me. Every day, I'll post a tweet with a picture or at least a description of One Beautiful Thing I saw that day. Feel free to join me with hashtag #1BeautifulThing . Here's the first day - thunderheads building in the sky to the east while the sun shone in the west.  What beautiful thing did you see today?

Synergy - The interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements, contributions, etc. Dictionary.com On a recent road trip, we came across this field. At first glance, it's a typical cotton field. The cotton plants take in sunshine and turn it into cotton which we make into crisp sheets and comfortable blue jeans. Plants are the original solar collectors. But for the cotton to thrive, it needs water, and rain isn't always dependable in West Texas. Wind, however, is almost constant, and the windmills on this property produce electricity. Electricity powers the pumps that produce water from an underground aquifer for the irrigation system that keeps this cotton growing. At the base of the windmill, you can see a pump-jack, pumping oil from deeper underground. The oil will be made into fuel, which powers the tractors and farm machinery necessary to plant, cultivate, and harvest the cotton. Everything...

When you hang out in writing circles, you meet the nicest people. At least that's been my experience. Writers have beta read for me, helped me craft blurbs, alerted me to opportunities, and helped me with promotion, all out of the goodness of their hearts.  Today, I'd like to say thank you the multi-talented  Liz Madrid , my latest writing angel. She read my entry for SYTYCW15 and not only voted and left encouraging comments, she's done some wonderful things to try to gather enough votes to get  As Long As We Both Shall Live  into the next round. By the way, if you haven't yet voted, there's still time up until Oct. 14th. Just follow the  link  and click the star.  Liz sent out creative messages on Wattpad and Twitter letting people know about the story. Then she created this wonderful cover for the book. And as if that wasn't enough, she made the amazing trailer below. Liz's creativity isn't limited to social and visual med...

Exciting News! I'm one of the top 50 picked for the first round of Harlequin's SYTYCW15. That's the So You Think You Can Write contest for 2015, with a grand prize of a two-book contract.  In this round, the editors judged pitches and first chapters from everyone who entered, and chose the top 50. Now, popular vote on Wattpad between Oct. 8th and Oct. 14th will determine which 25 move forward. So, if you're on Wattpad, or willing to take a few moments to register (it's easy) please take a look and consider voting for As Long As We Both Shall Live . Just click one the link and once you're in Part 1, click on the star to vote. As Long As We Both Shall Live is targeted for Harlequin Heartwarming, a line of clean romances.   Tawny broke his heart when she took their daughter and ran, but she can’t outrun a brain tumor. Now Alex is determined to save the mother of his child, even if he has to drag her into treatment. If he fails, he and his daughter wil...

Have you ever seen a little piece of nature that seems completely different from the area around it? Maybe a fern-filled grotto around a spring in the desert? Or a wildflower meadow in the center of a dense forest? Enchanted places? Not far from Silver City, New Mexico, we found such a place in City of Rocks State Park. In the middle of a rolling grassy plain, an ancient volcano left behind a core of hard rock that had eroded and weathered into what looks like a city on the hill.    It's easy to imagine a thriving city, magically turned to stone. Like all cities, it has streets and alleys, windows and doors. It's nicely landscaped, with wildflowers,  live oaks, and desert plants. Rock City has quite a few permanent residents, although they are a little camera shy. Weathered rocks are a little like cloud formations, stimulating the imagination. If I stare at them for very long, I begin to...

Last month I talked about a few of my favorite words ( Collecting Words ) but that's only the beginning.  Word collecting is great, because words are not only free, they don't have to be dusted. The ones I like best are words that invoke a special meaning and also dance off the tongue. How about these? Debacle Not a near miss, not even a nice try, but a huge, total, spectacular failure. A fiasco.  The debacle might well have been caused by someone's ... Shenanigans Mischief, or maybe something more nefarious. Secret, dishonest manipulations. And can't you just hear the Irish accent? Huckleberry Like a blueberry, but a bigger, sweeter, wilder version. In my mind, huckleberries  are always connected to a special camping trip to Montana. Also slang for "the man you're looking for." The one who can get the job done. "I'm your huckleberry." Mosquitos and No-see-ums Be honest. Don't you feel itchy just hearing the nam...

Last week, my husband decided to go fishing, and invited me along. At first I declined, looking forward to a full day of writing. But the weather forecast said it would be a beautiful day, rare in September. The Kenai River draws visitors from all over the world. How could I pass up the opportunity?  It was the right decision. Just on the drive down, we saw four swans in Potter's Marsh and a couple of dozen belugas in Turnagain Arm. Once we reached the Kenai Peninsula, we had to brake to avoid a bull moose that ran across the road. The Kenai River itself is beautiful, with just enough glacial silt from feeder creeks to give the river a slightly milky turquoise color. The water ran high, and the fishing wasn't good. My husband only hooked some spent cohos and one small trout. The pair of bald eagles watching him seemed disappointed, too. I guess they were hoping for the castoffs.  Personally, the lack of fish didn't bother me at all. We already have more fish in ...

In honor of National Dog Day, I'd like to share a few moments from the life of a happy, funny, and loyal companion, Roxy. Roxy likes to play. Always. She's happy to chase a ball, or tug on a rope, or pounce on a laser pointer. She even thinks the reflected sunbeams from her dog-tags are a toy and chases them across the wall. She thinks every action is an invitation to play, including vacuuming the living room, when she attacks the vacuum cleaner and lifts it from the floor.  She enjoys watering the garden ... and shoveling snow ... and she likes to find the hidden icicles and carry them away to hide them.  This one was a little more than she could handle. When we adopted her, we told Roxy she wasn't allowed on  the couch,  but she assured us she was.  Guess who won that battle. Happy National Dog Day. I hope you have someone who bring as much joy into your life  as Roxy does to mine.

E nglish is a rich language, mostly because of our habit of plundering words from other languages all over the world. As a writer, I like reaching for just the right word, the word that conveys my meaning exactly. Sometimes it’s illusive, but often the perfect word is right there, waiting. I love words, playing with them and moving them around. I love collecting interesting words and storing them away for later, like jars of jam.  These are a few of of my favorite words. Not that I necessarily use them often, but I love the pictures they paint. Illumine    http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Sistine-Madonna.html It means to enlighten, to convey the truth, but to me it means so much more. I picture illuminated manuscripts, with rich detail incorporated into the text like the ones at here , at Diana Wilder's blog. To illumine is to bring knowledge that glows with light, like a Raphael painting. Kerfuffle   Can’t you just see the dust flying, ...

Hospitality: the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers .   -dictionary.com Summer is the time for visitors, at least here in Alaska . As we’ve been getting the house ready for guests, I’ve been thinking about hospitality. I’ve been on the receiving end of hospitality countless times, with friends and relatives who share their homes, their meals, and their lives. They’ve been welcoming and generous, but one of my most memorable acts of hospitality was unexpected. Once upon a time, my husband and I were on a camping vacation in Montana. We set up the tent in a state park campground. The woman in the camping spot next door greeted us and said they'd come to pick wild huckleberries. When I mentioned I'd never tasted a huckleberry, her mouth dropped open in surprise. She ran into their camper calling, "They've never tasted huckleberries!"  and returned with a small box full of what looked like giant blueberries. They tasted like blueb...